The Mother

Agenda

Volume 8

June 24, 1967

Much to say, but... It's better to reach the end. It's a curve – it's better to reach the end. It's too early to talk.

(After a silence) The near totality of the body's movements are movements of habit. There is, behind, the consciousness of the physical mind (what I call the “cellular mind”) which, for its part, is constantly conscious of the divine Presence and anxious not to let in anything except That. So a whole work is going on to change, to shift the origin of movements. I mean that instead of that origin automatically being habit, the work is for the divine Consciousness and Presence to automatically be the prime mover (Mother makes the gesture of forcing the consciousness into the body).

But it's quite... quite inexpressible, that is, as soon as you try to express it, it becomes mentalized, it's no longer the thing. That's why it's very difficult to express. I can't talk about it.

But I think I told you not long ago about that habit of and taste for drama in the most material consciousness.¹ That was the starting point. As soon as that part grew conscious, that habit became foreign, so to say, foreign to the true consciousness, so the transfer is now taking place.

It's a very delicate and difficult work.

It means fighting against a millennial habit, you understand. It's the automatism of the material consciousness which is, yes, dramatic, almost catastrophic; sometimes dramatic while at the same time imagining a conclusion that undoes the drama. But as soon as you express it all, it becomes much too concrete. It's better not to talk about it.

As soon as it's said, it becomes artificial.

It's as if, in order to replace that habit, there were a kind of effort to create another one (!) which is only an approximation. Does that state of consciousness, that way of being, that way of existing, reacting, expressing, does it strive towards the divine Manifestation? Is it in conformity with the tendency towards the divine Manifestation?... The thought is silent, still, so the imagination isn't working (all that is deliberate), and the movement is trying to be as sincere and spontaneous as possible under the influence of the divine Presence.... Words distort too much.

From time to time, now and then, all at once – the concrete experience, as in a flash: the experience of the Presence, of identification. But it lasts for... a few seconds, then things revert to their former state.

It can't be expressed.

*
*   *

(Then Mother turns to the translation of two texts by Sri Aurobindo which she wants to publish.)

“That is a great secret of sadhana, to know how to get things done by the Power behind or above instead of doing all by the mind's effort.”

That's exactly the point.

Then:

“The importance of the body is obvious; it is because he has developed or been given a body and brain capable of receiving and serving a progressive mental illumination that man has risen above the animal. Equally, it can only be by developing a body or at least a functioning of the physical instrument capable of receiving and serving a still higher illumination that he will rise above himself and realise, not merely in thought and in his internal being but in life, a perfectly divine manhood. Otherwise either the promise of Life is cancelled its meaning annulled and earthly being can only realise Sachchidananda by abolishing itself, by shedding from it mind, life and body and returning to the pure Infinite, or else man is not the divine instrument, there is a destined limit to the consciously progressive power which distinguishes him from all other terrestrial existences and as he has replaced them in the front of things, so another must eventually replace him and assume his heritage.”

(The Life Divine, XVIII.231)

I understand! I have been preoccupied with this all the time.

(silence)

But Sri Aurobindo's conclusion is that it isn't this [the body] that can change: it will be a new being.

No! He says “if” man cannot, it will be a new being.

No, I don't mean here in this text, I mean in the things he wrote afterwards.

?...

Besides, it's the same problem, because... Can a body change?... It does seem very difficult – though not impossible. It's not impossible, but... it's such a formidable labor that life is too short. So even there, something needs to be changed, that habit of wear and tear is indeed a terrible thing.

Yes, but where would a “new being” come from? He won't drop from heaven, will he?!

Of course not, that's just the problem! The more you look at it... It won't come that way (Mother laughs), it will obviously come in a similar way that man came from the animal. But we lack the stages between the animal and man – we may think them up, imagine them, they have found some things, but to tell the truth we weren't there to see it all! We don't know how it happened. But that doesn't matter.... According to some, the transformation can be consciously begun inwardly by forming the child. It may be, I am not saying no. It may be. Then he will have to form another more transformed, and so on – several stages, which will disappear just as the stages between the ape and man disappeared?

Well, yes, that is the whole story of human improvement.

We can call it what we like, of course. But a NEW BEING... We can imagine, as you say, a new being coming down ready-made from start to finish!... But that's pulp fiction.

That's what Sri Aurobindo also says. That being must be worked out.

After two or three – or four or ten or twenty, I don't know – intermediary beings, there would come the new way, the supramental way of creating.... But will it be necessary to have children? Will it not do away with the need to have children in order to replace those who go, since they will now live on indefinitely? They will transform themselves sufficiently to adapt to the new needs.

All that is quite conceivable in the long term.

Yes, in the long term.

But Sri Aurobindo and you are here so it's done in the short term!

No, Sri Aurobindo didn't conceive of it in the short term.

Anyway, so it's done by you. Whether in the long or the short term, so it's done by you in this life and this body.

But what I see...

I am trying to do it – not out of an arbitrary will, not at all: there is simply “something,” or someone, or a consciousness or whatever (I don't want to talk about it) which uses this (Mother's body) to try and do something with it. Which means that I do the work and am a witness at the same time, and as for the “I,” I don't know where it is: it's not down here, it's not up above, it's not... I don't know where it is, it's for the requirements of language. There is “something” that works and is a witness of the work at the same time, and is at the same time the action being done: the three things.

Because now, the body itself really collaborates as much as it can – as much as it can – with ever-increasing goodwill and power of endurance, and the self-observation is truly reduced to the minimum (there is still some, like something touching lightly now and then, but it doesn't even stay for a few seconds). Self-observation, oh, that means a thoroughly disgusting, repugnant and catastrophic atmosphere. It's like that, FELT like that. And it's becoming increasingly impossible, I see that, it's visible.... But there is still the whole weight of millennia of bad habits, which we could call pessimistic, that is, expecting decay, expecting catastrophe, expecting... well, all those things, and, ugh! that's the most difficult thing to purify, to clarify, to remove from the atmosphere. It's so INGRAINED that it's absolutely spontaneous. That is the great, great, great obstacle – that sort of sense of inevitable decay.

Naturally, from the mental standpoint, the entire earth atmosphere is like that, but in the mind it hardly matters at all: one ray of light and it's swept away. But it's HERE INSIDE (pointing to her body), that habit – that catastrophic habit – is what is terrible, terrible to contradict. And it's INDISPENSABLE that it should disappear so the other can settle in.

So it's a struggle every minute, every minute, all the time, all the time.

And of course, the being isn't cut off, the body isn't cut off: the body is something of a multitude, with varying degrees of proximity; and very near, there are all those who are here, and it's the same problem – the same problem. Because all that has been gained in the consciousness of this being hasn't been gained at all in the consciousness of others. So that increases the work.

The problem of mental, even vital, contagion is solved, so to speak, but the problem of material contagion still remains.

And in this material consciousness, there is this material mind which has so marvelously responded here [in Mother], but it doesn't yet have the power to assert itself spontaneously against what comes from outside, that never-ending contagion, constant, constant, every minute.

(long silence)

When, all at once, the Contact is conscious and the sense of Identity comes (for a few seconds, as I said), when it comes... it's like a hosanna in all, but all the cells, they say, “Oh, so it's true! It's true indeed!...”

And that's all-powerful.

It comes perhaps a hundred times a day, but it doesn't stay.

¹ See conversation of June 14, 1967.

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