Mother or The New Species - II

7. Krishna in Gold

But is not all the present cataclysmic acceleration just the result of the acceleration of the "other thing"? The phenomenon rushing our way? We always look in the wrong direction, we always see an "against" whereas there is nothing but a "for." The whole world with its millions of aberrations or "right directions" is going in but one direction, and it is going there through the aberrations as well as the nonaberrations—for ultimately we do not at all know what is really happening, we are actors in a bogus play, here, on the outside, while something quite other is pushing within. We have taken the practical and pragmatic necessities of action for ideal and moral ends, because the particular situation required us to act "for" or "against," but these are merely processes for another end far exceeding all our ideals or moral speculations. When we have seen this once, we are cured forever of the deception of appearances, and can begin to appreciate the problem on a world scale—and to see the precipitation of the Other Thing in the chaos of appearances and by every means. True, it was not exactly the case in 1950, but since 1956 a new fact has come into the world which changes all existing data and gives them a strange acceleration. The world has changed. It has truly and radically changed—we have no idea just how radically. Appearances will have to explode in our faces before we begin to understand—but then this is just what is happening.

In 1958 that world is still very young, it is only two years old. Mother is discovering it step by step or perhaps should we say "un-covering it." She is removing the lid or the veil. I recall a very remarkable vision of a young, a very young Indian girl, a child of Mother, who did not very well understand herself what she was seeing because no one could really understand what it was about at the time—but now it is fairly obvious. In her vision, she was with a very "important" gentleman, a prominent grown-up, suitably attired in a hat (this gentleman was the Mind), and she herself was very young, a child of no more than ten or twelve years old. The two of them suddenly came upon the door of a sanctuary. It was clear that the gentleman was not supposed to go in there, but since he had the key to the door, they both went in. In the sanctuary, quietly seated on his throne, was the god Krishna, the child Krishna, very small, with an aura of blue light as he is usually depicted in Hindu mythology (blue is the light of the Mind and Krishna is the symbol of the higher regions of the Mind), and he was very much alive and smiling. As soon as he saw the young Indian girl, he got up, came toward her, took her hand, and notwithstanding the protests of the prominent Gentleman, he went outside... into the world. He was no higher than the little girl's chest. And together they set out hand in hand: "Wait, I'll show you something..." he said, with a charming, mischievous smile as only Krishna can have, "We are going to have a good time." So off they went, and as they walked peaceful folk began to quarrel, quiet fields began to swarm with people, towns fell into confusion—he sowed chaos everywhere, laughing all the while. A bit uneasy, the little girl turned toward him and suddenly noticed that instead of looking down at him, it was he who was looking down at her! Her Krishna had grown very tall—he had even changed color! Krishna was in gold! In solid gold, and yet light, smiling, mischievous, gamboling with her through the world. And he kept growing and growing and growing. And as he grew, the chaos kept growing and growing and growing. Finally, seeing this chaos everywhere, the very dignified and by now indignant Gentleman attempted to lock Krishna back up in his sanctuary (the sanctuary of the Mind) so that he could be worshiped as he ought to be, under lock and key, and cease sowing his chaos. And Krishna accepted the gentleman's plea, all the while keeping the little girl's hand in his, but when he arrived once again at the door of the sanctuary, he said to her with a smile in the corner of his eyes: "I'll show you something...." Krishna in gold went back inside and began growing, growing so much that the roof of the sanctuary flew off in splinters! His head went right through the top of the sanctuary, then, laughingly, he tore apart the walls with his bare hands, strode over the ruins, strode over the Gentleman who was beneath the debris, and... everything came to a close in the child's vision with an immense burst of laughter.

The divine laughter of the new world.

Gold is the color of the supermind.

Krishna in gold is growing up amongst us. Beware of the sanctuary.

And what is a vision? It is the translation, in a visual language, of a phenomenon that can be seen in all kinds of languages, on all kinds of levels, and with as many explanations as there are levels. The whole problem is to see things from the right level. For Mother, it was at the level of her own body that She was to see things, or rather it was the body that was to see things, not as a symbolic translation of "something" on the microscopic level, or the level of the Mind or the heart, but the living phenomenon itself, in its own milieu. Because ultimately, there is only one thing that truly understands, and that is Matter, the body—all the rest are translations. But then, which Matter?

The phenomenon was becoming more explicit or uncovered, as it were. The year 1958, the last year before the great turning point and Mother's "withdrawal" to plunge into the body (like Sri Aurobindo in 1926), is marked by two experiences, or rather three, since one dates from a little before 1958. These experiences could almost be identified as A2, G3, C4, etc., like laboratory experiments, because each experience initiates a whole line of experiences of a certain type, A1, A2, A3, etc., which eventually come to intersect another line B1, B2, B3, etc., to form ultimately a whole network of experiences with certain, more prominent lines or curves. There are thousands of such experiences, and they are only the beginning of a huge diagram where a new configuration of the world is gradually taking shape.

Or perhaps a new configuration of Matter.

But when you are in the midst of the experience, you do not even know that "X leads to Y" or "Y leads to Z," you do not know which way it is all going; it simply happens. It is "something" that is happening. Afterwards, we attribute, or try to attribute a meaning to it, but at the time it does not make any sense: you are immersed in a bath that produces various modifications of the body consciousness, which are quite puzzling until they are repeated a thousand times over. So it is very simple: A2 + V4 +... produces X0. And at X0, a new curve branches off. But you can never be sure of anything until you have reached the end, because, as Mother would say, "It is the last stage that counts." What is on the path and what is not, then? What is important and what is not? An overlooked speck of dust might perhaps contain the whole key to the mystery.

A very difficult diagram. Because if the new world were already explained, it would no longer be new at all!

A Friable Body

The action, development and effects of this new Power gradually became more distinct in the body. A body that was a sort of "representative object" of the world, as She said, to test whether this Power can grow there and be borne by this earthly substance, and from there spread to all Matter. A new Power is always difficult to bear; had the current of mental energy been abruptly poured into an ape's brain, its very opaqueness would have created such resistance and friction that the ape would have been knocked senseless or left utterly stunned. The experiences are thus dosed out, the "quantity" or quantum of supermind manifests gradually, as the body becomes accustomed or clarified. It was first perceived as a kind of pulsation in the cells, something that left a perception or a sensation or an impression... utterly strange and new.¹ In a second experience (Was it the second? For we really do not always know when it is an "experience": there are thousands of little unobtrusive and barely perceptible contacts, like a difference in the air or a sort of peculiar, elusive sensation, and they come again and again, preparing the substance without seeming to—actually, the experience is taking place constantly), this time, however, a few supramental "features" were going to emerge more clearly: A supramental entity had entirely possessed me, Mother notes, something a little taller than myself..² And effectively, the experience always gives the impression of extending beyond the body, as if boundaries do not stop where we think they do, or where we perceive them; the body is a kind of stunted and hard object, like a doll or a wooden actor: a mere puppet. Something a little taller than myself: its feet extended below my feet and its head went a little beyond my head. A solid block... one single piece. And it was denser than my physical body.² We shall often come across that particular feature. Already in Tlemcen, fifty years earlier, Theon had spoken of—and Mother had perceived—"a substance denser than physical Matter." What this dense matter exactly is we do not know for the moment, but it is a fact. The Upanishads do mention a "dense consciousness," chidghana, but it is only a "consciousness"—unless this consciousness became material or condensed like the clouds of primordial gas? Real Matter, therefore, would be "denser" than the one we perceive through our senses.... Future experience will perhaps clarify this point. And within that density, the physical body seemed to me almost unreal—as though friable—like sand eroding away.²

Obviously, if the supramental substance is to be molded in the way we have seen and if forms are to be able to change at will, the apparent rigidity of Matter as we perceive it will have to disappear. The body must start to perceive itself differently to be able eventually to handle its own substance differently. As long as it feels rigid and hard, it can be nothing but an opaque and irrevocably mortal piece of matter. The body is incredibly subject to its own self-perception, it is as though hypnotized by its own sensations: they represent the truth for it, much as justice and righteousness constitute truth at the mental level... and yet we know how very fragile and fluctuating and alterable these truths are. Therefore, the body has to be able to perceive itself differently if it is to have the least hope of changing—in short, it must lose its habit of false matter and its false sensations of a false matter: The perception must PRECEDE the material transformation,³ Mother said. When the body begins to realize that things can be different, it is as great, or greater a revolution as knowing in its head that the earth revolves around the sun, and not the reverse. But what is truly remarkable about the body is that its whole way of being changes as soon as it knows something; things begin to stir at a cellular level, whereas we can stir up millions of ideas and cosmogonies in our heads without our life changing an iota. To know, for the body, is to be able to do. Each time you perceive a detail with precision, it means it is about to be realized.... The body consciousness can know a thing with precision and in every detail only when it is ON THE VERGE of being realized. And that will be the sure indication.⁴ Indeed, the body does not speculate, it feels it either can or cannot do something, plunge or not plunge, jump or not jump: the body is the "bridge," it is the body that will perceive the possibility of its own next way of being. Thus Mother's body was beginning to perceive itself as porous, or "friable," permeable. But many repeated experiences are needed for all the cells to know.

Such is the basis of the process of supramental transformation.

And it radiated from me, Mother concludes: Myriads of little sparks that were penetrating everybody.... I begin to see what the supramental body will be.⁵

The light of Matter was beginning to appear. Myriads of tiny sparks. Yet always this question remained: What is it that veils it?

The Treasure in the Rock

Another experience, in June 1958, is even more important, because it disconcerts all that we can think about the phenomenon (that is what is unfortunate: we think out the phenomenon). The experience took place in Mother's bathroom, of all places, as if to show us that it is not at all necessary to be seated in meditation or contemplation to participate in this type of experience. They always occur in the most banal of banalities—but of course! the supermind is not in heaven; it is the banal that ceases to be banal. Mother said it with her delightful sense of humor: If you want to have material experiences, you have to be in Matter! And curiously, this very material experience of hers was a sort of repetition, in Matter, of some of the divine experiences that one has outside Matter, in deep meditation, outside one's body, in a state of so-called "ecstasy," way up above on the summits of consciousness—in other words, heaven in Matter! All of a sudden, we are reminded of the words of the ancient Vedic Rishis, who had found "the Treasure of heaven hidden in the secret cavern like the young of a bird—this Treasure in the infinite rock" [1.130.31. Here, it was not a rock, but bottles of mouthwash! After all, a bottle is made of Matter, just as we are. Now suddenly, those bottles, and all the objects in the bathroom, including

Mother's body, began to vibrate with a strange, continuous life, a life without division and so harmonious, a world so compactly ordered and luminous, that not a single atom of disorganization could occur in that Harmony. All the objects in the bathroom were full of a joyful enthusiasm—everything obeyed, everything!... Well, the whole time it remained actively like that, it was absolutely impossible to have the LEAST disorder in the body [Mother was unwell at the time], and not only in the body, but IN ALL THE SURROUNDING MATTER. It was as if every object obeyed without even needing to decide to obey: it was automatic. There was a divine Harmony in everything, constantly. So if that is established in a permanent way, there CAN NO LONGER be illness, it is impossible. There can no longer be accidents, there can no longer be disorders, and everything should harmonize (probably in a progressive way) just as that was harmonized.⁶ The veil over Matter had been removed. And automatically, everything was in order, harmonious: no illness, no accidents, no clashes. Everything responded. A kind of oneness of Matter, of which the body was as much a part as the rest (no more or no less than the rest). And a conscious Matter, which responds to everything and responds to itself everywhere, without separation. But that Matter had not suddenly become conscious by the touch of a magic wand, had it?... Probably we suddenly become conscious of something that has always been that way through some opening or "unveiling" in our consciousness. But heavens, to become conscious of it is an inestimable step! Because if it truly works like that, it means that a whole new range of conscious action upon Matter becomes possible—upon all terrestrial Matter, for where does Matter stop? At what boundary does it stop if not at the boundary of our little brain? A direct handling, from Matter to Matter, from the body to bottles or to any nearby or far-off Matter. I really had the feeling that it was a first experience, new upon earth. For I have experienced an absolute identity of the will with the divine Will ever since 1910, it has never left me.... [We might indeed imagine that this is some sort of higher Will or higher vision which looks upon Matter differently from the height of its summits and handles it differently, through some kind of divine decree.] It isn't that, its SOMETHING ELSE. It is MATTER BECOMING THE DIVINE. And it really came with the feeling that this thing was happening for the first time upon earth.⁶

We wonder if the first hominid to be visited by a thought wave did not feel also that the strange little vibration in his head, the "mind," was not the "Divine" coming to prompt him to join this liana with that piece of wood to make a bow. But here, the strange little vibration was taking place in Matter (even in bottles of mouthwash) and it was not prompting anyone to take a bit of matter and add it to another to obtain a result by combining the two—no, there was nothing to add, nothing to join, no outer manipulation: it was Matter itself moving, responding to itself, interacting and producing its own results. Not unlike Madame Theon's sandals that came automatically to her feet: the vibration of this unit of matter (the sandals) responded to the vibration of another unit of matter (Madame Theon), because it was all the same conscious Matter. It is no longer a divine revelation on the summits of Nirvana in some soporific consciousness, but a divine revelation... in a bottle of mouthwash (And why not? How is silicate less noble or less material than sleeping cerebral fibroblasts?).

Matter becoming the Divine....

Come to think of it, it is a rather stunning reversal because it brings down (and very much so) all the religions and all the spiritualities of the world. It is a revolution even greater than that of Copernicus. If heaven is in Matter, where are we running to, where are they all running to? And what of all their wonderful cosmic and nirvanic and celestial consciousnesses? In short, we humans have been too dense to have any access to this "Thing" we call "Divine" or "God" or "Supreme Consciousness," except through a little opening in our minds, a little hole in the shell—whereupon off we dash to heaven. Amen. But it is merely our own evolutionary thickness that concealed from us something that was here everywhere, materially here, God beneath our very feet (and in our feet and walking with our feet, and not only man's feet, but bottles of mouthwash). Though "God" is a word so full of falsehood that it would almost be better to forget it; we sometimes think that God is the cleverest invention of the devil—why, of course, they go together! For what is that omnipotent demiurge who rules over the earth from the heights of his heaven? It is childish and revolting for any enlightened mind, even if he does send down his son from time to time to repair the whole mess he has after all created—for if he has not created it, who has? Why, the devil, of course—and there they go, the two inseparable and indivisible accomplices; you just wonder who is the father of whom? But perhaps we are through with fathers versus "the others," whether they be "Gods" or "Devils," as well as with pieces of Matter separated into little bodies, and great illumined heavens soaring over the earth's old unchanged rottenness. The evolutionary "mess" was perhaps designed to lead one species, whatever it is and by whatever means, to the point where it would be compelled to find its own divine secret in Matter. Perhaps we are entering the reign of the divine oneness of Matter, without "otherness," without distance, without over there. We are perhaps beginning to put our finger on the key that will change Death. Because if this Matter is conscious, if this Matter is divine, it cannot die—consciousness does not die. Only unconsciousness dies. Only our unconscious vision creates death, just as it was forced to create gods and paradises to replace what it could not see with its body. Now the body will see, and seeing, it will be able to do.

"The Treasure in the infinite rock.”

But what was it that made Mother suddenly see that divine vibration in Matter (like the Rishis some seven thousand years earlier, the only ones who seem to have escaped the general aberration)? What triggered it? What veil was removed? We certainly would like to know something about that trigger, wouldn't we? That sudden divine microscope that makes Matter stir. And even this is incorrect, because it is not an "instrument," a supermicroscope, something outside Matter giving us another vision of Matter—it is Matter itself that perceives itself this way, as it really is, with its own eyes. It was Mother's cells, Mother's body, that suddenly perceived everything differently. It is in her body She suddenly noticed that the objects responded, just as in our heads we may suddenly notice a vibration signaling the presence of Peter or John. But what had triggered that new perception? It had nothing to do with her eyes (or rather it had also to do with her eyes). It was consciousness there perceiving consciousness here, in a perfect continuum, as if within the same body.

Mother gives us a partial answer. She explains the why but not the how (for the simple reason that She herself probably did not yet know how it happened): This last experience is the result of the descent of the supramental substance into Matter. Only this substance, what it has put into physical Matter, can make this possible. It is a new ferment. Yes, perhaps like a drop of sodium hydrate in a test tube of dark iodine: everything gets cleared up. The Supermind is what clears Matter up, what makes all Matter one, just as the Mind is what cuts Matter up into millions of pieces... only to try awkwardly and reunite them afterwards with a brain wave. But this does not yet explain how the phenomenon works: what created the veil? If we could understand the mechanism of the veil for the whole earth, it would be the most overwhelming revolution of all time. It would be a new earth. And Mother continues: From the material standpoint, this supramental substance removes from physical matter its tamas [inertial, its unconscious heaviness, and from the psychological standpoint, its ignorance and its falsehood. Matter becomes subtler.... Some unconsciousness, a veil of unconsciousness, is removed. But it has surely come only as a first experience to show how it will be. It is truly a state of absolute omniscience and omnipotence in the body which changes all the vibrations around it.⁶ "Omniscience," "omnipotence"—these are somewhat frightening words, but it is probably just the reaction of our old human bag-of-bones way, because if the body, one body, becomes conscious of the consciousness of Matter, it becomes conscious of the total body: everything becomes one single body, its own body, and it should not be surprising if it becomes aware of what is happening in any part of its own body, nor if it acts on any part of its own body. It is all ONE, the bottles of mouthwash and all the rest. Hong Kong and Paris.

We shall see....

But these conscious bottles of mouthwash raise an unexpected question and perhaps whisper to us a first unforeseen clue (please forgive me, but there also has to be a little humor in all this, because if we carry our human solemnity everywhere into this process, we undoubtedly miss the smiling joy of Matter, already veiled enough by centuries of "scientific" gravity and gravitation). And yet it is very serious, but it is joyfully serious, it is weightlessly serious, at last! What a terrible weight we have lugged around with us since Hippocrates and Jerusalem! So to continue, if the aforesaid bottles were conscious, then why not us? We should rightly come before the bottles, shouldn't we? In fact, because my dignity as a higher mammal was probably bruised, that is the very question I asked Mother. And She retorted immediately (and this is where our eyes began to open wide before something quite unexpected): I am convinced that among plants, for example, or among animals, the response will be much quicker than among men. It will be more difficult to act upon a very organized mind; beings who live in an entirely crystallized, organized mental consciousness are as hard as stone! It resists. According to my experience, what is "unconscious" will certainly follow more easily. It was a delight to see the water from the tap, the mouthwash in the bottle, the glass, the sponge—it all had such an air of joy and consent! There is much less ego, you see, it is not a conscious ego. The ego becomes more and more conscious and resistant as the being develops. Very primitive, very simple beings, little children will respond first, because they don't have an organized ego. But these big people! People who have worked on themselves, who have mastered themselves, who are organized, who have an ego made of steel, it will be difficult for them.⁶

And all of a sudden, it looks as if we humans were a huge artificial creation in the middle of "something" that is unfolding in the most natural way in the world; a semblance of a being confined in a thinking fishbowl through the walls of which he sees nothing and feels nothing of what truly is, who prides himself on knowing everything but is really a ridiculous tissue of impotence acting artificially on his own artifices seen through his artificial eyes. The world is something else. What is "unconscious" will follow more readily. Our so-called consciousness is the veil. Matter is more conscious than we are—more totally conscious than we are; only it does not know how to say it, it does not write fat volumes to impart false knowledge to us. It is content to live, which is precisely what escapes us. Yet what seems so distressing to us is actually our greatest hope, because if the future of the species truly depended upon our mental "adherence," our general human adherence, there would be no recourse but to wait for the final and unavoidable collapse of a species that adheres only to its own stupidity; but it is Matter itself, conscious Matter, that will adhere before us and explode appearances before our bewildered eyes—Krishna in gold is growing amongst us. Furthermore, if our mental consciousness is really the veil, a veil over something else that is true Matter, conscious Matter, then the evil of the world is fundamentally nowhere, except in the veil. An evil veil, a veil of death is covering the world. But a veil can be torn! Death is not inherent in the world, evil is not inherent in the world, the world was not born with death and evil, they are something added on—probably a momentary evolutionary expedient to help us realize ourselves (albeit painfully) as individuals—but if we remove the veil, death is no longer, evil is no longer. If Matter is conscious, nothing essentially prevents it from being immortal, it is something else that creates death—unconsciousness creates death, the mental veil creates death. We do not have to acquire, through superhuman efforts, capacities we do not yet possess: those capacities are here, those possibilities are here, immortality is here, perfection is here—only shrouded in a veil.

The Supermind is what is in the process of tearing down the world's veil in spite of us.

There behind the veil is the divine, immortal man (as a matter of fact, at the end, Sri Aurobindo spoke of the divine body, and not the divine man, as if to suggest that the body would understand better and quicker than *we). And the proof—I have the proof because I experienced it myself—is that from the minute you are in the other consciousness, the true consciousness, all these things which appear so real, so concrete (all the so-called physical laws, the causes, effects and consequences, everything science has discovered physically and materially) change *INSTANTLY. There are a number of things, certain material conditions of my body—material—that changed instantly. It did not last long enough for everything to change, but some things changed and never returned, they remained changed. In other words, if that consciousness were kept constantly, it would be a perpetual miracle—a fantastic and perpetual miracle! But from the supramental point of view, it would not be a miracle at all, it would be the most normal of things.⁷

A fantastic change of reality is at our door.

What we call concrete reality is a false reality.⁷

Now, there remains for us to understand the mechanism of the veil. It is Mother's next story.

Will we all make it, or will there be some casualties

The All-Powerful Spring

That "Treasure in the infinite rock" was going to further reveal its nature, power and hiding place—or rather what conceals it—in a third experience, of November 1958, just one month before the great turning point in Mother's life. I am here trying very awkwardly (I am quite aware of it) to decipher what belongs to tomorrow's language with poor images that probably seem as obscure as a child's multiplication tables would seem to a man of the Stone Age. But there is a fact. We must take hold of the fact. We are no mystics, we are only struggling hard with a reality that is difficult for our senses of children of the new world.

That experience happened during one of the last "Wednesday classes." Mother was seated there, before that whole amorphous mass that listened willingly; but then, life went on as always, you see, and they were there as if in a lovely meadow of light, grazing and chewing their cuds; they even asked questions that made you think that the Mind was not so bad after all, and Mother, like Sri Aurobindo, might have gone on speaking through a hundred thousand classes instead of writing a hundred thousand letters as Sri Aurobindo did without the Ashram making a real progress. That is what Mother was beginning to realize. It was not the problem of the Ashram that interested her, it was the problem of the world: I have not come on this earth to create an Ashram! It would be a very poor objective indeed...⁸ And later She told me: Over there at the Playground, I had to struggle to find some receptivity.... The situation would hardly improve later on, but anyway, that evening, after their hopeless "questions" and after the lights had been turned off for the usual meditation, Mother began wondering: But what is there in these brains who are interested in nothing but their personal little affairs? I felt, 'Well, really, can anything be done with such material?... So during the meditation, I began descending into their mental atmosphere, in search of the little light, of that which responds. And it literally pulled me downwards as into a hole.... And in that hole... I can still see it as I saw it. I was descending into a crevasse between two steep rocks, rocks that appeared to be made of something harder than basalt, BLACK, but metallic at the same time, with such sharp edges—it seemed that a mere touch would lacerate you. It appeared endless and bottomless, and it kept getting narrower, narrower and narrower, narrower and narrower, like a funnel, so narrow that there was almost no more room—NOT EVEN FOR THE CONSCIOUSNESS—to pass through. And the bottom was invisible, a black hole. I went down and down and down... as if I were sliding down this crevasse. There was no end to it, and it was becoming more and more compressing, stifling, oppressive...⁹ I am extraordinarily struck by Mother's description, because I myself had a very similar experience, and it was the experience of death. ²⁰⁰ I entered a black death of basalt, suffocating, exactly as Mother described it. Is this the place of death, then? If so, the rest is very interesting....

I asked myself, 'But what is there at the bottom of this hole?' And as soon as I had uttered this question, I seemed to touch a spring that was in the very depths—a spring I didn't see but that acted instantly with a tremendous power- and it cast me up forthwith, hurled me out of this crevasse into a formless, limitless Vast... vibrating with the seeds of the new world.... And it was all-powerful, with an infinite richness, as if that immensity were made of countless, imperceptible dots—dots that occupy no space—of a deep, warm gold.... Something equivalent to a mathematical point, but like living gold, a powdering of warm gold.... [We shall speak of this powdering of warm gold again, at length. It is the supramental substance—at the bottom of the hole, behind "death."] I cannot say it was sparkling, I cannot say it was dark, nor was it made of light, either: a multitude of tiny points of gold, nothing but that. They seemed to be touching my eyes, my face and with such an inherent power and warmth—it was a splendor! It would seem we are taking part in a microscopic description of what the world of true Matter is "behind" the obscure powdering of our atoms and other microparticles, the true bedrock of things. And all this was absolutely LIVING, living with a power that seemed infinite. And yet motionless. A perfect immobility in a sense of eternity—but with an extraordinary INTENSITY of movement and life!... Again, one of the supramental "features": the supramental is the meeting place of opposites, incredible dynamism in absolute peace, as if that very dynamism were born of the power of immobility. And a peace—the peace of eternity. A silence, a calm. A POWER CAPABLE OF EVERYTHING. And whatever was formless had the power to take forms.⁹

That is the supramental substance, which will make tomorrow's bodies and tomorrow's objects—and is perhaps making them already—the real Matter everything is made of, but which we do not yet see and live as it is: there is still a "missing link," a veil. What is extraordinarily interesting in the mysterious geography we have begun to explore gropingly is that Mother found that supramental "place," that supramental world, on the other side (or at the bottom) of the mental inconscient. Although it looks like nothing, this is a stupendous discovery—an un-covering, really. Because it means that all this, this new world and all-powerful powdering of gold capable of creating forms, is not located out there, at the end of God knows what remote evolution and developed muscles and centuries of toil and of matter to be endlessly purified, clarified and subtilized—it is behind the mental inconscient. It is here, immediately: "a spring that I had not seen." It is separated from us only by the Mind: by the roots of the Mind. The Mind is the veil—but the mystery is to know how deep the roots, that is, Mind's darkening veil, go into Matter. We used to think that the Inconscient, the one Sri Aurobindo and all the Rishis have described, was the primordial substance of the world, the first evolutionary layer, as it were, the first soil in which all the rest grew. But it is not so! Or rather it is no longer so. The primordial soil is not unconscious. The Rishis spoke quite clearly of "the ONE conscious in all things un-conscious"; Sri Aurobindo himself said, This nescience of Matter [precisely because He did not want to call it inconscient] is a veiled, an involved or somnambulist consciousness which contains all the latent powers of the Spirit.¹⁰ The real Inconscient, that is, nonconsciousness, was born later in evolution, a veil of unconsciousness fell over Matter, masking its power, its light, its malleable plasticity to make a stark, hardened, unchangeable and degenerating caricature out of it—something that dies because it cannot renew itself. It is this world of rocks with their sharp, metallic edges that Mother saw—black, airless.

Death. Death is a mental phenomenon, not a material one. It is our mental body, as seen by the mind, lived by the mind, felt by the mind, that dies. It is a false death, as false as our life—it is the false life that dies. And it is a veil... over something else, which is material. No—not at all the paradise of a consciousness up above, after "death," but a material world of true Matter on the other side of the veil of death, which is only the death of the Mind. Another Matter in Matter, another continent in a continent. But we do not need to die to get there! That is the crux of the matter. We need only pull that veil back and let real life enter our life, true Matter enter our unclogged eyes and cells, and let in the true movement of Matter, its true malleability, its true light and warmth, its true form-creating power. The physical body appeared "friable" to me, Mother noted in her first experience. A formidable change of reality—without death.

A formidable discovery, greater perhaps than the day the first hominid realized that the next world was not to be found in a miraculous dream on the other side of sleep, but just behind a minute of reflection.

The whole difficulty is to know where the new world is.

And Mother indeed indicated her surprise, without yet realizing all the consequences of it (the consequences would have to be "worked out"): *It was the *MENTAL inconscient. Because the starting point of the experience was mental [She had descended into the mental atmosphere of those children to understand why they were so obtuse]. A special unconsciousness—rigid, hard, resistant—with all that the Mind has brought into our consciousness. But it was far worse, far worse than a purely material unconsciousness! [even the bottles of mouthwash are not like that l] A "mentalized"

Inconscient, as it were. All this rigidity, this hardness, this narrowness, this fixity—a FIXITY—comes from the presence of the Mind in creation. When the Mind was not manifested, the Inconscient was not like that! It was formless and had the plasticity of something that is formless—the plasticity has gone. It is a terrible image [the rocks of basalt] of the mind's action in the "Inconscient." It has made the Inconscient aggressive—it was not so before. Aggressive, resistant, obstinate. That was not there before.... It was not an 'original' Inconscient. It was a mentalized Inconscient. With all that the mind has brought in in the way of opposition—of resistance, hardness, rigidity.... Well, the mental Inconscient REFUSES to change—which is not true of the other one; the other is nothing, it doesn't exist, it is not organized in any way, it has no way of being, whereas this one is an "organized" Inconscient—organized in its refusal to change. A hundred times worse!... It was a very new experience.¹¹ We do indeed believe that the experience is extraordinarily new, with consequences we have not yet begun to fathom. Because it changes all of death, as well as all of life, as if that death went along with that life, or rather as if that particular death were as false as that particular life. Death does not exist, it is something else—perhaps the key to the phenomenon. There is a veil of death to traverse—and the whole earth must traverse it together, with eyes wide open. In a sudden inspiration, while dictating to me the notation of that experience of November 7, 1958, which read: At the very bottom of the Inconscient, most hard and rigid and narrow and stifling, I struck upon an almighty spring that cast me up forthwith into a formless, limitless Vast vibrating with the seeds of a new world, Mother paused, looked at me as though seeing the whole Earth before her: And this almighty spring is the perfect image of what is happening—what must happen, what WILL HAPPEN—for everyone: suddenly, one is cast forth into the vast.¹¹

The whole earth.

Krishna in gold is growing up amongst us. A "powdering of warm gold" is in the process of breaking and shattering to pieces the mental rock of the world. Death is dying.

We must find the spring.

7. Krishna in Gold