Mother's Chronicles - Book Three

22

The Lord as Electrical Vibration!

Well then, Mother has already told us the loads of fun she had had table-moving, furniture-rapping and all that, in her apartment on Rue de Levis. But all sorts of other things took place during those reunions.

One day Satprem was reading to her an article¹ on the electrical force of the cells, which reported that "in experiments in his Mexico city laboratory, Dr Ruggiero produced a current in a goat with which the animal lit a series of 40-watt bulbs and activated an electric doorbell." Mother cut in to say, "But it's been known for a long time that cats —the skin of cats —are full of electricity. This was used to cure rhumatism."

Then, remembering, she said, "When I had

1. From the Sunday Standard of 14 May 1967.

Page 245

those reunions in Paris, and followed Théon's system — he didn't call them meditations but 'repose': 'to have repose together' —at that time, during our reunions a kind of vibration of light would come out of my fingers. It was visible to the naked eye. But it was like electricity. And that was a concentrated vital force. It was visible like a vibration of light coming out of the fingers."

Some years earlier, Mother had explained to Satprem where this electricity-like light originated from. On one of his birthdays, after their meditation together, she asked him, "What have you felt?"

He answered, "When I am alone, there is never this power, this ..."

She said, "The physical vibration is important."

Then she touched her body, her hands, and said, "You know, even now all this feels so vibrant and alive that it's difficult to sense the limit —as though it extended beyond the body in all directions. The limit doesn't exist anymore."

But she felt a lack of something. "But it's still not luminous in the dark. Because normally what's luminous in the dark is something else. I had that

Page 246

when I was working with Theon —after returning to France we had group meditations, he called it 'repose,' and we used to do that in a darkened room — and there was ... it was like phosphorescence, exactly the colour of phosphorescent light, like certain fish in the water at night. It would emanate from the body, spread out, move about. But that's the vital, it originates in the vital. It's a force from above, but what manifests is vital.

"Whereas now it's absolutely and clearly the golden supramental light in ... an extraordinary pulsation, vibrant with intensity. But probably it still lacks a . . . what Theon used to call 'density,' an agent that would enable it to be seen in the dark —but then it would be seen golden, not phosphorescent."

The question of light apart, this new Vibration enhanced the healing power in Mother's hands. "When somebody tells me, 'I have a pain here,' I put my hand on it and it's gone. The hands are so conscious of the Vibration that they feel everything is possible." She gave a recent example and said, "And I felt all the vibrations at my fingertips: like needles — needles of light." Is that acupuncture without needles?!

Page 247

"But it is very, very concrete, very material," said Mother about the Supermind.

Sri Aurobindo went further. "Before the Super-mind Matter dwindles to a shadow."

"What is that concreteness like?" asked a disciple.

"The sense of solidity, mass," he replied. "That is perhaps what the Veda meant when it said, 'Agni is wide of light and concrete of body.' You can say that the Supermind is harder than diamond and yet more fluid than gas."

"It is so compact," Mother said musingly. "Curious, this impression," she said. "It's something more . . . more compact, denser than the physical. The New Creation. One always tends to think of it as something more ethereal, but it's not! Theon always said with insistence, 'It will have a greater density.' That's what he said, 'A greater density.' And the feel I get of this atmosphere is of something more compact — more compact and, at the same time, without any heaviness or thickness. Evidently, all this is scientifically absurd. Yet the feeling is one of compactness."

But that is tomorrow's Matter. In the meantime, as Mother said, magnetic force or electric or whatever

Page 248

are all expressions of that same Power on different planes of the being- the mind, the vital, the body — the expressions differing with each part. "Personally, 1 think it's all one and the same thing, except that it's the scientists' material notation of the Fact."

Then she came up with one of her pithy utterances. "The Lord as electrical vibrations!"

Our laughter swelled the sound of her musical laugh.

It was during one of those 'reposes' that a young man was upset by an inner experience. To be upset always indicates a weakness in some part of the being.

"I knew a boy in France who was a fine musician," said Mother. "He played the violin admirably. But he didn't have a very big brain, it was just enough to help him with his music, nothing more. He used to come to our spiritual reunions and, all of a sudden, he had the experience of the infinite in the finite. It was an absolutely genuine experience —in the finite individual came the experience of the infinite. But this upset the boy so much that he was completely befuddled. He couldn't even play his music anymore. The experience had to be stopped because it was too

Page 249

powerful for him."

She pointed out, "This is an instance where the mind was too weak."

But cats were really Mother's favourite creatures. She made them the subject of a special study. The number of experiences she had with these animals could make a book in itself and very interesting reading it would make too!

Well, when Satprem asked for her permission to poison some cats that caused him sleepless nights with their meowing on his terrace, Mother said no.

"1 once had a cat with almost a child's consciousness, and someone poisoned it. And the day he came back poisoned, dying, I cursed all the people who poison cats. And that's serious. You mustn't do it. It was a real curse — I was with Sri Aurobindo, so it was serious —don't do it, please.

"But there's a way. . . .

"I made a pact with cats, you know, with the King of the Cats. It goes very, very far back. And it's extraordinary —it happened in Tlemcen, entirely on the occult plane —extraordinary! For certain reasons, the King of the Cats gave me a power over these

Page 250

creatures—and it's true. Only 1 have to see them.

"We shall try."

The King of the Cats had visited Mirra when she helped the angora cat kill the aspic.

"What do these animals represent in the terrestrial manifestation?" Satprem queried. "They're so strange. ..."

"Cats are vital forces," she explained. "They are incarnations of vital forces. The King of the Cats-that is, the spirit of the species- is a being of the vital world.

"For example, cats can very easily embody the vital force of a dead person. I've had two absolutely astounding experiences of this."

Let us skip the first story, which will come in its time and place, and go straight to the second.

"The other story," Mother said, "happened very long ago, long before the [1914] war even. I was living in another house; I had only the fifth floor," she said, referring to Rue de Levis. "Once a week I used to hold reunions there with a small number of friends -three or four - interested in occultism. They came to have me demonstrate or tell them about 'things.'

Page 251

"There was a Swedish artist, a French lady and ... a French boy, who was a student and a poet. He used to come regularly to these reunions which took place on Wednesday evenings. His parents were decent country folk who bled themselves white to pay for his life in Paris. The boy was very intelligent and a true artist, but he was depraved. We knew about it, but that was his private life and none of our business.

"That particular evening there was a reunion, and we were perhaps four or five, but the boy didn't turn up. We were surprised; we had met him a few days before and he had said he would come —he didn't come. We waited quite a long time. We had our reunion anyway and didn't give much thought to his absence —we thought he must be busy elsewhere.

"Around midnight, when the reunion was over and the people were leaving, I opened the door to let them out. A big black cat was sitting in the doorway. It rushes into the room like mad, and in a single bound jumps on me, just like that, all curled up into a ball, and mewing despairingly. So I calm it down, I look at it: 'Ah, the eyes of . . .'—I don't recall his name now —'Ah, the eyes of so-and-so.' Right away —

Page 252

at the time we were all involved in occultism —we said, 'Something has happened to him, he was unable to come and the cat has embodied his vital force.'

"The next day, all the newspapers were full of a vile murder —a pimp had murdered the boy. Revolting! Something utterly revolting. And it had happened at the very moment he should have come. He was seen, the concierge had seen him going into the house with that pimp. He had been assassinated that night. The next morning he was found lying strangled on his bed. What happened? Was it just for money or for something else—vice? Or what?"

Page 253