Mother or The Mutation Of Death - III

19: The Impossible Solution

She was so vast and so perfectly immobile in the great battle that was being fought. One merged into Her as into an immensity of soft snow, and yet so formidably burning in its immobility. One went far, far away and forever, and yet it was there. One was at home as if in the deepest inner sanctuary, and yet it was the world that was beating there. One was bathed in Love, yet it was a merciless war … in perfect silence, as if outside of all wars, as if they had been won from all times. And the small drops of her words, her little breaths from the depths of eternity, brought the fire, told of hell or the Marvel, of the contradiction and the eternal question, in the same, so totally even tone, as one watches a river flowing: here it turns to the right, there it turns to the left. It was the transparent truth, colourless and without a ripple: pure. Without anyone. And yet it was her.

And more tenderly her whenever She laughed.

On the Threshold of a Great Secret

But She no longer laughed very often, that’s true. She was now in a very tight game. But one never felt it was tight, one was not truly aware of the gravity of the situation, except that She seemed more and more engulfed in that strange time. Near her, there was such a bath of compact and light eternity that really one could not see where and how it could finish. There was no death there, obviously, but there were all those gazes of death around her. That was the assault. Her 95 years could have been 395 without making any difference, but time mattered for the others. One did not even feel that her body was getting old⎯“old” sounded so strange near Mother⎯but all those eyes…. And I remember again, with a flash of comprehension, what she had said one day: The impression is that the visible form is as much (at least as much) the result of how you are seen by others as of how you yourself are. I don’t know how to explain that.... When someone else sees you, you see yourself the way others see you. But there is a way of being which results from the true consciousness and is felt quite concretely, but which is ... not exactly in contradiction with, but wholly different from the way you see yourself according to others’ vision of yourself. That’s why something must be found for it to be independent of everybody’s influence.¹ Perhaps we will never know to what extent Matter, corporeal Matter, is miraculously supple and fluid, though as if frozen, hypnotized by habits. Really, the world is completely distorted. Matter is completely distorted. It can be miraculously otherwise … if we get out of the bath⎯if we see otherwise. If we are otherwise. Mother was seen as old. She was seen as dying. This was the horrible story. And She was not struggling for herself, but to free a spot of Matter from that dreadful hypnotism. Oh! how they believe in death. The power of Death is that they all want to die!² she said one day.

But there was “the other way,” “the product of the true consciousness,” that “son of the cells” that had been slowly built up, aggregated by the prayer of the body, the aspiration of the body, the millions of Mantras repeated night and day. A second time, She had seen it, in 1972. I don't know whether it's the supramental body or a transitional body, but I had a completely new body, in the sense that it was sexless It was very slender. Really lovely, a truly harmonious form.³ What was very different was the torso—the breathing. The shoulders were strikingly broad. That's important. The chest was neither feminine nor even masculine. And all that—stomach, abdomen and the rest—was simply an outline, a very slender and harmonious form, which certainly wasn't used for the purpose we now use our bodies What will change a great deal, of course—it had acquired a prominent role—is breathing. That being depended much on it. ⁴ And I told Mother: “Several times, I felt that rather than a transformation, there would be a concretization of the other body?”⎯Ah! But how? “Yes, we don’t know the passage. But instead of this body becoming the other, it would be the other that would replace this one.” Yes, but how?.... Understandably, if the body I had two nights ago were to materialize . . . . But how?...⁵ The passage? The passage, which for most people is like passing from the waking consciousness to the sleep consciousness and from the sleep consciousness to the waking consciousness.... There is still a step; there is still this-that [Mother twisted two fingers as if to indicate a shift or change of consciousness from one state to the other]. You-know-nothing. It’s peculiar how we know nothing.⁶ For her, there was no “passage” anymore, there was no longer a side of sleep and a waking side, a side of death and a side of the so-called living. It was one and the same side. Such was her strange, paradoxical life, as if in two worlds (two worlds for us, for our distorted vision within the cage). She was building that overlife where there was no longer any “side.” I see many scenes from Nature, like fields, gardens ... but all behind nets!⁷ she said to me, laughing. And those “nets” were so visibly, obviously (and symbolically) the “web” that separates us from the “other side.” I could almost see them as Mother spoke. I saw a kind of sardine net, light and streaming in the wind, between her and a true earth, so smiling. There is a net of one colour, another colour ... And it has a meaning. Absolutely everything is behind a net, you are ... as if you moved about with nets. But it’s not a single net, it depends: for its form and colour the net depends on what’s behind. And it is ... the means of communication. You understand, it’s lucky I don’t speak because they’d say I have taken leave of my senses! And I see that with my eyes open, during the day, can you imagine! So I’ll see my room, for example—I’ll be here, seeing people—and AT THE SAME TIME I’ll see one landscape or another, and it all changes and moves about ... with a net between me and the landscapes.⁸ It is all very pretty and one can conceive very well of a mode of overlife that would be devoid of… safety nets (!) but meanwhile, there is an enormous Screen, with a body that is perhaps very slender in true Matter, but another one that is very poorly regarded in this Matter and forced to decay. So what?… What indeed? The day the Screen falls away, it will be all right (unless it is another kind of catastrophe!) but precisely, we feel that for the screen to fall away, the present Matter has to open up, hew the passage in its own flesh, drag itself out of that leaden fixity or general hypnotism. That was exactly what was painfully taking place in Mother’s body, amidst the formidable collective Negation. That kind of “old thing,” as She called her body, was the site of the experiment, one could say the site of the passage⎯if it did not pass through that, where would it pass? Through what other crack in general Matter? It was not a question of leaving the old rag and frolicking around in a less wretched story: it was taking place there, in those 95 years that were so poorly regarded. And if nobody around wanted that, who would and where, in this damned collective Matter? The laboratory was perfectly representative. It was “the battle of the world.” So Mother came up against the eternal mystery: “It is curious how we know nothing.” And time was short. It has to go fast.

Sometimes, She sat staring into the distance, her right hand pressed on her lips, and one felt such an intensity of question. She stared at the conditions, the implacable conditions, and what way out? It was not a way out for her body! It was a way out for the earth. And who wanted it, who? Where was the small pure flame in all that quagmire that came to her room, draped in white and with its official yogic smiles⎯oh! there were the others, those who were never spoken of, who had neither names nor titles and obscurely worked for love, washing the dishes or greasing cars, those you met sometimes, with such a pretty little flame in their eyes. It was thanks to them that Mother kept holding on, the ones who could hardly ever see her and were not even allowed to bring her the little breath of their pure love. But there was all that obscure carapace around her, it was in it that She had to work, it was from that Negation that She had to wrest a cry of consent. She toiled and toiled, and sometimes it seemed hopeless. If there were a certitude, if, for instance, Sri Aurobindo said, “This is like this,” then it would be very easy ! But what’s difficult is ... You see, you are surrounded by people who think you’re ill and treat you as such; you are surrounded by a certainty that you’re fast moving towards the end, so this poor body is like this, it doesn’t know. It isn’t concerned with it, but it doesn’t have a certitude of how it will end. So all it can do is to be tranquil, trusting, and ... endure.⁹

Sri Aurobindo did not say anything, of course! It was the body that had to find. To find, for the body, means to do. And yet, invisibly, one felt She was approaching something, in spite or because of that very Contradiction. One could feel her oscillating faster and faster between two extremes of splendour and demolition, of victory and abyss, as if, perhaps, both were going to merge into an incredible something else. Oh! one felt it was so near: the more raging it was, the more obvious and palpable. And Mother did not know. She was learning nonexistence in order to exist and last in that frightening oscillation from one side to the other. She was building the bridge. She was the bridge. Was it death for good, was it something else? The apprenticeship of personal nonexistence. Forgetting the Divine even for a minute is becoming catastrophic. Now and then, for a few seconds, the true beatific consciousness comes—but only now and then and for a few seconds. That's all. Otherwise, the struggle. Once, twice, for a few seconds “Oh!...” And it's gone. Is this ... this body to be left and another one built? I don't know.... It doesn't fit with ... I have not been told that it has to be that way.¹⁰ “But if you left, what would we do here?” I protested. “We feel that the only moments we can breathe are when we are near you!” But it has no desire to leave. It doesn't know. But … either we have to manage to make this body more plastic so it can be transformed, or else it will be for another life. Although I must say that Sri Aurobindo said to me, “Oh, to have to begin all that over again, the whole childhood and all that unconsciousness—no.” Before he left, He said no. “No, I shall return when it can be done in a supramental body.” But there have to be bodies capable of lasting at will. And I have the feeling that that is possible. I can spend hours like that, in a kind of receptive contemplation, and it seems like a second. The sense of time is really curious ... time simply ceases to exist. I sense I sense I am on the threshold of a great Secret ... but ... not mental—not in thoughts. It's ... “something.”¹¹

The Great Immobility

We do not really know that great Secret, not yet. It cannot be something that is confined in a mental formula⎯a new functioning in Matter, perhaps. What can be the great secret of the caterpillar, which seeks to become a butterfly without knowing what a butterfly is and wraps itself up as if in death? She did not know. She spoke less and less, and it was very difficult: even our conversations were eavesdropped on. She did not have one true refuge left, except for that growing “something” into which She tried to draw me, silently, while holding my hand. She was building a last line of communication, She wanted me to touch the site of the experience. Then one day, She abruptly went out of the experience, as if compelled by an imperative something. I want to see you every day.¹² We called in one of her attendants, arranged a schedule…. It happened once … and it was “not possible” any more⎯there were so many reasons for it to be “not possible.” The wall of Negation around her was slowly, inexorably closing in. I’ve lost control—I’ve given up saying “I want,” completely.¹³

Something was ineluctably pushing towards an impossible point⎯or perhaps the very site of the solution?

And “something” seemed to develop simultaneously⎯was it the same something? The other face of the Negation, the lever within the obstacle? We never understand anything in the world because we always see “opposite” things. But really everything is a mystery. We will not understand until we have reached the end. I am perplexed by what's happening with clock time.... Oh, yes! I feel, I know—I know positively that my body is being accustomed to something else.¹⁴ But what? It seemed that everything revolved around that question of time. Life is a torture if I am not exclusively turned to the Divine. That's the only remedy; otherwise, it's true, life is a torture. Existing becomes intolerable. The only remedy is to be like this ... when time ceases to exist.¹⁵ What was happening in her body?

The laboratory notebook is more and more sparse and laconic. I am walking on a very thin and narrow line.¹⁶

At each moment, it was a vertiginous balance between an indefinable “something,” the “marvel,” as She would say, perhaps the state of the next species, and the death of the old species. A sort of living death. A kind of Pressure—a frightening Pressure—which compels the necessary progress. I feel it in myself, on my body. Really, it was everyone’s body. But my body isn't afraid; it says, “Well, if I must be finished, I'll be finished.” That's how it is at every instant: the True Thing [Mother lowered her fist] or the end.¹⁷ In Mother, there was such an extraordinary mixture of peace, so impassive and vast, beyond everything, and at the same time that terrible, almost ferocious will, in an absolute stillness. I had seen many things in this life, but sometimes shudders ran through me near Mother. It was like a living sword of light Imperative, at every minute: life or death. No halfway. You know, we have spent centuries being neither too uncomfortable nor too comfortable. Well, that time is over.

The body knows this is necessary for the supramental body to be formed: it must be ENTIRELY under the Influence of the Divine. No compromises, no half measures, no “It will come later.” Just like this [Mother brought down her fist again]: a dreadful Will.... But it's also terrible because it means perpetual danger. I don't know, perhaps a hundred times a day, a sensation like: life or ... disintegration (I mean a sensation in the cells).¹⁸ And one wonders whether it was not life and disintegration, that was the impossible paradox. And if they don’t become tense as is their wont, then things are fine. It's as if the body were being practically obliged to learn eternity.¹⁹ We were always brought back to that other time, through every possible detour, as if the key lay there.

Then a last blow was struck. It was in April, 1973. What Mother called the “transfers.” One after the other, all the body functions, all the organs had undergone a “change of authority,” that is, the passage from the old, automatic functioning of Nature to the conscious functioning of the great Consciousness, the supramental functioning, that which Sri Aurobindo and Mother called the “conscious automatism.” The uncoupling from the old laws of Nature and the coupling to the other rhythm. And one morning, visibly shaken, Mother simply said: My nervous system is being transferred to the Supramental.... It feels like ... it's worse than dying.²⁰ It was the last transfer. Which meant that nothing in her body obeyed the old law anymore. Perhaps the last thread or the ultimate transition to the other state. And we can well understand that it was becoming quite unbearable to suffer that alive, while speaking to people, signing checks and swallowing a thousand poisons from all sides. A caterpillar builds a cocoon to undergo the operation. But I think ... I think I can transmit the divine Vibration. So, would you like to stay?²¹ And Mother took my hand to bring me into the experience, perhaps She wanted me too to touch the key. “But when one is near you, it’s a torrent!” I exclaimed. “It feels like a purifying fire, it’s…. It widens you, it fills you⎯That’s IT in a word. Ever since you've become supposedly powerless, I have started to feel….” Look, She said interrupting, I have accepted—the Lord asked me if I wanted to “undergo the transformation,” and I said yes (I would have said yes in any event), but it's ... to the ordinary human consciousness, I am going mad.²²

And at the same time⎯at the same time, a phenomenon was beginning to take place in her body, so strange, so new…. Perhaps it was really the “dangerous unknown”? Dangerous because we do not know what it is, because it is new. Would a caterpillar not find the butterfly state dangerous?⎯Fortunately, it is not aware of anything! But Mother counted all the moments. The difference is such that I wonder ... sometimes I wonder how it is possible—at times, it is so new, so unexpected it's almost painful.²³ What was happening? How I would have liked to understand, to feel…. Now that “unexpected” was growing and developing, inexplicably: it was visible, there was like an acceleration … towards what? And one morning in April 1973, as I had been immersed in the experience with her for around half an hour, She suddenly opened her eyes: Why do I feel like howling?²⁴ I was so stunned. Then I immediately thought that I had perhaps brought in some poison with me, oh! we are so full of dark little miseries: “Well, I wonder if it’s not me who hurt you? ⎯No, mon petit! ALL THE TIME I feel like that—it's not you. Something. It isn't really painful, it's just....²⁵ And She sat staring out towards the big yellow copper-pod tree in front of her, staring at that something that made her howl and was not painful. I think—I think it's something so new that the body is frightened. That's the only explanation I see. I start howling, but it's no use—the only thing to do is stop howling and change.

Perhaps that was precisely the change. Yes, that must be it: something so new that the body ... doesn't know how to take it. And She turned to me in order to try and understand what was happening. You didn't feel something while we were meditating? What do you feel? But it was so hard to tell: “Like a fire melting into your Fire,” I answered. But what do you feel?⎯ “I don’t know… the great Power.” And She nodded her head and insisted, as if I had not touched the thing: You don't perceive anything in particular? So I managed to explain: “No, sweet Mother, what I feel is first that great flame that sinks into you, and then a kind of vast immobility—a powerful immobility.” And suddenly I remembered that “immobility of fire” Sri Aurobindo spoke of. Ah, that's it! And Mother smiled as if She had touched that something that I did not understand: That must be why! Yes, the body must be getting alarmed. Yes, that must be it.²⁶

But what was “it”?

As for me, around the end of the meditation, after that torrent of power that seemed to knead and engulf me at the same time, I felt the same thing almost every time, as after a cataclysm: something that spread out more and more, then settled, and nothing moved anymore, not a breath, as if the body no longer breathed, or breathed without breathing. Immobile. A compact, burning immobility, and yet weightless. Everything stops. Everything had stopped. Yes, perhaps that “eternity of the body.” But what was it like for her*? For her body? I only felt a reflection, a minuscule reflection of what She felt. So what? And She said: “That’s it, that must be it”…. An immobility like that of death, felt as death by the body, but a death … that would have been living. Words are absurd, but it is something, a state that is completely outside of life, obviously, outside of the breath of life, but which breathes nevertheless, which is not death nevertheless⎯another breathing … so new. The death of the old species, of the old breath, the birth of … what? And it is like a real death. “The body doesn’t know how to take it.” It feels like howling, yet it is “not painful.” Is it really what the transformation is? The passage. The zero time. Of course, one cannot be a butterfly while remaining a caterpillar. But … how is it possible with one’s eyes wide open, while fifty people wait at the door and a few others are there, spying? Can one become the other thing in the old body? How is the physiological transition worked out? She was visibly right on the threshold of the unknown, of the great secret.

• Let’s note that this immobility has nothing to do with the one that is found at the opposite end, when consciousness dissolves up above in the supracosmic pale stretches and the body sinks into a trance of oblivion. No, in this physical, or rather physiological immobility, it is the whole corporeal trepidation that stops, but in a kind of very acute perception which is quite the contrary of sleep or trance: one perceives everything, people, things, clocks, thoughts, the most microscopic vibrations and very far around, in a sort of physical prolongation of oneself in which one chooses, or does not choose to know what is there, but in fact one could very well perceive the ticking of a clock in New York as if it were in the next room. One is right in Matter. But a complete Matter.

And the only answer was that immobility in another type of time. The great immobility.

Was it life, was it death?

Was it transformation or disintegration?⎯“It’s almost the same process,” She used to say. As if to show you that to vanquish death, you must be ready to traverse death.

So what?

It seemed that She was being taught to enter death alive.

As Inside an Egg

Where was all that leading?

I understood very well that it was a question of time and patience. “Given time, everything will change,” she had said. There was no reason to go through death, I thought, except, perhaps, as a radical experiment that would last a few days or a few weeks, then everything would be changed. I felt that that timeless immobility was like the laboratory condition for the bottom of the substance to be able to change, that “infinitesimal vibration” in Matter, that intra-atomic movement which is the first hardening, the coagulation of the Screen. It was the “missing side” of the atom, the one which had the power to modify the movement by “freezing” it in its lightning-fast immobility. But I did not really know, nor did Mother. You see, we don't know, we don't have the slightest knowledge of what the supramental life is. Therefore we don't know if this [Mother pinched the skin of her hand] can change enough to adapt or not—and to tell the truth, I am not worried about it, it's not a problem that preoccupies me too much.... And I stared at Mother without understanding. The problem I am preoccupied with is building that supramental consciousness so IT becomes the being. It's that consciousness which must become the being. That's what's important. As for the rest, we'll see (it's the same as worrying over a change of clothing). I did not understand at all. And in order to do that, all the consciousness contained in these cells must aggregate, form and organize itself into an INDEPENDENT conscious entity—the consciousness in the cells must aggregate and form into a conscious entity capable of being conscious of Matter as well as conscious of the Supramental. That's the thing. That's what is being done. How far will we be able to go? I don't know.²⁷ Yet I remained obsessed by that appearance, the “piece of clothing,” as if it were the most difficult thing to change, to transform, while Mother, on the contrary, seemed to see it as an ultimate consequence, which would present no problem: “At the end, it will be nothing: a mere breath and that will be it. What’s difficult is all the rest.” I perfectly knew, of course, that that “son of the cells,” that body newly created with all the agglomerated consciousness of the cells, was there, already formed, and that was what Mother truly cared about: that it become an independent being⎯that is, independent of the body⎯and capable of being simultaneously conscious of our old material world and of the world of true Matter, the supramental world. What did that mean? If this old piece of clothing is, after all, the site of the ultimate transformation, the site where the Screen falls away, the bridge to true Matter, what is the role of that cellular body regarding the old body? What is it that will open the door to the other Matter, if not old Matter itself? What is it that will transfuse the other substance, if not the old substance? The supramental world will not drop from heaven or break old Matter’s doors open without something consenting to the process on this side. One body is needed to receive it, a place for it to come in, doesn’t it?…

Unless the screen is worn thin and the darkness disgorged everywhere at the same time and the carbon layer asphyxiates so radically and unbearably that it will break all of a sudden through all the pores of our despair⎯perhaps this is how it will happen. “There will be a miracle,” she said.

But until that “last breath and that will be it” takes place, there is this transition, this time to gain, and what is the role of that cellular body which seemed to be Mother’s first problem, the body that was to “become the being,” that is, in a way, replace or relieve the old body? Did it mean that Mother was about to get rid of the rag?… But it was not true at all! Mother had said and repeated time and time again: Death is not a solution! NOT AT ALL. There is no solution except ... except if ... [Mother touched her body, indicating material transformation].²⁸ She had said it again in 1971. And so many times. Always, always, I receive the same answer, which isn't an answer with words, but an answer with a Knowledge (how can I put it?...), a FACTUAL Knowledge: “It's no solution.” Something that comes from a very absolute region—which makes me feel or understand or grasp the uselessness of death. So we are after another solution. There MUST be another one.²⁹ And She was categorical: Death is the acceptance of defeat, so ...³⁰ for me it's a falsehood—death and falsehood go together.³¹ It's still the memory of a disastrous past.³² And there's no point in giving up, because it would just have to be started all over again next time ³³ Begin again in a little baby?³⁴ Mother shook her head.

There is only one way out: the supreme Door.

So She was seeking another solution. Or rather She was working out the other solution. What part that cellular body played in all that, if it were not simply meant to replace the other?… I do not know if there is an answer to that question or if there will be an answer before we have reached the end of the evolutionary operation (of this particular one in any case), but my recurring impression is that the cellular body is the one that can assume all the old body’s functions, keep all the links and contacts with the old world of Matter as we know it, physically survive death without its making any difference to the central consciousness (“it would make more difference to them than to me,” she would say) and thus watch over the old body (really like a guardian and a support) as long as it is necessary for it to be transformed and remodelled in its image. A sort of luminous cocoon that watches over, protects and regulates the deep and intra-atomic transmutations of the old substance. It was in that that Mother enveloped herself more and more, in that timeless body without wear and tear which could keep her functioning indefinitely in its conscious automatism … if the rest of the world allowed it. And one felt very well, in fact, that there, as long as She was there, She was completely outside of the 70 or 80 pulse beats and of the 95 years which the day after would be implacably 96. She was outside of all medical and baptismal conventions … as long as the rest did not stubbornly throw its old mortal convention in her face. An “independent” being, a small golden vibration repeating itself on and on in the depths of the cells, and which will keep repeating itself until the operation is over. Until the golden invasion has taken place in every point of the old body. It was only a question of time and patience. In 1972, in that same conversation in which She explained to me her foremost preoccupation, the formation of an independent body, She told me: I feel that if I last up to my hundredth birthday, that is, another six years, much will be accomplished—much. Something significant and decisive will be accomplished.³⁵

And again in 1972, one day, She made this very significant remark (all the more significant than it was about the Mind of the cells): It is only when the Supramental manifests in the physical Mind that its presence can be permanent.³⁶ And as I did not understand what had “to be done” (we always have the impression that one has to do!) in order to engage the Mantra in the body’s cells, that is, fix the Supramental in the body, Mother replied to me: I don't know what has to be done, for it's spontaneous. Perhaps this is the means: a contemplation of the Divine. This is its natural state. I think it's really the sensation of the helplessness of a baby, you understand? The actual feeling is even curious, you know ... the body feels as if it were completely enwrapped like a baby, exactly like this Two or three days ago, something was pressing on my heart—and it hurt. It hurt, I really had the feeling that the body had the feeling it was the end. But then immediately, it felt as if enfolded like a baby carried in the arms of the Divine. And after some time (a long time), when the body was exclusively in the Presence, it went away. The body didn't even ask for the pain to go; it just left. Absolutely the sensation of being a baby nestling in the Divine's arms. Extraordinary! I think [and that really opens up new horizons] I think my body has become excessively sensitive and needs to be protected from all those things coming in. As if it had to work inside, you know as in an egg. And She sat staring for a moment.

Yes, that's it. Exactly. I think a whole work is being done within. Oh, in terms of the old way, it's becoming more and more stupid, but the new way is beginning to emerge. One would like, so much, to remain enfolded like this, to remain like this for a long, long, long time.... It's coming, we must be patient.³⁷

As within an egg.

And the material consciousness repeats, OM Namo Bhagavateh.... Like a backdrop to everything. OM Namo Bhagavateh You know, a backdrop you can use as a physical support. OM Namo Bhagavateh ³⁸

She was weaving the cocoon of light. It was in March, 1973.

The “new body” is decidedly the cocoon of the body under transformation.

Sleeping Beauty

In my heart, I felt that the Moment was drawing near⎯the Moment of the Earth, truly, the one we had so much struggled and suffered for throughout all those ages. I had no doubt about it, we were approaching⎯but by what path? I had the impression of a poignant Performance of which Aeschylus and the medieval Mysteries were only pale copies. It was now the Performance of the earth. And She was smiling, immobile, as if draped in white light. Time is no longer the same time ... And I can't eat anymore. Well. What's going to happen, I don't know. “Very good things!” You're sweet, she answered. “But I am sure, sweet Mother!” Of course! So am I! And She laughed and took a big white hibiscus in her lap. What is this one? “It’s a Grace,” I answered. Then it's for you. Oh, that And She sat, her hands open on her knees. Can't speak anymore, can't eat anymore ... And time goes by like lightning.³⁹

Food: I thought it was the next step She was about to take. Naturally, it was the “seed of death,” the very symbol of the first turning in on ourselves, the devouring copy of Love. The last change of functioning before moving to … what? It was also the last communion with the old terrestrial way and I felt that it was something other than a small operation more; each time, one came up against the whole world, there, in that absurd symbol, as if to infringe that was to break the human law, the path from which there was no return⎯and they struggled around her to make her eat: if She did not eat, “She was going to die,” mind you, it was obvious, and She yielded to their hypnotism, sometimes She even told them: Force me to eat, even if I don’t want to. It was so poignant to see that body struggling to escape, then falling back into the suggestion before escaping again. “She was going to die” was written on every wall around her, whispered everywhere, it kept pounding and hammering her cells. “The world’s structure is still a brake,” she said. No one believed in the miracle! No one wanted to believe in the “other way.” It is hard for one body to believe against the whole world. Mother was nothing anymore but a body alone, a pure terrestrial physiology which was desperately striving to work out the transition of the species⎯but what can you do if the species does not want, does not understand? And good wills were as harmful as bad ones finally: it was another will that was needed! Night and day, I spend my time in the battle ⁴⁰ It isn't done for ONE body: it is done for the earth.⁴¹ This body has become a kind of representative and symbolic object—it is the battlefield, it is the field of victory, it is the Defeat, it is the Triumph, it is everything.⁴²

To infringe the law all by oneself?

One sensed that that step hid something that was very radical. A radical change was needed in the terrestrial consciousness, in that small laboratory around her.

Was the Hour to be missed?

Sometimes, they gorged her with so much defeat, impossibility and negation that her body no longer knew⎯was it not mad, all alone there, struggling against all the scientists of the world? Those irrefutable little axolotls. I don’t know. I don’t know what will happen. There are times when things become so difficult that I wonder if the body will be able to hold out, but I would like ⁴³ Oh, I haven't told you: yesterday or the day before, all of a sudden, for two or three minutes, my body was seized by the horror of … the idea of being put like this in a tomb was so horrifying! I couldn't have stood that more than a few minutes. It was horrifying. Not because I was buried alive, but because my body was conscious! It was considered “dead” by everybody for the heart had stopped beating—yet the body was conscious. That ... that was a horrible experience.... I was displaying all the signs of “death,” you know, the heart wasn't working, nothing was working—but I was conscious. The body was conscious. We must ... we must warn people at least not to rush to ⁴⁴ If the time for transformation comes, if my body grows cold, they should not rush to put it in the hole. Because it could be ... it could be only temporary. You understand? It could be momentary. You understand? Do you understand what I mean? ⁴⁵ Oh, I understood so well! And that day, I remembered a question that I had asked Mother a few years earlier: I wondered whether one could “experience death without dying”: Surely! She had said. You can have the experience in a yogic way, you can even have it materially if ... [and she laughed so much] if death is brief enough not to give the doctors time to declare you dead!⁴⁶ So I could picture the scene. What if they declared her dead? That’s how it is, you know, one HAS, has to die, that’s the terrestrial law, don’t be silly. And She, too, imagined the scene. I know, She continued, an attempt is being made to transform the body—it knows it and is very willing—but I don't know if it will be able to do it.... Do you follow? So for some time it may give the impression that it's over, although it would be only temporary. It would start again—it might start again. But then I would be. I may be incapable of speaking at that time, of saying this. So I am saying it to you ⁴⁷ I don't know. At any rate, I would like someone to prevent such a stupid thing, because then all the work would be ruined. People with some authority should be there and say: YOU MUST NOT DO THIS—Mother DOES NOT WANT.... What about you? ⁴⁸ ⎯“Who will listen to me? I interrupted. They will say that I am mad. They won’t even let me enter your room!” I did not know how prophetic I was. Then She corrected herself: It seems silly to make a fuss. Better say nothing.⁴⁹

One “makes a fuss,” but it is the earth that is concerned.

Come on, how silly, things are as usual. It is difficult to make History all alone.

Was it the sign that it was “not possible”?

And weeks “flashed” by (for her). I have become only this, a force pushing against a world of obstacles,⁵⁰ she had said twelve years earlier, but it was like yesterday. Any effort to retain the old way has become it brings about a discomfort, an almost intolerable discomfort.⁵¹ She could no longer remain in the old way, something had to happen. We just have to bear up, that’s all!⁵² And something happened. One day (we cannot know if it was a black day, because behind each night a greater light is hidden) things took a turn … we do not know in what direction⎯it was probably still the Direction, because there is not two. And that same day, so dark, it seemed that Mother had touched the key. It was April 7, 1973.

She did not smile that day. She was grave, “as when I pull all of the world’s weight.” She had a white lotus in her lap. I seem to be gathering all the world's resistances.... They come to me one after another, and if I weren't ... If I stop calling the Divine for a single minute, the pain is unbearable, mon petit! To such a point that I now hesitate to speak of “transformation” to people, because if that's what it is, one really has to be a hero You see, there's something in the body that would almost howl nonstop. Yet it looks to me that there is something very simple to be done to make it all right But I don't know what. Sometimes I wonder, “Does the Lord want me to leave?”

I am ... quite willing, you know; but does He want me to stay? No answer. And that is ⁵³ Yes, always that silence, perhaps until the end⎯not A SINGLE answer. Why? If we could find that “why,” we would have the key to what happened…. I truly, truly sense there is something to be done that would make everything go right—but I don't know what it is. “I sense there's an increasingly faster movement that's that's absorbing you.,” I said. Yes, yes, it's quite true. You see, I have a solution for the transformation of the body, but ... it's never been done before, so it's extremely hard to believe. I cannot, I cannot believe that that's it. Yet, it's the only solution I see Then

I stared wide-eyed. The body has a wish to go to sleep and awake ... (“sleep” in a certain sense, of course: I remain perfectly conscious) and awake only after it is transformed. ⁵⁴ Suddenly, it sprang out, a revelation: Sleeping Beauty! Yes, that was it⎯the cataleptic trance, the cocoon of transformation. It was obvious, it was the only solution. The “very simple” thing to be done. Then She immediately corrected herself But people will never have the patience to stand it, to take care of me. The task is colossal, a Herculean task; they're nice, but they're already doing their utmost, and I can't ask for more. That's the problem. Yet, it's the only solution to which the consciousness assents: “Yes, that's IT.” But who? Who? To ask that of the people who take care of me is almost impossible. “They’ll understand, at least a few will understand,” I innocently replied.⎯But I can't ask them.⎯I can do it, I stupidly replied. Will they believe you? I was astounded. For me, it was so simple. Perhaps you can explain to them in front of me, Mother continued when they come.⁵⁵ Then She closed her eyes, plunged into the experience, bringing me into that so strange, powerful immobility. And that was when She suddenly came out of her state: “I want to see you every day.” That everyday lasted only once.

Then it was time. They came in.

And my heart sinks.

One of the samples came up to us⎯one of the “guardians.” There was an instantaneous explosion. Thirty years of safety valve suddenly bursting out. Oh, I will not repeat, I cannot repeat that ugly monologue, that tidal wave of anger. And She was there, so white, immobile. Oh, there is no one to blame, it was not a “man” who stood there, and I do not know if one being on earth could have endured the trial of that formidable Pressure day after day⎯it was the earth that was saying NO. These were the laboratory conditions. It was there that She had to work: there were no “good” or “bad” people, they were the samples of the terrestrial enterprise. Those nearer to the centre of descent are very shaken up,⁵⁶ she had already said nine years earlier. But the facts are there, we cannot erase them from History…. She tried to speak out: I can't speak.⎯Don’t speak, Mother. I would like to explain ⎯“I am not interested.” It's because there is an attempt to transform the body....⎯ “Whatever happens, happens.” But you don't want to know?...⁵⁷ asked Mother in her little childlike voice.⎯ “No, I don’t want.” That was it.

That day, fate was sealed.

The solution was there, along with the impossibility of the solution.

She could not continue any longer, and they were closing the only possible door.

She could no longer transform herself without flattening all that resisted around her.

Like Sri Aurobindo.

Nothing was left but the “hole.”

And yet, yet I felt, I knew that in that very impossibility the ultimate Solution lay⎯the one nobody had foreseen. The very reason why She was told nothing. The last path to the ineluctable victory.

There is no NO anywhere, there is only a Supreme Yes, everywhere and always, which follows its imprescriptible ways through all the no’s, all the refusals, all the good and the bad, the violent and the peaceable, and everyone does exactly what has to be done … without their knowing it.

As men, we grieve (oh!) and lament, yield to an outburst of anger or reprobation⎯but it amounts to the same thing, we understand nothing. “Something” keeps following its imperturbable path. The supreme Door hides in the ultimate negation.

I held a white lotus in my hands when I went out of Mother’s room and I no longer understood anything. I only understood that an invisible page had been turned. “One day, they will close Mother’s door on us,” I said to my companion like a robot. I did not know how prophetic I was being for the second time.

The raging voice still resounded: “In thirty years I’ve seen enough ... enough of humbug!”

There is something very simple to be done ⁵⁸

If only the earth knew how very simple the thing to do is for everything to change.

So simple.

A certain yes in our hearts.

A yes that makes even tombs melt away. Then the Hour will have come.

A mere breath, and it will be done.

Mother had seven months left. The last path.

Sleeping Beauty needs a Prince Charming.