The Mother
Agenda
Volume 9
June 3, 1968
I've just come from there [the music room where Mother receives visitors]. I saw some twenty people.... There was Orissa's Chief Minister (Orissa is the first province in India to give money for a pavilion in Auroville: they gave a lakh of rupees). He is a nice man. The people from Orissa, they are nice people; of all provinces, they are the ones who seem the most eager to forge ahead, to change something.
And Bengal? Isn't it ahead?
They're a bit... fanciful. I mean, they talk a lot – they talk very well! Those from Orissa are more practical – they're generous, a very generous nature: they give a lot.
Bengal... they know, or feel, that they are the country's intellectual leaders, so they are puffed up with themselves. Me, I like simple people.
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Soon afterwards
I've been given the continuation of T.F.'s class about death. There are new notes.
(Mother holds out a paper to Satprem)
Sweet Mother, we have received your answer with joy and send you our reflections and our questions about the first paragraph: “Death is the phenomenon of decentralization and scattering of the cells....”
So then?
Abhijit says, “If a cell becomes conscious of its own personality, there is a risk that it may act in its own interest without regard for the collective interest.”
(Mother laughs) The interest of a cell!
Then?
Amitangshu asks two questions. The first is, “Does the decentralization take place all at once or in degrees?...”
It takes time.
It happens like this: the central will of the physical being abdicates its will to hold all the cells together. That's the first phenomenon. The central will accepts dissolution. But everything doesn't just scatter all at once – it takes a long time.
What precedes death is accepting to cease the centralization in the form for some reason or other. I have noticed that one of the strongest reasons (one of them, very strong) is a sense of irreparable disharmony. Another is a sort of disgust at carrying on the effort of coordination.
There are, in fact, innumerable reasons, but there is a sort of effort of cohesion and harmonization, and what inevitably precedes death (unless it's caused by a violent accident) is that, for one reason or another, or for no reason, that will to maintain cohesion abdicates.
There's a second question: “Must each cell be conscious of its unity with the center?”
That's not how it is.
(after a long silence)
It's hard to make them understand.... It's still a semicollective consciousness, not an individual consciousness of the cells.
Then?
Anand Arya asks this: “Does the decentralization always take place after death, or can it begin before?”
(Laughing) It often begins before!
Dilip M. asks, “Do the cells scatter in space or within the body? If it is in space, then the body must disappear with the cells?”
Naturally! Naturally, after death the body dissolves. But it takes a long time....
These children don't know because [in India] bodies are burned.
Rita asks, “In the phrase ‘scattering of the cells,’ doesn't the word ‘scattering’ have a particular meaning? If so, which one?”
I used the word in its quite positive meaning.
I have even seen that those cells that have been specially developed and have become conscious of the divine Presence within themselves, when the concentration that gives shape to the body is stopped and the body dissolves (it dissolves little by little), all those conscious cells spread out and enter other combinations in which, through contagion, they awaken the consciousness of the Presence each of them had. So then, it's through this phenomenon of concentration, development and scattering that Matter in its totality evolves, so to speak, and learns through contagion, develops through contagion, experiences through contagion.
But what enters other combinations isn't the cell itself – it's the subtle consciousness of the cells?
Yes, of course! The cell, too, dissolves. It's the CONSCIOUSNESS of the cells that penetrates others.
It's very hard to explain to one who doesn't have the experience.