A few days ago (two or three), Pavitra got a letter from France, from someone who wrote (Mother laughs) that according to a few French people who had visited the Ashram, morals have become quite “lax” at the Ashram and everything is in a pitiful state…. So then, this person sends his “wishes” for “the Ashram’s morals to be raised again….”
Pavitra asked me, “Should we reply?” At the time I said (laughing), “Don’t bother replying, there’s nothing to say” But once he had left, it came (gesture from above), not exactly as an answer to that person, but an answer to a rather common state of mind. It came in French first, in three parts: one sentence, then a whole group of experiences; a second sentence with a whole other group; and a third sentence. The connection hasn’t been written down.
(Mother holds out a note to Satprem)
“Never judge on appearances, still less on gossip….
There. Then there was a whole group… I don’t know how to put it; it’s not sentences, but a sort of knowledge that, naturally, your judgments are more or less consciously based on the morality in which you were brought up and the morality of the country you live in. So I wrote:
“The morality of one country is immorality in another…
That’s a fact.
And here’s the end:
“The service of the Divine exacts a sincerity in the surrender unknown to all moralities.”
That’s true, no morality, no religion has that! No one has ever dared to say that to people.
I hadn’t noticed it, it’s this occasion that made me notice it.
You mean that this surrender also entails abandoning all principles of morality.
Yes, of course. But especially this, that morality has never said, “Don’t see things in relation to yourself.” It has said, “You mustn’t be selfish, you must be good…” and all that, but never has it criticized this sense of a self existing separately from others, nowhere, while the true attitude demands it.
All that came very clearly—it comes as kinds of “tableaux,” I don’t know how to explain… and so clear! And it kept coming again and again; I tried to drive it away, but it came back again, until I wrote it down. Once I had written it down, it left me in peace.
These moralists imagine they’re “above,” above the fallen condition of “Others,” while they’re in the same sludge as everyone else!
(Mother laughs) Naturally! Oh, moralists think they’re very superior people.
But if you scratch a little, it’s not pretty.
Yes, it’s exactly the same thing.
***
Soon afterwards
The work is going fast….
For me, things are going fast and going strong, and I would have to note them down constantly… There are difficult moments.
There’re too many, too many things, they can’t be said.
(Mother seems to speak from far away)
There is clearly a work of change of consciousness (Mother touches her body), and it’s going very, very fast, so I don’t remember the transitions, the passages….
It’s the sense of the body’s ego that has gone away, with a very strange result…. While the experience is there, I might just manage to describe it, but… First the sense of limit, that is, of the body existing as a separate thing, has disappeared; for instance, the sensation that “you” knock against “something else” (I don’t know how to explain) has completely gone. And it leaves…
I have no memory at all; I can’t keep a memory of something and relate it: I can relate it only at the time of the experience. But it’s almost visual, I don’t know how to explain (Mother looks at her hands), it’s not limited and… impossible, I can’t express it.
There is something existing in a constant, permanent way; it’s a sort of STATE of consciousness related to the material world…. In the ordinary state, a sensation comes from a precise place in the body, it’s noted, recorded somewhere in the brain—now it’s no longer like that at all. The sensations… but they’re not exactly sensations: it’s a certain type of VIBRATION, and it comes from EVERYWHERE, like that (gesture all around); also like this (gesture from the body), but like that, like that… (gesture from every side), everywhere like that. So then, the consciousness… I’ve tried to see where the consciousness is, and it’s somewhere above; it’s everywhere, diffused absolutely everywhere, but there’s still a center of consciousness somewhere above (gesture above the head), as though it were more compact there; otherwise it’s everywhere, diffused everywhere, but it’s slightly more compact here (same gesture above the head), compact and stable, like that (Mother closes her two fists in an unshakable gesture), and that’s what conveys orders to the body (but all those words are idiotic; when I utter them they disgust me). You understand, that’s where the relationship with the Supreme Consciousness is established permanently and constantly—I say “Supreme Consciousness,” I’ve adopted these words so as not to make sentences all the time; I might say “the Divine,” but the Divine is so totally present everywhere that… It’s not the same thing (gesture above); I can’t call it “Will” because it has none of the characteristics of human will: it’s not a will “exerting itself on” something, that’s not it, it’s… IN ITSELF; it’s between vision, decision, will, power, all of it together. I don’t know. And much more than that. But that’s where the center is as far as the body and all that’s immediately around it is concerned. And that is… Strange, it’s extraordinarily imperative and all-powerful, and at the same time it’s the Peace (“peace” is a poor little word worth nothing much), it’s perfect Peace and Immobility (“immobility” is idiotic—but how are we to speak?!). And that is there constantly (gesture above Mother).
That’s what is taking the place of the conscious will as regards moving the body, for its internal functioning and for its action. And when the moment comes (it takes place gradually, but there’s a “moment”) for the old functioning—the ordinary functioning—to be eliminated or to disappear and be replaced by That (gesture above), the result is… (wobbly gesture), I don’t know if it’s long or brief, but there’s just a difficult transition. So then the body is caught between… (here or there, on one spot or another, for one thing or another) between the old habit and the new functioning. There’s just a transition of anguish. In most of its parts, the body is conscious of the stupidity of that anguish, but… the function or the part or… is seized with panic. Then it takes a material stillness for order to be restored.
That’s a wholly inadequate and stupid description, but I don’t know what to do! There are no words. It’s an approximation.
And all that takes place within a permanent Consciousness (Mother makes a round gesture), solid, you know, extraordinarily stable! It’s everywhere like that.
With a bombardment of intruding thoughts or sensations from others, like a ceaseless little bombardment which is beginning to be clearly perceived as coming from outside. But there’s a constant, constant need of purification.
There is something entirely different from what it was only three months ago, entirely different…. For the moment it’s still hard to express.
And the two things: the true Perception, and a sort of diminished, slowed down memory of the old way; and in that old way there are… all kinds of undesirable but general, universal things, which are hard to change for that reason, because the sort of “formation” now in the making is foreign, so to speak, to the world.
You understand, through people and things I am always in contact with the same Presence, but if for any reason the way of being of people and things imposes itself [on Mother], the body feels odd, the effect is odd.1
I am still right in the middle of a transitional state.
Can you hear me?
Yes, yes!
Right in the middle of a transitional state.
(silence)
(Mother looks at the clock) I think there are some impossible hours!
That’s it, I am literally overburdened with work and people. And no Command or Insistence to free myself from it. There’s a sort of laissez-faire on the part of this eternal and smiling Peace (immense, rhythmical gesture), very smiling—eternal and smiling, like that…. And a sort of constant demonstration to the body that it’s not what tires it, it’s not the work, not people, not things, it’s not that at all that tires it: it’s its own transitional state and its own imperfection—that’s it, nothing else. So there.
In this Consciousness, there is something smiling in such peace!… It’s absolutely wonderful, it’s… Unless one has felt it, one can’t understand what it is. It’s something wonderful. And naturally that’s what is trying to… what is working—working to take control of all these cells.
There’s still a lot to be done.
It’s odd… (Mother laughs).
This undated handwritten note of Mother, found later, puts the problem in clear terms: "When, through those around me, the outer world tries to impose its will on the rhythm of inner life, the result is a disequilibrium which the body does not always have the time to overcome." ↩
***
February 22, 1969
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