The Mother

Agenda

Volume 4

May 3, 1963

Did X tell you something about world events, about war?

He said what he always says, that there is going to be war. That war is certain.

War is always there, it seems!

Do you see new things on that level?

You know, I live from day to day. With only the feeling of “that” moving on very fast. By “that,” I mean a large number of things.

It's very hard to say, really.

It's the perception of a terrestrial movement more than anything else. So the details are unimportant in themselves, but they are symptomatic of the whole. I mean that difficulties, obstacles, battles, victories, advances are in themselves nothing but indications of a general movement: at times, the resistance and opposition are formidable; at other times there are fantastic advances or progress, seemingly miraculous. If you see everything together, you feel, you feel a sort of thrust – an overall thrust – in which a small cellular concentration seems really unimportant in itself; its importance diminishes with its lack of resistance, in the sense that the more it allows the Work to be done without hindering or distorting the movement – without hindering it or making it more complicated – the more the sense of its importance diminishes. In other words, it appears important only insofar as it hinders.

There is evidently a twofold movement: on one hand, something that tries to draw less and less the attention and concentration of others, that is, to lessen the sense of intermediary necessary for forces and thoughts to spread (more and more there is an attempt to undo that¹), and on the other hand, an increase – at times prodigious, staggering – of power. Now and then (seldom, and I must say I don't at all try to make it happen more often), now and then, for a minute – not even a minute: a few seconds – comes a sense of absolute Power; but immediately it is covered over, veiled. The effect at a distance is becoming greater and greater, but that is not the result of a conscious will – I mean there is no attempt to have more power, none at all. Now and then, there's the observation (a very amusing observation, sometimes) that for a moment (but it's a matter of seconds), the Power is absolute, and then the usual hodgepodge takes over again.

The effect on others is increasing considerably, though it too isn't the result of an attempt in that direction, not at all: those things are automatic. Yet, as I said, at certain seconds, there rises... something that wills. “Wills,” but not in the ordinary way: something that... it's between knowing, seeing and willing. A little something that has something of all three and is... as hard as diamond... (oh, how can I explain it? I don't know, there are no words for it), it has something of the emotive vibration, but that's not it; it has nothing to do with anything intellectual, nothing at all; it's neither intellectual vision nor supramental knowledge, that's not it, it's something else. It is... a diamondlike, live force – live, living. And that's all-powerful. But extremely fleeting – it immediately gets covered over by a heap of things, like visions, supramental vision, understanding, discernment – all this has become a constant mass, you understand.

From the standpoint of sensitivity or sensation (I don't know what to call it), when the body rests and enters the static state of pure Existence... Before, it was (or gave) a sense of total immobility – not something motionless: a “non-movement,” I don't know; not the opposition between something motionless and something in motion, not that – the absence of any possibility of movement. But now, as it happens, the body has the sense not only of a terrestrial movement, but of a universal movement so fantastically rapid that it is imperceptible, beyond perception. As if beyond Being and Non-Being, there were a “something” that's both... I mean, that doesn't move WITHIN a space but is both beyond immobility and beyond movement, in the sense that it's so rapid as to be absolutely imperceptible to ALL the senses (I don't mean merely the physical senses), all the senses in all the worlds.

This is something new.

When I lie down, I go from one state to the other with extraordinary speed. And I've noticed (the thing is just at its beginning, so I can't really say), I've noticed that in that state, the Movement² exceeds the force or power that concentrates the cells into an individual form. And that state seems to be all-powerful, although devoid of conscious will or vision (for the moment). It's a state... (how can I explain this?) whose characteristics exceed the power that concentrates the cells into an individual body. The effect is automatic (not willed): as soon as something takes the form of a physical pain, it disappears INSTANTLY. But then, and this is most interesting, the second the body reverts to a certain state – its ordinary state, which isn't the ordinary human state, of course, but its ordinary, habitual state – it recaptures the MEMORY of its pain, and along with the memory comes the possibility of reverting to it if a certain number of conditions are not automatically fulfilled. I don't know if what I am saying makes any sense, but that's how the experience is.... It is probably the passage from the true thing to the thing no longer true – not what is meant by Falsehood here on earth (that's something else altogether), but a first alteration compared to the pure Vibration. It gives the impression of a wrong habit, what remains is merely a question of a wrong habit. It's not the principle of distortion that works here, but the wrong habit due to the effect of ANOTHER principle. And something is to be found to check – check, eliminate, prevent – that effect from recurring automatically.

Because it happens CONSTANTLY. It's a constant phenomenon: passing from this to that, this to that, this to that, to such a point – it's so strong – that a second comes, or a minute, or anyway a certain interval of time (I don't know), when you are neither this nor that; then you have a feeling of nothingness. It lasts just an instant; if it lasted longer, it would probably result in fainting or something, I can't say what. But it happens all the time: this, that (oscillating gesture). And between this and that, there is a passage.

Life on the surface (what people see of it, what they are in contact with) is certainly a sort of mixture of the two, with something going on behind the screen, but what you see on the screen is a sort of combination of the two – they don't really combine, but the visual effect is odd [for Mother]. By “visual,” I don't mean just for the eyes but for the outer consciousness. It's a bizarre life, neither this nor that, nor a mixture of the two, nor a juxtaposition, but as though both were operating through each other. It must be intercellular: something that goes this way (Mother intertwines the fingers of one hand with the fingers of the other in a continuous movement of interpenetration), so that the mixture must be very microscopic, on the surface.

(Mother remains engrossed,
“looking” at the experience)

But from a much more external viewpoint, the night that followed your arrival there³ was dreadful, in the sense that the consciousness was put in contact with all the most negative and destructive things: like an entire world, yes, of denial, of refusal too, of opposition, of battle, of ill will – the visual appearance was chalk-white, you know, the soulless white of chalk, everything was like that, even black was chalk-white (!). Something absolutely stripped of all soul life. Horrible. I don't know, I would have to go back years and years and years to find anything like it in my memory. And I was right in it, it was forced on me; it was as if I were made to stay there and watch it all.

I forgot: immediately afterwards I swept everything clean. Except for what I've just said, I don't remember what it was – I don't remember what it was because I did NOT want it to exist. But it was horrible. And in the morning, there was such a painful impression! So I thought something was wrong over there, and when I received your letter, I understood. But it isn't limited to one person or another, one place or another: it seems to evoke a universal way of being, that's what troubles me. As if an entire way of being which I've been resisting for... for, well, more than seventy years at any rate, which I've been keeping at arm's length so it may no longer exist in a real way, as if it were all forced on me. Like a thing from a past that no longer has the right to exist.

Afterwards, it got better. That night was the worst.

But during the morning meditation, I was at a loss.... Is it the symbol of a clinging to the past? Possible. But then there are plenty of people like that in the world, who cling to the past, plenty....

(silence)

The next morning, for an hour, I had an experience.... Everything always happens as if it were in the body (but this body has become a kind of representative and symbolic object), it always takes place that way, whether it's a sense of imminent death or a sense of perfect immortality. All that always takes place in the body – it is the battlefield, it is the field of victory, it is the Defeat, it is the Triumph, it is everything. So I noted the experience down.

(Mother hands a slip of paper to Satprem):

“The Lord is peaceful resignation,
but the Lord is also the struggle
and the Victory.”

“He is the joyous acceptance
of all that is; but also
the constant effort
towards a more total and perfect harmony.”

“Perpetual movement
in absolute immobility.”

This isn't an intellectual reflection, it's the notation of the experience: the constant, twofold movement of total acceptance of all that is, as an absolute condition to participate in all that will be, and at the same time, the perpetual effort towards a greater perfection. And this was the experience of all the cells.

The experience lasted more than an hour: the two conditions.

That's exactly what made a sharp division in the whole spiritual thought or spiritual will of mankind. The point doesn't seem to have been understood. Some, like Buddha and that whole line, have declared that the world is incorrigible, that the only thing to do is to get out of it, and that it can never be otherwise – it changes, but really remains the same. The result is a certain attitude of perfect acceptance. So, for them, the goal is to get out – that is, you escape: you leave the world as it is and escape. Then there are the others, who sense a perfection towards which men strive indefinitely and which is realized progressively. And I see more and more that the two movements complement each other, and not only complement each other but are almost indispensable to each other.

In other words, the change that arises from a refusal to accept the world as it is has no force, no power: what is needed is an acceptance not only total but comprehensive, joyous – to find supreme joy in things in order to have (it's not a question of right or power)... in order to make it possible for things to change.

Putting it differently, you must become the Supreme in order to help in His action, in the changing of the world; you must have the supreme Vibration in order to participate in that Movement, which I am now beginning to feel in the body's cells – a Movement which is a sort of eternal Vibration, without beginning or end. It has no beginning (the earth has a beginning, so that makes it easy; with the earth's beginning, we have the beginning of the earth's history, but that's not the case here), it has no beginning, it is... something existing from all eternity, for all eternity, and without any division of time: it's only when it is projected onto a screen that it begins to assume the division of time. But you can't say a “second,” or an “instant”.... It's hard to explain.... No sooner do you begin to feel it than it's gone: something boundless, without beginning or end, a Movement so total – total and constant, constant – that it is perceived as total immobility.

Absolutely indescribable. Yet it is the Origin and Support of the whole terrestrial evolution.

When you speak of terrestrial things, it's very easy, very easy.

These words (Mother shows the notation of her experience) come long after the experience is over. There is a sort of silence, of immobility, and it's like something that settles slowly, slowly; and once it has settled, here is the residue (Mother shows her note, laughing).

¹ Mother means the perception of herself as a radiating center for the higher Forces. Mother commented on this passage later, on May 29 (see under that date).

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² In the next conversation, Mother clarified: “It isn't a movement or a vibration.... To put it accurately, one should say ‘this something.’”

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³ At Rameshwaram, the night of April 21.

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