Mother or The New Species - II

6. A Veil

This change in our perception of Matter, whether sudden or gradual, individual or more general, must necessarily be followed by a change in our handling of Matter. A considerable change. After all, there is no essential difference between an ape gnawing through a liana with its teeth and a man cutting down a tree with an electric saw: both are using a mechanism. Man is but the perfection of mechanism. The difference might seem awesome in its effects, but essentially it is an intelligence that applies itself to Matter and elaborates more and more sophisticated means or instruments: a muscular arm or electronic pincers. Matter remains the same, we have only violated it more or less judiciously or used some of its forces extracted by more and more complex machines. We are perfectly and completely the heirs of the apes, except for the illusion that makes us believe in our superiority, which, however, is in the process of crumbling under the very weight of the formidable Machinery we have devised. Even in our bodies, there is no appreciable difference: the physiological functioning of the monkey and ours are identical, except that ours has considerably deteriorated just because of the weight of this machinery. We have grown a bit too intelligent (I was about to say much too super-apes). We speak of the superman, but come to think of it, where simply is man?

The next evolutionary bifurcation will be a radical one, that is to say, it will take us totally out of this ape, however much "improved," and bring us into... perhaps into the true man.

The Supramental Creation

Man is an improvement upon the methods of the ape. The next man will be a man without methods. There will be only one "method," as it were, and that is consciousness. The entire universe has never been anything other than a "method" of consciousness, or rather a fact of consciousness, which has been veiled from us by the development of that substitute for consciousness we call the Mind. Having ceased to understand and to see the fundamental process of the universe, we have naturally been forced to resort to devices, instruments, "gadgets" and various pairs of spectacles to handle outwardly what we could no longer touch directly through consciousness, i.e., from consciousness to consciousness. Even a child can understand this. In any case, little Mirra understood very well the aspiration of a plant, the movement of an animal or the vibration of a stone; her consciousness touched the same consciousness everywhere—of course, since there is only that! We can understand each other quite well through it and in it, whether we are ten thousand miles away or just across the room, as if there were no separation. And there is no separation, except in our clever little brains that suddenly thought they were more intelligent than all the little cells in the universe. Anyway.... It was a necessary stage in evolution. And when I think of how we could ever believe that all this evolutionary labor was designed merely for composing rhapsodies whether Hungarian or in Blue, or for sending handsome boys to the moon!... We have such a poor idea of our future. Yet if we could only understand the workings of the next being somewhat more clearly, it would perhaps help us to create him. This is really the great grace of Mother and Sri Aurobindo: to help us see into our own future. The forest is immense, or seems immense, and we do not know when we will get to the other end, in this complete, supramental Amazon, but knowing what we can expect at the end may help us to get through the forest more quickly. What we always lack is seeing; we cannot realize what we do not see, it does not exist for us, it is in limbo. But as soon as we can perceive the thing a little in our consciousness, it is as if the first bridge were built, and the means are worked out almost automatically, almost necessarily we might say. The miracle of pioneers is to wrest the new vision out of a seeming nothingness.

Now, it is for us to see and make this new vision grow in our own substance—but perhaps it is growing all by itself. So let us just say, to help it grow faster.

In the vision of February 3, 1958, aboard the "supramental ship," which is a pictorial representation of the next Matter, true Matter, conscious Matter—just what the Mind veils from us—there were some very interesting details that bear repeating. There was ONE SINGLE substance in all things¹—whether for the objects aboard the ship, the ship itself, or even the tall beings on the shore. And actually, even scientifically, it is obvious that all Matter is a single substance: it is only we who have superimposed differences of skin and neckties and religion onto something that moves or should move as a single whole (and everything grates precisely because it does not move as a whole; it is obstructed, diverted and distorted by all the misleading differences of neckties or what-have-you—and boxed in, without the least communication). The Marxists very clearly saw the falsity of separation and division, which is why I said that they were nearer to the sense of evolution than a good many spiritualists who seek to re-create oneness above, in the clouds, or the idealists who make great speeches on oneness, which are however rather ineffective, because their oneness is woven or seeks to be woven in the Mind, where oneness cannot be: it can and must take place in the material substance—and the Marxists' mistake is to believe that that oneness can be achieved in the manner of super-apes, through outer means and repressive methods and social mechanisms. We eternally transplant the machinery everywhere. Whereas the next man is the man without machinery. Oneness can only exist at the level of conscious Matter, because it is the only thing that is ONE in the world.

But Matter must become conscious, or rather we must remove what prevents it from being conscious or what prevents us from perceiving its consciousness and handling it accordingly.

Now, this single substance in everything changed the quality of its vibration according to the needs or uses; the tall beings on the shore did not seem to have a skeletal structure, and they could take on any form according to their needs; and even aboard the ship, when a change had to be made, it was done not by artificial and outer means but by an inner process, by a working of the consciousness that gave the substance its form or appearance—life created its own forms.² This is an extraordinarily new phenomenon, and extraordinarily logical, one might say—natural for once.

Instead of drawing a picture, an imitation of a vision, a translation with hammer or chisel and pincers of something one sees: it is created as it is seen. It is the vision that creates. What takes place in the consciousness here is automatically translated in the substance over there, because it is the same consciousness, the same conscious substance, which is molded according to the particular needs, feelings or moments. A constantly new, renewed and renewable life, which is not imprisoned in any form except that of a beauty that changes and develops and ceaselessly reinvents itself. The only limit to the working of this new substance is the limit of our own quality of vision and of consciousness. That is, no one can deceive anyone; if you are gray, you only produce grayness, and there is no way to improve it with a few neckties, university degrees or bank accounts—one perfectly resembles oneself. The world we create is the exact replica of the quality of our soul. The means at our disposal are exactly in proportion to our power of "radiation," as it were. In other words, a real world—for once. That is why Mother said that the supramental world would be the perfect hierarchic manifestation, spontaneous, essentially true—and without coercion of any kind—where each one will be conscious of his own perfection.³ What coercion? One is one's own coercion, and the spontaneous urge of each being, then, would not be to acquire false external means, false powers and false substitutes for consciousness, but to grow inwardly, to perfect oneself inwardly, to develop one's quality and power of radiation in order to ceaselessly mold a life and an environment that grow according to one's own vision. We are different from each other by virtue of the quality of our soul or let us say, the quality of our vibration, and the scope of its radiation.

For the Supermind is not a milieu where all are alike. Here, in false matter ruled by mind, we constantly mistake oneness with uniformity, we reduce the true and essential oneness to a mechanical, paring-down and stereotyped equality. But it is a hideous caricature. For we know only one way of creating oneness, which is to reduce everything to the lowest common denominator: Those whose heads are above get them chopped off and those who are too small get pushed up from below. But that doesn't do any good,⁴ she said simply. The very law of the world is a law of oneness in diversity. No two leaves on the same tree are alike. But oneness does not lie in the external expression or behavior: it lies in consciousness and substance. But since we are not conscious of the real consciousness, not alive to the real substance, we are constantly forced to use false means to act upon a false substance and a false life—so everything is false, everything is instantly falsified. We fabricate means because of an incapacity to be, we make up rules because of an incapacity to be, we mechanize things because of an incapacity to grasp the real Mechanism of the world. Whereas in the true oneness—supramental—of the supra-mental consciousness and substance, everything is an infinitely varied play of one and the same thing. So this single thing is never in competition with itself, no more than one's feet are the enemy of one's arms, they feel no need to imitate the graceful movements of the metacarpus. It is one single body in an infinite diversity. How do you imagine the supramental life? she asked the children. As a paradise in which everyone will do the same thing in the same way? Everyone becomes a harp-playing angel?... That would be a dreadful world!⁵ No one needs to look alike in the supramental world, and no one needs to do better than his neighbor, or to have more than his neighbor! Each one is his own model and has the perfect and complete joy of expressing what he is—being himself is his joy, very simply, but since it is a true world and not a fossilized one, everyone is also conscious that perfection can grow, beauty can grow, vision can grow, joy can grow, and that there is an ever vaster way to express the particular mode of being that each one represents in the universal totality, while simultaneously having the essential joy of everything in the universe, because it is a world where everything is concretely ONE.... There remain many things to discover, unimaginable for our present understanding.

And finally, our false world is devoured by the means necessary for living. We live nothing at all. We spend our time devising ways to attempt to live an illusory life that is never lived! We do this in order to have that. Nothing is lived instantly, spontaneously; we constantly strive toward something that is always for later, always for afterwards, ((sometime," farther, over there. The artifice devours the artifice. The process swallows itself up. The most essential difference between our world and the supramental world (and it is only after having consciously gone there with the consciousness that usually operates here that I became aware of the enormous difference, as it were) is that everything here, except for what takes place very deeply within, appeared to me absolutely artificial. None of the values of ordinary, physical life are based on truth. Just as we have to get cloth and sew it to make dresses for ourselves and then wear them, so also to feed ourselves we need to get things from outside and put it inside our bodies for nourishment—for everything, our life is artificial. A true, sincere, spontaneous life as in the supramental world is a springing forth of things through the action of a conscious will, a power over substance that makes the substance accord with what we decide it to be. And he who has the power and the knowledge can have what he wants, whereas he who doesn't cannot use any artificial means to obtain what he wants. In ordinary life, EVERYTHING is artificial. Depending upon the fortuity of birth or the circumstances, you have a more or less high position or a more or less comfortable life, not because it is the spontaneous, natural and sincere expression of your mode of being and inner need, but because the fortuity of life's circumstances placed you in contact with those things.... It is an absurd world because it is an artificial world. Any imbecile has more power as long as he has the means to acquire the necessary artifices. Whereas in the supramental world, the more one is conscious and in touch with the truth of things, the more the will has authority over the substance. Authority is a true authority. If you want clothes, your have to have the power to make them, a real power. If you do not have this power, well, you remain naked. There is no artifice to substitute for a lack of power. Here, not once in a million times is authority an expression of something true. Everything is colossally stupid. ⁶

How true!

And the body itself becomes a true body.

Even the body takes on a form or a hue or a luminosity reflecting our real inner movement; we cannot pretend, we are what we are. But we can change also depending upon mood, state of consciousness or encounters. There are days when we might be like a lyre bird, other days when we flow like a silver river, and others when we are in a bad mood we simply do not exist then. An infinitely flowing world like living music expressing the changing tonalities of a perpetual soul. A spontaneous hierarchy of light and beauty.

And death no longer is. For only what is unconscious, devoid of inherent light, dies. Our world of reflected light is a mortal world. Whereas there, the light is within: the very substance is conscious and emanates the luminosity of its own consciousness. And how could light ever cease to be luminous?

Something in our present Matter eclipses the true light of Matter—what is it?

A veil of death over.., something.

Perhaps we are already something else behind that veil? There then remains to establish the connection with this already-otherwise.

A veil of death to cross.

The Mystery

It is strange, it is even very mysterious and probably the very heart of the mystery, but it would seem that there are two possible yet almost radically different ways of effecting the transition from this opaque body to the new body, from this false and obscure matter to that true and conscious Matter—what Sri Aurobindo and Mother call "transformation." It may be that they are not contradictory, perhaps they complement each other and meet at some point along the way. If we could define them or see them clearly, a great veil would be lifted. But after all, it is not like a problem in arithmetic that can be solved by thinking it out; it is not a mental problem at all—we can envisage it mentally, but it is not at that level that it is really visible: it is in the body, that is where the transition takes place, that is the level at which we must understand. Is it this opaque body, this false body, as it were, which is gradually going to become "unblocked," lightened, clarified and illumined through evolution? Or is it true Matter, matter as it already really is, that is going to come toward and join with the other and replace it through a process that may now seem incomprehensible to us but is perhaps extraordinarily simple, almost instantaneous, like lifting a veil: a sort of change in consciousness or change of material vision, something as radically different as the vision of the butterfly is to the vision of the caterpillar.... In which direction is the phenomenon going to unfold: from us to it or from it to us? Will it be evolution or revelation? In a certain sense, all evolution is a revelation of something that was already there in the seed. But the revelation is slow and seems to take its own nonchalant and endless time to move from one form to the other. And what is a "form" after all? A form is a certain expression of consciousness, a certain mode of being, and we are heading step by step toward a vaster, more total consciousness. Yet, a moment must come, a juncture in evolution, when one reaches the edge of that total consciousness, when it is ready to emerge in a sufficiently refined material form prepared through millennia of evolution—when, in short, what matters is no longer so much a question of a change in form as of a change of consciousness. So the problem amounts to knowing whether the old refined form will allow this consciousness to infiltrate, if its old obscure mold can be permeated, "transformed," or... There lies the mystery. Or what? Or will the consciousness itself directly produce its own new body?... It seems a formidable proposition. Yet, that is always how things have transpired in evolution: the change of forms has always been produced by a change in consciousness—it is because something in the cellular consciousness of the reptile was awakened to a new need that a change came about in its matter. And this is also the key to this new transition. Mother said it clearly: The real transformation is the transformation of the consciousness, all the rest will follow automatically.⁷ Sri Aurobindo said the same thing in The Life Divine:... The consciousness itself by its mutation will necessitate and operate whatever mutation is needed for the body.⁸ And this time, it is not a question of going to another, higher form of the same obscure Matter, but to another Matter, which is perhaps the same one but unobscured, conscious. So again, the whole problem is: will it be a gradual transformation of one into the other, or a dissolution, we might say, of the obscuring element? And what obscures—what is that element? If we knew, the whole problem would probably be solved—this is what She would set out to seek gropingly in her body just a few months later. But in either case it is the change of consciousness that produces the new body, either through a slow process of clarification or a sudden unblocking. And it is quite possible that the two processes intersect or overlap at some point along the way, that a certain degree of inner clarity or a certain threshold must first be reached, or slowly conquered, before the obscuring veil of false matter can be torn away—but can it be torn away in a single individual without its being torn away for the whole earth? This is yet another question. Matter is ONE—we keep forgetting that.

Everything revolves round this point: is it really a different matter, unknown, imperceptible to our coarse senses, or is it the same matter, only clarified and transformed In one case, we are in the supernatural (or in any event, in another kind of natural), while in the other, it is a logical evolution that unfolds (or a future logic). I personally believe it is the same matter, only perceived differently—but before reaching the threshold of a "different perception," a considerable change in our opaque substance of improved apes is needed. Which means that the two processes overlap here also. And what does this point of different perception imply? When we perceive something differently, we act upon it differently (microscopes attest to this, they have already changed our handling of Matter dramatically); if we perceive Matter differently, we will handle it differently, just as the supramental beings aboard the ship were doing—but those who do not have that perception see nothing, because to them Matter is still the same old obscure thing. In other words, we could very well continue to be apparently as we are in Matter, while having a different relationship, imperceptible to others, with this very same Matter. There is a border, a wall of perception to be crossed. There remains the same mysterious transition that seems to have to do with collective transition, collective perception. And what happens to the old body when it reaches the point of a different perception? Is it visibly going to change its old structure, or change it only to its own perception? But how can it change visibly when this "visibly" is precisely what constitutes our false perception, our old perception of Matter? Or else, having evolved its new perception, having perhaps even created its new body, allowed its true Matter (invisible to us) to emerge, the old body falls away, its destiny accomplished?—One "vanishes" into real Matter. There would then remain only the new body, which would be visible to all only when all will have equally gone through the wall of perception and fashioned and freed true Matter in themselves, which is the next body. Hence, there would really be two worlds, one within the other, a continent within a continent; both are equally material, but one is left behind, we might say, it is old, obsolete, merely hanging on, and the other is developing under the old crust.

This is as far as we can go mentally. Now it remains for us to look at the evolution of the process in Mother, in the experience of her body, in the flesh. In a way, hers is the witness-body of the world, the evolutionary crucible, the living example of what may come to take place—which will perhaps help all of us to cross over. She opened up the passage in her own body.

Mother's Forest is decidedly very mysterious. She was herself uncovering the mystery, little by little—She herself did not know just how infinitely mysterious it was when She set out. Already in 1958, after the experience of the supramental ship, She had said to the children: When I invited you for a journey into the unknown, a journey of adventure, I did not know just how true my words were, but I can promise those who are ready to embark upon the adventure that they will make some very interesting discoveries.⁹

And this was only the beginning.

The Improved Body

In short, the body must allow real Matter to emerge. The body is the evolutionary instrument, the means, the bridge. It must construct the "missing link." In other words, up to a certain point, it must operate in false matter as it is—or at least as it appears to be—as the body lives, feels and perceives it; then, there comes a moment when it begins perceiving differently, and its methods of operation change or should change. At least we suppose so. So the first part of the course, which seems the most concrete to us because it still deals with the old familiar Matter, would only be a preparation for the mysterious other thing, a pretext or a means to reach the other perception. Whether or not this is actually the case, we really do not know, for we know nothing yet: we shall only understand the process when we, or when one being reaches the other end. Until we reach the end, we cannot say at what stage we are. IT IS THE FINAL STAGE THAT WILL COUNT. So only one who comes in a few hundred or a few thousand years from now will be able to say, glancing back: there was such and such stage, such and such realization.... This will be History, a historical perspective of the event. Until then, we are all in the movement and in the work. At what stage are we, and just how far will we be able to go?—It is better not to speculate too much on these things because it hampers you and prevents you from running properly. It is better to think only of running and nothing else.¹⁰ This body, then, has first to become more refined, light, clarified and even to widen its limited material perceptions, get rid of its old animal habits, emerge from the mortal routine: an improved body.

The clear and simple fundamental Direction for this sailing into the unknown is given by Mother in a few words: It's in the direction of Matter's perfect obedience to the Consciousness.¹¹ She told me this in 1970, therefore it was something clearly seen, experientially seen. Here the purely physical discipline of gymnastics, sports, etc., can play an important role, and that is why She gave such a prominence to physical education in the Ashram. The fuller physical mastery given by hatha yoga can also be of help—all means are good. But actually, the tiny, unobtrusive method of a certain "attitude" in and toward the thousand gestures of daily life is an extraordinarily rich and virtually infinite source for the free development of Matter; we have already said it, but it bears repeating because of our compulsive need to mechanize everything we do, to make everything go through some mechanism—including even a mechanism for transformation! Each time we manage to instill a little consciousness into a gesture, we are nearer the goal than if we had lifted a hundred pounds of barbells for two hours, while observing the development of our muscles in the mirror—it is the muscles of our material consciousness that need developing. And that can be done while brushing our teeth.

Consequently, a huge field of possible development opens before us. There are genuine and duly recorded experiments in the annals of nearly all countries, and if they appear exceptional, the exceptional can be generalized, it is a matter of training: mastery over the vital body functions, over respiration and heartbeat, controlled channeling of the energies throughout the body, concentration of the energies on one point, suspension of the energies, perfect rest in trance (or yogic catalepsy), renewal of the energies by drawing from the universal substance through a kind of osmosis similar to that of the early stages of evolution, or better still, by drawing energy from the inexhaustible regions of the higher consciousness, and so forth. All these masteries lead naturally to the first essential desiderata of the transformation: immunity from disease and prolongation of life at will, for this whole laborious process seems to demand a considerable amount of time just to arrive at the starting point.

Along the way, another important development occurs which begins to change the perspectives of the body drastically and can accelerate the laborious process a thousand times over: it is the opening of the centers of consciousness, or chakras, which are the relay stations for the universal energies through the various planes of our body. In fact, our physical organs and the various plexuses are a rough expression or material adaptation of those centers of energy. Generally, all that filters through those centers is a thin trickle of current needed for the performance of our routine animal functions. But once the centers are opened, there are no such limits to the development of the body, as Sri Aurobindo notes in The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth: new powers as well as new and universal—or at any rate worldwide—means of communication would then emerge in this little body henceforth connected through its centers to all the possible levels of universal Energy and Consciousness; distances are annulled, the vision reaches everywhere, the perception reaches everywhere; the manipulation of energies and the means of action also reach everywhere; even the functioning of the organs could then change. For it may well be, said Sri Aurobindo, that the evolutionary urge would proceed to a change of the organs themselves in their material working and use and diminish greatly the need of their instrumentation and even of their existence. The centers [of consciousness] would pour their energies into material nerve and plexus and tissue and radiate them through the whole material body; all the physical life and its necessary activities in this new existence could be maintained and operated by these higher agencies in a freer and ampler way and by a less burdensome and restricting method. This might go so far that these organs might cease to be indispensable and even be felt as too obstructive: the central force might use them less and less and finally throw aside their use altogether. If that happened they might waste by atrophy, be reduced to an insignificant minimum or even disappear. The central force might substitute for them subtle organs of a very different character or, if anything material was needed, instruments that would be forms of dynamism or plastic transmitters rather than what we know as organs.¹²

Such is the improved body.

The Breaking Point

All these results are possible... on a scale of centuries of evolution. The substance becomes refined and the newly acquired characteristics may be transmitted hereditarily—an endless story, the very one we have lived painfully enough for ages. A sort of superman would emerge from that labor, not as we imagine him, with a big brain or even big muscles, but with a conscious body, infinitely receptive to all the world's vibrations, wrought of oneness, bathed in oneness, controlling the forces and capable of directing the flow of the force on each point of the world to heal and help his less evolved brothers, to influence circumstances by manipulating the vibrations that create circumstances and put a little harmony in this whole painful chaos. This summit would seem enviable to us, and it is actually possible that things partially occur in this way, because everything is possible and we can expect all sorts of intermediary transitions as was the case for every evolutionary phase. Nature tries out one formula, then another—thousands of formulas with her great lump of modeling clay—and she comes out with all kinds of bizarre forms that survive or vanish, vegetate or are the stepping stones for another, more complete, better adapted formula, until she reaches the last rung of that particular transition: I think, Mother said to the children, that all possibilities are foreseeable and that every sincere aspiration and total consecration will bring a response, and the methods, the means, the transitions, the transformations will be innumerable in their nature—it is not at all that things will be done in one particular way and not in another.¹³

Yet, this laboriously achieved superman, however improved, would still be a man, he would have the same old body, only improved, which would still continue to die like all animal bodies, even if it manages in part to prolong its life almost at will or die almost at will—because the world would still be under the rule of Death, the root of Death would still be there, unchanged, we would only have acquired the power to outwit it... for a while, until some little unexpected nail punctures our foot on the bank of a pretty river. Indeed, that "enviable summit" looks rather like an inflation of the human, or a little too human—and Nature rarely tends to inflate the same species indefinitely—something like the cosmic end point of the Peripatetics' old walkabout; perhaps we could even put the entire collection of the world's idealists together, shake that charming pretty bag and pull out the ideal species—which Nature would doubtlessly try to realize, because Nature is very obliging, she lends herself to each and every slightly sincere caprice... for a while. But actually, as long as Death is lurking somewhere nothing can be charming. As long as a single man dies, something in us will die a little and will suffer with him. And live three hundred years in the same bag of bones... what for? A swarm of doubtfully improvable children? Possibly, we would no longer need to build up bank accounts and libraries because we would perhaps also have devised a more just social order and a less murky means of knowledge than our cerebral libraries. All this is quite possible. But then, what? There is something called Death that is like the root of all the poison in the world, and it seems to us that as long as that root is not dissolved, the world will be poisoned again and again in one form or another, perhaps unforeseen today, but it will ultimately thwart all of our knowledge and wisdom and "improvements." Rot cannot be improved. There is a foundation of rottenness in the world which will decompose everything in spite of all the human or superhuman powers that we may plaster over it.

The only problem in the world is Death.

The only root to be changed is that one.

And meanwhile, we turn in circles, around and around, and sometimes it is an iron circle, sometimes a golden circle, but we turn in circles, we turn in circles, and the children will turn in circles and the grandchildren will turn in circles—and it will just go on and on.¹⁴ How well She put it.

If we knew what Death really was, the problem would be three-fourths solved because we would know how to handle it, instead of injecting penicillin into a phenomenon that totally escapes us. Death is not where we think it is. Where is Death, then? Where is it hiding?... It is right here, under our very nose.

Perhaps Mother's voyage leads through it.

And indeed, Mother and Sri Aurobindo have seen another species, another body, another substance—another kind of Matter no longer subject to the rule of Death. A supramental world. They saw it, it exists. But how does one get there?... Perhaps Death has actually to be gone through? But then where is it? Where is Death? Death is not in the corpse, it begins long before that: it is everywhere. The corpse is merely the result. Illness is merely the result. And all the stupidity in the world, all the madness of the world results from this... something. So really, if we must wait centuries upon centuries and improved body upon improved body to reach the threshold and get into the other Matter... then it is frightening. The pain of this world is dreadful—a geometrical and cataclysmic progression of pain, almost as frightening as the number of little babies that keep multiplying and multiplying along the roads of India. It is not possible. We all feel we are fast approaching the point of the not-possible. Something has to burst, something has to change, turn around. We do not need supermen, really, we need SOMETHING ELSE. We do not need to improve or to regulate our rottenness, we need to get out of it, to breathe another air. But since we do not believe in celestial paradises, because evolution does not believe in heaven, she believes in the earth—that is why she created her in the first place—something has to happen in this Matter! Not in a century, but soon—it is urgent.

But what?

We must get into that real Matter, since it is there, but what is veiling it, what is preventing the passage?... We can no longer wait. We cannot wait for the millions and billions of eyes of the world to open, if it is only a matter of a change in perception. For who will cleanse those millions of eyes, which for the most part do not even want to be cleansed, which even rejoice in their filth? We cannot, no, we can no longer turn out a few elite beings to serve as an example to the world—we no longer have the time! Great universal Death is knocking at our door. The asphyxiation is utterly asphyxiating; it almost takes heroism to keep on living in this world once one is slightly awake or awakened. So what, then? The question is almost appalling when lived with eyes wide open, with eyes that see and touch the misery everywhere, with cells that feel the misery everywhere.

But then Mother left; She tried. Did she succeed, or did She fail in the attempt, our attempt, since it was all being played out in the cells of her body? She was the crucible of the world, our bridge, our passage over.... What did She achieve? Did She achieve something? Did She open up the passage? If we knew that, it would perhaps help us to open the passage fully: it is as if a door were there, before us, almost in the air we breathe, we can feel it, and it would be enough to see where the door is. The phenomenon must come to us; that is the only possible hope, for not one in a million is ready to make the sincere effort to go to the end of the forest—nor even to the edge of the forest—and yet, there must be some act on our part that would unseal the door, if only we knew where it was—if we understood where.

It is this, our journey together through this book, as if through Death, as if toward a hope for the world.

To find the door.

Will there be a continuity or a sudden appearance of something new? Will there be a progressive transition between what we are now and what our inner spirit aspires to become, or will there be a break...? Will the human species be like certain other species that have disappeared from the earth?¹⁵

6. A Veil