Mother or The Mutation Of Death - III

9: Innumerable Life

It was a mystery indeed, deeper than that of the appearance of mental man amidst the animals, deeper than that of the appearance of any species whatever amidst other species of the same substance; perhaps one would have to go as far back as the explosion of life in the midst of the mineral world. It was like another life being born. How did a mineral learn life, is it not a little bit that? It was the explosion of its untroubled solidity, it was a wave of “something” that was indistinct, impalpable, “unreal” and supernatural, or of another nature, that seized hold of its crystals and atoms, ground and decomposed them— an enormous decomposition. But the recomposition? This “life” might well have been something invisible for it, too rapid for it and it only measured its decomposing effects. And in what way is this supramental life accessible to us—us thinking men solidly installed in our cultivated molecules? Decomposition is something we can see, but if it be that our interest goes beyond the narrow or large round of our mental life in its search for political, economic or aesthetic panaceas in the midst of small collapsing minerals, how can we hope to participate in or collaborate with this supramental life that, after all, appears to be the dissolution of all our good life, perhaps even the dissolution of these amiable bodies, if one were to judge by the experience of the human prototype called Mother. And who will ever have the courage to traverse such an evolutionary ordeal cold-bloodedly?... It is true that Mother’s experience was a bit “compressed,” as if one were stuffing centuries into a few years or months, and we assume that the experience will stretch over generations whose cells will become more and more refined, clarified, supple. We also suppose that the great supramental wave will lay hold of (or is already laying hold of) all bodies unbeknown to them, whether they think well, ill or nothing at all of it, and will work on them secretly from the other side of the web of the physical Mind, on the cellular level, and will wear away, undermine, pound this fortress of sickness and death and unchanging laws to make them suddenly or progressively emerge into Matter delivered from mental tyranny—a life already made radically lighter, with the beginning of a small song within. But at the end of all that, what will happen to this body of the old reign? The final decomposition or what? One moves into what is invisible and insubstantial (for us, even if it is another substance and another visibility), or what?... But after all, the plants and small animals of the good Lord continued to remain quite substantial and visible after the explosion of the mineral, so there is no reason to suppose that evolution will be less unreasonable than before, even if it disturbs the metal’s reason. Who knows, perhaps other eyes will come to us? Perhaps we do not yet know all the earth’s visibility—all of its natural, we could say—and that it is not forever imprisoned in a spectrograph? What is going to happen?

This is in some way the question that Mother’s body poses to us, as if we were facing there an accelerated hurried specimen. And one must well believe that that body could not be “accelerated” without us undergoing the acceleration as well: the “dangerous contagion,” as She would laughingly say. Truly, it is as if evolution, for once in its long history, placed us in the presence of its future data in a body, in vivo. Will it live, will it not live? Will it succeed or not succeed? Where are we going?

Something She asked herself as well.

The son of the cells

The heart of wood is tender, then it lignifies: the concentric rings of its “age” form themselves year after year. No doubt one observes the same process or an analogous one with layers of coral or mother of pearl, at all levels and in all branches of evolution, starting with the atom that weaves or attracts its electrons around it up to the sun with its planets. And always there is this hardening, this calcification, this agglutination, and we cannot help but think that what we call “Matter” is not the original fact, but a hardening. “Matter” is a hardened habit. And it seems that the supramental being follows the same process of formation or ingraining as all other bodies, but without the hardening. The original substance agglutinates itself around the small pure vibration of the cells, slowly depositing itself around this nucleus of call, or prayer, or perhaps love, indefinitely repeated by the Mind of the cells. But while in the first ages of Life, a crust or carapace of any sort eventually formed itself to separate beings, forms, distinct modes in the midst of this mass of Consciousness-Force or amorphous Matter-Consciousness and to protect this precarious life, here at the other end of evolution, the individual is already formed—it was the goal of this long journey—already cellularly conscious, and because he is conscious, individualized, he can voluntarily amalgamate the original substance without having the need to lignify or encrust it in order to separate and protect itself from the rest of the universe. The great Fear is gone. Its protection is the very density of this substance of consciousness: each time, Mother’s physical cells had the sensation they would explode or volatilize in this tide of solid power. But not being imprisoned in a fixed, hardened form, this body—this new body—can move about or blend into everything, everywhere. It is life innumerable. It is physical life without separation. It is the great unity of Life—unity of Matter, of Consciousness—lived materially. It is the wonder of that life that was being prepared by thousands of years of painful separation in a small prison of fossilized Matter. And one well understands that one had to become conscious cellularly in order to be able to build that life. It is Matter itself, evolved, conscious, individualized, that spins out its own, pure body, with the very substance it started from, back in the first amorphous ages.

A son of the cells.

For, let’s not be mistaken, it is not the Mind that weaves that body, it is not the heart or feelings or spiritual concentrations that build up that body—we all have a body of consciousness, it is an old story, even if we are sufficiently blind or ignorant not to perceive it with our eyes blinkered with obscurity. The moment one is slightly formed, conscious, developed in one’s mental consciousness, when these are no longer mere “ideas” that one juggles by the dozen, but a mental force, an emotional force or a spiritual one that one concentrates around oneself and handles, a subtle body starts forming itself: a mental body, a body of consciousness, of energy, one could say, formed of all our agglomerated vibrations and in which one travels. It is the oldest story in the world. It was in this subtle body that Mother met Sri Aurobindo without even knowing him, in Paris in 1903. It was in this subtle body, as I have related it, that I travelled 10,000 kilometres to witness the suicide of a friend in a room that was unfamiliar to me, in a city I did not know, but which I saw and described as exactly as if I had physically gone there. Here as well lies the old principle of the spinning-out of forces: one spins out and weaves mental, vital or psychic forces as others spin out layers of calcium. And a “body” is formed. But with Mother, it is not at all a question of that type of body, nothing to do with a “subtle” body: it is a material body, made by material but conscious cells. Only it is not Matter, or the degree of fossilized Matter that we are familiar with. It is the primary Matter. It is the cells alone that can “understand” that Matter and recognize it. The first time Mother discovered this world of matter where the living and the “dead” are together, without a difference, it was the body, the cells that became aware of the existence of this world—which Mother had been unaware of for eighty-four years (1962), She who had all the visions possible to be had. The Mind lives only in its head, and our microscopes are only the perfected eyes of that head. But the cells know. They are precisely reaching the point of their evolution when, freed from the cage of the physical Mind, this first body of fear, they will be able to become aware in their direct manner of the material universe, and discover their own means of locomotion. It is a new species that is forming itself, with a new perception, of course, but a very material species, probably even more material than that of our Mind. It is the supramental species.

And finally, it is quite right and logical that an evolution of Matter ends up with a blossoming, a flowering of Matter itself, and not with the triumph of a little canary in its mental cage.

And then we will become aware that we know nothing of the world.

Cellular Ubiquity

For a very long time, Mother did not know very well what was happening, and we understand more and more why Sri Aurobindo did not tell her anything, why He had not revealed his secret: it was the body itself that had to find the way, create the way. Explanations concern the Mind alone and the Mind has nothing to do with that. On the contrary, it runs the risk of mistaking its imaginations for reality. For the body, there is no “imagination,” it can only understand what it itself is. Yet, at times, strange experiences would literally burst out, as it sometimes happens that one suddenly comes upon a glade, then the curtain of the forest closed again and it was once more the long, slow blind march, where it seemed that nothing happened for years. Then again the experience would come back, sharper, vaster, more precise, as if it had been making its way underground, and one did not even always know that this linked up to that or was the follow-up of that. This new body was forming itself very invisibly and slowly around the cells, by small layers or microscopic coatings, with each of its aspirations, its silent prayers, its vibrations of call in the great rout of the old body.

One morning of 1962, just a few months after the experience of the great “pulsations,” after her exit from the first web of the physical Mind, when Mother had altogether ceased leaving her upstairs room, I found her with a sort of disconcerted, dumbfounded expression, like someone faced with an incomprehensible problem. Some rather strange things have been happening. I don't know whether you understand the difference between the memory of an inner experience (from the subtle physical, the Subconscient, all the inner regions) and the memory of a physical fact? There is a very great difference in quality, the same difference that exists between inner vision and physical vision. Physical vision is precise, well-defined, and at the same time flat—I don't know how to explain it: it's very flat, totally superficial, but very accurate, with the kind of accuracy and precision that defines things which are really not defined at all. Well, there's the same difference in quality between the two types of memory as between the two types of vision. And in the last few days I've realized that I had the memory of having gone downstairs, of having seen certain people and things, spoken and organized certain details—several different scenes of the PHYSICAL memory. Not at all things I saw with the inner vision while exteriorized, but the MATERIAL memory of having done certain things. Afterwards, I had to look into it: it really was a memory. It suddenly struck me, and I wondered, “Did I really go downstairs physically?” ... There are plenty of people here to prove that I didn't, that I didn't stir from here. And yet I have the PHYSICAL memory of having done so, and of having done certain other things as well; I even remember going outside!... Well, it confronts me with a real problem. Not only is that memory absolutely physical, but the effects of what I said and did ARE THERE. ⁶⁰ “Were you able to verify that changes had occurred?” I immediately asked Mother. But it happened! “Here's how this should be,” I had said, and it became like that. For example, if I told someone to put something in a certain place, he did it. The person doesn't know I told him, because he's not in the same consciousness as I am, but he did it. And I found out about the immediate effects of it even before recalling it, for it all unfolded in reverse: when a certain thing was done, I thought, “What on earth! This person is wonderful!” And then I suddenly realized, “But I told him to do that!” I told him. Then the image came—“the image” ... I don't mean the sort of memory one has of a vision, but the memory of something one has DONE.⁶¹ So I asked: “It’s not an exteriorization in the subtle physical?”—Not at all! The memory of an exteriorization in the subtle physical is very different. I have a lot of experience of it, you know, for something like sixty years. I know this phenomenon. But this is entirely the type of experience one has in the physical Falsehood, if you will, in the ordinary physical consciousness. ⁶² “A material doubling?”—Possibly. It may be that. Ubiquity, or something like that.⁶³ And Mother was no further on than she was before, after having put a label on the phenomenon.

But the other people that had made the required material changes according to

Mother’s instructions did not have the physical memory of having seen Mother. Strange. And yet they had made the changes. How can it be? To which Mother answered: When experiences happen to other people (they have no knowledge—ignorance is the most widespread thing), they take them all for dreams. So there's no point trying to explain anything to them, they just don't understand. Everything gets classified as dreams, dreams, dreams.⁶⁴ Then two physicals? Or a single one within two degrees of Matter, two ways of living the same Matter, separated by the barrier of the physical Mind. A true physical, as Sri Aurobindo said, and the other. True Matter, Matter seen and lived by the cells of the body, and the other seen and lived by the Mind? But for the ordinary consciousness that lives in the mental cage, everything that happens on the other side of the cage, in the same Matter however, is like a “dream,” another “world.” And if one asked them why they had made these changes, they would answer: I thought, I felt, or: I had a dream where Mother told me.… That is to say that the body of the cells is of a degree of Matter that is finer than our substance, there is no carapace. Our present eyes seize upon the opaque carapace alone. And yet it is a material body that moves about materially in our material world.

But Mother remained facing her problem and all the “ubiquities” of the world explained nothing to her, except that one had added one more small label, as always, to mask one’s ignorance and tame the unknown. Our world is chockfull of labels, in Greco- Latin to boot.

It was in 1962. A year later, a sudden bursting-open in the forest, unexpected, incomprehensible as always, but this time more “situated”: There must be a new element in the consciousness of the cellular aggregates—a new element.... The result: I had a series of fantastic cellular experiences, which I cannot even explain and which must be the beginning of a new revelation. When the experience began, there was something in me looking on (you know, there is always something looking on somewhat ironically, always amused) ... [That’s exactly Mother] which said, “Well, if that happened to someone else, he would think he was quite sick! Or half mad.” So I stayed very quiet and thought, “All right, let it be, I'll watch—I'll see soon enough.... Indescribable! Indescribable. The experience will have to recur several times before I can understand, fantastic! It started at 8:30 and went on till 2:30 in the morning; that is to say, not for a second did I lose consciousness, I was there watching the most extraordinary things. I don't know where this is going. Indescribable: you know, you become a forest, a river, a mountain, a house—and it's the sensation (an absolutely concrete sensation) OF THE BODY, of this [Mother pinched the skin of her hands]. Many other things too. Indescribable....⁶⁵ This time again, I took out my small label and asked Mother: “Ubiquity?”—A oneness, she answered. The sense of oneness.⁶⁶ Of course, on the cellular level everything is ONE, it is the great unity that runs everywhere, without separation, without a carapace—even the mountains have no carapace, it is men who have a carapace. And She added this, which is rather mysterious, or so it seemed to me at the time: It is clear that if this experience becomes natural, spontaneous and constant, death can no longer exist: even for the body.... There's something I SENSE there, without being able to express or understand it mentally. There must be some difference, even in the behaviour of the cells, when you leave your body. It must be another phenomenon that takes place.⁶⁷

What happened in 1973? What is happening?

A body of the cells that does not die... It was in 1963.

Then the curtain of the forest closed once more for six years, and all the time Mother would tell me, would repeat to me without my really understanding: It's the CONSCIOUSNESS of the cells that must change.⁶⁸ I did not very well understand how the consciousness of the cells could change the modalities of the body and She did not know very well herself either, only She knew that the key to the mystery was there and She worked, laboured to awaken this Mind of the cells, this small pure vibration at the bottom of the cells, to clarify and deliver all this substance from the old hypnotic vestiges of the physical Mind. And bit by bit, She began feeling something weave itself within, like an explanation without an explanation that rose up blindly from the depths of that body: What takes time, She told me in 1966, is to prepare Matter, this cellular Matter as it is now organized, to make it supple enough and strong enough to be able to bear the divine Force. ⁶⁹ And in fact, it was that tide of power that came as if by small touches as the web gave way, that “boiling porridge” of the primary Matter, those thousand experiences of “dissolution,” until She could sustain “the golden invasion,” as Sri Aurobindo would say, when the second web at last came undone. That takes a lot of time. But it explains everything, everything—everything is explained. The day we can describe that in detail, it will be really interesting.⁷⁰ She would never explain it: She would live it. It is I who am trying to unravel the creepers of the forest, hew a way with an axe through the obscure curtain and link up together the unexpected clearings. And there is a small beginning of how that being which Sri Aurobindo calls “supramental” will be—the next creation. A small beginning. And it is, as Sri Aurobindo said, an explanation from within outward—the “outward,” the surface, has only a quite secondary importance and it will come at the very end, when it's ready. But it begins from within outward, and it begins in a rather precise and interesting way. A great deal of time.⁷¹

From within outwards: like the butterfly in the caterpillar.

Then, all of a sudden, in 1969, just six months after the great turning point of 1968, when Mother’s body was left alone to itself with this Mind of the cells that had no choice but to develop itself, as nothing remained anymore except it, another bursting, a radical one this time: Never, never had the body been so happy! It was the complete Presence, absolute freedom, and a certitude, it didn’t matter [that it dies] : these cells, other cells, it was life everywhere, consciousness everywhere. Absolutely wonderful. It came effortlessly, and it left simply because ... I was too busy. And it’s the DIVINE SENSE, you understand, that’s what having the divine sense means. During these few hours (three or four hours), I understood in an absolute way what having the divine consciousness in the body means. And then, this body, that body, that other body [gesture here and there, all around Mother, showing bodies of this or that one], it doesn’t matter: it moved about from one body to another, quite free and independent, aware of the limitations or the possibilities of each body—absolutely wonderful, I had never, ever had this experience before. Absolutely wonderful! It left because I was so busy that.... But that state lasted for several hours. Never had this body, in the ninety-one years it’s been on earth, felt such happiness: freedom, absolute power, and no limits—no limits, no impossibilities, nothing. It was ... all other bodies were itself. There was no difference.⁷²

Innumerable life. Innumerable material life. No more carapace, no more prison.

And a life on earth.

In a terrestrial body formed by the cells. A body that does not die.

The Fact of the Corpse

After that, Mother looked at death differently—but not for long. A month after this experience, Mother believed She had found the solution (and in fact it was perhaps a part of the solution) and She said this: This question had been asked: “All this work of transformation of the cells, of consciousness in the cells, won’t it be wasted since the body is going to disintegrate?...” Then there came in a very precise, almost concrete manner: there is a way, which is, before dying, to prepare within oneself a body with all the transformed, illumined, conscious cells, to collect them together and form a body with the maximum number of conscious cells ; then, when the work is over, the full consciousness enters it and the other body can dissolve, it no longer matters.⁷³

Now there is something that is simple.

But which seems to us an evolutionary non-sense. One discards the rag.

This rag that has painfully, lengthily prepared this mutation to the nymph stage over millenniums.

There must be something else.

There must be a missing, living link that connects that other body to this one. A transformation of Matter or a dissolution of the old Matter?

But then, where is our sense in all that?

To the consciousness, this fluidity or plasticity is growing more and more evident, with only, only just something outwardly which ... is increasingly becoming an illusion.⁷⁴ It's like a piece of bark that clumsily covers certain spots.⁷⁵

What is going to happen to this “bark”?

It is the mystery of the last three years of Mother’s life. A more and more acute, painful, almost crying mystery up to that day in 1971 when She exclaimed: The inner consciousness can say and be conscious that that suffering is unreal, but the physical consciousness can't!—it can't, it HAS to change. It's not a matter of entering a consciousness where one leaves this physical consciousness to disappear: it has to change, it HAS TO change.... The FACT has to change, you see. For the transformation to be genuine, the body ALSO has to attain a harmony above—above all illnesses and accidents.⁷⁶

The Fact has to change. What is going to happen?

The surface, the very part that gives the sense of bark, is what will change last—what's going to happen? I don't know ... I don't know. But it will change last.⁷⁷

It will change, She said.

It is the whole mystery.

It is no longer the mystery of the formation of a new body in evolution, it is the mystery of the transformation of the old body: the link between the two.

Or no link?

It seems that this old Matter remains our keystone. The fact of the corpse.

The curtain of death must be lifted in all bodies.