June 15, 1966
… He is mentally very limp.
But I too feel mentally in a limp state! I get the feeling of a complete numbness.
Then that’s perfect.
Yes, but then I can’t write!
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Listen, Sri Aurobindo wrote the whole Arya for I don’t know how much time, five years, I think, without a single thought in his head.
I don’t think, but I do have the thoughts of the physical, material world, the material mind. Yes, that’s there.
Oh, it keeps running?
Yes, it keeps running. But all the rest has stopped running. There’s a sort of numbness. I wouldn’t complain if I didn’t have to write!
With me, it’s the other way around; it’s here [materially] that it has become numb – not numb, not at all a feeling of sleeping or … it’s being in what people call a dream, but it’s not a dream. It’s an inner perception, something, but without thought, like that, in the realm of … of what? … Of perception, yes, of consciousness, but a consciousness that’s not intellectually formulated. And there’s a sort of rhythm like this (Mother gestures to show the very supple and harmonious motion of a pendulum), materially. What was forever working and harping on things (it’s unbearable), now, oh, it’s very, very pleasant, very pleasant. But up there (gesture above the head), “That” is there; it’s becoming awesome, you know, from the standpoint of action, of perception.
It’s not exactly a numbness, but …
You must have gone through the wrong door.
The wrong door?
Yes (smiling), you have opened the wrong door.
Maybe what you want to write is very human? I mean, very much in the human consciousness: the human reactions, human perceptions. Because if that’s the case … I find it so useless, futile, uninteresting, absurd, and, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, untrue, false. So then, maybe I am responsible! I find it sickening, you know, now that there is that sort of sweetness … a sweetness … It’s not drowsy, it has nothing to do with inertia; it’s a sort of … (same gesture of a pendulum), it’s like letting oneself flow along, but on a luminous stream. So, ever since this has been there, all
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human stories, all their stories in all fields, from politics to artistic creation and all that, oh, I find it terribly futile – and so ridiculously agitated.
My idea (if I have one), and what makes me persist in writing, is that all that I have said in an intellectual way, which appeals to people’s intellectual consciousness, I’d like to say it in a deeper way, which is a rhythm (people call it “poetry,” but as for me I don’t understand a thing about poetry). What I’d like is to express an inner rhythm, to touch another layer of the being, deeper than those things of the intellect. “The Adventure of Consciousness” appeals to people’s intellectual consciousness, it’s to make them understand. But what I’d like is to touch something else. To say the same thing with an inner rhythm … images.
Maybe that’s why, maybe I am also responsible?
That’s right: I’m not in it, I’m not there.
You’re not there, no, but that’s because you are with me! (Mother laughs)
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