Mother or The Mutation Of Death - III

7: Conscious Automatism

The traversing of the second web is what is most simple and most difficult at the same time. Maybe because it is, or should be, extremely simple in a certain way. So radical a simplicity, in effect, and which eludes us so totally, we who are built on complications, that it is almost vertiginous. Something prodigious ... which looks idiotic¹, Mother said, after a last small “operation” that occurred in 1970. All the difficulties we thought of⎯the implacable laws, gravitations and decompositions, genes that coil and uncoil themselves, cells and tissues that wear themselves down, the limitations of age and physiological impossibilities⎯were precisely difficulties that we thought. All that was before, they were the impossibilities and “laws” of the first web, Matter according to our heads and the laws of our physical mind; when we reach the second web and that cellular substance freed from its phantoms, the difficulty is the reverse of the old Wall that we have crossed: the difficulty is precisely that there are no longer any walls, that we are floating in non-law, and that all is possible! But it is a bit frightening for a body. Nothing is solid anymore. It is marvellous and scary. Not the smallest of mechanisms to hold on to, except for the great Mechanism, and if one lets go of it even for a second, it is nothing at all any more, it is a volatilization. And where does that nothing, or that great “something,” go? One becomes aware that the vast world we have constructed is a formidable illusion of death, sickness, gravity and electronic microscopes, but the other … it is somewhat elusive, it is still inexistent for a body, it has never yet been lived by a terrestrial body, there is no reassuring memory in it. It is as if a body, a first terrestrial body had to colonize the unknown in some way, enter a nothing that will then be something by the fact that one enters it. But each step forward is a step into nothing. Columbus was at least entering a solid unknown. The nonentity of the person—the absolute nonentity and incapacity. ² And what person would there be?

You need memories to keep a person standing on an “I.” And what memories would there be, as they were all memories of the old cage, what “capacities,” as they were all capacities of dying brilliantly? So it is the gaping hole at each step. And an hour is made of many small seconds ... piles of small seconds, “riddled with holes.” No one will know what Mother lived. She was always asking what time it was: what time is it? What time is it?... And they thought She was exaggerating, or going senile. They would even tell her “to get lost” up to the day when She no longer asked the time. But it's really the consciousness of the cells that must change, you understand? ... And there are no words to express it, because it didn't exist on earth.³ It is another person to be built. A cellular person. What is it that can happen in such a sort of body?

The Direct Functioning

In fact, all sorts of marvellous, incredible, infernal and fantastic things occurred, which She spoke of to no one, because they would have thought her mad—I always think of Sri Aurobindo’s silence. But it happens that I had once traversed a sort of human no- man’s-land in a concentration camp, which bore a distant resemblance, perhaps, to Mother’s cellular no-man’s-land, and which had freed me once and for all from all human rationalities. After that, one had to truly believe in a superior earth, or die. I did not die, thanks to Mother, because with her I encountered someone who wanted to build this superior earth and I was ready to understand all and everything, except for the human prison, the despair-inducing physiological concentration camp that ends up in the hole and begins again in another “ameliorated” concentration camp. So I understood her totally; the “impossibility” for me was the old world. “The horrible thing” was living, palpable for me. In fact, under the Pressure of that nothingness, or that need—that old evolutionary key—something other was born in Mother’s cells. Another way of being in the world.

One had to hold oneself upright first and foremost. One had to make gestures, pronounce words in French and English. There were ten, twenty, fifty people who were waiting and others around watching. There was that invisible silent pressure of all the small consciousnesses that wanted this, wanted that, expected this, expected that, there was money to be distributed and this house to be rented or not, to be repaired or not, hundreds and thousands of absurd things that are life, a nibbling, hectic, harassing life. That body was bathed in that, it was small death innumerable and pulsating on all sides⎯it understood nothing of it, it meant nothing to it. And what does a check mean? And the quarrel of this one with that one, what does that mean? It was small pain everywhere, one bumped oneself everywhere in a world of incomprehensible pain, an aggressiveness as voracious in its expressions of love as in its expressions of falsehood. And at times, just a small clear vibration that wanted nothing, asked for nothing, expected nothing—a miracle. When all of a sudden that vibrated somewhere, then She would stop, turn inwards towards that small miraculous twinkling and smile with her eyes closed. A breath of sweetness. And then it would all begin again. When I was silently next to her, groping around in the new world, I could feel her stretching out into this immense tranquil sweetness, so formidably powerful, and if by chance for one second in a moment of weakening, a thought would approach me, simply on the periphery, at a distance, instantly She would start, all her body would gather itself up and She would open her eyes: What time is it? A thought, the most innocent thought was a shock in that. Thought is the Enemy, she would say, the enemy of the cells. Ten times I saw that. For them it is the devouring. For millenniums they have been in this devouring hypnotism. A thought is the master, it is what comes and says: I want and you must do, it is cold, you will be sick, it is hot, you will be sick; it is late, you will be tired It is the world of instantaneous pain, the old slavery that begins anew. And you will take Coramine, otherwise your heart will stop and you will She fought and struggled within that. She lived each second in death—no: She lived death. “Living” was death at each instant, at least living the way that they all wanted around her. One day, I was speaking to her of the unfolding of the experience, and She was explaining a functioning, another functioning, when through some old absurd human habit, I wanted to know what would happen in the future (always this mania of the “future” when we are not even capable of living the present second), and as She liked me, She tried to find out, closed her eyes and concentrated her gaze within, when all of a sudden She abruptly came out of that, pulled on her shawl as if She were suffocating, sweating as if about to faint. You see how it is: now, as soon as I try to know something, I feel such a suffocating heat I think I am going to die. There. Do you understand?⁴ And it is exactly that: a world where one cannot “try to know,” a world where one cannot try to do or even want to do. A world where nothing is moved by the Mind anymore, not even to lift a spoon and move it towards your mouth. One “knows” nothing and can do nothing, but whenever it is necessary, it is known, that is to say it is done: to know is to do; to see is to have the power to do—automatically. And if it is not to be seen one does not see it, it’s that simple; if it is not to be done, one does not do it, very naturally, one does not even know how to do it. That is to say that all operations proceed conversely to human practice where one has to first “know,” “understand” and “want” in order to be able to do. And as our understanding is uncertain, our action is also uncertain, as is our entire life. There, action is infallible, it is immediate, down to the second. A check has no sense, does it, but the pen writes out the check or does not—there were papers that Mother quite simply could not sign, She no longer knew even how to sign! And one would become aware two days or a month later that it was a lie. Or She could not accept that flower, could not touch that money offering, as in the background it was full of calculations and poison. And in the most microscopic, most “insignificant” details, She “knew” or no longer knew, saw or no longer saw, spoke or did not speak any more. For instance, if I am not “supposed” to say something, instead of its going through the thought, “Mustn’t speak, you mustn’t speak”—I just can’t speak anymore!... All sorts of things like that. The functioning is direct.⁵ Nothing passes through the Mind any more. The Mind loses its usurped rank of creator and impulse- giver. The supramental action is decided by a leap over the Mind. The Mind is an immobile zone of transmission.⁶ Now it is perfectly tranquil, peaceful, and it sets itself in motion only when it receives a command to do so, an imperative command. It receives a command, then does something precise for a precise reason, a very precise action, and then ... silence and calm. The Mind recovers its true role: that of a tool, like antennae, crab’s pincers or a nightingale’s throat. So then, that rehabilitates everything. It's only the quagmire it has been turned into that ceases to be.⁷

A Smile That Knows Everything

It was a long apprenticeship of the direct functioning, which only became really perfect at the end of many long gropings, after the turning of 1968, when all of the Mind drew back except that of the cells. But in truth, it was not something to “learn” as one learns judo or swimming: it was a way of being that made the automatic and correct functioning. Or perhaps a way of non-being, of not existing. A transparency that allows for that to flow all naturally in one direction or the other. The more “inexistent” one is, the more total one is! The more the “I” disappears, the more the totality of the universe is there. The more one does not know, the more one wants nothing, decides nothing, the more it is total knowledge, the vision everywhere, in all the nooks and crannies of the universe—one is at the centre of everything, because one is in the Centre. Then one knows, then one does. It is the body that knows, it is the body that sees. The countless small cells everywhere. Everything communicates, everything is there. It is the great Consciousness that flows and innumerably knows the slightest movement of each detail of its body. The slightest mental intrusion from the old movement spoils it all, observed Mother, I mean the old way of behaving with your body: you want this and you want that and you want to make it do this and you want to make it.... The minute“ that” pops up, everything stops. Progress comes to a standstill. One must be in a beatific state ... then one can feel the new functioning begin. But it has become such a delicate play! A minute thing, minute, is enough⎯a mere ordinary movement, the movement of the ordinary functioning; if through habit you slip back into it (these are infinitesimal things, not easily seen, subtle, tenuous-tenuous; one must be very, very, very alert), if this happens, everything stops. Then you have to wait. Wait until the ordinary functioning consents to stop, and that means entering into contemplation—going over the whole path again. Then, when you have caught hold of That again and can stay there for a few seconds, sometimes a few minutes (it's marvellous when it lasts a few minutes) everything is fine And then it gets jammed again and everything has to be done over.⁸ That is to say that thought is automatic jamming. The mental world is the world of jamming. And naturally, as everything is jammed, one has to invent a load of complications to disentangle the tangle or to tangle the untangling a little more. It is the world where one knows nothing directly, where one has to “foresee” everything, “organize” everything. It is the great organization of the tangle, while there, there is nothing to “foresee”—foresee what? Every second of the universe is perfectly new, perfectly free and organized in an innumerable single marvel, ONE, where the bird’s flight over the Arctic concurs exactly with the little breath that makes the leaf tremble under our noses. It is ONE movement ... accurate to the second. We have only to live that second, that’s all, or rather to be that formidable second in everything. And that, in the body’s cells. It is beginning to obey another law, Mother remarked. For instance, to know at the exact moment what needs to be done or said, what's going to happen—if there's the slightest bit of concern or concentration to know, it doesn't come. But if one is just like that, simply in a kind of inner immobility, then for all the little details of life, one knows at the exact moment. What needs to be said comes: you say this. And not like an order from outside: it just comes, there it is. What needs to be said is there, the reply that needs to be sent is there; the person who enters, enters—you're not forewarned. You do things in a kind of automatic way. In the mental world, you think of something before doing it (it may happen very fast, but both movements are distinct); here it isn't like that.⁹

A willing automatism,¹⁰ it was how Sri Aurobindo described the supramental life. Instead of the inconscient automatism of the animal and atom, it is the same automatism in the fullness of the light.

And it is the great universal rhythm in the slightest detail. At each second the great rhythm, for everything. There only remained “that”... something (how can I explain?). The English word “smooth” is the most expressive: soft, regular. Everything is done smoothly, everything without exception: getting washed, brushing one's teeth, washing one's face, everything.... There is no “big” and “small,” no “important” and “unimportant”). And it's something so ... uniform in its multiplicity, there is nothing that clashes or grates or causes difficulties anymore or …it's something that moves forward on and on, in so smooth a movement, without resistance. I don't know. And it's not an intensity of delight, it's not that: that also is so even, so regular, but not uniform: it's innumerable. And EVERYTHING is like that, in a single...? rhythm (the word “rhythm” is violent). It's not a uniformity, but something so even, and which feels so sweet, you know, and with a tremendous power in the smallest things There are no memories left, no habits; things aren't done because you learned to do them: they are done spontaneously by the Consciousness. It's not, “Ah, I have to go there,” no: you are every minute where you should be, and when you come to the place you had to go to: “Ah, here it is.”¹¹

At each second it is there. At each second one is.

Or one is born, perhaps.

It is the world “without sequel,” without “before,” or “after,” without fatal consequences—nothing is fatal! It is our head that is fatal and prolongs its sombre small and morbid cogitations into the future, perpetuates sickness, perpetuates death, perpetuates everything. It’s the Consciousness constantly at work, not as a sequel of what was there before, but as a result of what it perceives EVERY INSTANT. It’s the Consciousness which CONSTANTLY sees what has to be done. It’s the Consciousness which, every second, follows—follows its own movement! That allows everything! It’s precisely what allows miracles, reversals, and so on—it allows everything. It’s the very opposite of human creations.¹²

Nothing is enclosed anymore. Each second total, pure.

We have locked up everything in our heads, even time, space and chromosomes, but the world is not like that, it is a caricature of the world, a scientific and mathematical hell. An illusion of the world. The “miracle” is only when there is a breach in our logic. Then it is the instantaneous miracle. Scientists are the last sorcerers. You try out a number of landmarks in order to build yourself a cage.

And then, suddenly, a breath—a luminous, golden, warm, relaxed, comfortable breath: “Oh, but it's obvious, that's how it is! But I will be CARRIED quite naturally to the place— what's all this complication!?¹³... I am here, there are lots of circumstances, complications, people ... and everything is so tangled up; but then in the background there is a sort of it's not a mere Force, it's a CONSCIOUSNESS-Force—a Consciousness— and it's like a ... like a smile—a smile ... a smile that knows everything. That's it, you see.¹⁴

The smile of the next world.

I am sure that it's the passage from this life to that Life. When we are completely on that side, oh, we'll stop speculating, wanting to “explain,” wanting to deduce, conclude, arrange—all that will be over.... If we knew how ... to be—simply TO BE, to be.¹⁵