July 14, 1962The Mother
Agenda
Volume 3
July 14, 1962
Mon petit, last night for the first time I saw you, just as you are, coming to me. “How wonderful!” I said to you. You came up like this (Mother makes a gesture close to her face) and looked at me. “He's conscious!” I said to myself.
You weren't conscious?
?...
It was around three o'clock in the morning.
I have seen you very often in visions, symbolic visions in the mental realm, but that's not what it was. It was in the subtle physical, this close (same gesture); you came deliberately, and you looked at me. “Oh,” I told you, “how nice!”
I had a dream about you, but I felt the subconscient made it up.
No, it must be a transcription.
A strange dream, very strange. A crowd of people was waiting for you to come out, and you did come, you appeared. Then suddenly you fainted. I'm not sure why you fainted, you were physically sick or something. So you were carried away. A crowd was waiting to see you and they shoved me to the back (by the way, I noticed I was dressed as a Sannyasin). Finally, I came up close to you all of a sudden, leaving the crowd behind; I came up very close and then... you told me certain things, I don't know what. You seemed so frail – all white, very frail and tired, as if you had just fainted. Anyway, things like that, you see....1
No, I wasn't sleeping, I was concentrating; and in this concentration, while I was fully enveloped in those forces, THROUGH THAT you came to me. It was truly fine! Good. It will come; it's a good sign. I was very pleased: “Ah, something is happening!”
It will come.
*
* *
(Mother listens to Satprem read a passage from the last conversation in which she says: “This is the radical difference since the experience of April 13: there is nothing but the Lord. All the rest... what is it?... No more than a habit of speaking (not even a habit of thinking, that's all gone). Otherwise... nothing. And what else could there be? It is He who sees, He who wills, He who acts.”)
You know, there's the same vibration here as in “to die unto death.” It's something... yes, I think we could say it is His Presence... His creative Power.... It is a special vibration. Don't you feel something like... like a pure superelectricity?
When we touch That, we see that it's everywhere, but we are unaware of it.
When you read those words it suddenly came to me that... it must be the Lord's Power within material vibrations.
It's interesting, worth investigating.
*
* *
(In the same conversation of July 11, Mother said that to have the experience in its simple purity we mustn't even know “where we are,” and yet “we want to see ourselves being, progressing, acting, to see ourselves....”)
That [the sense of an individual position, of being a particular being in a particular place, watching and feeling oneself being] really vanished with the last experience [of April 13]. Before, it used to get in my way a lot. I was always wondering how to get rid of it.
In fact, this too is tied in with “to die unto death.” Because, just imagine, why on earth do I invariably see the experience of the 12th to 13th on my left (gesture to the left)? And rather distant, as though I had returned along a LEVEL path (horizontal gesture) from there back to my body. Out there (to the left), I didn't have it any more! I didn't have it – I existed in FULL consciousness, but I no longer had my body. That's what makes me say my body was dead. I no longer had it.... The experience was far, FAR away from here (I don't mean in the garden!)... somewhere. Somewhere very far away to the left, in the physical consciousness. And when I had traveled back here along a level path, I noticed that there was still a body.2
But this body is no longer MY body – it is A body.
Except that gradually the consciousness is regaining control, but not in the same manner. And when I tried to understand this “dying unto death,” I found myself over there again (gesture to the left), and I seemed to be told, “That was your experience.”
I felt MUCH more alive there than here! Much more. And even now when I want to feel that power and intensity of life, when I want to recapture my experience [of April 13], I always go off there, to the left.
Why the left?...
(silence)
Yes, last night I remember saying, “Ah, at long last! That's good. We've made it at last!”
It is going to materialize.
I saw you just as I am seeing you now, exactly the same, only with a more intense and vibrant vibration. For me, you know, the physical world is always veiled, as if it were being snuffed out like a candle; well, there was no snuffer, it was you exactly, same features, same expression, but... intense, intense. And you were looking at me (Mother makes a gesture showing Satprem peering right into her face), as if to say, “Ah! So that's what you look like.” (Laughter.)
I was very glad. Very glad. “Ah, at last we've made it!” That was my feeling – here we are at last.
In a few days it will materialize... a few days, I don't know. Over there (gesture to the left), days, months, all have another meaning. Listen, there are minutes.... You know, I walk around the room repeating the Words,3 and sometimes I go around ten times in a second! Yet it's always the same pace; I doubt if anyone would see any physical difference. But sometimes there are... ten, twenty, thirty rounds a second! And other times one single round will drag and drag – oh, it's endless!
And simultaneously there is an automatic perception of time – clock time – which is rather curious (everything is regulated by the comings and goings of the people around me, you see: such a thing at this time, such a thing at that time), I don't need to hear the clock – I am warned just before it strikes. I repeat one part of the japa in a particular way while lying down, because the Power is greater (these aren't meditations, they are actions), and another part while walking. So I stay stretched out for a certain time, I walk for a certain time, and at a fixed hour this one goes, another comes, and so on. But none of them are people; I don't tell them so, but they're not people: they are movements of the Lord. And it's extremely interesting – one of the Lord's movements will have this particular character, another movement will have a different type of vibration, and they all harmonize very nicely into a whole. But I know what time it is just before the clock strikes: six o'clock, 6:30, 7:00, 7:30, like that. Not with the words “six,” “seven,” but: it's time, it's time, it's time.... And along with this – this clockwork precision – I have that other notion of time which is quite different, it's.... Although it's a very rigid convention, our time is a
living formation with its own living power here in the world of action. The other time is... the rhythm of consciousness. So according to the intensity of the Presence (there's a concentration and an expansion, I mean), according to this pulsation – which can vary, it's not regular and mechanical – walking around the room takes either no time at all, or else an ENORMOUS amount of time. But this doesn't interfere with the other time, there's no contradiction. Our time is on a different plane, something far more external; but it has its usefulness and its own law, and the one doesn't hinder the other.4
And it's gradually becoming foreseeable that....5
(silence)
From time to time, one touches the vibration of the Supreme's Love, the creative Love, Love that creates, upholds, maintains, fuels progress and is the Manifestation's very reason for being (these great pulsations were the expression of That), and That is something so stupendous and marvelous for the material frame, the body, that it seems to be dosed out. From time to time, you are given a trickle of it to make you realize that the end (or anyway, the end of the beginning!) is That.
But you mustn't rush; and above all, no desire. Be very calm. The calmer you are, the longer it lasts. If you're in too much of a hurry, it goes away.
I can see it takes an EXTRAORDINARY capacity and solidity to bear That without exploding – and this capacity is slowly being prepared.
We mustn't be in a hurry.
(silence)
For a while yesterday I was put in contact with the way people think, how they think.... And I saw that I must be very careful; it is better to keep silent or they'll think I've finally gone off the deep end! You know: “She is getting old, there's arteriosclerosis of the brain, she is becoming a little silly, reverting to a second childhood....” I saw this, it's really funny. I saw, I was shown a whole way of thinking. Ah, they think they're intelligent, they think they know a lot!
Anyhow....
(silence)
Even in India.
And I am beginning to believe....
That's what I observe when I am put in contact with the outside world, Europe.
...But anyway, the Old World is an OLD world in the true sense of the word. India is much, much older, but more alive. Yet now it strikes me as so very rotten! They went rotten. You know what happens when a rotten apple is put next to a good one: England came and stayed much too long. It made things go quite rotten. Very, very rotten; it's difficult to heal. Otherwise, what's not rotten is truly good.
But there is a place where something is awakening, a small something like what little children and animals have, going like this (Mother imitates a baby bird poking its beak out of the nest and peering around), peep-peep-peep, oh, alert and eager to know: America. They have a carapace as hard as an automobile's – it has to be hammered open, but underneath there's something that wants to know... and knows nothing, nothing, is totally ignorant – but oh, it wants to know! And this can be touched. They may be the first to awaken.
A few in India, but a more widespread movement in America.
Strange, they're on that side! (Mother gestures to the right.) Why are they on the right?... Ah, that's where it is on the map! It's on the other side of the ocean, isn't it? (Mother looks in the direction of the Pondicherry coast.) That's it. No, but it does have something to do with the right.... Action: the right side is action.
They are silly, silly! They are absolutely ignorant and yet... there's a flame of aspiration suddenly awakening. And then they want to know, want to investigate, want to find, want to learn, want to.... It's going like this (Mother blinks her eyes like a baby bird waking up), vibrating and searching.
They've managed to stay very childlike.
Very childlike. But it's charming. Charming.
(silence)
All this is for the next hundred years. There are going to be some changes.
(silence)
1900?... Well, yes, in 2000 things will take a clear direction. You will still be here.
I don't know about that!
No, I am not speaking of what one is when one has “died unto death,” not that. I mean normally, physically – how many years before 2000?
Umm....
Not many, forty years.
Thirty-seven years.
Yes, it's nothing! Nothing, a minute – you will be here in any case, even without dying unto death. You will see it.
Yes, yes, it's soon.
You will be here too!
That, I always have been and always will be, it makes no difference....
(very long silence)
A time will come when we'll say, “Remember, in such and such a year we thought we were really doing something!” (Mother laughs.)
Just now I found myself projected into the future: “Remember, over there?” (It's always to the left – now why?...) “Remember? Oh, we thought we were doing something, thought we knew something!”
What a laugh.
(very long silence)
Yes, the ordinary consciousness is like an axis with everything revolving around it. An axis fixed somewhere, and everything revolves around it – that's the ordinary individual consciousness. And if the axis shifts, one feels lost. It's like a big axis (more or less big, it can also be tiny) planted straight up in time, with everything revolving around it. The consciousness may be more or less extended, more or less high, more or less strong, but it always turns on an axis. And now for me there is no more axis.
I was looking... it just isn't there any more – gone, vanished!
It [Mother's consciousness] can go here, it can go there and there (gesture to the cardinal points), it can go backwards, forwards, anywhere at all – no more axis, no turning on an axis. Interesting.
I think I've lost you! (Mother laughs.)
It's an interesting experience. No more axis.
1 Looking at it now (1979), this “dream” doesn't seem to be from the subconscient but actually from the subtle physical, with that whole crowd of people relentlessly assailing Mother and exhausting her (and pushing Satprem away, besides). But DESPITE the crowd, Satprem crossed through and came up “very close” to Mother, which concurs with her vision. “Dressed as a Sannyasin” means in his essentiality, divested of day-to-day material circumstances.
2 When one goes out of the body (and probably at death), there is always the impression of moving “upwards,” or “inwards,” which means into a deeper plane (either way, it is simply the expression of a change of dimension). What is striking about Mother's experience is this LEVEL movement, indicating that she had not left the physical world. We are faced with a strange enigma: a physical world WITHIN the physical world – another world, or the same one lived differently? A physical world where death no longer exists: one has died unto death. The world to come?...
3 Mother's japa.
4 Ever since Einstein's Theory of Relativity, we have known that such an experience of time's relative nature is “physically” feasible. We need only consider the example of time aboard a spaceship approaching the speed of light: time “slows down,” and the same event will take less time aboard the spaceship than on earth. In this instance, speed is what makes time slow down. In Mother's experience (which is every bit as “physical”), the “intensity of the Presence” seems to be the origin of time change. In other words, consciousness is what makes time slow down. Thus we are witnessing two experiences with identical physical results, but formulated in different languages. In one, we speak of “speed,” in the other of “consciousness.” But what is speed, after all?... (Moreover, the implications of this “language” difference are quite colossal, for it would indeed be simpler to press on a “consciousness button” than on an accelerator that had to take us to the speed of light.) Speed is a question of distance. Distance is a question of two legs or two wings: it implies a limited phenomenon or a limited being. When we say “at the speed of light,” we imagine our two legs or our two wings moving very, very fast. And all the phenomena of the universe are seen and conceived of in relation to these two legs, these two wings or this rocketship – they are creations of our present-day biped biology. But for a being (a supramental being, of the future biology) containing everything within himself, who is immediately everywhere, without distance, where is “speed”?... The only “speed of light” is biped. Speed increases and time slows down, they say. The future biology says: consciousness intensifies and time slows down or ceases to exist – distances are abolished, the body doesn't age. And the world's whole physical cage collapses. “Time is a rhythm of consciousness,” says Mother. We change rhythm and the physical world changes. Might this be the whole problem of transformation?
5 Asked later about this unfinished sentence, Mother said, “I stopped because it was an impression and not a certainty. We'll talk about it again later.” Was Mother hinting at a stage when she would live in both times simultaneously?...