March 16, 1968The Mother
Agenda
Volume 9
March 16, 1968
Mother holds out a flower to Satprem
This is “Happy Heart.”1
I am discovering the secret of it.
(long silence)
You feel you are constantly – constantly – on the way to a great discovery, then you make that discovery, and then you realize it had always been made!... It's only (laughing) that you look at it in another way.
This morning, there was an experience; it seemed an extraordinary revelation, and... it's something that was always known. So you mentalize it – the moment you mentalize it, it becomes clear, but that's no longer it! You see, we say this creation is “the creation of
equilibrium,”2 and that in fact it is mental error which makes us want to choose one thing and reject another – that all things must be together: what we call “good,” what we call “evil,” what we call right and what we call wrong, what we find pleasant and what we find unpleasant – all that must be together. And this morning, there was the discovery that through Separation – this Separation which has been described in all kinds of different ways, sometimes pictorially, sometimes simply in an abstract way, sometimes philosophically, sometimes... all that is just explanations, but there is something, which probably is simply Objectification (Mother gestures as if to push the universe forward, out of the Nonmanifest)... But that's still one way to explain. This so-called Separation, what is it exactly? We don't know (or perhaps we do, after all). It in fact created (to put it in colors) black and white, night and day (that's already more mixed – but black and white too are mixed), it's the tendency to create two poles: the pleasant or good thing, and the unpleasant or bad one. And as
soon as you want to return to the Origin, the two tend to merge together again. And it is in perfect equilibrium, that is, where no division is possible anymore and the one has no influence over the other, where the two have become one again, it's there that lies this famous Perfection which we are trying to rediscover.
Rejection of the one and acceptance of the other is childishness. It's ignorance. All mental translations, like that of an Evil eternally evil, giving birth to the idea of hell, or that of a Good eternally good... all that, all of it is childishness.
(silence)
It may be (maybe, because as soon as you try to formulate, you mentalize, and as soon as you mentalize, it gets shrunk, diminished, limited, it loses the power of truth – but anyway...), it may be that in this universe as it is constituted, perfection is ... (Mother remains absorbed for a long time). It eludes words.... We might put it this way (but it's dry and lifeless): it's the perception (is it only “perception”? It's not just “perception”; it's neither perception nor knowledge nor awareness...), it's the awareness of the oneness of the whole – a oneness perceived, lived, realized in the individual. But that's nothing, mere words.... The universe seems to have been created to realize this paradox of the awareness of the whole, an awareness lived (not just perceived but lived) in every part, every element making up the whole.
So in order to give form to those elements, it all began with Separation, and it was Separation that gave birth to this division between what we call good and evil; but from the point of view of sensation – sensation in the most material part – we may say it's suffering and Ananda. And the movement is to put a stop to all separation and to realize the total consciousness in every part (which mentally speaking is absurd, but it's like that).
That's far too philosophical for my taste, not concrete enough. But this morning's experience was concrete, and concrete because it stemmed from extremely concrete sensations in the body, from the presence of this constant duality which looks like an opposition (not only opposition, but mutual negation) between... we may take the symbol of suffering and Ananda. And the true state (which for the moment appears impossible to formulate in words, but which was lived and felt) is an all-containing totality; but instead of containing everything as clashing elements, it's a harmony of everything, an equilibrium of everything. And once this equilibrium is realized in the creation, the creation will be able... (if you put it
into words, it's no longer that)... we might say, able to go on progressing without break.
But that's not it.
These last few days, seen again in the present imperfect consciousness, there repeatedly came (but it's all methodical and organized by an overall organization infinitely superior to anything we can imagine) a state which is the state causing a break in the equilibrium, that is, the dissolution of the form – what's usually called “death.” And that state went up to the extreme limit, like a demonstration, with at the same time the state (not a perception – the state) that prevents the break in the equilibrium and allows progress to go on without break. The result, in the body consciousness, is the simultaneous perception (so to speak simultaneous) of what we might describe as the extreme anguish of dissolution (though it's not quite that, but anyway) and the extreme Ananda of union – the two simultaneously.
So if you translate it into ordinary words: the extreme fragility (more than fragility) of the form, and the eternity of the form.
And the Truth is not just the union, but the fusion, the identification of the two.
When you mentalize it, it becomes clear for everyone – but it loses its essential quality, the something that cannot be mentalized.
It's the awareness of the two states that must be simultaneous?
Not divided. It's the union of the two states that constitutes the true consciousness; the union of the two (“union” still implies division), the identification of the two states is what constitutes the true consciousness. Then you get the sensation that it's this consciousness which is the supreme Power. You understand, Power is limited by oppositions and negations: the most powerful power is the one that dominates the most – but that's a complete imperfection! There is an all-powerful Power made up of the fusion of the two – that's the absolute Power. And if That were realized physically... probably it would be the end of the problem.
In fact, during the few hours I lived in that state this morning, there was the impression of having mastered everything and understood everything – “understood,” I mean this sort of understanding that constitutes absolute power. But naturally, it can't be expressed.
That's what people who must have had the experience or a hint of it expressed by saying that this world was the world of equilibrium: in other words it's the simultaneousness, without division, of all
opposites. As soon as there is any divergence – not even divergence, any difference – it's the beginning of division. And anything that isn't that state cannot be eternal; it's only that state which... not “contains,” but expresses (or how else to put it?) eternity.
There have been all sorts of philosophies which tried to explain it, but it's in the air, it's mental, speculative. While this is lived – lived, I mean BEING it.
Is it the material equivalent of a psychological experience one has in which the perception of evil completely disappears in the perception of an absolute Good – even in evil?
Yes, that's it. We might say that instead of being just a mental conception, it's a concrete realization of the fact.
1 Ravenalia spectabilis.
2 We may recall Agenda 4 of November 13, 1963: “Traditions tell us that a universe is created, then withdrawn into pralaya, and then a new one comes; and according to them, ours is the seventh universe, and being the seventh universe, it is the one that will not return to pralaya but will go on progressing, without retreat.” See also Agenda 7 of March 4, 1966, and Agenda 8 of May 6, 1967.