The Mother

Agenda

Volume 11

June 27, 1970

(Mother's face is swollen by a tooth abscess.)

We'd need some “Notes [on the Way]” for the August Bulletin.

But you have some! (laughter)

There is something indeed, but it's a long time since you've stopped speaking.

(long silence)

Still, once or twice I wondered if your not speaking was due to something in me?

No!

Something in my attitude, or I don't know what?

No, no, mon petit! No, it's not that.

It's not that.

It would be that if I could speak to someone else, but with everyone it's the same thing.

Something is going on – it's not that it's not going on, but...

(very long silence
Mother moans now and then)

You understand, expressing takes a minimum of mentalization, and that's what is very difficult, because it's the body that's going through all kinds of experiences and is learning, but as soon as there is an attempt to express, it says, “No, it's not true! It's not like that....” (Mother draws small squares, like boxes) It's like doing geometrical drawings with life, that's its impression.

Even otherwise, it's inexpressible, because it's manifold, complex, and if you don't develop a whole explanation for it... it can't even be said. As soon as you develop a whole explanation, it's no longer true.

All these last few days, it has been this experience of the consciousness that a very slight shift (how could I put it?), a very slight change of attitude, which isn't even expressible, and in one case you are in divine bliss; then, things remaining exactly the same, it almost becomes a torture! That's something constant. At times, you know, the body would scream in pain, and... a very slight, very slight change, which is almost inexpressible, and it becomes bliss – it becomes... it's something else, this extraordinary thing of the Divine everywhere. So the body is constantly switching from one to the other, like a sort of gymnastics, a struggle of the consciousness between the two.

It's becoming extremely acute; sometimes, at certain seconds, just when the body says, “Ah, enough, I've had enough...” pffft!... (Mother makes a gesture of reversal).

So it's impossible to say. Whatever one may say is no longer really true.

And all these suffering vibrations (Mother points to her cheek) are as though supported by the mass of the general human consciousness – that's right. While the other [state] is supported by... something that doesn't seem to intervene, that's like this (immutable gesture) in comparison with this human mass that tends to express itself... So all that is impossible to say.

Constantly, constantly, there is either this immutable Peace – this superlative Peace, you know, which is more than any peace one may feel – and at the same time one knows (I can't say “one feels,” but one knows) that the movement of transformation is so rapid that it can't be perceived materially. And the two are concomitant, this body goes from one to the other, and sometimes... sometimes almost the two together! (Mother shakes her head, noting the impossibility of expressing herself.)

So then, to the vision of ordinary things, anyway of life as it is, it gives a perception from the standpoint... not the divine standpoint, but in comparison with the Divine, it gives the perception of a general madness, and no really perceptible difference between what people call “mad” and what they call “reasonable.” That... it's comical, the difference people make. One would be tempted to say, “But you are ALL like that, to varying degrees!...” So...

All that is a WORLD of simultaneous perceptions, so it's really impossible to speak.

There's really nothing there (Mother touches her head), it doesn't go through there, there's nothing there. It's something... something without a precise form, which has an INNUMERABLE experience at the same time, with a capacity of expression that has remained as it is, that is to say, incapable.

(silence)

For instance, with anything happening, there is, at the same time, the explanation (“explanation” isn't the right word, but anyway...), the explanation of the ordinary human consciousness (“ordinary,” I don't mean banal, I mean the human consciousness), then the explanation as Sri Aurobindo gives it in an illumined mind, and then... the divine perception. All three simultaneously, for the same thing – how, how do you describe it?!

And it's constant, it's all the time like that. So then, this (Mother points to her body) isn't in a condition to express itself, it's not the time for expression.

To such a point that when I write it's also like that. So I try to put what our idiotic formulas can hold – and I put so much, so much that can't be expressed with words, that when they read back to me what I wrote, I feel like saying, “You must be joking, you took away everything!...”