Mother or The Mutation Of Death - III

18: The Problem of the World

That other rhythm, that time of the future species was not trying to establish itself peacefully in a specimen freed from all human contingencies. She was assailed, She was invaded by people, it was a constant crush in her place. Until her door closed, She would receive one to two hundred people every day and ceaselessly listen to, or rather live, swallow all of their sordid, increasingly sordid stories. This was another contradiction which seemed to grow very proportionally to the inner changes that She was undergoing⎯it was even striking, this perfect coincidence between an exasperated Falsehood and the formidable Power in which one was bathed near Her, while her body grew slimmer and slimmer. The more She seemed to disappear, to vanish, the more unbearable with power it was⎯in fact, it was unbearable for the Falsehood. And She kept carefully reading her “occultist’s chart,” every day before the rush, as if She had to continue to see as we do, and She tirelessly paced her room, leaning on someone’s arm when She could no longer stand by herself, obstinately, indomitably⎯in fact, She was desperately struggling to keep a contact with the old human way of being, while that same old way made her suffer constant agonies. And in that impossible contradiction, She advanced day after day in the midst of a growing unknown, more and more unknown and new, which made her undergo strange internal modifications: it was perhaps life, it was perhaps death, it was perhaps another life. But it was agonising. A very strange kind of suffering.¹⁸ And yet nothing is wrong with me; the doctors say that everything is fine.... It was perhaps all of the suffering of the world. It was perhaps the transformation into another species. It was … what?

And the movement was accelerating. It accelerated in three ways.

The Triple Acceleration

First of all, that other time that irresistibly invaded her and left her suspended in the middle of a gesture, of a meeting. The “instant” could last 45 minutes or a second, or perhaps it was already the next day: What time is it? She repeated, what time is it?… The funny part is that people think I am asleep! I don't at all sleep A

Force at work.¹⁹ And in that consciousness, the strange thing is the importance of one minute, which to our consciousness is nothing—there it has an importance.... In one minute, something ... general can be done. Naturally, all words are stupid, but that's how it is. One minute. In one minute To such a point that the body perceives that one minute like this [Mother slightly rotated two fingers] is a victory; and one minute like that [She slightly rotated her two fingers the other way] is a catastrophe. And not only for itself, but it's general.²⁰ And we remember what She said one day: It’s a key, something which, if you got hold of it without being wholly on the true side in one second you could be the cause of a frightful catastrophe. Something like a dissolution of the world.²¹ Is it that that will allow the screen of the world to be suddenly lifted, one day, when everything is ready? And it is not a “power,” really: one is the whole earth, as one is one’s own body, without fuss or even sensation of “big” or “small”⎯it is simple, and terribly all-powerful. But try and lift the screen a bit brusquely in the body⎯what will happen then? A strange condition, you must admit. A dangerous position, though it is devoid of all the solemnities, enormities and cosmic implications that the Mind thinks⎯all that is nothing but the Mind that inflates. It is very simple, there. It is dimensionless. It is like a body, that’s all. With all sorts of pains within. And symbolically, all kinds of small terrestrial samples around, which were beginning to think that “really, Mother….” And then, all of a sudden, in all this chaos, this struggle, this friction, this suffering, and this ignorance and this darkness and this effort and this and that (oh, it's much worse than when it takes place in the mind: it's here in the body) and it's a question, yes, of life and death in the true sense of the phrase. And then, all of a sudden, just one drop ... it's not even a drop (it's not liquid!), it's not even a flash of lightning, it's ... yes, it's a vibration, a DIFFERENT vibration—luminous, so wonderfully sweet, peaceful, powerful, absolute. It's like something lighting up. And then there's no need anymore of discussion or explanation or anything: you've understood—it's to become conscious of THAT, it's to live THAT. But just THAT, one vibration of that, and then you understand everything.²²

It was that different vibration that She was trying to bring into the body of the earth as into her own body. Truly another rhythm. We say “time,” we say “rhythm,” we say “consciousness” or “power,” but it is all a way of vibrating in Matter. But a way of vibrating that changes Matter. Such was the deep trauma⎯the traumatic bliss! It was very traumatic for those who were around her. The physical world is changing. People will probably notice it only in fifty years.²³ That way of vibrating which was not that of the mineral, the vegetal or the animal had to take place very softly; even her body had to absorb and assimilate it in a state that precisely resembled a sleep, in which time was “frozen”⎯this false time of pain. It was true life there, while elsewhere it was pure hell, more and more. In fifty years perhaps we will not need to play the marmots or scream with bliss (!), Matter will have well adapted, it will be very natural like the air we breathe, but in the meanwhile…. Meanwhile, not only did She have to control the state of her body, the speed of the process and that strange time that invaded her, but the state of people around her, that is, She had to draw herself alive into hell in order to keep a contact. She had to slow down. It's already very baffling for all those who live with me, but if I were as I should be, I think it would be quite intolerable. We must, we must have the endurance for the transition. There has to be a transition.²⁴ The endurance was not really there around her, less and less there. It was the second of the three accelerations we have spoken of: the “unbearable” acceleration, we could say, the acceleration of the small terrestrial samples’ resistance.

But there was a third acceleration, which was purely physiological, that of the old physiology. There, too, there was an insoluble contradiction. And curiously enough (or not), that contradiction began to show when Mother reached that ultimate mineral layer, the residue of the primary evolution, that last (or first) envelope of the cells: food. She could no longer eat, or less and less, a few sips of glucose or fruit juice, and it was a kind of torture for her, it could not go down. Food is obviously the residue of the primary habit of devouring: even galaxies “eat one other,” according to the astronomers. It is a something that does not possess and wants to possess, that lacks and wants to take, that is separated and wants to encompass. It is the ABC of evolution, to begin with the small protons. But it is not at all a “necessity for feeding oneself,” really: it is a want of being that seeks to be fulfilled, it is the first cry of separation. One devours, because one is not all. Because the fundamental need of evolution and of each particle of evolution is to be all. So one “loves,” takes, kills: one eats. Everything is a way of filling the primary hole, the something that started to be a separate individual. The beginning of the cage. The beginning of death. She reached that layer in her body and immediately the problem arose: She could not eat anymore. Food carries in itself a seed of death, She observed. So obviously, it must be replaced by something else.²⁵ But what? And the problem became an inextricable tangle, it was the problem of everyday. There is this fact that existence itself needs to depend on something material, which naturally brings back every time an old recurring difficulty.²⁶ Every time, one swallows the old unconscious negation, that “background of negation behind everything,” that NO of the primordial I against all the rest. All that is under observation at the moment (a very minute observation, which I might almost call “scientific”), and, well, the cells are conscious of the divine Force and of the power that Force gives, but they are also conscious that in order to last as they are, even in a state of transformation, they still need this complement of something coming from outside—with that, every time you swallow a new difficulty. Can we conceive of something that works in the human way yet without deteriorating? Would this, as it is [Mother pinched the skin of her hands], would it be capable of being transformed by the Force? Can it be done?—We’ll know when it’s done and not before!²⁷ And She laughed. “But all possibilities are there!” I told her. “It is only that Matter has to adapt to the infiltration of another force.” That’s the whole point! CAN Matter do it?²⁸ “Doubtless it can. If the Spirit wants, it can. If the Spirit sees that the moment has come, it can. There is no reason why not.” And She laughed again. That would be interesting to see!²⁹ She looked at the “object” very scientifically, but the object was becoming more and more tenuous. And the more tenuous it became, the more formidably powerful it was! Go and understand. And in that Power, She needed or felt that her body still needed to feed itself, “to gain strength”! To gain.… That was it, She touched the root, and it was obviously not the problem of a “body to be nourished”: it may well have been the whole problem.

There was a leap to take.

The question was not to “give up food,” but to overcome the NO. To vanquish that layer. Or to traverse it in order to see what hid behind, for, as always, the obstacle held the key.

And the problem became more complicated because of her entourage. Meals are prepared in a kitchen. And if She does not eat, oh! She is going to die…. Death was thrown in her face at every minute and under any pretext, without even their being aware of it: it was “natural,” wasn’t it? They'd like me to eat more, whereas personally, I feel that eating detracts from the Work..... My system is beginning to refuse to work in the old way, and then the doctors want everything to function as usual—it's impossible. So it puts me in a state of it creates a sort of conflict in the nature. You see, things are going too fast and at the same time there is a resistance of the old nature—encouraged by the doctors and habits.³⁰ This is what we always forget: the hypnotism of the physical Mind. We will never know to what extent the substance (including Mother’s substance) is hypnotized by those “do’s and don’ts.” Mother would struggle until the end, and until the end they would throw their hypnotism at her: Oh! one must take some Coramine for one’s heart, oh! one must…. And the body is like a hypnotized baby. At each instant, She had to undo again and again, undo the collective hypnotism⎯until the day She stopped struggling. And I could not manage to understand why She did not decide to take the plunge, or why Sri Aurobindo, or the Consciousness, did not categorically tell her what She had to do. “Better to be mistaken while listening to the new consciousness than not to be mistaken while listening to the doctors!” I told her. But the Consciousness doesn't contradict anything. I don't know how to explain it If there were a strong and clear indication, I would certainly listen to it, but that's not the case....³¹ She was told nothing, it was the eternal mystery. She was left to flounder by herself between life and death⎯naturally! it was the body that had to find the solution. But…. The cook is used to doing things a certain way and does them that way; the doctor says to give me such and such a thing and they listen to him.... I live in such conventionality that it's very difficult. And always the idea that I am OLD, I am getting OLD, and so for them my consciousness must be half veiled. They don't have faith, what can you do! So I have taken the attitude of saying: let it be. I make myself as passive as possible—passive to the Divine Will—and I pray for it to guide me. That's the only way.³²

And I did not yet understand the whole extent of the problem, which seemed absurd to me, even while recognizing the part played by the collective hypnosis. “Why don’t you feed yourself on the air?” I told her one day. “That is what some yogis⎯many yogis⎯did in the past.” Ah no, the air is disgusting!³³ I had forgotten that She could smell the odour of an atomic bomb five thousand kilometres away. They have ruined the earth, She exclaimed, they have ruined the atmosphere, they have ruined everything. They have truly made a mess of Matter ³⁴ So that complicates matters. Ah, what time is it?³⁵

She seemed to touch the centre of the contradiction in her body, with an absurd problem that seemed to me completely stupid.

And “one” told her nothing, neither in one way nor in the other.

There was something to find.

There was an ultimate resistance to transmute, symbolically contained in a spoonful of fruit juice. A central NO. But the whole world was in it. It was the problem of the world, not the problem of a yogic and dietetic tour de force. And could one take that leap forward if nothing followed? What is the point of being the new species all alone?

And the triple acceleration accelerated more and more.

More and More, More and More...

The world, too, was following its accelerated curve towards some central contradiction, or some knot of the old History, which the mechanical appearances mask to us. Our high civilization rejoins the savage: only a few toys have changed. The only merit of our terrible toys is, as it happened in Mother’s body, to force us to find the true solution, the evolutionary solution: to change species or die. This was the whole curve. It was not a question of improving or idealizing the human fishbowl. The old evolutionary laboratory is bringing its work to a conclusion. So did Mother. It is a pity for us if we do not understand the meaning of it. Five years had passed by since the revolt of May ’68, and the suffocation was growing implacably⎯it will continue until we cry out for good, the true cry that will break the huge Illusion. Until we land in true Matter, on true Earth. The Marvel will be there, when we have had enough of all our clever stupidities. 1973 was the year of the second war of Israel, the first oil embargo and the fifteenth Chinese thermonuclear bomb, the fifth French nuclear explosion, Watergate and the filth plain for all to see everywhere, commandos and students’ unrest in Barcelona, Bangkok, Athens…. Almarik, Solzhenitsyn, the first American space laboratory⎯towards what truer space? What less suffocating air? It springs up from all sides, through all the pores of the carbon layer, more and more, more and more, through good or evil, into something that we do not know yet, as it did in Mother’s body. It is “the transition of the earth,” she said as early as 1963. This new Consciousness seems to be intensifying all things so as to make them more perceptible: all the circumstances of life. Diseases, misunderstandings, quarrels, everything but everything has become acute, so acute, as if to really force people to see them.³⁶ It’s the method of this Consciousness. I very clearly see the way in which it works: it puts a pressure for all that resists in someone’s nature to come to the surface and manifest, and so the ridiculous or wrong side of the thing becomes conspicuous, and it has either to go or to ... ³⁷ And Mother made this so strange, but so revealing remark: I have the impression that just as this Consciousness has tried, not exactly to dissolve religions, but to get inside them and remove barriers, it’s taken it into its head to do the same thing with politics. It seems to be working to create, not a disharmony, but a sort of ... to take away cohesion among people: cohesion among parties, cohesion among religions ³⁸ A formidable Force, which is not of incoherence but of de-coherence. To dismantle the Machine: the worst and the best. To reach the “unknown point,” as Mother did. And if we are not able to see that, the true sense of our story escapes us. Do the tadpoles bother about improving their fishbowl, or jumping overboard? We think that things are going wrong (they are going very wrong in the fishbowl) but they are going marvellously, exactly and implacably towards the exit. It is this exit that we have to look at. Will it take a complete bankruptcy of the Mind for people to understand? Will it burst to end in a zero?³⁹

Or will we have the courage to wage our own “immobile revolution,” pierce a hole in that huge mental balloon, and emerge into the true air⎯it is here! only waiting for our billions of cries. It is here. It's difficult, things grate. But it seems to be a mere appearance: it's the great Pressure of the Light—a warm, golden, powerful, supramental light—and it goes on increasing and increasing and increasing. ⁴⁰

What is going to happen?

Will this last year of Mother’s body, this end of the laboratory, give us some clue to our own mystery, or will things have to truly explode for us to understand?

Ineluctable Victory

And the little world around her was the exact reflection of the big world, with denser shadows and a few rare lights, as is usual under the light source. It was the evolutionary laboratory under pressure. Everything was taking place there, on a small scale. There were no “disciples or “non-disciples,” not faithful or unfaithful ones, no good or wicked people: there were only small terrestrial samples, the old ingredients of a strange evolutionary concoction boiling at a high heat⎯was it to succeed or not? It was a little how things were. One felt that everything was there, every possibility and every marvel were there, poison and Falsehood were there (how much so!), the old terrestrial calamity, clinging death, and the Miracle … if one wished. She was there, so fragile, so vast and tranquil⎯without a shadow of a person in that small body: a formidable, quiet active witness who welcomed everything, looked at everything, good and evil, poison and nectar, who embraced all in her great, immobile white Fire, without any difference, without pluses and minuses. It was the world, her world. These were the data of the problem, and each piece of data had its immense, absolute sense, as if that small black whirl that entered her room brought all the miseries of the earth in its wake⎯everyone was one misery⎯and that sudden, mute little flame all the hope of the earth. And it was like that, each day like a great, silent Act whose actors did not know the stakes. They climbed up the stairs with their obscure little business, their microscopic quarrel out of a million quarrels of the world, their tiny pettiness out of the general pettiness everywhere⎯and who prayed for the earth? Who had that single little cry within for a true earth at last, that flame which forces the Moment and breaks the door open? She was mute, vast, impassive. She was waiting. I am millions of years old and I am waiting.⁴¹ She was the prayer of the earth. It gives me the feeling of a bell that no one rings!⁴²

Was the Moment to be missed? As in 1950. The Moment of the earth?

No. What has to be will be in spite of everything, or BECAUSE of everything.⁴³ Oh, because, yes, because of all this misery, this pettiness, this ugliness, because of all that which rends our hearts and strangles us. It has to be. It has, it has to be…. It is not possible otherwise, it is monstrous otherwise. A true little prayer to trigger the Moment and open the Door. I used to go to her place as if counting the heartbeats of the earth.

I have much difficulty in speaking of that so-called “end,” first of all because it is not the end, it is something completely other than what we think, even what the most enlightened think⎯something totally other, the Mystery, really, the one I have been struggling with for exactly one year and eleven months to the day⎯October 17, 1975. I do not really struggle: I listen to Mother, but with so intense a prayer…. Not for one moment did I expect that “death” that most of them were so kindly, so naturally foreseeing. For me, Mother could not die, the question was irrelevant, it was a sort of simple, self-evident fact⎯things could not happen as usual. She had lost the habit of dying, one could say, it was something else⎯but what? What was going to happen, how was it going to happen, this was my only question, because transformation was bound to take place, it was obvious, but how, by what path? For me, Victory is certain, but I don't know if it's tomorrow or ... I don't know what road we will take to get there.... Such an ardent faith would be needed. ⁴⁴

So we can only try and trace the curve, pick up the “laboratory notebook” again, walk further in that marvellous forest where we never know what is going to happen, suspended between the marvel and the precipice, the old earth and the unknown, impossibility and all possibilities as if by magic. Impossibility…. I have definitively erased from my dictionary this word that is between impose and imposture⎯forever. And when the earth consents to discard that impossible word, things will definitely improve.

Meanwhile, it was strange, but it was surely heading for somewhere, faster and faster. I felt her gradually establishing herself in that “uninterrupted physical life,” and all kinds of ailments that had never ceased assailing her for so many decades were as if frozen or had stopped showing: heart attacks, terrible neuritis, eye haemorrhages, colds, raging toothaches, that whole harvest that She got from the ill wills around her. I hardly know what being tired is anymore. But there was that strange agony which took hold of her without medical reason and at times made her cry out in pain, whenever the “outer” world drew her a little too much into its mud or its perpetual invasion, its decaying thoughts. “Mother, what will happen when you are no more?” one of the little samples kindly wrote to her. And it was how things were, more and more so, at each instant. Come on, a thought, what is it! But it was as if they shoved her instantly into death. This body has become very, very sensitive. If someone comes displeased with something I did or said, all of a sudden, all the nerves (the body’s nerves) are as if tortured. And it comes from the person who’s there—and who shows all the signs of devotion and so on, absolutely no external sign, no spoken or direct manifestation: all the nerves are tortured ... It’s something ... it’s an influence that must cut off the body from its contact with the Divine, probably. It’s under study.⁴⁵ She “studied” a lot. She was so desperately seeking to solve that mystery of the cells and of the cellular contagion, but in reverse: to pass on the true vibration, the one which will transform Matter, the golden contagion, to the bodies and Matter around her. It resisted ferociously, stubbornly, the whole Matter resisted. But if that could be passed on, it would mean the end of the Screen. She was studying. She studied until the end.

And in that strange vulnerability (her vulnerability was her means of communication!) truly an agony, which was not only due to the world but to a deep alchemy, an internal restructuring or de-structuring resulting from the great Pressure, a whole movement She did not explained to herself but which was like pain piled up in her body as if it died at each instant to be reborn in the same instant; amidst that strange hell, the other state seemed to progressively develop, the other rhythm or other time which “froze” or changed all that into something else. And it was neither this nor that, but a sort of hybrid, incomprehensible existence, painful and blissful, marvellous and infernal. It’s strangely fragile at the same time, that’s the curious thing. There’s a sense of having gone out of all ordinary laws, and ... it’s hanging in suspense, like that. Something which is seeking to be established.⁴⁶ And that “something”⎯yes, perhaps the state of the butterfly, the state of the next species, that kind of incomprehensible thing which tried to sneak through the mesh of Matter⎯it was as if everything strove to demolish, impede it.

One cannot even say that the samples around her were especially bad, no: they were simply the earth, the earth’s state, the earth’s breathing, the earth’s habit. The earth’s pettiness, the old catastrophic habit. There’s all the old habit, which simply has to be conquered.⁴⁷ Not that simple. It’s like a rubber band that you let go of, and it all starts up again : you have a pain, you ... And the moment the body identifies with this Vibration, everything becomes like a ... radiant expression of the Consciousness, and then everything is smooth, free from clashes or difficulties; then, if you let yourself go like that, it becomes a marvel. It becomes a marvel. Unfortunately, there’s the whole influence of the outer world which makes it difficult for the body to be CONSTANTLY like that and makes it tend to fall back into the ordinary way. That’s why it can’t settle in permanently.... Life could be so marvellously simple and beautiful.... Man has really made it idiotic. I quite understand it was necessary to churn Matter, but ... the time has come for this to end, for a way out to be found.⁴⁸ She so desperately strove to bring the moment of the other thing into this Matter. And all of the difficulty, truly the Screen, hung only to that nasty little vibration of the physical Mind that could not prevent itself from wanting and foreseeing and concocting its old death, in every detail⎯all right, it was necessary to churn and knead this old Matter, but.… The fight between the two states was taking place in Mother’s body, She was the battlefield at each moment, the “sordid battlefield,” there, while pulling on the rubber band: the marvel and the asphyxiation, the earth’s tomorrow and the endless yesterday. I have difficulty keeping that, She exclaimed one day, because all contacts bring back the old consciousness—I don’t know anyone in this condition.⁴⁹ Exactly a butterfly all alone in a world of caterpillars which ceaselessly pulled her back into the old mud. The medical and triumphant little axolotls. The passage had to be opened up, could that ever pass ? Her body was the site where it strove to enter the earth: to “be established,” as She would say.

It’s a relentless struggle. Then, if you remain there [in the true Consciousness], everything is fine—EVERYTHING is fine: the body is fine, everything is fine. And as soon as you go out of that state and get into other movements, you see that all, but all is a world of contradictions: chaos and contradiction. But there, everything is perfectly harmonious.⁵⁰ I am shown to what extent the disequilibrium which, in circumstances, results in what people call “death” (which is death only quite apparently), how the two things, so to speak, are constantly there: this all-containing Harmony which is the very essence of Life, and this ... division, this fragmentation, this apparent, UNREAL division, which has an ARTIFICIAL existence, and which is the cause of death—how the two are interwoven in such a way that you can go from one to the other at any time and on any occasion. And it’s not at all as people think, that there needs to be something “serious”—it’s not that, it can happen with the most futile thing! It’s simply being here or being THERE, and that’s all. So you are here and remain here: it’s over; you are here, and then you are there [gesture in between the two]: it makes for a life with sufferings and troubles—all kinds of things. And being THERE is perpetual Life, absolute Power and ... you can’t even call it “peace,” it’s ... something immutable. And at the same time, everything is there: this state and that state are both there. And man makes a more or less clumsy mixture of the two things.⁵¹ Tomorrow is right in today, the other state is right in this one! Only a minuscule distorting web changes the Vibration on its way. There are no centuries to traverse, no miraculous transformations to work out, no immense, endless process⎯it is here, the instantaneous place where life and death change into the other thing, true Life, overlife. Almost a question of position of consciousness. And the Screen falls away. That had always been there…. But a few seconds of the true state in its purity and there’s ... an awesome power. Only ... [and this is where Mother put her finger on the problem] … the whole makeup of the world still seems to act as a brake, there still seems to be something ... [and She sat there staring perhaps at all those little samples around her, the actors of the great Act] … And that “something” is what this Consciousness is working on. For it to be established, a change in the earth consciousness must take place.⁵² But one can’t get out all alone.⁵³

One cannot be the other species all alone.

So, what was to happen between that more and more aggressive negation around her (but that very negation was part of the game, it was the game, or the terrestrial stakes) and that small golden breath, more and more fragile and gasping for air? And yet, the Victory WILL TAKE PLACE. But by what path?… Will we know how to discover the path to that ineluctable victory? It is our last path in Mother’s great forest.

Where is the path, where is the Victory, our victory? Where? Ineluctable Victory.

The Negation

And the contradiction closed in, very implacably. But very surely towards the desired Goal.

Everything is exactly as it must be. Only we have to find the sense.

We live for decades and centuries with a thousand little senses, and we seem to go nowhere and go round in circles. Then comes the hour of the Sense. We pile up discoveries that discover nothing, until the day the only thing un-covers itself, and everything is uncovered. We are reaching that hour. And if the contradiction is so black, it is only to compel us to its golden sense. Or else, better to pack our bags and go jump in the lake elsewhere⎯but there is no “elsewhere,” we are perfectly trapped. Like Mother. So we are obliged to find.

This body has a conviction that if it lasts till one hundred, then it will have a new strength and a new life. But ... these are just the difficult years,⁵⁴ she said in 1972. It was a question of time. It was a race against time. How many years left till my centenary? “Five years, sweet Mother.” Five more years in this hell!...⁵⁵ It was in 1973. Apparently, this was the contradiction of that body, so surprising a contradiction, really I did not understand: one had just to sit next to her and there was that cataract of power, so incredible, so formidable, which hammered, kneaded one and seemed to be capable of flattening everything (not “seemed”: it could do it), but … it was as if nothing went into Mother’s body: it went through it. She was like a breath. “A small puppet,” as She would say … in a torrent of incredible power. The pipe, I am the pipe!⁵⁶ she exclaimed, laughing. And She poured that onto the earth, but nothing remained in her own body. It’s very interesting. In appearance it’s something completely absurd [pointing to her own body], with apparent weaknesses that human beings scorn, and ... [laughing] awesome forces that human beings cannot bear. It’s curious.⁵⁷ It was very curious indeed. There is, at the same time, the fact of an all- powerfulness without limits, and of a powerlessness without limits. And all that here, AT THE SAME PLACE [Mother closed her two hands together, one on top of the other] ... And by temperament I am sensible enough not to talk, because if I were to say all that I see, all that goes on and all that's there ... they would say, “That's it, she's gone, she's lost her balance; with her mind she's lost her head!” So I take a very serious look and say to myself, “Let's see, let's take one of their so very important problems—problems of life and death to them—let's see, let's look at it straight in the face, let's be a little serious ” [and She laughed and laughed] And it's all right, the balance is still there!⁵⁸

Oh! that sense of humour which saved her from the revolting stupidity she was showered with. But sometimes, when the general doubt came and assailed her, in front of her body’s impotence, She had a cry: Lots of people did that in fact: they went off elsewhere, into another, more or less subtle world. Of course, there are millions of ways to escape—there is only one way to stay, and that's to truly have courage and endurance, to accept all the appearance of infirmity, the appearance of powerlessness, the appearance of incomprehension, the appearance, yes, of a negation of the Truth. But if one doesn't accept all that, nothing will ever be changed! Those who want to remain great, luminous, strong, powerful and what have you, well, let them stay up there, they can do nothing for the earth.⁵⁹

But why, why this total lack of junction with her own body? A thousandth, a millionth part of that, of that cataract of power, could have propelled her forward for centuries as if in the twinkling of an eye. And I understood without understanding⎯without understanding the immense Compassion that leads things. If that came, maybe it would destroy too many things!⁶⁰ When this luminous Power comes, it's so compact—so compact that it gives the impression of being much heavier than Matter. It's veiled, veiled, completely veiled, otherwise ... unbearable.⁶¹ But why could there not be just a small drop of that? I thought innocently. And She patiently explained: It’s REALLY an all-powerfulness. That is, entirely, totally and exclusively existing. It contains everything, but what is contrary to its vibration is forced to change, you see, since nothing can disappear; but then that immediate, brutal, so to say, and absolute change is, in the world as it is, a catastrophe.⁶² A drop or everything, it is obviously the same; it can be borne only because of our thick layer of filth.

To understand, one only had to look at the small seething laboratory around her. The Ashram seemed to be the centre of the resistance to the Work⎯of course! Sri Aurobindo had known it for fifty years. It was the symbol of all the difficulties of the earth. It is as if a superhuman Power were trying to manifest through millenniums of impotence.... This (the body) is made of millenniums of impotence. And a superhuman Power is trying to ... is exerting a pressure to manifest. That's what it is. What will be the outcome? I don't know. ⁶³ I don't think THE result is possible with the present conditions on earth: it would be a miracle, upsetting too many things. The consequences would be worse than ⁶⁴

So what was to happen, if at the same time the body had to last, to gain time, while the environment not only did not have the necessary patience, but could not bear what would have permitted the change?

She was trapped in an insoluble contradiction. The sips of glucose had more and more difficulty going down. The feeling of hanging from such a slender thread ... in an absolutely rotten atmosphere of disbelief, futility, bad will. A slender thread, and it's a miracle it does not break. They don't even understand that if this Vibration of Truth imposed itself, there would be the destruction of themselves! Of what they think to be themselves. The wonder—the wonder—is this infinite Compassion thanks to which nothing is destroyed: it waits. It's there, waiting with its full power, its full force, and ... it simply asserts its presence without imposing it, so as to reduce the damage to the minimum. It's a marvellous Compassion! And all those fools call it impotence!⁶⁵

“Mother can no longer do anything,” was their leitmotiv,” and “Mother is going away very fast”… Some even circulated a warning: “Get ready, She is going to leave.” An “absolutely rotten atmosphere.” So what?

One could almost laconically give the bulletin of her little cries, which sounded like an appeal to the earth:

• There seems to be a more and more powerful Pressure, and all difficulties are arising. People quarrel and ... oh! And it’s all over the world.⁶⁶

• “She's old, she's old....”⁶⁷ It creates an atmosphere of resistance to the change. It almost creates a conflict in the being. “It's impossible, impossible, impossible ...” from every side.⁶⁸

• The people around me don't help. Those immediately around me have no faith.⁶⁹

• I'm ready to struggle 200 years if necessary, but the work will be done.⁷⁰

• I really think that those who can begin the new race are among children. Men are ... crusted over. They're all old and I am the only one who is young! That's it, you know, that flame, that will They are satisfied with stupid little personal satisfactions which lead nowhere. While you feel you could hasten the coming if you were if you were a conqueror! Basically they just don't care.⁷¹

• It's only by clinging desperately to the Divine—but to the purest and most powerful Divine— that we can avoid a general conflagration. There's not a single minute to be lost, we should constantly, constantly cling to the Divine to compel his descent here. Otherwise.... So I need ... I need all those who love me to understand me. We have to get rid of everything that still holds us down in order to be really ready to receive that Divine Will. The urgency for that ... frightening.... That's it, nothing is left, nothing, nothing only a will—a will, an aspiration, a compelling need: oh, the reign of the Divine must come, it must! I am in a hurry.⁷²

• If things went any faster, everything would break.⁷³

• The time has come to take a clear stand: all that (illness, death, pain), all that is unreal. It’s high time.

• Sri Aurobindo said, he wrote: The time has come. Because He went away, people thought He was wrong.⁷⁴

• There's only one direction—towards the Divine. And as you know, it's as much inside as outside, above as below. Everywhere. It's in this very world that we must find the Divine and cling to Him—to Him alone, there's no other way.⁷⁵

• The body sees plainly, very clearly, the marvellous protection it has, otherwise it would be slashed to pieces.⁷⁶

• When I can get back into my normal atmosphere, it's as if everything vanishes, I am not in pain anymore. But back it comes from outside like a ferocious attack: people quarrelling, circumstances going awry, everything. And all that is thrown on me, so ⁷⁷

• For centuries and centuries, humanity has waited for this time. It has come We want a race without ego.⁷⁸

• Let us be something that is not an extra obstacle.... A transparent transmitter.⁷⁹

• 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 to the Truth?... It is only the Truth that can save us.⁸⁰

• I have just had a fantastic vision ... of the cradle of a future ... not a very distant future. A future ... I don’t know. It’s a pro-di-gious mass hanging over the earth.⁸¹

• All the beautiful dreams will become real, with a reality far more marvellous than anything we can dream of.⁸²

• I always think of that passage of Sri Aurobindo: “God shall grow up in Matter,” ... and you see the Divinity grow up in Matter, “... while the wise men talk and sleep.” It's exactly that.⁸³

• There is the possibility of a breathtaking success—not in the sky: here.⁸⁴

• There isn't any “we must be patient,” there isn't any “it will come in its own time,” there isn't any ... of all those very reasonable things, they don't exist anymore—it's That, like a sword- blade. And it's That despite everything: the Divine. The Divine alone. All the rest is falsehood—false, false, false, and a falsehood that must disappear. There is only one reality, there is only one life, there is only one consciousness: the Divine.⁸⁵

• There will be a miracle. But what, I don't know. One sees clearly that external circumstances are being brought to the point where things will suddenly crack up. But how? I don't know.⁸⁶

• You have the feeling of being on the edge of a cliff—you mustn't make a single false step. As if the Consciousness were putting pressure on circumstances so they become more definite and clear.⁸⁷

• Even if one person could put himself or herself faithfully at the disposal of the Truth, he or she could change the country and the world.⁸⁸

• Only some kind of violence could stop the transformation ⁸⁹

• There are people who are sending catastrophic suggestions. The body fights all it can to accept only the suggestions from the Divine, but there's still a pull.⁹⁰

• The sensation of my body is as if I were as big as the world and holding everything in my arms, truly the way a Mother holds her children. I can't explain.... Later.⁹¹

• Everything is becoming a discomfort: a perpetual discomfort, as if my body were made to live through every single thing that must disappear. Nonstop. Everything—external things, internal things, things in so-called others, things concerning this body—all, all is terrible, terrible, terrible As if all the negations had accumulated here so that I do the work, and I don't know who that “I” is anymore. The body, this poor body, is the negation of what it sees as the ... Beauty to be realized.⁹²

• I'd like to stop talking.⁹³

• As though the battle of the world were being fought in my consciousness. Yes, because it isn't one person's subconscient: it is the earth's subconscient. It's endless. Yet we must ...

Stopping that would mean stopping the work. Going on with it means it will take ages I don't know it's endless. As if this consciousness were the meeting point and the centre of action. So my sole means is to remain quiet—very quiet so the divine rays can pass, pass through it. It's the only solution. It must be the Divine who ... who fights the battle.⁹⁴

• A Bliss is there ... waiting for us.⁹⁵

• The slightest contradiction that enters the atmosphere causes me such discomfort, I feel I won't be able to stand it.... It's ... I don't know what it is. It is like a negation, a painful negation.⁹⁶

• The ultimate outcome is obvious.⁹⁷

• I feel like screaming When I am still, I have an almost limitless power. But when I am in my body, I feel so uncomfortable ⁹⁸

• It has become very intense. And at the same time the knowledge: now is the time to win the

Victory.” Like this, from above: Hold on ... hold on, now is the time to win the Victory.”⁹⁹

What could possibly happen?

What would be the last path to that final, “obvious” ending, that ineluctable Victory in spite of everything, or because of everything? Oh! because of everything. “The reign of the Divine must come, it must come, it must….”

Or what? To start all over again?