During the present extrovert state when I try to concentrate for a silent receptivity it creates a pain in the forehead and particularly between the eyebrows. Why so?
Resistance in the physical stuff to the activity of the inner will and vision centre.
Doubt and questioning are part of the physical obstruction.
The physical does not get tired of the blankness. It may feel tamasic because of its own tendency to inertia, but it does not usually object to voidness. Of course it may be the vital physical — you have only to reject it as a remnant of the old movements.
I could not understand this — “peace we must have, but not the peace of a devastated nature or a mutilated capacity incapable of unrest because it is incapable of intensity.”
Not tamasic peace which is at rest because it does not aspire after anything, is too tired by suffering and misfortune etc. to care for anything.
After seeing the Mother, my flesh began to feel different kinds of experiences. I do not know how to express them.
Even the teeth, the most inconscient part of the body, have entered into the field of experience!
Yes, these things are felt when the Force is working.
But I wonder why the action of the Mother’s Force is confined so much. All is limited up to the parts of my neck only!
It always begins like that.
You said yesterday: “These things are felt when the Force is working.” Our human mind would like to argue about this point: how is it the Force begins to act on an inconscient substance like teeth before it has acted sufficiently on the conscious parts like the vital and physical?
With many these experiences are the first they get.
The Fire around the body continues. It has enveloped the being like an armour. But what is its effect in the body? — a fiery intensity in the cells and the pores. Can this be true? The mind refuses to believe it.
It can very well be true.
Just at the end of the general Meditation the submind (subconscient or mechanical mind) became very active. I fail to understand the reason of its sudden coming up like that at such a time. Usually after the Meditation most of the being is either taken up into the absolute silence of the Self or the Higher fills it up with its static pure existence. This keeps the submind strongly intoxicated till I fall asleep.
It is probably the physical that could not keep up with the concentration, so started the submind business.
My lower vital seems to have hindered the free opening of the psychic being. That is why I don’t feel any soul-movement like love, bhakti or joy in my heart and inner vital.
I think this is the worst possible phase of the sadhana.
The uprising of the inertia and the persistence of the vital have to be fought out by constant rejection until there is the descent of the Force in such a way as to make one with the peace and silence — these being so strong that nothing will be able to touch or cover the inner being.
The year 1934
There is a doubt in the physical mind whether, when the mental proper and the vital are not totally quieted, the purification of the physical can begin.
Does it imagine that everything is done by sections? All the parts of the being react upon each other. The purification of the physical being is long but the mind and the vital are thoroughly and permanently cleaned.
There is a feeling of the Mother’s Force having entered into my physical nature and now working there. Is it correct?
There is a pressure on the physical nature to admit the Force.
When the tamas and rajas are driven out, one is in a sattwic state. But if the tamas enters again into this state how can an utter quietness be maintained?
You cannot drive out rajas and tamas, you can only convert them and give the predominance to sattwa. Tamas and rajas disappear only when the higher consciousness not only comes down but controls everything down to the cells of the body. They then change into the divine rest and peace and the divine energy or Tapas, — finally sattwa also changes into divine Light. As for remaining quiet when tamas is there, there can also be a tamasic quiet.
During the general morning concentration, my human consciousness went deep into the inner being and began to aspire. There it felt the working of the Mother’s Force which slowly became more and more intense. My body could not bear its pressure for a long time. So I brought my consciousness out for a rest and again took it inward; like this it went on for some time.
When the body cannot bear, one has to go slowly, doing as much as possible without disturbing it.
Almost for the whole day the previous experience of the mind’s liberation went on. During the physical activities it was not felt so vividly and exclusively. What I fail to grasp is, however, this; since it is a (purely) mental liberation, how is it that my flesh too feels some experience?
The flesh has a consciousness as well as the mind — all the consciousness is connected together so if the mind is freed, there is no reason why there should not be an effect on the physical also.
Let me tell you what happened during my noon nap. I was on the lap of the Mother. She had put her transforming palm on my head. With her thumb she was pressing or rather opening the Brahmic centre of my head. I began to feel as if something were received from there. Then all on a sudden there was a shifting of the consciousness into some other world. A supra-physical light was experienced in the cells of the body which was already flooded with light. The physical itself was taken up. Will you please explain this phenomenon?
There is nothing to explain. It was what you describe: At once the raising of the consciousness to a higher plane and the descent of that into the physical.
Today’s special working seems to be on the eyes. Something definitely is going on there. A strong pressure is felt working on them.
That is when the Force is preparing the body.
It would really be interesting to know what is going on in the parts between my head and neck?
It is a preparation of the body for the mental transformation.
My body-consciousness does not resist as before and allows itself to be used by me.
Evidently there has been much progress there.
When the Mother’s Force tackles the physical, cannot the body allow it to work quietly as the mind and vital do?
The law of the physical is inertia, dullness, obstruction to whatever is new or not yet established.
Even when the physical throws up inertia, is it not possible to cast off dullness and sorrow brought in by the inertia and continue maintaining our normal state of happiness?
Yes, but it needs a strong poise and great vigilance. Normally it is only after one has had a taste of dullness and inertia that one recovers.
It is the physical resistance which came up in you (the vital dissatisfaction with the emptiness giving it a chance) and the physical resistance there is an obstinate inertia. Its note is “stay where you are”. Probably you will have to resort to an active aspiration to get rid of the obstructive inertia.
The physical consciousness has a force of inertia which makes it always go on with its old conditions, movements, responses, habits even without sanction or any true utility in them.
It is the tendency of the physical to substitute its own inertia for the emptiness. The true emptiness is the beginning of what I call in the Arya “shama” — the rest, calm, peace of the eternal Self — which has finally to replace tamas, the physical inertia. Tamas is the degradation of shama, as rajas is the degradation of Tapas, the Divine Force. The physical consciousness is always trying to substitute its own inertia for the calm, peace or rest of the true consciousness, just as the vital is always trying to substitute its rajas for the true action of the Force.
At present when the descent of the Mother’s Force is the only movement prominent, why do I feel an increasing weakness in the body?
Probably the material is not yet open enough to receive the Force.
In the evening I felt something descending and reaching down to the chest. Probably it was the Mother’s Force.
Probably. You should establish the Force now in the form of a strong peace.
For the last three Darshans it has been noticed that the physical consciousness rises up and disturbs the free play of my consciousness just during these days.
The obstacles still in the nature very often rise up at these times. That means that they offer themselves to be overcome, — that is how you must take it.
Some say that it is not possible to fix peace in the outer physical till the supramental descent, and that there is only one man in the world who has done it up to now.
Who says that? Peace can be brought down into the physical — to its very cells. It is the active transformation of the physical that cannot be completely done without the supramental descent.
About Savitri | B1C3-11 Towards Unity with God (pp.31-33)