April 27, 1967
(Regarding the “darshan” of April 24, forty-seventh
anniversary of Mother’s coming to Pondicherry.)
How was the 24th? Did you stay at home for the meditation?
No, I always come.
It was rather peculiar.
Here is the sequence of events: someone living here had a very bad cold some seven or eight days before the darshan. I said to myself, “I must not catch it.”[[Mother in fact has a bad cold. ]] So I did a special prayer not to catch it. But it has had consequences.
I told you about that experience, which has been growing increasingly concrete and constant, of the Vibration of Harmony (a higher harmony expressing the essential Consciousness in its aspect of love and harmony and, as it draws nearer to the manifestation, of order and organization), and of the nearly constant and general vibration of disorder, disharmony, conflict – in reality, Matter’s
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resistance to this Action. The two vibrations are like this (Mother slips the fingers of her right hand between those of the left), as if they interpenetrated each other and a simple movement of consciousness sent you to one side or the other, or rather, as if the aspiration, the will for realization, put you into contact with the Vibration of Harmony, and the SLIGHTEST slackening made you lapse into the other. It has become constant. So then, on the 24th, right from morning there was a constant aspiration, a constant will for the triumph of the Vibration of Harmony. Then I sat down at my table as I always do, some five or ten minutes before it [the meditation] began. And instantly, with a power – a power capable of crushing an elephant – this Vibration of Harmony came down like that, in such a mass … that the body lost the sense of its own existence altogether: it became That, it was conscious of nothing but That. And the first quarter of an hour literally flashed by in a second. Then, there were three people in the room; one of the three, or maybe all three, felt ill-at-ease (nothing to be surprised at!), and that woke me up: I saw the light (I burn a candle on my table) and I saw the time, but it wasn’t me – something saw. Then there was a sort of pacifying action on the place, and then – gone again. And one second later, the call of the end! [[A gong is struck to mark the end of the meditations. ]]
It’s the first time that has happened to my body. It always used to remain conscious. Sri Aurobindo, too, told me the same thing, that he never, ever had samadhi in his body. Neither did I: I always, always used to remain conscious. While that … only Force remained, there was nothing left but Force at work: there was a concentration here, a concentration on the whole country, and a concentration on the whole earth. And it all was conscious, like that (vast gesture above the head), at work. But something massive, as powerful as an elephant – enough to crush you.
I didn’t say anything to anybody, I wanted to know (because when I speak, people try to find something, while I wanted to know the spontaneous reaction). The first thing I received was a letter from G. saying that he was at the Samadhi, and just before it started, a force came down on him so strongly that he fell (he was sitting, he fell forward). So he asked me what it was. I haven’t replied yet. Then there have been other people, other things.
That was unique for me, because it’s the first time it has happened to me. But it has had a result: all that still clings within to that old habit of disorder and disharmony – which is the cause of,
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oh, everything, all mischief, all illnesses, everything – that has been … Yesterday afternoon, I saw there was something that needed to be done away with, and it changed into a head cold. It’s nothing.
It’s nothing, and it has given me an opportunity to see that all the cells everywhere, even those that according to the old habit should be in discomfort because of the cold, are all in a blissful aspiration of transformation. And they truly and spontaneously feel that what’s happening to them is to make things move a little faster. So they are very happy.
But things should move still faster; that is, all these things such as colds and so on should pass very quickly – come in and go out.
There are still lots of bad habits – that will pass.
And there was the consciousness – the Total Consciousness, in a light … a light without any equivalent here, yet it was quite material. If you like, it might be like molten gold – molten and luminous. It was very thick. And it had a power – a weight, you know, like that, it was astonishing. And then, no more body, nothing anymore – nothing anymore, nothing but That. And the vision of That, like this (gesture widening out above the head), in its immediate action, its action on the country, and its action on the whole earth. An action that doesn’t cause any movement, I don’t know how to explain it. A sort of pressure – a pressure in which nothing is displaced.
The pressure went away after the meditation, but the effect has remained, and when, out of the old habit, I got up afterwards to take something on the table over there, I nearly fell! The body no longer knew how to walk! I had to concentrate, then it came back.
Something still remained (but not as strong as that), something remained when I went to the balcony [in the afternoon of the 24th]. At the balcony I was different from what I usually am. I don’t exactly know what it was. But then, the photographs are very different; there is something in the photographs that wasn’t there before. There was a special atmosphere.
(silence)
I remembered something Sri Aurobindo told me sometime during the last months; he told me, “When the supramental Force” (which he was constantly calling down, of course), “when the supramental Force is there and for as long as it is present, you get a sense of all-powerfulness – an unconditioned all-powerfulness:
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an ALL-powerfulness.” But he said, “It goes into the background” when the pressure of the Force is removed.
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