Mother or The Mutation Of Death - III

3: The Mind of the Cells

In fact, this germination of the Mind of the cells, this capital turning point in Mother’s (and Sri Aurobindo’s) yoga, so capital that Mother would say three years later, in 1971: But it is radical, mon petit!²⁰⁰ You can't imagine, it's like ... I could really say I've become another person.¹ (another person at ninety-three, after living the countless experiences that others would have regarded as a summit), this simple, so simple and fragile a thing which stammered in her body, this mantra that repeated itself on its own, was the real knot of the battle that Mother had been fighting since 1958: ten years. Not that the Mind of the cells had not tried, many times, to supplant the physical Mind, but each time it was as if engulfed again or, at best, it passively obeyed the higher Mind and the spiritual Vision, like a baby somewhat crushed by its parents of Light. Even when released from the sordid physical Mind, it shyly turned to the “higher” Light so as to “do its best”⎯but that best was worth nothing, or it could only, at the most, keep madly grinding out some higher humanity, sanctified and purified, the whole old improved evolutionary jumble. It took the radical cleanup of 1968 for those cells to be freed from the “good” of the higher Mind as well as the “evil” of the physical Mind⎯for them to be themselves, purely. And this was when the miracle truly started. It is the secret that every “man” of the next species will have to discover⎯and which will probably be easier to discover, now that one body has uncovered it and understood the formidable power and the formidable freedom that lay there.

The Fundamental Cage

We say “the mind of the cells,” “the intellectual mind,” “the intuitive mind,” or “the liberated mind” in its heaven up above, but it is but one and the same Mind and perhaps the word is inadequate: it is but one and the same consciousness, one and the same power in various vibratory modes or various “milieus.” Sri Aurobindo even said that that “Mind,” or Force-Consciousness, existed in each atom and each particle. That Consciousness or Power has always circulated freely through Matter⎯in fact, it is the very constituent of Matter, the Energy that Einstein put in an equation (but what was not formulated is the consciousness of that Energy). From the small ball of gelatine to the hominid, with every species growing in evolution that Power concretized itself, coiled up into one way of being or another, one vibratory habit or another⎯a certain molecule that fixed its circuit and seemed to be bound to repeat forever the habit it had got into, except when, by “miracle” or “mutation” (both words are equally hollow), the habit broke at one point or another and a new species or a new type began spinning and repeating a new habit or a new vibratory mode of the same eternal Power. Our “molecules” and “mutations” explain nothing, they are the outer crust of the phenomenon; we can continue, ad infinitum, to dissect molecules and particles and we will always find something else, which hides something else, which hides something else…. What we will never grasp hold of is the internal tension of the Consciousness that causes this and only this break, at that and only that moment. We can violate all the molecules we like, like laboratory demiurges, but we will not produce what follows man, it is that simple. We will not have obtained the secret of man. This is the exact limitation of our science. Just as we can force and bombard all the particles we like, but we will not master the great Energy, except to produce deadly machines out of it. We will not have the secret of Matter. But at the human level of the evolution of that great Power, it seems that a black curtain has been drawn, a second cage over the first fundamental, physiological cage that is specific to each species. But that which is our “accident” is also the key to demolishing the original cage. Instead of letting the Power coil up as usual, as it does in other mammals, and follow the small circuit of the simple cellular Mind which endlessly repeats its seasons, marriages, urges and impulses within an open milieu where everything communicates, “feels,” “responds” and lives in a certain harmony that could well seem divine to us compared to our own grating, we have built the cage of the ego, of the “I,” and taken on individual appearances within a carapace of non-communication with all the rest. Hence all the complications, distortions, suffocations, fears and what not, which slowly came to build up the leaden cage of the physical Mind, from the Pleistocene on, to such an extent that the cellular Mind could not even spin its simple, healthy habits without the other one interfering and terrorizing, medicalizing, hypnotizing and deeply traumatizing everything, with all the artifices made necessary by its imprisonment and all the false habits of its individualization in rivalry with everything else. A mongoose has no physical Mind, man has one, a diabolical one. This is our great misery. It is the vast web that is so deeply rooted in human Matter that we feel we cannot uproot it without uprooting life itself from our bodies.

It is this cage of the “I” that all philosophies, religions and sociologies come up against; it is to remedy or break it open that one creates Marxism, heavens and hells, democracies and telephones, but the true way out⎯the evolutionary door⎯is down below, as we have seen, behind or under the web of the physical Mind, in the Mind of the cells. And if we broke that cage, we would doubtless rediscover the freedom and the happy harmony of the animal⎯and many other things that Mother discovered while going through the web. There lies the integral unity that Marxism, religions or all our equations have vainly sought. It is Einstein’s “unified field.” But first of all, Evolution never went backward. We will not return to the mongoose; even there, the fundamental cage would still remain. This digesting, aging structure. And this is where we perfectly understand the evolutionary stratagem that has made us painfully transit through the “I” of the super cage. One of these days, compelled by our very asphyxiation to get out of the web, we will find ourselves⎯but with an individual way of seeing, an individual comprehension of the evolutionary programme⎯faced with that primal cellular substance freed of its old ghosts, and we will make discoveries that no animal could have made, because it feels perfectly at ease in its cage. Our evil was the hiding place of our supreme good.

The Agent of Mutation

Mother’s discoveries spread out over many years, they started long before ’68, but it was not before the last higher remnants of the Mind were swept away that her cells suddenly found themselves left on their own, without orders, except for whatever could spring from their own depths. And from that moment, a formidable Power began to emerge⎯the very one that had animated atoms, little or great men, saints and sages, all the evolutionary circuits, but through one filter, two filters, or layers upon layers of filters. And it was there, pure, as it really was. All-powerful. A Power that can crush everything to bits and rebuild everything. It was in 1964 that Mother touched that cellular foundation for the first time, and what is extremely interesting is that there is no more “personal” experience at that level⎯of course, as there is no more person there, it is the whole world⎯and when you have an experience there, it is as if, it is (not “as if”) the whole terrestrial field that has the experience, is put into contact with it. This is what Mother said in 1964: Something began to descend—not “descend”: to manifest and permeate; permeate and fill this terrestrial consciousness. What a force it had! What a power!... I had never felt that kind of intensity in the material world. A STABILITY, a power! Everything in the sense of a power, of a thrust forward: progress, evolution, transformation. It was the joy of progress.... Amidst all that—that mass of experience—there was, standing out from the rest, the impression of the gorilla, of the fantastic power of progress that would turn him into a man It was very odd, it was an extraordinary physical power, with an intense joy of progress [that joy of the cells, always: it is the main attribute of the cellular consciousness], of the thrust forward, and it made a kind of simian form moving forward towards man. And then it was like something repeating itself in the spiral of evolution: the same brute Power, the same vital force (there's no comparison, of course, man has lost all that completely), the fantastic force of life that's found in those animals was coming back into the human consciousness, but with all that has been brought by the evolution of Mind (a painful enough detour), and TRANSFORMED into the light of a higher certitude and a higher peace. And, you know, it wasn't a thing that came, diminished and came back again, it wasn't like that. It was an immensity, a full, solid, ESTABLISHED immensity. Not something that comes and presents itself to you to tell you, “This is how it will be,” it wasn't that—it was HERE. It wasn't a permeation into the Mind: it was a permeation into Life, into the material, earthly substance, which had become alive. Even plants participated in the experience: it wasn't something that was the privilege of the mental being, it was the whole vital, material substance of the earth that received this joy of the power of progress—it was triumphant. Triumphant That diamond-like sparkling. When I got up this morning, I had the feeling that a corner had been turned. But not at all—oh, not at all a subjective thing: a corner has been turned FOR THE EARTH. It doesn't matter in the least if people aren't aware of it.²

As Sri Aurobindo observed: it explains itself.

And Mother added: At any rate, the experience was decisive in the sense that it coordinated all those scattered little promises, all those scattered little advances [the hundreds of little experiences that sprouted up on every side, while She advanced blindly through the Forest]. But there was a fairly clear perception that soon the state of being or way of being (I think they say the “modus vivendi”) of the body, of this fragment of terrestrial Matter, could be altered, ruled, entirely driven by the direct Will [that is, the great total Consciousness]. Because it was as if ALL the illusions had fallen away one after another [the illusion of illness, of death, of decay, of the instinct for survival—all the indisputable physiological illusions that stick to us along with the web of the physical Mind], and every time an illusion disappeared, it produced one of those little promises that came in succession, announcing something that would come about later.³ It was only four years later, in 1968, that this great “direct Will” would take possession of the cells without passing through the filters of the Mind, of the Vital or even the most “spiritual” filters in the world.

But not only does one have to be able to bear the Power⎯and this is the whole preparation, widening, universalization and impersonalization that Mother’s body had to undergo⎯but it still needs something that catches it, if we may say so, some kind of turbine or condenser, a fixative element that prevents it from slipping away like a breeze. What on earth in those cells can “condense,” “fix” the Power? It was the very first question Mother asked herself in 1958. But in 1965, a double discovery, both negative and positive, occurred, an absolutely capital but very simple discovery (on the cellular level, nothing is spectacular: it is the Mind that enjoys making a fuss). This double discovery is truly the prelude, the key to the new species, or perhaps rather to the change of species. The agent of mutation. For a mutation to take place in this cellular substance, something has to shed its skin, or cease coiling up the current as usual and endlessly grinding out the same vibrations. Until then, it was the physical Mind that served as a condenser, with its peculiar habit of “condensing” disasters and coiling up the current in or according to the old atavistic, medical and “sensible” patterns (how “faithfully” it duplicated the medical dictionary, to such an extent that it made you wonder whether it was the illness that followed the dictionary or the dictionary that followed the illness), and Mother had striven a lot to silence and annul it. But She realized this, which was her first, negative discovery. It was very difficult to get rid of it because it was so intimately linked to the aggregate of the physical body and its present form ... it was difficult; and when I tried and a deeper consciousness tried to manifest, it used to cause fainting. I mean that the union, the fusion, the identification with the Supreme Presence [or the Power, the “other thing,” the great Current] without that, WITHOUT THIS PHYSICAL MIND, by annulling it, caused fainting⁴. Which means that the physical Mind was a kind of link, of connector between Matter (or the body) and the Power that drives, animates Matter⎯ suppress it and nothing holds the Current anymore, it just goes through: you faint. So, it was like a death sentence for the human system: you cannot rid yourself of this old maker of disasters, without it everything collapses. There is no possible mutation, you spin the disaster out until the end. There is no other connector.

But in 1965, on July 21 to be precise, a tiny, stammering microscopic phenomenon took place, which changed all the data.

Under that kind of fossilized crust of the physical Mind, something suddenly emerged, a crack, a hole in the carapace, and another voice, a new murmur in the body: There is a slight hope that this material mind, the mind of the cells, will be transformed—all of a sudden, here was all this mind saying a prayer. A prayer ... you know how I used to make prayers before, in “Prayers and Meditations” [Mother’s former diary at the beginning of the century]. It was the Mind saying prayers; it would have experiences and say prayers; well, here we are, now it's the experience of all the cells: an intense aspiration, and suddenly all that starts expressing it in words. It is as if this body-mind, on behalf of the body [it was the body beginning to be “mentalized”], were saying a prayer And it very much has the sense of the oneness of Matter. So there was the sense of the totality of Matter—terrestrial, human Matter— and it said:

The other states of being, the Vital, the Mind, may enjoy the intermediate contacts....

That is, the relationship with all the intermediary states of being: the gods, etc., heavens, illuminations, revelations and all sorts of music.

The supreme Lord alone can satisfy me.

And then, there was suddenly such a clear vision that the supremely perfect alone can give this body plenitude. I found that interesting. It's the beginning of something. It started with disgust—a sickening disgust—with all this misery, all this weakness, all this fatigue, all this discomfort, all this friction and grating, oof!... And it was very interesting because there was that disgust, and along with it came a sort of suggestion of Annihilation, of Nothingness: of eternal Peace [the physical Mind’s great aspiration: the immobility of stone]. And it swept all that away [yes, it is the cellular mind itself that does the sweeping away], as if the whole body straightened up: “Ah, but that's not it! That's not what I want. I want ... ” (and then there was a dazzling burst of light—a dazzling golden light) ... “I want the splendour of Your Consciousness.” The first pure reaction of the cellular consciousness. I feel as if we had caught the tail of the solution. It's a whole world that's beginning to open up. We'll see.⁵

The Mind of the cells itself reacting against the catastrophic hypnotism of the physical Mind and stammering a “prayer”⎯a prayer means word, vibration. The first pure vibration of the cells.

It was the new connector of Power: the Mind of the cells.

The demolition of the old pattern: the agent of mutation. Something that was going to coil up the Current, pure.

Just a little whisper in the cells. A first mantra of Matter. Like a freshly born Matter.

And an aspiration, a joy of intense aspiration in those cells, like a golden breath in the depths of Matter. Everything that was mental seems to me cold and dry ... yes, dry, lifeless. It's luminous, it's lovely, pleasant, but it's cold, lifeless. Whereas this aspiration here, oh, it has a power—a power of realization—quite an extraordinary power. If this becomes organized, it will be possible to do something. There is an accumulated power there.⁶

It is the very power that moves the atom, the pure supramental power, the Energy of all mutations and transformations of Matter: “A power that can crush everything and rebuild everything.”

One had now to learn the “new language” of the cells, “organize” this new Mind of Matter, coil the golden vibration until it transmutes the old skin.

But the key had been found.

It is the key to getting through the second web, the one that binds us to a mammal body, as it binds others to an aquatic or a reptilian body. We wonder how we poor humans can go through that Wall, when Mother and Sri Aurobindo had to display so much heroism and tenacity to carry out the operation, but the way is open. Now we know where the key is⎯all of the difficulty does not lie in the difficulty itself! It lies in not knowing how to tackle the difficulty. This is the very work of the pioneers of evolution: to find the way. Now, we know: the cells have to engage a mantra which will continue working by itself and will undo the old mesh by itself. It is the mantra that will sweep the web away and purify the cells by itself, automatically. An automatic power. We must learn to plant a mantra in the body, which will repeat it as stubbornly as it used to repeat: I forgot to turn off the gas, or I am going to get cancer, or…. It will repeat it like a mule, round the clock. It is that simple. As capital a discovery as the functioning of a little mental vibration in a few grey cells.

This might well be Sri Aurobindo’s “mathematical formula.”