The Mother

Agenda

Volume 4

April 20, 1963

D. was telling me just now that he is advised to meditate with his eyes open (I know, it keeps you active somewhere), and he said that if by mischance he closes his eyes, he can't move any more! He is conscious but completely paralyzed: he can't get up, can't move, can't even turn his head!

It's dangerous.

So I advised him to be sure to keep his eyes open: it maintains a certain activity. When you close your eyes, you plunge into trance (you are perfectly conscious, but you go into trance and the body is absolutely stilled). That's what Théon had taught me: you free the body consciousness and train it in such a way that it can act on its own, so that while you are deep in trance, you can get up, write, speak, do anything – you are outside the body, there's just a link left. But it's a whole training. It's not too easy, but still it can be done.

I did it to the point that even if the link is cut (I had the experience), the body can go on speaking. Very useful.

I told D. that I will teach him later, because it's not good to be paralyzed like that: if someone came in abruptly, anything could happen.

But it requires some work.

In my case I never went into trance in my life, I never even lost the contact with the outside.

Didn't you ever see your body?

Never.¹

Well, it's safer that way than the other way!

I've known several people, especially I., who worked with Dilip (she used to have visions, she danced also): when she went into meditation, it was all over; even when she tried to come back and move, she couldn't. Dilip had to come and pull her hands, disengage her fingers and move her body, till she began coming around. But you understand, that sort of thing won't do at all.

Better be more on this side than on that side.

But it's an incapacity, all the same, isn't it?

It's a lack of connection! She doesn't have any control over her body, that's all. Something that has never, never happened to me.

I mean that being unable, like me, to go into trance is an incapacity, isn't it?

No, I am certain that you went into trance, because I saw you, but you didn't know it.

In meditation?

No, not in meditation: at night.

In my case, I found out I had that capacity because it made me prone to fainting – not too often, but off and on it happened. When I was a child and didn't know a thing, I fainted a couple of times; the fainting, as it happened, wasn't unconscious – it was conscious – and after a bit of practice (not the practice of fainting!), of occult practice, when I fainted I would see myself. Even before that, I had seen myself but without knowing what it all meant, I couldn't make head or tail of it. But I would see myself. And afterwards, whenever I would faint, the first thing I did was to see my body lying down in a ridiculous position. So I would rush back into it vigorously, and it would be all over.

Of course, I was probably born with some abilities! (laughter)

But are my meditations...

Oh, mon petit, they're excellent, don't speak ill of your meditations, they're perfect! I have rarely seen such peace. Because I have seen many meditations with some peace, but generally a very tamasic, heavy peace. But this kind of peace that rises and turns into a white bliss, that's very rare. Very rare. And it's the same every time: regular, automatic, effortless; it's your natural state. I don't know if you had it before coming here, I can't say....

No, with you it becomes very concrete. When I'm alone, the perception is more vague; with you, I almost seem to see.

But that's because when you're alone, it lacks some shakti! (laughter)

Yes, that's true.

But generally, the best I've seen here with people who have practiced a lot is a blank – a blank silence, you know. It's empty, still, quiet, silent, but blank – so after a while, you've had enough of it! That can't last very long. That's what people in India generally have... and they come out of it in a daze.

But with you, it's like a surging up into whiteness – something luminous but white – in other words, it has a CONTENT. Very luminous, very white, and wonderfully still. It's blissful too, one can stay in it for a very long time – most pleasant.

The only thing I've done since I started meditating with you is a broadening, because at the beginning, it was a bit limited.² It's extremely difficult to have this white peace together with breadth. Sri Aurobindo said to me (when I told him about all those experiences), he always said to me that to have this FULL silence – concrete, white, pure, absolutely pure – TOGETHER WITH IMMENSITY ... there are not many who can have it. But I must say that I have broadened your silence a lot, quite a lot. Now I no longer feel hemmed in – I don't like to feel hemmed in! I no longer feel like that: it's a spreading out.

It's good. kilo, don't complain of what you have, some people work many LIVES to get that.

The other extreme is an innate ability to go out of one's body, a spontaneous ability to go out of one's body. To have a trance as you understand it, concrete, absolutely material, one must be able to go out, come back in, go out, come back in [at will]. But as people generally take great pains to go out, they don't know how to get back in any more! So they find themselves in ridiculous situations.

I had two experiences of that kind. The first was at Tlemcen³ and the second in Japan.... There was an epidemic of influenza, an influenza that came from the war (the 1914 war), and was generally fatal. People would get pneumonia after three days, and plop! finished. In Japan they never have epidemics (it's a country where epidemics are unknown), so they were caught unawares; it was an ideal breeding ground, absolutely unprepared – incredible: people died by the thousands every day, it was incredible! Everybody lived in terror, they didn't dare to go out without masks over their mouths. Then somebody whom I won't name asked me (in a brusque tone), “What Is this?” I answered him, “Better not think about it.” “Why not?” he said, “It's very interesting! We must find out, at least you are able to find out whatever this is.” Silly me, I was just about to go out; I had to visit a girl who lived at the other end of Tokyo (Tokyo is the largest city in the world, it takes a long time to go from one end to the other), and I wasn't so well-off I could go about in a car: I took the tram.... What an atmosphere! An atmosphere of panic in the city! You see, we lived in a house surrounded by a big park, secluded, but the atmosphere in the city was horrible. And the question, “What Is this?” naturally came to put me in contact – I came back home with the illness. I was sure to catch it, it had to happen! (laughing) I came home with it.

Like a bang on the head – I was completely dazed. They called a doctor. There were no medicines left in the city – there weren't enough medicines for people, but as we were considered important people (!) the doctor brought two tablets. I told him (laughing), “Doctor, I never take any medicines.” “What!” he said. “It's so hard to get them!” “That's just the point,” I replied, “they're very good for others!” Then, then... suddenly (I was in bed, of course, with a first-rate fever), suddenly I felt seized by trance – the real trance, the kind that pushes you out of your body – and I knew. I knew: “It's the end; if I can't resist it, it's the end.” So I looked. I looked and I saw it was a being whose head had been half blown off by a bomb and who didn't know he was dead, so he was hooking on to anybody he could to suck life. And each of those beings (I saw one over me, doing his “business”!) was one of the countless dead. Each had a sort of atmosphere – a very widespread atmosphere – of human decomposition, utterly pestilential, and that's what gave the illness. If it was merely that, you recovered, but if it was one of those beings with half a head or half a body, a being who had been killed so brutally that he didn't know he was dead and was trying to get hold of a body in order to continue his life (the atmosphere made thousands of people catch the illness every day, it was swarming, an infection), well, with such beings, you died. Within three days it was over – even before, within a day, sometimes. So once I saw and knew, I collected all the occult energy, all the occult power, and... (Mother bangs down her fist, as if to force her way into her body) I found myself back in my bed, awake, and it was over. Not only was it over, but I stayed very quiet and began to work in the atmosphere.... From that moment on, mon petit, there were no new cases! It was so extraordinary that it appeared in the Japanese papers. They didn't know how it happened, but from that day on, from that night on, not a single fresh case. And people recovered little by little.

I told the story to our Japanese friend in whose house we were living, I told him, “Well, that's what this illness is – a remnant of the war; and here's the way it happens.... And that being was repaid for his attempt!” Naturally, the fact that I repelled his influence by turning around and fighting... [dissolved the formation]. But what power it takes to do that! Extraordinary.

He told the story to some friends, who in turn told it to some friends, so in the end the story became known. There was even a sort of collective thanks from the city for my intervention.... But the whole thing stemmed from that: “What Is this illness? You're able to find out, aren't you?” (Laughter) Go and catch it!

But that feeling of being absolutely paralyzed, a prey to something – absolutely paralyzed, you can't... You are no longer in your body, you understand, you can't act on it any more. And a sense of liberation when you are able to turn around.

I had a tremendous fever, which naturally dropped little by little – after a few days I was completely cured; even immediately, I was almost cured.

There, petit.

So you're going there... [to X's place].

(silence)

As for me, I am debating with Death.

It's exactly the universal state of mind: a state of disbelief, oh, terrible! If we didn't know that something will come to replace it, it would be terrible.

This Savitri is wonderful, he foresaw everything, saw everything, everything, absolutely everything, there isn't one point he left unexplored!

¹ This is in fact incorrect. Satprem remembers occasions when, while playing in his room as a child, he saw his body quietly asleep in bed – only to rush back into it.

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² Mother had once told Satprem that he was in a kind of “white cube.”

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³ Mother means the experience when the link is cut off and one cannot reenter one's body (which means one is medically dead). The first experience at Tlemcen is probably the one when Théon had a fit of anger while Mother had gone out in her vital body in search of the mantra of life, and the link was cut off by Théon's anger.

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