to be victorious RIGHT NOW.
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| As for me, I
want love to be victorious RIGHT NOW. |
A day or two ago, while walking in my room, I suddenly went through a moment of complete nonexistence: the absolute certitude that I knew nothing, that one couldn't know anything. It was totally hopeless and completely impossible to understand anything, even by going beyond the mind, and no formulation was possible.
It was such an absolute feeling that helping others, making the world progress, spiritual life, seeking the Divine — all that seemed idle talk, empty words! There was nothing to understand. It was impossible to BE.
A feeling of total incapacity.
The experience was like a solvent. Everything seemed to dissolve: the world, the earth, people, life, intelligence.
An absolutely negative condition.
And my solution was the same as always. When the experience was total and complete, when nothing was left, then: "Who cares! I adore You!" That "I" was something utterly insubstantial. There was no form, no being, and no quality to it, just "I adore You."
There was just enough "I" to adore You with.
From that moment on an inexpressible Sweetness dawned, and in that Sweetness, a Voice . . . so sweet and harmonious, too! There was sound, but no words - yet it held a perfectly clear meaning for me, like very precise words: "You have just had your most creative moment"!
[After a month-long physical
ordeal.
Notation of an experience in night of
April 12-13, 1962:]
Suddenly in the night I woke up with the full awareness of what we could call the Yoga of the world. The Supreme Love was manifesting through big pulsations, and each pulsation was bringing the world further in its manifestation. It was the formidable pulsations of the eternal, stupendous love, only love: each pulsation of the love was carrying the universe further in its manifestation.
And the certitude that what is to be done is done and the Supramental Manifestation is realized.
Everything was Personal, nothing was individual.
This was going on and on and on and on.
The certitude that what is to be done is done.
All the results of the Falsehood had disappeared: Death was an illusion, Sickness was an illusion, and Ignorance was an illusion — something that had no reality, no existence. Only love, and love, and love, and love — immense, formidable, stupendous, carrying everything.
And how, how to express in the world? It was like an impossibility, because of the contradiction. But then it came: "You have accepted that this world should know the Supramental Truth . . . and it will be expressed totally, integrally." Yes, yes.
And the thing is done.
* * *
[A few days later:]
I was at the Origin — I was the Origin. For more than two hours, consciously, here on this bed, I was the Origin. It was like gusts — great gusts winding up in bursts. And each of these gusts was a period of the universe.
It was stupendous. I lived more than two hours like that, consciously.
It was love in its supreme essence, something that has nothing to do with what people normally understand by this word.
And each gust of this essence of Love was spreading out while separating and dividing itself.
These weren't forces; it was far beyond the realm of forces. The universe as we know it no longer existed; it was a sort of strange illusion without any relation to That.
There was only the truth of the universe, with those great colored gusts — they were colored with something that is the essence of color. Just as I became conscious of the last one — the one organized outwardly by Sri Aurobindo, one could say — came the absolute certitude that the it was accomplished, that it was decreed.
As the experience unfolded, a Voice explained everything to me. It explained each gust, each period of the universe. And it explained how it all became this, the distortion of the universe.
At some point, I wondered how it was possible for that Consciousness — that supreme Consciousness — to relate to the present distorted universe. How to make the connection without losing that Consciousness? A relation between the two seemed impossible. And that's when the Voice reminded me of my promise: I had promised to do the Work on earth and it would be done. "I promised to do the Work and it will be done."
Then began the process of transition between that true Consciousness and the individual consciousness, as if I were being sent back here to do the work. I was sent back into the body because that last creative gust had to be realized through this body.
The Voice kept explaining everything to me, as I went through each phase in detail. It wasn't pleasant. It took an hour and a half to go from that true Consciousness to the individual consciousness.
For during the experience, this present individuality and this body no longer existed. There were no more limits. I was no longer there — what was there was the Person. And an hour and a half were needed to return to the individual body-consciousness.
The first sign of the return to individuality was a prick of pain. Yes, because I have a sore in a rather awkward place, and it hurts. So I felt the pain. It was the sign of the individuality returning.
Otherwise there was nothing left anymore — no body, no individual, no limits.
And I made a curious discovery: I used to think the individual, the body, felt the pain and disabilities and misfortunes of human life, and I realized it's not my body that feels life's misfortunes, but each misfortune, each pain, each disability has its own individuality, as it were, and each represents a battle.
This may not be true for all bodies, but it is true for mine.
My body is a world of battles.
It is the battlefield.
More and more, this body gives me the feeling of something being entrusted to me for a definite purpose in the universal organization.
The only sensation that remains in the old way is physical pain. Those points of pain seem like the symbolic points of what remains of the old consciousness.
Pain is the only thing that feels the way it used to. Food, taste, smell, vision, hearing — all that's completely changed. They belong to another rhythm.
This new condition has come progressively, like a crystallization of something that's beyond the senses.
But pain is the old world.
Although three or four times, in a flash, even pain disappeared into something else. The pain suddenly became something completely different — another state of consciousness.
If that state remained, I would truly be free of the world as it is.
The whole way the organs function has changed. Have the organs themselves changed, or just the way they function? I don't know. But they all obey another law.
I can still see, but in a very special way. At times, I see with greater precision than ever before. I hear things that way, too.
And I have the definite impression that the last physical ordeal — that so-called illness — was the external and illusory form of an indispensable process of transformation. Without so-called illness there could be no transformation.
But the only concrete thing left in this world — this world of illusion — is pain. It seems to me the very essence of Falsehood. And whatever feels it feels it very concretely! I clearly see it's false, but that doesn't stop my body from feeling it.
And there is a reason: it is the battlefield.
I have even been forbidden to utilize my knowledge, power and force to annul the pain as I used to. That has been totally forbidden.
Yet, I see that something else is in the making. I can't call it a miracle because it isn't miracle, but it's something wonderful — the unknown. When will it come? How will it come? I don't know.
The old way of relating to things no longer exists.
The art of letting oneself be carried by the Supreme in the Infinite. . . .
Yes, the Infinite of Becoming, but with none of the harshness, the friction and clashes one ordinarily encounters in life.
That's what we must capture — a sort of rhythm, a wave movement, of such vastness, such power!
It's really stupendous.
It doesn't disrupt or displace or clash with anything. Yet it carries the universe in its undulatory movement. So smoothly!
Whatever comes from up here, from the mind, is constricted, harsh, and dry. It's violent, aggressive. Even goodwill is aggressive. Even affection, tenderness, attachment — all that is terribly aggressive.
I don't know if it is the same for others, but I feel that the only truly effective method is this sense of not existing, and that what we customarily call ourselves is something that grates and resists. Yet with a very simple movement, we can easily eliminate that from the consciousness. This movement can be formulated in an almost childlike way: "You alone, Lord; You alone can do."
One simply lets oneself melt, keeping the mind still, without any movement, wholly focused on the sensation of melting, with a feeling of limitlessness. And no more distinctions.
Even physically, no more sense of boundaries and time limits. It's like relaxing in an infinite past.
I am speaking of a bodily sensation.
As I am telling it now, it seems to take time, but actually a minute or two of silence is enough to capture it.
I realize that people really panicked this time. They thought I was going to die.
I could have died, had the Lord willed it.
In fact, it has been a kind of death, but I don't say it, because, well, one must have some regard for people's common sense!
One more line and I would say that I was dead and have come back to life. But I don't say it.
Lots of people have been praying for me and even taking vows that if I didn't die they would go here or there on a pilgrimage. It's very touching.
This greatly objectifies my situation, which has nothing to do with a curable disease! I can't be cured!
This is a work of transformation.
At any moment, if the Lord decides it's hopeless, it will be hopeless and over with. But if the Lord has decided I'll go to the end of the experience, then, no matter what happens, I'll go to the end.
The regular way of seeing, feeling and reacting to things really belongs to another world.
For me, the contrast is so great that if I had no regard for people's peace of mind I would say, "I don't know whether I am dead or alive."
Indeed, the way people ordinarily feel life, feel they are alive, is intimately linked to a certain sensation they have of their bodies and of themselves. But if that sensation, the kind of relation people call "I am alive" is completely removed, then how can one say, "I am alive" or "I am not alive"? The distinction no longer exists.
For me, it has been completely removed. It was definitively swept out of me during the night of April 12-13. And it has never come back.
So I can't say, "I am alive" the way they do — it's something else entirely.
Apropos a recent encounter with the scientific way of thinking, which needs to postulates certain hypotheses in order to reach the truth, once again I realized that the last experience of the Great Pulsations may have come to free me from all past knowledge; for to live the truth none of it is needed.
I need neither all this "scientific" terminology nor Sri Aurobindo's terminology nor, of course, anyone else's. I need none of this classification about planes of consciousness and inner realms. And I don't need all sorts of experiences.
I need one experience: the one I have.
I have it in all things and all circumstances — the experience of eternal, infinite, absolute Oneness manifesting in the finite, the relative, and the temporal.
And the process of change I am pursuing seems less and less of a problem. After looking like the ultimate problem, it doesn't seem to be so anymore, because . . . — it can't be uttered — it pleases Him to be this way.
The secret is simply to be in this "it pleases Him."
To be not merely in what is objectified, but also in That which objectifies.
That's all. With that, I need no other hypothesis or theory.
Taken to the extreme, if the identification is perfect, it necessarily means omnipotence.
Ultimately, nothing but omnipotence could convert, and convince, the world. The world isn't ready to experience supreme Love. Supreme Love eliminates all problems, even the problem of creation.
I know it since that last experience.
But the world isn't yet ready; it may take a few thousand years. But it is beginning to be ready for the manifestation of supreme Power, which would result from a constant identification.
But this "constancy" isn't yet there. One is identified and then one isn't, on again and off again. One winds up with one foot here and one foot there! It just won't do.
There must be certain laws that stem from a Wisdom far beyond us, because the experience I have seems to follow quite a definite trajectory, which, because I am in it, I don't understand, and which won't be understood till the end is reached.
I could say some elegant things, but they don't explain anything. For example, this feeling I have that one must die unto death to be born to immortality.
It doesn't mean anything, but it corresponds to something.
To die unto death, that is, to become incapable of dying because death has no more reality.
The sense of an individual position, of being a particular being in a particular place, watching and feeling oneself being, really disappeared with the last experience of the Great Pulsations. Before, this sense of individuality used to bother me a lot. I was forever wondering how to get rid of it.
Curiously enough, I always see that experience of the Great Pulsations at a horizontal distance to my left, as if the experience took place somewhere very far away to the left, in the physical consciousness, and I had to return along a level path from there back into my body.
There, I no longer had a body! I existed in full consciousness, feeling much more alive than here, but I no longer had my body.
That's what made me say that my body was dead. And after I had traveled back here along that level path, I noticed there was still a body.
But this body is no longer my body; it is a body.
Even now, whenever I want to recapture my experience and feel that power and intensity of life, I always go off there, to the left.
Oddly enough, when I tried to understand this feeling of "dying unto death," I found myself over there again! And I seemed to be told, "That was your experience."
Now the body — the body itself - feels it is within things or within people or within an action. There are no more physical limits.
For example, if someone accidentally bumps me with an object or a part of his body, it is never felt as something external; it happens inside. The body's consciousness is much larger than my physical body.
Yesterday, the table leg knocked my foot. There was the ordinary outward reaction: the body jumped. Then the body-consciousness noticed that an unexpected and involuntary collision of two objects had taken place inside itself. And it saw that if it made a certain movement of concentration on that particular spot, inside itself, some pain or damage would result. But if it made the other movement of union, of abolishing all separation (which it can do very well), then the results of the knock would be canceled.
So that's what happened. I let my body cope with the whole thing (while I watched with keen interest).
Someone with the sense of separation had moved the table, so the sense of separation came along with the knock, as well as all that person's regrets. Well, the body simply went into its usual mode, in which there's no sense of separation, and the effect vanished instantaneously.
Had I been asked, "Where were you hit?" I couldn't have said. All I know, because of what I heard, is that the table leg bumped into my foot. But where? I couldn't have said even five minutes after the incident. It had utterly disappeared, and disappeared through a voluntary movement.
The knock had come from something that had slipped in through an unconscious element. This person's state of consciousness entered the body along with the knock. Of course the regrets for having caused the blow were an ego movement.
All these vibrations came along with the knock and that's what the body had to annul in order to annul the result. The body simply absorbed, digested this unconsciousness — and it all vanished without a trace!
When I try to see life as most people see it (it is increasingly difficult), it becomes a mishmash! I understand nothing, and nothing makes sense. For the sake of the action, I have been warned that nobody can understand.
Nobody can comprehend to what extent the Lord is intermingled and present and active in all things.
From time to time, one touches the vibration of Supreme Love, the Love that creates, supports, maintains, fuels progress and is the Manifestation's very purpose (of which those great pulsations were an expression).
That is something so stupendous and marvelous for the material frame, for the body to hold, that it seems to be dosed out. Now and then, you are given a trickle of it to make you realize that the end is That.
Above all, no desire. Be very calm. The calmer you are, the longer it lasts. If you're in a hurry, it goes away.
I can see it takes an extraordinary capacity and solidity to bear That without exploding, for it causes such immediate intensity of joy in all the cells, in the heart and all the organs that they seem on the verge of exploding. Matter needs quite a preparation to be able to hold these vibrations. So this capacity is slowly being prepared and the body is given a trickle at the time to see how much it can bear.
I can bring it on at will, simply by putting myself in a certain state. But I notice it is dosed out; the contact is kept for a short period or in a certain amount. And there's nothing to be done about it; it's an Order from above. A mere hint of impatience would spoil everything and the power to establish the contact would probably be lost. I have never done that and I don't intent to.
It's not unlike those experiments conducted on animals. There's the body stretched out here on the chaise longue as the "subject." Then there's my consciousness, the part focused on the earthly experience and the present transformation (what I call "I"). And then there's the Lord, which is the best and easiest way of my putting it, though I never, ever think of a being.
"I" ask that the body may have the experience, or at least an initial taste, even a touch of the experience of this Love. Each time I ask, it comes instantly. Then I see that this Love is dosed out and maintained in exact proportion to what the body can bear.
The body is aware of this limitation and is a little sad about it. But immediately comes something so soothing, so calming and vast that the body instantly feels the immensity and regains its calm.
This experience I am describing is exactly what happened yesterday. And it's still here. Actually it is always here, though it's more striking when the body is lying down, motionless in the Yoga. The experience is slightly different when walking because that involves activity. But when it is stretched out and asks the Lord to take possession of it, it really asks with all its aspiration.
The intensity of these vibrations is above and beyond anything we are used to feeling.
And what a Wisdom! It knows how to make use of time — it actually changes itself into time — so as to minimize the possibilities of damage.
It's quite evident that, left to itself in its full power of transformation and progress, this flame of aspiration, this flame of Agni would have scant consideration for the result of the process — the result of the process is a burning fire. And there could be mishaps in the functioning of the organs. All the organs must undergo a transformation, but if it is too rapid and sudden, everything could go awry. The machine would simply explode.
I am making interesting discoveries.
Moreover, none of these things are in the least bit theoretical or mental; they're essentially practical. And they take unexpected forms.
The other day, as I was walking, an old formation suddenly showed its face, something that had already tried to materialize when Sri Aurobindo was here, but which he had stopped. It was one of the saddest things that could manifest physically in association with a spiritual life. I had said absolutely nothing, but Sri Aurobindo knew, and he simply did what had to be done, brushed it aside. I hadn't thought about it for more than ten years.
Now it has come back.
"Well, well, why has this returned?" I wondered. And then I saw that this body has been built in such a way as to instinctively attract ordeals, painful experiences. In the face of such formations, it is always passive, consenting, accepting, and totally confident in the ultimate outcome. It has an ingrained certitude that even in the moment of greatest difficulty it will be helped and saved, that the purpose behind all these ordeals is to speed things up, to save time, and to exhaust all the difficulties that seem to negate the goal so that they no longer hinder progress.
Once I saw that, the formation went away.
It had come just to show me that.
And once again the body gave its eternal assent: no matter what it's burdened with, it will always be ready to bear it.
Superficially, this body's temperament could be called a karma, but that's not what it is. It's actually one of the pivots of the body's invisible action, of its consciousness. And it is expressed by attracting certain circumstances.
Intellectually, I don't at all believe in taking others' problems upon oneself; that's childish. But certain vibrations in the world must be accepted, exhausted, and transformed. Inwardly, that's the work I have been doing all my life, consciously, gloriously.
But now it's on a purely physical level, independent of all the realities of other worlds. It's in the body. And this has given me a key to the Work.
It has been quite revealing, like a door opening up.
The body used to be like a little child, complaining when things weren't right. It wouldn't revolt, but it moaned.
But this time its only reaction was, "Why am I not transformed? Why am I not transformed? I want to be transformed. I want to be transformed." Not with words, because this is nothing mental, but through a kind of tension: pushing, pushing, pushing.
Toward what? I don't know.
We call it "the transformation" because we don't know what it is. There's a faint impression of what that new state could be, though it's very, very faint.
But there's this sense of tension, of pushing, of pleading, imploring.
That was the body's only reaction, nothing else, not even sorrow.
At one time — something like fifty years ago — it used to say, "Why do I deserve this?" and similar stupidities; that's been gone for more than fifty years. Then for a long while afterward, something inharmonious or nasty could bring me sorrow; that's gone too. It disappeared with the last experience of April 13.
And now: transformation, transformation, and transformation. That's the only idea left, the only will.
All those spiritual realizations, powers, talents, manifestations seem to me more and more like the feats of a traveling juggler! It may be shocking to hear, but it's true!
The more I go, the more sober it gets.
It's quiet, peaceful, with no fanfare and no make-believe.
And it's not done with the idea that if you keep on this way for some time, there'll be something dazzling at the other end.
Because the other end is the new creation, and how many steps will it take, how many incomplete or imperfect things, approximations, and attempts — how many minute realizations — will it take simply to be able to say, "Now, we're on the way"?
How many centuries before the glorious body of a supramental being appears?
Yesterday evening came a power of creative imagination that was trying to visualize supramental forms, beings living in other worlds and all sorts of similar things. I saw many things. But they seemed like champagne bubbles! "That's all very nice," I thought, "but it's unnecessary!"
There was a time when I considered this a great creative power (and many things I saw in those moments of super-creativity, super-imagination were actually realized years later on the earth), and perhaps it came this time again to give me a little amusement.
It originated in supramental light and had to do with how beings from other worlds would relate with the future beings and similar things.
Bedtime stories.
There was something so tranquil here, so calm and unhurried, not interested in showing anything off, but capable of living in an eternity of quiet effort and progress. It was here, immobile, watching all these things, which lasted all evening.
Finally, when I lay down in bed for the night, I said to the Lord, "I don't need diversions. I don't need to see encouraging things. I only want to work calmly, quietly, in You. You are the worker. You are here and You alone exist. You are the realizer."
Then all grew silent, still, motionless, and the excitement waned.
I am not saying it's impossible to see some sudden mutations and changes. But more and more, the life allotted to this body is to do things without knowledge, to change the world without seeing it, and to be absolutely unconcerned with the results.
As a matter of fact, I have a feeling that to reach the highest and purest Power the very notion of "result" must disappear all together — the Supreme Power has no sense of result at all. The sense of result is yet another rift between the essential, supreme Power and the Consciousness. It's because the Consciousness begins to separate slightly from its oneness with the Supreme Power that the sense of result is created, but otherwise it doesn't exist.
For me it is translated by: "I do things, and the results are none of my business." That's how it's expressed here in the body.
It's a kind of liberation — I don't mean from worry or preoccupation; there's no question of that — but from the very idea of a consequence. It's this way because it has to be this way.
Second after second, That repeats itself eternally, and it is this eternal Pulsation that is expressed in time by those gusts. I feel this very strongly. It's a constant, spontaneous and very natural experience for me. The notion of a Something behind or ahead of things is a Truth changing from immutable Eternity to Eternity of manifestation. And it changes exactly like pulsating gusts — puff, puff, puff.
Irresponsible gusts, like a child's soap bubbles, one might say. No sense of consequences whatsoever. Puff, puff, puff.
So when people come to tell me their problems and ask my advice about what to do next, I almost invariably answer, "Do whatever you like; it doesn't matter!
There's a curious sensation, a peculiar perception of both the true functioning and the functioning distorted by the sense of being an individual body. They're almost simultaneous, and that's why it is so hard to explain.
There are a number of disorders in the body. I don't know if they can be called illnesses, but they're organ disorders: the heart, the stomach, the intestines, the lungs, and so on.
Yet, simultaneously, there's the true state, which can't really be called a "functioning."
When the consciousness is pulled or pushed or poised in a certain position, these disorders appear instantly; I mean the consciousness becomes aware of their existence. And if the consciousness stays in that position long enough, there are what we conventionally call consequences: physical discomforts, for instance.
But if through yogic discipline — or the Lord's intervention? — the consciousness regains its true position, the consequences stop immediately.
Sometimes, though, it's goes this way, that way, back and forth between this position and that position. The back-and-forth movement takes only a few seconds, so I can almost perceive the two functionings simultaneously.
That's what gave me the knowledge of the process, otherwise I wouldn't understand. I would simply think I am falling from one state into another.
That's not it.
The substance, the vibrations, everything is probably following its normal course, and all that is really changing is the way consciousness perceives things.
So taking this knowledge to its extreme limits, life — what we usually call "life," the physical life of the body — and death are one and the same thing. It's just consciousness shifting back and forth.
I don't know if I am making myself clear, but this is fantastic.
This experience comes with examples just as concrete and banal as can be, leaving no room for imagination or fantasy. For instance, this sudden shift of consciousness takes place, and you feel on the verge of fainting: all the blood rushes from the head to the feet; but if the consciousness is caught in time, you don't faint.
I don't know if one can generalize, but there's a distinct impression that what ordinary human consciousness perceives as death might simply be that the consciousness hasn't been brought back to its true position fast enough.
I am quite aware that all this must seem confusing.
I can feel how inadequate words are for describing the experience. In literary terms, one might speak of an "inversion of consciousness." But that's not it. That's just literature.
Perhaps this means we are getting closer to the knowledge of the process. By knowledge, I mean the power to create it, change it, and make it last or cease to be. That's what "knowing" means. All the rest is explanations the mind gives to itself. And I can feel that something (what Sri Aurobindo calls "the Lord of Yoga": the part of the Supreme concerned with terrestrial evolution) is leading me toward the discovery of that Power or Knowledge through the only possible way: experience.
And it's going as fast as possible.
I learned what I know about the gods before coming here, through the Chaldean tradition. I've had conscious contacts with all the beings of that tradition as well as with all the beings described in Indian tradition. In fact, as far as I know I've had contacts with deities of all the religions.
There's a gradation, levels where these beings stand, from the vital to the mental realm and above. Humans have deified many things, making gods out of whatever didn't seem exactly like them. And one can have contacts with all these deities on their own plane of existence.
In the overmental world stand the gods with the power to rule the universe and, partially, the earth. The Vedic forefathers used this world, so do occultists, and so do Tantrics. But there's another path which, distrusting the gods and wary of forms and images, bypasses them all through a kind of intellectual asceticism and rises straight as an arrow, proud and pure, towards the supramental Light. That is a living experience.
Sri Aurobindo preached the integral yoga, which embraces everything, so one can have all the experiences. And the universe was clearly created as a field of experience. Some people prefer the straight and narrow path; others like to dawdle along the way; and still others are drawn to have all the experiences, and they often wander for a long time through the overmental world.
Actually, the world of the gods belongs to our side of things, although on a godlike scale, i.e., with the gods' power, their capacities, their consciousness and freedom, not to mention their immortality. In other words, a godlike life, which most human beings would more than envy.
To me, the overmental consciousness is a magnified consciousness — far lovelier, far loftier, far more powerful and happier, but . . .
For one thing, the gods don't have the sense of Oneness, of being various expressions of the one Divine. They are still part of the realm of diversity, though free from Ignorance. They have no Ignorance, no Unconsciousness, but they have the sense of diversity and of separation. And in their own way, they sometimes quarrel among themselves. So they are still on this side, but with magnified forms. And powers beyond our comprehension: for example, the power to change form at will or to be in many places at once — all sorts of things that poor human beings can only dream of. The gods have it all. They live a divine life!
But it is not supramental.
The true sign of the Supramental is Oneness. Not a sum of many different things, but a Oneness at play with Itself.
When I say "Oneness," I don't merely mean having the "sense" that all is one and that everything takes place within that One. What I mean by Oneness is that one cannot distinguish between conceiving an action, the will to act, the action itself, and the result. It's all one and simultaneous.
But how? It can't be explained! We can get a glimpse of the experience, but ultimately, it's inexpressible; we have no means to express it.
If we say, "all is simultaneous," we're talking in platitudes. As I have often said, other words would be needed, another way of formulating things.
At their best, at the height of their possibilities, human conceptions can express something or other of the overmental experience. For me, it is very vivid and familiar because I have often been in that world. Even so, I consider words too awkward to describe it, although "poetic" metaphors can sometimes convey an impression of it.
As for speaking of the Other Thing, even while having the experience, the only thing one feels like doing is . . . to keep quiet. As soon as one utters a word, it all clouds over.
But the experience of the gods has never been more than a distraction for me — an amusement, a pleasant diversion; none of it seems essential or indispensable. One can treat oneself to the luxury of these experiences, and they increase one's knowledge and power and this and that, but it's not particularly important.
We can have access to the Supramental without any of these experiences. But if someone wants to know and experience the universe, wants to be identified with the Supreme in His expression, well, all this is part of His expression in varying degrees and with varying powers.
I think that once we are identified with the Supreme and He has chosen us to do a work on earth, then He quite naturally grants us all these things, because it increases our power of action.
But the Thing is altogether different.
Is there such thing as error?
There are only things that seem impossible to us because we don't know that the Lord is all possibility and can do whatever He wants any way He wants. Error is one of the infinite possibilities - "infinite" in the sense that absolutely nothing is outside the possibility of being.
So where is room for error in this?
It's we who call it "error," but it's totally arbitrary.
"This is an error," we say. But in relation to what? To our judgment of what is true, but certainly not in relation to the Lord's judgment, since it is part of Him!
We just can't get it through our heads: "This can be, but that cannot be," we keep saying. But that's not so! Everything is possible, and only our own stupidity says that something "cannot be."
The only One who's not worried is He who watches the show, because He knows everything that's going to happen. He has absolute knowledge of everything that is happening, has happened, or will happen.
For Him, it's all one presence.
And then, there are the actors, the poor actors who don't even quite know their roles. They worry and fret because they're being made to play something they know nothing about.
I've just had a very strong sense of this: we're all playing parts in the comedy, but we don't know what the comedy is all about, where it's heading, or where it's coming from. We barely know what we're supposed to do at any given moment.
But when One knows everything, He can't worry anymore; He smiles. He must be having great fun.
Yet we are given the full capacity to have just as much fun as He does.
But few people can bear this widening of their understanding.
When I close my eyes and look inward, I see this Smile, this Joy, and this Laughter. And this peace! Oh, such peace! Such a luminous and total peace: no more struggle, no more contradictions. A single luminous harmony encompassing everything. What we call error, suffering, misery is all there. Nothing is left out.
It is another way of seeing.
There's nothing to say.
If we sincerely want to find a way, it isn't really so difficult. There's nothing to do but leave everything to the Lord.
And He does it all.
He takes anything, even what we call a quite ordinary intelligence, and He simply shows how to leave that intelligence aside: "Here, keep still now. Don't stir; don't interfere; I don't need you."
And then a door opens, and we're led through to the other side.
Oh, all that frightful toil and effort of the mind to try to understand! Struggling, giving itself headaches! Absolutely useless! It leads nowhere, except to more confusion and headaches.
A so-called problem arises: "What am I to say? What am I to do?" There is nothing to do! Nothing but to say to the Lord, "You see, here's the situation." That's all.
Then keep very still.
And spontaneously, without thinking, without calculating or doing anything whatsoever, without the slightest effort, we do what must be done. But it's the Lord who does it; it's no longer a particular person. He does it, arranges the circumstances, arranges the people. He puts the words in our mouth or under our pen. He does it all, all, all. And all we have to do is to let ourselves live in bliss.
Under certain conditions some people may feel powerful, wonderful, luminous, competent, but as far as I am concerned, that's because they have no idea what they're really like! When one really sees what one is made of . . . it's really nothing.
Yet it is capable of anything . . . provided one lets the Lord do it.
Personally, I have come to feel Him everywhere, all the time, to the point of actual physical contact (it's subtle physical, but physical): in things, in the air, in people. So I don't have far to go! I just have to do a slight movement inward, one second of concentration - and there He is!
He is far only if we think He's far.
Of course, if we start thinking of all the worlds, all the universal planes of consciousness, and He's way, way, way up there at the end of all that, then it does become very far indeed!
But if we think of Him as being everywhere, in everything, that He is everything, that only our way of perceiving things keeps us from seeing and feeling Him, and all we have to do is this slight movement inward, then it gets very concrete. In one position everything seems artificial, hard, dry, false; and just with this slight inward movement all becomes vast, tranquil, luminous, peaceful, joyous.
How? Where? It can't be described, for it is solely a movement of consciousness.
The difference between the true and the false consciousness becomes increasingly sharp and precise, and at the same time slight. Nothing "great" is required to go from one position to the other.
In the past, there was this feeling of being confined in something and a huge effort of concentration, interiorization, absorption was needed to get out of this confinement; whereas now I feel it's something one accepts as a sort of mask, something like a very thin and very hard little rind — and with that slight movement inward, it vanishes.
I foresee a time when it will no longer be necessary to be aware of the mask. The mask will be so thin that we can see and feel and act through it — and it won't be necessary to hide behind it.
That's what is beginning to happen.
But this Presence . . . is a Vibration embracing everything. A Vibration encompassing infinite power, infinite joy, infinite peace.
Yet it is just a Vibration.
Oh, Lord! It cannot be thought out, so it can't be described. As soon as one starts thinking, it's the same old mess again. That's why one can't say anything about it.
There was a time when I curled up into a ball inwardly. For the least difficulty I became just like a sphere!
Then I could feel Him everywhere, everywhere, everywhere: within, without, everywhere. Him, nothing but Him.
There is a form and there is no form.
One feels a gaze, too, yet there are no eyes.
One feels a smile, and there's no mouth, no face! Yet there is a smile and a gaze and . . . one can't help saying, "Yes, Lord, I am stupid!"
But He laughs — and one laughs, happy.
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