It's neither life nor death.. BOTH are being changed.. into something still unknown.. dangerous and wonderful. On Nov 17, 1973, she left her body - why?
"Before dying falsehood rises in full swing. Still people understand only the lesson of catastrophe. Will it have to come before they open their eyes?" This is the year of Watergate, of Nixon's first trip to China, the assassination of the Israeli athletes in Munich, the first oil embargo. This is Mother's last lap. A lap strewn with heartrending little cries and stunning visions. The end of one world, the beginning of another.... whether we want it or not. "Sometimes, it is so new and unexpected, it's almost painful." And I would ask her, "But is it a state outside matter?" "I don't go outside of physical life, but.... it looks different. But it is strange. And it is PHYSICAL, that is the extraordinary thing! As if the physical had split in two.... A new state in matter. And it is ruled by something that is not the sun, I don't know what it is.... I am touching another world. Another way of being.... dangerous but wonderful." How I listened to her little breath as she gasped for air, a breath that seemed to come from another side of the world: "There is no difference between life and death. It's neither life nor death, it is.... something. It is not the disappearance of death you understand: BOTH are being changed.... into something still unknown, which seems at once extremely dangerous and absolutely wonderful." And what if "death" were merely the other, MATERIAL side of our human bowl, the sunlit shore for a species to come? A new condition on both sides of the world, in which life and death change into.... something else? "I am treading a very thin and narrow line...." And then this cry, this entreaty: "Let me do the work!" On November 17, 1973, she passed away - why?
Do you have anything to ask?
I had a question about Sri Aurobindo. I was wondering what stage he had reached when he left—what stage in the transformation? For instance, what difference is there between the work you are doing now and what he was doing at the time?
He had accumulated a great deal of supramental force in his body, and as soon as he left he.... He was on his bed, you see,
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and I was standing beside him, and all the supramental force that was in him passed quite concretely from his body into mine—so concretely that I thought it was visible. I could feel the friction of the passage. It was extraordinary—extraordinary! It was an extraordinary experience. It went on for a long, long time like this (gesture of the Force passing into Mother's body). I was standing beside his bed, and it passed into me.
Almost physical—it was a physical sensation.
It lasted a long time.
That's all I know.
But what I want to understand is at what stage he was in the inner work—for example, cleansing the subconscient and all that? What difference is there between the work he had done at the time and where you have reached now, if you will? I mean, is the subconscient less subconscious or...?
Oh, yes! Certainly, certainly!
But that is the mental way of looking at things, you see—I don't have it anymore.
Yes, Mother.
(silence)
Perhaps the difference lies in the general or collective intensity of that Power, that Force?
There is a difference in the POWER of the action.
He himself—he himself has a greater action, a greater power or action now than when he was in his body. Besides, that's why he left—because it had to be done that way.
It's very tangible, you know. His action has become very tangible. Of course, it isn't something mental at all. It is from another region. But it isn't neither ethereal nor—is it tangible. I could almost say material.
I've often wondered about the right inner movement needed to go into that other region. There are basically two possible movements: a movement inwards in the direction of the soul, as it were, and a movement of annihilation of the individuality, in which you are in a sort of impersonal vastness.
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Both are needed.
Both?
Yes.
(Mother plunges in)
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