Mother or The New Species - II

5. The Supramental World

If we were an explorer returning from some faraway continent and had to describe the marvels we had encountered, forests unlike any others, winged beings, metals with strange properties, it would be easy enough. But it is not the case. The future world is right here before our eyes. It is an unexplored land, and yet it is beneath our very feet: it is another continent within the continent. We live in it without seeing it. The world in which apes capered about and the world we walk in are the same, and yet.... This other world, she said, is necessarily an entirely new experience. You must go back to the time of the transition between the animal creation and the human creation to find a similar evolutionary period. At that time, however, the consciousness was not sufficiently mentalized to be able to observe, understand and feel intelligently, so the transition had to be worked out in a totally obscure way. Consequently, this thing is really new and unique in the terrestrial creation: it's something unprecedented and is really quite a strange and new perception or sensation or impression....¹

A new perception.

Nor are we even sure there is a real analogy between this transition and previous transitions, for not only is the physiological difference between ape and man negligible, or even between the mongoose formed in the womb of its mother and the child of man formed in the womb of its mother, but the perceptions of apes and men, although vastly different, still apply to the same Matter, which is simply used in a new way because of the new perception. We perceive Matter differently, so we use it differently, we discover new ways to deal with and handle it, but it is the same Matter. Up to a certain point, this is also what is going to happen to us. The apes merely grafted a new device, mind, onto the old terrestrial substance. But in the present case, it is not a new graft, not a new device, supermind, that is being added to the terrestrial arsenal; Matter itself is changed. We could say that Matter's properties change—are in the process of changing. We might think: "Okay, we shall see when it will be done." Indeed, if a giraffe started growing a second neck, we would surely notice it. The trouble is... it is quite possible that our old human perception will not permit us to see the new Matter, and that this new Matter has no intention of indulging in physiological oddities as we imagine them, for it is we who imagine them, we who keep incorrigibly transposing the old way of being onto another way that has nothing in common with ours and is the way of the new Matter. In short, the task is to perceive, or pre-perceive with human organs something human organs cannot grasp. To make an advance in evolution beforehand, if we may say so. It is a challenge. The ape's task was easier... perhaps. But all the same, our substance must contain a connecting link—how could the transition, the bridge between the present state and the future one, be made otherwise? There must be a way, a sort of perception of the "vanishing point," as it were, of the direction where things escape us; and if we have the courage to let ourselves slip through that aperture—rather dizzying for our old reference points—we might find ourselves on a new track. To set foot on the path is to work out the transition. What we are going to find at the other end, we truly cannot know, it is unimaginable by our human means. A strange adventure. Perhaps a dangerous one.

Fossilized Appearances

The first signs of the transition are to be found in our perception. The ape, too, acquired a new perception, but its eyes remained unchanged: it only established new connections between old habitual things. Here, the organ of perception is not changed or improved or enlarged, but the very object of perception and the whole field of perception is changed, because it is not seeing with new eyes: it is all of Matter seeing, in a way, and perceiving itself differently, as if it had thousands of eyes everywhere—it is the cells that see, conscious atoms that move, and all this in a total oneness in which the superficial and artificial separation of little bodies dressed in European or Chinese or literary or mathematical suits no longer exists. The line of demarcation becomes as unreal as barbed wire on the slopes of the Alps. It no longer exists, as everything exists simultaneously. The purpose of the individual consciousness, so laboriously carved out by evolution, is simply to focus a ray on a certain point of that totality, to allow the movement of force to flow in a certain direction according to the needs of the moment; and it does not pour or direct it "over there," for everything is within that totality. One body, or the entire universe, it is all the same. It is conscious Matter. obviously not the Matter we perceive through our present eyes, fingers, or television sets. That Matter is not what we see or as we see it, is quite evident: our microscopes blare it out. From the standpoint of science, she said to the children, you are a mass of... not even atoms, something infinitely finer than atoms, and in constant motion. There is simply nothing like a face, a nose, eyes, or a mouth, all this is just an appearance. And so the scientists have come to this conclusion—the same one as the old incorrigible spiritualists—that the world is an illusion. This is a great discovery, a very great one.... One more step and they will reach the Truth.² In Tlemcen, we have already seen another kind of Matter. Well, this time, it is not supermicroscopes that will tell us, nor the visions of psychics nor occult powers: Matter itself will tell us, will experience itself. It is real Matter, direct, unalloyed, that will see and operate: the spontaneity of pre-mental, "natural" evolution will be reproduced on a conscious scale. Only, instead of a bird restricted to its trans-Siberian route, there will be a totality of consciousness and being encompassing all the routes in its own substance. Life will no longer be "thought"; it will be lived, simply. Matter itself will live instead of a thought of Matter. We see nothing of life, we live nothing of life—we only think it. Everything comes to us through a mental veil. It is that screen which has been removed. All the millennia we have spent laboriously weaving that veil were only meant to allow a centralized, individualized consciousness to become aware one day of the unimaginable wholeness of matter and life, to live everything, to be everything, to understand everything, to feel everything.... Truly another life. To love everything and feel joy in everything, because the goal of this whole affair is the joy of being, which we so miserably lack.

But first, we must come into contact with that true Matter. How? Through what perception? Our senses are liars!³ Mother exclaimed. How can we release that other continent within the continent? Probably—certainly—it will emerge on its own: the Supermind is quite capable of explaining itself. The "little pulsation" is already at work, formidably so. It is in the process of startling all the cells in the world despite the pandemonium of our mental complications and surface revolutions which revolutionize nothing. This is the real revolution, within and inescapable. Hence it is not some happier "posterity" that concerns us, but our immediate present, whether or not we wish to participate in the process, whether or not we wish to accelerate the movement and witness the transition instead of reeling through it in the unreal nightmare of the Mind. For, after all, we may awake in two or three generations (probably more) as the next ordinary or great men and find all this as natural as today we solve an equation or call the Observatory on the telephone. Future History will show us how stupid we used to be, and we shall no longer be the same fools—for the time being, however, we are clearly still in the stupidity, and some find it asphyxiating. Future history is for them. One day while looking at Mother and the dreadful labor in Matter She had taken upon herself to do, in order to release that truer world and those truer cells, I was struck by this thought: "But they will find all this completely natural once it is done! They will say: WE have done it all, it's our own evolution!" And Mother smiled: The world will go on. Things will come to pass. And there will be perhaps a handful of men who will know how they were done. That's all.⁴

For those who are eager to work out the transition with open eyes, some initial idea, or better yet, an initial perception of the supramental process is necessary: how and in which way should we look, since our eyes are deceptive and our thoughts are deceptive? And that's it: the very first step is not "to do," but to undo: I challenge you to transform your body if your mind is not transformed. Just try a little to see! You can't move a finger, say a word or take a single step without the mind intervening. So with what tool do you expect to transform your body if your mind is not already transformed?.. .⁵ As long as your mind is real for you, as long as your way of thinking is something true, real, concrete for you, it only shows that you are not there yet. You must first cross over to the other side.⁶ We do not know just how simple and yet fantastically different it is. A brief personal example, a very simple one, might better illustrate how sly and invisible the phenomenon is, so perfectly natural that we live in a net without realizing it—quite naturally, of course, otherwise we would have left it long ago. What takes the most time, Mother said, is becoming conscious of what must be changed...⁷ To break away from the old natural way. Well, one day, on a riverbank in a remote part of the world, I was alone, in rags, cleaning a copper pot that was my sole possession in the world, and while scrubbing my pot with sand from the river, I considered my rather strange and miserable life of begging for food during the day and fighting insects at night, with a body that any decent society would have considered ill—and surely I would fall ill if I looked at it all too closely. If I had had a thermometer at that moment, I would certainly have fallen ill with fever. But suddenly, a thought—more than a thought, a force—seized hold of me: "What does it matter what you think of it!?" Instantly, like scales falling from my eyes, the sickness left the body, the situation was transformed, the world changed: I stopped thinking about it... and the millions of thoughts stopped having any relevance, they scurried off like rats—suddenly everything was the same, and it was utterly different! It was the thought that had created the picture of fever—a false image. Take away thought's false picture, and the body lives very joyously. It was the body that suddenly became quite buoyant, as if emerging from a mud bath.

We constantly live in that mud. It veils everything, distorts and falsifies everything. The first step is to step out of it. It is the "vanishing point" for the other reality. What we think is of no importance whatsoever. And on top of it, it is wrong. They would rather die clinging to their habits than let go of them and live in an immortal way. ⁸ Death, too, results from a certain habit, as does misery, and false vision, and illness, and the entire falsehood of the world. We live in an incredibly false habit: "I can see this, therefore it's true; I touch this, therefore it's true; I feel this, therefore it's true...." Well, that "truth" must first fall away like dust, it is like a first piercing look breaking open the old armor so as to release the perception of true Matter. We must break out of this vague and murky way of looking that sees just appearances, which are so deceptive, so unreal—so fossilized.⁹ Our Mental Quaternary is a fossilized and obsolete age, like primitive mosses in carbon layers.

Only, the Habit must be uprooted down to the cells. That is Mother's whole work. And we have to start somewhere. We are at the time when we are going to see things.... There are long, long, very long periods during which things are prepared; there is, afterwards, a very long, very long period during which things develop, organize, settle and bear consequences; but between this and that, there is a moment *when things are done, when they happen. It's not always very long (sometimes it is, at other times its very brief), but that's when something happens. And that "something" is what will give the world a new development. Well, we are just—as it happens, we are just at such a moment. Which means that if we are (people, most of the time, are blind), if we aren't blind, if our eyes are open, we *WILL SEE, we will see things.... Some people are in the night, in the past, in falsehood up to here... they see nothing, nothing, nothing—they will go right to the end without seeing anything.... But those whose eyes are open will see.¹⁰

She repeated this endlessly to the children in the Playground: Those who know how not to be weighed down by old habits...¹¹

The Supramental Substance

All the same, if only we could know what is at the other end.... Once we lose the Habit, we enter the Great Forest; we are like the blind of a nonexistent world, or a world whose existence increases as we walk through it, and what will there BE in that Peru at the other end, when we get there? That Peru is right under our feet, but we are blind to it. If we could only see a little, or know the direction, what the supramental world looks like, the journey would perhaps be less blind. In fact, the wonder of Pioneers is that they walk through nothingness, and it becomes something by the fact of their walking through it. It is their grace, their gift to the world.

But, just one year before entering the great unnamed Forest where She was to spend fifteen years hacking away in the dark, in nothingness, in death, Mother had a vision, which was like the sweep of a searchlight over this tangled nonexistence of undone habits and of a new, yet unborn habit. It happened on the 3rd of February 1958—February is a decidedly lovely month. But unfortunately, She was unable to see till the end of the vision, because, as usual, someone clinging to her skirt abruptly called her and dragged her from the next world back to... the old habit of being an idiot. The degree of human stupidity mixed with this stupendous adventure is simply unbelievable; at each step, each moment, and right to the end, it would surround her, as if She not only had to carve out the New but also uproot the old. But so it is, the two go hand in hand. She had to uproot the old habit of the world in each little specimen around her so that a lovely Peru may be born under our feet. She wanted so much the earth to be lovely. She truly loved the world very much. Anyone else would have blown the whole snake pit apart—that is what we all do, war after little war after little war, and it all starts over again. She wanted so much for things to become different. So She took the lot, that which resisted and refused, that which was stupid and petty and crablike, and She swallowed and swallowed the poison of the world, tirelessly transmuting each and every pettiness. She hewed the path with an axe, and left her love behind as a trail of light so that we too might walk... a little.

In that vision, She suddenly saw the supramental world in a symbolic way. A glance into the future, into the ever-existent that unveils itself gradually. It seems far, far away... and yet? There is more than one miracle in that Forest, who knows? A squirrel looking at man certainly does not understand much about him, there is almost no connection between its small, inquisitive eyes and our haughty airs in a three-piece suit; but it was suddenly as if a connection had been made, a bridge spanned between the mysterious future species and our large, inquisitive eyes. Once we hold a thread, we can pull on it. We must pull on the great Thread, the thread of joy perhaps. That vision is like a first bridge, a contact with the already-here. What takes thousands of years is to establish the contact, to conceive of the possibility of contact. Then, it is the contact that pulls us; alone, we could not possibly extricate ourselves from the old bog—"Just try a little!" Mother would say. Evolution is simply a great future pulling us, for how could the Night ever pull anything but night?

There was an immense ship, the symbol of the transit site where human-men were being prepared for the supramental life: a sort of training ship for the supramental world. And all those who were ready, who fulfilled the required conditions, were about to disembark in the supramental world. On the shore of this world stood tall beings, supramental beings; they were to review the young apprentices from the ship to determine whether or not they were able to disembark. I say able to disembark, because living, breathing and existing in that new milieu, in that supra-mental world, was really like a question of oxygen, or rather of bodily substance. The next substance seems to be a singular discovery. And, not only the beings onshore, but the ship itself, the entire ship's substance, were made of that same supramental substance: The supramental substance nearest to the physical world, the first to manifest. The light was a mixture of gold and red creating a uniform substance of luminous orange. Everything was like that: the light, the people, everything had that color, with varying nuances to differentiate one thing from another. It gave an overall impression of a shadowless world: there were nuances but no shadows. The atmosphere was full of joy, calm, order. Everything went smoothly and silently.¹² And this is where it decidedly becomes very curious and interesting: On that ship, things were not made as they are made on earth; for example, clothes were not made of cloth, and the material that looked like cloth was not artificially manufactured: it was part of their body, it was made of the same substance that took different forms. It had a sort of plasticity.... Plasticity is the great characteristic of the Supramental World: it is like going from the rigidity of our present, false Matter to something resembling the movement of the subatomic Matter of modern scientists. When a change had to be effected, it was not done through artificial and external means, but by means of an inner operation, THROUGH AN OPERATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS that gave form or appearance to the substance. LIFE CREATED ITS OWN FORMS [my emphasis]. Everything was a single substance, which altered the quality of its own vibration according to the needs or requirements...¹² We thus catch a glimpse of that "conscious Matter" which takes on forms at will out of a total oneness of substance. It all seems like a fairy tale, but our evolution is perhaps a fantastic fairy tale. After all, we are but the mental babies of the second millennium after Christ. What do we know? The little lemur in the Philippines would certainly have found it quite fantastic if it had been told that a fellow on two feet was to be its posterity. In short, we are invited to take a look at our own posterity: The tall beings on the shore were not the same color, they did not have the orange hue: they were paler, more transparent. Except for a certain part of their bodies, only their contours were visible. They were very tall, they seemed to have no skeleton and to be able to take on forms according to their needs. Only from the waist to the feet did they have a permanent density, which you did not feel in the rest of their body. Their color was much paler and contained very little red, it verged on gold or even white...¹² How far away all this seems!

But less distant were the young supramental recruits, the apprentices. They were from every country and every age, but on the whole they were not old. Some were sent back to the ship as though their preparation were insufficient or their substance not yet ready. The quality of the substance was the criterion: Those who were sent back for further training were not of a uniform color: as if their body had spots of a grayish opacity, of a substance resembling the earthly substance. They were dull, as if they had not been entirely permeated by the light, not transformed. They were not like that everywhere, only in places.¹² Opacity is the very attribute of false matter—what we know, or rather see as unconscious Matter ("unconscious" because of our own unconsciousness). And we wonder if the difference—the apparently enormous difference—between those beings and ourselves, between that Matter and this one, is not simply a question of a little screen to be knocked over—a screen of unconsciousness that hides real Matter from us and makes it appear opaque and rigid. What a surprise if those opacities started to clear up, became light and began to move away by virtue of a mere change of consciousness!... Yet it is the same Matter, we need not imagine or create another Matter; it is the same one. In one case illumined, in the other sealed—by what? Perhaps by our idea of Matter, or by our mental vision of Matter.... There is a mental process to be undone right down to the cells. But it is not a different kind of Matter, it is here, the same one- only unsealed. Perhaps like the difference between a primitive moss fossilized in a layer of carbon and the same primitive moss fully alive in the sunlight.

What has the power of unsealing this Matter, of cleansing it? Obviously not what we think of it, neither the superphenomenologies of the mind from the little Hegels of the Quaternary, nor even all our religious or Marxist virtues.... There must be something else. It is this "something-else" that is of interest to us. What are the "virtues" that will help make the next species? If we knew that much, the road would be clearer. The "opaque" ones were sent back to terrestrial life. The criterion for deciding was based exclusively on the substance of which people were made, that is, whether they belonged completely to the supra-mental world, whether they were made of that very special substance. The criterion was neither moral nor psychological. Very likely, the substance of their body was the result of an inner law or an inner movement....¹² What is that law, that movement? Perhaps a certain way of aspiring in Matter. In the Mind, we aspire for beauty and truth; in the heart, we aspire for love and oneness.... There must be a similar movement to be initiated at the level of Matter, in the body. A new rhythm to be found. Probably one must first be quite detached from all mental and vital movements in order to understand what the true movement of bodily Matter may be. On that riverbank, with a copper pot in hand, my body suddenly free of thought had become very carefree and joyous—as if there were another kind of breathing in it: everything was clear, sparkling and light. The body is perhaps the movement of joy, the world of joy. The true movement of Matter is joy. It does not last because of the old habit which returns, the old habit of being ill, or thinking we are going to be ill, or... the whole mortal routine. The habitual opacity. That criterion had nothing mental in it and gave the strange inner sensation that many things we consider good or bad are not so in reality.... ¹² Indeed, the false sense of reality! What is really bad is not to grasp everything in its true sense, for everything makes sense in terms of tomorrow's life: only either we embrace that sense, or we do not. For the supramental world, "sin" is simply not changing everything into the sparkling little rhythm, or not taking everything as an opportunity to establish the little rhythm and undarken Matter. The abyss, the sin, is to remain opaque, whether in sickness or in health, in vice or in virtue—the worst opacities are the virtuous ones! Yes, we must catch this misery and force the joy of tomorrow into it, fill it with the lightness of the right Sense, the true Sense, the Great Sense—where we are going. For everything is going there... if we want to. There is no good or bad, there are only missed opportunities. Clearly, everything depended upon the capacity of things, upon their ability to express the supramental world or to be in contact with it.... In one way, we are in contact, in another way, we are sealed off. An ape swinging in the trees is quite sealed off from mental life; a man wearing moral and mental spectacles is quite sealed off, too. It was so unbelievably different, sometimes even so contrary to our ordinary appreciation of things! Quite obviously, our appreciation of what is divine or not divine is incorrect...¹² Is it so surprising? Sometimes we wonder if Sri Aurobindo and Mother were not discovering a new divine! A divine who laughs, who dares to laugh for once, after centuries of crucifixions and Sinais under the thunder of Jehovah and ascetics in their solemn cosmic trance. A hell of a change, or in any case a sacred one. Perhaps cosmic consciousness in Matter? And endowed with humor moreover. I saw that what helps and what prevents people from becoming supra-mental is very different from what our usual moral notions imagine. I felt just how... ridiculous we are.¹² Amen. Indeed, she concluded, the shortest road from one point to another is not the straight line that men imagine!¹² And we wonder if that Supermind—far, far away, at the other end of... of what?—is not perhaps reachable in one second. It is all here. It is everywhere. Only a certain way of establishing the contact is lacking. We must find the way. We must find the Sense here. And tomorrow's mystery could suddenly become amazingly simple.

Something to be unblocked.

The Missing Link

We wonder what this unblocking depends on. Not a psychological unblocking, but a material one, an unblocking of Matter. Real Matter, here. Or should we say the next Matter? We are struggling awkwardly to create the language of butterflies with caterpillar words.

All the same, there is something quite mysterious. When She narrated her experience in the supramental world, Mother said: On February 3rd, I was there walking concretely, as concretely as I used to walk in Paris in the old days, in a world which EXISTS IN ITSELF, outside of all subjectivity....¹² Let us see, She clearly said "concretely" and "outside all subjectivity." In other words, an objective world... like the Champs-Elysees. Forgive me, but I am extremely materialistic: You won't be satisfied until you are supramental from head to foot, She once said to me. Indeed, preferably first the feet. However, I replied: "I'm not even sure." I was not sure of ever being satisfied with anything. A kind of absolute thirst, you could say. And no tall tales please. You will be satisfied when it is in Matter. Actually, the whole point is perhaps that true contentment can only exist in the body, and all the rest is just some vague daydream. But all the same, this Matter must be prepared, made up, unblocked. I firmly believe in that. Matter is obviously not what it should be—or rather it is not what it is. But where is that ((concrete"? It is a fact that She did not say "as concretely as I used to go walking on the Playground"—She chose an analogy in Paris. The Champs-Elysees is far away, six thousand miles from the Playground and four and a half hours earlier by the clock time during the summer days—but then this difference, too, is rather subjective. A few more jet engines and perhaps it will be the day before. And She said: It is as if a bridge were being spanned between the two worlds.¹² Her vision was like a first bridge. And if it is "concrete" or material in some way, it would indicate another Matter in Matter or behind Matter—another world within this one? And if there cannot be two identical kinds of Matter one inside the other, it must mean that there is a true matter and a false matter... or perhaps both are true and the same, but perceived differently—two different levels of perception. Just as there is the level of Mr. Jones reading his newspaper and the level of the electron microscope. Another kind of "materiality"—the next kind. But truly speaking, we know nothing about it at all; we do not have adequate eyes. All we know is that something is in the process of happening. When I returned [from the supramental world], along with the memory of the experience, I knew that the supramental world is permanent, that my presence there is permanent, and only A MISSING LINK IS NEEDED TO ALLOW THE JUNCTION WITH THE CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE SUBSTANCE, and it is that link which is in the process of being built.¹²

For Matter to be unblocked, it must first begin to perceive itself differently, which means that it must abandon a certain way of perceiving itself or of being perceived by us and enter into another way. This new way would be the means of the transition. In a way, it is the new perception that opens up the road to the new world. The supramental Amazon is there, concretely, in its entirety, but as we walk through it, it takes on visible contours, relief, rivers and small birds that were always present. Walking through it is probably what builds the missing link between a glimpse of the Amazon and the perception of the entire Amazon. When it is completely perceived, it will be entirely there—but it must be perceived in the material substance. It is the body—and by no means the head—that makes the crossing through the supramental Amazon and perceives it little by little. We are now walking through this same Amazon with our head, which is why we do not see it (or see it in another way). The "evolutionary bridge" is truly the body consciousness, that is, what opens the passage in its own substance, what gradually becomes conscious of the other way and builds the "missing link" between an obsolete, fossilized perception and the other. It is decidedly a very remarkable and rather strange phenomenon. The missing links between a certain Pithecanthropus and some quadrumane or between this reptile and that pterodactyl were usually sought in the external forms; but now the link is in the consciousness and in the perception of the consciousness. It is quite possible, however, that each evolutionary transition took place in the consciousness before taking place in the form. It has always seemed to us that there first had to be a certain perception or pre-perception of a future possibility for the possibility to see the light of day. In a way, something in the reptile had first to grow inner wings or have a need for wings in order for them to grow materially. When we say that something suddenly "mutates" in the cells, we simply push back the problem by making it a mechanical one, because we do not know that the cells are as conscious and intelligent in their own way as our little anthropological brains—there certainly is a cellular consciousness. And it is precisely that consciousness in our own substance which will work out the new evolutionary transition; it is not a game of probability that puts ten million molecules of DNA or RNA into a big bag, shakes it well and suddenly pulls out a new species. It does not work like that. It has never worked like that.

A Sudden Change?

By means of that first perception of the "future," Mother wove the link in her own substance and in the earth's substance. She was beginning to grow the "inner wings" of the next species. But that future is wholly here, you see. So the problem becomes very. I was about to say miraculous. Mother's Great Forest is magical, as I have said—perhaps far more so than we can ever imagine. Because if everything is here and only one small link of perception is missing, that future cannot be out there millions of light years or geological and anthropological ages away. It is a tomorrow that can be here in a flash, the unblocking may happen in a burst of laughter—yes, perhaps an outburst of joy could undo all the old mental nightmare and open our true eyes of Matter, who knows? Or the eyes of true Matter. We suddenly break out of our old carbon layer, and it is here. For where is the "supramental substance" that is to make the next being if not in some little outbursts of joy that suddenly reveal to us an unexpected matter, a completely fresh and carefree body, which never knew it could be "like that"? The body must learn it can be "like that." It must come into contact with the true movement of its cells. The supramental movement is here, in the heart of all Nature. The supramental substance is there, just behind this false substance smothered by ten million mental, medical, logical and atavistic theorems, with Newton and all the rest of all the false gravity of our heads. On 29 February 1956, a true little pulsation began to palpitate in the cells of the world, or rather a first being endowed with a terrestrial body became conscious of that pulsation. A first bridge was spanned between false and true Matter, and who knows, perhaps the complete fusing, the final unblocking, will happen in a flash. I can tell you that by the fact of your living on earth at this time, she said to the children—whether you are conscious of it or not, whether you even want it or not—with the very air you breathe, you are absorbing that new supramental substance which is spreading throughout the earth's atmosphere. And it is preparing things in you that will materialize VERY SUDDENLY, as soon as you have taken the decisive step.¹³ The decisive step must be taken in one's consciousness. We must open our eyes to the POSSIBILITY. If the consciousness believes it is possible, then everything is possible! The only impossibility is to believe that it is not possible: it blocks the door completely, and buries you in the old fossilized perception—the reptile would have stubbornly remained a reptile, it would have dried up in its swamp and never worked out the transition. But for those of us who do want to work out the transition, we have only to open the Door of the Possible, which opens the door of the new perception, which opens the door to the great change of the world, to the transformation. That is what is expected of us. To collaborate with evolution means to refrain from constantly putting the sticks of an old evolutionary logic into the spokes of the new evolutionary logic—for obviously, it is not the same logic! But it is logical nevertheless. If you consider the material world, she said to the children, and you go down to the most minute element (you know, don't you, that they have found innumerable, absolutely invisible things), if you take this element as the part and the material world as the whole, and you imagine a Consciousness [the great total Consciousness, which we are gingerly becoming, in small doses, so as not to explode], or a Will that would delight in making an infinite number of combinations with all these elements but without ever repeating the same combination... we would have to conclude that the universe is new every instant of eternity. And if the universe is new every instant of eternity, we are forced to acknowledge that absolutely nothing is impossible; not only that, but what we call logical is not necessarily so.¹⁴ It is only the repetition of the combinations that gives an appearance—we insist on "appearance"—of stability to the universe, whence we derive laws, principles or "facts," but the fact of the bird is not that of the reptile. We constantly imprison the universe in our little network of facts, as if it were to remain "humanized" forever, but it may be that the universe does not care for human facts, just as one day it did not care for certain simian facts. You can understand, she told them, that if through your aspiration or through YOUR ATTITUDE [the emphasis is mine], you introduced a higher element—what we can now call a supramental element—into the existing set of combinations, you could SUDDENLY change their nature, then all these so-called necessary and inescapable laws would become absurdities. In other words YOU YOURSELVES close the door to the miracle by having certain conceptions, certain attitudes, and by the acceptance you give to certain so-called principles.... And it is YOU YOURSELVES who shut the door by saying with a logic that seems entirely reasonable to you: "Well, if I do X, necessarily Y is going to happen, or if I do not do X, necessarily some other thing is going to happen." It is as if you were hanging up a steel curtain between yourselves and the free action of the Grace.... How wonderful it would be to imagine another kind of logic, that of the unexpected. Don't you think it would be delightful? We have had enough of the world as it is! Why not let it become at least what we think it should be?¹⁵

The world is on the verge of a miracle—it is here, possible, almost palpable. But on what little trigger does that reversal of appearances depend? What will happen to make human beings see differently all of a sudden? Or will we have to wait for centuries until slowly, slowly, almost imperceptibly, perceptions change one by one, through millions of repeated experiences that gradually clarify and lighten matter—and we glide into the other way almost without noticing it? But this is very unlikely. The phenomenon is growing from within; it will take us by surprise, because it is not happening in our heads nor even with our mental consent, but in our bodies and in the general substance of the earth. For the moment, we are witnessing only the negativity of the phenomenon, big waves of terrestrial mud flowing everywhere, the great universal cleansing of Matter, which is throwing out all the old falsehood, pounding and kneading and pulverizing everything until we thoroughly lose our bearings. And perhaps that is exactly the point—no one will be able to find his bearings any more. We will not have a handle any more. Nothing will explain anything any more, nothing will be worthwhile any more, we will stand mouths agape before an incomprehensible and ungovernable world in which everything contradicts itself, each remedy annuls the other and everything is mutually reduced to zero. A chaos of perceptions. But behind is a supremely Positive element that is pushing and pushing and is in the process of breaking the old structure open to reveal to us its naked Marvel. It is there. We must come in contact with that, we must let ourselves be drawn by that. The very quality of the atmosphere has changed,¹⁶ She said. And She knew the difference of "airs," She could detect the odor of an atomic explosion thousands of miles away. No, it does not depend upon a slow, interminable evolution of consciousnesses. It is not a question of refining or sharpening any instruments, developing new antennae or concentrating and meditating and reaching higher regions; it is right here before our eyes. We even wonder if the phenomenon will take place on our side or on the other, as it were; if we will go to it or it will come to us. But what is the human point, the terrestrial moment that will make the two meet? There must be something to do on our side, a movement to make.... Perhaps a point of impossibility, something that cries out everywhere in the earth's consciousness: each one is as though placed before a certain impossibility that is the point through which he will gain access to the new door. Perhaps the whole earth and each nation will meet its point of impossibility, where it will be forced to call for something else. We do not know, we know nothing about it really. We only feel an extraordinary Possibility, an incredible new perception which is veiled from us only by... perhaps only by the amount of time it will take for enough people to perceive it. A contagion of the new perception. Each time a new element is introduced into the sum total of possible combinations, she said, it results in what could be called a tearing of the limits.... It is obvious that the modern scientific perception is much closer to something of the new reality than, say, the perception of the Stone Age. But even that is suddenly going to find itself outdated, surpassed and probably shattered by the intrusion of something that did not exist in the universe as we had studied it. Well, it is this change, this sudden transformation of the universal element which is most certainly going to result in a kind of chaos in the perceptions, out of which a new knowledge will emerge. This is, in broad terms, the result of the new Manifestation.... The quality, quantity and nature of the possible universal combinations are suddenly going to change in such a drastic way that it will probably stun all those who are doing research in life.

Now we are going to see. ¹⁷ And She placed her arms on her chair with that air of such laughter within, like a child hiding an enchanting surprise. Then She got up, glanced at everyone with a twinkling of mischief and challenge in her eyes—and She was gone.

Perhaps a gesture of joy and faith in the true earth. Something very simple, almost candid.

And it dissolves the shell of appearances.

There we are.

It was always there.

We had always been that light vastness. But this time, in a body.

A terrestrial mutation.

5. The Supramental World