Mother, in her body, emerges into a 'third position' - resembling the quantum world - a 'third cellular position' in which you become incapable of dying because death no longer has any reality.
The course of the year 1962.... the year of the Kennedy-Khrushchev confrontation over Cuba and the first Sino-Indian conflict: "Could it be the first sign of something really.... momentous? It seems to have profoundly disrupted something central." The entire earth is disrupted. It is the year when Mother, in her body, emerges into a "third position", neither life nor death as we know them, but another side of the "web" where the laws of our physics no longer hold, and which strangely resembles the quantum world of Black Holes: time changes, space changes, death changes. Could this be the material place, in the body, where the laws of the world - which exist only in our heads - become inverted and where evolution opens out into an unthinkable body freedom, a third position, that of the next species on earth?.... "The body is beginning to obey another law. The sense of time disappears into a moving immobility.... A mass of infinite force, like pure superelectricity..... An undulating movement of corporeal waves, as vast as the earth.... All the organs have changed, they belong to another rhythm. Such a formidable power, so free! It's something else.... something else! I don't know if I am living or dead.... The nature of my nights is changing, the nature of my days is changing.... The physical vibration is becoming porous.... No more axis - it's gone, vanished! It can go forward, backwards, anywhere at all.... Ubiquity, or something of the sort." And then this cry: "Death is an illusion, illness is an illusion! Life and death are one and the same thing. It's merely a shifting of consciousness. Why, it's fantastic!" And then this simple discovery in the flesh: "The closer you draw to the cell, the more the cell says, 'Ah, but I am immortal!' "A third cellular position in which you become incapable of dying because death no longer has any reality." Has Mother, at the age of 84, discovered another material reality? "There, behind, it's like a fairy tale....Something very beautiful is in preparation, ineffably beautiful - a lovely story that Sri Aurobindo was trying to bring onto earth, and it is sure to come!"
(At the start of this conversation, Mother listens to Satprem read an unpleasant letter he has just received from P.A.L., his Paris publisher:)
Here's what he says: "I read with great interest the Introduction to your new book on Shri Aurobindo. I must confess that
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if I have been late in replying it is because I am still very hesitant. The text reads well, but it leaves doubts as to how well the book that follows will conform to the norms of our 'Spiritual Masters' series. I greatly fear that we will both end up disappointed again. The book you want to write is, I feel, very personal, whereas this series must consist of books which are essentially expositions, introductions, tools of information...": etc.
(After a silence) I am getting a sort of indication: when I turn the beacon to this side, the resistance suddenly seems to give way—there must be a means of making it give way....
Don't reply, keep quiet. Write your book and we will see.
I have the feeling that, consciously or unconsciously (I don't know which), this gentleman has become a tool of Catholic resistance. It is very strong in the Old World and in America as well, although there it's more Christian than specifically Catholic. But it's terribly strong in France: it tries to take advantage of every opening and to block whatever might take a new turn.
It will give way.
But the things I am seeing aren't at all personal like this letter, you know, they are not small details, they are overall actions. There seems to be something unyielding, like this (gesture), and then it suddenly collapses and there's a free flow.
I can't say this gentleman knows it (he probably doesn't—what goes on in the human brain is very incoherent). But in any case, something in him is wary: "What's to tell me this book won't lead me just where I don't want to go?"
Their main complaint was, "You are abstract." So if we want to be concrete, we have to speak of experiences.
No, to them "concrete" means telling what Sri Aurobindo did physically. That's what they call concrete. Psychology is something abstract for them.
Oh, I don't know what to do!
Here, I'll give you an example: A. wrote to tell me, "If you know how to get in touch with Agni,1 let me know, because I need him"!
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I gave the natural reply, that what's needed is aspiration for progress, a will for perfection, and that you kindle the fire by burning your desires. I told him this in a way I call very concrete. Well, he answered (laughing), "Ohhh! You're living in abstractions. That's not what I want, I want a living god"—a personality, you see!
That's how people are.
Psychology: that's abstract. What they want is: on such and such a date he went to this place, saw these people and did this—all the most external and banal sorts of things. Even yoga boils down to: he sat down and stayed there for so many hours, he had this vision, he tried out that method, he did asanas and breathing exercises.... That, for them, is concrete. That and that alone. Psychology is thoroughly abstract—thoroughly. It's unreal to them.
But I've tried to be as concrete as possible! Like cutting up a rat on a dissecting table to see what's inside it....
They would already have to be well advanced.
Listen, don't think about it, don't pay it any attention—finish the book.
I'm not really satisfied.
That isn't necessary.
Is it necessary to be satisfied? (Mother laughs.)
I have noticed that the very thing you feel you've done most poorly is usually the most useful. It has always been like that for me. I remember doing a lot of things—a bit of painting, a bit of music, a bit of writing (very little)—and it was just when I used to think, "Oh, la-la! What a fiasco!", that people were the most touched and pleased.
You mustn't be concerned with it, it's totally irrelevant.
I think it's quite dangerous to be satisfied, because then the very best part of the being goes to sleep.
Whether we're satisfied or not is altogether unimportant.
And then, it may well be that one day "someone" will put the pressure on this gentleman, and he will say, "Ahh!... Well, all right—let's try."
Keep on.
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