“Sweet Mother, in the Bulletin you said, ‘Psychic memories … are unforgettable moments of life when the consciousness is intense, luminous, strong, active, powerful, and sometimes also turning points in your life which gave it a new orientation. But never will you be able to describe the dress you wore or the gentleman with whom you spoke or the neighbours or the kind of field you were in.’ (Questions and Answers of May 6, 1953) And regarding the memory of small details, you said, ‘It’s perfectly silly.’
“But then how is it that one fairly often reads in newspapers the story of little children who remember their past life? …”
That’s not a psychic memory. They always confuse things so dreadfully!
It’s not psychic, it’s when the vital, through some special circumstance, goes from one body to another, then it still remembers. That’s generally when it comes back in the same family, or in neighbours.
Is that all he writes?
“… How is it that newspapers tell fairly enough the story of little children who remember their past life, and that details were confirmed? Since the study of such occurrences is what leads parapsychologists to note the existence of reincarnation, they are therefore not on a wholly wrong track, are they? And how can one give another kind of scientific proof of reincarnation?”
How arrogant the mind is! Instead of simply saying, “There is something here that I don’t understand” and asking for an explanation, oh, instantly it rears its head.
What’s the name of this young ninny? … I’ll send him this (Mother writes):
“The memories you are referring to, those mentioned in the newspapers, are the memories of the vital being, when exceptionally it has come out of a body in order to enter another. That happens, though not frequently. The memories I am referring to are those of the psychic being, and one is conscious of them only when one is in conscious relationship with one’s psychic being. There is no contradiction between the two things.”
***
Then it is question of the darshan of November 24:
I have new photos taken on darshan day. Photos which were taken with a telephoto lens, would you like to see them? (Mother goes to get the photos)
S. has a new telescopic camera, and instead of taking a photo of the whole view at the balcony, she took only my face. Two of them I find very good…. They’re not enlarged, they’re just as they were taken (Mother shows Satprem the photos).
I don’t know, but at each darshan I feel as if I am a different person, and when I see myself like this, objectively, indeed I see a different person every time. Sometimes an old Chinese! Other times a sort of transposition of Sri Aurobindo, a veiled Sri Aurobindo; and then sometimes, a person I am very familiar with, but not the present one: a person I was just ONCE. That has happened several times.
But here too, I get an impression of someone … It’s very different from you as you are usually.
Isn’t it!
And I feel it’s something I know.
Yes, exactly. My impression is just the same. I look at this and say, “I know this person very well”—but it has nothing to do with this body.
But it’s something I know!
It’s very, very familiar, but it’s not this (Mother points to her body); it’s not here, yet it’s very familiar.
It reminds me of a painter, I don’t know why.
One doesn’t quite know whether it’s a woman or a man, one isn’t sure.
I wondered if it wasn’t a being living in another world than the physical world of the earth? Because it’s … I know this, but not with the intimacy of the body’s sensation. It’s clearly someone I know very well and have seen often.
I get an impression of someone I have seen before.
Oh, yes. But I don’t know if you saw it in this world.
I have a painting or a painter in mind, I don’t know why.
Which of the two is more familiar to you?
This one, No. 14.
Yes, that’s right. And are you sure it’s a woman?
I’m not sure, either.
No.
But I don’t know why, I get the idea of a painter or a painting.
A painter? … Leonardo da Vinci? (Laughing) But he had a beard!
(To Sujata:) Do you know this person?
It’s not the same Mother!
Yes (Mother takes one photo, then the other): this and this are two different persons.
But strangely, I know this very well, especially this part (Mother points to the part of the photo between the eyebrows and the lips), and something, a certain way of looking.
It may be a painting, perhaps you’re right. But which one, I don’t see.
Someone very familiar to me, but … If I were told it’s a historical personality, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Especially this one (No. 14).
Strange. And it’s becoming more and more like that. As the body catches hold of the inner rhythm, it keeps increasing.
It’s probably not physical.
(Sujata:) Somewhat Chinese!
What is it? One day we’ll know….
It’s quite familiar.
Yes. But my impression is like this: someone I knew very intimately, with whom I perhaps lived—but not “me,” you understand. That is, it’s the body that says, “It’s not me.” Inwardly, it’s quite different: there is no me-and-you, none of that exists; but the body still has it and says, “It’s not me, it’s someone I know very, very well, but it’s not me.”
Why does it come like that at the balcony?
It may be two things. It may be that the original consciousness split into two in a past existence (it has happened several times) and manifested in two different bodies at the same time; and so naturally, there was an intimacy and probably a familiarity in life—it may be something physical. But it may also be someone who exists permanently, a permanent form somewhere, with whom we are in constant contact in that world (the overmental or supramental world, or elsewhere), and the feeling “Oh, I know this” springs from within. It may be either of those two things—I don’t know which as yet.
(After a silence) It’s more an expression, a type of vibration, an atmosphere more than exact features. So it might rather be this: someone who exists permanently somewhere with whom we are in contact.
That would explain the sensation that we don’t know whether it’s a man or a woman: it must be from a sexless world, a world where there is neither man nor woman.
(silence)
The body itself has more than an impression, it’s … a sort of knowledge—more than a knowledge, it’s, well, a fact: there are lots and lots of beings, forces, personalities that manifest through it, at times even several at once. That’s a very common experience. For instance, the experience that Sri Aurobindo is here, and that he speaks and sees, with his own way of seeing (piercing and ironic gesture) and his way of expressing himself—that happens very often. Often too, it’s Durga, or Mahakali, or … very often. Often, what manifests is a being from very high up, very permanent—very permanent—and then there comes into the being a sort of absoluteness. At times, it’s beings from a nearby plane trying to make themselves felt, to express themselves, but that’s under control.
The body is used to it, you understand.
But the strange thing was that this time, on the 24th, when I went to the balcony, it was someone … (and that happens to me now and then, more and more frequently) someone looking on from a sort of plane of eternity, with, mingled in it, a great benevolence (something like benevolence, I don’t know how to express it), but with an absolute calm, almost indifference, and the two are together looking on like that (Mother draws waves far away below), as though it were seen from far away, far above, far … (how should I put it?) seen from such an eternal vision. That was what my body felt when I went out for the balcony. So the body said, “But I have to aspire, there must be an aspiration for the Force to descend on all these people!” And “That” was like that (sovereign gesture above), oh, so benevolent, but with a sort of indifference—the indifference of eternity, I don’t know how to explain it. And the body feels it all as something making use of it.
That’s why I find these photos interesting, it’s to objectify the state.
We’ll know.
***
November 25, 1967
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