On Thoughts and Aphorisms

Aphorism - 101, 102

101—In God's sight there is no near or distant, no present, past or future. These things are only a convenient perspective for His world-picture.

102—To the senses it is always true that the sun moves round the earth; this is false to the reason. To the reason it is always true that the earth moves round the sun; this is false to the supreme vision. Neither earth moves nor sun; there is only a change in the relation of sun-consciousness and earth-consciousness.

(Long silence)

Impossible, I can't say anything.

This would mean that our normal perception of the physical world is a false perception.

Yes, naturally.

But then what would the true perception be like?

Well, yes, there it is!

The true perception of the physical world—trees, people, stones—what do they look like to a supramental eye?

This is precisely what one cannot say! When you have the vision and the consciousness of the Order of Truth, of what is direct, the direct expression of the Truth, you immediately have an impression of something inexpressible, because all words belong to the other domain; all images, all comparisons, all expressions belong to the other domain.

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This is precisely the great difficulty I had—it was on the 29th of February. During the whole time that I lived in this consciousness of the direct manifestation of the Truth, I tried to formulate what I was feeling, what I was seeing—it was impossible. There were no words. And immediately, simply the formulation would cause an instantaneous fall back into the other consciousness.

On that occasion, the memory of this Aphorism about the sun and the earth came back to me... even to say a "change of consciousness"—a change of consciousness is also a movement.

I don't think one can say anything. I feel incapable of saying anything, because all the things we say are uninteresting approximations.

But when you are in this Truth-Consciousness, is it a "subjective" experience or does Matter itself change its appearance?

Yes, everything—the whole world is different! Everything is different. And the experience has convinced me of one thing, which I still feel continually, that both states—of Truth and Falsehood—are simultaneous, concomitant, and that only... yes, what he calls a "change of consciousness", that is to say that one is either in this consciousness or in that consciousness, but one does not move for all that.

We are obliged to use words that move, because for us everything moves; but this change of consciousness is not a movement—it is not a movement. So then how can we speak about it or describe it?...

Even if we say, "one state taking the place of another", with "taking the place of" we immediately introduce movement.... All our words are like that, what can we say?...

Yesterday again, the experience was absolutely concrete and powerful, that there is no need to move oneself or to move anything whatever for this Truth-Consciousness to replace the

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consciousness of deformation or distortion. That is to say, the capacity to live and be this true—essential and true—vibration seems to have the power to substitute this vibration for the vibration of falsehood and distortion, to such an extent that... for example, the natural result of distortion or of the vibration of distortion, should be an accident or a catastrophe; but if, inside these vibrations, there is a consciousness which has the power to become conscious of the vibration of Truth and therefore to manifest the vibration of Truth, it can—and must—annul the other, which would be translated in the external phenomenon by an intervention that would avert the catastrophe.

It is a growing impression that the True is the only way to change the world, that all the other processes of slow transformation are always at a tangent—one draws nearer and nearer but one never arrives—and that the last step must be this: the substitution of the true vibration.

We do have partial proofs. But since they are partial, they are not conclusive, because for the ordinary vision and understanding explanations can always be found: one can say that the accident, for example, was "intended" and "fated" to be forestalled, and that it was not forestalled by this intervention at all, but by the "determinism" that had decided it. And how to prove it? How to prove even to oneself that it is not so? It is impossible.

As soon as you express it, you enter into the mind, and as soon as you enter the mind, there is this kind of logic, which is frightful because it is all-powerful: if everything already exists, co-existing from all eternity, how can one thing be changed into another?... How can anything "change"?

You are told—Sri Aurobindo has just said it himself—that for the consciousness of the Lord there is no past, no time, no movement, nothing—everything is. To translate this, we say "from all eternity", which is nonsense, but anyway, everything is. So everything is (Mother folds her arms), and that is all there is to it, there is nothing to be done. This conception, or rather this way of speaking—for it is only a way of speaking—cancels

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all sense of progress, it cancels evolution, it cancels... You are told that it is part of the determinism that you should strive for progress—yes, all that is empty talk.

And note that this way of speaking is only a minute of experience, it is not the whole experience. There is a moment when one feels like that, but it is not total, it is partial. It is only one way of feeling, it is not everything. There is something much deeper and much more inexpressible than that in the eternal consciousness—much more. This is only the first bewilderment one feels when one leaves the ordinary consciousness, but that is not everything. It is not everything. When the memory of this Aphorism came back to me recently, I had the impression that it was merely a little glimpse one suddenly has, and a feeling of opposition between the two states, but that is not everything, it is not everything. There is something else.

There is something else which is altogether different from what we understand, but which is translated by what we understand.

And this is what cannot be said. It cannot be said because it is inexpressible, inexpressible.

This amounts to a feeling that everything which in our ordinary consciousness becomes false, untrue, distorted, crooked, is all essentially true for the Truth-Consciousness. But true in what way? That is precisely something which cannot be put into words, because words belong to Falsehood.

That is to say, the materiality of the world would not be annulled by this Consciousness, it would be transfigured?... Or would it be a completely different world?

(Silence)

Let us be clear.... I am afraid that what we call "Matter" is in fact only the false appearance of the world.

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There is something corresponding, but...

This aphorism would lead to an absolute subjectivity and only this absolute subjectivity would be true—well, it is not like that. For that is Pralaya, Nirvana. But Nirvana is not the only thing, there is an objectivity which is real, which is not false—but how to put it!... It is something I have felt several times—several times, not only in a flash—the reality of... how to express it? One is always betrayed by one's own words.... In the perfect sense of Oneness and in the consciousness of Oneness, there is room for objectiveness, objectivity—the one does not destroy the other, not at all. One can have a feeling of differentiation: not that it is not oneself, but it is a different vision. I have told you, everything one can say is nothing, it is nonsense, because words are meant to express the unreal world, but... Yes, perhaps this is what Sri Aurobindo calls the sense of multiplicity in unity, it may correspond a little; just as one feels the inner multiplicity of one's being, something like that... I no longer have the feeling of a separate self, not at all, not at all, even in the body, but that does not prevent me from having a certain sense of objective relation—yes, look—this is the same thing as his "relation of consciousness" between earth and sun, which changes (Mother laughs). It is true that this is perhaps the best way of saying it! It is a relation of consciousness. It is not at all a relation of self and "others"—not at all, that is completely cancelled—but it might be like a relation of consciousness between the different parts of one's being. And obviously, that gives objectivity to the different parts.

(Long silence)

To come back to the example, which is very easy to understand, of the accident that is forestalled, one can very well imagine that the intervention of the Truth-Consciousness was decided "from all eternity" and that there is no new element,

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but nevertheless, it was this intervention which stopped the accident—which gives an exact picture of the power of this true consciousness over the other one. And if you project your own way of being onto the Supreme, you can imagine that it amuses Him to make all kinds of experiments, to see how things play themselves out. That is another matter. Nevertheless there is an All-Consciousness that knows all things from all eternity—all this in words that are absolutely inadequate. But nevertheless, when you look at the process, it was this intervention which was able to forestall the accident: the substitution of a false consciousness by a true one arrested the process of the false consciousness.

It seems to me that this happens quite often—much more often than one might think. For example, each time an illness is cured, each time an accident is avoided, each time a catastrophe, even a terrestrial catastrophe, is averted, in all these things, it is always an intervention of the vibration of harmony in the vibration of disorder that causes the disorder to cease.

So the people, the faithful, who always say, "By the grace of God, this has happened," are not so wrong.

I am simply observing a fact, that this vibration of order and harmony intervenes—the causes of its intervention have nothing to do with it, it is merely a scientific observation—and I have experienced this quite a number of times.

Would that be the process of world transformation?

Yes.

A more and more constant incarnation of this vibration of harmony.

That's it, yes, exactly. Exactly.

And from this point of view, I have even seen... The ordinary idea that this phenomenon must necessarily occur first in the

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body where the Consciousness is expressed more constantly, seems absolutely useless and subordinate; on the contrary, it occurs everywhere at the same time, wherever it can do so most easily and completely, and it is not necessarily this agglomerate of cells (Mother points to her own body) that is most prepared for this operation. Therefore it may remain as it is in its appearance for a very long time, even if its understanding and receptivity are exceptional. I mean that the awareness, the conscious perception of this body is infinitely superior to the awareness of all the others with which it is in contact, except at those moments—the moments—when other bodies, as if by Grace, have this perception; whereas for this body, it is a natural and constant state. It is the effective result of the fact that this Truth-Consciousness is more constantly concentrated on this group of cells than on any other—more directly. But the substitution of one vibration for the other—in circumstances, in action, in objects—occurs at the point where it can have the most striking and effectual results.

It is something I have felt very, very clearly and which one cannot feel so long as the physical ego is there, because the physical ego has the sense of its own importance and that disappears entirely with the physical ego. And when it disappears one has the precise perception that the intervention or the manifestation of the true vibration does not depend on egos or individualities—human or national individualities or even those of Nature: animals, plants, etc. It depends on a certain play of the cells and Matter in which some agglomerates are particularly favourable to the transformation—not "transformation", but substitution, to be precise: the substitution of the vibration of Truth for the vibration of Falsehood. And this phenomenon can be quite independent of any groupings or individualities—it may be one piece here, one piece there, one thing here, one thing there—and it always corresponds to a certain quality of vibration that brings about an expansion—a receptive expansion. Then the phenomenon can take place.

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Unfortunately, as I said at the beginning, all words belong to the world of appearances.

(Silence)

And this has been my experience all this time, with a vision and a conviction—the conviction of experience: the two vibrations are like that (gesture indicating superimposition and infiltration), all the time. All the time, all the time.

Perhaps the feeling of wonder comes when the amount of infiltration is great enough to become perceptible. But I have the impression—and a very acute impression—that this phenomenon is taking place all the time, all the time, everywhere (gesture indicating dots of infiltration), in a minute, infinitesimal way; and in certain circumstances, certain conditions which are visible, visible to that vision—it is a kind of luminous expansion, I cannot explain—there, the mass of infiltration is great enough to give the impression of a miracle. But otherwise it is something that occurs all the time, all the time, ceaselessly, in the world (same gesture of dots), like an infinitesimal quantity of Falsehood being replaced by Light, Falsehood being replaced by Light... constantly.

And this vibration—which I feel and see—gives an impression of fire. This is what the Vedic Rishis must have translated as the "Flame"—in the human consciousness, in man, in Matter they always spoke of a Flame. It is in fact a vibration which has the intensity of a higher fire.

Several times, when the work was very concentrated or condensed, the body even felt that it was the equivalent of a fever.

Two or three nights ago, something like that happened; there was this descent of Force, a descent of this Truth-Power with a special intensity.... Well, that is what is happening—happening everywhere, all the time. So, if it happens in an agglomerate that is large enough, it appears to be a miracle—but it is the miracle of the whole earth.

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One must hold firm, because it has consequences, it brings a sensation of Power, and very few people can feel it, experience it, without their balance being more or less disturbed, because they do not have a sufficient basis of peace, of vast and very, very quiet peace. Many times I have said: There is only one answer, one single answer: one must be quiet, quiet, and even more quiet, more and more quiet, and not trying to find a solution with the head, because it cannot. One must only be quiet—quiet, quiet, immovably quiet. Calm and peace, calm and peace—that is the only answer.

I do not say that it is the cure, but it is the only answer: to endure in calm and peace, to endure in calm and peace....

Then something will happen.

25 March 1964