The work in the body is going on at a quickened pace, but it’s not easy… But very precise, very accurate. I told you that I spent a whole night with Sri Aurobindo, and he explained to me all that’s going on for the body, in detail….
It’s difficult.
The state one used to find natural now so much feels like a state of perfect imbecility, so… and everything one used to lean on now feels like nothing at all. So it’s… difficult.
Things… it’s so interesting! We always think that certain things are dangerous (certain illnesses, for example, or certain disorders) and others are insignificant, and then it’s shown in an absolutely irrefutable manner that it doesn’t at all depend on this, that… all absolutely depends (to put it intelligibly) on what has been decided, on what the Supreme Lord has decided. With the slightest thing, an absolutely insignificant trouble. He can stop the body’s functioning, while something regarded as incurably serious passes off without importance. And it’s demonstrated in practice.
There are troublesome moments. Because mental convictions, mental constructions help the body a lot, and now it no longer has any, so it no longer has that facility. For instance, when you have a mental faith—what’s called faith—it helps you a lot, because it remains without budging through all difficulties… but that’s not there anymore! It’s only the Consciousness, but then the Consciousness… (smiling) the Consciousness makes no fuss. The Consciousness doesn’t talk nonsense, it doesn’t tell you stories at the desired moment in order to help you—it’s like this, as it is (gesture like an immutable presence), in its absolute simplicity and sincerity. So you see very well, you know very well, but…
The body sees very well, it also sees that its sensations are evidently… almost made up, which means that they don’t really correspond to the truth—but… (laughing) that doesn’t help it much!… At times it really feels ill at ease.
It has become so conscious of its own imbecility that… the first effect was to say, “It’s hopeless; it has to dissolve for something else to take the place.” And then there’s always that Smile looking on here, making no fuss…. So… so it tries to be still.
You see, it has gone beyond the stage of imbecility where you say, “Why are these things like this?”—It sees clearly, sees very well why they are like this. But things are so vast, so general that… It’s difficult for the body consciousness to remain in that state of universality all the time.
(silence)
To make a sentence (because all this looks like sentences), it’s knowing that one lives in a falsehood, knowing what that falsehood is, knowing, in flashes, what the Truth is, and yet being unable to … adjust the two. And seeing why. Because there’s a whole path to travel so this falsehood can abdicate before the Truth, can be transformed into Truth, and in a TRUE way—not arbitrarily but truly. So that requires all kinds of experiences, adjustments, and for us here, it means time, it needs time. It can’t be done instantly. And when the body sees, when it becomes conscious of its imbecility, it would like, it aspires for that to disappear instantly, so things grate.
Ah, it’s not easy.
(long silence)
The body isn’t told anything positively—clearly, I mean precisely—neither that the transformation is possible nor that it’s impossible. So it’s like that, it sees what a tremendous work this is, what difference there is between what it is and what it ought to be, and at the same time, without knowing whether it will be capable of doing the work or not. What’s expected of it? It is told what’s expected of it from one minute to the next; that it’s told very clearly, so it does it, and so at times it can let itself go (Mother stretches her arms in the Great Rhythm), and then things are fine, but… But there is life and all the necessities of life, and each thing is a problem.
(silence)
In its state of ignorance (a general ignorance), when the body wants to persist, it… (what shall I say?) PASSIVELY accepts to persist as it is; but in its present state, it CANNOT accept to remain as it is, it has too much prescience of what must be, so there’s a sort of need to remain—a need to remain but without remaining, you understand? Things become… in a constant and almost total transformation.
(long silence)
Oh, last night, I think, or the night before (I forget which), I gave you a demonstration of the condition you are in. Now I don’t remember a single word.
A pity!
It’s a pity. Oh, and it was so clear, I told you, “But see…” It was so precise, seen in this new Consciousness. I told you, “So there…” But it was good. I told you, “See, you have no reason to be worried, things are fine!” (Sujata laughs) That I remember. And I explained to you why you aren’t conscious when you’re awake.
It’s a curious thing. When I am in that state, I am not asleep yet I am not awake; it’s neither one nor the other. It’s a sort of new state I have; whether I am in my bed or sitting in my armchair makes no difference. It’s a certain state I go into, in which I know things in such a clear way, and then (as I did with you) I explain them. Then when I go out of that state, pfft! finished…. It’s curious. Nights are very short—very short—yet when I go to bed, its hardly nine, I think, and I get up at 4:30, which is a long time. Yet it’s very short. You understand, I don’t sleep the way people do (but not at all), and I am not awake. It’s something else. And then, things are evident, very easy to understand, I can explain them (as I explain them to you), and it’s a perfectly natural phenomenon—there was no surprise at meeting you (it wasn’t “meeting,” you were there), and I told you things. And then, pfft! finished. Suddenly I’ll cough or have a pain here, there, and then… you fall back into this ordinary imbecility.
Sometimes it’s like that when I am simply sitting there, in my armchair.
But then, the funny thing is that I hear very clearly, see very clearly, but it’s evidently not with these senses because, for instance, right now I don’t hear well and don’t see clearly. But at such times… And I remember that I do things; for example, when I am with Sri Aurobindo at night, it’s with that consciousness; now, materially, my body is stooped—at night it was perfectly normal! Yet I don’t sleep! What is it? I don’t know. There’s something there…. Is it possible?
And I don’t go out of my body…. Or is this body replaced by another?—I don’t know.
And everything is different.
***
February 25, 1970
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