Mother or The New Species - II

20. The Change of Functioning

The Cellular Bridge

Mother was receiving the answers to her questions in her own body. She was living the answer without clearly knowing, there, on the outside, what it all meant, except that it was a strange life, increasingly stranger, where the two extremes of unbelievable splendor and imminent disintegration seemed constantly to intermingle: A sense of treading a very sharp ridge between two precipices.¹ And never the assurance that it was the "right" path—though probably everything was the right path. To walk was the path. Sri Aurobindo, when I saw him the first time, told me, "The others came to prepare and left, but this time, it's to ACCOMPLISH." He, too, left. He left. True, He told me, "You are the one who will do it," but he never gave me.... He said it "just like that," as he used to say things, you know. It wasn't something that gave you an absolute certitude.... And I can't say I am asking the question because that's not true, I am not asking it, but the two possibilities are there. Well, there is no answer to either one or the other. At times I have the vision that it's going to be the end and the next minute, there is the possibility of going right to the end of the transformation...² When everything is in utter confusion, at times I ask for an Assurance—and I see very well, very well that if my body's cells, the body consciousness were told, "You are immortal; all these difficulties are experiences; the pain you feel has no importance; this apparent decomposition has no importance; all these things are necessary experiences, and you will go on to the end of the experience, that is, to transformation," if it were told that, obviously it would be mere child's play, just enduring the difficulties—that's nothing. But never have I been told that, never have I been given the Assurance—now and then the body is in a sort of STATE, a state of immortality, but it isn't constant, it's dependent on other things; so the minute it's "dependent," it is no longer a supreme Assurance. At the same time there is a sort of discernment that there could very well be a general slackening of the cells' effort if they were told, "Never mind, none of this is important, because you will last till the work is done." Maybe they would flag...³ So, that's how it is: I walk on, without knowing what will happen tomorrow. Yesterday, I could have said, "Yes, maybe this is the end...." And then when this state has gone and the other one comes, you say, "What is it to die? How can you say that?" And it's not that the two "states" alternate with... oppositions—it's not that at all, it's almost simultaneous but now you see this, now you see that. And it's one and the same totality of... "something"... which is the Truth. We find it very hard to understand that the Supreme constantly does everything. There. She added, laughing: And that we are just clumsy fools who want things to be otherwise because we don't understand the first thing about anything! Because we think, "Oh, if it were for us, everything would instantly be just fine," no? And that "just fine," God knows what it would be!*⁴

Mother never received the Assurance—never. And it can be said that She knew nothing to the very end. And I suspect there is a secret there greater than we can imagine. Mother was not supposed to know. Why? Not only to avoid relaxing her effort.... Perhaps because there was a frightening trial to go through. Sometimes we get glimmers of the secret of the end.

The words above were dated 1965. There were still to be eight more years of that singular state in which life and death were as if together at every instant, almost without any transition between the two. I don't know if I am alive, I don't know if I am dead,⁵ She would often say to me. Perhaps She was learning a new state that was neither life nor death. A new way of being.

And everything was bizarrely different, indeed even disquieting (for anyone other than Mother), in that hybrid state, which was basically like both sides of the barrier together. Perhaps we do not understand literally enough that She was at the same time really alive on one side and really dead on the other (ours), all the while maintaining the appearance of the old, habitual life. Yes, dead, and yet alive at the same time—try making something of that! But this state was not very easy to live. How would a fish react out of water? Yet, in a way, one had to be on both sides at once in order to find the secret of the barrier. When Mother said She did not know whether it was going to be "the end," She meant the end of death, one could say: the body was the strange link between both sides... as if the cells of the body were the meeting ground of life and death, the bridge, the point that is on both sides. That is where the "barrier" is, or rather where it vanishes. That is in fact where the secret is. Quite possibly, all of Mother's strange experiences boiled down to one single experience: the vanishing of the barrier. A sort of invasion of immortality into the death we live, of the "other" world into this one. A little like a constant state of resurrection. Mother is the singular evolutionary witness slowly telling us not only what the other world is like, but how it can enter this one here. And finally how it can transform this one. With just a little cellular hinge. A cellular bridge.

Perhaps Mother is the end of the barrier between life and death.

Which is why She was never given any assurance. She had to find life in death. And the words of the Vedic Rishis come back to us with an added depth: "He uncovered the two worlds (Earth and Heaven), eternal and in one nest" (Rig-Veda 1.62.7). A living body goes to investigate the state where one is supposedly dead, over there in the "other world," as they say, and discovers another physical life operating under other laws, which is not in "another world" but separated from us only by a certain cellular barrier: an opaque periphery. The beyond of the fish is not the realm of the dead, but simply another physical form of breathing. Life and "death" in one nest. The cells are the site of a very subtle tilting where death is transformed into something else. It seems one is done for, it is all over, and then... it is something else.

A Paradoxical State

I am quite aware that I am struggling with awkward words and poor analogies to describe this new world, but what can I do? How could we skillfully describe something that does not yet exist, we who do not have the language of the next world! Anyway....

The basic difficulty in all those physiological experiences they are physiological, you see, not psychological: a new and unknown physiology—is that they require the body to keep on living in a state that is contrary to all the laws of the body; you might almost say that the body must live as though it had no body! But perhaps it is, truly, the phenomenon of the caterpillar becoming a butterfly—and how does one become a butterfly in the body of a caterpillar? How does one keep the link with the old body, that is, remain apparently alive, while having a mode of life, or of being, that no longer belongs to the caterpillar? It is a paradox that is lived down to the cells of the body—a dangerous paradox. So am I "dead," that is to say, am I the butterfly flying, or am I "alive," that is to say, am I crawling on the ground like all other bodies—and where is life, where is death? If there remains some corner in the body that keeps the point of view of the caterpillar, it is dead; that corner feels it is dying; and if all the little corners become transformed together, then it looks as if you are undergoing a radical death and how do you keep from letting everything go altogether? And for the little corner that flies, or begins to fly, what is this crawling state on the other side that is moribund, obscure and rigid? All this lived together, simultaneously, in the same body. Strange.... The experience was taking place on all the levels of the body and in every detail, as if the organs or functions were being taken up one by one, entirely stripped of all their old reassuring nature and equipped with another, frightful capacity (frightful for the organ that undergoes the little operation). The "other thing" is always frightful for the old thing—it is a frightful wonder! And Mother said so often, more and more often: Almost at the same time there's torture and bliss ;⁶ at times I feel like screaming, and at the same time I say to myself "Ah, this is bliss ! "⁷ I can't speak to anyone anymore, because people would think I am going nuts.⁸

Among the dozens of experiences that will go on multiplying and getting worse, as it were, we can mention the one that dates from early 1968 (already). Mother was noting the eternal Fact of the total Consciousness, without separation, and of our little individual consciousness that has fragmented, divided, separated, put everything outside of its cage—for basically, our whole transition from caterpillar to butterfly is only the transition from this separated consciousness to total consciousness, which naturally must have its physiological consequences and perhaps, ultimately, produce a mutation of the form. The universe seems to have been created to realize this paradox of the awareness of the Whole, an awareness lived (not just perceived but lived) in every part, every element making up the Whole.... ⁹ And it is this paradox that Mother's body was reproducing physiologically. So, she continued, in order to give form to those elements, it all began with Separation, and it was Separation that gave birth to this division between what we call "good" and "evil," black and white, night and day; but from the point of view of sensation—sensation in the most material part—we can say it's suffering and Ananda [beatitude].... It's the tendency to create two poles: the pleasant or good thing, and the unpleasant or bad one. And as soon as you want to return to the Origin, the two tend to merge together again. And it is in perfect equilibrium, that is, where no division is possible anymore and the one has no influence over the other, where the two have become one again, it's there that lies this famous Perfection which we are trying to reconquer.... It is mental error which makes us want to choose one thing and reject another—all things must be together: what we call "good," what we call "evil," what we call right and what we call wrong, what we find pleasant and what we find unpleasant—all that must be together. Rejection of the one and acceptance of the other is childishness. Its ignorance. All mental translations, like that of an Evil eternally evil, giving birth to the idea of hell, or that of a Good eternally good... all that, all of it is childishness.⁹ And this is where metaphysics connects with physiology, and the paradox of the universe with that of Mother's body: That's far too philosophical for my taste, not concrete enough. But this morning's experience was concrete, and concrete because it stemmed from extremely concrete sensations in the body, from the presence of this constant duality which looks like an opposition (not only opposition, but mutual negation) between what we may take as the symbol of suffering and Ananda. And the true state (which for the moment appears impossible to formulate in words, but which was lived and felt) is an all-containing totality; but instead of containing everything as clashing elements, it's a harmony of everything, an equilibrium of everything. And once this equilibrium is realized in the creation, the creation will be able... to go on progressing without break.⁹ In other words, without death, we were about to say... but here we again fall into the trap of mentally dividing things into opposite poles, for this is what Mother added: These last few days, there repeatedly came (but it's all methodical and organized by an overall Organization infinitely superior to anything we can imagine) a state which is the state causing a break in the equilibrium, that is, the dissolution of the form—what's usually called "death." And that state went up to the extreme limit, like a demonstration, with at the same time the state (not a perception—the state) that prevents the break in the equilibrium and allows progress to go on without break. The result, in the body consciousness, is the simultaneous perception (so to speak simultaneous) of what we might describe as the extreme anguish of dissolution and the extreme Ananda of union—the two simultaneously. So if you translate it into ordinary words: it is the extreme fragility (more than fragility) of the form, and the eternity of the form.... ⁹ A state of death and a state of life, simultaneously.*

Then Mother added the following, which definitely is quite astounding on the physiological level: And the Truth is not just the union, but the fusion, the identification of the two. It's the union of the two states that constitutes the true consciousness; the union of the two ("union" still implies division), the identification of the two states is what constitutes the true consciousness.⁹ The fusion of "life" and "death"?... A third state of... something. At the border between "life" and "death," on that extreme frontier of the anguish of dissolution, something else was taking shape that seemed to be the product of the fusion of the two.

And then, she went on, you get the sensation that it's this consciousness which is the supreme Power. You understand, Power is limited by oppositions and negations: the most powerful power is the one that dominates the most—but that's a complete imperfection! There is an all-powerful Power made up of the fusion of the two—that's the absolute Power. And if That were realized physically... probably it would be the end of the problem.⁹

No longer a victory of life over death, but a transmutation of life and death into a third state, right there, at the agonizing frontier between the two worlds, the cellular threshold that seems to be the bridge between "life" and "death." The heart of the Paradox. The site of the third state. And we understand more and more what Mother meant by "I don't know if I am living or dead.... I don't know if it is bliss or torture."

The oxygen of the open air is torture for the fish.

A paradoxical state. Or rather THE paradoxical state. An amphibious state.

The transition to a flying species, which does not really involve growing new wings, but changing death into a new mode of life—life without a barrier between one side and the other. Because death and life are simultaneous... and they are something else. There are no more sides. The whole flows unseparated.

Perhaps it is the site of true Matter.

The Lesson of the Miracle

This paradoxical state without barrier slowly took shape over the years; it takes a long time to reach that cellular threshold: there are layers upon layers of evolution to cleanse and clarify, all the residue of the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms—an overwhelming habit made of a million habits that form our "natural" way of being. And all this makes the veil, the web: an obscure recording at the surface of the cells that keeps repeating and repeating itself—a sort of "magnetization" of the cells, much like our magnetic recording tapes. Negatively, we could say that we must erase the recording, but rather it is a sort of positive transparency that dissolves the recorded habit. There are... aggregates, or very small groups of cells that have retained imprints, imprints made on them; there are corners—many dark nooks and crannies—and the memory of the circumstances, events, sensations, perceptions that built the imprint: it's all seen in the new Light, to be done away with. And then... yes, as they say, you "travel," you travel in an immense world, indeed; and it's not things from the past, its... an immense Present in which you travel.¹⁰ All prehistory and History are right there, directly, without yesterdays. There is a whole memory to be dissolved, an awesome memory—indeed the whole "natural" functioning is to be dissolved. And what is the operation all about, finally? It is a formidable transfer of power,¹¹ as Mother said, the transition from the small individual consciousness which has traced furrow upon furrow and has slowly shut itself up in one cage or another, has "magnetized" these cells and other cells, has hypnotized and frozen its substance into a certain kind of functioning that made for some cohesion, its cohesion, to the great undivided and total Consciousness for which each "second" is a new creation without any consequence, without any memory, you might say: a pulsation. A fantastic, total Pulsation that infallibly and exactly and automatically organizes each one of its "instants": it is and it is perfect. It is a totally new way of being on earth. Another time, another rhythm, another functioning. A fluidity exactly the opposite of our fixity, because for us to fix is to be; if there is no wall, we feel it is just a volatile nothingness. And that is what makes death, the necessity of death, to break through that crust and continue progressing. We lead a fossil life, we are fossilized right from the cradle. The education of the cells' consciousness consists in teaching them how to choose the divine Presence—the divine Consciousness, the divine Presence, the divine Power (all that wordlessly), the "something".... It's a choice of every second between the old laws of Nature—and the government by the supreme Consciousness.¹² The government of the open air versus the government of the aquarium, we could say.

A "choice"; it is easier said than done, for how does it get translated at the level of the cells? From high up on its perch the Mind may hold forth, but the recording goes on just the same down below. There is but one way of teaching the cells: to disorganize them completely—that Consciousness we call supramental is a tremendous disorganizer, at every level: it upsets everything. None of the cages, whether moral, spiritual, national or cellular, are spared. And ultimately there is only one cage, precisely the one Mother was slowly undoing—when this one collapses, all the others collapse; our "towering" political or religious stories hang on a little blocked cell. So this Consciousness begins by throwing one good illness, or several, on the body to teach it to function differently (it does the same with nations), and it goes on until you have understood. It is "the illness of transformation," Mother said. Mother had a good half a dozen of them every day. The greatest difficulty is that the body's texture is made of Ignorance, so that every time the Force, the Light, the Power try to penetrate somewhere, that Ignorance [or the old way of breathing, we could say] *has to be dislodged. Every time the experience is similar, renewed in detail... it's a sort of Negation out of ignorant stupidity—not out of ill will, there is no ill will: its an inert and ignorant stupidity which, by the very fact of what it is, *DENIES the possibility of the divine Power [or open air]. And that's what has to be dissolved every time. At every step, in every detail, it's always the same thing that has to be dissolved.¹³ That is to say, the natural that gives the sense of security: all the rest are just frightful miracles. Indeed, for the cells, "miracles" are a very serious form of illness. The Miracle must have a lot of patience before it is accepted as the most natural thing in the world. If only this sick earth of ours knew that it is in the very midst of living a miracle... perhaps things would go faster. It too is learning its lessons, like Mother.

The experience is repeated again and again... It's not as in the realm of ideas, where once you have seen the problem clearly and have the knowledge, it's over; some doubts or absurdities may come back to you from outside, but the thing is established, the light is there, and automatically things are either repelled or transformed. But this here isn't the same thing! Every single aggregate of cells.... Not that it comes from outside: it's BUILT that way! Built by an inert and stupid Ignorance. An inert and stupid automatism. And so, automatically, it denies—not "denies," there's no will to deny: it CANNOT understand, it's an opposite—an ESTABLISHED opposite—of the divine Power. And every time, there is a kind of action which really in every detail is almost miraculous: suddenly that negation is compelled to recognize that the divine Force is all-powerful. Seen from another angle, it's a sort of perpetual little miracle. I'll give you an example: last time you were with me, I got a pain here [left side], a frightful pain of the kind that makes people howl (they think they're very sick!). You didn't see anything, did you, I didn't show anything. As long as you were here, I didn't bother about it... I simply thought of something else. But when you left, I thought, "There's no reason to leave that here." So I concentrated—I called the Lord and put Him here [on the "sick" spot]. And then it's almost instantaneous: the first thing is a reaction—a STATE—which denies the possibility of divine Action. It isn't a will, it's an automatic negation. Then there is always a Smile that answers (that's what is interesting, there's never any anger or any force that imposes itself only a Smile), and almost instantly the pain disappears—"That" settles in, luminous, tranquil.... It isn't final, mind you, only a first contact: the experience recurs on another occasion and for another reason, but there is already a beginning of collaboration: the cells have learned that with That, the state changed (very interestingly, they remember), so they begin to collaborate, and the Action is even more rapid. Then a third time, a few hours later, it recurs once again; but then THE CELLS THEMSELVES call and ask for the divine Action, because they remember. [They remember the open air.] And then That comes in, gloriously, like something established.... The attitude in the cells changes—not the disorder (! )... it recurs with clockwork regularity—that's its job. It is the way it's received by the cells, their reaction to it, that brings about the change.¹⁴ It is not the Disorder we must cure, it is the "reception" of the disorder.... If the world understood that, it would be an all-powerful secret. There is no disorder! There is nothing to cure—no cancer to cure: just an attitude to cure. With this attitude, the Disorder melts away, as if it had never existed. A painful illusion of disorder... designed perhaps to help us or compel us to discover our own automatic omnipotence. As Mother exclaimed one day, The Disorder is not to perceive THAT! (the something, the smiling and miraculous That, everywhere and always). Because there is a CONSTANT Reality, a CONSTANT divine Orden and it's only the incapacity to perceive it that makes for the present Disorder and Falsehood.¹⁵ And in the end, the Disorder is the cage, the great Consciousness prevented from flowing—it is illness, death, the mad and mortal trepidation of the world. And Mother concluded: Now I've got it—I've got the knack! It's for training the cells, you understand! It's not just like a sick person who has to be cured once and for all: no, it's a training of the cells, to teach them... to live.¹⁶ Mother however added: All that atmosphere of the physical mind is full of every possible stupidity. You have to be permanently on your guard and sweep it all away—the doctors' opinions, the example of other people, that whole... really, that whole terrible muddle of Ignorance all around, which you have to drive back.¹⁶ It is our old problem. And it is not just the atmosphere of one body, it is the surrounding atmosphere, everywhere. We bathe in that muddle.

The Transfer of Power

But this is only the beginning of teaching the cells the existence of That, the smiling miracle. There are more radical operations in store for them—in fact, what takes place is one and the same operation: a transfer of power. It is the transition from thousands of years of habits crystallized into laws to the great Law, which is rather a non-law or an invention at every second. Can we conceive of a body that must relearn how to live every second, or, we could say, rediscover life every second—a constant rebirth of the body?... Yet that is the very phenomenon under way. The work consists in changing the conscious base of all the cells—but not all at once! Because that would be impossible; even little by little is very difficult: the moment when the conscious base is changed is... there is almost a sort of panic in the cells, and the impression, "Ooh! What's going to happen?" So now and then, it's difficult¹⁷ She would close her eyes and become very pale, or, when the dose was too strong, everything would just become disorganized—although truly, it was never that the dose was too strong, it was perfectly measured, but then there were the surrounding difficulties that were compounded to it: I fought and fought, but... there are too many lies around me.¹⁸ I would hear that little sentence up to the end. So then, the various functions are taken up in turn, in a marvelously logical order, following the body's functioning. It's by group, almost by faculty or part of faculty, and some of them are a little difficult. [The transfers involving the nerves and the heart—especially the nerves—would in fact be the most perilous and painful]. I don't know (since its quite new), I don't know if it would be easier if I weren't doing anything? [There was a whole line of people waiting at her door, or even standing in her room.] Probably not, it's not that: it's people's general attitude. It makes for a kind of collective support at the moment of the transition. At the moment when the consciousness that ordinarily supports the cells fades away for the new one to take its place, the cells need ("the cells," I don't know if its them), but there has to be the support of... (how can I put it?)... a sort of collaboration of the collective forces. Its not much, its not indispensable, but it helps a little. There is a moment when there's almost an anguish, you know, you're suspended like that; it may be a few seconds, but those few seconds are terrible. [Moments when all the disciples were watching her, thinking: Mother is very ill, Mother is leaving, Mother.... An opaque collective atmosphere that her cells were directly drawing in.] And even that comes from this idiotic spirit of self-preservation in the depths of any cellular consciousness—it knows that. It knows it. It's an old habit...¹⁹ This instinct of self-preservation accounts for the very first wires of the cage. The first individualized Matter that no longer perceives that it has all of Life and the immensity of Power of the entire universe—it is "me," and it is afraid. It has entered death. Mother was approaching that root. And the process was the same every time: At the critical moment, there is a complete abdication of everything, *of its existence and of everything, and it is filled with light and force. That's the Response.¹⁹ The cage gives way, and everything is there. The surrender of the old species. Not a day passes without the observation that, not a dose, but a tiny little drop, an infinitesimal drop of That can cure you in a minute (it CURES you, it's not that it "can"), that one is constantly like that, in balance, and the slightest faltering means disorder and the end, and with just a drop of That... it's all turned into light and progress. The two extremes. The two extremes side by side.²⁰

A time will come when they will no longer be side by side but inextricably woven together. It is the slow approach to the mysterious frontier, the paradoxical state that is like death and life at the same time: both on this side and on the other. During all those years, Mother would be "perfecting surrender," as She used to say. We speak of transformation, even of transfiguration, but there is the passage from the old movement to the new movement, from the old status to the new status, which is a break in equilibrium; and always, for what still belongs to the old creation, a dangerous break in equilibrium is what gives you the feeling that everything eludes you, that you have lost your foothold. And that's when you need unwavering faith. But a faith that isn't like mental faith, which is self-supporting: it is a faith in the sensation. And that is very difficult.²¹ Year after year, we can note the progress toward that new state and follow the curve as if on a laconic chart, we can almost see the curve trace itself: In the transition between the two consciousnesses, there is a moment when you feel you are quite stupid—you feel you can't think anymore, you can't do anything anymore, you have become useless, you have no contact with things. Each part, when it changes (what I used to call the "change of master",) you feel it's finished. The first few times, you are worried; afterwards, you become used to it and keep still; then the light suddenly shines. ²² And this: The millennial habit of being otherwise is so strong that the impression is.... It's like... like stretching a rubber band; so, as long as you keep it stretched, the effect is there; but if the tension stops, even for a second, it falls back out of habit.... Which compels you to a constant tension. But it won't always be like that. It is the transition from one habit to another. And [in the "other" habit] this extraordinary impression of the unreality of suffering, unreality of diseases, unreality.... Its very strange. [The unreality of the laws of the fishbowl.] Then that whole millennial habit comes along and tries to deny and say... and say that it is the state you are in which is unreal!... There are moments, you know, of inexpressible glory, but it's fleeting. And the other thing is there—pressing all around....²³ Then the movement becomes more precise and intense: It's this transition that's being worked out in the details, and it's not easy. Its like that habit of the cells of drawing the force from below (through food and so on): when you try to transform that into a constant habit of drawing the force from above, every instant, in every small detail, there's a difficult moment.... ("From above" is a manner of speaking, because there's no sense of direction, high or low or anything of the sort.) But its no longer leaning on the surface for support—for standing, walking, sitting, moving about.... And if the memory of the other method (the ordinary method, the universal method of all human beings) comes back, the body suddenly seems... (it's very strange), it seems to become incapable of doing ANYTHING, absolutely as if it were about to faint.²⁴

And it is not "as if" either.

Then the curve becomes clear: Its no longer the same thing that makes you act—"act" or anything, of course: move, walk, anything. It isn't the same center any longer. This morning, for example, several times for a certain length of time the body's cells, that is, the body's form had the experience that staying together or dissolving depends on a certain attitude. And with the perception (sometimes simultaneously an almost double perception, one being more a memory and the other a lived thing) of what makes you move, act, know; the old way like a memory, and the new way in which, obviously, there is no reason at all to dissolve, except if you choose to do so—it's meaningless, it's something meaningless: why dissolve?²⁵ On the other side of the cage, death has no meaning, it does not exist. But there is this frontier between the two. And when you fall back into the old consciousness.... That's not exactly the point: when the old consciousness comes back to the surface, if you aren't very attentive, naturally it results in fainting.... AT THE SAME TIME, a sense of the unreality of life and of a reality that we could call eternal: the meaning of death does not exist, it's meaningless. It is only a choice. And dislocation has no meaning, NO RAISON D'ETRE: its an extravagance.²⁵ Death is simply being in the wrong position, a wrong attitude. Or else an old disastrous habit. Nothing is mortal except an ill-poised consciousness. And the contrast or the opposition [between the two states] is difficult, painful; both ways of being are complaining: the other way feels as if it is fainting, and the new one as if it isn't left in peace [fifty people were waiting at the door]. When you are in one or in the other, its all right, but when both are there together... it's not very pleasant. And there is a sort of sense of uncertainty: you don't very well know where you are, whether you are here or whether you are there; you don't very well know. And then, the stupidity of people and things becomes cruel, because even in the ordinary consciousness, for me all those things are meaningless; but then with that need to keep two almost contradictory states together, if you add to it a truckload of nonsense, it's not pleasant.²⁵

And yet it was in that contradictory or paradoxical state that the key was hidden. Because it was not really a matter of going to one side or the other, from one position to another, one world to the other, but of transforming the passage itself into a third state that would combine the two. In short, it is almost as if an opening had to be bored or a bridge built between the two, to replace the present toppling from one world to the other. The bridge has to be built in the body, not outside of it. The bridge is in the body. The passage from "life" to "death" is the place where a third reality must come into being. The mesh of the web or the bars of the cage that create a kind of reversal from life to death (or rather from death to life) must be changed into a continuous and unbroken life. This body, which is the place of our imprisonment, must find in itself and through its very imprisonment the key to continuous life. The one which is on both sides and which, finally, has no more sides. There must be no more "sides"—then "death" will be no more: it becomes something else. Something else that is on both sides. Obviously a new type of life.

The one that was slowly being built in Mother's body—slowly and precariously and perilously: Its really an odd state.... There are even times when you feel that a mere nothing could make you lose contact and that only if you remain very still and very indifferent—indifferent—can it continue.²⁶ But still... the minutes are long.²⁷ To be able to join the two sides, you had to establish a total indifference to death, unrealize it, it had to lose its whole meaning. Death had to lose its whole meaning in the body, there had to be nothing but That, flowing without barriers—no more support, no more habits: only the habit of That. And the curve draws to a close: Are you ready for anything? Naturally I answered: anything. And the Presence takes on such a wonderful intensity.... No choice, no preference, no aspiration, even: a total, complete surrender.... All slavery, all bonds with external things, all that is finished, it has completely fallen off—completely fallen off: there's absolute freedom. In other words, That alone remains, the Supreme Master is the master.²⁸ The great total Consciousness. The old species has surrendered. And Mother added: The body no longer depends on physical laws.²⁸

It was the "transfer of power."

It was in 1966.

It was the transition from the obscure automatism of the old cellular imprints to the conscious automatism of the great Exact Consciousness.

Nevertheless, a mere nothing could make you lose contact.

And one morning, in her quiet little voice like a silvery river, Mother told me: I am on the border of a new perception of life.... As if certain parts of the consciousness were in a metamorphosis from the caterpillar state into the butterfly state.²⁹

Life without barriers.

The place that is on both sides.

The place of true Matter.