Yesterday afternoon, I had an experience concerning a woman who has been in a coma for sixty-five days (!). After fifty or fifty-five days (the whole family was around her, but her son had gone to work), all of a sudden after fifty-five days, because her son had left, she started calling for him, shouting frantically! (Laughing) I think they all had a scare…. And the usual stupid remarks: “She was unconscious.” I said, “Good God! But why do you say she was unconscious, you know nothing about it!… She can’t express herself, but she isn’t unconscious.” She is entirely conscious, only the means of expression are damaged, she can no longer use them. And I made a long speech on the subject, but there was no one to record it and I can never say the same thing twice. It came clearly (Sri Aurobindo was there), and with the absolutely clear picture of what death is…. Now I can’t repeat it.
In reality, to put it practically (but it’s not any longer the thing), what people call “death” is when the instrument of expression—the instrument of connection with the milieu, and of expression—has deteriorated to the point where it can no longer be used, and so there comes a moment when the consciousness … abandons it. Probably for all sorts of reasons (there must be different reasons in each case), but the consciousness abandons it because it can no longer be used.
But yesterday it came well; now it’s nothing. It was lived. Lived, and so clear, so concrete, so obvious, it was, “But men know nothing, nothing, nothing at all!…” Only now it sounds like a platitude.
(silence)
The vision was so clear (not vision: lived, the experience), it was so clear that it contained in itself the purpose of the creation. You could see the work of the consciousness to permeate the inconscient and make it progressively more capable of manifesting the consciousness (gesture like a flower rising out of the earth), with increasing complications, but the complications are the result of the inability of the inconscient—of inconscient matter—which adds one device to another in the hope of reconstructing the supreme Possibility. Then, through all those complications, and as the substance becomes increasingly permeated with consciousness, the need for “devices” will diminish, and we will be able to return to the higher Simplicity.
But all that was lived, seen—seen, and so clear!
(silence)
And in each “life,” as men call it—that is to say, the utilisation of a portion of matter organized in what we call a body—how that utilisation aims at the greatest possibility of manifestation (reception and manifestation) of the consciousness.
Naturally, this can be done because even in the inconscient, at its very bottom, there is consciousness; but that’s philosophy. Yesterday, it was the perfectly concrete and material experience of it all.
And individualization is part of the process, it’s a necessity of the process, because it permits a more minute and direct action.
And when Matter will be supple enough to be transformed under the action of the consciousness—a CONSTANT transformation—then this need to abandon there something that has become useless, or is in impossible conditions, will no longer exist. That is how it may happen, at least for the requirements of the transformation, to have at will a continuity, of existence for a form which was transitional.
But yesterday, the impression was that it [death] is now only an old habit, no longer a necessity. It’s only because … First of all, because the body is still unconscious enough to (how should I put it?), not to “desire,” because that’s not the word, but to feel the need of total rest, that is, inertia. When that is abolished, there is no disorganization that cannot be mended, or in any case (the field of accidents hasn’t been studied, but in the normal course of things), no wear and tear, no deterioration, no disharmony that cannot be mended by the action of the consciousness.
It’s only this residue (a considerable one), this residue of inconscient that asks for rest (gesture of dissolution). What it calls rest is the state of inertia, that is to say, the refusal to manifest the consciousness. It’s only that.
There is also that FORMIDABLE collective suggestion … weighing down. That suggestion of ageing … ageing, wearing out and death (“death,” anyway what they call death, which isn’t dying—what does “dying” mean? Annulment does not exist, nothing is annulled), but anyway, giving up the form because the form refuses to be transformed (that’s nearly what it is) and isn’t receptive, it accepts a progressive deterioration because of the formidable weight of the collective suggestion—the habit of millennia: “It’s always been like that, that’s that.” The great argument. Which isn’t true, besides.
But there is such idiocy in this body. For instance, there is at each moment (each second or minute), at each moment there is the choice between the continuation of the old habit or progress towards consciousness. It’s constantly like that. And through … (what can I call it?) sloppiness (what is it? … It’s not bad will because it’s idiotic; it’s more idiotic than bad will), there is a spontaneous tendency to choose deterioration rather than the effort of progress, and it’s only when there is something like a slightly awakened consciousness that says, “You silly fool! You’ve gone through many more difficulties than the little difficulty of making an effort of progress,” then that has some weight—not always.
There is a sort of passive knowledge (not that the body doesn’t know how it is, it knows how it is—it’s sloppiness), but when it knows and makes the effort, it is always, every time, expressed as lights, yes, like vibratory waves, and those of progress are the ones which have all the colours, that stippling of all the colours: a light made of a stippling of all the colours. Those are the lights that choose the immediate little effort to reject the sloppiness…. But they are not important events: it’s something going on each minute, for everything, all the time, all the time, all the time—for everything.
It must be a phase. I don’t know how long that phase will last, but it must be a phase because it’s obviously a transitional state. And then, when there is that inner aspiration, oh!… I have seen the cells, I’ve seen them saying like this, “Oh, will there be a possibility to be You effortlessly?” Then there comes such a marvellous Response! For a few seconds it’s … (blissful gesture), then the old routine starts up again.
But the great difficulty is mental observation: the observing mind (not a personal mind: an observing Mind), and that makes things much more difficult. If one can keep the mind busy, it’s easier. Because the mind is something extremely hard, dry, positive, phew! and logical, reasonable—it’s dreadful. Dreadful. And yet, to put things at their best, the general waves are full (especially now, in our time) full of doubt—such a foul and obstinate doubt! They treat all this as fantastic imagination.
You are led to tell the mind, “I’d rather be mistaken this way than be mistaken in your way.”
(silence)
Then, in the psychological makeup, there are all those old things that come from human atavism: you must be reasonable, prudent, perspicacious … you must take precautions, be provident, oh!… The whole fabric of ordinary human equilibrium. It’s so sordid. And it’s like that, the whole mentalization of the cells is like that, full of that, and not only in your own way of being, according to your own experience, but in the way of being of your parents, grandparents, the people around, and … oh!
***
October 19, 1967
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