Starts the terrible years.The change is DONE: a new mode of being of the cellular consciousness has appeared on earth. The future awaits - will the 'old' yield?
The beginning of the terrible years.... There was the feeling that Mother had found the secret of the change, conquered all she could from her own body, and that she was now sitting there, surrounded by the pack, just putting up with each and every resistance of the old species. "The change is DONE. Everything is tooth and nail, ferociously after me, but it's over." A new mode of being of the cellular consciousness had appeared on earth, as one day, in inert matter, there appeared a new mode of being called life - but this time it is "overlife": "The impression there is a way of being of the cells that would be the beginning of a new body; only, when that comes, the body itself feels it is dying." What would be the feeling of the first corpuscle to experience life? "The body feels it has reached the point of.... unknown. A very, very strange sensation. A sort of new vibration. It's so new that.... I can't speak of anguish, but it's.... the unknown. A mystery of the unknown." And there, what we call death is like the other side of the bowl for the former fish, and yet it is not "another world": "They are surprisingly one within the other! There is something there.... Is it possible? For overlife is both life and death together." And then, this cry of the breakthrough: "What appears to us as 'the laws of nature' is nonsense!...." Another world ON EARTH in which the old mortal laws of our bowl break down.... into something else? "I have just had a fantastic vision of the cradle of a future.... which is not very far. It's like a formidable mass suspended above the earth." But will the old pack let her go through to the end?
(Mother's face is swollen by a tooth abscess.)
We'd need some "Notes [on the Way]" for the August Bulletin.
But you have some! (laughter)
There is something indeed, but it's a long time since you've stopped speaking.
(long silence)
Still, once or twice I wondered if your not speaking was due to something in me?
No!
Something in my attitude, or I don't know what?
No, no, mon petit! No, it's not that.
It's not that.
It would be that if I could speak to someone else, but with everyone it's the same thing.
Something is going on—it's not that it's not going on, but...
(very long silence Mother moans now and then)
Page 240
You understand, expressing takes a minimum of mentalization, and that's what is very difficult, because it's the body that's going through all kinds of experiences and is learning, but as soon as there is an attempt to express, it says, "No, it's not true! It's not like that...." (Mother draws small squares, like boxes) It's like doing geometrical drawings with life, that's its impression.
Even otherwise, it's inexpressible, because it's manifold, complex, and if you don't develop a whole explanation for it... it can't even be said. As soon as you develop a whole explanation, it's no longer true.
All these last few days, it has been this experience of the consciousness that a very slight shift (how could I put it?), a very slight change of attitude, which isn't even expressible, and in one case you are in divine bliss; then, things remaining exactly the same, it almost becomes a torture! That's something constant. At times, you know, the body would scream in pain, and... a very slight, very slight change, which is almost inexpressible, and it becomes bliss—it becomes... it's something else, this extraordinary thing of the Divine everywhere. So the body is constantly switching from one to the other, like a sort of gymnastics, a struggle of the consciousness between the two.
It's becoming extremely acute; sometimes, at certain seconds, just when the body says, "Ah, enough, I've had enough..." pffft!... (Mother makes a gesture of reversal).
So it's impossible to say. Whatever one may say is no longer really true.
And all these suffering vibrations (Mother points to her cheek) are as though supported by the mass of the general human consciousness—that's right. While the other [state] is supported by... something that doesn't seem to intervene, that's like this (immutable gesture) in comparison with this human mass that tends to express itself... So all that is impossible to say.
Constantly, constantly, there is either this immutable Peace—this superlative Peace, you know, which is more than any peace one may feel—and at the same time one knows (I can't say "one feels," but one knows) that the movement of transformation is so rapid that it can't be perceived materially. And the two are concomitant, this body goes from one to the other, and sometimes... sometimes almost the two together! (Mother shakes her head, noting the impossibility of expressing herself.)
So then, to the vision of ordinary things, anyway of life as it is, it gives a perception from the standpoint... not the divine standpoint,
Page 241
but in comparison with the Divine, it gives the perception of a general madness, and no really perceptible difference between what people call "mad" and what they call "reasonable." That... it's comical, the difference people make. One would be tempted to say, "But you are ALL like that, to varying degrees!..." So...
All that is a WORLD of simultaneous perceptions, so it's really impossible to speak.
There's really nothing there (Mother touches her head), it doesn't go through there, there's nothing there. It's something... something without a precise form, which has an INNUMERABLE experience at the same time, with a capacity of expression that has remained as it is, that is to say, incapable.
(silence)
For instance, with anything happening, there is, at the same time, the explanation ("explanation" isn't the right word, but anyway...), the explanation of the ordinary human consciousness ("ordinary," I don't mean banal, I mean the human consciousness), then the explanation as Sri Aurobindo gives it in an illumined mind, and then... the divine perception. All three simultaneously, for the same thing—how, how do you describe it?!
And it's constant, it's all the time like that. So then, this (Mother points to her body) isn't in a condition to express itself, it's not the time for expression.
To such a point that when I write it's also like that. So I try to put what our idiotic formulas can hold—and I put so much, so much that can't be expressed with words, that when they read back to me what I wrote, I feel like saying, "You must be joking, you took away everything!..."
Page 242
Home
The Mother
Books
Agenda
Share your feedback. Help us improve. Or ask a question.