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!"
(Mother gives Satprem an old note to keep—unfortunately, he does not recall exactly what it was—one of those little scraps of paper, scattered about almost everywhere, on which Mother would jot down notations of her experiences; or, to be more exact, on which she concretized in material words the Force then manifesting. As a comment on this note, Mother adds:)
I have experienced this hundreds and hundreds of times: one has a deep, true experience, but the mind, even the higher mind, immediately latches onto it (usually it's the higher mind) and very actively makes its OWN thing out of the experience, thus bringing in its own distortion.
It comes merely as an addition, the distortion is not total, there's still something quite true behind it.
All those things are barriers the mind sets against the Truth....
I didn't write that to give you. Sometimes I write things and then keep them for years on end so that.... They are a material
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focus for the action. Had I not written it, I would not have been able to work so effectively—these are occult documents.1
(Regarding the last conversation and Mother's "innumerable vital beings," who reincarnated this time "in a deluge":)
As a child, when I was around ten or twelve years old, I had some rather interesting experiences which I didn't understand at all. I had some history books—you know, the textbooks they give you to learn history. Well, I'd read and suddenly the book would seem to become transparent, or the printed words would become transparent, and I'd see other words or even pictures. I hadn't the faintest idea what was happening to me! And it appeared so natural to me that I thought it was the same for everybody. But my brother and I were great chums (he was only a year and a half older), so I would tell him: "They talk nonsense in history, you know—it is LIKE THIS; it isn't like that: it is LIKE THIS!" And several times the corrections I got on one person or another turned out to be quite exact and detailed. And (I see it now—I understood it later on) they were certainly memories. About some passages I would even say, "How stupid! It was never that; THIS is what was said. It never happened like that; THIS is how it happened." And the book was simply open before me; I was just reading along like any other child and... suddenly something would occur. It was something in me, of course, but I used to think it was in the book!
I found out many, many things about Joan of Arc—many things. And with stunning precision, which made it extremely interesting. I won't repeat them because I don't remember with exactness, and these things have no value unless they are exact. And then, for the Italian Renaissance: Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa; and for the French Renaissance: François I, Marguerite de Valois,2 and so forth.
Twice I knew that it wasn't just images but something that had
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happened to ME, but it took another form. Once (when I was older, around twenty) it happened at Versailles. I had been invited to dinner by a cousin who, with no warning, served me dry champagne during dinner—and I drank it unsuspectingly (I who never drank at all, neither wine nor liquor!).... When I had to get up and cross the crowded room, oh, how very difficult it became, so difficult! Then we went to a place near the chateau, with a view of the whole park. And I was staring at the park, when I saw... I saw the park filling up with lights (the electric lights had vanished), with all kinds of lights, torches, lanterns... and then crowds of people walking about... in Louis XIV dress! I was staring at this with my eyes wide open, holding on to the balustrade to keep from falling down (I wasn't too sure of myself!). I was seeing it all, then I saw myself there, engrossed in conversation with some people (I don't remember now, but there were certain "corrections" here too).... I mean I was a certain person (I don't remember who) and there were those two brothers who were sculptors (Mother vainly tries to recollect the names3)... anyhow, all kinds of people were there and I saw myself talking, chatting. And I seem to have been sufficiently in control of myself, because when I related all that I had seen, there were some quite interesting details and corrections. That was one time.
There was another time at Blois. They make Anjou wine at Blois. It was the same story: I never drank anything but water or herb tea, but there was a luncheon and they served us sparkling Anjou wine... it seemed so light! Afterwards (I was with an artist friend, we were all artists) we went to see the museum, and it appears I was sparkling with wit! And I suddenly halted in front of a painting by... now let's see, who was it? Coué?... No, Clouet! Clouet: the princess... one of the princesses.4 And I started making
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a few remarks out loud (it took me a little while to notice that people were listening). "Look at this!" I was saying. "Just look at this! Look what this fellow has done to me! See what he's done to me—it wasn't at all like that!" It was actually a beautiful painting, but I was quite unhappy about it: "Look what he's done to me! Look—he made this like that, but that's not at all how it was, it was LIKE THIS!" Details.... And then I became aware (I wasn't too conscious physically)... I realized that people were standing around listening, so I got a grip on myself, and left without a word. But I told my friends, "Listen, it was definitely me! It was MY portrait, it was ME!"
Almost all my memories of past lives came like that; the particular being reincarnated in me rises to the surface and begins acting as if it were all on its own! Once in Italy, when I was fifteen, it happened in an extraordinary way. But that time I did some research. I was in Venice with my mother and I researched in museums and archives, and I discovered my name, and the names of the other people involved. I had relived a scene in the Ducal Palace, but relived it in such a... such an absolutely intense way (laughing—a scene where I was being strangled and thrown into a canal!) that my mother had to hurry me out of there as fast as she could! But that experience I wrote down, so the exact memory has been kept (I didn't write down the other experiences, so the details have all faded away, but this one was noted, although I didn't include any names). The next morning I did some research and uncovered the whole story. I told it all to Théon and Madame Théon, and he also had the memory of a past life there, during the same period. And as a matter of fact, I had seen a portrait there that was the spitting image of Théon! The portrait of one of the doges. It was absolutely (it was a Titian)... absolutely Théon! HIS portrait, you know, as if it had just been done.5
All those kinds of things came to me just like that, without my looking for them, wanting them, or understanding them, without doing any sort of discipline, nothing—it was absolutely spontaneous. And they just kept on coming and coming and coming.
From the time I met Théon, it all got clarified: I saw it all clearly, understood and organized it. But a good deal of it happened before
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—everything I have just told you happened before I met Théon.
"One after the other, these vital beings came," you say, "and some of them have even been in men...."
One of them was in Murat, on the day of his great victory.6 It was a vital force that took possession of him and remained just for that victory; and it came into me, so I saw it all! I saw its entry into Murat's body and the whole battle scene—I lived through it all. And once the battle was over, it left him. It was very interesting.
I wanted to clarify something.... I don't know if Mona Lisa and Marguerite de Valois were your incarnations, but weren't they contemporaries!?...
Yes, but I told you—four at once!7
Four at once. And, in general, they were the different states of being of the Mother—the four aspects. Generally one aspect in each embodiment (when there were four). Or else this or that aspect might have been less present in one embodiment and more present in another. Sometimes there was a fairly central presence and then at the same time less central, less important emanations. But that has happened several times—several times. On two occasions it was particularly clear.
But I have often sensed that there wasn't merely ONE embodiment, that the course of history may have crystallized around this or that person, but there were other embodiments less (how to put it?)... less conspicuous, somewhere else.
They are the different aspects of the Mother.
(A little later, Mother refers to a passage from the preceding conversation in which she said that her present incarnation on
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earth didn't have a merely terrestrial effect but an effect on all the other worlds as well—and particularly on the gods.)
None of those beings, those gods and deities of various pantheons, have the same rapport with the Supreme that man has; for man has a psychic being, in other words, the Supreme's presence within him. These gods are emanations—independent emanations—created for a special purpose and a particular action which they fulfill SPONTANEOUSLY; they do it not with a sense of constant surrender to the Divine but simply because that's what they are, and why they are, and all they know is what they are. They don't have the conscious link with the Supreme that man has—man carries the Supreme within himself.
That makes a considerable difference.
But with this present incarnation of the Mahashakti.... She is the Supreme's first manifestation, creation's first stride, and it was She who first gave form to all those beings. Now, since her incarnation in the physical world, and through the position She has taken here in relation to the Supreme by incarnating in a human body, all the other worlds have been influenced, and influenced in an extremely interesting way.8 I have been in contact with all those gods, all those great beings, and for the most part their attitude has changed. And even with those who didn't want to change, it has nonetheless influenced their way of being.
Human experience, with this direct incarnation of the Supreme,9 is ultimately a UNIQUE experience, which has given a new orientation to universal history. Sri Aurobindo speaks of this—he speaks of the difference between the Vedic era, the Vedic way of relating to the Supreme, and the advent of Vedanta (I think it's Vedanta):
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devotion, adoration, bhakti, the God within.10 Well, this aspect of rapport with the Supreme could exist ONLY WITH MAN, because man is a special being in universal History—the divine Presence is in him. And several of those great gods have taken human bodies JUST TO HAVE THAT.11 But not many of them—they were so fully aware of their own perfect independence and their almightiness that they didn't NEED anything (unlike man, you see, struggling to escape his slavery): they were absolutely free.
And that's why.... How many times Durga came! She would always come, and I had my eye on her (!), because in her presence I could clearly sense that there wasn't that rapport with the Supreme (she just didn't need it, she didn't need anything). And it wasn't that something acted on her consciously, deliberately, to obtain that result: it has been a contagion. I remember how she used to come, and my aspiration would be so intense, my inner attitude so concentrated... and one day there was such a sense of power, of immensity, of ineffable bliss in the contact with the Supreme (it was a day when Durga was there), and she seemed to be taken and absorbed in it. And through that bliss she made her surrender.
Most interesting.
Not at all the result of will or anything: she was simply engulfed.
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In those movements of consciousness, in this state of consciousness, I am comfortable (Mother heaves a sigh). But it has taken me a lot of discipline to concentrate here [in the body]: there was always something, from my very childhood, that felt hemmed in, squeezed, really... oh! And with a sense of something so powerful that if it ever went into action (gesture of unleashing), it would smash everything.
Now it has been tamed.
So, is that enough for you?
No, no!
(Mother laughs)
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