Vertical time' - a sort of absoluteness in each second. As if Mother were experiencing her body at the level of subatomic physics. A new mode of life in matter.
The course of 1961, the year of the first American voyage in space, arrives at the heart of the great mystery– "It is double! It is the same world and yet it is.... what?" In one world, everything is harmonious, without the least possibility of illness, accident or death – "a miraculous harmony" – and in the other, everything goes wrong. Yet it is the same world of matter - separated by what? "More and more, I feel it’s a question of the vibration in matter." And then, what is this "vertical time" which suddenly opens up another way of living and being in the matter, in which causality ceases to exist – "A sort of absoluteness in each second"? A new world each second, ageless, leaving no trace or imprint. And this "massive immobility" in a lightning-fast movement, this "twinkling of vibrations," as if Mother were no longer experiencing her body at the macroscopic level, but at the level of subatomic physics. And sixty years of "spiritual life" crumble like a "far more serious illusion" before.... a new Divine... or a new mode of life in matter? The next mode? "I am in the midst of hewing a path through a virgin forest." Volume II records the opening up of this path.
Sri Aurobindo speaks here of the 'higher soul.'1 Yet we can't translate it by 'âme supérieure,' as if there were an 'inferior soul,' can we?
Sri Aurobindo wants to make the distinction between the progressive soul (the soul which has experiences and progresses from life to life), what can be called the 'lower soul,' and the higher soul, that is, the eternal, immutable and divine soul—essentially divine. He wrote this when he was in contact with certain Theosophical writings, before I introduced Theon's vocabulary to him. For Theon, there is the 'divine center' which is the eternal soul, and the 'psychic being'; similarly, to avoid using the same word in both cases, Sri Aurobindo speaks in later writings of the 'psychic being' and of the divine center or 'central being'—the essential soul.
What if we translate it 'la partie supérieure de l'âme,' [the higher part of the soul], rather than 'âme supérieure?'
Then the soul would appear to be divided!
(After the work, when it is time to leave, Mother makes the following remark:)
Later on there will be a lot to say.
(silence)
Page 85
Ah, if we can hold out—or to put it in a better way, after we have held out—there will indeed be some interesting things to say....
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