The Mother

Agenda

Volume 3

December 22, 1962

New Year's Day and Christmas. Where there used to be ten letters a day, now there are twenty-five. Nolini comes and he just won't leave.... I am late again.¹

Did you bring your book?

It's not so great.

That doesn't matter.

Is it the end of the chapter?

Oh, no, just another part.

What is it on? The transformation? You've finished the “transformation” – no? The transformation isn't finished!

(Satprem reads a passage from his manuscript dealing with the Ashram's “bright period” in 1926, when Mother had made an overmental creation and the gods were beginning to manifest.)

In the end, Sri Aurobindo told me it was an overmental creation, not the Truth. These were his very words: “Yes, it's an overmental creation, but that's not the truth we're seeking; it's not the truth, the highest truth,” he said.

I made no reply, not a word: in half an hour I had undone everything – I undid it all, really everything, cut the connection between the gods and the people here, demolished absolutely everything. Because you see, I knew it was so attractive for people (they were constantly seeing the most astonishing things) that the obvious temptation was to hang on to it and say, “We'll improve on it” – which was impossible. So I sat down quietly for half an hour, and I undid it all.

We had to start over again with something else.

But I said nothing, I told no one about it except Sri Aurobindo. At the time I let no one know, because they would have been completely discouraged.

*
*   *

A little later:

I have enough work for ten people....

If I spent the whole night writing, as Sri Aurobindo used to do, I might be able to keep up to date. But I have no intention of doing that, because my nights are very interesting!

I have had... some rather strange things have been happening. I don't know whether you understand the difference between the memory of an inner experience (from the subtle physical, the subconscient, all the inner regions) and the memory of a physical fact. There is a very great difference in quality, the same difference that exists between inner vision and physical vision. Physical vision is precise, well defined, and at the same time flat – I don't know how to explain it: it's very flat, totally superficial, but very accurate, with the kind of accuracy and precision that defines things which are really not defined at all. Well, there's the same difference in quality between the two types of memory as between the two types of vision. And in the last few days I've realized that I had the memory of having gone downstairs, of having seen certain people and things, spoken and organized certain things – several different scenes... of the PHYSICAL memory. Not at all things I saw with the inner vision while exteriorized, but the MATERIAL memory of having done certain things.

Afterwards, I had to look into it: it really was a memory. It suddenly struck me, and I wondered, “Did I really go downstairs physically?”... There are plenty of people here to prove that I didn't, that I didn't stir from here. And yet I have the physical memory of having done so, and of having done certain other things as well; I even remember going outside.

Well, it confronts me with a real problem. Not only is that memory absolutely physical, but the EFFECTS of what I said and did are there.

The effects are there?

Yes, they are. Tiny things, certain arrangements in a room, slight changes in regard to the meals, things of absolutely no importance in themselves – the little things life is full of, the things one does all the time, not big events (I know there's also an action on terrestrial events and all that, but it belongs to the other type of memory).

You've been able to verify these changes?

There's no question of verification – they happened!

Oh, they happened!

“Here's how this should be,” I would say, and it became like that. For example, if I told someone to put something in a certain place, he did it. The person doesn't know I told him, because he's not in the same consciousness as I am, but he did it.

And I found out about the immediate effects of it even before recalling it, for it all unfolded in reverse: when a certain thing was done, I thought, “What on earth! This person is wonderful.” And then I suddenly realized, “But I told him to do that!” I told him. Then the image came – “the image”... I don't mean the sort of memory one has of a vision, but the memory of something one has DONE. With that kind of image, it's not that you “look”: it just enters into you quite naturally. It has a particular quality. That's how I became aware of these changes. I noticed them on my own.

And they are facts. There's nothing to discuss: they are facts. And yet materially, according to physical appearances, that is, I didn't stir from here.

So WHO was it, who did all that? I don't know.

Could it be some exteriorization in the subtle physical?

Not at all! The memory of an exteriorization in the subtle physical is VERY different. I have a lot of experience of it, you know! I have been familiar with the phenomenon for something like sixty years – it's completely different. But this is entirely the type of experience one has in the physical Falsehood, if you will, in the ordinary physical consciousness.

I haven't said anything because people here tend to think I am going off my rocker, and I don't want to add to their... impression! But even for me, it left me... it took me a little while (it didn't happen just once, but two or three times, for different things), I kept very still for a while to look into the phenomenon and try to analyze it.

But I haven't yet found the key.

A kind of material doubling?

Possibly. It may be that.

It may be that.

Ubiquity, or something like that.

When experiences happen to other people (they have no knowledge – ignorance is the most widespread thing), they take them all for dreams. So there's no point trying to explain anything to them, they just don't understand. Everything gets classified as dreams, dreams, dreams.

This must have happened in the afternoon, between 12:30 and 1:30, when I am here – in appearance, anyway, my body is here lying down.

(silence)

According to what we know, yes, it might be what's called a phenomenon of ubiquity.

But for instance, if this had happened with people who know nothing of my outer life, they would have said, “But Mother went outside, I saw her.” I had experiences like that in Paris (it happened to someone else, not me personally). Someone swore that another person (who, by the way, was with me at the time) had come to him, spoken to him and even clapped him on the shoulder – all the typical phenomena of ubiquity which in this case were explained by mental concentration. But this person had no idea that it was impossible (according to material logic) for the other one to have come to him, you see. So he quite simply and naturally said, “But look, I saw him, I spoke to him, he clapped me on the shoulder!”

So one doesn't say anything because.... You see, when people are in Ignorance their immediate explanation is always the same:

“He's gone crazy.”

So I haven't said anything; I am waiting. I am going to see.

It would be interesting if some other people were conscious and could confirm this.

Yes, but I tell you, I have seen certain things and asked people about them and what they answer is, “A dream; yes, I had a dream.” (Mother laughs) So I haven't said anything.

We'll see.

Well, see you at Christmas.

¹ This is the beginning of a phenomenon that will become quite acute over the years, as if an increasingly inexorable force were trying to swallow up Mother's conversations with Satprem – the story of the transformation, in other words – in favor of small parochial doings.

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