Mother or The New Species - II

13. The Paths of Universalization

The web was not going to be undone in a day and the pure cellular mind simply appear, released from the hypnotism of the physical mind. That would have to wait until 1965. The true body has to be wrested from the night of the world, from the whole world. For the obstacles that prevent one from getting "over there" are not unfortunate errors or useless encumbrances, and when we have cut our way through them all, we shall indeed reach the beautiful supramental clearing. Things actually move according to a more complex rhythm, the experience seems to follow a distant, unending curve through the forest, with days upon days of walking: you touch point B, point C, D..—changes in time, in space, in sleep, in vision, in the sense organs—then another small clearing, another river, each one like a world in itself, and the experience A1, A2, A3... seems now far, far "behind," as if it no longer were. You go from one unconnected world to the other, one unconnected place to the other. Then suddenly, without any reason, at the end of that curve, you find yourself in experience A again, but it is now singularly widened and deepened, with a whole train of new waves and implications as if that same experience had surreptitiously changed and acquired another meaning and other consequences from the fact that you have touched B, C, D... in the meantime. Then you set off again to follow a wide curve, you leave line A1, A2, and find B2, C2, D2... which have also subtly changed in the meantime. It is like a global progression in which no single point is the "good" one and no single point is final or conquered once and for all: nothing is "over there" in particular, everything is anywhere at all. And at times, at some unexpected point of the progression, you find yourself as if standing before the total secret: at once all the lines seem to converge... and again it is gone. And you walk and walk; where is the Secret? Mother touched it a hundred times, a thousand times. And yet one could almost say that She never knew where the Secret was: She lived it, "worked it out," without having a name for it. She walked, and it came into being through her walking. It is not a mental trail through some mathematical problem whose solution lies at the end: it is a cellular trail, a progress of the body. It is a new body being made in the old body or emerging from the old body: a new world emerging from the old. All the points are equally good, are that, but they all have equally to reach the development that results from having gone through all the other points. In a way, we could say that the forest emerges all at once, at any point at all, once everything has been gone through. Mother's was the symbolic body in which the body of the new world was emerging. Only one link is missing for it to be visible to all: the unconcealed forest, the total course, the secret in every point. The Amazon unveiled. The new world beneath our steps. The new body here. We only need to become aware of something. For the crossing is over, She went through it all. So what is missing? The Secret is to know what is missing, not to know what is here.

There is a sort of veil to be lifted somewhere in our consciousness.

We are always wondering if this veil is not the famous physical mind: the "deformation's spell" Sri Aurobindo spoke of. A cellular spell.

True Matter

When the meshes of the web loosen a little as a result of the impersonalization, as well as from the hammering of the mantra, all kinds of phenomena start taking place, rather imperceptibly at first, like a breath, but becoming more precise and amplifying over the years. But first, the true supramental Vibration begins to infiltrate Matter, not in a crushing and "dazzling" way, but in a tenuous form that Mother described many times: As it works to settle itself in here, it produces this little vibration—a twinkling of vibrations—which seems to be indispensable for it to enter into this Matter.¹ But one really wonders in which direction the process should be read: saying "penetrate into this Matter" gives the impression of something behind or outside which penetrates the bodily substance, but is it actually a "penetration" from outside or rather a sort of clarification which allows us to see and perceive or feel what was always there, beneath the meshes of the web? We have always wondered in which direction the phenomenon should be understood. The question seems very simple, but it entails radically different consequences that change the whole perspective of the process: in one case, it is the "other" vibration that infiltrates the old Matter little by little and modifies it—hence a transformation of one by the other; and in the other case, it is the real condition, the real vibration, the real form which emerges from the meshes of the web or the veil of mud, and which takes the place of the other—hence a substitution, or unveiling. We shall ask ourselves this question right to the end. Years later, after completing the whole course and going through quite a number of experiences, Mother came back to this "twinkling" infiltration and suddenly, "like that," in the middle of the conversation, She made a remark that left me completely dumbfounded. And this happened all the time with Mother. Those discoveries, so enormous that scientists could write volumes on them, never seemed to be "discoveries" for her: She simply noted the fact in passing, or rather became aware of it, made a remark, and then it was over, She went on—Mother was full of discoveries as transparent as the air one breathes, but She did not always take the trouble to label them so as to be able to say: well, this is a discovery. She simply lived the thing without mentalizing it—the discovery is for later on, when a name is put on it. Basically, everything is discovered in Mother's journey but nothing is named, so it is as if it did not exist—for us. But this time, She named it. She observed that the twinkling infiltration induced a whole new way of being in the body: A way of being that might be luminous, harmonious. That way of being is still quite indefinable; but in this seeking there is a constant perception (which translates as a vision) of a multicolored light, with all the colors—all the colors not in layers but as though combined in dots, a combination of all the colors.² And we recall the "iridescent light" She had perceived at the turn of the century in the depths of the Inconscient—which means an immense course completed (we could say by the earth: Mother's body is an earthly body like everyone else's), since that light was no longer over there, beneath unfathomable layers, deep in a kind of "cave," but just here, at the edge of her body, twinkling through all the pores of her skin, so to say. The veil had thinned. And She added, But now I see it constantly, associated with everything, and it seems to be what we might call a "perception of true Matter. " All possible colors are combined without being mixed together, and combined in luminous dots. Everything is as though MADE UP of this.² I believe She never again spoke of "true Matter" after that: it had come and gone. Another time it was something else, which She left unnamed. On the other hand, She would speak of "false matter" more and more often, as if this speckling of multicolored vibrations were Matter's real way of being, which emerged or became more perceptible as the web grew clearer—it was this web She would call "false matter." So more and more it seems that we can read the phenomenon as a substitution by true Matter or an unveiling of true Matter, rather than as the transformation of the old Matter into something "else." Then many things become clear. All those who expected to see Mother suddenly rejuvenated, unwrinkled, unbent and glorious in the same old corporeal substance were looking at the phenomenon in the wrong way. Perhaps we are looking at the whole earth in the wrong way: the new world is perhaps not the old being transformed, but the true one, already here, taking its place. A tremendous change in perspective. A complete dissolution of the web. One had better know which side one stands on.

But that perception of real Matter in her body, in objects, in everything, was not only a vision—for after all, visions are all right for those who are able to see—it was materially and corporeally translated by a completely different way of being in Matter, as if the laws were no longer exactly the same. Thus we can understand that some adaptation is necessary to prevent the body from suddenly disintegrating or vaporizing under the pressure of the new laws, or rather because of the sudden disappearance of the old laws that weighed on it like a ton of lead. Lead feels light to us. The cage does not exist for us. We must get out of it to understand that it is made of lead and is a cage. But the moment we get out of it, there is a rather... peculiar transition for the old body—indeed, how can you be in two bodies or two Matters simultaneously? How do we get into one without dying in the other, or at least fainting? It is like breathing two kinds of entirely different air, one deadly, the other living—and how do you remain alive while in the deadly one? How can you be in true Matter, live in true Matter, without losing the other—which is the bridge, the link with the old terrestrial existence and allows you to go on being, living, apparently doing as everybody else, speaking with others and being accessible to them? We are accessible only insofar as we are mortal like them, false like them, opaque, heavy, aging, painful.... This will be Mother's problem more and more. Somewhat like the problem of the first amphibian. In short, how to be on both sides of the web. To be in death without being in it.

The New Way of Being

This new way of being of Matter (or of being in Matter) took shape very gradually and cautiously, but all the same.... And first of all, on which occasion does it manifest, what triggers the other movement? A body is very simple, in a way: it breathes easily, it breathes heavily; it is comfortable, it is tired; it has a routine, it makes its everyday gestures. The moment one habit changes, things start grating. There are millions of habits for the body, everything is habit. Its habits, whatever they are—good, bad, useful, harmful, breathing well or breathing heavily—are part of the web, they are within the web. The web is ultimately a habit, millions of habits. A habit of good health or poor health, and ultimately a habit of dying because "that's the way it is," the way bodies behave, it is the way of bodies. Now, the new movement tends to emerge when we seek to break a habit, whatever it is, however microscopic and futile it may be. Immediately something starts grating. It falls ill quite easily because it is upset, and everything becomes suddenly very boring: "The world is decidedly quite disgusting." Everything is disgusted. The web is upset. It even feels like dying (oh, only a whisper, it is a big word it would hardly dare pronounce!), and actually the slightest grating always points in that direction, if you but touch or tickle it a little, we could say. You can touch the web on any side at all, at any point, and surprisingly, you always find yourself before death—a sly little death, so stupid that you laugh at it when you notice it, and you throw it out the window; but it does not forget, it simply bides its time. None of our mental boasting can do anything in the end: it does, in secret.

Therefore we can catch the web of habits from any side at all, but if we look closely, there is one habit that is like the mother of the others, or in any case more pronounced than the others: it is the habit of defeat. It can be taken as an excellent opportunity for setting the new movement in motion. For at the least trouble, the body instantly gives up: oh, it's such and such an illness, it's going to last for so many months or so many years, and then I must have an operation, and then... the whole list. There are even dreams of the physical Mind in which you undergo operations that last hours, stoically (with God knows what submissive delight). The physical consciousness, the consciousness that makes the cells function [or more precisely that which hypnotizes the cells] is accustomed to effort, struggle, misery, defeat... so accustomed—that's quite universal. In people, it's only their mental consciousness that holds out; but their physical consciousness tends to foresee catastrophe, so accustomed it is: the end, you know, that end which for centuries and centuries was inescapable.... It weighs down. It's very difficult. It takes a very slow and constant work to replace that sort of habit... of defeat, basically, with a faith, a true consciousness.... The true consciousness that truth is Harmony, truth is Progress, truth is Light, truth is....³ And the body, the physical consciousness falls back constantly into its old habit, what Mother called the "old way": But there is such idiocy in this body. For instance, there is every moment (it's every second or minute), every moment there is the choice between continuation of the old habit and progress towards consciousness. It's constantly like that. And through... listlessness (what is it?... It's not bad will because it's idiotic; its more idiotic than bad will), there is a spontaneous tendency to choose deterioration rather than the effort of progress.... its listlessness. But when it knows and makes effort, it is always, every time, translated as lights, yes, like vibratory waves, and those of progress are the ones which have all the colors, that twinkling of all the colors: a light made of a twinkling of all the colors. Those are the lights that choose the immediate little effort to reject the listlessness.... But its not over important events: it's something going on every minute, for everything, all the time, all the time—for everything.⁴

There is thus an effort or a way of being that produces a certain porousness in the body.

When that effort takes place, which is rather a call within, a need to be something instead of that amorphous mass that records nonexistent minutes like a taxi meter, when the mantra hammers this heavy opacity, there occasionally occurs in the body—then more and more often—a kind of luminous swelling, like a dilation that is truly the aspiration of the body, its cry, its call for true air in the midst of this walking suffocation: it suddenly begins to suffocate, as if it were becoming aware of the web. This dilation, which is perceived in the cells and everywhere as indeed a "luminous swelling," may even become rather crushing and repressive in another way, as if there were not enough room in the body, as if it were still too clogged. It is the sign of the infiltration of the other movement, which gradually becomes easy and "flowing," as the substance becomes clarified and impersonalized. The intellect does the same thing when it begins to emerge from the first enveloping cocoon of ignorance: it suffocates, it feels it is constantly bumping against ugliness, stupidity, pettiness everywhere, and being boxed in. The process is the same for the consciousness of the body. But here, the stupidity is all the physiological laws. And a new mode of being begins to emerge, imperceptible and almost like a breath at first, but which is to have stupendous consequences. We do not know the tremendous power germinating in those microscopic processes. This luminous twinkling... seems to be the true mode of being, she said at the beginning; I am not yet sure, but at any rate it's a far more conscious mode of being. I see it all the time: with eyes open, eyes closed, all the time. It gives a strange perception (with regard to the body), a strange perception at the same time of subtlety, permeability (if I may call it that), of suppleness of form, and not exactly

When that effort takes place, which is rather a call within, a need to be something instead of that amorphous mass that records nonexistent minutes like a taxi meter, when the mantra hammers this heavy opacity, there occasionally occurs in the body—then more and more often—a kind of luminous swelling, like a dilation that is truly the aspiration of the body, its cry, its call for true air in the midst of this walking suffocation: it suddenly begins to suffocate, as if it were becoming aware of the web. This dilation, which is perceived in the cells and everywhere as indeed a "luminous swelling," may even become rather crushing and repressive in another way, as if there were not enough room in the body, as if it were still too clogged. It is the sign of the infiltration of the other movement, which gradually becomes easy and "flowing," as the substance becomes clarified and impersonalized. The intellect does the same thing when it begins to emerge from the first enveloping cocoon of ignorance: it suffocates, it feels it is constantly bumping against ugliness, stupidity, pettiness everywhere, and being boxed in. The process is the same for the consciousness of the body. But here, the stupidity is all the physiological laws. And a new mode of being begins to emerge, imperceptible and almost like a breath at first, but which is to have stupendous consequences. We do not know the tremendous power germinating in those microscopic processes. This luminous twinkling... seems to be the true mode of being, she said at the beginning; I am not yet sure, but at any rate it's a far more conscious mode of being. I see it all the time: with eyes open, eyes closed, all the time. It gives a strange perception (with regard to the body), a strange perception at the same time of subtlety, permeability (if I may call it that), of suppleness of form, and not exactly a removal but a considerable lessening of the rigidity of forms. As for the body, the first times it felt that in some part or the other, it felt... when it happens it's a bit lost, with the sense of something eluding it. That was when the series of faintings began. But if one remains very quiet and waits quietly, it's simply replaced by a sort of plasticity and fluidity that seems to be a new mode of the cells. It might probably be what, on the material level, must take the place of the physical ego...⁵ It really seems like nothing, but in a way it means the dissolution of everything that constitutes the foundation or the power of cohesion of our body: what makes you feel as a body, "my" body—that is, the habit formed by the web. Millions of centered habits woven into a vibratory network, and making a physical "I," just as there is a mental "I" and an emotional "I". Getting out of the web is a strange adventure—not an easy one. But somehow Mother was opening the path in her own body, a little like the first ancient saurian learned how to grow wings—except this is more radical. That is to say, Mother continued, it seems the rigidity of the form must give place to this new way of being. Of course, the first contact is always very... surprising. But the body is getting used to it little by little. What's a little difficult is the moment of transition from one way to the other. It's done very progressively, yet at the moment of transition there are a few seconds that are... the least we can say is "unexpected." In that way, all habits are undone. Its the same with all the functionings: blood circulation, digestion, breathing—all the functions. And at the moment of transition it's not that one abruptly takes the place of the other, but there is a state of fluidity between the two which is difficult.⁵

The Body of the World

This infiltration is difficult to bear at first. Everything gets disorganized, there is a sort of veiled revolt: "Like stepping on an anthill," she said, and it is exactly that. Everything becomes very aggressive, and strange as it may seem, all material things, even objects, animals and all the people around become very aggressive, as if there were some kind of secret complicity in Matter. I have personally observed a very remarkable phenomenon which recurred several times so that I would really get the point. This in itself is a strange experience: as soon as you want to try to understand how things really work in Matter, it is as if everything came to give you a demonstration—a complicity in the other direction—everything comes to life and seems to react, to create echoes everywhere, ten thousand miles away or under your feet. Now, I noticed that on days there was some "disturbance in the atmosphere," not only did all kinds of small, minuscule accidents happen in waves, one after another (in people or the objects around, in my own gestures), but even animals began to grind, and inevitably I would find a scorpion on my doorstep or on the stairway... as if everything moved within the same maleficent, microscopic rhythm. As if all of Matter were grating at once, so to speak. There are little disorders, there are big disorders. The second time the supramental Force came to take hold of her body, in 1961, Mother noted: All possible difficulties rose up en masse—it had to happen, and it surely happened to Sri Aurobindo, too. How well I understood! How well, indeed. And it's no joke, you know! I had wondered why these difficulties had hounded him so ferociously—now I understand, because I am being attacked in the same relentless fashion. Actually, it springs from everything in material consciousness that can still be touched by the adverse forces; that is, not exactly the body-consciousness itself but, one could say, MATERIAL SUBSTANCE AS IT HAS BEEN ORGANIZED BY THE MIND- the first stirrings of Mind in life making the passage from animal to human.... Well, something in there protests, and naturally this protest creates disorder.⁶ Here we are, before the inevitable physical Mind, the remarkable something that was formed with man and caused the transition from animal to man. There is no physical mind in animals; there is only a cellular mind. The cage exists only for us. The "Inconscient," which every tradition places at the beginning of time like a kind of primal rock, is in fact a human phenomenon. It is a phenomenon of the physical Mind: it is the veil, or the mud wall. The web. Behind it, everything communicates, there are no partitions. Evolution became caged and veiled hundreds of millions of years later, for reasons of individualization that we have already mentioned. But if the fact is correct, if it is really the physical Mind that makes the wall, then we are before a wonderful possibility: we need not accomplish an “evolution," a transformation or a mutation embracing centuries and fortuitous miseries—we only need to break down the Wall. And everything is there. Total Consciousness is there, total Movement, the Shakti, the total Power is there. We sought to break down the Wall from above, but it is down below, in Matter, that it must be broken down. We sought to create super-men in the web, but it is the web itself that must be destroyed, and every "super" is there, far more unimaginable than we could ever think. Only, the moment you touch the web, it starts grating, and everything grates: "It all rose up en masse," Mother said, and She added, as an afterthought, That's the problem: something totally new is being introduced into Matter, and the body is protesting.⁶

The body of the world protests.

It vehemently protests against the little twinkling of surreptitious light which is disrupting its whole way of being.

But how can one body, one little body all by itself in obscure Pondicherry, change the body of the world? This was my constant question during the first years with Mother. Because it was the problem of the world that concerned me, and I did not see how this smiling little Mother, going back and forth in her corridor among those grating specimens, could "transform the world." It seemed to me a kind of fairy tale. How could undoing a little habit here—really a speck of dust in the great expanse of the world—undo the enormous habit of the world? To be sure, I clearly saw that all the little habits around her were as if grating in chorus, but.... "How can the work You are doing on your own body have a general effect on the corporeal substance outside of You?" In the same way as always, she answered, because the vibration spreads out! For example, each time I have been able to master something, I mean find the true solution for an "illness" or a malfunctioning (the TRUE solution, not a mental one, not some ordinary knowledge, but the spiritual solution: the vibration that will UNDO the wrong working or set you on your feet again), it has always been very easy for me to cure the same thing in others, through the emission of this vibration.... That's how it works. Because all substance is ONE. All is ONE—we constantly forget that! We always have a sense of separation, and that is total, total Falsehood; it's because we rely on what our eyes see, on....

That is truly Falsehood. As soon as your consciousness changes a little, you realize that... what we see is like an image plastered over something. But it's not true, not true at all. Even in the most material Matter, even a stone—even in a stone—as soon as one's consciousness changes, all this separation, all this division, completely vanishes. These are... (how to put it?) modes of concentration, vibratory modes WITHIN THE SAME THING⁷.

Such is the process of spiritual contagion. All vibrations are contagious, the good ones too.

At the time I was convinced, because Mother made you see things when She spoke, you felt them in your own body. But even so I kept asking the same question in one form or another. "How can this ridiculous little movement whose neck I wring in my consciousness be uprooted elsewhere in the world?" Here I was putting a much more tricky question to Mother, and in effect I was right to do so, because at that point She had yet to find the real mechanism: She was being led to it "by fist and hammer blows." She replied, It's an ERROR to think that there can be a single "personal" movement in the world; it's man's ignorant consciousness which MAKES IT PERSONAL, but it isn't: it's all terrestrial attitudes. And She further added, It came with the Mind; animals don't have that. And that's why I feel a sweetness in animals, even the supposedly most ferocious, which doesn't exist in man.⁸ All right then, but even if these are waves of a general nature, how is the fact of my having eliminated the movement from my personal web going to eliminate it from the world web? Some root must be touched somewhere. And Mother used to explain to me her method of those days, the one She had used for decades (and it could probably be used for centuries without making any real radical change). It is the spiritual method of all genuine yogis (those who work for the world, silently). Mother would go out of her material body, the individual little web, and inevitably, as soon you go out of the web, everything becomes universal. And She acted upon the various universal layers of consciousness: the mental, the vital or the subconscious layers, all that weaves our brilliant or not so brilliant ideas, our absurd or more harmful reactions: But when one descends to accomplish a work of transformation—to bring Light into the different layers of life, for instance—it is not an individual Subconscient, and the work of transformation is not done through individualization, but through the opposite movement, through a sort of universalization.... The minute you become universalized you act upon the whole.... You can have the idea of being separate, but you can't be separate in reality. In fact, if you are trying to eliminate the Subconscient in yourself your movement must necessarily be general; it can't be personal, you would never get anywhere.^{9 200}

And Mother would tell me of the work She was doing particularly at night, when She had a little peace and went out of her body: It goes on every night. It takes the form of all sorts of scenes, of symbols, of memories, from words to images. It comes in groups and categories of tendencies, it represents the various human tendencies in detail.¹⁰ These "categories of tendencies" or "terrestrial attitudes," these thousands of stupid reactions to be undone, used to assume all sorts of faces, sometimes odd composite faces, as if one face represented dozens or perhaps hundreds of faces: it did not represent one person, but rather an attitude: Such characters are sometimes put together with features from several people, to make it very clear that they represent a state of consciousness and not an individual. It's far more often a state of consciousness than an individual.¹¹ Already when I lived in Japan there were four people I could never distinguish during my night time activities—all four of them (and god knows they weren't even acquainted! ) were always intermingled because their subconscious reactions were identical.... There was an Englishman, a Frenchman, a Japanese and one more, each from a different country; well, at night they were all the same, as if viewed one through the other, all intermingled.¹² That's how the specimens in the Ashram assumed their universal meaning: The people around me for the work here are like families in those worlds there; they are types, that is—each person represents a type....¹³ Those types take on the image of someone I am in contact with or was in personal contact with. But to me they are types: "Oh, its such and such a type—but that can be THOUSANDS of people. And the action on the person-type has repercussions on all that he represents.... But Mother added: And that's a labor which seems... infinite—endless, at any rate.¹⁴

One wonders if it is really the solution, if the root is really touched in this way. And then her labor in the daytime, amidst all those people to be seen, those difficulties to be resolved, those resistances to be overcome, those thousands of little reactions in and around her body, had the same symbolic character: So the details are unimportant in themselves, but they are symptomatic of the whole.¹⁵ Yes, like little scorpions scurrying up to your door. One illness is a million of identical illnesses. I mean that difficulties, obstacles, battles, victories, advances are in themselves nothing but indications of a general movement—at times there are fantastic advances or progress, seemingly miraculous. If you see everything together, you feel, you feel a sort of thrust—an overall thrust....¹⁵

A hell of a thrust, for sure.

But will the scorpion species disappear for all that?... Perhaps after a few centuries of "global thrust."

Is it really in this way that the web of the world can be destroyed?... To ask this question is to put into question all the spiritual methods since the beginning of spirituality. It is to admit a priori that all the materialisms of the world that have constantly denied the power of the Spirit and affirmed the superiority of their machinery to improve material existence are right... although they have been a little shaken lately.

And the answer, the only answer—the one Mother was going to discover in her body—is that there is only one way of curing the body of the world: it is to be the body of the world. There is only one way to destroy the web, it is to destroy it in a body that has become the whole body of the earth. One must get out of the web without getting out of one's body. Ecstasy is but a nice little dream. One can really and totally have some action only on what one is. If you want to act on terrestrial Matter, you must be all terrestrial Matter. What is needed is material contagion. It is not from above or within or without, or by meditation, or contemplation or going out of one's body into the fourth or hundredth dimension that one finds the solution, but by becoming each atom, each vibration of the earthly body. And how is it possible? Mentally one understands that one can become the cosmic consciousness and merge with the universal Mind; even vitally one understands that one can become the great Energy of life and merge with the universal Dynamism (even though there is hardly any terrestrial example of this, except, perhaps, on a very small scale, Napoleon, Alexander or Genghis Khan). But corporeally, how can one little body become all bodies and enter all the miseries of the world without dying from it? How can it even physiologically broaden its cellular consciousness without bursting or being dissolved?

And finally, the little twinkling could really enter the body of the world only if Sri Aurobindo's or Mother's body had, in some way, become the body of the Earth.

"Each atom," said Sri Aurobindo.

The Little Doors

Mother would be made to live the answer; Matter itself was going to provide it. As a matter of fact, we are always in the answer! It is constantly given to us, for everything, in the least detail, but we do not know how to see it, we do not even know that it is the answer, we constantly cover everything that happens with a veil: with our idea or preference or reaction or sensation, nothing reaches us purely, everything is veiled and distorted in advance, interpreted in one way or another, and always "it is right," "it is wrong," "it is good," "it is bad," "it is horrible," "it is excellent."... A bird does not ask questions, it does not ask where Siberia is: it goes straight to Siberia. And we are constantly within that "Siberia" or Amazon, that real country we are looking for, the answer to all our questions, this "realization" that is never in the future but always here, before our eyes, beneath our steps—only we do not know this is it. We live in a false future, our sense of time is a Falsehood like the rest of our perceptions in the web, like tuberculosis, death, gravity and the "over there." It is all an incredible tissue of unreality. Mother used to say an objective unrealitym¹⁶ and we understand perfectly what She means. Only it is not enough to think things out and understand them mentally: we must learn to live them in our bodies, we must undo the Habit. We must find again the entire Amazon that is here, each instant, with all the answers.

Mother was living the answer, there, amidst all her specimens. She did not know—or not yet—that this was the answer; with a sense of wonder, She was beginning to learn that everything is the Answer. I have said that She never knew what the Secret was, and yet She touched it, lived it a thousand times—but does a bird know that "this is Siberia?" Perhaps it notices certain changes of climate. Similarly, Mother noticed many little changes of climate—Siberia is for the geographers. I am Mother's geographer. In ordinary life, you think of things, then you do them—but this is just the opposite! In this life you have to do things first and understand afterwards—but long afterwards. You have to act first, without thinking. If you think, you get nowhere; you're just reverting to the old way of doing things. And Mother added, But what can be said about That! It simply cannot be spoken of and here's the proof: if we could talk about it, it would be here. And even then we probably wouldn't talk about it.¹⁷ She went among her specimens, with the checks to be signed and impossible payment deadlines to meet, complaints here, illnesses there, upset teachers, upset students, "I want" and "I don't want," and the pains of her own body and the pain of everyone's body, everywhere the great misery clothed in pompous words: That suffering, that general misery is becoming almost unbearable.... It has been THRUST on me like a sort of acute anguish—which certainly is necessary to get out of it. To get out, I mean, to cure, to change—not to flee. I don't like flight. That was my major objection to the Buddhists: all that you are advised to do is merely to give you an opportunity to flee—that's not pretty. But change, yes.¹⁸ And She realized that even her anguish was already a kind of answer: all the material conditions needed to find the solution were created. Suffocation is the first step to finding the door. Anguish is stupid in itself, but it is the false image or mental transcription of a physiological state necessary to reach the solution. And similarly, everything is false, and everything is true. The state itself is true, it is exactly as it must be, but the mental transcription and the sensation we add to it in the web is a total falsity. And thus everything in the world is false, and everything is perfectly true! Yes, She was learning that "all the stupidities we commit are for the work," it is stupid because of the wrong meaning we give it, it is harmful because of our wrong reaction, it is disastrous, it can lead to death—and the very same thing, when seen and taken differently, is a door that opens onto victory. We begin to see, touch, feel that we live in a world of mirages, and it is very interesting, almost fabulous at times: a tiny something and things turn into Wonder, another tiny something and they turn into Blackness—and it is the same thing, the same so-called material, ((concrete" fact. And we invariably observe that it is everything the physical Mind stealthily adds to the fact, sticks on it, plasters over it, smearing it with black glue. Mother was learning the lesson. And all of a sudden, as if struck by a revelation, She exclaimed, At every instant, at every moment in the universe, all is exactly as it should be.... That is omnipotence.¹⁹ These few words, enigmatic as they are, are blazing with power if wholly understood. Omnipotence, Power, the great Open Sesame is perhaps only a matter of perceiving that everything is exactly and marvelously as it should be—but perceiving it in one's body. Then the body sees, and the mirage dissolves. Then it does not die, then it is not sick, then all the false mental consequences crumble. And it is. And it is omnipotent and invincible—it is.

Only, that must be lived. Lived each second.

It seems fabulous, and it is incredibly simple, so simple that it cannot be believed. The Mind cannot believe what is simple—for its role is to complicate and box up and ensnare everything.

In a way, the body must be de-mentalized.

Speaking mentally, we say that Mother was learning "impersonalization," but that is a frightful word which already connotes the victimizing of the little self. There is nothing to victimize! One has only to let oneself flow little by little in the Obvious. Then everything becomes different. But this flowing in the Obvious is not some kind of blissful acceptance of everything (although it can become that, but it cannot really become that so long as the body remains in death—up above one can smile, it is very nice and very Buddhistic and it makes a pretty picture, but the smile must be in the body), this flowing means to open the little door of everything, in everything—everything has a door. Each thing, each most microscopic incident has its "door"; one opens it or one leaves it closed. Saying yes or no will not open the door, but if one lets oneself glide into the heart of the thing, if one adheres—adheres even to the "worst"!then the door opens and the meaning appears, the real face of the thing and its remedy at the core of evil or behind the door of evil. The "evil" was precisely the mental door we put on the thing—which is neither "good" nor "bad," but "something else." The very cunning Mind will at once cry out: then everything must be accepted, even destruction, even.... And you catch it pricking up its ears, for naturally it is expecting destruction—and it will have it. If it accepts in its own way, it will certainly have destruction, and a few good beatings to boot. Its black glue sticks everywhere, it is just hopeless, one cannot walk on this path with the mind, it will glue you down at the first opportunity. This flowing in the Obvious must be actually experienced, these thousand little doors at every minute and every step and in everything must be opened—not even opened: gone through like a breeze while repeating the Mantra... and with a sort of will for the sunlit Truth or a call for Truth everywhere. What Mother calls SINCERITY. And She defined it so marvelously. That's what I call sincerity: if one can catch oneself every minute belonging to the old Stupidity.²⁰ The seething, old stupidity of the mental habit muttering its little disasters, little sins, little nos and yeses, little gratings, its old voraciousness of a punished child in a cage striving hard to devour the cosmos through the bars. All that has to be aired out; one goes through it and walks about with it and carries it everywhere—it is "inevitable"—but there is a certain way of flowing in it while pinching its ear at the same time... because one is not fooled, but one flows in it all the same and passes through it.

Even through sickness—even through death, as Mother will learn. The body is also learning the lesson of "illness", She said. Oh, that's very, very amusing. The difference between the thing itself as it is, the particular kind of disorder, whatever it is, and the old habit of feeling and receiving the thing, the ordinary habit, what people call an illness: "I am ill." That's very amusing. And always, if you stay truly still, there is always a little light—a warm little light, very bright and wonderfully still, behind; as if it were saying, "You have only to will." Then the body's cells panic: "Will, how? How can I will? It's AN ILLNESS"—the whole drama, it's "an illness". Then something with a general wisdom, says, "Calm down, calm down... don't remain attached to your illness! So they consent—"consent," like a child who has been scolded, "All right, very well, I'll try." They try—immediately, that light comes again: "You only have to will." And once or twice, for one thing or another, on THIS POINT, you consent—the next minute, it's over! Not the next minute: a few seconds and it's over. Then the cells remember: "But how come? I had a pain here..."—pop! It all comes back And the whole drama unfolds like that, constantly. So if they really learned the lesson... Oh, they are learning their lesson all the time, all the time. Everything, all that happens is always a lesson—always. Always, always: all the quarrels, all the difficulties, all the so-called illnesses, everything, all the disorders are to make you learn a lesson—as soon as you've learned the lesson, it's over! But then, you are so slow and heavy, you take so much time to REALIZE that it's a lesson that it drags on and on and on... It's beginning to learn. And then, instead of the selfish answer that consists in saying, "Ah, no! I don't want that, I don't want any of it! (Laughing) I am 'above' that weakness and disorder;" let it come, accept it, and see what the solution is. In other words, instead of the old problem- rejection of life, rejection of the difficulty, rejection of the disorder and the flight into Nirvana—it is the acceptance of everything—and Victory.²¹

Total acceptance in order to find the real meaning of each thing, what is behind the door. The other face of things, what really is, without the travesty of the mind, the travesty of the sensations and reactions, the travesty of "illness" and death and everything. The web. And Mother added, Life is on the verge of becoming wonderful—but we don't know how to live it. We still have to learn. When we truly learn, it will be something.²¹ And then, as one's acceptance becomes perfected, as one ceases sticking yeses or noes on things and circumstances and encounters, one begins to flow in the "thing," the other thing, the Obvious, and one discovers the marvelous organization: EVERYTHING comes to make you move forward as fast as possible, everything: obstacles, contradictions, incomprehensions, trivial occupations, everything but everything is to make you move forward. It's to touch one point, another point, yet another... and make you progress as fast as possible. If we don't look after this Matter, how is it going to change?²²

And all these little doors opening to the left, to the right, at each step and each minute, each gesture, each stupidity, let air into the being, into daily life—and even into the body. Everything starts becoming porous, as it were.

Without our realizing it, we have come to the Great Door: physical universalization.

We have become wide as if by magic.

The little twinkling twinkles everywhere.