(To my surprise, the next day Satprem asked me again to bring the tape recorder on our walk. I felt encouraged to ask the question I had been reluctant to ask.)
.
(Luc:) I wanted to ask you a question about that "power" you spoke of yesterday. From the outside, one gets the impression that it is rather as if a car were moving at a certain speed, and accelerated and accelerated--and suddenly there's a sort of break in the movement of the car: it leaves the road and takes off into the air--it behaves in an altogether "unclassical" manner. As if that "power" had nothing in common with our usual notion of spirituality.
.
(Satprem:) But of course, it has nothing in common! They would be crushed to a pulp if they were in contact with that!
The rishis, yes, they knew....
.
(Luc:) So my question is to know how--not how one gets it (I understand one doesn't "get" it; it has to come by itself), but--
.
(Satprem:) What helps to make it come?
.
(Luc:) Yes...what has to happen, at some point, in the being--in the body--for that Thing to manifest?
.
(Satprem:) All right, let me put things as simply as possible (I always use the same metaphor because I find it very vivid): we are REALLY like fish inside a fishbowl--it's an absolute fact. It is a fishbowl of horror, of pain, of calamity. But then...(after all, sometimes there is a grace in life), all of a sudden, something in the body cries out...CRIES OUT--something cries out materially, not in the mind, not as a result of self-discipline or anything of the sort. A cry suddenly bursts out of the ordinary man in the street because he is SUFFOCATING. And all of a sudden...the fish sticks its nose out on the other side of the water, into another air--which is formidable (formidable, because he's still a fish). But, you see, you stick your nose out on the other side, you emerge--it's your SUBSTANCE that has to emerge there, nothing else! I'm talking of the cry of the man who is condemned to death, the cry of the man who is being tortured, the cry of the nightmare, the cry of--you've reached the END, you understand; you simply can't go on: you're dying.
.
So what is the way to get there? The way is uncatchable, indescribable; it belongs to no system, no spirituality, no...--it belongs to the substance that CRIES OUT.
.
That cries out.
.
All of a sudden, in the middle of its nightmare, it cries out. In the midst of its pain, of its...it lets slip a cry.
.
And you emerge a first time. You emerge...and you are in that other Power of life--which is life.
.
(Sri Aurobindo:)
All the world is changed to a single oneness.
.
A Revolution in the Body
.
But the most extraordinary discovery that I--in my body, you understand, because you can discover anything you want in your head, it's just hot air; whereas when the body makes a discovery, it's...absolute, you know. It's like: suddenly it knows how to swim, or suddenly it knows how to--it KNOWS. These are absolute discoveries. Well, it was extraordinary that day when the body suddenly REALIZED (it was feeling all the horror of that cruelty, that suffering, that...), when it said to itself, "WHY, THIS ISN'T LIFE DYING; THIS IS DEATH LIVING!"
.
Do you understand?
.
It is DEATH that lives--it isn't life that dies; it's DEATH that lives.
.
I felt that death everywhere--death-death-death, cruel death. Death in every way: in my mind, my heart, my life. There was nothing but death and horror, really--what kind of life is this, for God's sake!
.
What kind of life is this?
.
And then--I don't know how to describe it, because for the body it's quite simple and overwhelming, like a complete reversal of all its values, but not "intellectual values"--suddenly it was right there in the flesh; it was...it was like being born to the world. Or being born to a world.
.
That's it: it isn't life that...; it's DEATH that lives.
.
It created a sort of...revolution in the body, a complete reversal, a real breakthrough, I assure you.
.
There isn't any method.
.
You see, it is right at the point of dying that you begin to emerge. "At the point of dying"--you can die in your heart, die in your mind, die in your...in fact, we never stop dying in this life; that's all we do! But it has to become sufficiently...that death has to hold you sufficiently in its grip...so that there is such an intense aspiration in the body, you see--we when it is asphyxiated.
.
As when it is asphyxiated.
.
Well, look, there isn't any manual for that! You must...all of a sudden you kick the bottom of that...that hell, and you emerge. But "emerge"--it's in your SUBSTANCE that you emerge, not in your head, you understand! It is both EXTREMELY SIMPLE and absolutely indescribable. There is no "path"; it's something completely automatic. There is no literature about it. There is no philosophy on it.
.
For the body, the Divine is something one DRINKS.
.
(Mother:) And it isn't the result of an aspiration or research, an effort or a tapasya [discipline], nothing of the kind--it comes: plop!
.
...And there is no imitating it. What's wonderful is that it can't be imitated! Everything else--for example, all ascetic realizations--can be imitated. But that cannot be imitated, because...there's no equivalent anywhere.
.
...All your aspiration, your tapasya, your effort, all that is individual--absolutely no effect. It comes, and that's it.
.
You can do only one thing, which is to ANNUL YOURSELF AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. If you can annul yourself completely, the experience is total. And if one could keep that blank state constantly, then the experience would remain there constantly.
.
I tell you, the first time, it was--oh, it was like drinking nectar! The body was drinking. It drank for HOURS--it drank and drank and drank and drank.
.
I had never seen anything like it!
.
It was...it was unbelievable! It drank and drank and drank and drank--really as if it had been thirsty for thousands of years, and suddenly it was DRINKING the Divine! There was not even such a word as "divine"; it was just life pouring in for the first time.
.
(Sri Aurobindo:)
I have drunk the Infinite like a giant's wine.
.
So that Power is...
.
You can't describe the way--it's automatic. You can't "understand" it; you can't understand a way that doesn't exist--it is made for you. You can't "understand" it, because how can you ask a fish to understand what happens in the sunlight? It's impossible--it's another...way of being.
.
So it's automatic.
.
The only thing is the beginning: "Really, it's hell in here!" It's hell, and that's all. And it isn't just hell in your head--you're at the end of your rope! Then, all this matter, all that is covered up, you know, ENTOMBED, shut in a tomb--all this body covered up by that dreadful mental formation: that philosophy, religion, atavism...(the body is almost literally in a TOMB beneath all that!)--all of a sudden, all that breaks open.
.
The body suffocates!--we are just not aware of it. We notice it...we notice it when it begins to die! But there's obviously no manual on suffocation or asphyxiation--at that moment whatever must happen happens....
.
Then, gradually--and that's the painful part--the old fish learns how to live in that other air, that other Power, that other kind of breathing.
.
But it is as material as this (Satprem makes a fist). It's really--it isn't a metaphor--that material. One day, when the first fish became amphibian, it must have gone through hell--it must have been asphyxiated and suffocated in order to invent a new way of breathing. Well, this is exactly the same thing, you see.
.
It's EXACTLY the same--MATERIALLY the same.
.
These are not "metaphors."
.
The Other Air
.
I can tell you quite simply how it happened, the first time when really...when it happened. I don't need to tell you all the details: truly, since the age of twenty I have been thrown into horror, and I did go through a lot of horror and pain and--a lot, a lot...
.
Anyway...
.
(silence)
.
But a time comes when you really reach the end of the line. To reach it at twenty is already difficult; to reach it at sixty is in a way easier--but it's also more difficult. So there's really that...burning NEED in the body--because all spiritualities and ideas and methods and all that are part of the fishbowl, part of the asphyxiation, part of the NOTHING, you see. And then there's this matter, this body, so full of pain--and genuine pain, you know, because one has lived enough to be able to feel a little of all that misery, which is not only one's own, but the misery of this dreadful world. So you say to yourself, "That's it, you're going to die, and then what? What will you have DONE? What will you have truly LIVED? What is--WHERE IS LIFE, for God's sake?! Where is life?"
.
Where is life?
.
Well, one of these times (you can't pinpoint one in particular; there are millions of times, thousands of times, and some days it's more vivid than others--well, that day it was more vivid), it's absolutely as if everything in the body, all this consciousness, this...(this what? What drives this body), all this were seized with such an intensity--a MORTAL intensity, I could say--with such a CRY... I could see the entire course from the time I was twenty, with the Gestapo, till I was sixty--and what I saw was forty years of horror! FORTY years, you understand: I am sixty and I still find the SAME HORROR!
.
Truly, one can't talk about these things....
.
So it's...I don't know. Of course, that cry happened many times before--many, many times, I am sure, and since very long ago.
.
But there was a day when all that cry of the body was like millions and billions of material particles, which started to rise and rise and rise and rise from the whole body....So I said to myself, "This is it, you're going to die." And I couldn't have cared less. It was really like millions of particles of my body which... (were they the consciousness of my body? or the cry of my body? or what?--I can't say). But there was really the feeling of coutless tiny particles leaving the body. As if the whole body were being emptied, you know--being emptied of all its being, of all its...life (or blood?).
.
And all of a sudden, it found itself...well, it found itself in that other air....It had the impression of rising and rising and rising (while, in fact, it stayed right on the ground), and then it emerged into...into another air, another Power, another--call it what you like.
.
You can't describe these things. I tell you, it is both extremely simple and... People have to experience it, that's all.
.
People have to experience it.
.
(Sri Aurobindo:)
A divine force shall flow through tissue and cell
And take the charge of breath and speech and act
And all the thoughts shall be a glow of suns
And every feeling a celestial thrill.
Often a lustrous inner dawn shall come
Lighting the chambers of the slumbering mind;
A sudden bliss shall run through every limb;
And Nature with a mightier Presence fill.
Thus shall the earth open to divinity
And common natures feel the wide uplift,
Illumine common acts with the Spirit's ray
And meet the deity in common things.
Nature shall live to manifest secret God,
The Spirit shall take up the human plan,
This earthly life become the life divine.
.
(Mother:) It's a state, a state of intense vibration where you have at once a feeling of omnipotence, even in this (Mother pinches the skin of her hand), in this old thing, and...a luminous omnipotence. And always with something comparable to goodness, benevolence, but far beyond those things (they seem like ridiculous distortions in comparison). This (gesture of expansion) and static at the same time. In other words, there's a feeling of eternity in the cells.
.
There must be enough of a CRY, enough intensity of call, enough... This is perhaps how all mutations happened? Because a given species is dying--well, it's got to find the other way, or perish.
This is what has to happen in a few individuals.
And it can be ANY individual.
The grace is... to call.
That's all.
We could also say that the grace is to asphyxiate...
That's true.
And, of course, this has nothing to do with any spirituality. You see, I did do...well, I've had all sorts of experiences in my life. So as far as the regions "above" are concerned, the super-regions of yogis and people who practice meditation, I know them well--I've explored them. Well, I tell you, they seem like a paltry dream in comparison--like a dream. That power has such a DENSITY! And yet, it is such an incredible nectar. It's something you TASTE, you DRINK, you... INHALE. How can you possibly describe that? For the body, which has been living in death for... well, for nearly sixty years in my case (and for each person, it's been death for as long as he or she has lived), all of a sudden, it's life!
.
All of a sudden, it's life!
.
But it's a life that...You do not emerge into it once and for all, you see. You carry with you all the old fish. So you must constantly...well, now the old fish must learn the new way of breathing, the new way of being. It must be learned. And learned how? Well, learned by asphyxiating, by painful labor, by--you learn it on the job. This is not in any manual, you see. And then, it will vary; it will be different for each individual. How do you learn to evolve from fish to amphibian? How do you learn to grow legs to walk on the ground? Yes, how do you learn?...
.
That's it, you see.
.
The fins have to change into something that can walk, the lungs have to change into something that can breathe the air--it's a completely new way of being. It has to be developed, to be learned....
.
(Mother:) It can't last, mostly because of the constant contact with... (gesture showing the old world around Mother). But even without that contact, for example at night, it may stay an hour, two hours, in that state, and suddenly, you don't know why, it slips back into the other way. And you hurt here, hurt there; you're uncomfortable, oh...terrible.
.
An Automatic Path
.
Well, there isn't any manual for that. There's nothing.
.
It's a wonderful path (in a sense), because, since you can't know ANYTHING about it, you're certain not to make any mistakes! You are certain. You can't make any mistakes. Because you can't know what the next step should or shouldn't be--you simply can't. You don't know--you know NOTHING! What does a fish know about life in the sunshine? It knows NOTHING.
.
So, it's a totally automatic path--totally material and totally automatic. You meet all the obstacles, all the difficulties, all the complications--all that is necessary for you to learn the new way of breathing, the new way of walking, the new way of being. And you can't invent it; you can't plan it--it's impossible. Impossible.
.
You can't make any mistakes--there is no road!
.
(Mother:) No more ties--free, free, free, free! Always ready to change everything, except one thing: aspiration, that thirst.
.
I don't know what's going to happen--the body is not told what will happen. Actually, it's easy to understand: if the body knew in advance what will happen, it would probably do something stupid instead of being very attentive and very... well, receptive, not just "listening" (it isn't just a matter of hearing something), but attentive to the Impulse, to do exactly what must be done--what is expected of it--for everything, absolutely everything, down to the least detail: eating, sleeping, speaking, moving, everything. To be like that all the time, all the time: attentive to do nothing except what has to be done.
.
And, you know, if you tried to deceive yourself--pfft! (gesture of a blade across the throat) It's impossible, you see, because it is overwhelming. It is, in fact, a PURE air, so if the least thing is impure, it's...simply pulverized. And that's not a joke! You must be TOTALLY pure--in fact, the whole task is for the old fish to purify itself of all its old...way of being. And if you try to bring a little of the fish into the other air, it EXPLODES! You can't cheat with "that," you see. You simply can't; it's impossible--it's a material fact. You can't bring any of the fish to the other side; it's impossible.
.
I could say any fool can do it. But it has to be a fool who is really asphyxiating, really crying out, really calling, really...
.
All those who believe they have remedies, panaceas, tricks are still completely stuck in the death of the fishbowl--they are nothing but panaceas of death. The point is, you must be at the end of all "panaceas"--at the end of everything.
.
(Mother:) It's day after day, you know, with something new every day; and always the same immediate conclusion: I know nothing, I understand nothing, I am nothing.... The negation of EVERYTHING. All the mental props of the human consciousness are gone. And for little things, for big things--for everything.
.
If Sri Aurobindo and Mother had not MADE the way, it would be completely impossible, you know, because... you would panic instantly. It would be impossible--they had to open the way because you would think you've gone insane. You'd fall directly into death!
.
So the way has been opened.
.
In other words, the surface of that...mortal illusion has been BROKEN. And through that break, let's say that...others, in turn, can pass: their cry can get through.
.
(Mother:) It must be "worked out," as they say; it must be worked out in detail, but the change is accomplished--the change IS ACCOMPLISHED.
.
That is, the material conditions that have been elaborated by the mind, fixed by it (Mother closes her fist tightly), and which seemed so inevitable--to the point that those who had a living experience of the higher worlds thought it necessary to escape this material world, abandon it, in order really to live the Truth (that's the origin of all those theories and beliefs)--but now it's no longer the case! Now it's no longer the case. The physical is capable of receiving the higher Light, the Truth, the true Consciousness, and of MANIFESTING it.
.
It isn't easy; it requires endurance and will-power, but a day will come when it will be totally natural. The door is just ajar--and now we have to walk through it.
.
That's the difficult part, but it's also a marvel--a lived marvel. But you can't talk about these things. It's like discovering life, you see!
.
It's truly like that.
.
The Delight in the Body
.
I didn't realize... Once, I had to go to F. to the dentist, and I felt really miserable, as if I were at the end of my life. I felt so... exhausted by all those people rushing and bustling about. And I did not realize how much of that other air I had already absorbed (you don't realize that you absorb a lot, a lot of that other air). I came back home--and suddenly what an incredible TORRENT OF LIFE came pouring in! I drank it, drank it as if my body... It was fabulous! The body, these billions of cells were all drinking and drinking and drinking and drinking as if... I can't say. It's... it's concrete!
.
It's truly a nectar. It's something that has never been experienced.
.
So, for the body, it's divine--it is the Divine. It's adorable, delightful; it's a delight. No words are necessary--but the body understands! It understands.
.
(Sri Aurobindo:)
It is Thy rapture flaming through my nerves
And all my cells and atoms thrill with Thee;
My body Thy vessel is and only serves
As a living wine-cup of Thy ecstasy.
.
You can't imagine how marvelous it is.... It's really as if this body--this body, these cells--had lived for thousands and thousands of years, gone through desert after desert after desert, and suddenly it finds the water of life--a water it never knew, an air it never knew, which is its first breath ever. It's unbelievable, I assure you. It's unbelievable! It isn't expressible--it's a fact. You can't compare it with anything.
.
And that is life!
.
That is life. A life that will... build everything, that will make Life!--which has never been, you see.
.
Which has never been....
.
We'll see what the future has in store--that doesn't preoccupy me.
.
(silence)
.
That swelling of delight in the body!... It's unbelievable, inexpressible!
.
It's a complete revolution, a trauma in reverse. I don't know how to describe it: it was dead and now it is living! How can you express that? And even trying to express it is...
Yes.
.
(Sri Aurobindo)
All my cells thrill swept by a surge of splendour.
Rigid, stone-like, fixed like a hill or statue,
Vast my body feels and upbears the world's weight;
Dire the large descent of the Godhead enters
Limbs that are mortal.
.
(Mother:) When the new way comes in pure, unmixed, the body, the consciousness of the body, still has that reaction of... (Mother makes a movement of surprise) wonder at something that still seems impossible.
.
But that, it doesn't forget--it doesn't forget. That leaves a marvelous imprint everywhere, in its myriad cells. From that moment on, it--that's what helps, what will help it to undergo that purification (indeed painful) of everything that's left of the old fish, you see. That's the tough part: that old death that still sticks to you, yes (laughing), the remains... of the old fish, which must still be purified.
.
But it leaves such an imprint... I don't know.
.
It's like a collapse in reverse. I can't tell you: It was dead and now it is living; it was locked in a prison of all sorts of things, and pfft, the prison is gone! You have to breathe that to... all of sudden to appreciate the sort of CATACLYSM it creates in that squirming--but a wonderful cataclysm! It's a reversal of everything: there was death, and now there's life (while the body thought there was life when there was, in fact, death). Everything is reversed. And not in the HEAD--the body has UNDERSTOOD.
.
It has understood forever.
.
(silence)
.
Come, let's walk a little....
.
(Mother:) Mentally, you can explain everything, but it means absolutely nothing. For the body, for the material consciousness, it's an abstraction. Once the material consciousness has grasped something, it knows it a hundred times better than we can know something through mental knowledge. When it knows, it acquires the power to do--that gives the power to do.
.
Before--long ago, many years ago--whenever I had an experience, it was the mind that more or less benefited from it, then spread it around and used it. Now it's no longer that way: it's the body directly; it's the body that has the experience, and it is much truer. There's a certain intellectual attitude that puts a sort of veil or some... I don't know, something, something unreal over our perception of things--it's an attitude, just an attitude. It's as if you were looking through a veil or a... something, a certain atmosphere. Whereas the body feels the thing in itself--it BECOMES it.
.
A World Simply True
.
(We resumed our walk. All the trees around us stood out with amazing clarity on the horizon. Satprem continued:)
.
And so they all spend their time worshiping the tomb of Mother and Sri Aurobindo--instead of making a HOLE in it!
.
(silence)
.
They are the ones who are entombed.
.
(silence)
.
It will be so beautiful the day when that tomb of the world, that tomb of pain and falsehood and hoor BREAKS OPEN, when a new earth comes into being at last, into the open air, into a delightful air, a true air, yes, really true....
.
It's a TRUE world, you know! (in a sobbing voice) It's...TRUE. For once, it's true, simply true.
.
(silence)
.
Perhaps the blessing of our times, of our century, of our... (the blessing of our horror, one could say) is that we have reached such a horrible point that... things will break and we'll emerge into something else. Not break with their bombs--that's still the triumph of the old death--but something that breaks in the human consciousness. This is perhaps the blessing of this horrible age. Before, the Horror had a lovely mask: it had beautiful literature, beautiful religion, beautiful spirituality. Evrything was gilded and respectable--now it's stark naked. That, too, is a blessing. You can no longer be deceived. There's a whole illusion that nobody can entertain anymore; all that is finished. These are moments of grace, precisely because the illusion is for the most part shattered.
.
(silence)
.
Shall we sit a little?
.
(We sat at the edge of a field,
beneath a beautiful tree with
a smooth, straight trunk.)
.
(Luc:) The trouble is that in this world--in society, let's say--if a man had such an experience, if his cry succeeded in tearing the veil, in breaking the fishbowl, he would instantly think he'd gone crazy!
.
(Satprem:) You must never forget that that "other thing" is truly Divine: it's the pure Divine, the lived Divine. So it takes very great care of... whatever may happen. One could say that it automatically takes care of what's there. That's the whole point: it's unthinkable," it's... an automatic, effortless, natural marvel. Completely natural: "it" does exactly what is needed, and "it" knows exactly everything there is to know.
.
Those who'd become crazy are those who would have cheated in one way or another.
.
It's measured--it has to be, I should think! If you emerged completely, entirely into it, well, there would probably be an explosion; everything would be shattered, pulverized. As far as I can tell, it comes in stages. In stages--that is, each time it's a deeper physical layer that is touched. Naturally, the deeper it is, the more powerful it is.... It's measured--there's no need of any description, of any system, because it's marvelously and automatically Divine.
.
It is precisely the opposite of everything that happens in this phony, twisted mind, which is capable of taking the most marvelous spirituality and turning it into the most marvelous fakery--it's the OPPOSITE of that.
.
In a way, it's frightening, but it's frightening for the old death, for the old falsehood, for everything that's twisted.
.
That's what has to happen to everyone... just in the right "measure," in the right way, at the right moment.
.
Only death can die!
.
It's... really the truth.
.
Oh, you know, it's so extraordinarily simple!
.
Only falsehood can become crazy! Only what is twisted can become twisted... It's very simple!
.
(silence)
.
Someone, obviously, had to... open the passage for the first time, because... Someone had to do it once. And that's where the work done by Sri Aurobindo is fantastic, you know--it's unbelievable.
.
It's unbelievable....
.
(Sri Aurobindo:)
I have been digging deep and long
Mid a horror of filth and mire
A bed for the golden river's song,
A home for the deathless fire.
I have laboured and suffered in Matter's night
To bring the fire to man;
But the hate of hell and human spite
Are my meed since the world began....
My gaping wounds are a thousand and one
And the Titan kings assail,...
A voice cried, "Go where none has gone!
Dig deeper, deeper yet
Till thou reach the grim foundation stone
And knock at the keyless gate."...
[I] plumged through the body's alleys blind
To the nether mysteries
I have delved through the dumb Earth's dreadful heart
And heard her black mass' bell.
I have seen the source whence her agonies part
And the inner reason of hell.
.
Well, people, the world, are approaching that Moment. We are approaching that moment of... the Marvel.
.
While, for them, it's a cataclysm, it's "death"--but everything is upside down! Everything is upside down! For them, we are approaching a cataclysm, the end of God knows what, of the world. But it continues.... It's certainly the end of the fish... (that wouldn't be too bad!) or at least of this kind of... intelligent fish.
.
We must dare!
.
(silence)
.
There are plenty of "manuals" on how to do Yoga--there's no manual for being thirsty.
.
(silence)
.
And if you are thirsty, the river comes to you; if you are not thirsty, the river does not exist.
.
It does not exist.
.
(silence)
.
The Marvel....
.
One day, you know, it struck me--it struck me without warning. It seized hold of me in such an... unbearable way. I had just turned sixty, and one night I again found myself with the Gestapo, in that world of horror. And I thought, "So there it is: you've dragged that horror for forty years. You've dragged that horror for FORTY years--and you're still dragging it!"
.
It was... crushing, really. I was crushed with despair. I found myself again in that nightmare, in that perverse world, as only humans can invent perversity. And I thought, "This has been going on for FORTY years!"
.
I have had that nightmare thousands of times.
.
Well, the entire world is right in the nightmare.
.
(Sri Aurobindo:)
It was a space where nothing could be true,...
A vast deception was the law of things
.
This is what you have to take back with you: That exists. There is that Marvel--IT EXISTS.
.
It isn't complicated.
.
It exists.
.
(silence)
.
We just have to realize it's there....
.
(silence)
.
What is that Marvel going to do? What is that Power of pure life going to do? We don't know. There is no path--it just happens. We cannot "understand"--it just happens. We don't know how it works.
.
You see, sometimes, when that Marvel comes, it's like...I can't say, it's at once a Nectar and a torrent of FIRE, unbearable for all that is mortal, precisely. So if you put people face to face with a flood of FIRE and told them, "Well, go right ahead!"--they couldn't do it. And it's obvious: you can't do it. Well, all life is like that, with death saying: "You can't do it. you can't do it. Listen, be reasonable; you can't do it." It's DEATH that makes all the you-can't-do-it, you-can't-do-it, you-can't-do-it.... And that's that--and mathematical to boot.
.
So it isn't in the head that you can do this. It must be experienced by the cells of our body! That "you-can't-do-it" must simply cease to exist for the cells! And then it will be over: no more "you-can't-do-it." Then everything will be possible.
.
(Mother:)All the impossibilities, all the "It-can-not-be," (it-cannot-be-done"--all that is swept away. but it's swept away in principle, and it's trying to become a fact, a concrete fact.
.
So I don't imagine anything, I don't speculate about anything, but I know that's how it is: that some "you-can't-do-its" are clearing out, and all the "you-can't-do-its" will eventually clear out, and... we'll see what happens!
.
But the first and foremost magic wand of death is that "you-can't-do-it."
.
That's how it possesses us. And it's a magic wand that's "scientific" to boot!
.
But one can't undo the "spell" in one's mind. Only the BODY can undo its own spell. That's the only place where it can be undone, where you go from the fishbowl into the open air. It's your old fish matter that emerges--it's in matter that it can be done, that the spell can be undone, not in the brain. It may be good to know about it intellectually, but that's not where it takes place, you see. This is not a "liberation" up above in heaven--it takes place IN matter. And there, well, everyone's on his own. It just happens.
.
And sometimes it happens in spite of yourself and in an unexpected way! You can't do anything about it. All you can do is to cry, to... to do the work of a true human being, that is, a little sincere.
.
But the world that is coming is prodigious, you know! It is there, approaching... waiting for us--waiting for us to get out of this evil spell.
.
The thing is, you can't pretend anything, you can't invent anything; it's done FOR you. It is precisely a world in which there is no more "pretending," no more "cheating": it's the pure simplicity of Truth--I say "Truth," but it's still an abstract word; it's PURE simplicity, you see, like breathing air. You can't cheat. You can't "imagine things," you can't invent things--you can't pretend. There can be no counterfeiter, no fraud--it's the "Truth." It's PURE air. And if you try to cheat, you die instantly! Everything that's corrupted and mortal in you dies instantly.
.
(Mother:) "What You will, as You will." Truly, you must have the concrete sensation that this [the body] does not exist--it's just as if "utilized"--and that there is ONLY THAT. That conscious immensity... (Mother opens her arms wide), that IMMENSE Force, IMMENSE Vibration, which presses and presses and presses...and then the Thing opens up, and when it opens, that spreads out.
.
This is the only solution. There's no other solution. All the rest is... aspirations, conceptions, hopes--it's still the superman, but it isn't the supramental. It's higher humanity trying to lift its humanity upward, but... it's useless. It doesn't work.
.
I have such a vivid image of all that humanity grappling to raise itself, trying to catch hold of something, but it doesn't give itself--it just wants to take! And that won't do. It must annul itself. Then something else can come and take its place.
.
That's the whole secret.
.
What is absurd here is all the artificial means one must use. Any fool has more power if he has the means of acquiring the necessary contrivance. Whereas in the supramental world, the more conscious you are and in harmony with the truth of things, the more authority willpower has over matter. Authority is true authority. If you want clothes, you must have the power to make them, a genuine power. If you don't have that power, well, you go naked. There's no contrivance to make up for the lack of power. Here, not once in a million is authority the expression of something true. Everything is extraordinarily stupid.
.
Well, it's going to be--it will be--an absolutely wonderful world, you know! Not in the sense that people think, but wonderfully simple--divinely simple! No more tricks. No more gimmicks. No more "Great Powers"--all those people loaded with "Powers": the superyogis, superpresidents.... No more powers--the only "power" is simply to breathe and to be. No more "powers," you see--all that is over. These "powers" are just the tricks of Falsehood: "Me, I am capable of doing this and that!"
.
It's death that is "capable."
.
(silence)
.
Oh, how good it will feel the day when all the frauds of the world CRUMBLE! It will feel so good!
.
(silence)
.
And in the meantime, they elect the next president--they always elect the next liar. Or else they pick up the phone to call the next liar who will help them... to die.
.
(silence)
.
I speak to you, brother, because you will be in that world. Not "another" world--this one. You will be there--you will. You are already in it. You still don't realize it completely, because... you have a job to do, and in order to do that job effectively, you still need to wear masks....
.
It's temporary.
.
(long silence)
.
Mother is gracious, you know.... She is gracious. It takes very little on our part--our poor part--it takes very little for Her to... rush to the rescue and help.
.
We are very obtuse, you know. We are precisely doing our old work of being obtuse.
.
(silence)
.
I think... everything is VERY CLOSE.
.
We have been created... for that Marvel... for that Delight... on earth.