Notes on the Way

25 March 1972

The other day you spoke of the vision of your body, this body in transition...

Yes, but I was like that. It was myself. I did not see myself in a mirror: I saw myself like that (Mother bends her head to look at her body). I was... I was like that.

It was for the first time. It was at four o'clock in the morning, I believe. It was quite natural—I did not look in a mirror, I was quite natural. I remember only what I saw (gesture from the chest to the waist). I had only a veil on me, so I saw only... it was the trunk that was quite different from the chest down to the waist: neither man nor woman.

And it was pretty. I had a form very very slim, very slender—very slender but not thin. And the skin was very white; the skin was like my skin. A very pretty form. But no sex, you could not say—neither man nor woman; sex had disappeared.

Also there (Mother points to the chest), all that: nothing. I do not know how to say it. It was like a semblance, but had no form at all (Mother touches her chest), not even as much as men have. A very white skin, all very even. No belly, so to say. The stomach—no stomach. All that was slim.

Well, I did not pay any special attention because I was like that and I found it quite natural. It was the first time and it was in the night, the day before yesterday. And last night I saw nothing—that was the first and only time till now.

But it was so in the subtle physical?

It must have been so in the subtle physical.

But how will that pass into the physical?

Page 302

There! I do not know... I do not know. I do not know.

Also, it was clear that there should not be any complicated process of digestion nor of elimination as now. It was not like that.

But how?... Evidently the food is already very different and becoming more and more different (as for example glucose, things that do not need a complicated digestion). But how is the body itself going to change? I do not know. I do not know.

I did not look to see how it was, because it was quite natural, so I cannot give a detailed description. Simply, it was neither the body of a woman nor the body of a man—that is clear. And the "outline", the silhouette, was almost the same as that of a very very young person. There was a sort of semblance to human forms (Mother sketches it in the air), there was a shoulder and a figure. As though the semblance of a form.

I see it, but... I saw it as one sees oneself. And there was a kind of veil that I had put on just to cover myself. It was a mode of being, not surprising to me, it was a natural mode of being.

It must be like that in the subtle physical.

No, what seems mysterious is the transit from one to the other.

Yes, how?

But it is the same mystery as the passage from the chimpanzee to a man.

Oh no! It is much more tremendous than that, Mother, much more tremendous because, after all, between a chimpanzee and a man there is not much difference.

But there was not much difference in appearance here (Mother sketches a silhouette in the air): there were the shoulders, the arms, a body, a figure like that, legs. All that was the same, only it was...

Page 303

Yes, but I mean to say that the bodily function of a chimpanzee and that of a man are similar.

They are similar.

Well, yes, they digest, breathe, they... Whereas here...

No, there must have been respiration—on the contrary, the shoulders were broad (gesture). That is important. Only the chest was neither feminine nor masculine, but just a semblance. And then all that—stomach, belly, etc.—they were just an outline, a very slim and harmonious form, but it certainly had not the use to which we put our body.

The two things very very different: first, procreation, of which there was no possibility there; secondly, the food. But it is quite clear that the food now is not that of chimpanzees nor that of the first men. It is very different. And now the question is to find a food which needs no complicated digestion.... Here it seems to me that the food should not be positively liquid, but not solid either. And then there is the question of the mouth—I do not know. The teeth? Evidently there is no more need of chewing and so the teeth have no more... But there must be something in their place.... That I do not know at all, at all, how the face was, but it did not seem to have a very different look from what it is now.

Evidently, what will change very much, which had become very important, was breathing. It is upon this that this being greatly depended.

Yes, probably it absorbs the energies directly.

Yes. But probably there will be intermediary beings that will not last very long, like the intermediary beings that were between the chimpanzee and man.

But I do not know, something must happen that has not happened till now.

Page 304

Yes.

(Silence)

Sometimes I have a sort of feeling that the time of realisation is near.

Yes, but how?

Yes, how, one does not know.

Is that (Mother points to her body), is that going to change? It must change or it has to follow the old ordinary process of undoing itself and remaking itself.... I do not know.... Evidently life can be much prolonged, there are examples but... I do not know.

I do not know.

Many a time I have had the feeling that, rather than a transformation, it will be a concretisation of the other body.

Ah!... But how?

That also, the transition, one does not know. But instead of this one becoming the other, it is rather the other that will take the place of this one.

Yes, but how?

Yes, how, I do not know.

(After a silence) Yes, the person that I was the night before yesterday, evidently if it materialised itself... But how?

Page 305

(Mother goes into contemplation.)

One knows nothing!

Strange how one knows nothing.

(Silence)

Mother, in a poem, "Transformation", Sri Aurobindo begins in this way:

"My breath runs in a subtle rhythmic stream;
It fills my members with a might divine..."

The breath, yes, that, that is important.

Page 306