and He is keeping it.
Well, I want His secret.
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The Lord has obviously a secret,
and He is keeping it. Well, I want His secret. |
These days I am having every possible experience in the body, one after another.
Yesterday and this morning . . . oh, this morning! I saw here in the heart center the Master of the Yoga. He was not separate from me, yet I could see him, and he even seemed slightly imbued with color.
He does everything, decides and organizes everything in the smallest detail with almost mathematical precision.
It was not just the experience of the divine Presence, but that the Divine alone is acting in the body, that He has become the body. During the experience it was absolutely impossible to have the least disorder in the body, and not only in the body, but also in all surrounding matter. It took place in my bathroom upstairs, certainly to show it exists in the most trivial things. It was as if every object obeyed automatically, without even needing to decide to obey. There was a divine harmony in everything, constantly.
If that is established in a permanent way, there can no longer be any illnesses, any accidents, any disorder. All things should become gradually harmonized just as they were harmonized.
All the objects in the bathroom were full of a joyful enthusiasm. It was delightful to see the water running from the tap, the mouthwash in the bottle, the glass, the sponge — it all had such an air of joy and assent!
I have known an absolute identity of the will with the divine Will since 1910, which has never left me. But this is something else. This is matter becoming the Divine.
Also, it came with the feeling that it was something happening for the first time on earth.
It is truly a state of absolute omniscience and omnipotence in the body, which modifies all the vibrations around.
This is the result of the descent of the supramental substance into matter. Only that substance — what it has put into physical matter — could have made it possible. It is a new ferment. From a material standpoint, it removes from matter its tamas, the heaviness of its unconsciousness; and from a psychological standpoint, its ignorance and its falsehood. Matter is subtilized.
No doubt, it has come as a first experience only to show how it will work.
The moment the body becomes conscious, it becomes conscious of its own falsehood!
There is this law, that law, that third law, that fourth law, that tenth law — everything is "law." "If you do this, such and such result will ensue, and so on and so forth." It reeks! All this reeks of falsehood.
In the body, we have no faith in the divine Grace, none, none whatever! Unless we have gone through a yogic discipline, as I have, we say: "All these inner feelings and this psychology are all very good, but material facts are material facts — they have a concrete reality — an illness is an illness, food is food, and each thing you do has a consequence, and on and on and on!"
We must understand that this just isn't true. It isn't true. It's a falsehood.
If only we would accept the Supreme inside our bodies, if we had the experience I had a few days ago [The Divine as Matter]: the supreme Knowledge in action, with complete abolition of all past and future consequences. Each second has its own eternity and its own law of absolute truth.
One of the greatest obstacles to overcome is the sense of legitimacy the ordinary consciousness confers to all the so-called physical laws, all that science has discovered physically. It all seems like unquestionable reality to the consciousness, a reality that stands independent and absolute in the face of the eternal divine Reality.
When dealing with movements of anger, desire, etc., one sees they are wrong and must disappear, but when material laws are involved — the body's needs and health, for example — they have such a solid, established, and concrete reality that they appear absolutely undeniable.
Well, in order to stop putting spiritual life on one side and material life on the other, one must make the resolution never to legitimize any of these movements, under any circumstances.
And the proof (I have the proof because I experienced it myself) is that the moment you are in the other consciousness, the true consciousness, all the things that seemed so real, so concrete change instantly. There are certain material conditions of my body that have changed instantly. It did not last long enough for everything to change, but certain things changed and never reverted.
In other words, if that state of consciousness could be kept constantly, it would be a perpetual miracle (what we call a miracle from our ordinary point of view). But from the supramental point of view, it would not be a miracle at all, just the most normal of things.
Yesterday evening, at the Playground, I realized that the children, who had had a whole week to prepare their questions about the text I am reading, had not found a single question. A terrible lethargy! A total lack of interest. So after I finished speaking, I thought to myself, "But what is in these people who are interested in nothing except their little personal affairs?" And I began going down into their mental atmosphere, in search of the little light, of something that would respond.
I was literally sucked as if into a hole, in such a material way that my hand began slipping down the armrest, my other hand went down toward the ground, and my head, too! I thought I was going to touch my knees!
The impression — I actually saw it — was of falling into a crevasse between two steep rocks, which seem to be made of something harder than basalt, black, but metallic at the same time, with extremely sharp edges. A mere touch and you would be lacerated.
It seemed endless and bottomless, becoming narrower and narrower and narrower like a funnel. So narrow that there was almost no more room — not even for consciousness — to get through. The bottom was invisible — a black hole. It went down and down and down, like that, without air, without light, except for a sort of glimmer that enabled me to make out the edges. Finally, as my head began touching my knees, I asked myself, "But what is at the bottom of this hole?"
As I uttered these words, it's as if I hit a spring hidden at the very bottom — a spring I had not seen, but which reacted instantly, with incredible power — and I was cast up, hurled out of this crevasse into . . . a formless, limitless expanse, infinitely comfortable - not exactly warm, but giving a feeling of ease and intimate warmth.
It was all-powerful, endowed with infinite richness. It didn't have any form, and it had no limits. It was as if made of countless imperceptible dots of a deep warm gold (this is only a feeling, a translation). All this was absolutely alive — alive with a power that seemed infinite. And yet motionless.
It lasted for quite some time, for the rest of the meditation.
This was not a willed experience. I had decided nothing, simply to be passive.
The spring means exactly this: in the deepest depths of the Inconscient lies the supreme spring that propels us to the Supreme. When we touch the very bottom of the Inconscient, we touch the Supreme.
This hole was the mental Inconscient, because the starting point was mental. A special Inconscient made rigid, hard, and resistant by all that the mind has brought into our consciousness. It is far worse than a purely material Inconscient! A "mentalized" Inconscient, one might say. All this rigidity, this hardness, this narrowness come from the mental presence in the creation.
It is a terrible image of the mental action in the Inconscient.
The mental Inconscient refuses to change, which is not the case of the original inconscient. The original inconscient is not organized in any way and has no particular way of being. Whereas this one is an organized Inconscient — organized by a beginning of mental influence.
A hundred times worse!
But this almighty spring is the perfect image of what must happen and will happen for everyone: One is suddenly cast forth into the vastness.
The experience of the Almighty Spring was a new step in building the link between the two worlds. Where I was cast was clearly into the origin of the supramental creation — all this warm gold, this tremendous living power, and this sovereign peace. And once again, I saw that the values governing the supramental world have nothing in common with our values here, even the values of the highest wisdom, even those we consider the most divine when we live constantly in the divine Presence.
It is entirely different.
Not only in our state of adoration and surrender to the Supreme, but even in our state of identification, the quality of the identification is different depending on whether we are on this side, moving in this hemisphere, or have passed to the other side and have emerged in the other world, the higher hemisphere.
The character or the type of relation I had with the Supreme at that moment was entirely different from the one we have here — even the identification had a different quality to it. One does conceive that all the lower movements would be different, but this identification through which the Supreme governs and lives in us has been the summit of our experience here on earth — well, the way He governs and lives is different depending on whether we are in this hemisphere here or in the supramental life. And what made the experience so intense was that I was able to perceive vaguely both states of consciousness at once.
It was almost as if the Supreme Himself, the way in which we experience Him, were different. In the higher hemisphere, there is an intensity and a plenitude that translate into a power different from the one here.
How to express this?
I could say it this way: it's as if our entire spiritual life were made of silver, while the supramental life is made of gold. This whole spiritual life of the psychic being and of all our present consciousness, which appears so warm, so full, so wonderful, so luminous to the ordinary consciousness — well, all this splendor seems poor in comparison to the splendor of the new world.
It isn't something higher than the summit we can attain here; it is not one more rung. We have reached the end here, the summit, but . . . it's the character that is different. The character, in the sense that there is fullness, richness, and a power, a "something" that . . . eludes us.
It is truly an inversion of consciousness.
When we begin living the spiritual life, an inversion of consciousness takes place, which for us is the proof that we have entered the spiritual life. Well, yet another one occurs when we enter the supramental world.
It's a feeling that is repeated with each new conquest. With each new conquest, we feel that until then we had lived only on the surface of the realization, on the surface of "surrender," on the surface of power — the surface of the experience. Behind the surface, there is a depth, and only when we penetrate that depth do we touch the Real Thing. Each time, what seemed a depth becomes the surface — a surface that feels not really alive, like a copy, an imitation, an image, but not the Thing itself. When we break through it, we feel we have uncovered the Source, the Power, and the Truth of things; then this source, power, and truth in turn become an appearance, an imitation, a mere transcription in comparison to something concrete — the new realization.
Meanwhile, we must admit we still don't have the key. Or rather, we know quite well where it is, and there is only one thing to do to get it: the perfect surrender Sri Aurobindo speaks of, the total surrender to the divine Will, whatever happens, even in the darkest night.
There is night and sunshine, night and sunshine, and night again, many nights, but one must cling to this will for surrender - cling as through a storm — and put everything into the hands of the Supreme Lord.
Until the day when the Sun will shine forever, the day of total Victory.
Shortly before Sri Aurobindo's birthday [August 15, 1959], I had a unique experience showing that the two worlds - the physical world and the world of Truth — are not far from one another. The world of Truth is very close, as a lining of the other.
The supramental light penetrated directly into my body, without going through the inner beings.
It was the first time.
Of a red and gold color, marvelously warm and intense, it came in through the feet and went up and up. And as it went up, the fever, too, went up, because the body was not accustomed to such intensity.
As all that light gathered near the head, I thought I would burst and the experience would have to be interrupted. But then, I distinctly received the indication to bring down the Peace and the Calm and to widen all this body-consciousness and all these cells so they could bear the supramental light. So as the light went up, I brought down vastness and unshakable peace.
Suddenly, there was a split second of fainting.
I found myself in another world, but not far (I was not in a total trance).
That world was almost as substantial as the physical world. There were rooms, Sri Aurobindo's room with the bed where he rests. And he lived there; he was there all the time. It was his home. There was even my room, with a large mirror like the one I have here, combs, and all kinds of things. All the objects were of a substance almost as dense as in the physical world, but they had their own light, which was not translucent, not transparent, not radiant, but self-luminous. The objects and the substance of the rooms did not have the same opacity as the physical objects here; they were not harsh and hard as in the physical world.
And Sri Aurobindo was there, majestically, a magnificent beauty. He had all his beautiful hair as before. It was all so concrete, so substantial — he was even being served some kind of food.
I remained there for one full hour (I looked at my watch before and after). I spoke to Sri Aurobindo, because I had some important questions about the direction of certain things. He said nothing. He listened quietly and looked at me as if all my words were unnecessary. He understood everything instantaneously.
And he answered with a gesture and two expressions on his face — an unexpected gesture that had nothing to do with any thought of mine. He picked up three combs lying near the mirror and he put them into his own hair. He planted one comb in the middle and one on each side of his head, gathering all his hair over his temples. He was literally coifed with these combs, making a kind of crown. And I immediately understood that by doing this he meant he adopted my conception: "You see, I embrace your conception of things, and I coif myself with it; it is my will."
When I woke up, I didn't have the usual feeling of returning from afar and of having to reenter my body. No, it was simply like being in that other world and taking a step back, and I found myself here again. It took me a good half an hour to understand that this world here existed as much as the other and that I was no longer on the other side but here, in the world of falsehood. I had forgotten everything - people, things, what I had to do. Everything had gone, as if it had no reality at all.
So it's not that this world of Truth has to be created from scratch; it is already there, completely ready, like a lining of our own world. Everything is already there.
I remained in that state for two full days, two days of absolute felicity. And Sri Aurobindo was with me the whole time - when I walked, he walked with me; when I sat down, he sat next to me.
I showed all these people, all this field of work to Sri Aurobindo and asked him when that other world, the real one, would come to take the place of our world of falsehood.
All he replied was: Not ready.
By the end of the second day I realized I could not continue to stay like that because the work was not progressing. The work has to be done in the body; the realization must be gained here in the physical world; otherwise something isn't complete. So I withdrew and set to work here again.
There is a difference between immortality and the deathless state. Sri Aurobindo has described it very well in Savitri.
The deathless state is what can be envisaged for the human physical body in the future. It is constant rebirth. Instead of foundering and falling apart by lack of plasticity and incapacity to follow the universal movement, the body is constantly being undone forward, as it were.
What persists through all the outer changes is the particular way each individual has of organizing the cells of his body. All the rest is undone and redone, but it is undone in a thrust toward the new instead of collapsing backward into death. And it is redone in a constant aspiration to follow the progressive movement of the divine Truth.
But for that, the body — the body-consciousness - must first learn to widen itself. It is indispensable, for otherwise all the cells become a kind of boiling porridge under the pressure of the supramental light.
What usually happens is that when the body reaches its maximum intensity of aspiration or of ecstasy of Love, it is unable to contain it. It shrinks back, becomes inert. Things settle down, and one is enriched with a new vibration, but then everything resumes its normal course.
So one must widen oneself in order to learn to bear unflinchingly the intensities of the supramental force, to go forward always, always with the ascending movement of the divine Truth, without falling backward into the decrepitude of the body.
That is what Sri Aurobindo means when he speaks of an intolerable ecstasy. It is not an intolerable ecstasy; it is an unflinching ecstasy.
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