June 30, 1962The Mother
Agenda
Volume 3
June 30, 1962
(Mother gives Satprem an old note to keep – unfortunately, he does not recall exactly what it was – one of those little scraps of paper, scattered about almost everywhere, on which Mother would jot down notations of her experiences; or, to be more exact, on which she concretized in material words the Force then manifesting. As a comment on this note, Mother adds.)
I have experienced this hundreds and hundreds of times: one has a deep, true experience, but the mind, even the higher mind, immediately latches onto it (usually it's the higher mind) and very actively makes its OWN thing out of the experience, thus bringing in its own distortion.
It comes merely as an addition, the distortion is not total, there's still something quite true behind it.
All those things are barriers the mind sets against the Truth.... I didn't write that to give you. Sometimes I write things and then keep them for years on end so that.... They are a material
focus for the action. Had I not written it, I would not have been able to work so effectively – these are occult documents.1
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(Regarding the last conversation and Mother's “innumerable vital beings,” who reincarnated this time “in a deluge”:)
As a child, when I was around ten or twelve years old, I had some rather interesting experiences which I didn't understand at all. I had some history books – you know, the textbooks they give you to learn history. Well, I'd read and suddenly the book would seem to become transparent, or the printed words would become transparent, and I'd see other words or even pictures. I hadn't the faintest idea what was
happening to me! And it appeared so natural to me that I thought it was the same for everybody. But my brother and I were great chums (he was only a year and a half older), so I would tell him: “They talk nonsense in history, you know – it is LIKE THIS; it isn't like that: it is LIKE THIS!” And several times the corrections I got on one person or another turned out to be quite exact and detailed. And (I see it now – I understood it later on) they were certainly memories. About some passages I would even say, “How stupid! It was never that; THIS is what was said. It never happened like that; THIS is how it happened.” And the book was simply open before me; I was just reading along like any other child and... suddenly something would occur. It was something in me, of course, but I used to think it was in the book!
I found out many, many things about Joan of Arc – many things. And with stunning precision, which made it extremely interesting. I won't repeat them because I don't remember with exactness, and these things have no value unless they are exact. And then, for the Italian Renaissance: Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa; and for the French Renaissance: François I, Marguerite de Valois,2 and so forth.
Twice I knew that it wasn't just images but something that had happened to ME, but it took another form. Once (when I was older, around twenty) it happened at Versailles. I had been invited to dinner by a cousin who, with no warning, served me dry champagne during dinner – and I drank it unsuspectingly (I who never drank at all, neither wine nor liquor!).... When I had to get up and cross the crowded room, oh, how very difficult it became, so difficult! Then we went to a place near the chateau, with a view of the whole park. And I was staring at the park, when I saw... I saw the park filling up with lights (the electric lights had vanished), with all kinds of lights, torches, lanterns... and then crowds of people walking about... in Louis XIV dress! I was staring at this with my eyes wide open, holding on to the balustrade to keep from falling down (I wasn't too sure of myself!). I was seeing it all, then I saw myself there, engrossed in conversation with some people (I don't remember now, but there were certain “corrections” here too).... I mean I was a certain person (I don't remember who) and there were those two brothers who were sculptors (Mother vainly tries to recollect the names3)... anyhow, all kinds of people were there and I saw myself talking, chatting. And I seem to have been sufficiently in control of myself, because when I related all that I had seen, there were some quite interesting details and corrections. That was one time.
There was another time at Blois. They make Anjou wine at Blois. It was the same story: I never drank anything but water or herb tea, but there was a luncheon and they served us sparkling Anjou wine... it seemed so light! Afterwards (I was with an artist friend, we were all artists) we went to see the museum, and it appears I was sparkling with wit! And I suddenly halted in front of a painting by... now let's see, who was it? Coué?... No, Clouet! Clouet: the princess... one of the princesses.4 And I started making a few remarks out loud (it took me a little while to notice that people were listening). “Look at this!” I was saying. “Just look at this! Look what this fellow has done to me! See what he's done to me – it wasn't at all like that!” It was actually a beautiful painting, but I was quite unhappy about it: “Look what he's done to me! Look – he made this like that, but that's not at all how it was, it was LIKE THIS!” Details.... And then I became aware (I wasn't too conscious physically)... I realized that people were standing around listening, so I got a grip on myself, and left without a word. But I told my friends, “Listen, it was definitely me! It was MY portrait, it was ME!”
Almost all my memories of past lives came like that; the particular being reincarnated in me rises to the surface and begins acting as if it were all on its own! Once in Italy, when I was fifteen, it happened in an extraordinary way. But that time I did some research. I was in Venice with my mother and I researched in museums and archives, and I discovered my name, and the names of the other people involved. I had relived a scene in the Ducal Palace, but relived it in such a... such an absolutely intense way (laughing – a scene where I was being strangled and thrown into a canal!) that my mother had to hurry me out of there as fast as she could! But that experience I wrote down, so the exact memory has been kept (I didn't write down the other experiences, so the details have all faded away, but this one was noted, although I didn't include any names). The next morning I did some research and uncovered the whole story. I told it all to Théon and Madame Théon, and he also had the memory of a past life there, during the same period. And as a matter of fact, I had seen a portrait there that was the spitting image of Théon! The portrait of one of the doges. It was absolutely (it was a Titian)... absolutely Théon! HIS portrait, you know, as if it had just been done.5
All those kinds of things came to me just like that, without my looking for them, wanting them, or understanding them, without doing any sort of discipline, nothing – it was absolutely spontaneous. And they just kept on coming and coming and coming.
From the time I met Théon, it all got clarified: I saw it all clearly, understood and organized it. But a good deal of it happened before – everything I have just told you happened before I met Théon.
“One after the other, these vital beings came,” you say, “and some of them have even been in men....”
One of them was in Murat, on the day of his great victory.6 It was a vital force that took possession of him and remained just for that victory; and it came into me, so I saw it all! I saw its entry into Murat's body and the whole battle scene – I lived through it all. And once the battle was over, it left him. It was very interesting.
I wanted to clarify something.... I don't know if Mona Lisa and Marguerite de Valois were your incarnations, but weren't they contemporaries!?...
Yes, but I told you – four at once!7
Four at once. And, in general, they were the different states of being of the Mother – the four aspects. Generally one aspect in each embodiment (when there were four). Or else this or that aspect might have been less present in one embodiment and more present in another. Sometimes there was a fairly central presence and then at the same time less central, less important emanations. But that has happened several times – several times. On two occasions it was particularly clear. But I have often sensed that there wasn't merely ONE embodiment, that the course of history may have crystallized around this or that person, but there were other embodiments less (how to put it?)... less conspicuous, somewhere else.
They are the different aspects of the Mother.
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(A little later, Mother refers to a passage from the preceding conversation in which she said that her present incarnation on
earth didn't have a merely terrestrial effect but an effect on all the other worlds as well – and particularly on the gods.)
None of those beings, those gods and deities of various pantheons, have the same rapport with the Supreme that man has; for man has a psychic being, in other words, the Supreme's presence within him. These gods are emanations – independent emanations – created for a special purpose and a particular action which they fulfill SPONTANEOUSLY; they do it not with a sense of constant surrender to the Divine but simply because that's what they are, and why they are, and all they know is what they are. They don't have the conscious link with the Supreme that man has – man carries the Supreme within himself.
That makes a considerable difference.
But with this present incarnation of the Mahashakti.... She is the Supreme's first manifestation, creation's first stride, and it was She who first gave form to all those beings. Now, since her incarnation in the physical world, and through the position She has taken here in relation to the Supreme by incarnating in a human body, all the other worlds have been influenced, and influenced in an extremely interesting way.8 I have been in contact with all those gods, all those great beings, and for the most part their attitude has changed. And even with those who didn't want to change, it has nonetheless influenced their way of being.
Human experience, with this direct incarnation of the Supreme,9 is ultimately a UNIQUE experience, which has given a new orientation to universal history. Sri Aurobindo speaks of this – he speaks of the difference between the Vedic era, the Vedic way of relating to the Supreme, and the advent of Vedanta (I think it's Vedanta):
devotion, adoration, bhakti, the God within.10 Well, this aspect of rapport with the Supreme could exist ONLY WITH MAN, because man is a special being in universal History – the divine Presence is in him. And several of those great gods have taken human bodies JUST TO HAVE THAT.11 But not many of them – they were so fully aware of their own perfect independence and their almightiness that they didn't NEED anything (unlike man, you see, struggling to escape his slavery): they were absolutely free.
And that's why.... How many times Durga came! She would always come, and I had my eye on her (!), because in her presence I could clearly sense that there wasn't that rapport with the Supreme (she just didn't need it, she didn't need anything). And it wasn't that something acted on her consciously, deliberately, to obtain that result: it has been a contagion. I remember how she used to come, and my aspiration would be so intense, my inner attitude so concentrated... and one day there was such a sense of power, of immensity, of ineffable bliss in the contact with the Supreme (it was a day when Durga was there), and she seemed to be taken and absorbed in it. And through that bliss she made her surrender.
Most interesting.
Not at all the result of will or anything: she was simply engulfed.
In those movements of consciousness, in this state of consciousness, I am comfortable (Mother heaves a sigh). But it has taken me a lot of discipline to concentrate here [in the body]: there was always something, from my very childhood, that felt hemmed in, squeezed, really... oh! And with a sense of something so powerful that if it ever went into action (gesture of unleashing), it would smash everything.
Now it has been tamed.
So, is that enough for you?
No, no!
(Mother laughs)
1 Somewhat in the manner of Tantric yantrams, but using words charged with force instead of geometric symbols. Mother once told Satprem that from time to time she would “recharge” these little scraps of paper by looking at them or simply keeping them on the table next to her.
2 Of whom Clement Marot said: “Body of a woman, heart of a man, and face of an angel.”
3 Mother later tried to recall the names again, without success: “Those sculptor brothers did a lot of work on the palace at Versailles.... And I am not sure if it wasn't Mme de Montespan. I don't remember any more. This kind of thing should not be talked about vaguely. At the time it was precise, exact: I knew all the names, all the details, all the words – but I never wrote it down and now it's gone. And these things shouldn't be told approximately. I'll do some research on these sculptor brothers. No, just leave it as it is: a few 'vaguenesses' (Mother laughs).”
4 Has Mother confused Clouet with Corneille de Lyon? Because it seems there is no Clouet at Blois, but there is a portrait of Madeleine of Scotland, daughter of François 1, painted by Corneille de Lyon. Unless Mother confused Blois with another town and another chateau?
5 Here we have a choice between several chilling faces. Of the five portraits of doges by Titian, that of the doge Antonio Crimani, painted between 1555 and 1576, is one of the few that have remained in the Palazzo Ducale in Venice. Might this be the one?
6 Is the battle in question here that of Eylau (February 8, 1807) or Friedland (June 14, 1807)?
7 Conversation of June 27.
8 Some days later, Satprem again brought up the above passage, asking whether the Mother hadn't been active on earth since the beginning of time and not merely “with this present incarnation of the Mahashakti.” The reply: “It was always through EMANATIONS, while now it's as Sri Aurobindo writes in Savitri – the Supreme tells Savitri that a day will come when the earth is ready and 'The Mighty Mother shall take birth'.... But Savitri was already on earth – she was an emanation. So they were all emanations? They were all emanations, right from the beginning. So we have to say: 'With the PRESENT incarnation.'”
9 I.e., with the psychic being or soul IN MAN, the direct incarnation of the Supreme in man: “This has come with humankind.”
10 Satprem subsequently asked Mother: You almost seem to be saying that during the Vedic era there was no divine presence in man! No, there wasn't! They discovered it. Humanity has undergone a spiritual evolution. Vedism is in contact with the gods and, THROUGH THE GODS, with the Supreme; but it is not in direct contact with the Supreme – there is no inner, psychic contact. That's what Sri Aurobindo says (I myself know nothing about it!). But with the Vedanta and the devotees of Krishna, it is the god within: they had a direct contact with the god within (as in the Gita).
11 Shortly afterwards, Satprem asked: When a god takes a human body it must be terrible for him. Or does his divinity become quite veiled to him? Yes, quite veiled. They are powerful beings, they give a sense of power, but it is quite veiled. But Krishna had a human body, Shiva had a human body. But supposing one of those gods were to incarnate in the present world... well, it wouldn't be much fun – he would suffocate. Fun?... No, you see, they extend sufficiently beyond the limits of their bodies so as not to be suffocated.