Here is what I wrote for the opening of the sports season:
“… I must tell you once more that for us spiritual life does not mean contempt for Matter but its divinization. We do not want to reject the body but to transform it. For this, physical education is one of the means most directly effective …”
***
Last time, there was something I didn’t have the time to tell you; now, regrettably, it’s only a memory—not quite, not just a memory, something remains. The effect remains. But while it was there …
Sri Aurobindo said, but he said it as the expression of a knowledge that had always been expressed at the summit of the scale of consciousness, as one more rung beyond the state in which one knows (one knows it, lives it), that the essential Oneness, that everything is “That,” is the expression or manifestation or objectification or … of “That.” Naturally, according to the times and epochs and milieus, it has been said in different words, but it seems to be the supreme experience. And the conclusion, when you go outside of time and space, is that all is from all eternity.
Sri Aurobindo regarded this (we talked about it), he regarded it as the realization (not just the knowledge: the realization) which gives supreme Peace and puts an end to all the whys and hows and all the wills to rectify things. All that, that whole drama of life, disappears when you realize that.
I have had this experience. I’ve had it in an almost constant way. And in the most conscious part of the being (that which is one with the heights), the expression of this experience, let’s say, “All is from all eternity” or “All is the expression of the supreme Vision” (I am not using the word “will,” I’ll say why in a moment), there was the sense of a limitation. I don’t know how to express it, but that’s how it was (it goes without saying that all words are approximations). Always, each time the experience was there, it was there with the sense that… to put it crudely I might express it with the phrase, “That’s not it!”
So the other day (the day before I saw you), it came at the time of my experiences, that is, very early morning (the time of my lived experiences), and it was like that, with that same sense of inadequacy. Then I entered a certain state in which “that” remained quite luminous and clear, but at the same time—at the same time, simultaneously—there came the perception … (how can I put it?) of the original Vibration, as it were, in all the splendour of its all-powerful Light, and the two things—that and That—were simultaneously translated on the level of expression, without opposition, both together like this (Mother clasps her two hands, interlacing her fingers), tightly joined, in an identical Light: every instant—every instant—it’s like a pulsation of that Force (it is: creative Force-Light-Power, contained in the global Vibration of Love); with every pulsation, a complete re-creation.1
When the two things are like this (same gesture) and you live in that Consciousness, then there is a sense of absolute Freedom: that nothing is impossible.
It lasted for a few minutes perhaps, complete; then it began to be objectified, but at first it simply was… that IS, that IS. Afterwards it began being objectified, that is to say, to be a witness of That at the same time as one is that—a slight descent. But at that moment, while it was there, it was THAT.
It was omnipotence.
Absolute omnipotence.
Then, at the same time, at the same moment, there came the experience (not an objectified one), the experience that the Will is on a much lower level than “That,” or rather, much more external. Because the Will sees and does—sees AND does—whereas there, it’s not seeing AND executing AND doing, or seeing AND being: it’s simultaneous. It’s something above vision—above vision and above will—something … (silence) something that IS. And at that moment, simultaneously, that is to say, without any possible space (space or time, of course, it’s quite outside that, because it’s not a vision that sees itself seeing, it’s not a perception that’s conscious of its perception, not a consciousness conscious of its consciousness), it IS, like that (one could say), such as it will be projected in space and time.
So when we say, “To want what God wants” or “To unite with the divine Will,” it’s our way of looking (gesture from the bottom upwards, or from below to above). And it’s quite approximate. But there … And the marvellous thing is that it’s not what we in our infirmity may conceive of as a simplification, it’s really … the Whole: the manifested, the non-manifested, the yet-to-be-manifested, everything, but everything—the Whole. At that second, when you are there, it’s omnipotence. Omnipotence, absolute freedom, the unforeseeable, and the existent whole. And that …
Naturally, words are idiotic.
When I came back from That (it lasted long enough for me to have the full experience of it—full, total), there were many things I then understood. One, for instance, which I had noticed with Sri Aurobindo for all the small details of life, well all things as they are on earth—mere nothings; when I went to him with an inner vision and said to him, “This is how I see that” (I would say it to him with words or not), it would AUTOMATICALLY become true, it would become real: things that were neither in my hands nor in his nor … And it wasn’t that we would take a decision: it was automatic. I noticed this several times and found it wonderful…. It so happens that in a few psychological cases, that is, when it has to do with individual consciousness, since quite recently (it hasn’t been like that very long), when someone is sincere (one must be sincere) and expresses an aspiration, for instance, a hope, or a vision of how he or she should be, I have seen this same phenomenon occur: it automatically becomes true.
It’s not very frequent yet, but it has happened. And now I understand how it happens.
The day we are able to keep that state I was in the other day, wherein the will is already a secondary movement, then it will be like that: it’s omnipotence. Because those two ideas2 that appear most contradictory are only as if two ways of looking at… the same thing.
Naturally, when you try to bring that back into the consciousness that expresses itself, it becomes very difficult, but when you live it, while you live it, it’s different.
Now the experience has become a memory, but a memory that remains quite living and whose effect in the cells (Mother touches the skin of her hands) is making itself felt constantly. It is expressed here as a sense of a Freedom of choice. And a choice all-powerful in its execution. The impression that … with life’s every pulsation, the universe chooses … what it is.
(silence)
It was followed by another peculiar experience…. Some people in Bombay have taken it into their heads to prepare a big event for 1968, when I turn ninety (supposedly ninety!). So they have prepared brochures which they are going to distribute to lots of people and so on—I am quite indifferent to it, but they sent it to me for my approval. I stuck it in a corner and didn’t bother about it. They returned to the charge, went and saw Nolini, said they were in a hurry because it’s a big work and they needed to have it right away, so I shouldn’t keep them waiting. So Nolini started reading out the brochure. And as he was reading … (they included all that Sri Aurobindo said on the “universal Mother,” the Mother’s “Aspects” and all that, the whole old story—generally it leaves me quite indifferent), but while he was reading, when he gave all the quotations and sentences, there was a kind of sensation (I don’t know how to explain it), a sensation of imposed limitation, with a malaise, and something that wanted to break those limits. I didn’t say anything. I said, “I don’t want to concern myself with this, do what you like, it’s no business of mine.” And he answered along those lines, politely. But I found it very interesting, because that sense of malaise, of constriction—limitation, constriction—was very, very strong. So I said, “What’s going on? What is it, why do I feel this way? What is it?…” As I said, usually I let myself float in an indifference, like that—not “indifference,” but… (vast gesture). Instead of that, it was as if someone wanted to shut me in something. Then I looked, and the memory of the experience [of the pulsations] came back, and I understood. It’s interesting.
All this is felt in the body; all the experiences are in the body, in this—which, besides … I sometimes look (laughing), I look to see (I look from above), to see if there’s still a form! (Mother laughs) … It’s peculiar. And why does it remain like this? … Oh, I have stopped asking this question too. It’s like that … it’s like that as the effect of a supreme Grace, because if it were otherwise … it would be intolerable—intolerable for everybody.
Just the state of consciousness when I act spontaneously (the “I” is a habit of speech, it’s to avoid having to make sentences), when I act spontaneously, without objectifying myself, it is generally fairly unbearable: the reactions in others are tiresome. I always have to [contain myself] … It does happen, but generally I am obliged to be careful, especially when I have to speak.
And there is a very amusing observation; it’s exactly what Sri Aurobindo writes in Savitri: “The wise men talk and sleep …” God grows up while the wise men talk and sleep.3 And that’s how it is: wholly unconscious of what goes on. I don’t say it (I am saying it to you), but they are wholly unconscious. I constantly feel I am using a candle snuffer! so as not to be … really unbearable.
When this luminous Power comes, it’s so compact—so compact that it gives the impression of being much heavier than Matter. It’s veiled, veiled, veiled, otherwise … unbearable.
(silence)
When Nolini read me sentences from that brochure, at first when I felt that malaise, I wondered … Because, as I have said several times, for the transformation to take place freely in this body, those very Entities and Powers and Beings were all keeping at a distance, they were no longer manifesting so as not to cause any mixture and so this (body) could be transformed. At first I thought, “That’s what it is: I have lost (the body, I mean), has lost the habit of manifesting that (the gods, the aspects of the Mother), and so, when it comes into contact with that, there is a malaise.” I thought it was that. And for a day (a whole day), it came back again and again, like a problem to be resolved. Then, suddenly, looking at it attentively, I saw it was the very opposite! I saw it was the sense of a constriction, of a limitation. Instead of it being an unbearable weight (those gods or aspects of the Mother), it was something preventing the free manifestation!… It seems so limited—all those Entities, all those Powers, all those qualities, all those differences, all those attributes, all… oh! (Mother makes a cramped gesture)
There, that’s what I wanted to tell you today.
(silence)
Experiences sometimes come and then go away. Often in the past, experiences would come, show themselves, then go away. But this, it isn’t like that: it has remained HERE, but… this (the body) isn’t yet entirely ready for That to be able to be here all the time. But it’s here, the contact hasn’t been abolished. Only, it’s not the Manifestation.
This (the body) still has too many limitations, a lot of limitations.
This is the "vertical time." ↩
The experience in which all is from all eternity, and the experience of the supreme Vibration, re-creating the universe every instant. ↩
A few shall see what none yet understands; God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep; For man shall not know the coming till its hour And belief shall be not till the work is done.
I.IV.55 ↩
***
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