The Mother

Agenda

Volume 2

June 27, 1961

Aphorism 62 – I heard a fool discoursing utter folly and wondered what God meant by it; then I considered and saw a distorted mask of truth and wisdom.

Is there really no such thing as utter stupidity or absolute falsehood? Is there always a truth behind?

Practically speaking, there can be no absolute falsehood, since the Divine is behind everything.

It's like asking if certain elements will disappear from the universe. What can it mean, the destruction of a universe? Once we are out of our stupidity, what can we call “destruction”? Only the form is destroyed, the appearance (that, yes – all appearances are destroyed, one after the other). It is also said (it's written everywhere) that the adverse forces will either be converted – that is, become aware of their own divinity and become divine – or be destroyed. But what does “destroyed” mean? Their form? Their form of consciousness can be dissolved, but what about the “something” which brings it – and everything else – into existence? How can that “something” be destroyed? This, mon petit, is difficult to comprehend. The universe is a conscious objectification of That which exists from all eternity. Well, how can the All cease to be? The infinite and eternal All, without limits of any kind – how can anything be thrown out of it? There is nowhere to go! (You can rack your brains over it, you know!) Go where? There is only THAT.

And even when we say “there is only that” we are situating it somewhere – which is perfectly idiotic. It is everywhere – so how can anything be thrown out of it?

Of course, one can conceive of a universe being thrown out of the present manifestation – that, yes; one can conceive of successive universes, with what was in the first universes no longer being in the others – it's even obvious. One can imagine how a whole sum of falsity and untruth (what for us, NOW, is falsity and untruth) may come to no longer belong to the world in its future unfolding; one can comprehend all that. But “destroy”? Where can it go to be destroyed? When we say something is “destroyed,” it's only a form which is destroyed (it may be a form of consciousness, it may not be a material form, but it's always a form). But how can the formless be destroyed?

Therefore, to speak of an absolute falsehood disappearing would simply mean that a whole set of things will live eternally in the past but not belong to the coming manifestations, that's all.

You can't get out of THAT, can you? There you are!

But will these things simply remain in the past?

We are told that when you ascend both beyond Nirvana or Nothingness and beyond Existence (the two SIMULTANEOUS and complementary aspects of the Supreme), there is a state of consciousness where all simultaneously and eternally exists. Thus – although God knows, it may be yet another stupidity – we can conceive of a whole set of things passing into Non-Being, and for our consciousness this would be disappearance or destruction.

Is it possible? I don't know. We would have to ask the Lord! But He generally doesn't answer such questions – He just smiles!

You know, there comes a time when, really, you can no longer say anything; you feel that whatever you say is, if not absolute rubbish, then the next thing to it, and that in practice it's best to keep silent. That's the difficulty. And in some of these aphorisms you get the feeling that he has suddenly captured something beyond – beyond anything which can be thought. So what to do?

(silence)

Naturally, when you come back down here you can – oh, you can say many things!

Jokingly you can say (you can always joke, although I hesitate to do so, because people take my jokes so seriously) but you can very well say, without being totally in error, that you sometimes learn much more listening to a madman or a fool than to a reasonable person. Personally, I'm convinced of it! There is nothing more deadening than reasonable people.

At any rate, this simultaneity of past, present and future can't be a physical simultaneity, can it?

Ah, no! Not here.

I've heard about a curious theory which says one could reincarnate into the past.

Reincarnate into the past?

Yes, reincarnate from now, so to speak, into a past epoch of history.

This, too, is a manner of speaking.

Reincarnate? No. One can relive the past; that, yes – very well, very well.

I have had an oft repeated experience of reliving the past¹ (it's a phenomenon of consciousness, possible because everything is preserved and continues to exist somewhere), with a kind of will – which would be the sign of a power – to change it. I don't know, but at the moment of reliving it, instead of reliving the past just as it had been preserved, a power to make it different was introduced. I am not speaking of the power to change the consequences of the past (that is obvious and functions all the time) – it wasn't that; it was the power to change the circumstances themselves (circumstances not quite material but of the subtle physical, with a predominantly psychological content). And since the will was there, from the standpoint of consciousness it actually happened – that is, instead of circumstances developing in one direction, they developed in another. So it must correspond to something real, otherwise I would not have had the experience. It wasn't a product of the imagination; it wasn't something one thinks of and would “really like to be different” – it wasn't that; it was a phenomenon of consciousness: my consciousness was reliving certain circumstances (which are still quite living and obviously continue to exist within their own domain), but reliving them with the power and the knowledge acquired between that past moment and the present, and with a power to change the past moment. A new power entered the scene and turned the circumstance being relived in a new direction. I have had this experience many times and it has always surprised me – it's not a phenomenon of mental imagination, which is something else entirely.

It opens the door to everything.

But it belongs to the past.

Does the past...? We know it remains present somewhere. Does this fact enable the past to participate in the progressive movement (progressive for us) of universal change within the manifestation? There is no reason why not.

But it remains present through its consequences....

No., no, no! The past IN ITSELF. In itself. Not through its consequences, that's something else – in itself. And within the TERRESTRIAL atmosphere (not on the most material plane, but very near; very, very near).

I have what could be called a tactile sensation that the contents of the subtle atmosphere are increasing. This atmosphere is not part of material space as we conceive of or see it physically, where one thing has to give place to another (Mother changes the position of an eraser on the table) – and even that (laughing) I believe is an illusion! It only SEEMS like that to us! It's not on the wholly material plane, but just behind or within (how to put it?), and its contents are increasing. And as it's happening within inner dimensions, it can augment, so to speak, indefinitely; things become more and more interwoven, if you see what I mean – where there was one phenomenon of consciousness there may now be hundreds, interwoven with each other in the inner dimensions; which means, for example, considering only our tiny planet, that the earth is becoming more and more compact and rich with all that has been since the beginning of its formation – because it's all there, it is all still there.

Actually, as soon as one is not totally, totally tied down by the physical sense organs.... For example, I am more and more frequently experiencing changes in the quality of vision. Quite recently, yesterday or the day before, I was sitting in the bathroom drying my face before going out and I raised my eyes (I was sitting before a mirror, although I don't usually look at myself); I raised my eyes and looked, and I saw many things (Mother laughs, greatly amused).... At that moment, I had an experience which made me say to myself, “Ah! That's why, from the physical, purely material standpoint, my vision seems to be a bit blurred.” Because what I was seeing was MUCH clearer and infinitely more expressive than normal physical sight. And I recalled that it is with these clearer eyes that I see and recognize all my people at balcony darshan. (From the balcony I recognize all my people.) And it's that vision (but with open eyes!) which.... It is of another order.

I am going to study what Sri Aurobindo says when I come to it in The Yoga of Self-Perfection. He says there comes a time when the senses change – it's not that you employ the senses proper to another plane (we have always known we had senses on all the different planes); it's quite different from that: the senses THEMSELVES change. He foretells this change – he says it will occur. And I believe it begins in the way I am experiencing it now.

The CONTENT is different, mon petit. I see... I see, but.... The state of consciousness of the person I'm looking at, for instance, changes his physical appearance – for my PHYSICAL eyes. And this has nothing to do with the banalities of ordinary psychology, where your physiognomy is said to be changed by the feelings you experience. The CONTENT of what I see is different. And then the eyes of the person I am looking at are not the same – it is rather.... I couldn't sketch it, but perhaps if I made a painting it would give some idea (I would need to use a somewhat blurred technique, not too precise). The eyes are not quite the same, and the rest of the face too, even the color and the shape – that's what sometimes makes me hesitate. I see people (I see my people every morning) and I recognize them, and yet they are different, they are not the same every day (some are always, always the same, like a rock, but others are not). And I even... I hesitate sometimes: “Is it really he? But he is very.... It is indeed he, but I don't quite know him.” This generally coincides with changes in the person's consciousness.

In conclusion: we know nothing.

(silence)

it is the undeniable fact of the... (oh, how to put it!) the constant Presence... but “Presence” means nothing... (Mother remains silent for a long time, then gives up trying to explain).

Oh, the more you try to capture it, the more it slips out of your grasp!

*
*   *

(After listening to the conversation of June 24, concerning death:)

You know, we are just on the frontier, on the edge: it's as if there were a semi-transparent curtain – one sees things on the other side, tries to grasp them, but as yet cannot. But there is such a sense of proximity!

Sometimes, all of a sudden, I see myself as a FORMIDABLE concentration of power, pushing, pushing, pushing in an inner concentration to pass through. It happens to me anywhere, any time, at any moment – I see a whole mass of consciousness gathered into a formidable power pushing, pushing, pushing to pass to the other side.

When we have passed to the other side, all will be well.

¹ Not a past in Mother's present existence.

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