Mother experiences a cellular ubiquity: 'The body is everywhere!' A new cellular consciousness that will be a new kind of physics and the earth's next biology?
The year of Kennedy's assassination; the beginnings of the Sino-Soviet split. While the destructive giants respond faster and faster and science calls in question the laws of the universe, Mother is slowly hewing out the path to the next species on earth. "The path I seek is ever descending," into the consciousness of the cells. Will it be global death then, or, just as the birds followed the reptiles, the beginning of a new world? "I am on the threshold of a stupendous realisation, which depends on a very tiny thing." She is 85 this year. Will it be a more "intelligent" species within the framework of our physics, or one endowed with another kind of intelligence capable of changing the laws of physics, as the frog changes the laws of the tadpole in its fishbowl? In the course of this descent towards the self, Mother suddenly veers into another physical universe: "Everything looks as though you were seeing it for the first time, even the motion of the earth and the stars… There is no distance, no difference, there is not something that sees and something that is seen.... You become a mountain, a forest, a house.... You see simultaneously thousands of miles away and at very close range" - a kind of cellular ubiquity. And then, too, this astounding realisation: "The body is everywhere!" Is the next species ubiquitous? For what happens to the laws of the old physics when the fishbowl is shattered, when distance and "elsewhere" are abolished? "All the usual rhythms have changed.... a universal movement so tremendously rapid that it seems motionless.... A true physical that lies behind." And where is death for one who escapes the wear and tear of time inside the fishbowl? "If this condition becomes a natural thing, death can no longer exist!.... It would be a new phase of life on earth." And there is no need to look far for it: "The field of experience is right here, at every second.... people strive to enter into contact with something that is right here." A new cellular consciousness that will be a new kind of physics and perhaps the earth's next biology?
(Mother first reads in English an unpublished letter of Sri Aurobindo's:)
About the present civilisation, it is not this which has to be saved; it is the world that has to be saved and that will surely be done, though it may not be so easily or so soon as some wish or imagine or in the way that they imagine. The present must surely change, but whether by a destruction or a new construction on the basis of a greater Truth, is the issue. The Mother has left... (Mother laughs) this question hanging and I can only do the same. (September 1945)
About the present civilisation, it is not this which has to be saved; it is the world that has to be saved and that will surely be done, though it may not be so easily or so soon as some wish or imagine or in the way that they imagine. The present must surely change, but whether by a destruction or a new construction on the basis of a greater Truth, is the issue. The Mother has left... (Mother laughs) this question hanging and I can only do the same.
(September 1945)
It's marvelous! (Mother laughs) Marvelous. And it was written in '45, that is to say during the war—the war hadn't ended yet.
It was the end.1
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I intend to distribute this for August 15.
(Satprem, in English:) Is it still hanging?
(Mother laughs and does not reply)
There are two other letters:
To bring the Divine Love and Beauty and Ananda into the world is, indeed, the whole crown and essence of our yoga. But it has always seemed to me impossible unless there comes as its support and foundation and guard the Divine Truth—what I call the supramental—and its Divine Power.... (XXIII.753)
To bring the Divine Love and Beauty and Ananda into the world is, indeed, the whole crown and essence of our yoga. But it has always seemed to me impossible unless there comes as its support and foundation and guard the Divine Truth—what I call the supramental—and its Divine Power....
(XXIII.753)
Here it's clear: he says that what he calls the "Supramental" is the Divine Truth, and that it must come first, and the rest comes afterwards.
And yet, for some time now and increasingly, there has been an extremely concrete Response to a kind of aspiration (a call or prayer) in which I say to the Lord, "Supreme Lord, manifest Your Love." (It comes at the end of a long invocation in which I ask Him to manifest all His aspects one after another, one after another, and it ends like that.) But then, remarkably enough, at that moment there comes a Response which is growing clearer and clearer, stronger and stronger.... But Sri Aurobindo says that Truth should be established first, and that what he calls the Supramental is the supreme Truth, the Divine Truth. It corresponds to what I noticed while translating that last chapter on "the perfection of the being" in the "Yoga of Self-Perfection": I kept thinking, "But that's only the aspect of Truth; all that he expresses is the aspect of Truth; always and everywhere, it's the angle of Truth; and his supramental action is an action of Truth."
I didn't know he had said it, but it's written clearly here:
...But it has always seemed to me impossible unless there comes as its support and foundation and guard the Divine Truth—what I call the supramental—and its Divine Power. Otherwise Love itself blinded by the confusions of this present consciousness may stumble in its human receptacles and, even otherwise, may find Page 236 itself unrecognised, rejected or rapidly degenerating and lost in the frailty of man's inferior nature. But when it comes in the divine truth and power, Divine Love descends first as something transcendent and universal and out of that transcendence and universality it applies itself to persons according to the Divine Truth and Will, creating a vaster, greater, purer personal love than any the human mind or heart can now imagine. It is when one has felt this descent that one can be really an instrument for the birth and action of the Divine Love in the world. (XXIII.753)
...But it has always seemed to me impossible unless there comes as its support and foundation and guard the Divine Truth—what I call the supramental—and its Divine Power. Otherwise Love itself blinded by the confusions of this present consciousness may stumble in its human receptacles and, even otherwise, may find
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itself unrecognised, rejected or rapidly degenerating and lost in the frailty of man's inferior nature. But when it comes in the divine truth and power, Divine Love descends first as something transcendent and universal and out of that transcendence and universality it applies itself to persons according to the Divine Truth and Will, creating a vaster, greater, purer personal love than any the human mind or heart can now imagine. It is when one has felt this descent that one can be really an instrument for the birth and action of the Divine Love in the world.
They don't give the date, but I find it most interesting.
And the last one:
The importance of the body is obvious; it is because he has developed or been given a body and brain capable of receiving and serving a progressive mental illumination that man has risen above the animal. Equally, it can only be by developing a body or at least a functioning of the physical instrument capable of receiving and serving a still higher illumination that he will rise above himself and realise, not merely in thought and in his internal being but in life, a perfectly divine manhood. Otherwise either the promise of Life is cancelled, its meaning annulled and earthly being can only realise Sachchidananda by abolishing itself, by shedding from it mind, life and body and returning to the pure Infinite, or else man is not the divine instrument, there is a destined limit to the consciously progressive power which distinguishes him from all other terrestrial existences and as he has replaced them in the front of things, so another must eventually replace him and assume his heritage. (The Life Divine, XVIII.231)
The importance of the body is obvious; it is because he has developed or been given a body and brain capable of receiving and serving a progressive mental illumination that man has risen above the animal. Equally, it can only be by developing a body or at least a functioning of the physical instrument capable of receiving and serving a still higher illumination that he will rise above himself and realise, not merely in thought and in his internal being but in life, a perfectly divine manhood. Otherwise either the promise of Life is cancelled, its meaning annulled and earthly being can only realise Sachchidananda by abolishing itself, by shedding from it mind, life and body and returning to the pure Infinite, or else man is not the divine instrument, there is a destined limit to the consciously progressive power which distinguishes him from all other terrestrial existences and as he has replaced them in the front of things, so another must eventually replace him and assume his heritage.
(The Life Divine, XVIII.231)
It's amusing.
(silence)
Aren't you replying to my question?
No! (laughter)
Page 237
No, barely two or three days ago, someone asked me a similar question: "Will there be another great destruction or not?" Those are things one ought not to talk about.2
You know that X ceaselessly repeats, "There will be war, there will be war, there will be war... even if I don't want it, there will be war"!! He had said war would come by April—it's now July.
For the time being, the Chinese are quite clearly those who represent in the world the aggressive attitude; they've even quarreled with the Russians because of that—a serious quarrel. You know the story, I suppose.
Those are things it's better not to talk about.
Then Mother comments again on Sri Aurobindo's second letter:
And were Love to manifest before Truth, there would be catastrophes.
It's curious, for a-very long time, for months and almost years, something always stopped me when I asked for Love's manifestation, a sort of very clear impression: "No, it isn't time yet, it isn't time yet...." Until suddenly one day it started off and there came an overwhelming Response. That was several months ago, and ever since then there has been a Response—an ever-increasing Response.
Yet I can't say in all sincerity that the Truth has manifested!
Perhaps the preparation is sufficient?
Perhaps it's an individual question—yet my action isn't individual, there's a constant perception of the earth's atmosphere.
Never mind, to say so gives some comfort!
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Your health—all right?
All right, Mother.
Good. That's the one thing needed—important, very important: to keep the body in good health, in a sort of balance. We must keep our balance. Very important. The rest doesn't matter!
(Mother laughs and so does Satprem)
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