Mother's Chronicles - Book Three

12

The Valley of the False Glimmer

It was not only the crown of twelve pearls over Mirra's head that Madame Theon saw. Her seeing included, among others, those two Guardian Angels who always hovered near Mirra —and even upbore her and gently set her down on the flint stones in Fontainebleau when, as she was racing ahead of the other children, she had sailed into the air and fallen from a height of about three metres. And not a scratch to show for it!

Mirra related to the Théons many of her personal experiences. That of the Palazzo Ducale in Venice was one. She had gone there with her mother. In the Dungeon she had relived a scene from a past life wherein she was strangled and thrown out into the canal. "I related all this to Theon and Madame

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Theon, and he too remembered one of his past lives there, during that very period. In fact, I had seen in Venice a portrait that was the spitting image of Theon! The portrait of one of the doges. Absolutely — it was a painting by Titian —it was absolutely Theon! his portrait, you know, as if it had just been done."

But she was really keen on understanding her night experiences, for they had left her puzzled. And the Théons were able to give her the key to the riddles of her 'dreams.' Take the mystery of the Being who promised her things in abundance. "When I was a child," said Mother to Satprem, "around twelve, I knew nothing about spiritual things, my family lived in a completely materialistic atmosphere. But once, I saw something in a dream: a Being coming to me, a woman, and telling me, 'You will always have in abundance whatever you need.' It was Nature, material Nature, the same Being I have always seen afterwards. And it's true, it's perfectly true," Mother smilingly swept her arm in a wide arc which included the room, the laden table, the piled up objects on the carpet, and every corner full to overflowing.

"Later on, when I met Theon, he explained it

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to me. But at the time I knew nothing at all; it wasn't a figment of my imagination, it came unbeknown to me, unasked for : 'You will always have in abundance whatever you need.' It's true!" She laughed her infectious laugh. Let us recall the time when Mirra the artist was so hard up that she had to paint her patent leather boots; and how, when she wanted one petticoat "much in fashion" then, to go with her gown, she got five!

The experiences that came to her "massively from my infancy," came "just like that, without my seeking them, wanting them or understanding them, without doing any sort of discipline, nothing —absolutely spontaneous. And they kept on coming and coming and coming." It was only "from the time I met Theon that it all got explained —I saw it all clearly, I understood and organized it."

It was her sleep that Mirra organized impeccably. Indeed, none could beat Mother where the subjects of sleep and dream were concerned. On one occasion when Satprem complained to Mother about his bad nights, she shed much fresh light upon sleep, then proceeded to say, "There would be many interesting

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things to tell about sleep, because it is one of the things 1 have studied the most." Indeed, over the decades during which she trained her sleep, the number of nights when Mother could not drill it was minimal. "To speak of how I became conscious of my nights. I learned this from Theon. And now that I know all these things of India, I realize what a real expert Theon was."

So was Mother. Thus she could at once refute somebody who stated to her, "If somebody kills you in a dream, it doesn't matter, since it is only a dream!"

"Sorry!" she riposted. "As a rule, you are sick the next day, or some time after. It is a warning. I knew a person who was attacked on the eye in a dream, and who really lost one eye a few days later.

"I myself have happened to dream about getting blows on my face. Well, upon waking up in the morning, I had a red mark on the spot, on the forehead and the cheek. A vital wound to somebody will inevitably result in a physical wound. I was struck vitally. It comes from within. Nothing and nobody touched anything at all from outside."

This vital world is the land of the Life Heavens

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on the one hand: "Just imagine, for example, that you are very tired and need to rest," Mother said to Satprem who always needed to take rest after his night's sleep! "If you know how to exteriorize yourself and enter consciously the vital world, you can find there a region similar to a miraculous virgin forest where all the splendours of a rich and harmonious vegetation are assembled, with such magnificent mirrors of water and an atmosphere so filled with this living, vibrant vitality of plants!"

Mother frequently went there for a walk. Once, she met Prahlad, who had died some time back. He was the son of Dr Agarwal, the ophthalmologist. "Two days ago," she related to Satprem in October 1968, "the day before yesterday, I went for a stroll in a forest of the vital.... My little child, it was beautiful! Oh, a magnificent forest, and then such a well-kept forest, so clean! Oh! It was fine. A truly magnificent place, truly magnificent." Her expression showed how breathtakingly beautiful it was.

"Well then, I suddenly see a youngish Pralhad there, a mere lad, coming towards me and telling me, 'I don't know, can't find the religion.'" She mimicked

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his despairing tone of voice. Then laughingly said, "So I told him, 'You don't need any religion!'

"He said, 'Oh, there is another man here who also can't find a religion.'

"And that was Benjamin!" He was a football player in Nolini's batch; a Pondicherian Christian, Benjamin yet lived in the Ashram where he did a part of the tailoring work for the inmates; he died in 1963. I remember how, during the war years, he and Moni¹ used to entertain us with French patriotic songs.

Mother continued, "I said, 'He is an idiot! He doesn't need to find a religion!"' She laughed again, struck by the incongruity of the situation. "There you are. . . . Benjamin lost in a marvellous forest —it's beautiful, you know! —because he can't find a religion! And Pralhad looking for a religion!"

Then Mother wished to send a comforting word to Prahlad's grieving mother, "Be consoled, Prahlad is in a very nice place!"

She remarked, "He was very well. He was very

1. Moni or Suresh Chakraborty was a revolutionary from Bengal. He came to Pondicherry in 1910 with a letter from Sri Aurobindo to arrange a residence for him.

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well dressed." In life the boy used to be dressed rather slovenly

"Oh, how ridiculous it all is!"

After a silent contemplation Mother said again, "Oh, what a beautiful forest, my child. Trees as I have not seen except in Japan. Trees like columns, rising straight, planted in rows, superb! Pale green grass, light, so very light. Grass on the ground; air, lots of air; and at the same time there are only trees —a forest. Not thick, not smothered." She saw the forest again in her mind's eye.

"Well then, in this superb place, instead of rejoicing, the imbecile," Mother assumed a wailing voice, "'I don't know what happened to me, I have no religion'!" She laughed outright.

"Then I told him, 'But you should rejoice! No religion.... You are in a place much finer than all the religions.'"

She said anew, "There is such a life there, such a Beauty, so much richness and plenitude that you wake up full of force, together with an absolutely marvellous feeling of energy, even if you have remained there but one minute."

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She added in her precise way, "There are regions like that —not very many, but some.

"The vital world is a world of extremes. If, for instance, you eat a bunch of grapes in the vital world, you are so nourished that you can remain thirty-six hours without feeling hungry." Because grape is the fruit of life.

One day this happened in our presence. Mother was seated in her chair and we were on the carpet in front of her. Silence reigned in the room. Mother's eyes were wide open, but I could see that she was deep in contemplation; Satprem also* was in meditation. Then suddenly Mother spoke to him. "Somebody has just brought from both sides at once," she made a gesture to her right and left, "one dish of grapes and another dish of grapes, like this. There was one for you and one for me." A being from the Vital had brought them. He was like me, I dare say, always happy to be able to serve Mother.

"Those grapes" —quite frequently the vital world's food —"are of incomparable beauty. There were two bunches; one was big, the other not so big. I don't know for whom was the bigger one, and for

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whom the other? They were brought on both sides: one was on a dish, the other on a square of white paper. I assumed that the one on the square white paper was meant for me.

"Pretty! Beautiful! Grape that turns golden, you know transparent and golden when it ripens. Grape big like this." Her index and thumb were about five centimetres apart.

We, of course, had seen neither the being nor the bunches of grapes! Mother added, "When one is asleep, that is, when the body is in a state of trance, one can eat. You can feel the taste when you are outside the body. And it's very nourishing, it gives strength. I don't know how many times I have happened to eat . . . and mostly grapes. . . . Such grapes!"

"A world of extremes." And how! You can find there not only the Life Heavens but the Valley of the False Glimmer as well. It is a dangerous world. "Only a trained occultist with the infallible tact born of long experience can guide himself without stumbling or being caught through the maze," wrote Sri Aurobindo. Mirra, as we know, was certainly a trained occultist and much more. Even otherwise "Mirra is born free" as

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said Sri Aurobindo. Her unbound soul could, like the proverbial swan,¹ separate milk from water. She easily discerned the real nature of this zone; and with the sunlight of her clear vision dispersed its shimmering mists and fogs.

"On the other hand," said Mother, "there are many unpleasant places in the vital world where it is better not to go. You can also run into things, enter places that will wrest all the energy from you in a minute, and at times leave you sick or even disabled.

"I knew a woman who, from an occult point of view, was absolutely exceptional, and a similar accident befell her in the vital world. While trying to tear away from the beings of the vital world someone to whom she was attached, she received such a blow on the eye that it made her blind in one eye." Mother was referring to Madame Theon.

It is not for nothing that this zone is called the Valley of the False Glimmer. Sri Aurobindo describes it in Savitri.

1. Swan or Hamsa: liberated soul, in Indian symbolism. And, curiously enough, Mother's signature resembled a swan with outspread wings, and the dot on the i, she told me, was the eye of the Consciousness.

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"It lends beauty to the terror of the gulfs And fascinating eyes to perilous Gods, Invests with grace the demon and the snake."

As Satprem read this to Mother, "Charming!" she exclaimed sarcastically.

"It's absolutely the characteristics of the vital, that which Theon called, 'the nervous world'."

But with all his knowledge and power Theon was unable to prevent the accident to his wife's eye. "Theon couldn't even protect her!" After more than sixty-five years Mother still felt bitter about it. That is why, when Satprem asked her if the kind of power over matter the Théons possessed would not be useful to her, she replied categorically, "No use —no use whatsoever." Occult power is a truncated power. It is not the almighty power.

All the same, as Mother observed once, knowledge of the occult can be useful; much can be gained by knowing those worlds. She who had to work constantly in them knew the dangers that lurked in the vital world, for example. When people 'die' they have to cross through this Valley of the False Glimmer to go beyond to other worlds. Many, most, get caught in

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its maze and never make it through.

"These things are very interesting," she told Satprem.

"They must form part of the work for which I have come on earth. Because even before meeting Theon, before knowing anything, I had experiences at night, certain types of night activities caring for people who had just left their bodies and with a knowledge (although I didn't know the process nor did I seek to know): but I knew exactly what had to be done and I did it. I was about twenty.

"As soon as I came upon Théon's teaching —even before meeting him personally — and read and understood all kinds of things I hadn't known before, I began to work quite systematically. Every night, at the same hour, my work consisted in constructing between the purely terrestrial atmosphere and the psychic atmosphere a sort of path of protection across the vital, so that people wouldn't have to pass through it —for those who are conscious but don't have the knowledge it's a very difficult passage, infernal. It is infernal. I was preparing this path — it must have been around 1903 or 1904, I don't exactly remember —and

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doing this work for months and months and months. All sorts of things happened during that time, all sorts, ex-tra-ordi-nary things. Extraordinary. I could tell long stories....

"Then when I went to Tlemcen, I told Madame Theon about it. 'Yes,' she told me, 'it is part of the work you have come on earth to do. All those with even a slightly awakened psychic being who can see your Light will go to your Light at the moment of dying, wherever they may die, and you will help them to pass through.'

"And this is a constant work. Constant. It has given me a considerable number of experiences concerning what happens to people when they leave their bodies. I've had all sorts of experiences, all kinds of examples. It's really very interesting."

But something left her puzzled. "I have had all sorts of experiences," Mother said, "for so many, so many years. For about sixty years, constantly I have aided people who are said 'to die.' Constantly. Well, there are almost as many cases as there are people. ... At least twice it happened to me —in this very existence —'to die,' as people call it; and both

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times the experience was different, although the apparent fact was the same. What I was asking myself today is: Would what is called 'death' be, by chance, a multitude of different things?"

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