Mother or The New Species - II

19. False Matter

The Earth's Illness

Mother was living this passage from one "room" to the other or from one time to the other (or rather from a non-time to a painful space) minute after minute and in the most frightful conditions possible—but probably what is "frightful" is only a reaction of our human sentimentality and the conditions were exactly what they had to be for the task to be complete. We are always in the best possible conditions—only the true story eludes us and we struggle against a difficulty that is really our great secret Door. She was winning this non-time in the midst of a ferocious time and certainly not in the blissful meditations of a little sylvan Ashram. The new life is most decidedly in the midst of life. She had thought that the "illness" of 1962 had been meant to free her from the "infernal" life She had downstairs: her life became a hundred times more infernal. Instead of the "problem" being spread over a certain physical space with corridors, doors and rooms, everything was now concentrated in a single room with no exit, except for a bathroom which served as passageway to a small "music room" where She received visitors... and where at times, bent over the keyboard, eyes closed, slightly swaying on her stool, She would give herself over to her organ, and we listened to a strange music that was like a bath of the soul, as if one was running through weightless spaces, something that spoke so deeply within that it was like recognizing an old well-known Country, where one had lived a thousand times and where one flowed like a little river—one could have flowed there for ever. And everything was said. Everything was done, there. Perhaps it was non-time. We run off far, but everything is here. Perhaps it was the music of the new world, yes, that silvery light, sparkling like the light pulsation of the cells freed from their thorny coating. But even the music room would soon close, and the whole problem would be implacably concentrated in a 300 square feet space—there was no getting out! One had to get out within, but a within that was not "inner," for She was no more comfortable with her eyes closed than with her eyes open: They leave [my body] in peace physically, but mentally they don't!¹ Truly, another way of being in life. 150 or 200 people to see every day until 1973, except for the periods when the pendulum went a bit too far and the body would go through death, as in 1968, the second great Turning Point. An incredible and unthinkable life for any human being, even in his prime. They have a RIGHT to come—and it is my DUTY to see them. And when I say that I don't have the time... they're upset. It's a farce, you know! And that farce has been going on since 1929.... Yoga is simply out of the question! It's a hundred thousand miles away from their consciousness (their mouths are full of words, but it's only lip service).² But if I weren't in those conditions, a lot of things would be overlooked, a lot. A lot of things would remain undone. There are all kinds of vibrations that aren't in affinity with this aggregate [Mother's pointed to her own body] and that would never have had an opportunity to touch the transforming Force if I weren't in contact with all the people.³

For it is not the cage of one particular being, it is the cage of the world. The nearer She came to the heart of the problem, the more global the problem would appear to her. Up above, in the cosmic expanses, one can find individual freedom (or the illusion of freedom), but here in Matter the problem is utterly ONE. And what seems as a colossal impossibility is perhaps the very sign of a stunning simplicity—only someone has to find the passage, the trigger... the pendulum for the whole world. She was going through the phenomenon step by step: There are all kinds of things.... One, for instance, which I have often observed: an illness is triggered, or a disorder is triggered.... Let's say that a certain number of cells give way; for some reason or other, they submit to the disorder—obey the disorder—and a particular POINT becomes "ill." But that intrusion of Disorder makes itself felt everywhere, it has repercussions everywhere: wherever there is a weaker point which doesn't resist the attack so well, it manifests. Take someone who is in the habit of getting headaches, or toothaches, or a cough, whatever, a host of little things of that sort that come and go, increase and decrease. But if there is an attack of Disorder somewhere, a serious attack, all those little troubles reappear instantly, here, there, there.... And the opposite movement follows the same pattern: if you are able to bring to the attacked spot the true Vibration—the Vibration of Order and Harmony—and you stop the Disorder... all the other things are put back in order, as if automatically. I am speaking here of the body's cells, but it's the same thing with external events, even with world events. It's even remarkable with regard to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc.: it would seem that the entire earth is like the body; that is to say, if one point gives way and manifests Disorder, all the sensitive points suffer the same effect. From the human standpoint, in a crowd, it's extraordinarily precise: the contagion of a vibration—especially vibrations of disorder (but the others, too). It is an absolutely concrete demonstration of Oneness. It's very interesting. It is something I have observed on the level of the body's cells hundreds and hundreds of times. And then, you no longer have at all that mental impression of one "disorder added to another, which makes the problem more difficult—that's not it at all, its... if you get to the center, all the rest will be naturally restored to order. An absolutely concrete demonstration of Oneness. And it is this knowledge of Oneness that gives you the key. People wonder how, for instance, the action of one man or of one thought can restore order—this is how. Not that you have to think of all the troubled spots, no: you have to get to the center.⁴

And the earth's illness will be cured.

A Thin Onion Skin

More and more one had the feeling that this "center" was there, at the threshold of the cells, at the transition from one state to the other: Of course, when we start thinking of all the zones, all the universal planes of consciousness, and that He's way, way, way up there at the end of all that, well... then it does become very far, very far indeed! she said, laughing. But if we think of Him as being everywhere, in everything, that He is everything, that only our way of perceiving things keeps us from seeing and feeling Him, and all we have to do is this [and Mother tilted her hand in one direction and then in the other], then it gets to be quite concrete: you go like this and everything becomes artificial—hard, dry, false, deceptive, artificial; you go like that [Mother tilted her hand], and all is vast, tranquil, luminous, peaceful, immense, joyous. And it's merely this... or that—How? Where? It can't be described, but it is solely—solely—a movement of consciousness, nothing else. And the difference between the true and the false consciousness becomes more and more... precise and at the same time THIN: you don't need to do "great" things to get out of it. Before [before 1962], there used to be a feeling of living within something and that a great effort of interiorization, concentration, absorption was needed to get out of it; but now I feel it's something one accepts, something like a thin little rind, very hard—malleable, but very hard, very dry, very thin, very thin... something like a mask you put on—then you go like this [Mother tilted her hand], and it's gone.... I foresee a time when it will no longer be necessary to be aware of the mask. 5 But that's it! Something in us becomes aware of the wrong way: an awareness that amounts to catching the illness, the falsehood, the disorder, or death—and not a single microbe! A microbe of consciousness, or a microscopic consciousness, something very microscopic and very thin, but sticky. And Mother added: The mask will be so thin that we can see and feel and act through it, and it won't be necessary to put it back on. That's what is starting to happen.⁵

This "mask" over one's perception, this little membrane, is an extraordinarily interesting phenomenon with incredible ramifications. One feels one is touching the world's suffocation there, and it does not take much: a tiny pinch of it is enough. Mother was going to deal with that tiny pinch for years in order to find the mechanism. A sort of reversal of consciousness that reverses all material conditions, and in fact reverses the whole condition of the human species. One goes into the "room" of the new species. Only one must not be obsessed with greatness: the phenomenon must be unearthed in the minutest vibration, there where it takes root. Every day she would perform the operation again and again with the little specimens around her. For instance, in this true Consciousness (what Sri Aurobindo called the Truth-Consciousness and Mother sometimes called, in the manner of the Vedic Rishis, the Straight Consciousness, ritam, because there everything is simple, straight, immediate, all-powerful, just as it really is, i.e., the all-powerful simplicity without even our thinking of it, it is automatic and automatically true), in this Straight Consciousness, She would say to a disciple: go and see so and so and tell him such and such in order to obtain such and such a thing. If the disciple is perfectly transparent, if nothing moves or questions in his consciousness, he goes, speaks the words and the thing is done instantly, quite simply. If the person has an active mental consciousness, Mother said, he sees the difficulties, sees the problems to be resolved, sees all the complications—naturally, they all occur! So according to the proportion (everything is a question of proportion, always), according to the proportion, it creates complications, it takes time, the thing is delayed, or, a little worse, it is distorted, it doesn't occur exactly as it should, or, finally, it doesn't occur at all—there are many, many degrees, but it all belongs to the domain of complications (mental complications) and desire. Whereas the other way is immediate. Then people tell you, "Oh, you've worked a miracle!" No miracle was worked: it should always be that way. It's because the intermediary did not add himself to the action.⁶ The bird does not add itself to the Action, and it goes straight to its unseen goal; there is an "I " that adds itself and everything is instantly turned aside and twisted—a mental "I." The membrane. The membrane that sees every possible complication: a mask over the direct perception which is at the same time the action and the power of doing what is perceived—to perceive there means to be able to do automatically what is perceived. It can even extend to a terrestrial action.... There are examples, in the terrestrial action, of things that were done in that way: no one ever understood how it was done or why it was done—just like that, so simply, very simply, it all worked out. ²⁰⁰ And in other cases, to obtain a mere visa or permit, you have to move heaven and earth! So, from the smallest thing, the slightest physical discomfort, to the most global action, it's all the same principle; it all boils down to the same principle.⁶

A straight vibration, a crooked vibration. The Action is in a way distorted as it goes through the membrane, as if it were entering a different, deforming medium. It is what I had called "the fishbowl" before. It's like a thin film of difficulties, of complications, added on by the human consciousness⁷. And it reminds me of that "big brother" who so much wanted to "simplify" the passage across the river by inventing some fantastic boat, while it was enough to say, "I wish." The animal doesn't have that, Mother added, its something specific to man and the mental function, it's something very thin—as thin as an onion skin, as dry as an onion skin—yet it spoils everything... that stupid "onion skin" of human mentality. Its an "onion skin": all our difficulties are onion skins. An onion skin, you know: its terribly thin, but nothing can get through!

The whole change of the world lies in that microscopic passage when the Ray is suddenly distorted. And there are no "big things" to do to get out of it. But it must be done at the cellular level, right where the Mind is enmeshed in Matter. Now, the closer She came to the cellular level, the more Mother discovered the microscopic enormity, if I may say so, or the microscopic universality of the problem, really a very little universal nothing: Over the entire material creation there is a tissue—which we might call catastrophic—a tissue of bad will. That is to say, a sort of web [the first time Mother had used the word was eight years earlier], yes, a defeatist web defeatist, catastrophic—where you botch what you wanted to do, where there are all possible accidents, all possible bad wills. Like a web. And the body is being taught to get out of it. It's as if mingled with the Force that realizes and expresses itself; it's like something mingling with the material creation. And the body is being taught to break free from it. But it's difficult, very difficult. It's the cause of diseases, the cause of accidents—it's the cause of all destructive things. And this web is there constantly, all the time, like that, enveloping the earth.⁸

A little stupid and mortal skin enveloping the whole earth. An opaque epidermis that separates the material level (that which we know and call "Matter") from the cellular level.

And finally, what is this milieu we call "Matter"?

Can one body undo the web for the whole body of the earth—and is such a thing possible without a formidable trauma?

Illusionism in Reverse

Up until 1968 is a strange period in which Mother was feeling her way between two worlds in search of the new species, or the new type, with all the vertigo that results from leaving a "solid" world for a new world whose laws She did not know very well. But what is it we call "solidity" if not a crystallized habit? For fish, water is perfectly solid. The world is but a huge habit. Hence it would be more accurate to speak of a change of Milieu. You do not invent a Milieu: it is and has been forever. It is an eternal Milieu we live in with different habits, seemingly aquatic or land-bound, but that water and that land are merely the different ways of touching and seeing by a certain consciousness which keeps growing and, as it grows, breaks through the limits of its present milieu and gradually begins touching, seeing and living in another way. It is the ever purer or more total discovery of the eternal Milieu: laws are temporary little walking sticks, a habit along the way. It is the gradual discovery of the great Law that makes all the little laws along the way. Evolution is the conscious discovery of the great Milieu and of the great Law: the thousands and millions of little aggregates, each discovering the wonder of the great All they are. Man is the individualized transition from the great totality unconscious of itself, devoid of self-reflection, you could say, like the bird and all the little creatures, to the great totality conscious of its multiplicity in unity: the return to the great Natural of the world from which they had temporarily cut themselves off in order to evolve this little reflective or reflecting facet. This painful screen is our great "cosmic accident," our so-called fall from earthly paradise. But the earthly paradise is perfectly here; we do not need heaven, we need only to find the great Consciousness again, the true Milieu, the total Law. We need to find again what we are. Our great pain is not to be what we are, there is no other. Then all the little crystallized habits will vanish in the great, happy Rhythm, the immediate Knowledge, the Power to become what we see. It is the great transition from the distorted consciousness in its distorted individual milieu to the Straight Consciousness, the Exact Consciousness, the Truth-Consciousness, which we may call the Divine or the Lord or whatever we wish—the important thing is to taste it.

Indeed, it can be tasted: It was as if I was plunged in a bath of the Supreme's Love.... [For the body it is a bath, it is not a sentiment.] And it's a kind of homogenous vibratory mass, immobile, yet with an unparalleled intensity of vibration, which can be described as a warm, golden light. And then, its everywhere at once, everywhere always the same, without alternations of high and low, unchanging, in an unvarying intensity of sensation. And that "something"... is at the same time absolute immobility and absolute intensity of vibration. And That... loves. There is no "Lord," there are no "things"; there is no subject, no object. And That loves. But how can you say what That is?... It impossible. And That loves everywhere and everything, all the time, all at the same time. And once you've lived That... you become so irrevocably conscious that everything depends on the individual perception, entirely; and naturally, that individual perception depends on the inadequacy, the inertia, the incomprehension, the incapacity, the cells' inability to hold and keep the Vibration, anyway all that man calls his "character" and which comes from his animal evolution. But HE is there, He is there, right there! He is there permanently: it's THE Permanence. The Permanence Buddha sought is there. He claims he found it in Nirvana—it is there, in Love. It's there, it's there, it's there—it is there. And it's for things themselves that it's impossible to feel more of it than they can bear. The world of tomorrow, or of the day after tomorrow... an inexpressible glory.... I don't know if this world (I am not talking of the earth alone, but of the present universe), if this world will be followed by others or if it will itself go on, or if... but That, which I am talking about and calling "Love," is the Master of this world. The day when the earth (because we were promised it, and they aren't vain promises), the day the earth manifests That, it will be a glory.... Its rather curious: the vital world is magnificent, the mental world has its splendors, the overmental world with all its gods (who are extant beings, I know them well) is truly very beautiful; but I tell you, since I had that Contact, I have found all that hollow—hollow and... lacking the essential. And that essential thing, in its principle, is here, on earth.⁹

It is an experience of the body, of the cells.

What did the apes call "God"? Probably lightning, thunder... something very natural and material. What we call "God" is perhaps more natural and material—and less stupid—than our Mental Age imagines. O Aristophanes of the universe,. .. ¹⁰ Sri Aurobindo said.

But the transition to the great Consciousness, to the true and total Milieu, is quite "surprising" for an animal body which sees its old habits crumbling and from time to time sets foot in a perfectly illegal Wonder: it is not philosophy, you see, it is physiology. Only, it is not always easy to learn another physiology. Mother was learning the physiology of the new species, but She was learning it in reverse, so to speak: not what the other one is, but what this one is when it no longer has its old habits. It is only at the end, probably, when all the old habits have left us, that we will say: Oh, so this is the other one! When nothing else remains but That. In a word, She was uncovering step by step the illusory falsehood (or temporary truth), of the old habits of the human milieu; She was unlearning all the laws. An interesting subject matter for the disciples of Newton, Lavoisier, Claude-Bernard, Niels Bohr and all the tribe who have codified our whole blessed or cursed affair. I have a very strong impression that "one" wants us to learn something. Very strong. And I don't know what it is. It's... something like the secret of the functioning. There's a constant demonstration, through all kinds of little facts, that the process we conceive of or understand, or have accepted, is false, not in conformity with reality, and one wants to make us find, discover—but discover WHILE LIVING IT—the true process of the Manifestation: ²⁰¹: the why and the how. And that's the state of consciousness I am in all the time. I am there as if pushing and pushing....¹¹

In fact, She was pushing against the walls of the cage, or the mesh of the web, and each time it gave way a little, it seemed as if all the legal or at least reasonable laws, were volatilized—a microscopic volatilization, a little pinch of "miracle." And so the question was becoming very precise: what is "Matter," after all? As if it were no longer so sure. Rather like a fish beginning to fly and wondering: but what is water, after all? For in effect, we do not know at all what Matter is because we are completely in it, body and soul.

A fish can understand nothing about its water, except that it certainly swims in it quite well. But here, it is still more radical because it is not like a fish coming out of a particular form of Matter to enter another, even flying, form of Matter, it is... something else. Yes, another Milieu which we can say is the real constituent of all the possible forms of Matter, and in which what we term "Matter" is decidedly... something else; and yet this Milieu is material: after all, Mother had a body like everyone else, She was not pure spirit! And it is this material body which was beginning to perceive its own materiality in a different way. Suddenly, or progressively, She was discovering a kind of illusionism that was not Buddhist: it was cellular. What others had discovered at the apex of consciousness, leaving the universe to its sorry illusion or its "vale of tears," She was discovering in her body—but with an extraordinary Reality underneath, we could say an extraordinarily different kind of "Matter." And it was not even "underneath," not something "behind" our material illusion; no, it was within, in the very heart of the "illusion," it was the same thing, the same Matter, but otherwise. As if all were seen and lived with the wrong eyes or senses. A superimposition of falsehood over a real fact, she said. What we see is not THE thing; it's a reflection, a distorted image in our consciousness. The thing itself EXISTS outside this reflection, and in that existence it doesn't have the character we attribute to it.¹²

It is strange: a kind of concrete illusionism—an illusionism in reverse. As the mirage in the desert dissolves, the man dying of thirst sees his golden city vanish into the sands: there was no city. Here, the mirage vanishes and there is a city! It was the mirage that prevented us from seeing the beautiful golden city.

So here we are, in the desert, seeking the real city of men—seeking, perhaps, our true skin.

To begin touching the other thing one must have a great thirst for the other thing. One must push and push against the meshes of the net.

A thin skin of falsehood to peel off.

And the true functioning of the world.

Vertical Time

Among those thousands of experiences or operations, it is difficult indeed to say which ones count, because they all count for something we do not know. The Agenda is a veritable laboratory log, and I think of those metallurgists throwing their useless samples out into the laboratory courtyard till one day, amid the heap of rust, one of them noticed a sample shining, without a trace of rust: it was stainless steel. All our real discoveries are accidental, we dare say, because we do not know what is to be discovered. I am praying to Mother that She will not let us throw Peru overboard, thinking it is yet another piece of useless forest. And actually, Mother was making a somewhat similar discovery: She was discovering the nondiscovery, as it were.

Something as yet imperceptible had stolen into her along with that sort of change of time or state of "massive immobility" which seemed to have bizarre properties: another Vibration, which She called the Straight Vibration or the Vibration of Supreme Love, or... another way of being of life. At any level whatsoever, there is always a goal. We here speak of the "supramental realization" as the goal. Just recently, though, I don't know what happened, but something seemed to take hold of me... with this perception of the Supreme who is everything, everywhere, who does everything—what has been, what is, what will be, what is being done—everything. And suddenly there was a kind of... not a thought or a feeling, it wasn't that; it was rather like a state: the unreality of the goal—not "unreality," uselessness. Not even uselessness: the non-existence of the goal. And even this will that remains in the body to undergo the experience—even this has gone! It's... something.... I don't know. There used to be a kind of mainspring, which had its raison d'être and so persisted: do this to arrive at that, and this leads to that (it's more subtle, of course); but this mainspring suddenly seems to have been abolished, because it became useless. Now a kind of absoluteness prevails at each and every second,- in each movement, from the most subtle, the most spiritual, to the most material. The sense of linking has disappeared: that isn't the "cause" of this, and this isn't done "for" that; there is no "there" one is heading towards—it all seems.... Is this, perhaps, how the Supreme sees?... Perhaps that is what his perception is, the supreme perception: an absolute. An absolute—innumerable, perpetual and simultaneous....¹³ Its like those pulsations in my experience two years ago [1962], the pulsations of Love bursting forth and creating the world, which followed one another but had neither cause nor effect: one pulsation wasn't the result of the one before or the cause of the one after—not at all—each one was a whole in itself Each moment of the Supreme is a whole in itself..¹⁴ The sense of connection has gone, the sense of cause and effect has gone—all that belongs to the world of space and time. Each... each what? What is that "that"? You can't say a amovement," you can't say a "state of consciousness," you can't say a "vibration" (all this still belongs to our ordinary mode of perception), so you say "thing"—"thing" means nothing. Each "thing" carries in itself its own absolute law.¹⁵

Which is to say that everything that constitutes the foundation and the sense of connection of our laws of Matter was disappearing. Our "laws" are the inferred consequence based on the repetition of the same phenomenon: there is no such thing as a same phenomenon! There is an ever-new phenomenon. Each "second" [if we can speak of seconds] has its own law. But then, it is a marvelous universe! Each second is new! Each second is free! There is no "I am eighty-nine years old tomorrow": I am zero years old at each "instant"! There is no "I have to bear tuberculosis for the next four years": I am cured of tuberculosis before having caught it, or at the very moment I catch it: it simply does not exist. All diseases are the diseases of time. Our time is very diseased.

As Mother says, The solution comes ahead of the problem.¹⁶

This kind of connection [horizontal] doesn't exist; it's like this [and Mother made a vertical gesture].... Something which has neither cause nor effect, nor prolongation nor intention—intention of what! There is nothing "to be done"!... Its like this [and Mother made the same vertical gesture].¹⁷

A vertical time.

But what is most important is that this experience is an experience of the body, of the consciousness of the body—were it taking place up there in the mind, the Mind could easily wander round and round endlessly in eternal timelessness, and continue down here to be eighty-nine years old + 1 day + 2 days + the grave. But if the body feels that, lives that...? Probably such was the experience under way. The body had to live that continuously without "tilting" from one room to the other, from one state to the other, from a straight vibration to a crooked vibration, from a timeless time to a diseased time. Because obviously, if the body, if Matter can live that... it upsets everything. Mother was beginning to be "upset" more and more—and strangely enough (or maybe not), the earth along with her. Human beings, she further said, always do a thing FOR something, with a goal, for a reason, from a motive; even spiritual life, even spiritual effort are FOR the progress of consciousness, FOR reaching the Truth, for... it's a vibration that always has a tail—a tail in front. And these cells have realized that if you can have the vibration without the tail, the power increases tenfold—"tenfold" is nothing! At times the difference is fantastic.¹⁸

And in this "vertical time" Matter was beginning to be very... slippery, or bizarre—fluid. That is where the Agenda starts to become a magical forest. But a microscopic kind of magic, or rather the reverse of magic: as if a formidable Evil Spell were being undone, minutely. It is not that "miracles" happen, rather, the Evil Spell vanishes, at one point or another. And so things become quite naturally miraculous. There is nothing to "do," only to be... naturally. Only, our body is not at all natural, that is the problem. To be That: when you are That, everything changes, not subjectively but objectively, materially. It is these microscopic phenomena, by the tens and hundreds, day after day, that make up a forest with incredible chasms of light, and sometimes bewildering question marks. For these little "pinches" of miracle or breaks in the Evil Spell occur in the body, you see... but the body means a lot of people, perhaps the whole world. So?... It is the great Web. To undo the web of the world? Perhaps it was what Mother was looking at one day, her eyes closed, bent over, one hand over her mouth as was often her way, while I sat at her feet on the thick golden carpet; abruptly, She looked at me or rather through me, with that immense look of blue infinity, like the eyes of Sri Aurobindo toward the end, and She began speaking in English (So very often, I hear Sri Aurobindo speaking), it was Sri Aurobindo speaking: After some time I will be able to say... [for a long time Mother sat gazing in front of her, perhaps at the flame tree with its yellow flowers in front of the open window] what is meant exactly by the unreality of this apparent matter." Then, after one of those long silences which seemed so substantially made of infinity, as if infinity were actually there, in the quality of the air, but such a light air, She added in French: I have the impression... the impression of being on the verge of finding a key—a key or a "trick"... a procedure (I don't know how to put it: all this is popularization), but something which, if you got hold of it without being wholly on the true side... in one second you could be the cause of a frightful catastrophe. That's why the integral preparation of the consciousness must go side by side with the perception of the Power. And then, there are such subtle differences... an insignificant, almost imperceptible tiny little movement could bring about catastrophe. What catastrophe? I don't know.... Something like a dissolution of the world.¹⁹

The dissolution of the world or of the Web? The "unreality" of our apparent Matter? Real Matter unveiled?

So you stand there, as if on an invisible borderline, with an extraordinary, almighty Power which, at the same time, makes you know and prevents you from knowing, with extraordinary tiny subtleties of movement so nothing may happen too soon, that is, before everything is ready.¹⁹

This was in 1967, the first Israeli war and China's first thermonuclear explosion.

We seem to be at the core of the problem There is but one single body.

The Unrealization of Falsehood

The farther Mother progressed, the closer it seemed She was getting to something very simple and at the same time very mysterious, something that seemed impossibly. easy. Perhaps the universe is nothing but an easy supreme impossibility—it must certainly be easy for "someone" or in some way, though that way remains to be found. For instance, the tilting to the "other room": Mother was discovering that it was not really another room! There too, something was simplified, brought closer, as if all the walls of impossibility were only in our consciousness or in our way of looking. Oneness is simple; whenever something appears to us "other" or "different" or "beside the point" or even "not part of that," we are mistaken, because everything is That, directly—only wrongly seen, wrongly lived, or wrongly felt. In a certain state, the state which corresponds to That, the essential state, everything is harmonious, with a living, smiling, happy peace; then as soon as there is... a nothing, you know, simply the coming into the atmosphere of something clashing—a mere nothing—it's felt like something extremely acute and painful. Everyone has explained it in his own way: some have called it "falling from the Truth into Falsehood," others "falling from the Light into Darkness," others "falling from Ananda [joy] into suffering," yet others... [the doctors would call it falling ill]. *Everyone has given his explanation, but it's something else.... As for me, I have no words for it, but the body feels it, feels it very acutely, and it sees that at the end of it, the consequence of it, is disintegration. And its whole effort is to strive to re-establish that inner Harmony, that state in which everything becomes harmonious, everything—and in their appearance things haven't changed! Yet in one way they are marvelous, and in the other detestable. The opposition between the two things is growing sharper every minute: one moment everything is divine, the next moment everything is detestable—yet its the same thing. But then, it has nothing to do with thought, or even with sensation: its purely material [here Mother touched her body]; it's the difference between a progressive and unbroken harmony that has no reason to stop... "something"... something so natural, so natural and... with the rhythm of eternity. So there is THAT, and then suddenly you fall back into... exactly THE SAME THING. Everything is the same thing, yet everything is the opposite! To such a point that you have a perception, a material perception... of a perfect Harmony which can, in the consciousness*, turn into a serious disease!²⁰

You fall back into the same room. The same room divided by what? There is only a difference of consciousness or perception which has nothing really subjective about it, it is very "concrete," since in one case there is death at the end, and in the other, uninterrupted Harmony. Indeed, death and life at the same time, in the same room. A perception of death, a perception of life, but no perception of a something that is death: it is the perception itself that is death.

And this other "state" is not even a state of consciousness: It's a WAY OF BEING, not even a "way of consciousness" because that implies "being conscious OF something" and it's not that: it's a way of being. And that way of being is what, in the human consciousness, translates as "Ah, the Divine!— by opposition. It's a perfectly natural and spontaneous way of being.²¹ Ultimately, the Divine is the most natural thing in the world. Which is why we do not recognize it, unless a certain dose of philosophical and religious falsehood is added to it. But how does That become this? How does That become distorted?... You constantly, constantly [and Mother made a minuscule and ceaseless back-and-forth movement in the air], switch from one to the other, back and forth, over and over again, as if to learn—to learn how That eludes: the mechanism.²¹

A harmony that becomes a fatal illness? We are undoubtedly standing on the borderline of a certain illusion. A frightfully concrete illusion. As Mother said with her unfailing humor: Go tell someone who is suffering from a renal colic that his pain is an illusion! How shall we disillusion pain and death, that is the question?

And who is the illusionist?

The experience was going on, in countless ways, microscopically, not only in her but in all the sick little specimens around her. *All of a sudden, for two or three seconds, you seem to be holding the key. And all that's conventionally called "miracle" looks like the simplest thing in the world: "But it's perfectly simple, all you have to do is this!"And then... it goes away. And once its gone, you try and try—absolutely useless. But when it's there, it's so simple, so natural! And absolutely all-powerful.... One thing that seems to be trying to come is the power to heal. But not at all as it's described, its not that at all—it doesn't give a sense of "healing," you understand. It's... putting things back in order. But that's not it either.... It's a little something that disappears, and *that little something is... essentially it's the Falsehood. It very strange. Basically, it's what gives the ordinary human consciousness the sense of reality. That's what must disappear. What we call "concrete," a "concrete reality"... yes, what truly gives you the sense of real existence—that's what must disappear and be replaced by.... It's inexpressible. I remember, when I came back after having BEEN those bursts—those pulsations, those bursts of creative Love, when I returned to the ordinary consciousness, well, that state, is... That which must replace here this consciousness of concrete reality—which is, which becomes unreal: its like something lifeless—hard, dry, inert, lifeless. And to our ordinary consciousness that's what gives us the impression, "This is concrete, this is real." Well, "this," this sensation, is what must be replaced by the phenomenon of consciousness of that Pulsation. And That is at the same time all-light, all-power, all-intensity of love, and such fullness! And when That is here, in the body, in the cells, then all you have to do is focus It on someone or something, and order is instantly restored in the person or the thing. So, translated into ordinary words, it "heals." It heals the disease. But it doesn't heal it: it annuls it.... Yes, it annuls it. Any disease, any disease whatsoever. It UNREALIZES it.²¹

To unrealize death.

But does it not also "unrealize" our life? Because we appreciate all this "concreteness," after all, we have not the faintest desire to go off into a hazy world of consciousness, even if it is very real in another way—we are very attached to this terrestrial way, otherwise why on earth would we have come to this damned planet in the first place? And Mother was smiling, She read me like an open book: She played at being other than me, outwardly, there in her chair. And it doesn't abolish anything, that's the most wonderful part! Everything is there, nothing is abolished.²² Only Falsehood is unreal, not the world.²³ It's only a phenomenon of consciousness. I mean it abolishes nothing of the Manifestation; you don't even feel that Falsehood is abolished: it doesn't exist, there isn't any. Everything can remain exactly as it is; it becomes only a question of choice. Everything becomes a question of choice: you choose this way, choose that way.... And in a splendor of joy, of beauty, of harmony, a plenitude of luminous consciousness in which there is no darkness anymore: it no longer exists. And it truly is, so to say, the choice between life and death.... If it could be translated into words, that ineffable Presence seems to be saying, "You see, I was always there, and you didn't know it." And it's lived at the very heart of the cells: "You see, you know that I was always there, but you didn't know it." And then.... It's a tiny nothing—which changes everything. That's how a dead man can come back to life.²⁴

But how does that consciousness of non-death work, where can we catch hold of it? What did Mother practically do to "unrealize" the damned thing? The condition of all the cells (the vibrations that make up this body) is undeniably what makes the healing possible or not; that is, depending on the body's condition, it serves either as a transmitter, or on the contrary as an obstruction. Because it's not a "higher force" acting in others THROUGH Matter: its a direct action from matter to matter. What people generally call "healing power" is a very great mental or vital power that imposes itself through the resistance of Matter—but this isn't at all the same thing! It's the contagion of a vibration. And then its irrevocable.... Right here, this Vibration is felt as a swelling. You understand, it [the body's ordinary condition] is tied up, its tied and bound, I might almost say hardened; and at such times, it seems to swell, to expand.²⁵

Obviously, another kind of Matter, or materiality, or mode of Matter. Something at the cellular level in which Falsehood does not exist, is not. In which death is not. In which our hardening and false opacity are not. In which our "concreteness" is not—and yet where life remains just the same... minus the Falsehood. And it is a natural state. The great Natural of the world. A web of Falsehood that came and stuck itself to Matter as it is, something that makes a wall in the same room—which bring us back, and Mother was always brought back, to that first mentalization of Matter, that catastrophic and defeatist Mind, it is the illusionist! We see nothing as it is, we are never in direct contact with the world and with Matter, not even with our own matter, we always are in contact through the Mind: it is a mental perception of Matter. The Mind sees something outside and says: it is Matter, it is a bird, it is cancer, it is John Smith; while the body—the cellular body—does not "perceive" the world, you could say, it does not perceive Matter, it is not something it absorbs from outside and discharges again as a feeling, a thought or a definition: it becomes or is inside, it is in the world, in things, in people, in the flow, without any separateness. For it, Matter is... something else. It is really like another world." Instead of shrinking the experience down to the individual's scale, the individual widens to the scale of the experience.²⁶ And the nearer Mother came to the pure cellular level, pulling back the meshes of the web, the more "miraculous" things became, naturally miraculous, universally miraculous, without having to do anything: simply being. Being That. And not only did the whole apparatus of illness and death disappear, but Matter itself became different, as if endowed with other properties that seemed to have nothing to do anymore with those of the physicists (and yet...). As soon as you descend into that realm, the realm of the cells and even of the cells' constitution, how much less heavy it seems! Mother exclaimed. That sort of heaviness of Matter disappears: it becomes fluid and vibrant again. Which would tend to show that the heaviness, the thickness, the inertia, the immobility, is something that has been ADDED ON, it's not an essential quality of Matter—it's false Matter, Matter as we think or feel it, but not Matter itself as it is.²⁷

A Worldwide Reversal of Consciousness

Thus an enormous field of discoveries opens up before us. There is nothing to cure! Nothing to change! There is a web to be removed. And death is no more. Truly, a new life on earth. But Mother wanted this new life for the earth, not for herself. She was not about to become a "healer," any more than fly through the air or walk upon water. It is the healing of the world that She wanted—the healing of this false matter: to unrealize it from the earth consciousness. But who understood that, even or especially among those around her? You see, the faith of people is a superstition—it's not faith, it's superstition. Now there are more and more people who think they have faith, and they ask me ridiculous things! Someone brings me a child born with a deformed arm, and the superstition is that if I put my hand on the arm of the child, he'll be healed.... Things like that. It's completely stupid. That's not Power! They need a little miracle, you know, at their level. Humanity is still very small, very small, very small. But even those who might have a power.... Look how it is: certain people could have a power, they would just have to have the true inspiration—they're afraid of it, mon petit! They reject the true inspiration, because they THINK that things have to follow their "natural" course—so-calle natural. Humanity rejects the true miracle. It only believes in.... There are moments—what Sri Aurobindo called The Hour of God—there are moments when the true, the true miracle is possible; if that moment is missed, then the world will go on... at its turtle pace. And it's hard—a lot of suffering, a lot of complications.... But faith, who has faith? True faith.²⁸ The faith that it is here, that everything is possible, right here, behind the web of our mental illusionism—and without miraculous "powers," without "devices": directly, naturally, if we just make a breach in the huge Wall of what we think, what all of Science thinks, a Science stubbornly bent on creating new "powers" to overcome its own illusion. This is not Power! The Power is... transparent. The Power is everywhere—the miracle is everywhere, every minute, separated from us by that web. That is the Miracle we need. Man is the all-powerful master of all the states of being of his nature. His natural state is to be all-powerful—he has forgotten to be so. In that state of oblivion, everything becomes "concrete," yes, in the sense that you may have a mark on the eye [Mother pointed to her left eye just stricken with a hemorrhage], it may have that kind of result, but that's because... because you allowed it to happen.²⁹ "Concrete" reality is only the concrete of the physical Mind which has changed the world into a fatal illness, because it has enclosed the world in its cage, then it has devised the laws of its cage and decided: this is how the world is. "But listen, it's cancer! But listen, it's the law of gravitation! But listen, it's ten thousand miles away...." Of course, it is like that in the cage. But once you come out of it, it is different. Once you come out of it, it is divine. It is the Divine. And everything remains just as concrete and just as real—it doesn't become misty. It's just as concrete, just as real, but... it becomes divine, because... because it is the Divine. Its the Divine playing...³⁰ See, that Lord, how many things He possesses: He plays with all that—He plays, He plays at... changing the positions. And then, when you see it, that whole, you feel the limitless Marvel, and that whatever the object of the most marvelous aspiration, it's all quite possible and will even be surpassed. Then you are consoled. Otherwise, this existence... is inconsolable.³⁰ He plays at being the materialist, He plays at being the spiritualist, He plays in the cage and outside the cage, He plays at taking every possible position throughout time and space—perhaps the time has come to play out a third position... natural at last, divine. Because there has never been anything but That in the world, only we have chosen to forget it awhile in order to find again the totality of That through our myriad individual eyes.

It is the real miracle of the world. The simple position, all-powerful because it includes everything instead of putting everything outside its cage.

How odd that our fiction stories depicting the future and all the children's magazines endlessly invent a world ever more equipped with miraculous supermachines—no one looks in the direction of a simplification of devices, of a direct power. And the more marvelous their machines, the more frowning the faces of the men who run them.

It is the transition to this terrestrial third position that Mother was seeking. The miracle of the earth.

The body is all the time—constantly, unceasingly—all the time brought face to face with this experience that when you are like this [Mother turned two fingers to one side], that is, turned to the Divine, things work out miraculously- miraculously... it's unbelievable; and being like that [Mother turned her fingers to the other side as if she were crossing an invisible wall] is enough for everything to be disgusting, to go wrong, to grate: a tiny little movement.... For microscopic, unimportant things, you understand, that is to say, for EVERYTHING—no question of "important" or "unimportant" things, nothing of that sort—for everything it becomes simply miraculous, yet its the same thing! In one case you are in pain, you suffer, you are miserable, you even fall ill, and in the other case.... And it's the same thing.³¹ It goes like this, and like that [Mother turned her fingers abruptly from one side to the other], it takes no time, there's no preparation or anything, it goes hup! hup!... as if to show the body's stupidity. It's something perfectly idiotic, like a factual demonstration of the stupidity of the body left to itself and then of this wonderful Consciousness which comes and in which all that vanishes like... something that has no consistency, no reality—it vanishes. And like a demonstration that it's not just in imagination but in FACT: a demonstration of the Power at work so that all this... vain dream of life as it is would be turned into a marvel, like that, simply through the reversal of consciousness. The experience is repeated in every detail, every field, like a demonstration through fact. And it's not a "long process" of transformation: its like something all at once turning itself around.... And all things have remained the same, nothing has changed, except consciousness. We might put it this way: the body has the sense of being shut inside something—shut in, yes—shut as if inside a box, but it can see through; it sees and can also have an action (though limited) through something that's still there and which must disappear. That "something" gives a sense of imprisonment. How is it to disappear?... That I don't know yet.³²

A universal "box."

At the level of the cells.

And Mother remained pensive: The relationship must be found between the consciousness in ONE body and the consciousness of the whole. And the extent of the dependence, and the extent of the independence; that is, how far the body can be transformed in its consciousness (and, necessarily as a result, in its appearance), how it can be transformed without... without the transformation of the whole—how far? And to what extent is the transformation of the whole necessary to the transformation of the body? That remains to be discovered.... And She added, The vision of the collective progress which has taken place on earth is very clear (our field of experience is the earth); but if we go by the past, a tremendous length of time would still seem to be necessary for the whole to be ready to change.... Yet there is almost a promise that... there is going to be an abrupt change.... So the body is constantly pushing, pushing like that to catch hold of the secret.³²

A worldwide reversal of consciousness?

The last "sedition" announced by Sri Aurobindo, the end of the mental box.

But the Mind will never make the reversal, it is much too preoccupied with performing its superior somersaults: a reversal in the consciousness of the body... which will burst open the box inspite of us?

How will the transformation of the world take place—or is it, perhaps, taking place?

How will the transition from false matter to true Matter occur?

And what is this true Matter, how does it behave? Mother's body had become like the laboratory of the New World.