So, what would you like to tell me for your birthday?
I’d like to do more for you, and better.
Better is difficult. As for more, we’d have to have more time! We could do a lot, I know that, but we would need time.
But I’d like to serve you more.
There are lots of things, lots of things…. Last night again, we were together for a long time. But we are together to WORK together; you understand, it’s not as if you are looking after me and I am looking after you, it’s not that: we meet because we work together. And there are vast movements of consciousness.
To tell the truth, I don’t like mental activity—I have never liked it. I worked a lot in the mind for a time: it was a phase, the phase of mental development when I did philosophy—all philosophies, comparative philosophies—in order to make the intellect more supple. But to tell the truth, it doesn’t interest me. While states of consciousness—movements of consciousness, states of consciousness—that’s tremendously interesting! And going on at the moment there is a very keen, that is, very painstaking study of the relationship between states of consciousness and the phenomenon of death.
Ultimately, all beliefs people have about what happens after death… Human beings have long tried to know, of course, and some religions thought they had found an explanation…. I’ve had personal experiences. And now the problem is put in a new way, as if (I say “as if” because I haven’t come to the end and I don’t know), as if what is perpetuated from life to life weren’t personalities but STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS, which are immortal and in constant transformation at the same time, and what’s transformed through one’s lives is the state of consciousness…. Some have only one state of consciousness, others have many (there are even certain people who have two nearly opposite states of consciousness, which results in that “double personality” and those contradictions in life). Some are very simple and have only one, and that results in almost primitive individuals; but they sometimes have a wonderful development in their state of consciousness…. That explains many contradictions. That’s what I am clearly shown at the moment: states of consciousness passing through numerous aggregates. And then, there is, there too, a secret to be found for the prolongation of an aggregate, that is, what gives the character not of immortality (which is something very different), but of the indefinite duration of life—of the FORM, rather (life never stops), of the form. So then, once this study has been done in depth, another secret will have been found.
It’s very interesting.
(silence)
Not last night but the night before, I spent a long time, almost two hours of our time here, with Sri Aurobindo. I have told you he has something that translates as an “abode” (it’s magnificent, magnificent!) in the subtle physical. It’s always immense, so clear, well-defined, yet fully open. And I get a sense of… (Mother takes a deep breath) phew! open, luminous—always, in every case. He is there… maybe not quite as he was here (but it makes no difference to me because the change has been very progressive: I have followed Sri Aurobindo almost from day to day, step by step), and he is perhaps rather taller, with perhaps a form that has greater perfection, I don’t know, but to me, his expression… (Mother smiles with her eyes closed)… his expression is inexpressible. I spent a very, very long time with him. In those huge rooms (they are limitless, you know, you feel you could go indefinitely from one room to another, from one place to another), he was directing… It was in a part of the place with a certain number of rooms (four, five or six, I don’t know), large rooms where he was directing a pottery, just imagine! But it wasn’t like here. There were objects made of clay. There wasn’t any process of firing, painting or any like that (it wasn’t like here), but there were shapes which looked like pottery shapes, and they had a power (Mother gestures downward) to manifest. And then, there was everything: animals, plants, people, things, everything, with all possible colors. I went from one to another, looking, explaining. I had spent a long time with him, and I knew exactly why and how it was done, and afterwards I went and studied the work and observed. Then the rooms were arranged, the things were put in their place: that was as if to show the result. And things… charming in their simplicity, yet they contained an extraordinary power of manifestation! But they had a deep meaning. I took an object made of a very dark reddish brown earth, and it was badly put together, that is, the shape wasn’t right and I showed it to the “pottery foreman” (there was a pottery foreman in each room, looking after the work). I showed it to him, and told him (it was fairly big at the bottom, with a small piece at the top [Mother draws a sort of vase with a neck], anyway it wasn’t well done), I explained it to him, saying, “You understand, it’s not properly balanced.” And while I was holding it in my fingers—it broke. Then he said to me, “Oh, I am going to mend it.” I answered, “If you like, but it’s not as it should be….” Of course, we say it with our words, but there, it had a very precise MEANING. Then, there were kinds of big openings between one room and another (they weren’t “rooms,” they were huge halls), and one went on to the place where they made “fish”! But the fish weren’t fish (!), they had another meaning. And there were fish this big, made of clay, colored and gleaming, magnificent: one was blue-green, another yellowish white, but pretty, so pretty! And they were kept on the floor as if it were water: the fish were kept on the floor, right in the way. So I thought, “That’s not very convenient!” (Mother laughs) And said like this, it all looks like childishness, but there it had a very deep meaning, very deep.
It was very interesting.
I spent at least two hours like that. It must have been between one and three in the night. And the sense of something so very peaceful, so comfortable and full of light and consciousness—especially consciousness—oh, it was wonderful. The consciousness here seems very, very restricted. Very restricted. And because it expresses itself through thought it’s weighed down: that weighs it down, restricts it… fossilizes it. While there, the consciousness moves about freely in full light, oh, such a clear, clear atmosphere, so limpid… shadowless… yet everything has a shape. There are even streets (there are other places), but everything is like that, in full light.
The feeling remained for hours afterwards.
And it seems to be developing and completed fantastically fast: from one visit to the next (with at times an interval of eight days, perhaps), there is an extraordinary change, tremendous. Sri Aurobindo himself changes. I find him… Previously (two years ago, for instance) I found him very like what he was physically; of course, I saw him almost right in the beginning in his supramental reality, but that’s very different: I am speaking of the Sri Aurobindo who is in constant, constant contact with us—it’s like an emanation of the other [the supramental Sri Aurobindo] and like the continuation of the Sri Aurobindo who lived with us. That’s how it is. Well, for a time, he looked like himself much more than he does now; now it’s as though he looked more like the other. But still, remaining very close to us, very close.
And the work is proceeding fast, fast….
(silence)
There are some people over there who lived on earth, but not many. That’s where I met several times (very often during the first year after her death) the woman who used to cook for Sri Aurobindo. What was her name?
Mridu.
Mridu! She has also changed a lot, quite a lot, but… (Mother smiles, amused) in a way she is still the same!
But I felt (it was yesterday, I think) that things are much simpler—much simpler—and much less dramatic than human thought imagines. It’s very strange, I have a growing feeling of something… without mystery, and that it’s our way of thinking and feeling that adds the whole mystery and the whole drama—while in fact there isn’t any.
Oh, how men dramatize everything!
It’s like their relationship with the Divine…. Yesterday, while I was working here in the morning (distributing the eggs!), they made me listen to music by Sahana,1 a hymn by their group which is in the line of “religious music.” There are sounds, certain sounds that may be called “religious sounds”; they are certain “associations of sounds,” which are universal, that is, they don’t belong to a particular time or a particular country. In all times and all countries, those who have had this religious emotion have spontaneously given out this sound. While the music was playing, that perception came to me very clearly (it’s an association of two or three sounds), it came with the very state of consciousness that produces these sounds, and which is always the same: the sounds reproduce the state of consciousness. The whole [instrumental] accompaniment is different, and naturally that always, always spoils it. But these two—two or three—sounds are wonderfully expressive, in a precise, exact way, of the religious feeling, the Contact (gesture to the Heights), the adoration: the contact of adoration.
It was very interesting.
And in her piece, this sound recurs two or three times. All the rest is padding. But that… And I’ve heard it in churches, I’ve heard it in temples, I’ve heard it in mystic gatherings, I’ve heard it… Always mixed with all kinds of other things, but that’s… And these sounds are absolutely evocative of the effect—in fact it’s the other way around: it’s the state of consciousness that produces these sounds, but when you hear the sounds it puts you in contact with the state of consciousness. So then, I understood why people like to listen to this music: it’s because it suddenly gives them… ah! they feel something unknown to them.
How interesting it was!
How different everything becomes! You live in the state of consciousness, and then everything becomes different. You see things… yes, I think that’s what Sri Aurobindo calls seeing things from within outward. One causes the other.
Very interesting.
In Sunil’s music there are two or three of those associations of sounds that are evocative associations, and in his music it’s the splendor of the future creation, oh, it comes like a dazzling sun.
But even in very old music, or disjointed music, there is that association now and then: two sounds, a relationship between two sounds (two, sometimes three). And I don’t think people are aware of it, but that’s what puts them in contact with the state of consciousness.
In reality, it’s one way of looking at the problem, but it makes things simpler in a truly interesting way…. In other words, great transformations are merely the result of a change of state of consciousness.
(silence)
So, I wish you a good year.
Yes, Mother.
It’s going to be a good year. A very clear year—very clear, very vast—vast and clear…. I don’t know what’s going to happen here. Circumstances appear to be increasingly difficult, but I must say that leaves me very calm. They are difficult. In the country, in the world, it’s difficult, things grate. But it seems to be a mere appearance: it’s the great pressure of the Light—a warm, golden, powerful, supramental light—and it goes on increasing and increasing and increasing….
Also, since the day I saw those two curves for you, they have been asserting themselves, establishing themselves, and the soaring towards the future is magnificent—very strong, very powerful, and at the same time very luminous (“luminous,” it has always been so: luminous, even crystalline on the intellectual level), but now it has great force. A great force.
I felt like drawing the curve, but it should be pretty, well done, and I don’t have the time—but they are there (how can I put it?…) in the invisible. The one that climbs, climbs magnificently, like a jet of light.
Voilà.
(Mother picks up a small object beside her:)
Would you like a little donkey to help you!
A Bengali disciple who is a musician. ↩
***
October 26, 1966
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