that is beginning.
Not at all of something that is ending.
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A curious sensation of something that is beginning. Not at all of something that is ending. |
My system is beginning to refuse to work in the old way.
So how am I supposed to eat? I have no attraction for food whatsoever. It seems stupid, yet I "have to" eat, as I realize that not eating upsets the old system too much.
Of course, the doctors want everything to function as usual.
It's impossible.
So it creates a conflict in the nature. Things are going too fast and at the same time there is a resistance from the old nature, fostered by the doctors and old habits.
For instance, they say that my difficulties stem from not eating enough, which is true according to the old system. So they'd like me to eat more, while I personally feel that eating conflicts with the Work.
Basically, I realize more and more that we live in total ignorance. We really don't know either what should be done or how to do it. Our practical knowledge is based on an experience that has become worthless.
If there was a strong and clear indication, I would certainly listen to it, but that's not the case.
For instance, the cook is used to doing things in a certain way; when the doctor asks that I should be given such and such a dish, they listen to him. But if I express a preference for a certain kind of food, they give it to me grudgingly, almost as a concession to gluttony!
I live in such conventionality that it's very difficult.
And always surrounded by the idea that I am old, I am getting old, and my consciousness must be half-dead.
They simply don't have faith!
So I have taken the attitude of saying: let it be. I make myself as passive as possible - passive to the Divine Will — and I pray for it to guide me.
That's the only way.
Humanity, the human animal, has a dread of the Divine. For him, it is equivalent to disappearing.
In truth, it is the disappearance of the ego.
For a long time, there is a feeling that if the physical ego disappears, then the being, the form disappears. But that isn't true!
It isn't true.
In any case, my body has become ready to live without a physical ego.
It's as if the organization that holds everything together and makes up a form we call human had to learn it can go on living without the sense of separate individuality, without the sense of ego, while for thousands of years it's been accustomed to existing separately because of the ego.
Without the ego, it goes on . . . according to another law the body doesn't yet know, which it finds incomprehensible.
It's "something," a new way of being.
This body has learned that even without ego, it is what it is — because it exists by the Divine Will and not by the ego. We exist by the Divine Will and not by the ego. The ego was a means, a centuries-old means. Now it's worthless; its time is over.
It had its usefulness, but it's over.
Now, consciousness is the Divine; power is the Divine; action is the Divine; individuality is the Divine.
The body has understood and realized that the sense of being a separate personality is perfectly useless. It isn't in the least indispensable to its existence. It exists by another power and another will, which is not individual, nor personal — the Divine Will. And it will become what it is supposed to be the day it feels there is no difference between itself and the Divine.
All the rest is falsehood, and a falsehood that must disappear.
There is only one reality, one life, and one consciousness: the Divine.
This body doesn't feel things in relation to itself, but in others, with a general consciousness, not a personal one.
It has such a dread of physical suffering, of illnesses or accidents that yesterday it asked why the world exists as it is. And it understood why some people no longer want to have a body, which had always seemed absurd before.
It was such an intense experience! It had an aspiration, something like a prayer: "May the world change! May the world change. It has to change, or else disappear."
The idea of the world disappearing had never come before. It used to think that the world was moving towards a harmonious perfection. But it takes so much time! The length of time is terrible.
There was an aspiration of incredible intensity for the transformation. Everything looks so dreadful because the transformation must take place. That anyone can be satisfied with a world like this is impossible; it's impossible to a physical consciousness that is conscious of the Divine.
It absolutely has to change.
I was gripped by it all night and all day, even while seeing people, with such an intensity: it must change, it must change. . . .
The inner consciousness can say that this suffering is unreal, but the physical consciousness can't — it has to change. It's not a matter of merging with another consciousness and leaving this physical consciousness to disappear.
It has to change.
This being is so very aware that in all the worlds, even in the vital world, everything depends on one's attitude. If one is in contact with the Divine, everything is fine and there's no problem. But this physical suffering — cancer and all these things — has to change.
It can't be considered something one must "see in a different way." It actually must change.
In all the other realms, things depend on the attitude; here it doesn't depend on the attitude — the attitude may lessen the suffering, but . . .
The fact itself has to change, because the material world as it is is dreadful.
It is bearable because of the vital and mental influence — but that influence is not enough.
It must be transformed.
For the transformation to be genuine, the body also has to acquire a harmony above all illnesses and accidents. The other parts of the being can transform their consciousness while remaining what they are, but the physical body needs to change.
It's as if the two extremes — a marvelous state and a general decomposition — were inextricably intertwined.
Everything is falling apart: People you count on give way, dishonesty is spreading, people are getting sick all the time. There has never been so many compounded difficulties. All the circumstances are like that, all the people are like that, from the government on down to the people here.
Yet, at the same time, for a flash, there comes a marvelous state, which my body feels - something unimaginable, like the extreme opposite. It comes into my body for a few minutes, then it goes away.
As if it were trying to take over - but the other fights back fiercely.
It's as if my body were a battlefield between that which obstinately wants to stay and that which wants to take its place. There are marvelous moments, glorious moments, and then, a second or a minute later, such a violent attack!
Regarding food, for instance, there are times when I eat without even noticing it, except that everything tastes delicious; and a second later, I can't swallow a thing!
The only solution I have is to keep as tranquil as possible. As soon as I am tranquil, it feels better.
Suddenly, I have the impression that I am about to die, and a minute later it's eternity. Sometimes, everything seems so foggy, so dark — there's no hope, no possibility of seeing anything clearly — and a minute later everything becomes clear and luminous.
Yet night and day, ceaselessly, whatever the difficulties, my body simply says, "My God, let Your Will be done."
The body's attitude is steadfast in its self-offering and complete openness, along with a sense of its own powerlessness. For whatever sense of self is left, it feels so impotent, so ignorant! It feels frightfully ignorant of everything.
For instance, I am lying down, feeling so uncomfortable that I think, "I just can't stay like this." And suddenly, a marvelous repose! There is no more body, no more problems, nothing. Then, without knowing why or how, the difficulties are back.
It's like that all the time, for every circumstance of life.
So people come to me and say, "I have this or that problem . . ." "Look," I reply, "the whole world is like that!"
At times, there is not a word in my head, nothing; at other times, I see and know what is happening everywhere.
Three minutes of splendor for twelve hours of misery — that's the ratio. For a body that truly, sincerely thinks only of the Divine, wants only the Divine.
This is a living demonstration of the existence of the Divine — what the Divine existence is, and what it has become.
I don't hear, I don't see, I can't eat, I can't speak, I no longer remember anything. . . . But suddenly, the sense of a sovereign omnipotence in a bliss that has no equivalent in our world. And the effect of that power sometimes shows up in people here and there: Miraculous things suddenly happen.
For when it is allowed to flow undiminished and undistorted, that Power is unbelievably powerful! As if it were telling me: "This is it. This is what we want and this is what will have to be."
But when?
In other words, the contrast between what the world is and what it should be is becoming increasingly acute.
People usually claim there's a mixture of good and bad things. But all that is childish. The "good" things aren't any better than the bad ones.
That's not it.
The Divine is something else altogether.
I have to be very careful when I am with people, otherwise they would think I am going crazy!
It's only because my body has faith that it can go on.
It has the experience. And it knows that it does not go away. It is incapable of feeling it all the time, but it knows it doesn't go away.
It feels it no longer belongs to the old way of being, but it knows it is not yet in the new one. It is no longer mortal, and it is not yet immortal.
The body is becoming more and more conscious, but not at all mentally. It's as if things were actually lived.
It senses how, in the manifestation, the human consciousness distorts the Divine Action. Our constitution is so miserable. We reduce, distort, and diminish everything. We know many things (knowledge is all around us, in us), but we are so complicated that we distort them. Everyone is that way.
There is this keen sensation of everything that is organized by the inner Divine from within, and how it gets distorted as it comes to the surface. It's our silly way of expressing something that is so simple and so marvelous.
But we are so perverted that we always choose what is distorted.
Even my words distort this Divine Action, which I feel is so simple, so luminous, so pure — so absolute. But we turn it into what we see all around us: a complicated and almost incomprehensible life.
I am here surrounded by people, circumstances, complications, and everything is so tangled up. Yet in the background is a sort of . . . not just a Force, but a consciousness-Force, like a smile — a smile that knows everything.
When I am quiet, it's as if nothing existed. And all is marvelous. But the moment people speak to me or I see someone, all the complications return — they make a mess of everything.
I am sure it is the transition from this life to that Life. When we are completely on that other side, we'll stop speculating, trying to "explain," deduce, and classify.
If we only knew how to be — simply to be. If we don't speak, think, or decide, we feel we are outside life.
Yet that silence is not the silence of unexpressed words; it is the silence of an active contemplation.
This is certainly the preparation for a new mode of life.
I see (as if through a veil) a Power, an extraordinary Power! But we are such imbeciles we don't even accept it.
I could put it this way: nobody knows anything, but there are those who aspire, who have the will, the inclination, the aspiration, the need to know and to be; and then there are those who don't care, who cruise along or just live their little-life-big-life — whether it's a head of state or a street cleaner makes no difference. The vibrations are the same.
I am feeling quite all right.
I could say the body is beginning to have the true attitude.
I mean, it increasingly feels in a concrete and acute manner that there is only one way to exist — in the Divine Consciousness.
It is being taught to exist by the Divine alone, to count on the Divine for everything - absolutely everything without exception. It's only when the consciousness is linked utterly to the Divine Consciousness that there's the sense of existence.
It has become extraordinarily intense.
The body has no need to know anything at all: Its only need is to be entirely molded, set in motion, and used in every way by the Divine. Its only dream is to forget that it exists, to become spontaneously the expression of "something" it calls the Divine.
The difference between being in the Divine, existing only by Him and for Him, and then being, not in the ordinary consciousness, obviously, but just in the human consciousness, is so great that one feels like death compared to the other.
I mean, the physical realization is really a concrete realization.
When the physical gets converted, it will be something solid, unalterable, and complete.
There is a beginning of a tremendous concentration of energy! A power and reality in the consciousness that exists absolutely nowhere else; everything vital or mental seems hazy and insubstantial in comparison. It's really marvelous.
Some problems remain to be solved, but not through words or thoughts. Things, people, circumstances come to teach the body to have the true consciousness.
It seems that the main question was to create a physical being capable of bearing the Power that wants to manifest. All ordinary body-consciousnesses are too thin and fragile to withstand the overwhelming Power that is to manifest. And so this body is being accustomed to it.
It's as if it had suddenly caught a glimpse of such a marvelous horizon ahead, but overwhelmingly marvelous!
It is allowed to take only as much of it as it can bear.
This is the transitional condition toward a state that is still a wonder, and some adaptation is required. It's quite evident where rest and food, for example, are concerned (especially food).
It's very much a matter of plasticity: To be able to withstand and offer no resistance to the Power that wants to manifest.
Will the body have enough plasticity?
I say "the Divine," but what is the Divine? I don't know.
Yet I can't say that I don't know.
But even saying that is false, not it.
Everything is not it.
And that includes material life. Take eating, for example. Depending on a certain attitude, the same food can be either absolutely detestable and impossible to swallow, or delicious. The same material circumstances themselves can have very adverse and serious consequences or totally positive ones, depending on — what does it depend on?
Sometimes, the body is seized with unbearable pain, so fierce it wants to howl. A minute later, everything is perfectly fine. Yet the physical conditions are the same.
What does it depend on?
Consciousness is apparently the same. One simply doesn't know what causes the change.
In other words, this whole material life is unreal.
There's nothing to fight against, because everything is a mirage.
We don't know what it is. We don't know what there really is.
What does it depend on?
There is "something" to discover.
Yesterday I had an experience that showed me how the physical being, which believed it was exclusively turned toward the Divine, is turned in an almost superficial way. In particular, it is still capable of feeling certain events as "catastrophic."
I was made to experience all the possible things that could still happen to me, to this body, if things went wrong and if human beings were driven by the adverse force.
They were the most dreadful possibilities. And I could see to what degree the body is not imperturbable to them.
For several hours it was completely upset, ill with the horror of all these possibilities. Then it was able to offer all that to the Divine and say, really consciously: "Your Will."
There was this feeling of incapacity to truly know the Divine Will — especially regarding the future: What is going to happen right at this minute. It was dreadful.
How utterly ignorant we are!
It was yesterday afternoon, between one and two o'clock. It was worse than hell, simply to realize how little we know.
It was a very thorough experience, because it wasn't the experience of a person, but of all humanity.
I saw absolutely concretely how all the people who thought they had the Experience of the Divine were still halfway there, as it were. Whenever one rises a bit higher than the ordinary consciousness, one immediately thinks one has touched the Divine.
And yesterday's experience did not culminate in any new knowledge; it culminated in . . . total surrender.
Yesterday, suddenly, I saw the world in another way.
For a moment, I saw as . . . the Divine sees the world.
The human vision was completely gone.
And I saw something so marvelous . . . I can't describe it. Then, slowly, the human consciousness came back.
Everything became clear, clear, clear.
The purpose of this creation was to achieve the phenomenon of a consciousness that would encompass at once individual consciousness — the individual consciousness we have naturally — and consciousness of the whole, a consciousness we could call "global." Then both consciousnesses would merge into something . . . which we have yet to implement, that is, a consciousness at once individual and total.
All the work is to merge the two consciousnesses into a consciousness that would be both at once.
That's the next stage and the next realization. For us, it "takes time." It translates as something "being done" or that needs "to be done." But that is the illusion we still live in, because we have not yet crossed over to the other side.
The individual consciousness is not at all a falsehood. It needs to be associated with the consciousness of the whole to form another type of consciousness, which at the moment we don't have. But it will not be cancelled out by the other.
There needs to be some adjustment, a new mode, so that the two can manifest simultaneously.
This is what I feel: no longer this, and not yet that. But there's no need to leave one to be the other; the two must combine and give birth to something new.
I strongly believe I have caught the true point. It explains absolutely everything. Yet it cancels nothing.
It's strange how everything suddenly became clear, clear, crystal clear! There's no longer any problem. Absolutely all the problems have been resolved at once. Only I can't express it in detail.
It's a hundred times more marvelous than we can possibly imagine.
The question now is to know if this body will be able to follow. It not only has to endure, but it has to acquire a new strength and a new life.
In any case, it doesn't matter, for the consciousness is clear and the consciousness is not subject to this body. If it can be used, so much the better, if not . . .
For example, my body feels the complete Presence of the Divine in all things, everywhere, all the time, as if it were at once enveloped and permeated by it. Recently, it asked for an even more concrete experience. And a kind of Consciousness responded that the body wasn't given a more complete perception because it would then feel like fusing into the Divine and the cells would simply explode, so to speak. The body would lose its form.
I felt this was very true.
There are still things to be found. Oh, there are so many things to be found!
But the old routine is finished.
It's finished.
We need to find the plasticity of matter — so that it can progress forever.
How much time will it take? I don't know. How many experiences will it take? I don't know.
But the direction is clear.
The ordinary human consciousness, even in people who are broad-minded, always stands at the center and things exist in relation to that central point. While now that point no longer exists, so things exist in themselves.
Instead of "receiving" things, I feel that my consciousness is in things.
It's even better than that because it isn't just "in" things, but in "something" that is in things and . . . impels them.
To be flowery, I could say: this is no longer a being among other beings; it is the Divine in everything.
But that's not the way I feel it. Rather, it is that which impels things, or that which is conscious in them.
It is all clearly a question of consciousness, but not consciousness as human beings understand it, for the quality of consciousness is different.
Among many outcomes, something curious happens when I eat. When I am in that consciousness, my whole lunch is taken effortlessly, without any difficulty. I take and taste the food, but the position is different, as it were. While as soon as I become conscious in the old consciousness, which means putting the food in my mouth, tasting it, eating it, I have all the trouble in the world to swallow.
I feel there is something that tastes and takes, which is at once in me and in the food. It is no longer as it was before. That's all I can say.
What I am saying now is not what I want to say. I can't find a way to make myself understood, because new words would have to be invented.
That's happening more and more every day.
It's like at nighttime. I don't sleep and I am not awake. I go into a state in which I don't sleep at all — yet I am not awake. I don't know how to describe what it is.
This state can last indefinitely; there's no sense of time or fatigue or duration. But the moment the old consciousness returns, it is almost unbearably painful. I suffocate or I can't breathe; I am too cold or too hot; a pain starts up or a body function is affected.
But as soon as I can return to that other state everything becomes flawless again — time no longer exists. Time is endless in the old consciousness, while it doesn't exist there.
To use big words, one could say that the old consciousness leads to death; it's being on the verge of dying every moment. While the other one is life — peaceful and eternal life.
I just heard a letter of Sri Aurobindo's in which he explains that for the Supramental to settle on earth and become permanent, the body-mind, the mind within the body, has to accept to receive and manifest it (he had noticed that the Supramental came into him, then withdrew, came back, then withdrew).
The body-mind is precisely the only mind that is left in me now. That explains why the mind was removed and the body-mind took its place. It is developing under the supramental influence, and it is being converted very rapidly and interestingly. These past few days, I have noticed that it is becoming vaster, with comprehensive visions and a whole different way of seeing.
But it is a very radical process!
I could say I've become another person.
In my case, it was done without asking my opinion! Very few people would accept that. Everything was simply taken away from me; the mind was completely removed. In appearance, I became a total idiot who no longer knew anything. And gradually, very gradually the body-mind began developing instead.
That's how it was done — very radically.
It could be done that way because I had remained very conscious of my psychic being, and this psychic presence enabled me to deal with the outside world without its making any difference. That's why there were so few visible changes.
What's becoming predominant now is this: the absolute nonentity and incapacity of the person. You're quite naturally like a child who says to the Divine, "Do everything for me."
There's nothing left of the person, so you can't do anything yourself! Then immediately everything goes well and you feel fine.
The body has given itself entirely. It even said to the Divine, "I beg You to make me want my dissolution if I must die," so that I won't put up any resistance should it be necessary for this body to go. That's its attitude. A response came that said something like: "If you accept suffering and discomfort, transformation is better than dissolution." So when the body feels uncomfortable, it simply accepts the condition.
Words are quite inadequate. It's not really like that, but it's hard to explain. It's truly a new attitude and a new sensation, which I can't express.
The body must have an enormous goodwill. Mine has it, and it's not a mental goodwill; it's truly a bodily goodwill. It accepts all the difficulties and discomfort.
But the attitude is important, not the results (I am convinced that the difficulties are not indispensable). The attitude has to be one of acceptance and trust. For I have noticed that in most cases surrender to the Divine does not mean trust in the Divine. One may surrender to the Divine and say, "Even if You make me suffer, I surrender." That's an absolute lack of trust! Trust is something else: It's unshakable knowledge that nothing can perturb.
Actually, it's we who change into difficulties, suffering, and misery that which is perfect peace in the Divine Consciousness. It's we who create that little "transformation."
It's really the consciousness that must change — and even the consciousness of the cells.
That's the radical change.
I could say that at each minute one feels one can either live eternally or die. And the difference between the two sides is so slight that one can't say what it takes to be on one side rather than on the other.
It's a way of being almost beyond description.
I would like to abolish this personality as much as possible, leaving only an external form. I would become merely a transmitting channel, letting the Force flow unobstructed through me.
And I don't even ask to be conscious of it.
At times, in some cases, the Power is so tremendous, so potent, that it leaves me flabbergasted, while at other times it seems to disappear.
I just don't know what happens.
Naturally, people tell me, "You have cured me; you have saved so-and-so." I almost perform miracles. They think it's me, but there's no "me"! There's nothing; it's only the Force flowing.
I only try not to block, not to check or diminish anything. That's my sole effort — to let it go through me as impersonally as possible.
I feel this is like a transitional condition (not a final one) required to attain immortality.
That's what it is.
There is still something to be found. But I don't know what.
The feeling of a new life that is about to depend on different conditions than the usual ones.
But those new conditions aren't there yet, nor is the body familiar with them, so the transition from one state to the other is a perpetual source of problems.
When I am very quiet, I hear a sort of great chant, almost a collective chant of OM Namo Bhagavateh, as if rising from all of Nature. Then everything is fine. But if there's the slightest effort, everything goes wrong again.
The old way of perceiving things (I don't mean the ordinary way) has dissolved, as it were, leaving the place for . . . everything to be learned anew.
It's all in the consciousness of the physical body.
It's not even switching back and forth between two states. It's as if both states were constantly together: The sense that you know nothing and are completely impotent in terms of the "current" way of doing and knowing things; and at the very same time the sense of an absolute knowledge and power. The two states are not within one another, not behind one another, or beside one another. I just don't know how to describe it. Both are there simultaneously.
The best example is food. The body needs food to live; yet everything in the body is a stranger to food. So meals are becoming an almost unsolvable problem. To put it in a simplistic way, it's as if I no longer knew how to eat, though another way of eating comes spontaneously when I don't observe myself eating.
The same applies to seeing, to hearing. I feel all my faculties diminishing.
In that respect, it is true, I don't know what people around me are doing or saying, but at the same time I have a much truer perception of what they are, of what they think and do — of the world. A perception that is so new that I don't know how to describe it.
I think that if all goes well, in a few years I'll be able to do many things . . . but not quite yet.
I feel when I reach one hundred years, I will be strong.
The body itself has a conviction that if it lasts till one hundred, it will possess a new strength and a new life. But these are the difficult years, the years of transition.
Yesterday the heart underwent what I call the "change of Government," and it was a difficult moment.
What happened is that the day before yesterday, in the middle of the night, the heart switched from the old rule of nature to the divine rule, and at one point . . . it was very difficult.
There was a strange sensation, a feeling of extreme closeness to the psychic consciousness. Of course it has been governing the being for a long, long time — that's why the mind and the vital could be dismissed, because the psychic being had taken up the reins so long ago.
Yesterday, there was another difficult moment, with irregular heartbeats and pain, but the being simply opened up: "What You will, Lord, what You will." Within a few hours everything was back in order. How was it done? I have no idea. With just this movement of opening. . . .
Usually, we passively leave it up to Nature to set things right after something goes awry — that's totally changing. It's becoming a process of consciousness instead. For years the mind has been trained not to meddle and to let Nature take care of any damage; but now Nature is being told, "Keep out of this, a higher Consciousness will take care of things."
That means consciousness must be constantly on the alert.
The consciousness' own attitude is to be constantly nestled in the Divine, even immersed in the Divine: What You will, what You will, what You will, what You will. This is a very good "basic" attitude, as it were. But when suddenly something goes wrong in the body, without any explanation (most of the time it's due to an outside cause, some disorder coming from the outside), one simply doesn't know what to do, since the mind is no longer there to decide what to do.
One doesn't know what to do, so one does nothing.
There is obviously something to learn.
For the first time, early this morning, I saw my body.
I don't know whether it is a supramental body or a transitional body, but I had a completely new body, in the sense that it was sexless.
It was very white, very slender - really a lovely, harmonious form.
That was a first!
I hadn't the least idea, the faintest notion what it would look like, and I saw — I was like that; I had become like that.
It was around four in the morning, I think. And it was perfectly natural. I mean, I didn't look in a mirror.
What was very different was the torso, from the chest to the waist: It was neither male nor female.
It was lovely. My form was extremely svelte and slim. And the skin was very white, just like my skin. A lovely form. And no sex — the sex had disappeared.
I didn't pay any special attention, because it felt so perfectly natural to me.
Also, there was none of the complex digestion we have now, or the kind of elimination we have now. It didn't work that way.
I didn't look to see how it worked, since it felt so completely natural to me. Therefore I can't describe it in detail. It was neither a woman's body nor a man's — that much is certain. The outline was fairly similar to that of a very young person. There was a faint suggestion of a human form, with a shoulder and a waist.
The two things visibly different concerned procreation, which was no longer possible, and food.
Now we need to find a food that doesn't require all this digesting. Not exactly liquid, but not solid either. There's also the question of the mouth and the teeth. Chewing should no longer be necessary, and therefore teeth shouldn't be either. But something will replace them.
I haven't the slightest idea what the face looked like. But it didn't seem too unlike what it is now.
What will change a great
deal, of course, is breathing. That being depended very much
on breathing, which had acquired a very central role.
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