Mother or The Mutation Of Death - III

17: Uninterrupted Physical Life

But Mother’s mystery is not over.

Perhaps even it is the true mystery that is beginning.

We have found a pretty little label, “overlife,” and all is exorcised, we think⎯and that air is actually there, light, new, for those who know how to breathe (and even for those who do not want to breathe), but all that could take centuries. Ineluctably, obviously, that overlife is the next step of the species, it is as inevitable as man after the small lizard. A change of air, or of environment, which will modify all structures. All evolutionary beginnings, we suppose, seem like nothing. A tiny golden lichen that clings to a bare stone; a few, rather mad men who live bizarrely here and there. But can we afford to delay for centuries? There were Charlemagne and Louis le Débonnaire and at the time, well, one could wait centuries; then suddenly life accelerated in a strange way which had even nothing to do with our machines⎯an inner acceleration, as if we were hurled into a funnel that sucks us forward, makes us convulse, kneads, builds and demolishes us in three seconds, cuts all of the scientific, moral or legal ground from under our feet, and we walk as if on nothing, ceaselessly inventing a nothing that is immediately demolished. And all that proceeds towards something that is not to happen centuries later, it is obvious. We are not rushing, we are being rushed towards something. We would have to be completely blind not to understand that the supermind, or overlife, or whatever we call it, is at the door⎯not even at the door: in our blood, in our veins and cells. With a lot of strange little things becoming stranger and stranger and swarming on all sides as soon as we begin to look more closely, in the right direction. It is swarming with small miracles, small encounters, small coincidences, as if the carbon crust were beginning to let strange signals break through all its pores. It even resembles a gigantic intertwining of signals. It is like small animals in a forest: You remain silent for a while and they start moving everywhere. Only, we do not know that type of silence, which is not even the silence of meditation, no: a certain silence in Matter, in our bodies, in our eyes. We say: “Oh, this is granite; this is a toothache, this is a scorpion, this is my foot bumping into the sidewalk, and this is … as usual,” a million optico-physiologic small labels which hide the real, the absolute miracle of each thing. The innumerable message that everything brings us. They haven't found, they haven’t found the true path, Mother said one day about the young. Because it's not a mental path.¹ It has nothing to do with going off to inaccessible regions: it's RIGHT HERE. Although, for the moment, all the old habits and the general unconsciousness have put a sort of lid on it, which prevents us from seeing and feeling. We must ... we must lift it off. It's everywhere, you see—always everywhere. It doesn't come and go: it's always there ... everywhere. It's we, it's our stupidity that keeps us from feeling it. There's no need to go off anywhere ... no need at all, none at all.² Indeed, a cow looking at a meadow and a man looking at a meadow do not see the same thing. We have to look at the terrestrial meadow differently. To lift off the mental lid.

And it is there, everywhere there.

But what is very interesting is that when we begin to look there, it seems to multiply the phenomenon, as if it only awaited a sign to swarm everywhere in a kind of formidable complicity of everything. Then… then we wonder whether those huge, leaden centuries could not instantly melt in a kind of general little twinkling, the moment when suddenly we begin to look there. Perhaps it will be the moment when an immense laugh seizes us, or a sense of marvel that will make us definitively leave our human skins. Like that, suddenly, we will be there.

Perhaps it is when Mother’s last mystery will reveal itself.

For there is still a mystery.

Mother’s forest is full of mysteries.

Only one has to look with one’s body’s eyes.

Another Physical Air

Slowly, She was joining the two doors in her body.

We say “overlife” as if it were settled once and for all, a sort of new fixed state, rather strange perhaps, but delimit able and nameable; but for her, nothing was settled or exorcised, nothing stopped anywhere, it was always the same shifting and dangerous unknown that developed, progressed, one did not know in what mortal or living⎯or supermortal or superliving⎯direction, and brought her into a growing contradiction, which would result in … what? What seemed clear was that that state created the conditions that were necessary to the transformation of the body⎯transformation, but when? She could not wait centuries (or if She could, the others could not), and transformation, how?… She advanced in all that without knowing anything, between torture and bliss, disintegration and a transformation that strangely resembled the disintegration of the end. And all that with a clear, lucid consciousness which perceived everything, saw everything and observed the phenomenon almost scientifically, in the least detail. So we can hardly do anything but continue the clinical picture (perhaps we should rather say the lab notebook) in the hope that a curve will emerge⎯we are interested in that curve, it is our curve, it is tomorrow’s mystery. It is our path that opens up. Afterwards, we will go as if it were quite natural; telegraph posts will be there and we will say: “But it was so simple!” Or perhaps: “But come on, this is evolution!” Amen. Unless we are cured of labels and begin to see the living miracle of everything.

The phenomenon of the contradiction was clear and well laid out, painfully led out: Truly, the ordinary state, the old state, is consciously death and suffering. And then in the other state, death and suffering appear to be ... absolutely unreal—there you are.³ And it is not a psychological “unreality,” a sort of fantasy of a “liberated” consciousness on its clouds, no: pain subsides physically, heart attacks stop physically, and death cannot act. When I say nothing and just stay like this, immobile ... an attitude of absolute surrender, things go on well. But if the slightest thing pulls me out of it, I feel ... as if I were about to die. Extraordinary!⁴ In fact, it is not “as if”: it is a sort of instant asphyxiation. I feel as if to make myself heard I have to lift a staggering weight. I feel as if I have to speak very, very loudly to be heard [her voice actually seemed to traverse layers]; it's almost like a mass ... yes, as though I were buried underground and had to shout very loudly in order to be heard. But the underground was precisely our outside, in the old state, whenever She had to speak, explain, solve sordid problems. ... And it's an effort, a considerable effort. There is a sort of mass, the colour of brownish earth, weighing down on me, as though I were buried and had to shout. Like the axolotl waking up in the depths of its hole. And I told Mother, trying to understand: “It must be the thickness of consciousnesses that you feel?” It's the air—it's in the air.⁵ Of course, her physical air was made of something else. There was another physical air. Another way of breathing in which death, illness and pain did not exist, could not come in. They were an impossibility there. There was a true Matter beneath the carbon layer. And the phenomenon was becoming more and more pronounced. Things have taken an extreme form. There's a sort of lifting of the whole atmosphere towards an almost ... inconceivable splendour, and AT THE SAME TIME, there's a feeling that one can ... die any moment—not “die,” but the body could dissolve. Both things together make up a strange consciousness She hewed a path through the carbon layer, her very asphyxiation pierced, bored the path to the other state in this one. She made the “thing” emerge with each of her little gasps for air. And She nodded her head: All past experiences seem puerile, childish, unconscious. And this [the other thing] ... is stupendous and wonderful. But the body has a single prayer—always the same: Make me worthy of knowing You; Make me worthy of serving You; Make me worthy of being You There. I can barely eat anymore, and I am not hungry. I feel a growing strength in me but new in quality ... in silence and contemplation. Nothing is impossible.⁶

Nothing is impossible there.

Transformation is child’s play.

It is the natural, obvious, almost obliged consequence of that state⎯there are no “laws” there. There is only the Law. But … one has to make the junction with the old bark. She spent her time making the junction. So it’s something that must change in the body’s vibration for the Consciousness to manifest without distortion. The very body, the physical consciousness, is full of all those falsehoods and all those illusions and all those preconceived ideas, and when that is gone, then the Lord can manifest in there. Distortion is what creates ... a misery, you know, which now the body finds frightful. When that disappears, gets transformed : it’s a bliss.⁷

Something that must change in the body’s vibration. As if transformation only and simply depended on a little “something” that falsifies, veils, distorts, in the body’s consciousness. “That little vibration which falsifies,”⁸ She had already said in 1950. No tissues to transform, no cells to rejuvenate, no bones to make supple or regenerate: a mere vibration to change. A vibration that causes all aging, rigidity, illness, decomposition⎯the whole damned story. Not a hundred things: only one. And that little distorted vibration is perhaps even the very one that creates the whole carbon layer. Change that, and the true Consciousness flows into the tissues, the bones, the nerves … the earth. Then nothing is impossible. A change of position in the physical consciousness. Something that annuls the distorting little vibration.

But through what mechanism? How does the axolotl in its hole manage to breathe the other air?

Another Physical Rhythm

As usual, the remedy lay in the contradiction itself. Mother was living the solution, it was arising by itself, more and more. The phenomenon that seemed to accompany and almost characterize the state of overlife was a change of time. We saw it emerge and develop at the cellular level, as if the pure cells, freed from the physical Mind’s web, were endowed with another time, just as they were endowed with universality and so swift a movement of consciousness that it was as if instantly everywhere. It is the time of true Matter, we could say. The time of overlife. It was that phenomenon that was to accelerate and reach bigger proportions, so much so that it seemed to invade Mother’s body, visibly taking hold of the old bark⎯filling the carbon layer as if to change its substance and content, the vibration that veiled and falsified.

A change of time necessarily means a change in the vibration of the body’s consciousness: something that accelerates or slows down. And that is where the experience was to take a new curve, or perhaps simply follow its curve right to the end. I don't know how to describe what it is. And when it's normal, it can last indefinitely, there's no sense of time or fatigue or duration. When the old consciousness comes back, there's almost unbearable suffering: I am suffocating or I can't breathe, or it's too cold or too hot, all sorts of things ... which are aggravated by a consciousness which shouldn't be there anymore. You see, my body is full of pains, but as soon as I go into that state everything is done—time doesn't exist anymore. Time is endless in the old consciousness, while it doesn't exist in this one. I don’t know how to describe it. Being flowery, I would say: the old consciousness is like ... it's death, it's as if you were going to die any minute: you suffer, you ... it's the consciousness that leads to death. And the other one is life ... peaceful life, eternal life.⁹ In the body, in this old bark itself.

And the phenomenon was to get denser day after day, take shape before our very eyes. When I remain still and enter that Consciousness, time flies with fantastic speed, in a kind of ... luminous calm. But the slightest thing that pulls me out of it seems to pull me into hell. Exactly. The discomfort is so great one feels one couldn't last a minute or a few minutes like that. So one ... one calls the Divine. You feel like curling up in the Divine. And then it goes well.¹⁰ But what happens in that state? “What do you see there, what do you look at?” was my eternal question. And She smiled. I feel like saying: nothing! Nothing, I see nothing. There's no longer “something that sees,” but I AM, I am a myriad things. I LIVE a myriad things. There are so, so many—so many—that it's like nothing! And She laughed. Then She further explained: A state which is so, so vast ... peaceful and so powerful—where things are accomplished. But there are no words or explanations—nothing satisfying for the Mind.¹¹

And She laughed at me. But one day, nonetheless, She tried to explain, a mysterious explanation in which I seemed to seize, without understanding, a secret, a great secret.

She was looking at all those difficulties of the world, of the body, that hell, and She said, in her hesitating little voice, as if She were traversing layers upon layers, “the colour of brownish earth.” More and more I am convinced that we have a way of receiving things and reacting to them that CREATES difficulties—I am more and more convinced of it. If you succeed in being in the true Consciousness all the time, there are no difficulties—and yet things are the same.¹² There is no such thing as illness, tiredness, unbalance⎯no death⎯and yet things are the same. The microbes are the same. The day before yesterday, I was sick as a dog, and yesterday circumstances were the same, my body was in the same state and yet ... all was peaceful. If only I didn't have so much trouble speaking. That explains everything. It explains everything, all, all. The world is the same—but it is seen and felt in a totally opposite way. It's like death, you see. The phenomenon is transitional, but seems to us to have existed forever (it's forever for us because our consciousness is like this) [Mother drew a little square in the air], but when you have that divine consciousness, oh! things become almost instantaneous, you understand. I can't explain it. There IS movement, there IS progression, there IS what is translated for us by time, that exists, it's something ... something in the consciousness.... It's hard to express.... It's like an object and its projection. A little like that. All things ARE, but for us, we see them projected on a screen, one comes after another. It's a little like that. But Truth is ... the Divine as totality—totality in time and totality in space. And that consciousness, the body CAN have, because this body had it and while it has it, everything is so you see, it's not joy, it's not pleasure, it's not happiness, nothing of all that ... a sort of blissful peace and luminous and creative. Magnificent, magnificent. Only, it comes and goes, comes and goes And when you go out of it, you have the impression of falling into a horrible pit, our ordinary consciousness (I mean the ordinary human consciousness) is a horrible pit. But we also know why it had to be momentarily that way [in evolution], for it was necessary in order to go from this to that: everything that happens is necessary for the full development of the goal of creation. You could say (to use pretty words): the goal of creation is for the creature to become conscious as the Creator. It's word-painting, but it's in that direction. This creation's goal is that Consciousness of the Infinite and Eternal, all-powerful ... outside of time: each individual particle possessing that Consciousness; each individual particle containing that same Consciousness Words are stupid, but that's how it is. That gives both the reason and the goal of creation— both at once—and almost the METHOD of development. Yes, it's like something that IS, that is as a whole and is successively projected on a screen. And yet it exists as a whole—and it is projected successively on a screen. I have the impression [and this is where Mother touched that Secret] ...that I am on the way to discovering the illusion that must be destroyed so that physical life can be uninterrupted—discovering that death comes from a ... a distortion of consciousness. That's it.¹³

The screen that imprisons time, the vibration that distorts.

A “distorting magic,” Sri Aurobindo said.

And She added: Something IS happening—that's all I can say.¹⁴

It was Christmas day, 1971.

Remove the screen and everything is the same, and there is no death. Death has never been there. A change of consciousness, a change of time that suppresses death. Death was the transition, the long evolutionary transition within the cage in order to find, hounded and whipped by pain, the total state in the body.

Remove the screen, and the two sides are ONE.

There is a distortion, a false vibration in the body that creates death⎯illnesses, unbalances, disorders. The abominable chaos of this world. A … real illusion. But an illusion nonetheless. An evolutionary illusion for us to grow within the cage … then break it open. Break the screen and physical life can go on uninterrupted, nothing impedes. Nothing impedes. Death was a necessary illusion in order to reach the total state, without death, in a body.

Just a small vibration which distorts. Which veils.

A false time in the body’s consciousness.

Transformation means a change in the physical consciousness of time.

Then the world will be exactly the same, but it will be lived differently altogether⎯without heaven and without tombs.

As great a difference as between the consciousness of the mineral and that of the animal.

Something that must change in the physical vibration of the earth.

Perhaps it is what is happening without our being aware of it: another rhythm in the body’s cells (not in our heads, the head does not understand anything about it⎯but the body understands). There is a rhythm of the mineral, a rhythm of the vegetal, a rhythm of the animal, and there is the other rhythm.

That was what was trying to take place in Mother’s body, and through her in the body of the earth.

It is like another time that has entered this one.

“Something is happening. That’s all I can say.”

At Any Second

And one wonders whether that mysterious screen is not there everywhere, before our very eyes, so totally visible and simple that it is as if invisible⎯that is, EVERYTHING is exactly as it should be, marvellously as it should be, at every moment as it should be, luminously as it should be, without an atom of darkness anywhere, without a grain of error anywhere, without an iota of contradiction: the constant Marvel, constant Light, constant Truth of everything, in the least detail, even in apparent horrors, apparent disorders, apparent falsehoods, apparent pains, apparent deaths, but … it is SEEN IN THE WRONG WAY. And the second it is seen as it is, in its truth behind the falsehood, in its light behind darkness, in its bliss behind the pain, in its eternal life behind death, in its all-powerful and smiling Rhythm behind the chaos, everything is REVERSED, instantly: there is no longer anything but That. And the death we were about to enter, the pain and despair we were about to sink into, the physical disorder, the illness and the murder that were about to happen or had even laid their mortal grip on our body, vanish, instantly disappear, beyond all physical laws, medical laws, the millions of laws⎯they no longer exist. That shines. Instantaneously. And everything is the same. And there is no darkness anymore. It was seen wrongly. It was not seen divinely. Because there is only the Divine, there has never been anything but the Divine, Joy, Light, the quiet and smiling and all- powerful Rhythm. And we are reminded of Mother’s words: There is a CONSTANT Reality, a CONSTANT divine Order, and it's only the incapacity to perceive it that makes the present Disorder and Falsehood.¹⁵ A wrong gaze. And She uttered these mysterious words, which now become clearer: At every moment, all is exactly as it should be—that is Omnipotence.¹⁶ To see that is all-powerfulness. It is the instant reversal of death and of all appearances. It is the murderer’s arm that stops. For in truth, there is nothing but that. Only it is not in our heads that we have to see it, but in our bodies. That state of infinitesimal vibration of Matter, it is THERE, at that level, that the change must take place. And She said this: Perfection is there, always, coexisting with imperfection—perfection and imperfection are coexistent, always, and not only simultaneous, but in THE SAME PLACE. Truth is there, Falsehood is there [Mother pressed her two hands together]; perfection is there, imperfection is there [same gesture]; they're perfectly coexistent—the minute you perceive perfection, imperfection disappears, the Illusion disappears. The false vibration disappears ... as if it had never existed. The vibration of truth literally CANCELS the vibration of Falsehood, which doesn't exist—it existed only as an illusion for the false consciousness we have.... Which means that at ANY SECOND and in any conditions, you can attain Perfection: it isn't something that has to be gained little by little, through successive progress; perfection is THERE, and YOU change states.¹⁷

And that is how the world’s formidable screen of Falsehood can fall suddenly, in one second, for Perfection is there, in the same place and in the same abominable conditions. You change states. The world changes states. A reversal of states. A global coup d’état. There is nothing to do to rectify, improve, cure or transform: there is that crust, that screen of Falsehood to cross, and it is there, immediately there, the next second. And the vibration of Truth literally cancels the vibration of Falsehood.

At one stroke, it is done.

We do not need to go far: it is here.

There is no “later on” to walk to: it is here.

There is no tomorrow, there is no perhaps, no if … it is here.

But it is in Matter’s infinitesimal state of vibration that the vibration has to change.

Then we suddenly understand the true meaning of the change of rhythm that was taking place in Mother’s body⎯She was drawing the screen of illusion in Matter, the small vibration that falsifies. The something that tenses in the body and says no to anything may happen. A small vibration hunched in a closed space and an aggressive time. And one understands how the world can change … if it is capable or when it is capable of bearing the removal of the screen without being blinded.

Not that there will be fabulous lights or fabulous apparitions, no: but the world

as it is will be such an instantaneous marvel that….

The miracle of the world is that it is as it is. The illusion consists in not seeing what is.

So we have to look there and look at everything as that veiled miracle. And who knows if our gaze thirsting for Truth, our breathing thirsting for true air, our millions of eyes thirsting for the true world will not suddenly make the Truth emerge. The world as it is.

We must look at everything as the miracle there. And the miracle will be.

The great, miraculous natural of the divine world.

Like the axolotl, suddenly brought to its true environment.

And physical life will flow uninterrupted, because at each instant it will breathe the true air, it will move in harmony with the rhythm and will perceive the absolute meaning of everything.

Mother’s last years are no longer the mystery of the new species : it is settled, ineluctable; they are the mystery of that global “second”⎯how to reach there. What is the strategy?