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 looked better the previous Wednesday.)
Do you have something?
Now Mother, nothing special.... Have you seen any changes?
(Mother shakes her head negatively)
(Long meditation, Mother pants for breath)
Do you have any questions?
(Mother shakes her head)
But it's over now, isn't it?
Oh yes, completely over.
(meditation again with labored breathing)
Do you have anything to ask?
I saw a text by Sri Aurobindo that I found interesting....
Oh!
There's a question in fact.... It's a letter1 in which he refers to the first period in the Ashram, when everyone was having "great experiences"; afterwards, there was a descent to the physical level. So he says:
"Working on the physical is like digging the ground; the physical is absolutely inert, dead like stone. When the work began there, all former energies disappeared, experiences stopped; if they came they didn't last. The progress is exceedingly slow. One rises, falls; rises again and falls again, Page 326 constantly meeting with the suggestions of the Vedic Asuras, 'You can't do anything, you are bound to fail.' "You have to go on working and working year after year, point after point, till you come to a central point in the subconscient which has to be conquered and it is the crux of the whole problem, hence exceedingly difficult.... This point in the subconscient is the seed and it goes on sprouting and sprouting till you have cut out the seed." 7 January 1939
"Working on the physical is like digging the ground; the physical is absolutely inert, dead like stone. When the work began there, all former energies disappeared, experiences stopped; if they came they didn't last. The progress is exceedingly slow. One rises, falls; rises again and falls again,
Page 326
constantly meeting with the suggestions of the Vedic Asuras, 'You can't do anything, you are bound to fail.' "You have to go on working and working year after year, point after point, till you come to a central point in the subconscient which has to be conquered and it is the crux of the whole problem, hence exceedingly difficult.... This point in the subconscient is the seed and it goes on sprouting and sprouting till you have cut out the seed."
7 January 1939
(after a silence)
Then doesn't he say something more... more encouraging? (laughter)
(long silence)
What did he say, "a point"?
"A central point in the subconscient... and it is the crux of the whole problem."
(after a long silence)
He didn't say what it was?
No, Mother.
(Mother gestures to say she does not know long concentration)
Nothing, nothing comes, nothing.
(long, panting silence)
Nothing, there's nothing to say. No experiences, nothing.
What time is it?
Eleven, Mother.
Is there no work?... Working avoids concentrating.
You see, it gives me a discomfort all over like this (gesture at the top of the chest).
But what gives you this?
Page 327
I don't know, I have it now.
Does it come from me?
No! No... I live in a... (Mother shakes her head).
It's better to read me something.
(Satprem reads a few Aphorisms of Sri Aurobindo for the next issue of the Bulletin)
159—He who recognizes no Krishna, the God in man, knows not God entirely; he who knows Krishna only, knows not even Krishna....
That's good, it's very GOOD.
Yet is the opposite truth also wholly true that if thou canst see all God in a little pale unsightly and scentless flower, then hast thou hold of His supreme reality.
Then I have hold of my supreme reality, but...! (Mother laughs) All right, it's good, it's some consolation! (laughter)
(Satprem goes on reading, then asks)
Does it tire you?
Tire? Oh, no.... It comforts me a little! It doesn't tire me at all.
(silence Satprem lays his forehead on Mother's knees)
The next time, you'll read to me. At least it's... [comforting?].
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