Mother or The New Species - II

17: But Where is Death?

Indeed, Mother felt the urgency of the situation. The "race between transformation and Death" was becoming very concrete. The "construction" of the third position must take place in the body, it is not an intellectual position (and truly, all those intellectual complications of red versus white, all those dualities and "isms" become so puerile! One wonders how men can still live in that, when the Real Thing, the destiny of the world, the end of pain, the defeat of Death, are right there in a little cell). In the Mind, in the heart also and in the deeper being we have an immortal life, and as soon as the consciousness is the least bit developed, we can perceive the continuity of lives, recall past circumstances more or less accurately, see their extension into this life and the unfolding of the eternal story; but a body just decomposes, that is all. *You see, for our consolation we are told in every possible way that the work done isn't lost and that all this action on the cells to make them conscious of the higher life isn't lost—that's not true, it's absolutely lost! Suppose I leave my body tomorrow; this body (not immediately, but after a time) reverts to dust; then all that I've done for these cells is perfectly useless! Except that the consciousness will come out of the cells—but it *always does!...' "It is really during the Worker's lifetime that the thing must be done," I said. Yes, of course! It's before. Something has to enter here before. And I insisted: "Yes, it is in your body, through your body, that another form must be worked out. For after death, it is over." Consequently, it's a waste. On the physical level, it's a pure waste. The mind and vital are another affair, that's not interesting: we have known for a very long time that their life doesn't depend on the body.... I am speaking of the body, that's what interests me: the body's cells. Well, death is a waste and that's that. "Yes, the transformation must be done in one life. It is not for the next life, it is in one single life. The progress made by your cells will not be transmitted to another body—unless you evolve another body." That is to say, she answered, before this body dissolves, a new creation should be there.... a certain quality of cells should be able to allow the form to become different (the form can change, it changes all the time, it's never the same), but with the conscious interrelationships of the cells persisting. "But it's not impossible!" It's more than possible, she said, laughing, but we have to learn how to do it!¹

That is how the "problem" presented itself at the time. But as for the "Transformation," no one knows what it is about, Mother did not know at all—how do you attempt to become something you know nothing about! What is that new body? A transformation of the old, or something else, another kind of unknown? The only plain fact is that these cells would have to create something else before decomposing, unless they found a way not to decompose. Indeed what is the crux of the problem in truth?... In Truth, that which is true is immortal; only Falsehood can die—our bodies are full of Falsehood and of rotting essence. But if these cells are true, purely true, purely light like the light that shines at their center, how could they possibly decompose? They cannot decompose. Any more than the soul can decompose—it is the same thing!. There is an opaque periphery that envelops the central light of the cell. And suddenly we wonder if it is not a completely false problem, if this Matter we see is not false, deceptive, illusory, an opaque covering over "something"—over a true world, a true body. And the whole comedy of death is then a real comedy: you simply lift the veil and you are, exactly the same, and the world is, exactly the same, but now true. We need not "transform" Falsehood: we need to let the Truth shine through. We need to lift the veil, to make Death disappear—that which makes for Death. And perhaps the work of the cells in Mother's body was not so much to transform themselves as to dissolve the veil, that which prevents things from being there, true, pure, immortal—as they are. The opaque periphery around the cells.

The periphery of Death.

But on a global scale?...

We really do not know, we can only follow the phenomenon.

The Two States

In fact, Mother, too, followed the phenomenon rather than "did" anything—She repeated the Mantra and went through all pains, one after the other. She was wearing out the World's pain. All depends on the capacity to go through the necessary experiences,² she said. It is not something you "do" really, it is something you go through—and by the fact of going through it, of being able to go through it without flinching, the thing is done, automatically. Such was Mother's long journey, with an unutterable something taking place along the way.

A bizarre state, nevertheless. If indeed a third position were taking shape at all, it was doing so very negatively. Of course, the bird is very "negative" for the fish, at the beginning. You relate much more to the fish you are leaving behind than to the bird you are becoming, and most likely it is only when the fish is absolutely left behind that suddenly you realize: Ah! So this is a bird! To leave a body entirely, without leaving it... is difficult. Those eleven years constitute the most astonishing paradox ever experienced by the human species. The paradox of Mother is our secret—our next secret. All the habitual rhythms of the material world have changed.... The body had based its sort of sense of good health on a certain number of vibrations, and whenever those vibrations were present, it felt in good health; when something came and disturbed them, it felt that it was about to fall ill or that it was ill, depending on the intensity. All that has changed now: those basic vibrations have simply been removed, they no longer exist; the vibrations on which the body based its sense of good or ill health—removed. They are replaced by something else, and something else of such a nature that "good health" and "illness" have lost all meaning!³ But it was not only good health or illness that seemed to topple into something else (although for the body it is an important basic element: its functioning is based on that), it was all of life that was strangely toppling into something that no longer felt like "life" and yet, apparently, was not death, as if life and death were another pair of accomplices with a third... indefinable meaning. This "indefinable" is quite all right for the intellect, which, after all, can very well fail to "define" without dying from it, but the body! A body that no longer knows its own definition.... And with that sense of humor that never left her, one day in June 1962, Mother suddenly exclaimed: It has reached such a degree that if I had no regard for people's peace of mind I would say, "I don't know whether I am dead or alive." Mother was to make this remark dozens of times in the years that followed, more and more often and in an increasingly intense way, as it were. And it seems that the whole Secret is there, in that something that is no longer "life" and not "death"—truly a third position. Because there is a life, a type of life vibration that is completely independent of... No, I'll put it another way: the way people ordinarily feel life, feel that they are alive, is intimately linked with a certain sensation they have of their bodies and of themselves. If you totally eliminate that sensation, the type of relation that allows people to say "I am alive"... or "I am not alive", the distinction NO LONGER EXISTS. Well, for me, it has been completely eliminated. That night [of the "great pulsations" in April 1962], it was definitively swept out of me. It has never come back. It's something that seems impossible now.⁴ And indeed for eleven years Mother's life was something absolutely "impossible." So what they mean by "I am alive" is... I can't say "I am alive" the way they do—it's something else entirely. But really, if I let myself go one step further I would say that I was dead and... have come back to life. And moreover, not "come back" to the same life: come back to something else. It has been a sort of death, that's for sure—sure, sure, sure—although I don't say so, because.... After all, one must have some regard for people's common sense!⁴ And for eleven years, Mother never said anything (and now we well understand why Sri Aurobindo did not speak, we understand and will understand it better and better, for the whole story is absolutely "impossible"): Better not keep this—in the end they'll be worrying about my sanity! And She laughed. I feel like an egg that has yet to hatch—I mean a certain period of incubation is needed, isn't it?⁴ The incubation lasted until 1973. What happened in 1973 when She left this so-called life, which was no longer life, to enter that alleged death which was not death either? But of course, She was no longer "alive"—and had not been for a long time! And of course, She is not dead! You only die from this life.

So where is She?

And all this concerns a bodily consciousness, you see, it was not her mind that dreamed of immortality: it was her body that lived otherwise, perceived otherwise, walked otherwise and was... in something else. What is that "something else?" That other bodily, material thing. Another state of Matter in Matter?

As Mother said, there is no lack of question marks! And the reader should not think that I know the Secret but am hiding it up my sleeve—I do not know it at all! It is as if Mother, from the other side of the veil, wanted to make us discover it step by step; and this discovery would be the prelude, or perhaps the beginning of.... I dare not say. Indeed, we shall see.

Perhaps the "Hour of God" Sri Aurobindo spoke of.

Mother stammered out the third position: You get such a feeling of power, so tremendous, so FREE, so independent of all circumstances, all reactions, all events—and it doesn't depend on whether the body is this way or that. Something else.... Something else.... And she added: Only one thing depends on the body: speech, expression... who knows?..⁴ And Mother sat gazing in front of her, into the future. I wonder if this "who knows" then was not watching this pen trying to stammer out Mother's Secret? Ah, that's enough for today!⁴ And She broke off, laughing.

A corporeal life independent of the body?

But then what body?... A kind of Matter we do not know. Perhaps a Matter that is in the process of being unveiled. It is twinkling everywhere, you see.

All the same, I wanted to know more about it. If there was no longer "good health" or "illness" (and perhaps no longer "life" or "death"), then what was there, what was She feeling?... She went gropingly into the new sensation that was to become increasingly explicit with the years, but certainly, it is very "microscopic" in the beginning, there are no "miraculous" phenomena—our concept of miracles is completely beside the point; the miracle is microscopic, it lies in the cells. But if a little cell starts behaving differently from its human genetic program, it is a much more formidable miracle than flying in the air! It is exactly the beginning of another species. Now, there is the sense of an established harmony among the cells, increasingly established among the cells, which represents the right functioning, whatever that may be: it's no longer a question of a stomach or a heart or this or that...⁵ There is Harmony, and there is the old mortal state, in which you feel you have a heart or a stomach, etc., which may very well "malfunction" or "function well," as they say. If you listen to these heartbeats, then you can be sure of getting myocarditis. We must stop listening to that, we must listen to the other thing. If we listen only to the other thing, then everything is naturally well, even if the heart seems to go off into fibrillations. Still, there is the habit of listening in the old way; this habit in every nook and every gesture is precisely the whole difficulty of the transition. And the slightest thing that comes and disturbs that harmony is VERY painful.... Mother's typical euphemism to say that you feel you are dying in the old way—if you feel it too much, you actually die. But at the same time there is the knowledge of what to do to reestablish the Harmony instantly; and if the Harmony is reestablished, the functioning isn't affected.⁵ To speak concretely, it means that Mother had dozens of heart attacks or other illnesses—little daily flash-deaths—so that She could learn the mechanism of the "right functioning." She was learning the lesson of Harmony. And if the Harmony is reestablished, the functioning isn't affected. But if out of curiosity, for instance (it's a mental illness in humans), you start asking yourself, "What's that? What effect will it have? What's going to happen?" (what the body calls "the desire to learn"), if you are unlucky enough to be that way, you can be sure that you'll have something very unpleasant which, according to the doctors (according to ignoramuses), becomes an illness or disrupts the body's functioning. While if you don't have that unhealthy curiosity and, on the contrary, will the Harmony not to be disrupted, you only have to, we could say poetically [and Mother had her mischievous little smile], bring one drop of the Lord on the troubled spot for everything to be fine again. And Mother added: The body is unable to know things in the way it did formerly.⁵

To sum up, the body had to forget a whole world in order to learn the new world.

So there is a period when you are in suspense: no longer this, not yet that [No longer the fish, not yet the bird.], just in between. It's a difficult period when you have to be very quiet, very patient, and above all—above all—never become afraid or irritated or impatient, because that's catastrophic. And the difficulty is that from all quarters and without letup come all the idiotic suggestions of ordinary thinking: age, deterioration, the possibility of death—illness, dotage... decay. It comes all the time, all the time; and all the time this poor harried body has to remain very quiet and not to listen, preoccupied only with maintaining its vibrations in a harmonious state.⁵ It was Mother's eternal problem—perhaps the only problem: the little specimens surrounding her constantly pouring their suggestions or anxieties upon her—well intentioned, but nevertheless deadly. Mother's difficulty was not death, but others' thoughts of death. Nobody ever understood that. But it was probably part of the general Work because, after all, the veil had to be lifted for everyone and in everyone, otherwise what? The "opaque periphery" began right there.

The Deathless State

Slowly, cautiously, Mother was made to tread sweeping circles, and I realize that all these microscopic experiences were tending toward a certain point, or an almost imperceptible moment that links one state we call "life" to another we call "death." She was being taught the mechanism of death. Death is not sensational, it is something very small, minuscule, which makes you tip over—it is in life we must catch hold of the little death-trigger, in those few seconds of the passage: a borderline moment which is as if on both sides at once. The sensational fact of the corpse is only the magnification or end result of an imperceptible little slip that takes place at any time, in the midst of the best possible state of health. Dozens of fleeting experiences that seem to yield the key, then go away, come back again and disappear; each time you are left more perplexed, each clarification reveals another mystery.... Mother went gropingly into Death. She was not afraid, She was never afraid. We know a number of fearless human beings capable of heroism, but these minuscule, staggering pitfalls require a sort of fearlessness on a second's notice, in the cells of the body: nothing must stir there. "Equanimity" takes on its absolute meaning here. And everything seemed to revolve around that transition from the state of Harmony to the other, the state common to everybody, which Mother sometimes called the Disorder (but in fact our whole world is in a state of death; only it dies more or less swiftly. Even its "order" is as deadly as the rest, even its "good health" is as deadly as anything else; so basically it is a transition from the state of Harmony to the old, ordinary evolutionary state). A "Harmony" that obviously has very little to do with what we normally mean by the word—animals would understand better what it means, but the minute they would be able to understand, it would be spoiled instantly! That was what happened to us. This state of Harmony is in fact the supramental state. We must get out of the state of mental "understanding," which, truly speaking, understands very little (it individualizes or encages more than it understands), so that we may enter the total super-understanding that "understands" because it is the object it seeks to understand—and it does not even need to want to understand: it simply is, so automatically it knows. And because it knows, it acts automatically, unerringly. It is Harmony. Oh, nowadays I constantly make a distinction between (what shall I say?)... the straight-line, right-angle life and the undulating life. One life (a choppy one) I might describe like this: everything is sharp-edged, hard, angular, and you're constantly bumping into things; and then there's an undulatin life, very sweet, with a great charm—very charming—but not... not too stable. [Indeed, Mother was none too solid on her feet at that time.] Strange, it's a completely different kind of life.... The art of letting oneself be carried by the Supreme, within Infinity. But it is within the Infinity of the BECOMING. And with none of the harshness, none of the shocks that are ordinarily experienced in life. The art of letting oneself be carried by the Supreme within the Infinite Becoming.... Whatever comes from here [Mother touched her forehead]... it's all harsh, dry, crumpled up—it's violent, it's aggressive. Even goodwill is aggressive, even affection, tenderness, attachment—all of that, it's all terribly aggressive. Like the blows of a stick. All mental life is harsh, actually.... That's it, that's what we must catch hold of—a sort of cadence, a wave movement, and it has such vastness, such power! It's tremendous, really. And it doesn't disrupt anything. It doesn't displace anything, it doesn't clash with anything. And it carries the universe in its undulatory movement—so smoothly!... This sense of not existing, and that the only thing existing—I mean, what one customarily calls oneself—is something that grates and resists.⁶ What Mother called the "coat of thorns." The old obsolete species.

And She closed her eyes, and the little drops of words came like pearls from far, far away, as if they had to cross the reaches of space: At every moment, if I stop talking or listening or working, at every moment, it's like... great beatific wings, as vast as the world, beating slowly.... A feeling of immense wings—not two: all around and stretching out everywhere. Constantly, night and day. I participate in it only when I am tranquil. But it never leaves me. The wings of the Lord.⁷

And let there be no mistake about it: it is not a "poetic" state, it is a very practical (to say the least), bodily state, the very state that gently set little Mirra down on the flintstones at Fontainebleau. Yogis are very familiar with this power, they call it laghima: the power of lightness. Only here, it was not a "power," it was the natural state of the body. But Mother was not about to "perform miracles" and fly in the air. She was looking for something far more serious, which is the key to the true life—the something in which Death no longer is. And naturally, in that "undulatory" state, Death no longer existed, you could not die there, it was a sort of state "without wear and tear," Mother said. There was no friction, everything flowed through the body. And then rest—not a stiff and stony and stagnant rest, a rest within the undulation.... You let yourself float.⁸ And suddenly, I remembered the words Mother had told me in 1959, which at the time had seemed quite enigmatic: we must achieve a deathless state.9 Not immortality, which indeed seems quite puerile to me—for why would anyone want to remain a thousand years in the same old carcass—but a state endowed with such plasticity that it can alter the form imprisoned in its rigid cage—truly speaking, death is rigidity. The deathless state, she said, is what can be envisaged for the human physical body in the future: it is constant rebirth. Instead of again tumbling backwards and falling apart due to a lack of plasticity and an incapacity to adapt to the universal movement, the body IS UNDONE "FUTUREWARDS," as it were.⁹ It is luminous! Suddenly I understood the real meaning of the undulatory movement... the body is undone but forward. Yes, but you must still keep standing on your feet! It is the transition to the new species that is difficult. How do you "undo" yourself without undoing everything? Mother was learning the transition from the true Movement to the false movement (the one we normally live in, which is ultimately the movement of death), and vice versa, from the mortal state to the deathless state: Its like going from something crisp, precise, defined, into something soft, mellow... soft, transparent and oh, such a peace.... As if nothing in the world could resist that peace." We will indeed discover that this "peace" as well as the "undulation" have very astonishing and "miraculous" properties, but a microscopic kind of miracle that is the very miracle of the world compared to which all the powers of flying in the air are the trifles of mere mortals—nothing resists that, not even death. Death cannot be there. And I am reminded of the cyclone that could not enter Sri Aurobindo's room. Only we must find out that true Movement in the little details of everyday life; we must construct the bird inside the fish, establish it there very gradually, as it were, so that this old Matter may get accustomed and withstand the Movement without vanishing into thin air or becoming "undone" too abruptly. Looking at it in the ordinary way, externally, superficially, you might say there has been a great deterioration [in Mother's body]; well, the body doesn't feel that way at all! What it feels is that a particular movement, effort, gesture or action belongs to the world—this world of Ignorance [i.e., the world of death]—and isn't being performed in the true way: its not the true movement, done in the true way. And its sensation or perception is that the state I was speaking of soft, unctuous, with no angles, has to develop along a certain line and produce effects on the body that will make true action possible, action expressing the true will. With no difference on the surface, perhaps (I don't know about that yet)... but done in another way. And I am not talking about grandiose things, but of everyday activities, of each minute: getting up, walking, taking a bath.... There is another way to be found. But not "found "with the head, it's not like that.... A way that is somewhere in the making.

It is our third position. The state that is neither Matter as we know it nor Spirit as we conceive it, neither good health nor illness, neither "life" nor "death." The next state of bodies.

And we well understand why Mother said, "I don't know whether I am dead or alive!"

Then She added, laughing: It has come to the point where as soon as I change states I get the feeling that the body is sitting on jagged chunks of wood... and yet it is very comfortably ensconced on feather cushions! But the sense of time completely disappears into... into an inner immobility. But an immobility in motion!... If it keeps on like this, they will put me in a padded cell! I still hear her laughter like a little girl's, so clear, so amused: how funny it is!

Strange,¹⁰ she concluded.

The Wrong Position

The little vertiginous experiences were multiplying—an I think of Sri Aurobindo, seated there in his big green armchair, and of everything He must have borne and suffered, surrounded by such a total incomprehension. I do not know if the earth has ever seen so absolute an example of self-effacement. He said nothing, not a word; He answered their thousands of stupid or pretentious questions, and He lived that little death; He even let himself die without breathing a word of what He was doing for the earth—He wanted to do it, that is all. No one ever knew anything. If that is not love, then what is it?... But for all times and throughout all space, there is a great Vibration called Sri Aurobindo and which opens infinite treasures to those who love the Truth, even down to their body and in their smallest gestures. There is a secret of Matter, a secret for living in a body, a tiny and formidable secret. Mother knocked at the small doors, at all the doors, each breath of her life from 1950 on had no other purpose than to find out, to do—to wrest Sri Aurobindo from that Death, or rather to wrest the something that veils him, uproot Death from the world, and He will be here, and the world will be true. What is Death? What is it?... We are completely misled by the corpse—death comes earlier. When is it? When does it start? Where is it? Where is the root of death?... Mother was in that great rhythmic Consciousness, the consciousness of her body was flowing in it, inexplicably, as if of one movement with the body of the Earth—as if it were the body of the Earth itself. There, no death was possible, it was the deathless state, but that which boxed this body in, the shell holding all these cells together, this something that was so false and mortal but which nonetheless held that non-death, held that immensity—otherwise everything would simply have vanished into the great Indistinctionhow can we make it participate in the other, shell-less state? What impedes? The very thing that makes up death is what impedes, but what makes up death? Where is death?... Mother was going from the small body to the great Body, from death to the deathless state—it is a sort of paradox, it seems we must die in order no longer to die.... And what is it to die?

Once again, Mother had just gone through a violent little operation: It always feels as if something wants to tear the life out of the body. For three days it's been battle, battle, battle.... You see, there's no longer the slightest feeling of being "ill" or anything like that.... It's a strange sensation, a bizarre perception of both the true functioning and the functioning distorted by the sense of being an individual body. They're not even... you can't even say they're superimposed, they're almost simultaneous, and that's why it is so hard to explain.... As if the consciousness were pulled or pushed or poised in a certain way, and then, those malfunctionings instantly appear—not as a consequence: I mean the consciousness becomes AWARE of their existence. There is a fugitive secret here in this "becoming aware." And if the consciousness stays in that position long enough, there are what we conventionally call consequences: the malfunctioning has its consequences (tiny things, such as physical discomforts, for instance). And if through (is it yogic discipline, is it the Lord's intervention?... Call it what you will)... but if the consciousness regains its true position, the consequences cease IMMEDIATELY.¹¹ And little by little the experience was to become so radical that Mother would discover that incurable or chronic or even fatal illnesses could be cured or dissolved in a second (the filariasis is a case in point): It's like inverting a prism,¹² she said, as sudden, "miraculously" sudden as that, by the single fact of the true position being regained—it was really as if illness did not exist in a certain state and existed again in another state. Sometimes, though, it's like this [and Mother moved the fingers of her right hand back and forth through those of her left very rapidly], in other words, this way, then that, this way, then that... this position, then that position, this one, then that one. This movement takes only a few seconds [like going from life to death, or rather from death to life—we always confuse the direction—in a vertiginous back-and-forth movement], so I can almost perceive the two functionings simultaneously. That's what gave me the knowledge of the process, otherwise I wouldn't understand; I would simply think I am falling from one state into another.¹³ Oh!... but then it is not at all an "illness" followed by a "cure," it is something else; there seems to be a formidable secret here. That's not it, it's just.... The substance, the vibrations, everything is probably following its normal course, you see, and all that is really changing is the way consciousness perceives things. So pushing this knowledge to its limit—that is, applying it generally—life (what we usually call "life," the physical life of the body) and death are THE SAME THING, SIMULTANEOUSLY... it's just that the consciousness moves back and forth, back and forth. I don't know if I am making myself clear. But it's fantastic.¹³

It is absolutely fantastic. Life and death are simultaneous. It is not life, then death. It is not illness, then a cure. It is the same milieu of something, and in this same milieu the consciousness shifts from one position to another, from a true position to a false position. But then where is death? There is no death anywhere! Or else it exists at the same time as life, everywhere, and we go from a false position of consciousness to a true one. Death is a hardened and inveterate phenomenon of consciousness, one might say, a chronic state of false consciousness. But there is nothing in the life substance that is death. There is no "I have cancer, I have tuberculosis"; there is "I have a false position of consciousness, which produces cancer, which produces tuberculosis, which produces death." We can eliminate every conceivable illness, for not one of them is true; there is only a true consciousness and a false consciousness. There is only an illness of consciousness, a death of consciousness. And all the non-miraculous miracles are there from the minute you restore the natural, i.e., the true position. In one second, the filariasis disappears—it does not exist. In one second, you sail through Parkinson's disease, it does not exist. Death does not exist. There is no physical germ that causes death—there is no germ whatsoever. If you are in the wrong position, you can die from anything, a scratch or a draft, because the wrong position is what causes death. That is the only germ.

Mother said one becomes "aware" of the wrong functioning—one becomes "aware" of death—meaning, it comes up all of a sudden in the midst of the "normal" course of life. It is not that it was there and then you notice it: noticing it means that you have moved into the false position, so automatically, instantly there is illness or death. It is not "another" physical state: it is the same physical state, but pure, with another state of consciousness. We do not fall ill: we fall into the false position, and death is there. We become aware it.

Two positions that exactly mark the passage through the web: one is out of the web, one falls back again into the web; one is in the new species, one falls back again into the old species. The whole experience of this back-and-forth movement is the passage through the web.

But the web is on the cellular level.

That is the opaque periphery.

*And this experience comes with examples just as concrete and as utterly banal as can be. For example (it's only *ONE example), this sudden shift of consciousness takes place (something imperceptible, you can't perceive it, for ifyou had time to perceive it, I suppose it wouldn't happen), and... you feel you're going to faint, all the blood rushes from the head to the feet and: whoops! But if the consciousness is caught in time, it doesn't happen; and if its not caught in time, it does. This would tend to show... I don't know if we can generalize or if this is just one special case being worked out, but there's a very distinct impression that what ordinary human consciousness perceives as death might simply be that the consciousness hasn't been brought back to its true position fast enough. I am quite aware that all this must seem confusing; I can feel how inadequate the words and expression are for describing the experience. Perhaps it means we are drawing closer to the knowledge of the thing—by knowledge I mean the power to change it, of course. If you have power over something, it's because you know it; "knowing" a thing means being able to create it, or change it, to make it last or cease to be—in other words it is Power. That's what "knowing" means. All the rest is explanations the mind gives to itself And I can feel that something is leading me toward the discovery of that Power—that Knowledge—naturally by the only possible means: experience. And with great care, for I can feel that...¹³

So the only remaining question: what creates the wrong position?

But it is quite phenomenal... if we really look at it. And what if we became un-aware of Death?

If we really and physically realized that it does not exist... it would no longer exist. There is something twisted, false, distorted that causes the perception of death and through its perception creates and engenders death and the whole blessed sequel. But Death is nowhere, it is at no point in physical space and at no point in the physical body.

It is our perception that is deadly.

Where is the root of that particular perception?

But the problem is no longer that of changing something in Matter to prevent it from being mortal: there is something to be changed in the consciousness. It is purely a phenomenon of consciousness. Nothing is preventing this body from being immortal, nothing is preventing this world from being true—they already are true, already immortal, except for a certain perception clinging to them and covering them, which makes a tragic simulacrum of a glorious reality.

There is obviously a cage that creates the deformation.

There is a deadly cage.

A web.

But Death is dead.

There remains to "elaborate" cautiously.

And I now recall, with a kind of dizziness, those words of Mother just two years before the Mystery of 1973: I am on the way to discovering... the illusion that must be destroyed so that physical life can be uninterrupted.¹⁴

Dying to Death

You could say that birds live in a perfectly natural state but they die just the same—does death really exist for them? To notice death, an "I" is necessary in relation to which death exists, there must be an "I am dying" or "I am going to die." This is our unhappy lot (momentarily). But there is a fact of death, a stiff little body in a wheat field, and you could say that if the bird's consciousness were always in the true position, death should not exist: i.e., the corpse. Hence, somewhere death exists, even if it is felt quite differently from the way we feel it. I think that in terms of the evolutionary process, death is really no more fundamental than the external gills of the frog: death evolves, like life, it is an evolutionary device like thousands and millions of others; a moment comes when the frog no longer needs its external gills nor the caterpillar its cocoon. Up to a certain point, life needed death to break the old stagnant forms—in reality, to break the incapacity for perpetual self-development: the incapacity to progress automatically caused death. Life had millions of lives to progress with, it never died—it started to "die" with the "I" am dying. With man in his cage. That is to say, a corner, a tiny corner of life, became aware of the "I die," all the while knowing that life continues perfectly. This particular "I" is the whole mystery of the evolutionary transition from an apparently mortal individual to an individual who has acquired enough "I" to include others and the rest of the world in it, and thus no longer has any need of death—that evolutionary device—to develop in accordance with the universal rhythm. The goal of evolution is total consciousness, just as the goal of the seed is a total tree. And naturally, a form better and better adapted to the suppleness and beauty of that total Becoming. Death no longer has any reason to exist once it is replaced by another means of progress: it atrophies, it must atrophy, like a useless limb. As a matter of fact, that is what happens at all the levels of an individual human being from the moment he breaks through his own limits: a mentally conscious individual (not a parrot with a degree or one who forever repeats what he has seen and read and heard according to the old chromosomic and cultural rut, but a being conscious of the universal Mind, who has an independent mental life) does not disintegrate mentally after death, he keeps the acquired dynamism, the special form of his mental life, the imprints and memories of this life, which he carries over into another life, such as certain predispositions or spontaneous openings, certain particular talents or difficulties. This is a plain and concrete fact for all those who are a little conscious, and millions of unconscious people may deny the fact without changing it one iota! The caterpillar may forever deny the butterfly—but the caterpillar will become a butterfly one day or another. The same holds true for the emotional life that is sufficiently universalized, that has sufficiently broken its little circle of feelings to include things beyond the mere genetic circle: disintegration does not take place—one again finds the beings one truly loved and one pursues a common work. But there remains the little corpse that has never yet become a part of the universal consciousness—and as long as there remains a scrap of death somewhere, the tree will not be complete. The body is the complete proof.

We are at the stage of evolution where, thanks to the "I," we have been able to bring the body to an awareness of its own death—to be conscious of the obstacle is already the means of overcoming the obstacle (indeed the only obstacle is not knowing where the obstacle is); and where, because of this same "I," we cannot extricate ourselves from death. A transition in which the former means becomes an obstacle, just as the very qualities of the reptile were what prevented it from flying. The qualities of the old species are the obstacles for the new species. That is the whole story of evolutionary transitions. But if the proper conditions are present, death has to evolve like the rest: either go out of evolution or change into what it is hiding.

That is the whole study now under way.

In the "true position" death no longer exists. Only, the entire body has to know it: when the body is wholly true, it will be wholly outside death. Indeed only Falsehood dies, being the very essence of Death. What is true does not die, at any level whatever, not even at the bodily level. And what is Falsehood in a body? The Falsehood is the cage. The "I-am-all-alone-in-this-little-body-separated-from-the-world-and-others." It is the cage that makes up death. We must become "undone forward," Mother said. And it is the unprogressing cage of the bird or any stagnant species unable to get out of its two wings or four paws or fins that makes up death. It is another type of cage than our own. It is not the same death. There is no such thing as "death": there is but a certain phenomenon of life that has to make a detour in order to still continue living and continue developing because we tend to enclose it. Fundamentally it is not a cellular phenomenon: it is a phenomenon of life flowing wrongly. Death is not the opposite of life! Mother exclaimed after one of her experiences. At that moment I understood, and I never forgot: death is NOT the opposite of life, it is not the opposite of life.¹⁵

But the mystery is much greater than we think, and perhaps much simpler also. A strange experience happened to Mother on the occasion of the death of a disciple who fell while walking in meditation: He took a fall, probably because he fainted, and fractured his skull: "loss of consciousness" due to cerebral hemorrhage (that's modern science speaking!). When the accident occurred, he came to me (not in a precise form, but in a state of consciousness I immediately recognized), and stayed here motionless, in complete trust and blissful peace—motionless.... They tried, fought, operated: no movement, nothing moved. Then one day they declared him dead.... And he was here [near Mother] the whole while, immutable. Then suddenly I felt a kind of shudder; I looked—he was gone. I was busy and didn't note the time, but it was in the afternoon.... Later I was told that they had decided to cremate him, and had done so at that time.... The violence of the accident had brutally exteriorized him, but when it happened he must have been thinking of me with trust. He came and didn't budge—he never knew what was happening to his body. He didn't know he was dead! And if... Then and there I said to myself "This habit of cremating people is appallingly brutal!"He didn't know he was dead and THAT'S HOW he learned it!... From the reaction of the life of the form in the body.... [Let us note here that what Mother calls "the life of the form" is in fact the cellular consciousness, what remains in a mummy, for instance, if it is well preserved and enables you to have a conscious contact with it, as Mother had in the Guimet Museum. Thus, that man learned he was "dead" through the violent reaction of the cells being burned]. Given the state he was in, it made NO difference to him whether he was dead or alive; that's what was interesting! He remained in a blissful, trusting, peaceful state. He would never have known he was dead.¹⁶

This was like a revelation for Mother... a revelation in her body, not in her head! I immediately said to myself "But he was still existing, living, having the experience, absolutely INDEPENDENT of his body—he didn't need his body to have his experience. "¹⁶ So then, what was that "body" they cremated? And that other "body" which continued to have its experience independent of the one being cremated...? Is there therefore a body of cellular consciousness, as it were, independent of the life and "death" of the material body we see—a false matter perhaps? And a true one in which we go on living? It is a question yet to be clarified, but the point, the sudden revelation, is that Mother remembered her own transit in the reverse direction—no longer from life to "death," like the disciple, but from so-called "death" to life—during the experience in April 1962 when She was as if dead, disappeared in those great Pulsations on the other side of the web, then "brought back to life".... And at the moment of transit, just as She was about to come back to her body (which they had not yet had time to bury), She saw or perceived something indefinable and luminous, which was like the total Secret: We have only to die unto death, and that will be that!... To die unto death, TO BECOME

INCAPABLE OF DYING BECAUSE DEATH HAS NO MORE REALITY.... It was clear and... stunningly powerful. And the same impression: easy, easy. There's really no question of hard or easy—it's spontaneous, NATURAL, and so smiling. And that "to die unto death" was filled with such joy! Such joy.... I could almost have said, "It's plain as day! Don't you see how plain it is! But that's it: we have only to die unto death, and that will be that *.¹⁷

Like when you are within an inch of something: "That's it! I'm going to catch it, that's it!..." A few seconds' experience which gave me the sense that the most central problem was solved. And then...¹⁸

And then everything vanishes—one falls back into death. It was a question of cells and of the consciousness in the cells,Th Mother concluded.

A consciousness in the cells for which death is unreal, does not exist.... To become conscious of death is dying. Something becomes conscious of death and dies—it dies because it becomes conscious of it. Because it slips into the false position. But then, we must learn to forget death while living (and not afterwards, like that disciple!). The body must learn to forget death—the minute it forgets, death no longer exists. We must live where the consciousness of death no longer exists. There are, as it were, two layers in the body: a cellular layer for which death does not exist, and the other... the crust. The opaque periphery. There is a sort of Wall in the body between two types of life. There is an illusion of death on the surface—we must lose the illusion, and that's it! We must die to death. There is no such thing as death, there is a veil of something that causes death. A true position, a false position. And easy, it is easy!... natural. A change of position to be carried out in the body.

But even so it is the body that must understand this.

What I mean by "understand" is having the power to do and undo, that's what I call "to understand": And in the present case, the conscious power would mean the power to give or prevent death equally; to effect the necessary movement of forces—almost... almost an action on the cells, a mechanical action on the cells. With that power, you can give death, you can prevent death. You can easily stop the thing from going this way or that way; you can go like that or like this or like that [Mother made a gesture of pulling the consciousness to one side or the other].¹⁹

A veil to be lifted in the material consciousness of the earth. A tilt into the true position.

Nothing to change. Only the position of consciousness to change. The world is the same, and everything is true. Life is the same, and death no longer is. Death is the Falsehood of the world... a necessary illusion to overcome the illusion of mental individualization, to give it the strength and the need to break out of its own entrapment.

Of course, it would mean a new phase for life on earth.¹⁹

And I clearly see a curve, a curve of experience leading to the point where death no longer means anything. Then we'll be able to say, "Now it no longer makes sense." Only at that point can we be sure.... You can conquer death only when it no longer makes sense.²⁰

Such is the true position. The position in which death no longer makes sense.

Not an intellectual position: a cellular position.

An obscure cellular periphery to be cured or purified.