The Mother

Agenda

Volume 9

November 27, 1968

(Mother has a severe cold. In fact, she has been in the same painful curve since July.)

What you said last time could perhaps be used for the February Bulletin? It seems very important....

I don't remember at all.

You touched the “central experience” of the transformation.

Oh, that's right.

It's going on.... The body has the impression that it's beginning to understand. For it, naturally, there are no thoughts at all – none at all; but it's states of consciousness. States of consciousness complementing one another, replacing one another.... To such a point that the body wonders how one can know with thought; for it, the only way of knowing, the only way of experiencing, is consciousness. It's growing increasingly clear from a general point of view. And it's applying it; it's applying it to itself, that is to say, a work is going on to make all the parts of the body conscious not only of the forces they receive, the forces going through the body, but of the action of its inner working.

That's growing increasingly precise.

It's mostly this: for the body, everything is a phenomenon of consciousness, and when it wants to do something, it almost no longer understands the meaning of “knowing how to do it”; it must be CONSCIOUS of the manner of doing it. And not only for itself, but for all the people around it. That's becoming such an obvious fact.... So to learn from someone else, to learn, for instance, the manner of doing a thing – for the body it's only by doing it and at the same time applying the consciousness that it can learn. And what one explains, what someone else may explain, seems... it seems hollow – lifeless, hollow.

It's becoming more and more like that.

(silence)

You didn't answer my question about that vision of you lying flat on the ground....

(Mother laughs) I think it's the symbol of perfect surrender. I was lying on my back, wasn't I?

On your back, on the ground.

On my back, yes. It must be the pictorial expression of the body's attitude.¹

It's the attitude of perfect receptivity in complete surrender.

Because that's true.

I truly don't know if there are “parts” or organs that still have what we might call their “spirit of independence,” but truly the body has made its surrender, that is, it has no will of its own; it has no desire, no will of its own, and it's all the time as if “listening” – all the time – to perceive the Indication.

It's beginning to know the exact spot or function that isn't... I can't say “transformed,” because that's quite a high-sounding word, but not in harmony with the others, and causing a disorder. That's becoming a perception of every moment. When something apparently abnormal takes place, there is the understanding, the awareness of why it occurs and what it must be leading to: how an apparent disorder can lead to a greater perfection. That's it. It's a tiny little beginning. But it has begun. The body is beginning to be a little conscious. And not only for itself alone, but for all others too, it has begun: seeing, perceiving how the Consciousness (with a capital C) acts in others. And in fact, at times (words lag WAY BEHIND the experience), there no longer is the perception of division: there is the perception of diversity (that's becoming very interesting)... the diversity (if it weren't for what we might call the “latching on” of separateness), the diversity that, in the true consciousness, would be perfectly harmonious and would make a whole that would be perfection itself (Mother makes a round gesture).

It's the latching on – what happened?... What happened?...

It remains to be seen if, for some reason or other, it was necessary or if it was an accident – but how could it be an accident!... For the moment (there's no thought, so it's a little vague), for the moment there is an impression... I might put it simply like this: the impression of a TREMENDOUS acquisition of consciousness, which has been gained by paying the very high price of all the suffering and all the disorder.... Yesterday or today (I forget when, I think yesterday), at one point the problem was so acute (Mother touches her cheek and throat), and then the divine Consciousness seemed to be saying, “In all this suffering, it's I who suffer” (the Consciousness, you understand), “it's I who suffer, but in a way different from yours.” I don't know how to express it.... There was a sort of impression that the divine Consciousness was perceiving what to us was a suffering, that it existed – it existed for the divine Consciousness. But not in the same way as it exists for our own consciousness. So then, there was an attempt to make understood the consciousness of the whole at the same time, the simultaneous consciousness of everything... to express myself I might just say, the consciousness of suffering (the most acute disorder) and of Harmony (the most perfect Ananda) – both together, perceived together. Naturally that changes the nature of suffering.

But all that is very conscious of being some kind of chatter. It's not the translation of what is.

There is also the perception that little by little, following all these experiences, every aggregate (what, for us, is a body) is getting used to having the power to bear the true Consciousness.... It requires a play of adaptation.

But you know, Sri Aurobindo too wrote in Thoughts and Glimpses, I think, that suffering was a preparation for Ananda.²

Yes. I must say there are many things from Sri Aurobindo that I am beginning to understand in a very different way.

I told you it was here (Mother points to her nose, mouth and throat) that there was the most complete resistance. As an experience it's very interesting, but it's still in full work....

(silence)

The impression of being on the verge of touching something, and then... it escapes. Something is missing.

(silence)

Still a long, long, long way to go.

¹ Soon after Satprem left at the end of the conversation, Mother sent him a line containing the sentence that follows.

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² “...Pain that travails towards the touch of an unimaginable ecstasy.” See also Thoughts and Aphorisms: 93 – “Pain is the touch of our Mother teaching us how to bear and grow in rapture. She has three stages of her schooling, endurance first, next equality of soul, last ecstasy.”

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