November 7, 1962

(Mother again speaks of the experience of SAT or pure Existence in the background of consciousness, and describes the movement of consciousness needed to enter that state.)

.,. It's somewhat similar to collecting one's thoughts. It's part concentration, part interiorization, and both together - like drawing back, but without movement.

After a while, it becomes almost automatic; I do it hundreds of times a day. It's difficult to describe, because the description makes it too concrete. But it's a drawing back, an interiorization - a self-gathering. But all those words seem dense, heavy; too material, too heavy. Yet it's a very concrete sensation, very concrete, which immediately brings about a kind of stabilization - everything stops. Everything stops, to the point where even a vibration of pain is stopped, it doesn't exist any more. But when you leave this state, back it comes again. It gets cured only when you persist for some time; otherwise the two might continue to coexist.

The most superficial way of putting it is: "to take a step back." But it's not that, of course.

And it isn't the same as "going within" when you want to find your psychic being, for instance. It isn't the same movement. When you go within to find your psychic being, you feel a shift of position; while in this case there's no shifting - you stay where you are.

You go beyond time, you go beyond space.

I don't know, it's so familiar to me that I feel it's something everyone can do, but it may very well be difficult, I don't know.

That's really what it is: to go beyond this present condition and enter a state where everything is stabilized. You can't say "immobilized," because that would mean the opposite of movement - it isn't the opposite of movement! It's ... something else. You immediately have the sense of Eternity; not of something endlessly developing, no: everything stops. But "everything stops" implies the sense of something that "moves," yet you no longer have that sense.[["I mean there is no longer 'something that stops.' But there are no words for it. I choose words for their vaguely analogous meaning, but for me they express something altogether different. There are no words for it! It's a change of state WITHOUT a change of place. This state is clearly outside time and space, that's certain. So you go from the state in time and space to the state where you're outside time and space, and NOT by a change of place ... something! It's something that happens inside, instantaneously. It's not a long passage like the long and gradual movement you experience in meditation, for instance; the passage into Sat isn't a gradual transition from one state to another: it is sudden, like an immediate reversal. But as I just said, there are no words for it; 'reversal' is infinitely too violent for expressing it." ]]

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And yet it is Existence, it is BEING: Being, pure Existence; full consciousness without an object - without an object of consciousness. Pure Existence without any development.

And it's always here, it never leaves you, it's always here; you don't have to go off looking for it - it is always here. If you start thinking about it, you might say: without that, there can be no world; without that, there can be neither time nor space nor movement nor consciousness - nothing. Therefore, it is everywhere.

It doesn't need the Manifestation in order to be - not at ALL. But without it, the Manifestation could not be.

In fact, the aim of meditation is to catch hold of that. And any path whatsoever is good, since you're sure to catch hold of it: it is HERE. You don't have to go far to look for it - it is right here.

It has become a kind of habit: I am eating a meal, for example, and swallow the wrong way or whatever (not even something violent, just a slightly uneasy sensation in the throat), I do this (gesture of drawing back) for one second, and it's finished. Or I am speaking to someone and the right word doesn't come automatically: I just have to do this (same gesture), and there it is. It works for everything. It puts things back in order.

And that's what you have in your meditations. Only (laughing), you won't be happy unless you get out of it - unless something dramatic happens! (Mother laughs and laughs) That's why you complain! Some people work years and years and years to have it just once.

That's all, mon petit.

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