Mother or The Mutation Of Death - III

8: The Exit from the Second Web or the New Body

But how could this new way of being create a new Matter?

The body moves in another way, it knows in another way, it acts in another way, but it is opaque in the old way, it digests just like everyone, breathes just like everyone, and even if its heart obeys other laws (if it did not, it would have died twenty times over), it is nonetheless a heart that pumps blood through the veins. Even if wear and tear is stopped, it is suspended in time in the midst of death. It is not the next species, but an amelioration of the old one. Geneticists imagine, maybe, that by rehandling or changing the molecular order they will produce another being by chance. But if that is truly their hope, they are mistaken. They will produce monsters and caricatures, or perhaps improved super-brains, that is, if they succeed, but these will be variations of the same thing and woven of the same substance. One can put the molecules of Napoleon, Dante and Shakespeare together—it would be amusing to behold—but it would still be of man all the same, perhaps even worse. What follows man will possibly (certainly) produce itself from man but with an element that is not of man. A new element that makes all the difference—and in what gene, what molecule will they go looking for this new element? We always think of the development of species as a continuous (?) series but these are species of the same animal Species. The next species does not belong to the animal reign. It is not a variant, it is something else. It is a new evolutionary saltus like that which separates the vegetal from the mineral or the animal from the vegetal. A new reign. Another Matter issuing from the same eternal Matter. Can one imagine a being that will be made of a Matter as different as the matter that constitutes granite is from that of the rose or the dragonfly, something that is neither vegetal nor mineral nor animal? It is impossible, they will say, it does not come into the existing compositions or else they are bodies of fantasy, celestial apparitions and the whole esoteric calendar. But we are speaking of Matter, are we not, not miracle, unless it happens to be the miracle of Matter. The physical mind, said Sri Aurobindo, always comes in with its fixed line of the present and “No farther” and when the fixed line of the present is unfixed and overpassed, it again erects a new line and cries “No farther.” If an “elemental” who had attained to the physical mind had been present at the different stages of the earth-history he would have argued like that. When only matter was there and there was no life, if told that there would soon be life on earth embodied in matter, he would have cried out, “What is that? It is impossible, it cannot be done. Life is possible only in a subtle body. It has never been and will never be embodied in gross matter. What, this mass of electrons, gases, chemical elements, this heap of mud and water and stones and inert metals, how are you going to get life in that? Will the metal walk? Can the stone live?”¹⁶

And now that “life” alone exists, and not an “over-life,” will these bodies made of DNA and these pulmonary alveoli and exquisite grey cells ever live anywhere else than in the good air of the good Lord, somewhat polluted (the good air, that is) and in a Matter that is palpable, at least reasonable? It is not possible, one must rise to heaven.

But how is this other Matter produced? What does it look like? It won’t fall down from heaven, will it?

A Way of Being

We are approaching the most mysterious part of Mother’s great Forest, and yet we feel that it must be so very simple. She did not know the way, She walked, that’s all. She said: I saw that, I felt this, I had that experience.… And that seemed to come out of just anywhere, go just anywhere—it was a fact, yes, but the fact of what? There were thousands of facts ... of something one could neither name, nor define, nor sew together. When the baby grows, there is that “garden”: stones, grasses, a whole assortment of unspeakable and unnamed things that feel, live, happen, and then what? It is only long after that it all adds up to “a garden.” And sometimes, even as late as 1972, a year before the far end of the “garden,” I would complain to Mother that I “did not quite understand the path that we were following.” Why, I myself don't understand it at all! Simply ... (and She would open her hands in a gesture of surrender) It isn't easy.¹⁷. So if the reader believes I want to “demonstrate” anything at all, he or she is mistaken. I would only like to understand this garden, I do not even know where it leads, or what it is. It is perhaps the new world. But in the meanwhile, it is very bizarre.

One morning in 1970, Mother simply remarked: My own impression is that there is a part that tries to take form in the body, that is, a way of being of the cells that would be the beginning of a new body. When it happens, it’s a bizarre sensation. A bizarre sensation. The very body feels as if it’s dying—something, it doesn’t know what it is. It’s only a state of intense faith that enables you to bear it. As if the one was being changed into the other As if what is were trying to change into something else. But that’s ... it’s hard to bear. Something wholly new.¹⁸ The entire mystery lies there. A way of being of the cells that would be the beginning of a new body How can a way of being form a body?

Obviously, there is a way of being that makes a lizard, a way of being that makes a flower, or a man. And what is it after all that makes a lizard, there at the very beginning?… It is always that famous “beginning,” that “first time that.” We come afterwards, so we say: it is very simple, it winds itself into small molecules of protein that follow such and such a schema, and if one disturbs the schema, it no longer produces a lizard, it produces ... produces what? What is it that made it wind itself in that way, that made it want to wind itself in that way and not in another? Then one says “Nature,” it is very convenient, or “evolution,” it’s simple. But where is that lady or that man, that something that wanted—unless one thinks that nothing ever wanted something, or that nothing wanted whatever, or the heavenly father perhaps? We still have the impression that our scientists are secretly transporting the heavenly father under their Greco-Latin molecules. But something did want— one must want in order to do or see in order to do, damn it! Or one must be ... something. In the case of a baby, it is the parents that push, but in a globule of unorganized gelatine, there must be “something” that pushes (if one says “life,” one is again shifting the mystery under the aegis of another lady), something that “tends towards”—something, that means a being, a consciousness of self, even if it does not resemble our superb cogitations; a way of vibrating or of tending towards something that makes use of whatever the means at hand to wind or secrete its existence. If one says it is the sun and amino acids and the bombardment of particles plus a number of degrees centigrade ... one might as well say the prison produced the prisoner. It is a science of prisoners. Even those amino acids wanted to be something, they are a way of vibrating—a way of being. We are not philosophizing and we mock philosophy to the utmost, we have no need to be Marxist or even spiritualist: we are trying to understand the phenomenon. The phenomenon is that of a body, or more exactly of the cells of a certain body, that have lost their habit of coiling in the way that the physical Mind had fixed in its grooves, but which have not lost their habit of being: to be means to beat, vibrate, tend towards ... perhaps to want, but without very well knowing what it wants nor where it is going. In other words, cells that would be “at the first point that,” but after having accomplished the whole human journey. What are they going to spin, what substance, what is happening? Necessarily a being weaves its body, a way of being or vibrating must coagulate Matter or substance in its own way—with what is at its disposal, if one dares say so. And what is it?

If we knew what is there, the pure thing to be spun without any of the old schemas, we would be very close to touching the secret of the world. Perhaps we have covered this enormous circuit of spinnings across evolution in order to arrive at the moment where, individually formed, individually conscious, we can touch the secret of the start, the impulse of the start, the energy or the matter or the being of the start—what there is, pure, without all the evolutionary crutches that have carried us this far. Then we will move from the science of crutches to the science of being, from the science of our old successive prisons to the science of freedom. For once it will be a very interesting science.

The Exit from the Second Web

Here, we are reduced to “facts” (even though we do not yet know the fact of what), that is to the experience of those pure cells that Mother stammeringly tried to express. And there are so many experiences, sometimes almost contradictory, but probably no more contradictory than grasses and stones contradict the pond of the garden; only we do not well know the relation, because we do not know the “garden.”

The phenomenon that seems to most often repeat itself at the beginning is a state of cellular fluidity (or of cellular consciousness), that is to say, the principle of the amalgamation of those cells, the normal vibration that binds them together, that shapes an “I” into a man or a lizard, the something that repeats itself, seems to dissolve. There seems to be a dilation—a dilation—and like something that would want to melt. A very, very strong impression. And throughout the cells it brings about an extraordinary power of vibration. Something wholly out of proportion to the human body—tremendous! And it goes through like that.¹⁹ That vibration is precisely our mystery. We call it the supramental vibration, but we would like to know what that supramental is. And when it comes, when I look, some people melt (not many, very few), but others are terrified! They get up and run away...²⁰ And indeed, when one felt “that” coming through, it was a bit ... awesome, but awesome probably because a human body is completely unaccustomed to it, a vibration so foreign to its substance that it is almost menacing. I just have to stop my [outer]activities even two or three seconds, one or two minutes at the most, for the body to feel as if it's floating, floating like that, floating. And one sees an immensity, like an ocean of this vibrating, luminous, golden, powerful Consciousness, and the body floats in it ²¹ And we wonder if primal Matter is not precisely that. The “something” that each and every one and every species has spun, canalized, concretized or fossilized in its own way: the primal substance of the world, the vibration from which all other vibrations derive, or of which all the other vibrations are a diminutive, a deformation or a formation the size of a flagellate or a lizard. What we call “Matter” is a way of spinning or imprisoning that, and there are all possible degrees of Matter. So what will happen in a body that let itself be traversed purely by that? Will it dissolve itself in that, or “imprison” that in another way? What could the new principle of amalgamation be, that is, if it is at all possible?

The beginnings of the experience are very “troubling” for the body. This “dilation” is absolutely like a dissolution; there is no longer any corporal “I” that wisely repeats its little coagulating vibration, that incessant, invisible trepidation that allows it to stick together: How to keep the form without the ego's presence?— that's the problem. That's precisely the so interesting curve at present unfolding. At times, you feel as if everything, everything is dissolving, getting disorganized; and I have observed closely: at first the physical consciousness wasn't sufficiently enlightened, and when those inner preparations took place, it would feel, “Ah, this must be what heralds death”; then, little by little, came the knowledge that it wasn't that at all, it was only the inner preparation to be capable. And then, on the contrary, the very clear vision of this plasticity so particular, this suppleness so extraordinary that if it were realized it obviously means the abolition of the necessity of death. That is to say, an unknown state which we may call “physically unrealized.”²² Nothing imprisons the current anymore, then there is no more reason to die, of course, because it is the prison or the hardening of the current that makes for the necessity of death. But how to stand upright in that “plasticity”? It was Mother’s problem for months and months; and to a certain degree it will continue to be the problem until the moment when something new forms in the body, a new type of “supple solidity,” as She would say. It was the transition that was difficult. Spontaneously, that is to say, left to its old habits and ways of being, it’s very difficult for the body, it results in an internal organization that quite looks like disorder—it’s difficult. You see, problems crop up all the time, for everything—everything—there isn’t one activity of the body that’s not called into question by that [that fluidity].²³ Eating is becoming a problem, sleeping is becoming a problem, speaking is becoming a problem—everything is a problem ²⁴ The process is no longer the old process, it’s no longer as it was, but “as it is,” it hasn’t become a habit, a spontaneous habit, which means it’s not natural, it demands that the consciousness should be constantly watchful—for everything, even to swallow lunch.... Oh, how difficult! Through a sort of conscious concentration, you have to keep up a state, a way of being that isn’t natural according to the old nature, but which is clearly the new way of being. But it’s an almost Herculean labour.²⁵

This new way of being is at first almost a way of not being, because “to be” comprises all the old habits of being. It is something that naturally no longer has any particular centre, no more prison, it is spread everywhere. The body feels forces coming, but ... it doesn’t even feel them going through. It all goes through without ... through what, one doesn’t know. Very nonexistent. And then, if the body starts being conscious of itself or of something, it’s most unpleasant, a discomfort—an inexpressible discomfort. It’s limitless, you understand [and Mother pointed to her body], that’s the strange thing ²⁶ There's a phenomenon, for example (among many others), a curious phenomenon: I don't feel “I” am eating, you see, so I am not aware of putting things in my mouth and having to swallow them and No, it's something which is at once in me and IN THE FOOD, it isn't like something that “comes in,” it's like something [and

Mother traced what seemed like a circle of forces in the air] something which develops, which is free to develop. Well then—then it's very good. But as soon as I become conscious in the old consciousness, which means eating, tasting the food, putting it in my mouth—it's difficult! I have all the trouble in the world not to swallow wrong....²⁷ There’s no more at all the sensation of “this through which,” this through which the Divine flows—there isn’t. It’s still and nonexistent, without any self- awareness, aware only of ... the Divine Action, like that. Then everything is fine. And the minute there’s even a slight impression of the thing flowing “through,” discomfort comes. See, I might say (it sounds like literature!) that in a certain state, in that state in which it no longer feels itself and only the awareness of the Divine remains, there’s the sense of an immortality, of Eternity; and if there’s the least sensation of “something in which” the Divine manifests, it absolutely becomes the sense of death—you instantly become mortal again.²⁸

One falls back into the prison. One spins out death, immediately.

It has become a very acute state, she added. And it was to become more and more acute. The slightest thing upsets it—I can't swallow anymore or even breathe anymore. The feeling of a life which is about to depend on different conditions than the usual ones. But the other conditions aren't there yet, nor is the body familiar with them, and so the transition from one state to the other is a perpetual source of problems.²⁹ It was a sort of constant paradox for everything, a radical, dangerous contradiction at every minute, basically between the state of life and the state of death, the new state and the old one. It's an incredible situation: either true consciousness or the sensation of an impending and general danger. Everything— eating , taking a bath—is a danger, you see. ³⁰ It’s as if the body were shown how, in all sorts of circumstances—innumerable circumstances—how one goes towards death and how one goes towards life: with everything, everything, every part of the body, every organ, every activity, one after another—impossible to tell ³¹ Strangely, as soon as there’s the slightest slackening in the attitude, for instance, a second of forgetfulness (what I might call “forgetfulness,” that is, the former old habit, the old terrestrial habit of being returns), the body instantly feels about to be dissolved. And so, at such times, brr! There can come two or three seconds like that: you feel everything, but everything is about to be dissolved.³²

And sometimes Mother no longer knew at all where She was, on this side or the other, going towards life or towards death, disintegration or something else, and a cry would escape from her: You understand, I feel as if I am plunged in a world I do not know, struggling with laws I do not know, and to work out a change I do not know either—what’s the nature of this change?³³ And I attempted to tell Mother what I profoundly felt, like some intimate self-evidence: “Yes, but sweet Mother, I absolutely have the feeling that through this obscurity, this ignorance of the “laws,” you are KNOWINGLY carried to the point where the solution will be found.”—You are right. You’re right. If you like, I might say that I “think” that way (I don’t think, but ), there is a perception like that. But ... there’s everything in between. And then She would laugh, would poke fun at me: Well, then! Go on thinking that way!³⁴ And I would protest, I was so sure of the deep logic of that hell, I could almost see the other side of that no-man’s-land: “It is not possible for it not to succeed!”—Why? Then it would spring forth from my heart, as if the entire hope of the earth was there, in that impossible transition: “Because ... because you are the body of the world! Because it is truly the Hope.” —That... isn’t that poetry? And this was so typical of Mother, that “poetry” that She wanted nothing of, which She was ashamed of perhaps, because after all, She was making that poetry.—“But no! sweet Mother, it is not poetry, it is like that. One only has to see: the external world is more and more infernal.” Ah, yes, that’s true.³⁵ ⎯ “Well, it’s that in your body.”

And in fact it was that, it was the passage to another world, another reign, to a true earth, a free earth, on the other side of all cages.

The exit from the second web.

The physiological and genetic cage. This was in 1970.

The Key to the New Body

In fact the solution being sought was right there, next to one, without one’s knowing it. It was within the difficulty itself. The passage from the mineral to the animated (but still static) vegetal life must have been a formidable scattering of the stone cage, and that of the vegetal to the animal’s movement another vertiginous stampede—and the next one? A superman is easy to understand, but the other one? What is it that is neither the movement of life nor the static immobility of the stone?... The contradiction, or paradox became more and more sharp in this animal life that was dying to be born to one knew not what. At times, the body feels such a great strength that it gets the feeling it could ... anything, a strength … a strength of a different quality, but much greater than before. And at other times, it can’t even hold itself upright, and for a reason which isn’t ... physical. It no longer obeys the same laws as those that keep us upright. So...³⁶ And this: A strange experience. It's a strange experience. The body feels it no longer belongs to the old way of being, but it knows that it is not yet in the new one and that it is It is no longer mortal and it is not yet immortal. It's quite strange. Very strange. And sometimes I go from the most dreadful discomfort to ... the marvel. I have to be concentrated all the time, concentrated in order to do things [and one could see Mother trying to pull towards “herself” something that was spread out everywhere]. Sometimes, not a word in my head, nothing; sometimes I see and know what is happening everywhere.... I have to be careful when I am with people, otherwise they would think I am going crazy! It's really peculiar. A sort of total impotence and an overwhelming power side by side. But at the same time ... sometimes I can't even eat!³⁷ And I asked Mother, “If one could know exactly what makes one swing to one side or the other?...” Yes! There is clearly an attempt to let the body know, and it suddenly finds itself outside all habits, outside all actions and reactions, consequences and so on; then it’s …a wonder. And then it disappears. It’s so new for the material consciousness that each time you feel as if on the verge of a precipice. There’s a minute of panic in the consciousness. Because from the beginning and constantly, there’s a sort of commonsense firmly rooted in the being, which refuses to imagine things; it says, “I don’t want to imagine this, I don’t want to imagine that....” Past ninety, Mother appreciated Mathilde’s virtues. So then, the consciousness takes up things only when they are totally concrete—it’s too easy to start spinning tales and ... None of that. Totally practical, concrete.³⁸ Therefore I am certain this isn't a tendency to mystic dreaming in me, not at all, not at all, this body had nothing mystic! Nothing ... Thank God!³⁹ And it was then that I said to Mother: “What if all of a sudden we gave to a caterpillar, by accelerated evolution, the eyes of a man.…”—Yes, She exclaimed. “It would be frightening.”—Yes, that’s it.

And it was exactly that.

Nonetheless, as if implicitly, something else wanted to be born or filter through, but one does not know, does one, when one is in it⎯one does not see oneself being. One clearly sees what is on its way out; and what is coming is so new that it is as if invisible. For it to be seen the eyes must become accustomed to it, perhaps what is required are eyes adapted to the next mode—what does a man mean for a dragonfly? Does it even exist? There is no pollen on it nor a pretty shimmering of fresh waters. Our eyes are awfully functional, and if it is no longer our function, be it but an aesthetic one, then what is it? The body consciousness is slowly changing, in such a way that its whole former life seems foreign to it. That seems to be someone else’s consciousness, someone else’s life. Its “situation,” if you like, in the world, is changing. As if there were no past, you know, one is wholly like this (gesture ahead), there’s nothing behind. A curious sensation of something beginning. Not at all, not at all something ending. It’s a curious sensation: something beginning. With all the unknown, the unexpected. Strange. I constantly feel that things are new, that my relationship with them is new. And the body’s impression too is that of a new way of feeling, new way of reacting.... It’s very strange.⁴⁰ And always this “inexpressible unease” that seems to punctuate each step or each movement, maybe a hundred times a day, as if it were the back and forth from the cage to something else, the marvellous opening and then the recoil—perhaps the stepping back in order to have the strength to jump even farther? We do not understand our difficulties at all, they are always our springboard! Generally, it comes like that, that discomfort; so, immediately, the body surrenders—surrenders as if saying: “If it’s death, well, may Your Will be done.” You understand, total surrender. So then, when the surrender is more or less effective, I don’t know, sometimes a clarity comes, an understanding, a SELF-EVIDENCE OF EVERYTHING.⁴¹ And we wonder whether this other life that is coming, this other reign that is no more of the mineral, the vegetal or the animal, this other inconceivable movement of being, might not be life innumerable? No longer enclosed within a shell or a tegument, nor a skin of whatever sort, whether stone, tree or man, but something that runs innumerably, that is innumerably—the self-evidence or everything. The state of self-evidence. Nothing is obvious for us: we always have to run after things, and even when we seize them, we still have to “look.” Here, one is within, in everything: it is obvious. But where is the body that can do that? A body, isn’t it, not just a consciousness that navigates. A truly remarkable state. But it doesn’t last. The least thing disrupts it. I know. The body feels that if it could surrender TOTALLY—have no independent existence, no personal effort, no personal will... insofar as that’s possible, everything is fine.⁴²

Surrender, yes, and how could one become the other by hanging onto even the best of the physiologies of the old?

A total surrender. For the body, this means the acceptance of death. A physiological acceptance…. Mentally, it is all very well, but when your breath becomes strangled?

Now, it is here that we begin to touch the key or the lever. In this inexpressible uneasiness where the body was thrown, that sort of return to death (that actual suffocation: a body suffocates when it enters the surroundings of death), something occurred that was always the same, very simple, automatic and repeated thousands and millions of times, because nights and days are made up of lots of seconds (86,400): an intense aspiration in the body. It is the simplest of phenomena. There is nothing anymore, so one must perforce hold onto something. It is the very movement of the first breath of the world, which must have been an aspiration. A suffocation of nonbeing that wants to be. It is the deep beat of life, of all life. The first spinning of something around a nucleus. The secret prayer of things. The hidden name of beings. It is there, deep down; but generally it has to cross layers upon layers, and it only spins a habit. But that first cry of Matter, that need of being, or perhaps of loving, it is at the beginning of each species, each thing, it grows with each species, each step of the long journey, and sometimes torn from everything, broken perhaps, it springs forth from the depths of our body. A burning. An intense heat that resembles love, something that is very immobile but is like a firmly packed power, compact, almost overflowing—a too much of something that is at the same time very sweet and very unbearable, as if one were going to explode. It is in the body: it seems to rise from all sides at once. It has nothing to do with sentiments: it is like a tidal wave of flame. And curiously, it loves. It is as if one were at the same time filled with the greatest of anguishes, the most intolerable of emptinesses, almost a pain, and the fullness of something that is as if itself for the first time in the world. Everything else falls into dust but that is, sovereignly. It is even all that there is. Moments of death that are like a sovereign but inexpressible life. Twenty years later, it shines like pure gold, as if they were eternal moments, in the body. One day, I asked Mother what this type of intense aspiration was that took hold at times in the body: I think what we call intense aspiration must be the supramental vibration.⁴³ It is that in the bodies’ depths—the depths of all bodies—that first vibration that spun life into forms and forms, that became crusted over, hardened, schematized, but one only breaks or scratches the habit a bit and it is there. It is there instantaneously, it is the very being of everything that moves, sleeps, eats, kills and forgets, so much forgets what it is. And in each thing, there is that luminous, golden, imperative Vibration⎯ which is necessarily all-powerful.⁴⁴

So, we have the key to the new body, because it is the key to all bodies ever created on this planet. It is the original Matter of the world, the true Matter.

A wave of a very particular type.

Primary Matter

We can quite easily visualize this “warm golden powdering” that was Mother’s first direct experience of the supramental twelve years earlier, in 1958, when She descended to the rock-bottom of this “Inconscient,” that is, (as I can now understand) when She pierced through the crust of the physical Mind: the rock of the Rishis. A powdering like an atomic dust, but with an extremely intense vibration,⁴⁵ she said. And it could well be that our very atoms are a first covering or coiling of this fundamental vibration. A vastness that was made of countless, imperceptible points. A multitude of tiny points of gold, nothing but that. They seemed to be touching my eyes, my face and with such an inherent power and warmth—it was a splendour!...⁴⁶ And today it seems that I better understand the trajectory of those twelve years: the slow preparation in order to traverse the web of the physical Mind, the widening, the universalisation to sustain the “boiling porridge” of this supramental powdering without disintegrating, the Movement that exceeds the force or power that concentrates the cells, ⁴⁷ she noted in 1963. This slow clarifying of the opaque periphery of the cells to reach the nucleus, the primal vibration divested of all its old spun layers—that “vibrating immensity” into which it seemed to her at times that She was going to dissolve. It was like a return to the material origin of the world. And the experience is each time the same, year after year (like little dashes of experience to progressively habituate the body), again in 1969: There’s an intense aspiration, and at times—a moment when there is like a swelling—I don’t know what happens, it’s something going on in the cells and then ... it’s a state, a state of intense vibration, with at the same time a sense of all-powerfulness, even in here, in this old thing [and Mother pointed to her own body], a luminous all-powerfulness, and STATIC, that is, with the sense of eternity in the cells ⁴⁸ It is the strange contradiction of this

Supramental that seems to mix or unite an extreme velocity, perhaps so extreme in its vibration that it gives the perception or sensation of immobility as if one re-found there the immobility of the stone in its lightning-like intra-atomic movement. And we remember Sri Aurobindo:

A fiery stillness wakes the slumbering cells⁴⁹

Something COMPLETELY, completely new for the body.⁵⁰ Yet it was in 1969. Whatever could it have been that was new in this experience, which seems so similar to so many others that we have already noted?... Perhaps it was not the experience that was new, but the level on which it was situated. It was as if, down the years and as the layers were traversed, the experience—the eternal same experience—became purer, more material, more corporeal, at the very heart of the cleared cellular substance. And in fact, we say “Supramental,” but it is that which functions everywhere, through all levels, through mental force on the spiritual summits as well as through sentiments, instincts, formations or deformations, or depravities, through everything; it is that which is the sole driving force through complications or thickenings, innumerable and various coilings—and then the experience becomes pure in a little cell. It is a state which seems to be perfectly still.... I don’t know what it is: it’s not stillness, not eternity. I don’t know, it’s something, a “something” that is ... Power, Light, and really Love ... something To such a point that when you leave that state, you wonder if you still have the same shape!⁵¹ And She laughed.

Of course! It is the first coagulating agent of all forms.

Something that unites the apparent immobility of the mineral reign to the more and more accelerated movement of the vegetal, animal and mental reigns—a new acceleration in an apparent immobility? What type of Matter is this anyway?... We say “primary Matter,” that’s very pretty, but what does it look like, how is it handled? Matter is not a breath, although there is a certain gassy matter from which we have created stars. The scientists even tell us that Matter is in large part composed of void, with its minute nuclei distantly surrounded by their mantle of electrons. It is what they have seen at the end of their microscopes. And what was Mother seeing at the end of her direct microscope, “in situ,” if one dares say? And there, strangely, her oft-repeated experience, repeated dozens of times, meets up with that of Theon at the beginning of the century when he spoke of “A Matter denser than physical Matter, but with qualities that physical Matter doesn’t have, like elasticity, for example.” And what is the most curious is that they found in Mother’s papers, after her departure, the noting down of an experience She had had in 1906 and had completely forgotten about, noted in pencil on the back of bills for paintings of the “Edouard Morisset workshop” (the father-in-law, who painted portraits of the little princesses of Egypt), and in which She related the following: Suddenly, I found myself caught up in a vertiginous fall [and we have the impression that this “fall" is the sudden traversing of all the layers of consciousness or memories formed by the evolution of bodies], a fall that seemed to me more and more vertiginous, to stop, as if stuck, in a place that I could not easily make out at first and where I felt a totally strange sensation which was also, so to speak, unknown to me: I felt myself in a surrounding that was denser than the earth itself, a surrounding that seemed to me as dense as a diamond but which was elastic and I was closely surrounded to the point that I clearly felt the contact of this matter on all of my body and particularly on the face, the arms and hands (the parts that were naked); the sensation was not disagreeable but so new that I was surprised by it. The thought then came to me that the best would be for me to rest a bit to assimilate myself to the surroundings, which is what I did, and after a moment I found myself at my ease and I saw that this matter was a bit luminous on its own and of various colours, with molecules of varying density as well; there was also some self-luminous gold but very different from the essential gold, a bit of colour but mainly because of the difference of density; this luminous gold was not transparent. Bit by bit I saw a large sphere of this matter forming itself AROUND me, and this sphere was of all colours....

This Matter formed itself around her. Now this is what is truly interesting. And we find again there our irised “scintillation of multi-coloured light.” But what was it that made it form or agglutinate around her body?... This is a question that She perhaps took sixty years to resolve, or rather live. What She saw then distantly, “in vision” and as if at the end of a “vertiginous fall,” took her sixty years to touch directly in her body, with her eyes wide-open, after having traversed all those layers, which are like layers of sleep for us, the layers of false matter, or dead Matter, one could say, piled up by the evolution of bodies: all those residues of the vegetal, animal and mineral that have made and still make a body. In 1961, when She spoke to me for the first time (still a bit “distantly”) of this “other Matter,” or this “new substance,” having totally forgotten her experience of 1906, She told me, It’s something more compact, denser than the physical: the New Creation. One always tends to think of it as something more ethereal, but it’s not! The impression I get of this atmosphere is of something more compact—more compact and at the same time without heaviness or thickness. And solid! Oh, so cohesive, so MASSIVE, and at the same time ... I don't know, it's something completely different from anything you might expect. You can't imagine it Something that is compact and undivided. I mean that there's a feeling of being on the wrong track: ordinarily, when seeking the “Supermind,” one looks for it on the heights. But that's not it! That's not it. And one always imagines a sort of subtilization, something etherealized, but it's not that.⁵²

Decidedly, there is a logic and a continuity to this experience spanning sixty years.

Again in 1967, She told me: If you like, it might be like molten gold—molten and luminous. It was very thick. And it had a power—a WEIGHT, you know, it was astonishing.⁵³

And now that her body was directly in contact with this primal substance, what was going to happen? What we call “Matter” is obviously something that is “hardened,” as Mother would say, a stereotyped, frozen movement, an imprisoned force down to the atom, and it is because it is shrivelled, frozen and hardened that we can seize hold of it: we touch the prison. The prison is “Matter.” All in all, we can only touch that which has a sufficiently slow vibration: the slower it is, the more opaque it is. We only seize what is opaque. There is a whole scale of lights that are too swift for us to seize upon, sounds too “high” to touch us. There is a whole “wave band” of existence that escapes us. But beyond what our instruments can capture, there is a whole range of primary Matter without opacity, too rapid for all our senses—a Matter that rejoins the very movement of consciousness. And immediately we dig a sort of supernatural abyss between Matter that can be touched and verified and this imponderable quantity which we call “consciousness.” It is our fundamental error. “Have you seen metal walk?” Sri Aurobindo’s imaginary being inquired at the beginning of the Ages of the earth, when Life did not yet exist. It is only a supernatural matter, or rather a supernatural and disembodied consciousness that can move upon this mineral crust. We are perhaps making the same error today with all our scientific apparatus: it is only a supernatural matter or some disincarnated consciousness that could walk upon the face of our good earth with something other than all our excellent composites of the vegetal, animal or mineral reign⎯that is, all the products of the successive hardenings of evolution. We only touch what is hardened. Everything eludes us, because we have not grasped Matter’s central secret: Matter = Consciousness. Any more than the central secret of evolution: Evolution = development of Consciousness. And because this does not exactly resemble all our listed and labelled fossilizations, we deduce from it that Consciousness is not a type of Matter⎯but it is probably as much of a superstition as to say that Matter is not an energy. Or perhaps we believe that it is a product of all our small improved prisons? A sort of superior secretion. But it is the very Matter of the world. And the whole evolutionary experiment underway, the evolutionary challenge that is being thrown more or less brutally in the faces of all those small metals that walk is that this end product must find again what first set it in motion, and produce with its conscious cells a body of conscious Matter that will perhaps keep itself upright thanks to other laws than those of the gravitation of bodies, but will walk on the surface of this good earth as surely and solidly—more solidly perhaps—and with nothing more supernatural than the small thinking metals of today. The secret of the beginning is at the end. Matter is not betrayed by consciousness, it does not “subtilize” itself nor faint into a cosmic dream (“it was very thick,” Mother said): it enters a new acceleration or a new reign. The reign of conscious Matter.

Matter without a prison.

A Mystery of the Unknown

But a form means a delimitation or a structure. What can a non-supernatural body endowed with a recognizable form that is not a prison look like? A body that will not fall from heaven, for god’s sake! as we are in a logical, sensible evolution even if it does not correspond to our present sense and leaden logic.

The experience is simple.

In this kind of dissolution of the form that seemed to project the cells into nothingness, or into an “ocean of vibrant consciousness” where nothing subsisted anymore of what they had slowly, painfully built up over millenniums of evolution, in that sudden suffocation, in that negation perhaps of all that had made them beat, hope and live through bodies and more bodies, they were seized with an intense aspiration: to be again, to be forever, it was for that that they were made! Death was the awful negation, be it a death in the light; they were of Matter, those cells, they called in the truth of Matter, the life of Matter, they hooked the Mantra, the small golden vibration of the depths; they repeated, repeated their prayer of being, their love of being; they spun, spun that sole golden substance, dense, as the plant spins out the light of the sun, as the butterfly beetles on pollen, as simply, as blindly: it was a question of life or death. There was no more memory to spin, no more “I” in the way of all bodies: there were only those thousands of pure beats in the depths of the cells, which would swell and gorge themselves on the only air that remained. A way of being on the frontier of death, a way of calling, praying as at the dawn of the world, when there was nothing yet except that small pure vibration that wanted to be forever, to love forever. Something very simple, so simple that all our words seem stupid or pompous. “Poetry again,” she would say. But it was truly the primal poetry: it made. It made a body. A new body, slowly, day after day, year after year, like the shell spinning out its calcium. A spinning of dense substance, irised, at times golden, around that nucleus of prayer or of love at the heart of each cell; something that married that form, modelled itself on it, around it, perhaps slowly filled it. Perhaps absorbed it or slowly made it pass into something else: A bizarre sensation. As if the one were being changed into the other. As if what is were trying to change into something else. But that’s ... it’s hard to bear.⁵⁴

She did not know it very well herself, She did not understand it very well herself; She no longer had a Mental that looks at itself upon a stage: She was only thousands of small conscious cells that called, called day and night, repeated and repeated the Mantra, like a golden hymn: an incantation, you know, a call, the incantation to the supreme Power,⁵⁵ and then if it ceased for a second to call, it was the instantaneous dissolution, the “precipice.” That’s all. Mother was only like a prayer of Matter. It was a body, a certain body of the old Matter which was passing into something different and unknown, which had the impression of dying at each second and at each second entered something else that it did not know or understand, that it did not even perceive as another body. There is a moment when ... the word “anguish” is too strong, much too strong, but the impression is of being on the verge of ... the unknown—the unknown, the ... something. A very, very odd sensation. Almost constantly, the body really has a very ... (at least a very odd) sensation of being ... of no longer being this and not yet being That. Inexpressible. But it’s quite strange; there’s absolutely no fear, there’s no acute sensation, no acute sensation at all, and there is something.... Well, I might say: it’s a sort of new vibration. It’s so new that ... you can’t call it anguish, but it’s ... the unknown. A mystery of the unknown. But there’s nothing mental about it, of course, it’s just in the sensation of the vibration. And that’s becoming constant. So there’s only one solution for the body, it’s ... total surrender— total. And in that total surrender it realizes that that vibration (how can I explain?), that vibration is not one of dissolution, but something ... what?... The unknown, completely unknown—new, unknown. Sometimes it’s struck with panic. And it can’t say it’s in pain much, I can’t call that suffering, it’s something ... quite extraordinary. So, the only solution is ... to snuggle up in the Divine: what will happen will happen. ⁵⁶

Then I understood so deeply, I said to Mother: “Yes, the ‘other thing’ must be so other that it is like a death for the body!”—/ It’s the equivalent, at any rate. That’s right. But [and She smiled]... it doesn’t confuse the two. It doesn’t confuse the two, it KNOWS this is not what people call death t’s a funny life, at any rate!⁵⁷

And then She laughed, I will soon have a dangerous contagion, you know!⁵⁸

That was in April 1970.

The mystery of the unknown.

Something the cells don't quite understand yet, but they know, they sense. They feel as if they were thrust forcibly into a new world.⁵⁹

It is Matter that finds the key to Matter.

The exit from the mineral, vegetal, animal reign. The beginning of the supramental being.

The exit from the second web.