The Mother

Agenda

Volume 11

March 18, 1970

(Regarding the latest Aphorisms and the English translation of Mother's comments.)

393 – We ought to use the divine health in us to cure and prevent diseases; but Galen and Hippocrates and their tribe have given us instead an armoury of drugs and a barbarous Latin hocus-pocus as our physical gospel.

399 – Man was once naturally healthy and could revert to that primal condition if he were suffered; but Medical Science pursues our body with an innumerable pack of drugs and assails the imagination with ravening hordes of microbes.

400 – I would rather die and have done with it than spend life in defending myself against a phantasmal siege of microbes. If that is to be barbarous and unenlightened, I embrace gladly my Cimmerian darkness.

401 – Surgeons save and cure by cutting and maiming. Why not rather seek to discover Nature's direct all-powerful remedies?

402 – It should take long for self-cure to replace medicine, because of the fear, self-distrust and unnatural physical reliance on drugs which Medical Science has taught to our minds and bodies and made our second nature.

In fact, very often the answer comes to me in English because it comes to me from Sri Aurobindo. When I read, I listen, and then he speaks. And then I am the one who translates while writing! I translate into French. But I could write it in English at the same time.

Yesterday again... Have you read yesterdays aphorism?... But yesterday, he was going at the doctors with a will! So I said, “For people spontaneously not to need medicines, nature must change.” It's too old a habit.

What did I say?

(Satprem reads)

“No external measure can enable us to react against the harm caused by mental faith in the necessity of drugs. It is only by emerging from the mind's prison and consciously soaring into the light of the spirit that, through a conscious union with the Divine, we will be able to let Him give us back the balance and health which we have lost.

“Supramental transformation is the only true remedy.”

(silence)

I've had this experience for several months now (especially since the start of the year) that the “shift” of the consciousness – instead of the consciousness being in the ordinary state, if you shift it (I am referring to the body's consciousness), if it's directly tuned to the Divine, in a few... sometimes seconds, sometimes minutes, but in a few minutes, the disease absolutely disappears. And if you just do this (Mother slightly tilts one finger to the left), if you go back even a little, it instantly comes back. But if you keep your consciousness at the right place, it's gone.

That's an experiment I've made more than a hundred times, even with something like toothache (which is hard to cure), even sharp pains at one spot or another. That's the experiment made by the BODY. The body knows.

(long silence)

It's very interesting because it's an experiment it has made in every detail and at every stage.... The first thing it found was not to think of the disease, not to be concerned with it. That's the first stage. Afterwards, it found that when it was occupied with something else, the pain was greatly lessened. Later on, it had the experience that if someone comes near it, someone who knows you are in pain, it comes back! All that is very, very interesting: lots of small observations of every minute. And finally, it had this repeated and absolutely convincing proof that as soon as it concentrates on the Divine, as soon as it makes contact (because it FEELS, it has the sensation in the cells), as soon as it concentrates (without being concerned with the diseased point: it's better not to be concerned with it), the pain totally disappears, to such a point that... At such times (those are things that cause pain, so the first effect is not to feel the pain), at times, in the beginning, the body would ask for the Intervention and there would be an effect, but there was the sense of a struggle, a resistance (something of the sort): it would take a little time. But when the body succeeded in concentrating WITHOUT DEMAND, you understand (simply giving itself), on the Divine, then it would stop thinking about the pain, the body itself stops thinking about the pain, and after a certain time, it realizes it's completely vanished! – It stopped thinking about it and it was gone.

That experience has been repeated HUNDREDS of times, for all kinds of different things.

(silence)

There must be a condition in which the possibility of accident disappears. But that... that I don't know.

Those would be the natural conditions of supramental life.

So, necessarily, since it's taking place in the body, the very constitution of the body must change – it will have to change. How? That I don't know yet.

It's in the direction of Matter's perfect obedience to the Consciousness (the higher Consciousness); to the present experience, it's the divine consciousness, but it's very probably what Sri Aurobindo called the supramental consciousness. Because there must be... (gesture in gradations) an indefinite ascent.

It's a consciousness in which the sense of ego completely disappears, it does not exist. There isn't “a person” in front of others, you understand, receiving and sending influences – it's no longer like that at all. It's a general play of forces (Mother makes a vast, fluid gesture) in which everyone spontaneously plays his part.

Several times the body has had that experience. It remains in that for a long time. Now it's almost... that relationship with things and beings (the old relationship) is on the verge of becoming a memory. It's no longer... no longer natural.

(long silence)

I don't know how to explain.... There's something radically changed not only in the body's consciousness, but in its functioning. For the moment it's still hard to explain.... You see, the image of being at the center with things coming towards you and everything being in relationship with this [the egocentric center] is an old thing that went away long ago. But there were still...

(silence)

It's not quite that, but somewhat: all the cells seem to be attuned – attuned to something higher than they, even in space, but which they feel as being their center. But a center... not like this (Mother gestures onto herself) and not... (what's the word?) localized; it's... neither here [the body] nor above, nor... It's not localized. Yet the cells' impression is that the Force – the impelling force or will-force – emanating from “that” spreads out (gesture fanning out downward) to enter into the body And... (this is interesting) the body feels it's more DIRECTLY in relationship with “that” and, through it, that acts on others, on those around – but it's not “others,” it's... The body has sometimes even had the impression that some of those things [“others,” those around] are closer to it than others.... It's very hard to explain.... But it's spontaneous. You see, the difficulty is that in order to express it, I have to start thinking it, while it's spontaneous: it's a sensation, not a thought.

For instance, at night when I am alone, at times there's the impression of a disorder or an anguish somewhere [in “those around”], and then, the body's remedy (it clearly feels it comes from outside towards it – but “outside” isn't the word, it's a distance... I don't know how to explain), its sole movement of remedy is to rush into this luminous center – it's not to “attract” something to it, it's... to rush into that.

(Mother goes into a long contemplation, then smiles)

There was here beside you, and very... (how can I put it?) very visible and clear, what you were in a previous life. A head – I could have drawn it.... A shaven head, very large, with a longish chin and a thin nose. Yet, strangely, it's absolutely you.

But a color... the very fair Indian color (the Indian color, that is, without any pink at all in it), large eyes like this, about twenty-five to thirty years. A head slightly bigger than yours (slightly, not much). But VERY CLOSE to you, I mean closely united.... A large forehead – large, a very large forehead. And the head like... it makes a pear-shaped head.

He was meditating, then at a certain point he looked at me: the gaze was wholly luminous.... He looked so close, so close – you understand, I didn't go far or deep: it was there. It's odd.

Didn't you feel something?

But my impression was that it wasn't a new fact – as if he were there very constantly.

It's amusing. I almost seemed to see with these [physical] eyes!

The head is a little bigger than yours – not much, a little.

And it looks like you! (Mother laughs) This (gesture to the forehead): large.

He looked settled there, not on a visit: settled.

What kind of help is he bringing?

It's a being who has done a very intensive yoga. It's a relationship with the higher consciousnesses. But very... he must have been very highly ascetic.... This [matter] wasn't what preoccupied him: he was wholly in the relationship with the Consciousness – very, very concentrated.

My difficulty in distinguishing forces or influences is that it's always translated as an intensity of force in me, so I don't know how to untangle: it's always “force,” you understand, intensity.

Yes, and his must be VERY intense!

And he was smiling. Smiling as if in a very happy experience. But ALL WITHIN. Probably not very interested in the outside.

He must have been a sannyasin. Besides, he had... he was naked, there was just a small piece of cloth visible, but an orange cloth.... He was the color of very fair-skinned Indians.

And at one point he looked: his eyes were very beautiful, the gaze was very beautiful.

A very intense aspiration.