The Conquest Over Death (HH 096)

Words of the Mother

….I was told something this morning (I think it was this morning, or in the night, I don’t remember); it was said to the body, not to me. The body was told that it would go on till complete purification, and that AT THAT POINT it will have the choice between continuing its work or … You see, once it has attained complete purification from the cellular point of view (not what people call physical “purity,” that’s not it), from the point of view of the divine Influence, which means that each cell will be under the exclusive influence of the Supreme (that’s the work under way now), the body was told that that work would be done, and once it was completed, the body ITSELF, entirely under the Supreme’s influence, would decide whether it wants to continue or be dissolved. It was very interesting, because … dissolution means a scattering, but to scatter (that’s easy to understand) is a way to SPREAD the consciousness over a very large area. So the cells will be given the choice either to act in that way (gesture of diffusion) or to act in agglomeration (Mother makes a fist).

(silence)

It’s the first time the problem has been envisaged from that angle, that is to say, from the standpoint of a general work.

But I don’t see how the scattering … If it is scattered, if it is dissolved, the whole work is dissolved, isn’t it?

No, each cell is perfectly conscious.

Then they would go into other bodies?

(Mother remains thoughtful a moment) What happens from the material point of view?… Do they know if it reverts to inert Matter, or what? Does it become dust – what does it become?

Dust, yes.

Dust …. They’re not cells any more?

No, I don’t think so.

Then that’s not it, because according to what I was told, they were cells – they remained cells. It must be something new. They remained cells, it was the cell that was given the choice either of staying in its present agglomeration or of spreading.

I don’t know, but it seems to me they could persist only in agglomeration with other living beings.

Are the cells in the human body different from the cells in other bodies, in animals, for instance? Or are they the same?

Except for certain specialized cells, the other cells aren’t different, I believe.

But the specialized cells must be the ones in question, because those in question are fully conscious cells – they are specialized cells.

So I don’t see that they could go into animals, I don’t think they’re the same kind.

They could only go into other human organisms.

Human, yes.

Maybe it’s the difference between ONE being and many beings? …

It must be something in preparation. We’ll see.

So mon petit, I’ll let you go now, because …

* * *

A few days afterwards, Mother added this reflection:

It is clearly (according to external logic) a new way of dying that must be possible – no longer death as we regard it. But that … for the moment, all we could say would be speculative, not a concrete experience. We’ll see.

This morning there was a kind of vision or sensation of the curve from the animal to man – a spiral curve – then of the return to the state above the animal, in which life, action, movement aren’t the result of Mind but of a Force, which is felt as a Force of SHADOWLESS light, that is, self-luminous, casting no shadows, and absolutely peaceful. And in that peace, so harmonious and soft … oh, it’s supreme rest. That disharmony and hardness are the cause of fatigue in life.

I am speaking of the cells’ consciousness.

Oh, to get out of that chaos of ideas, wills, conceptions – it’s all so petty, so dry, so hollow, and at the same time so irritating in its instability.

And it seems to be reflected in circumstances: everyone seems to be, if not at the peak of his difficulties, at least a good way up (!) Disharmony, conflict, chaos appear to have reached their highest (I hope they won’t rise any higher, because as it is it’s hardly bearable). From morning till night, without letup, quarrels, discontent, demands … oh, dissatisfaction, “rumblings, all the time, all the time, with a sort of simmering – a simmering of disorder and dissatisfaction. (Mother points to a stack of letters): see all that – which I am supposed to answer, naturally.

* * *

But it’s still going on. Now, there’s a great battle against all the ideas, the habits, the sensations, the possibilities, everything, concerning death – “death” (laughing), not “death” in the sense of the consciousness departing (that, of course, people talk about, but … those things no longer exist), no: WHAT THE CELLS MUST FEEL.  And all the possibilities are presented to me … With that consciousness (the consciousness accumulated, compressed in all those cells), when the heart stops beating and it’s understood that, according to human ignorance, you are “dead,” how does the force that groups all those cells together abdicate its will to hold them all together?… Naturally, I was told right away (because the problem – all the problems – come from everywhere, and it’s purposely that I am shown the problem and made to struggle with it; it’s not just as an “idea”), I was told right away that that force, that consciousness which holds everything together in really superconscious cells (they don’t have at all the ordinary type of consciousness; ordinarily, it’s the inner, vital being [Mother touches the heart center] that’s conscious of oneness, that is, conscious of being a being), that this aggregate of cells is now an aggregate OF ITS OWN WILL, with an organized consciousness which is a sort of collective gathering of that cellular consciousness; well … Obviously this is an exceptional condition, but even in the past, in those beings who were very developed outwardly, there was a beginning of willed, conscious cellular gathering, and that’s certainly why in ancient Egypt, where occultism was very developed. exceptional beings such as the pharaohs, the high priests, etc., were mummified, so as to preserve the form as long as possible. Even here in India, generally they were petrified (in the Himalayas there were petrifactive springs). There was a reason.

And I saw for Sri Aurobindo (although he hadn’t yet started this systematic transformation; but still, he was constantly pulling the supramental force down into his body), even in his case, it took five days to show the first slight sign of decomposition. I would have kept his body longer, but the government always meddles in other people’s business, naturally, and they pestered me awfully, saying it was forbidden to keep a body so long and that we should … So when the body began to (what’s the word?) shrink – it was shrinking and contracting, that is, dehydrating – then we had to do it. He had had enough time to come out, since almost everything came into my body – almost everything that was material came into my body.

But the question arose for this body [Mother’s], “just to see,” you know. And I saw all kinds of things, and finally the answer was always the same (you see, the problem was presented to me to enable me to understand the situation in all its aspects and see the necessities), that naturally everything would be for the best! (Laughing) Without a doubt. But I mean it was presented very concretely and, I could say, very “personally” to make me understand the problem. And there was that old thing I was told the other day (old, that is, a few days old! i: I was told that THE CELLS THEMSELVES would be given a free choice. So the conclusion of all that meditation was that there must be a new element in the consciousness of the cellular aggregates – a new element … a new experience that must be in progress. The result: last night, I had a series of fantastic cellular experiences, which I cannot even explain and which must be the beginning of a new revelation.

When the experience began, there was something looking on (you know, there is always in me something looking on somewhat ironically, always amused) which said, “Very well! If that happened to someone else, he would think he was quite sick! (laughing) Or half mad.” So I stayed very quiet and thought, “All right, let it be, I’ll watch, I’ll see – I’ll see soon enough! It has started, so it will have to end! …” Indescribable! Indescribable (the experience will have to recur several times before I can understand), fantastic! It started at 8:30 and went on till 2:30 in the morning; that is to say, not for a second did I lose consciousness, I was there watching the most extraordinary things – for six hours.

I don’t know where this is going….

Indescribable; you know, you become a forest, a river, a mountain, a house – and it’s the sensation (an absolutely concrete sensation) OF THE BODY, of this (gesture to the body).Many other things too. Indescribable. It lasted a long time, with a whole variety of things.

So at 2:30 in the morning, I said to the Lord, “That will do, won’t it?!” (Mother laughs)And He gave me a blissful rest till 4:30.

Good.

All that on the aphorism! … Anyway, you can use the beginning. But you should ask me a question. Ask me a question.

I asked myself if for everybody the supramental process will always automatically involve a lot of physical suffering.

No.

No, because I have a growing proof that those things I have mastered now, in the body, I have the power (I keep receiving letters and notes from here or there, from people here or there who have an illness) … it is beginning; so far it’s only a beginning, a very small beginning: the power to eliminate pain.

You know, on a smaller scale, what happened with your illness.

Yes, but I didn’t mean sick people. I mean people who today or in the future will seek to effect the transformation in themselves.

No, they …

Will they have to go through all that suffering?

No! That Sri Aurobindo wrote very clearly: for all those who have faith and open themselves in surrender and faith, the work will be done automatically. As long as he was here, mon petit, all the thirty years I spent with him working, NOT ONCE did I have to make an effort for a transformation. Simply, whenever there was a difficulty, I repeated, My Lord, my Lord, my Lord … I just thought of him – hop! it went away. Physical pain: he annulled it. You know, some things that were hampering the body, some old habits that had come back, I only had to tell him: off they would go. And through me, he did the same for others. He always said that he and I did the Work (in fact, when he was here, it was he who did it; I only did the external work), that he and I did the Work, and that all that was asked from the others was faith and surrender, nothing more.

If they had trust and gave themselves in perfect trust, the Work was done automatically.

In your body’s cells, it is therefore a universal progress that is being made, it’s the earth that progresses.

Yes.

(silence)

This body was built for that purpose, because I remember very well that when the war – the First World War – started and I offered my body up in sacrifice to the Lord so that the war would not be in vain, every part of my body, one after another (Mother touches her legs, her arms etc.), or sometimes the same part several times over, represented a battlefield: I could see it, I could feel it, I LIVED it. Every time it was … it was very strange, I had only to sit quietly and watch: I would see here, there, there, the whole thing in my body, all that was going on. And while it went on, I would put the concentration of the divine Force there, so that all – all that pain, all that suffering, everything – would hasten the preparation of the earth and the Descent of the Force. And that went on consciously throughout the war.

The body was built for that purpose.

At the time, there was still a lot of mental activity, and those experiences took all the forms the mind gives to things – very nice, very literary! Now, all that is over – happily, thank God! A complete silence – I don’t make speeches on the thing. But the experience of last night! … And to think that when an experience lasts half an hour, three quarters of an hour, one hour, it’s considered extraordinary – it lasted from 8:30 till 2:15, nonstop.

A sort of ubiquity in the cells?

Yes, yes.

A oneness – the sense of Oneness.

(silence)

It is clear that if this experience becomes natural, spontaneous and constant, death can no longer exist: even for this, I mean (Mother touches her body).

There’s something I SENSE there, without being able to express or understand it mentally. There must be some difference, even in the behavior of the cells, when you leave your body.

It must be another phenomenon that takes place.

During all that period of concentration and meditation on what happens in a body after death (I am speaking of the body’s experience after what is now called “death”), well, several times the same kind of vision came to me…. I had been told (shown and told) of certain saints whose bodies did not decompose (there’s one here, there was one in Goa – fantastic stories). Naturally, people always romanticize those things, but there remains the material fact of a saint who died in Goa, left his body in Goa, but whose body didn’t decompose. I don’t know the story in all its details, but the body was removed from India, taken away to China and remained buried there, in Hong-Kong, I believe (or somewhere in that region) for a time; then it was taken out, brought back here, buried again. For ten or twelve years it stayed buried in those two places: it didn’t decompose. It dried out, became mummified (dried out, that is, dehydrated), but it remained preserved. Well, this fact was presented to me several times as ONE of the possibilities.

Which means, to tell the truth, that everything is possible.

It’s like a progressive victory over all constraints. So naturally, all the laws of Nature, all the human laws, all habits, all rules, all that grows increasingly supple and finally becomes nonexistent. Yet it is possible to keep a regular rhythm that makes action easier – it’s not contrary to this suppleness. But it’s a suppleness in the execution, in the adaptation, which comes and changes everything. From the point of view of hygiene, health, organization, from the point of view of the relationship with others, all that has not only lost its aggressiveness (because for it to lose its aggressiveness, all you have to do is to be wise – wise and level-headed and calm), but also its absolutism, its imperative rule: that’s entirely gone – gone.

And then, you see: as the process grows more and more perfect – “perfect” means integral, total, leaving nothing behind – it NECESSARILY, inevitably means victory over death. Not that this dissolution of the cells which death involves stops existing, but that it would exist only when necessary: not as an absolute law, but as ONE of the processes, when necessary.

It’s mainly all that the Mind has brought in terms of rigidity and absoluteness and near invincibility – that’s what … is going to disappear. And simply by … handing the supreme power over to the Supreme Consciousness.