The Consciousness of the Cells

Parts of chapters 4, 5, 6 & 7 of Satprem's "The Mind of the Cells" (1981)

The Mental Layers

Hence, that descent into the body is not done through any yoga technique, but in the simplest possible way: You go into what is there. And you don't penetrate into any network of veins and dendrites, but into something else altogether, which also looks like a strange Amazonian jungle. In order to perceive or experience the cells, we must first get through whatever is covering them: opaque, buzzing layers, one after the other. The first of those layers is our intellectual layer -- the one we ordinarily live in. That is the top stratum of the fishbowl. All the ideas, philosophies, religions, and so on, have obviously nothing to do with the body. You do not even notice that layer, it is like the air you breathe, but it is a huge seething mass. All that must be silenced. Just as a liquid first has to settle if you want to see through it. Hence the first step is silencing the mind. When that layer is somewhat clarified, a second layer comes into view with greater sharpness, as it is no longer embellished by the higher noise of great ideas and noble philosophical concepts: it is the layer of the emotional mind. This layer is noticeably stickier. But emotions, however lofty they may be, have nothing to do with the body. Hence the second step is to quiet the emotional mind. This is a more complex task, somewhat like guerrilla warfare in the desert. When that layer becomes a little clear and calm, a third layer appears which, up to now, had been totally blended with the first two: the sensory mind, which governs our reactions; at that point it is really the thick of the jungle teeming with all kinds of little snakes and swamps. We have not quite reached the body, but we are getting close. All the sensations of fatigue and sleep, fear, pain and pleasure, like and dislike, attraction and repulsion, contraction and release -- it is a constant teeming. But one realizes to what an extent all that is the result of habit, of the cultural environment, of education: a real hodgepodge that has nothing to do with the body and is just laminated onto it, as it were. The third step is transparency of the sensory mind, or perfect neutrality. The least contraction or rejection is like instantly putting up a wall: the penetration stops, and you're stuck in the middle of the Amazonia. The body must be freed from that whole network of actions and reactions. At that point, it begins to waver a little, as if it had lost its moorings and was unsure of its mass -- in reality, it is unusually unburdened and light; one begins to feel "the body" a little. Then we reach the barrier: the fourth layer, the physical mind. But you don't know that it is the barrier, or where you are or what you're doing in that bizarre jungle -- it's afterwards, once you've crossed it, that you realize it was the barrier, and what it meant. At the time -- and "the time" lasted years for Mother -- it's only an endless, microscopic, sticky, seething magma, and you don't quite know whether it leads to the "other side," or to the disintegration of the body, or even if there exists another side to that microscopic hell which is so firmly laminated onto the body that it would seem that attempting to pull off that layer would mean pulling apart the body itself. When Francesco de Orellana, coming from the Andes, went down the Amazon River for the first time, it wasn't called the Amazon then, but "a place" with creeping vines and alligators, and he did not know whether it would lead him to the Atlantic Ocean or to death; nor had he any idea of what he was crossing. It's easy to draw maps afterwards. We will give only a few stages or landmarks of that crossing through the layers to the barrier of the physical mind.

63.108 -- It's a monumental battle against habits going back thousands of years.
59.195 -- When it comes to the body, and you want to make it take one single step forward -- oh, not even a whole step, just a tiny one -- everything starts grating: it's like stepping on an anthill.
56.276 -- As soon as you want to progress, you immediately encounter the resistance of everything that refuses to progress within you and around you.
58.256 -- There is such a long way to go between the usual state of the body, this almost total unconsciousness we are used to because "that's the way it is," and the perfect awakening of the consciousness, the response of all the cells, of all the organs and body functions.... Between the two, there seem to be centuries of work.
53.1410 -- Death isn't inevitable, it is an accident which has always happened until now (or seems to have always happened), and we have gotten it into our head to conquer and overcome this accident. But that means such a dreadful and gigantic fight against all the laws of nature, all the collective suggestions, all the earthly habits, that unless you are a fearless warrior ready to go through anything, you had better not start the battle. Absolute fearlessness is required, because at every step, at every second, you must wage a war against everything that is established. So it isn't exactly easy. Even individually, you have to battle with yourself, because if you want your physical consciousness to reach a state allowing physical immortality, you must be so free from everything the present physical consciousness stands for that it's a battle every second: every feeling, every sensation, every repulsion, everything that makes up the fabric of our physical life must be overcome, transformed and freed of all its habits. That means fighting every single second against thousands and millions of adversaries.
63.3010--The body is starting to understand one thing: EVERYTHING that happens is for progress. Everything that happens is meant to attain the true state, the state the cells are supposed to be in so that the realization may be accomplished. Even blows, even pains or apparent disorganization are all for a purpose. And it's only when the body takes it the wrong way, like an idiot, that it gets worse.
63.226 -- It's really an unsatisfying transition period, in the sense that you no longer have the strength and capacity you used to have, and you have none of the power and capacities you foresee -- you're midway, neither here nor there. With absolutely amazing things happening; at times, there are things which leave you wide-eyed: "Aha, so that's what it's like!" But then at the same time, such tiring limitations, so tiring!
67.267 -- We could call our world a world of bad habits.
67.28 and 19 -- A slow, invisible, almost imperceptible underground labor.... A sordid battlefield.
61.125 -- Even those moments in life when you have sudden glimpses of an immortal consciousness, a contact with a truth, even all those experiences are all well and good, but that isn't IT. What is the true MEANING of life: what is life really about? What's behind it? Why has the Lord done that? What is he aiming at?... He obviously has a secret and he's keeping it. Well, I, for one, want his secret. Why are things this way? They certainly aren't this way just to be this way: they're meant to become something else. Well, I want that something else.
61.157 -- Every possible difficulty in the body's subconscious rose up en masse -- as it had to happen, and as it must have happened for Sri Aurobindo, I understand now! Well, it's no joke, you know! I was wondering why he was hounded by all those things -- now I know, because the exact same fury is after me. It is not exactly in the consciousness of the body, but in the corporeal substance as organized by the mind, one could say: the first mental stirrings in Life. You know, what brought about the transition from animal to man, the first mentalization of matter. Well, something in there is protesting, and the protesting produces physical disorders, naturally.

The Physical Mind.

This physical mind is an extraordinary discovery. And yet, it is right in front of our nose, it drones in our ears and rules our slightest gestures, only we do not notice it; or if we do, we soon discard it as ridiculously insignificant or drown it in the bustle of our lofty thoughts, lofty feelings and the rest of our lofty qualities, which all end up falling to pieces precisely because that microscopic creature was never taken into account. The greatest discovery is finding what blocks the way. If each species knew what blocks the way to the advent of the next species, it would soon question and overturn its own values and find the passage. But for that, however, a certain sense of discomfort or a beginning of suffocation within one's species is necessary -- such is our privilege among all the little beasts that happily go around in circles in their bowl. If some fish had not started suffocating in their evaporating ponds, they would never have invented pulmonary respiration and changed their fins into paws to produce amphibians. That physical mind is precisely what is suffocating us -- insidiously, multifariously and very implacably. It is our cage, the very wall of our human bowl. We do not need extraordinary mutations to leave our bowl: we only need enough suffocation to find the way out. And perhaps our species is indeed reaching the time of suffocation.
The "top" part of that physical mind, at least, is familiar to us: it is the one we hear repeating microscopic material thoughts ad nauseam, like an old crone talking to herself. If we didn't check it, it would go on repeating for hours, tirelessly: "You haven't closed the door, go and make sure..." like a broken record -- and you know perfectly well that you've closed that door! It repeats everything: the slightest gesture, the least word, the tiniest tripping on a stair -- and it remembers everything twenty years later, in exact detail. An implacable memory. The size of a pinhead, it penetrates any corner of matter, traces its furrow, and then repeats for ever and ever. In our every nerve and from head to toe, we are furrowed by that thing -- and even in our cells. In fact, we are literally woven and covered by that physical mind. It is the great fixative, without which we might forget that we are men, forever yoked to this mode of matter and to death. But its role is precisely that: to harness us to matter.
Its second "quality," which we can perceive somewhat in its higher and more visible parts, is fear. It is afraid of just everything: "Careful! You forgot to take your scarf, you'll catch a cold.... Careful! If you go too fast, you'll break a leg.... Careful! You can't do that, or you'll tire your heart." You can't, you can't; it's a mental creature teeming with can'ts. Even if you could, it would prevent you -- and that is why you can't in the end. In short, it guards the limits of the bowl. It is the prison warden. "The doctor said ... and the professor said, and Webster said, and so did the sheriff, and the minister, and the biologist -- isn't that enough?" Everyone says so, isn't that doubly enough? It is the world's greatest logician. A many-faceted, microscopic, implacable logic. It is the greatest sheriff of all species: "Be realistic, you can't possibly leave the bowl! There isn't any material water on the other side, only death and fish Spirit -- and in any case it doesn't really exist: one can't swim in it, one can't touch it or see it, so isn't that enough?" But its "logic" leads straight to the desired nest: death. It all leads there. It is not the preservation of the species, by any means; it is the preservation of death. Just follow its microscopic murmurings; whenever there is the slightest scratch: "Oh, isn't this poisonous?", or the least sneeze in Moscow: "Oh, will there be war?" It foresees every possible disaster, every possible disease, every accident -- and above all, death; it foresees death from the start. "This is a DISEASE, there's no way out of it; you MUST take this many pills, you must do this, you mustn't do that, you mustn't...." We are bound from head to foot, invisibly, insidiously and inexorably. It is a kind of generalized fear ingrained in matter, like a memory, or a regret, of the happy, quiet inertia of the stone -- life is a calamity to that inertia, a threat, a constant danger. Death is peace at last. So it spins and secretes its little death every second, until it gets what it wants: "I told you so." And what would the whole ecclesiastic hierarchy do without death? And the biologist, the philosopher, and the rest of the pack? Come to think of it, they all live on death. It is the keeper of the law of death. Who says law says death. It is the gospel of death from A to Z. The ultimate example of that creature's doings is found in a person afflicted with the uncontrollable trembling of Parkinson's disease, who tries desperately to take a step forward, trips, and tries again: "You can't do it, you see, you can't walk," until the person is "fixed" once and for all. Its job is to fix. And so we realize the fantastic hypnotic power of that physical mind; it takes all our mental bustle above for us not to notice the omnipotence of the infinitesimal whisperer. In fact, it is the field of operation of all professional "healers" and "hypnotists," when they are able to prevent you from feeling a pain, say, which would have you screaming otherwise, or when they make you do "impossible" things that contradict all the "cannots" -- they abolish, for a moment, the physical mind. Doctors also act on the physical mind -- sometimes to cure an illness, and most often to "fix" it forever. In our higher consciousness, we laugh at that harping and ever-fearful caricature, we throw it out the window -- but it remains underneath, spinning its little deaths, diseases and accidents, which will culminate in the big, quiet and final death. In the end it always catches up with you. Something in living matter yearns for the peace of the mineral. There is an implacable memory that goes back to the beginning of time ... perhaps to that original condition of matter in which the supreme power is buried in what appears as utter powerlessness and immobility, in the supreme movement of the atoms. If the death of the species is an obstacle, it must be the key to something else. Wherever there is a wall, there is also the other side of the wall. The only real obstacle is in not seeing the wall. We will give a brief account of Mother's crossing into that last layer, which wraps us tightly and "seals" us hermetically in our human, mortal way. That is what Mother called the "horrible thing." In fact, we are wrapped in a fourfold superimposed web: the first, relatively loose-meshed web is the intellectual mind; the second with a somewhat tighter and stickier mesh, is the emotional mind; then there is the close-meshed web of the sensory mind, and finally the microscopic mesh of the physical mind -- underneath all that is the body, i.e., an unknown, whose reality eludes us completely, because everything supposedly coming from the "body" is distorted, falsified -- manufactured really -- by the four successive webs. So what is really underneath? Biologists talk of enzymes and DNA molecules, but that is like describing the nature of a man forever at the bottom of a dungeon -- let him get out of his dungeon and get a little sun, and we will soon find out whether the little molecules still behave the same, and if all the "laws" of the biologists are not merely the laws of the dungeon.

57.155 -- I challenge you to change your body if your mind is not changed. Just try and let's see what happens! You can't move a finger, say a word, take a step without the mind intervening; so with what instrument do you expect to change your body if your mind isn't changed beforehand?
58.105 -- One of the most serious obstacles is the sense of legitimacy which the outer, ignorant and deceitful consciousness, the ordinary consciousness, gives to all the so-called physical laws -- causes, effects and consequences -- and to all the physical and material scientific discoveries. All that is indisputable truth to our consciousness, and it's so automatic that we're not even aware of it. When it's a matter of such things as anger, desire, etc., we see that they're wrong and must be eliminated, but when it's a question of material laws -- those of the body, for instance, involving its needs, its health, its nutrition and all those things -- they have such a solidly concrete reality for us [exactly: the dungeon], they are so solid, so established, that they appear absolutely irrefutable.
61.173 -- Each of us is locked up inside a little formation created by the most ordinary mind that molds everyday life, as if we were in some narrow prison.
67.2110 -- And then, there are all those old things that come from human atavism: being reasonable, being careful, being smart ... taking precautions, providing for unknown eventualities, oh!... that whole fabric making up the ordinary human poise. It's so sordid! The whole mentalization of the cells.... The cells are "mentalized," i.e., hypnotized and perhaps even terrorized by the prison warden. ... The whole mentalization of the cells is like that, full of it; and not just as a result of one's own way of being, but also that of one's parents, and grandparents, and friends, and....
68.2610 -- It really is a kind of hell. It is only that Possibility [the other state, outside the dungeon] which prevents it from being hell, otherwise.... You see, normally, all the levels of the being are sort of whipped together (you know, like mayonnaise); all the layers thoroughly mixed together in the greatest confusion, so naturally the "horrible thing" is bearable because everything is mixed together! But if you separate it from the rest.... It is very clear that if it weren't unbearable, it would never change.
Mother lived in that last, "pure" layer separated from the rest, at the threshold of the body, searching for the passage.
65.247 -- That material mind loves disasters and attracts them, it even creates them, because it needs the emotional stimulation to arouse its unconsciousness. Whatever is unconscious or inert needs intense emotions to shake it into waking up. And that need creates a sort of attraction or morbid imagination for those things -- it is forever contemplating every possible disaster, or opening the door to negative suggestions. For the least little pain: "Oh! is it cancer?"
68.910 -- They are whole worlds of suggestions. In a certain wave of suggestion, everything is terrifying; in another wave of suggestion, everything is delightful; in still another, everything is magnificent....
63.38 -- The physical substance, the very elementary consciousness that is in the physical substance, has been so mistreated that it finds it hard to believe that things could be other than what they are at present. I have this experience: when the concrete and utterly tangible intervention of the supreme Power, the supreme Light, is experienced by the physical substance, it's a new wonder each time; and in that state of wonder I perceive something like: "Is this really possible?..." It's like a dog that has been beaten so often that it expects nothing but beatings. It's sad. And the physical substance feels a kind of anxiety towards mental energy; whenever a mental force manifests, it cries out, "Oh, no! That's enough! Enough!" As if that were the cause of all its torment. It feels mental force as something hard, dry, rigid and implacable -- especially dry and empty: empty of the true vibration. It seems to be considered as the Enemy. And this morning, I had a sort of vision, a sense of the course that led from animal to man, then back to the state above the animal, where life, action and movement are not the product of the mind, but of a force that is felt as a force of shadowless light, of pure light casting no shadow, which is absolutely peaceful; and in that peacefulness so harmonious and sweet ... oh, there's supreme repose!

No longer the nostalgic return to the peace of the mineral, but cellular repose in the great unwalled expanse. "Liberation" is in the body.

64.710 -- The big problem in matter is that material consciousness, meaning the mind within matter, was formed under the pressure of difficulties -- difficulties, obstacles, suffering, struggle. It was "put together," so to speak, by those things, and they gave it almost an imprint of pessimism and defeatism, which is certainly the greatest obstacle. I am always having to check, to push aside, to convert some pessimism, doubt or defeatist imagination. How many times has it happened that, in the middle of an acute pain, when it feels increasingly unbearable, a tiny inner movement takes place in the cells: they send out their SOS ... everything stops, the pain vanishes. The pain is replaced by a feeling of blissful well-being. But the first reaction of that stupid material consciousness is: "Ha, let's see how long it lasts!" This movement naturally ruins everything. I have to start all over again.
58.105 -- As soon as the body becomes conscious, it is conscious of its own falsehood! It is conscious of this law, and that law, and a third law, a fourth law, a tenth law -- everything is a "law." "We are subjected to physical laws: if you do this, it will result in that, such and such will happen, and...." Why, they exude from every pore! We must realize that IT IS NOT TRUE -- it is not true, all that is an absolute falsehood. It's NOT TRUE! If only people had the experience I had a few days ago....

For sometimes, the meshes of the web opened and another state filtered in, which seemed as miraculous as green pastures might to a man just escaped from a dungeon:

... This experience is the supreme knowledge in action, with total cancellation of all past and future consequences ....

And this is where we are left wide-eyed:

... Each second has its eternity and its own law, which is a law of absolute truth.

And then the meshes close again.

65.107 and 48 -- I can tell you that the mental distortions of doctors are frightful; they stick in your brain, remain there and come back ten years later. Doctors have, oh they have a hypnotic power over the material consciousness ... which is a bit frightening. A doctor crystallizes the illness, he makes it concrete, hard; and then he gets the credit for curing it ... when he can.
60.2510 -- I have looked, I have seen the power of thought over the body -- it is fantastic! One can't imagine how fantastic it is. Even a subconscious thought, sometimes even an unconscious one, has an effect and provokes incredible results. For the last two years I have been studying that in detail -- it's incredible! Tiny little mental or vital reactions that seem to be TOTALLY unimportant to our ordinary consciousness, have an effect on the cells and can create physical disorders. But I know for certain that if one can bring all that mass of the physical mind under control, everything is POSSIBLE, one is in control: it's not Fate, or something beyond our control; it's not a sort of "law of Nature" we can't do anything about. For two years now, I have been gathering experiences in the tiniest details, things that may seem utterly futile -- it's not a work for megalomaniacs; you have to consent to it and appreciate that in that minute work of establishing the true attitude within a few cells lies the key to everything.
60.511 -- I went down somewhere in the consciousness, in a part of the consciousness that lives in a state of apprehension, alarm, fear, anxiety ... it's really and truly terrifying. And we carry all that inside us! We don't notice it, but it's there: it's cowardly, and that's what can make you fall ill in a minute. It's in the cells' subconscious, that's where it's rooted. You have to go all the way down there to change it. And that makes for unpleasant moments, you know.
63.196 -- The problem seems to become ever closer and pressing and crushing. It's that work in the physical mind, the material mind. And I seek my way downward -- a way out downward -- that's what I can't find. The way I am seeking is always descending, descending -- it's never going up, it's always descending, descending. Oh! I have no idea when it will be over.
60.1312 --It's a ground level seething. And how does one prevent this stupid, trivial, and most of all defeatist automatic process from acting up all the time? It is really an automaton: no conscious will can move it -- nothing. And it's very closely connected with physical illnesses. I am right in the middle of the problem.
65.1812 and 63.1811 -- When this material mind is seized with an idea, it is literally possessed by it and can hardly free itself. And that's what illnesses are. Take Parkinson's disease, for instance: that trembling is the result of being possessed by an idea, a state of hypnotism together with fear ingrained in matter. The two together: possession and fear. In the ancient scriptures, it was likened to a dog's crooked tail. It's really just that, a kind of WRINKLE that you try to flatten and it comes right back, automatically and stupidly: you straighten it and it wrinkles up again, you reject it, and it comes back again. It's extremely interesting but very pitiful. And ALL illnesses are like that, every single one, whatever their external appearance -- the external appearance is a certain form of the SAME THING, because forms and appearances follow every possible combination, and those which fall into similar patterns are classified by doctors under one name or another.... AND THE CELLS OF THE BODY OBEY THAT MATERIAL MIND.

Mother had reached the bottom.
This discovery, which doesn't look like much, is quite formidable. We spend our time looking for answers right and left, in chromosomes, and molecules, and penicillin, and in the whole bag of tricks of science, which codifies the walls of the prison -- only to realize that they are nothing but the code of our own state of walled-in hypnotism. "Do you know that the walls consist of ten billion atoms per DNA molecule, and that there are millions of billions of atoms per cubic inch of matter -- as many as there are grains of sand in all the oceans combined -- and twenty kinds of amino acids, and five sorts of nucleotides, and there simply isn't any way out of this?"[I borrow my science from the remarkable book of Dr. Robert Jastrow, Red Giants and White Dwarfs (New York: Warner Books, 1980).] And then ... then it's nothing but the paper-thin creation of our own conception of matter: that's not where the obstacle is, that's not the wall. The wall is what we think it is. Illnesses are what we think they are. Death is what we think it is. And all the "laws" of our species are what our species thinks they are. A mind ingrained in matter.
We can then start conceiving that there may be a way out after all.

The Supramental Vibration

58.811 -- I seemed to be descending into a crevice between two steep rocks, rocks made of something harder than basalt, but metallic at the same time. It was endless and bottomless, growing narrower and narrower like a funnel. And the bottom was invisible -- pitch black. And I went down and down like that, without air, without light ... suffocating. Suddenly, as if I had hit a spring at the very bottom -- a spring which I hadn't seen -- I was hurled out of the crevice with incredible force and cast into a formless, limitless vast. It was all-powerful and infinitely rich, as if this vastness were made of countless imperceptible dots -- dots that take up no space -- of a warm, dark gold. All that was absolutely alive, alive with a power that seemed infinite. And yet motionless. A perfect immobility, but containing an incredible intensity of movement and life! And a life that was so ... multitudinous that you can only call it infinite. And an intensity, a power, a force, and a peace -- the peace of eternity. Silence, calm. A POWER capable of everything. Everything. There was that whole impression of power, warmth, gold.... It didn't feel fluid: it was like a powdering. And each of those "things" (I can't call them particles, or fragments, or even dots unless we take dots in the mathematical sense of a point that takes up no space) was like living gold: a powdering of warm gold; I can't say bright, or dark; it wasn't luminous either: a multitude of tiny gold dots, nothing but that. And with a fantastic self-contained power and warmth! And then, at the same time, a sense of plenitude, of peace stemming from absolute power. It was movement at its utmost, infinitely faster than anything we can possibly imagine, and absolute peace, perfect tranquillity at the same time.

Suddenly, it seemed that Mother had emerged at the atomic level, that her body was living quantum physics. Overwhelming motion within perfect stillness: such seems to be the constant characteristic of the experience. It then recurred with greater precision and intensity.

58.169 -- The other day, it happened in my bathroom: it came, taking over the entire body. It went up like this: all the cells were trembling. With such power! So I let the thing develop, and the vibration kept amplifying, growing and growing, and all the cells of the body were seized with an intense aspiration ... as if the body itself were growing bigger -- it was becoming colossal. I had the feeling everything was going to explode. And it has such a transforming power! I felt that, if I went on, something would happen, in the sense that some equilibrium in the cells of the body would be altered. And it has a great action, a very great action: it can prevent an accident.

That is a mystery to which we shall return once the experience reaches its full development.

58.115 -- It's strange, it has a cohesive effect: the whole cellular life becomes one solid and compact mass of incredible concentration -- with a SINGLE vibration. Instead of the body's many usual vibrations, there is only one single vibration. As if all the cells of the body were ... a single mass.
61.241 -- The entire body became a SINGLE, extremely rapid and intense vibration, but motionless. I don't know how to explain it because it wasn't moving in space, and yet it was a vibration (meaning, it wasn't immobile), but it was motionless in space. It was in the body, as if EACH cell had a vibration and there was but a single BLOCK of vibrations.

One cannot help thinking about the whirl of electrons around the nucleus, so fast it seems immobile, yet which gives matter it apparent solidity; [and also of the laser process in which the coherence of the vibrations gives rise to an incredible amplification of power: "Instead of the body's many usual vibrations, there is only one single vibration."]

63.185 -- It was such a strong mass! It was much more solid than matter. It's something very special and so solid! More solid, more material than matter. And it had such a power, a weight, a density, incredible!
60.1110 -- This extraordinary vibration ... like a pulsation in the cells. During the first months, I was conscious almost in detail of the myriads of cells that were opening up under this vibration.

That's the vibration Mother was to call the "supramental vibration"; physicists may have another name for it, but it is the same one.

66.1511 -- It's something that takes hold of the body: such a warm, gentle vibration, and yet so terribly powerful at the same time!
64.253 -- And that vibration feels like a fire. As a matter of fact, it is a vibration whose intensity is that of a higher fire. Several times the body has even felt it was the equivalent of a fever.
60.1211 -- One must learn to widen, widen, not only the inner consciousness, but even this aggregate of cells. To widen this sort of crystallization in order to be capable of holding that force. I know. Two or three times, I felt that the body was on the verge of bursting. I was about to say, "let's explode and be done with it." But then, weeks and sometimes months go by between one thing and another, so that some plasticity may come in these silly cells. A waste of time. Three times, however, I really thought that my body was on the verge of ... falling apart. The first time, I had a tremendous fever; I was roasting from head to toe: everything had become golden red, like that, and then ... it was over.
72.151 -- My body is living the process.
72.297 -- It comes as if to show you that to conquer death, you must be ready to go through death. As if to show that there's just a difference, just a difference in attitude: the body may fall apart or become transformed, and it's ... it's almost the same process.

And again the meshes close:

72.197 -- The subconscious of the body is crammed with defeatism, and that must absolutely be changed. The subconscious needs to be clarified to enable the new race to come into being -- it's all muddy. It is full to the hilt with defeatism: the initial reaction is always defeat. And that goes way back.... A TREMENDOUS energy is obstructed by that wretched thing.

Then the process of the passage becomes more explicit: one goes from the microscopic to the macroscopic, from the dust of atomic energy to the "undulation" of the other state:

63.35 -- Now, the body happens to feel not only a terrestrial movement but a universal one, which is so extraordinarily rapid that it is imperceptible, it is beyond perception. It's like something that does not move IN space but is beyond both immobility and movement, in the sense that its rapidity makes it absolutely imperceptible to all the senses. It's something new. While in that state, I have noticed that the rate of movement is greater than the force or power that holds the cells together to make an individual form [hence Mother's fainting spells in the beginning]. And that state seems to be all-powerful. It must be on the way to the real thing. And it is constant; constantly I go from one state to the other: from here to there, here to there ... and sometimes -- it's so strong -- for a second, or a minute, for some period of time, I don't know, one is neither this nor that; one feels there is no longer anything anymore. It does not last. If it lasted, it would probably provoke a faint, or something like that. But it's constant: from one to the other, one to the other, here to there. And between this and that, there is a transition which.... It's a strange kind of life, which is neither here nor there, which is not a mixture of both states, not their juxtaposition, but as if the two operated through one another.
It must be intracellular, in other words the mixture must be very microscopic, on the surface.

One goes through the walls of the fishbowl, or through the wall of electrons. And it is there, during that transition, when the two states seem to operate simultaneously, or "through one another," as Mother says, that one grasps extraordinary secrets, which perhaps will be the fairy tale of the next species. Truly, we don't know if there has ever been a more essential event in the history of humanity than the experiment of Sri Aurobindo and Mother -- our nuclear experiments are child's play in comparison, although scientific discoveries have certainly prepared us better to understand the present experiment.

Between Two States

This crossing through the wall or the web does not take place once and for all, as if: "That's it, we're out, we're in the other environment for good." If that were the case, the old body would probably die, having completed its evolutionary task, which was to take us over to the other state. The amphibian does not discard its old body: it acquires a new way of breathing -- with lungs -- which enables it to step into another state, in the open air, on the shores of this good earth, and little by little the very conditions of the new environment force it to develop new organs and a new way of being on earth. Mother's body stayed right on this good earth, but the new shores looked a bit strange at first -- they no longer had anything to do with the old retinal vision back in the fishbowl -- and the new conditions and laws, if any, had to be explored. A sweeping change of "program." And as one does not step once and for all onto the new shore, since one occasionally falls back into the old fishbowl (probably for reasons of slow adaptation), what exactly causes this falling back into the old state, and the return to the new one? What triggers the passage? For years, Mother went back and forth between the two states, and it is precisely the articulation of this passage, that hybrid state so to say, which can enable us, not only to explore the features and secrets of the new environment, but also to discover the true reality of our own environment, which our physicists, biologists and medical doctors think they have so thoroughly examined and codified. But their code is worthless! It is only suited to a certain thinking fishbowl. What there is, in fact, is a revolution whose scope we haven't begun to measure. Here are the first stammerings of the new world:

61.66 -- Take two sets of absolutely identical circumstances, not even a day apart, just a few hours apart; identical circumstances: the same outer conditions and the same inner conditions, meaning the same psychological "mood"; the same outer circumstances of life, the same events, and the same people, approximately. In one instance, the body (I mean the cellular consciousness) feels a sort of eurhythmy, an overall harmony in the atmosphere, it feels that everything dovetails in a marvelous way, without any friction -- everything flows and is organized in a total harmony; everything is wonderful and the body is well. And in the other instance ... everything is the same, the consciousness is the same, and this is where something escapes me but that harmony is gone. For what reason? One does not know. And then the body starts to go wrong. Yet everything is identical ... something eludes me, it's like trying to grasp something that keeps eluding you. What is it that eludes me? I don't understand. What is it?... More and more I feel ... what? How can I explain that?... A question of vibration in matter. It's incomprehensible. I mean, it's totally beyond all mental law, all psychological law: it's something self-existent. There are certainly a lot of question marks! The more into detail you go, the more mysterious it becomes. It's almost like ... like standing on the edge between two worlds. It's the same world, and it's completely different -- is it two aspects of this world? I can't even say that. Yet it is the SAME world.

The amphibian too landed in the same world, it wasn't a different earth.

73.173 -- It's so different that I wonder ... sometimes I wonder how it is possible! At times, it's so new and unexpected, it's almost painful. (Question:) Do you mean that you don't really leave matter? No, not at all! Is it a new state IN Matter? Yes. Yes, exactly. And it's ruled by something other than the sun -- I don't know what.
Probably the supramental consciousness.

Someone has to take the first step. Several persistent features stand out, however:

68.412 -- All the time -- it's really constant -- the body has this same experience: in this position (Mother turns her hand slightly to the right), everything works out miraculously -- miraculously, it's unbelievable; and it takes only a slight movement (she turns her hand slightly to the left), and everything is disgusting, everything goes wrong and starts grating: just a slight movement. Then, again, it becomes miraculously wonderful. It becomes miraculous for microscopic, "unimportant" things, in other words for EVERYTHING (without distinction between "important" and "unimportant"), and yet it's the SAME thing! But in one instance, you are in pain, you suffer, you are miserable, and in the other.... And it's the same thing. For example, the body experiences this: it's a mess, it has a cold, a pain here, a pain there, and when it is in a certain attitude: it's all gone! It doesn't exist anymore, there is not a single trace left -- no more cold, no more pain, nothing, it's all gone! Though it may well return [if one falls back into the other position]. Not only is it gone, but the surrounding CIRCUMSTANCES have changed too! In one case, everything is hostile, warped, and in the other.... And it happens in no time at all, it isn't a "long process" of transformation, it's like something that suddenly flips over: flip-flop! (Mother turns her hand to the left and to the right). It's like a concrete proof of the intervention of that wonderful consciousness which makes all those things fade away as though ... they had no consistency, no reality, they simply vanish. And it's a proof that it isn't just something imagined but an actual FACT: a demonstration of the power capable of changing all this ... this present futile life in to a marvel, like that, with that simple reversal.... Another way to put it would be this: the body has the impression it is shut up in something -- literally enclosed -- enclosed as though inside a box, but it sees through it; it sees and can also have some (limited) action through something which is still there but will eventually disappear. So it pushes, pushes to get to the secret, it feels it's about to grasp it, and....

But the old state does not dissolve all at once, it's as if one had to stay in it in order to dissolve it from within, or to infiltrate the new vibrational state into it.

67.197 -- The millennial habit of being otherwise is so ingrained that it feels like ... pulling on a rubber band: the effect lasts as long as you pull on it, but as soon as you let go, even for a second, it snaps back to the way it was. When the other movement is established, it will be natural, that tension won't be necessary anymore. But that impression of the unreality of pain, of the unreality of disease, the unreality of ... is really extraordinary. There are moments of indescribable glory, you know. But the other is there too, all around, pressing.
68.49 -- The entire material creation is covered with a sort of fabric -- a "catastrophic" fabric we might say -- woven of ill will. It's a sort of web, a defeatist, catastrophic web, such that anything you try will fail; it's filled with every possible accident and every ill will. It's like a web. And the body is being taught to get out of it. It's literally blended in with the force of materialization and expression, it's something blended with the material creation. That's what causes diseases and accidents -- it's the cause of all destructive things.

Then, the vibrational quality of the two states becomes more distinct:

62.412 -- The quality of those two vibrations (which are still separate, so that one can be conscious of them both) is simply fantastic! One is fragmentation -- infinite fragmentation -- and utter instability, and the other is an eternal stillness, a limitless vast of absolute light. The consciousness still slips from one to the other.
65.2311 and 63.78 -- You know what it's like to feel really uncomfortable, you can't breathe, you feel nauseous, totally helpless, not able to move or to think about anything, really awful, and then, all of a sudden .... consciousness -- the consciousness of the vibration of love in the body, which is the very essence of creation, only one second: everything brightens, pfft, gone, everything is gone. So you look at yourself in disbelief -- everything is gone! It's just like turning a prism over: at once everything vanishes. The only thing left is that stupid habit the body has of remembering. And of course as it remembers.... In one case, there is a sort of inner silence in the cells, a deep peace that doesn't prevent movement, even rapid movement: it simply takes place on a foundation of eternal peace; and in the other case, it's that inner unrest, that trepidation.

The very definition of the physical mind.

61.26 -- I go off into the experience and ten minutes later realize that I was in that state, with my pen in midair! I have had instances when I no longer understood anything, knew anything, thought anything, wanted anything, or could do anything -- I was simply ... stopped. And then I see people around me, looking at me, and saying to themselves, "Oh! Mother is in her dotage...."
69.1810 -- The body feels that the highest vibration, the vibration of the true consciousness, is so intense that it is equivalent to inertia and immobility: it has an intensity which is imperceptible (for us). That intensity is so great that, for us, it amounts to inertia. And it's a state of immortality, immutably peaceful and still, amidst something resembling waves of overwhelming speed, so fast that they seem motionless. And it is so; total immobility (in appearance) within fantastic movement. And it seems so natural, so simple! ... And then, when you return to this side.... Truly, the ordinary state, the old state, is consciously death and pain, while in the other state, death and pain appear absolutely ... unreal!
Here we are.

It would seem that at the threshold of the body, at the point where that primal mind meshes with bodily matter and trembles and contracts like Parkinson's disease, where it mingles with the very whirl of the electrons in their ceaseless movement and with them forms a solid wall, some kind of reversal takes place: from "infinite fragmentation" in constant trembling to those "vibrations of overwhelming speed" in perfect immobility -- it is like going from Newtonian physics to intergalactic physics, or perhaps even to a new physics.

63.232 -- At any time at all, if I stop talking or listening or working, it's like ... great blissful wings, as big as the world, beating slowly. There's an impression of immense wings -- not two: they are all around and extend everywhere.
72.315 -- There is no longer a sense of time.... As if another time had come into this one.

Another physics has come into matter.

The New Physics

The Other Time.

These experiences of "the other side of the web" may seem purely subjective, with no material consequence for the old environment we live in. "Yes, that's all very nice, that 'fantastic energy,' and that 'unreality' of illness and death, but here, back in the old fishbowl, we're still really sick and we keep on really dying." That's a "real" fact. But the extraordinary thing in Mother's experiment -- the real breakthrough in the evolution of our species -- is that we are in effect shut in a bowl of physical unreality. Physical laws are not as we think, physical illness and death are not as we think and feel them. All our sensations and perceptions of the physical world are false. Hence, we can get out of it physically. Leaving the false perception doesn't lead to Nirvana or to heaven or to death: it leads to the true physical reality, true matter ... as it is. To another life in matter. For Mother's story is not the story of some freak of nature going off to another state, like the amphibian emerging into the open air, and then good-bye to the old ocean of falsehood and unreality: it is two states or two worlds within each other, and getting into the new state modifies the physical laws of the old state. One goes from false matter to true matter, from the false laws to the true law of the world. That was Mother's very first cry in 1958, when a tear occurred in the web -- Mother wasn't a child: she was eighty years old in 1958, and her experience was to go on for another fifteen years.

58.105 -- The minute you are in the other consciousness, all these things that seem so real and concrete change INSTANTLY! There are a number of physical conditions -- physical -- in my body which changed instantly.
It didn't last long enough for everything to change, but some things changed and have never reverted. It means that if that consciousness were kept constantly, it would be a perpetual miracle (what WE call a miracle) -- a fantastic and perpetual miracle! But from the supramental point of view, it would not be a miracle at all, it would be most natural.

Indeed, there is nothing "miraculous" to it -- no more miraculous than Newton's apple falling to the ground at a certain speed. But this is the point: at a certain speed, with respect to a certain frame of reference. And here is where Mother's corporeal experiences perhaps link up with Einstein's physics.
One of Mother's first comments in 1962, her first exclamation after that "great exit" from the web, was: "Death is an illusion, sickness is an illusion, ignorance is an illusion ... only love, and love, and love -- immense, formidable, stupendous, carrying everything." This short passage contains the whole seed of the "miracle" of true matter:

62.66 -- The sense of time disappears completely in ... it's an inner immobility. But an immobility in motion!

And with her usual humor Mother added, "If it continues, they'll put me in the madhouse!" But it is we who are shut behind walls, for without a doubt these vibrations of dazzling speed -- which may be electromagnetic waves or perhaps those of the "unified field" -- move at a speed so great that they appear motionless. And we know from Einstein that a change of speed results in a change of time.
But let us allow Mother to develop her experience in all directions, starting from the first steps:

62.315 -- All of a sudden, for no apparent reason (I still haven't been able to figure out how or why), one ... FALLS, as it were, into the other room [what she sometimes called the old human state], as if one had tripped, and it starts to hurt here and hurt there; one is uncomfortable. Then suddenly, it's like moving from one room to another, crossing a threshold or a wall, automatically, almost without noticing it, and I find myself in a position in which everything flows like a river of quiet peace (it's truly marvelous): the whole creation, all of life, every movement and every thing is one single entity, and this body feels like a very homogeneous part of the whole, and everything flows like an endless river of smiling peace. Then, bang! One trips again, and again one is SITUATED, one is in a certain place, at a certain MOMENT in time; and then a pain here, a pain there, a pain....

One reenters Time, which is the time of pain and death.

62.1210 -- It is getting to be very concrete: you do this (gesture to the left), and everything becomes artificial, hard, dry, false, deceitful -- artificial. You do that (gesture to the right), and everything becomes vast, calm, luminous, limitless, happy. And that's all it takes (Mother tilts her hand from side to side). How? Where? It can't be described, but it's only a movement of consciousness. And the difference between true consciousness and false consciousness is becoming increasingly precise and at the same time THIN: there are no "great" things to do to get out of it. It's like a very hard, thin little rind -- very hard, though malleable, but very, very dry and very thin.

It's the wall of the fishbowl. And Mother adds this, which is very revealing:

64.118 -- It's this sort of film. It's like a film of difficulties and complications added on by the human consciousness (it's much more prominent in man than in animals -- animals don't have it: it's something inherent in man and in mental development), and it's something very thin -- thin and dry like an onion skin, and yet it spoils everything. It's the stupid onion skin of human mentality. You know how terribly thin an onion skin is, and yet nothing gets through it.
61.210 -- The consciousness is deceptive! When you are open and in contact with "that," the vibration gives you strength, energy (and if you're quiet enough, it even fills you with a great joy -- all that in the cells of the body). You fall back into ordinary consciousness, and immediately, the same thing, without anything having changed, THE VERY SAME VIBRATION COMING FROM THE SAME SOURCE turns into pain, uneasiness and a kind of sensation of instability and decrepitude.... I repeated the experiment three or four times to be sure, and it was absolutely automatic, like a chemical reaction: same conditions, same results. I found that quite interesting.

The same vibration, but of course! There aren't fifty kinds of vibrations in the universe, there's only one, the one that carries the worlds and us. And while going through the walls of the fishbowl, that same vibration is refracted, distorted, falsified -- it's death. It may be only a toothache, but it's death just the same! It belongs to the same family, because all ills lead to their culmination, there. It's the whole family of mortal and deceptive vibrations.
And the experiment becomes more precise:

63.35 -- I am beginning to feel that Movement in the cells of my body: it's a movement which is a kind of eternal vibration, with no beginning and no end; it's something from all eternity, for all eternity [like a sine wave]; and there are no time divisions: it's only when it gets projected on a screen that it starts assuming time divisions....

That screen is exactly the formula of our human "onion skin": the fishbowl.

... And that Movement is so all-encompassing -- all-encompassing and constant -- that it gives a feeling of immobility to a normal perception.

"It assumes time divisions," and in the same divisions it assumes pain and death.

71.2512 -- I am more and more convinced that we have a way of receiving things and reacting to them that CREATES the difficulties. If one can remain constantly in that consciousness [the other state], there are no difficulties, yet things are the SAME. The world is the same -- it is seen and felt in a totally different way. Take death, for instance; it's a phenomenon of transition, which to us seems to have been there forever (it's forever because our consciousness divides everything up), but in that divine consciousness, oh!... THINGS BECOME ALMOST INSTANTANEOUS, do you understand? I can't explain it. It's difficult to explain.... It's like an object and its projection.Things ARE, but we see them as if projected on a screen: they come one after another. It's something like that. I feel I am on the way to discovering ... what the illusion is that must be destroyed, so that physical life may be uninterrupted -- to discovering that death comes from a distortion of consciousness. And nothing more.

It's the whole transition from the fragmented vibration of our human consciousness invested with time and death in its wake, to a stupendous vibration, so rapid it appears motionless, and invested with another kind of time.
With his equations of Relativity, Einstein has shown that such "immutable" quantities as the mass of an object, the frequency of a vibration and the time separating two physical events are related to the speed of the frame of reference within which the measurement takes place: in our case, the earth reference or that of our human bowl. For instance, a clock aboard a satellite at constant speed around the earth will count 60 seconds between two electronic "bips," while an identical clock on earth will register 61 seconds between the same two signals: time "slows down" with speed. The greater the speed, the greater the slowing down. There is also the well-known story of the space traveler who returns to earth having aged less than his fellow humans who remained on earth. If the frame of reference approaches the speed of light, time vanishes, and all the laws of Newtonian physics break down completely. As Mother put it, "Things become almost instantaneous." One is in another "frame of reference," like Mother's body in those waves of overwhelming speed.

66.3112 -- It's different.... It's very special, it's an innumerable present.
69.234 -- I don't know what's happening, something is happening in the cells, and ... it's a state, a state of intense vibration, which gives at the same time a sense of luminous omnipotence, even in this (Mother points to her own body), in this old thing, a luminous omnipotence, and static, that is to say, the cells have a feeling of eternity. Something totally new in the body and which seems totally motionless.... I don't know what it is: it isn't immobility, it isn't eternity, I don't know, it's "something" like that which is power, light and truly love. To the point that when I leave that state, I wonder if I still have the same shape!
71.189 -- It's a curious thing. The body feels it no longer belongs to the old way of being, but it knows that it isn't yet in the new one ... it is no longer mortal but it isn't immortal. It's very strange. And sometimes I go from the most terrible discomfort to ... a marvel. Sometimes there isn't a word in my head, nothing; other times, I see and know what's happening everywhere. It's really strange.

And then the experience becomes very explicit ... with fabulous implications, for, if time vanishes for the material, bodily consciousness, then decay vanishes, "consequences" vanish with their whole string of illnesses, accidents and death: each "second" (so to speak) is new, each moment of the universe is as new as if it had just been born -- each instant of man is open and free of any past and future. The future is wholly present at each "second." And where is the consequence of yesterday and of these eighty-seven years, which will never be 87 years + one day? That day is no more, today is a brand-new day of the earth.

61.254 -- In the usual state of consciousness, one does something FOR something. For instance, all those Vedic rishis had a goal: for them the goal was to find immortality. At any level there is always a goal. We ourselves speak of "supramental realization." But not so long ago, I don't know what happened, something took hold of me; it wasn't a thought, it wasn't a sensation, but rather something like a condition: the unreality of the goal -- not its unreality: its uselessness. Not even uselessness: the nonexistence of the goal. It's.... Now, there is a sort of absoluteness in every single second, every movement, from the most subtle and spiritual movement to the most material -- the sense of sequence has disappeared. The sequence has disappeared: this is not the "cause" of that, this is not done "for" that; one isn't aiming at "that" -- all that seems.... It's rather peculiar. An innumerable, perpetual and simultaneous absolute. The sense of connection is gone, the sense of cause and effect is gone: all that belongs to the world of time and space. Each ... each what? I can't say "movement," or "state of consciousness," or "vibration" (all these notions still belong to our mode of perception), so I say "thing" -- "thing" doesn't mean anything. Each "thing" carries in itself its own absolute law. There is total lack of cause and effect, goal, intention. This type of connection (Mother makes a horizontal gesture) doesn't exist: only that (vertical gesture). Something that has neither cause, nor effect, nor continuation, nor intention -- intention of what! It's like this (same vertical movement).
62.206 -- In the true position, there is neither friction nor wear and tear.
58.105 -- Each second has its own eternity and its own law.

As if Mother's body were living at the speed of light.
And we can begin to see the outline of the earth's miracle.

The Substitution of Vibrations

Of course, the immortality of this old body is not the "goal." That would not be worth the trouble. "Who would care to wear one coat for a hundred years or be confined in one narrow and changeless lodging unto a long eternity?" said Sri Aurobindo. [Thoughts & Aphorisms, XVII, 124.] Quite obviously that new consciousness must gradually change the modalities of its body, change this corporeal rigidity into a new flexibility, freeing it from its dependence on coarse matter for nourishment, allowing it to discover other sources of energy, etc. -- it will take a few centuries. In the meantime, we must hold on, and that new state, which Mother called "the state without death" (there is a nuance), will give us the necessary time to evolve the desired transformations in this old, transitory body. That is not where the problem lies: it is an evolutionary mechanism, which will follow its more or less accelerated course. What concerns us is the acceleration itself, the actual driving power of the change.

1930 -- The real change in consciousness will be the one that changes the PHYSICAL conditions of the world and makes it an entirely new creation.

Mother said that in 1930. It is that new physics which concerns us. We could perhaps say supramental physics -- how does it work?
To begin with, the new state is extremely contagious. That is its first quality. The first mental vibrations in the anthropoid were most probably very contagious too -- and we all know today the power of a thought wave across the world. But here, strangely enough (or not so strangely), it is a power of material contagion, as if the fact of living the true state, or we could say true matter, had the capacity to change the laws of the false, illusion-ridden matter we live in: its entire "logical" sequence of cause and effect, which are but the cause and effect of a certain illusion. The first "law" of the new physics is that each second is new and bears its own law, which does not depend on anything "before," and has no consequence "afterwards." But how can a "state of consciousness" be contagious, we good materialists of the old matter may wonder? "Consciousness" is a highly subjective thing.... It could well be the supreme objectivity of the world, but we have known nothing about it until now, because the only "consciousness" we know is what's whirling in our heads; but there is a consciousness in matter, and it's a state of consciousness in matter: a cellular state of consciousness -- and nothing is more contagious than matter, because it's one and the same continuous thing from one end of the universe to the other. The only separation is in our heads.
It is better to let Mother express her first groping discoveries in this new physics, as early as 1958, when a first tear occurred in the web:

58.66 -- During the entire time it was actively like that [the new experience], it was absolutely impossible to have the least disorder in the body, and not only in the body but in ALL SURROUNDING MATTER. It's as if all the objects obeyed, and without any need to "decide" to obey: it was automatic....

It is no longer will power which communicates orders to matter: it is matter itself which communicates, automatically.

... There was a divine harmony in EVERYTHING (it happened in my bathroom upstairs, surely to show that it is in the most trivial things), in everything, continuously. If that condition becomes permanently established, there can NO LONGER be any illnesses, it's impossible. There can no longer be accidents, there can no longer be disorders, and everything (probably in a progressive way) must become harmonious as it was harmonious: all the objects in the bathroom were filled with joyful enthusiasm -- everything obeyed, everything! I really felt it was a first experience, meaning something new on earth. It is truly a state of absolute omniscience and omnipotence in the body. And it modifies all the surrounding vibrations.... Most probably, the greatest resistance will come from the most conscious beings, because of the mind itself, which wants things to continue according to their pattern of ignorance. So-called inert matter is much more readily responsive: it doesn't resist. And I am convinced that in plants, for instance, or with animals, the response will be much swifter than in humans. It will be more difficult to have to deal with a very organized mental being: people who live in a well-organized and crystallized mental consciousness are as hard as a rock. It doesn't budge. Certainly, according to my experience, what is "unconscious" will follow more easily: it was delightful to see the water running out of the tap, the mouth-wash in the bottle, the glass, the washcloth, it all looked so happy and receptive!
61.113 -- As I was walking yesterday, I was walking in a sort of atmosphere that was exclusively the divine [the other state]: one could touch it, feel it, it was inside, outside, everywhere. For three-quarters of an hour, nothing but "that." Well, I can assure you that at that moment there were no more problems, to be sure! And what a simplicity! No need to think, no need to want anything, no need to "decide": BEING, being, being! Being, in an infinite diversity of infinite unity: everything was there, but nothing was separate; everything was in motion, and nothing moved.
61.3010 -- This new creation is something denser, more compact than the physical world ["mass" increases with speed, said Einstein]. We always tend to think that it's more ethereal, but it isn't! The impression that atmosphere gives me is of something more compact, and at the same time with no heaviness or thickness. But solid! cohesive, so MASSIVE and at the same time.... I don't know, it's entirely different from what one expects. You can't imagine what it's like. Something compact and WITHOUT DIVISIONS.
66.221 -- And it's a wonderful way of being, infinitely superior to anything we have here! Here, there is always something wrong -- a pain here, a pain there, or something or other, and then the circumstances are difficult also -- all that ... changes its complexion. Everything becomes light, you see, light, malleable. All the hardness and rigidity: gone. It changes everything! Everything is changed! I was brushing my teeth, for example, I was rinsing my eyes, doing the most commonplace things: their very nature was changed! There was a conscious vibration in the eye that was being washed, in the toothbrush, in.... It was all different! It's obvious that if one masters that state, one can change all the surrounding circumstances.

Then, suddenly, the experience assumes a surprising dimension:

67.127 -- For two or three seconds, all of a sudden, it's as if one held the key. And all the so-called miracles appear as the simplest things in the world: "Why, it's quite simple, all it takes is this!" And then ... it goes away. When it's there, it's so simple, so NATURAL. And absolutely all-powerful. For example, something new seems to be coming: the power to heal. But not as it is usually described! Not at all, I don't feel I "heal" somebody: it's ... putting things back in order. But it's not even that.... It's a LITTLE SOMETHING WHICH DISAPPEARS, and this little something is essentially ... Falsehood.

In other words, the bowl of physical unreality we live in.

... It's very interesting. It is basically what gives the ordinary human consciousness the sense of reality -- that's what has to disappear. What we call "concrete," a "concrete reality" -- yes, what gives you the sense of a "real" existence -- that particular sensation has to disappear and be replaced by.... It's beyond words. It's like a universal pulsation. It's all-light, all-power, all-intensity of love at the same time, and a fullness! It is so full that nothing else can exist beside that. And when "that" is here, in the body, in the cells, it's enough to direct "it" onto someone or something, and everything falls immediately into place. So, in ordinary terms, it "heals": the illness is cured. No! it doesn't cure it: it cancels it! That's it, the illness is canceled, made UNREAL.

And this is where we begin to stare wide-eyed.

... You see, it isn't the action of a "higher force" THROUGH matter, into others: it's a direct action, from matter to matter. What people usually call "healing power" is a great mental or vital power IMPOSING ITSELF despite the resistance of matter -- that's not at all the case here! It is the contagion of a vibration. So it's irrevocable.
61.271 -- That state is a sort of absolute. An absolute that not only doesn't have to "overcome" obstacles or resistance, but that automatically CANCELS the resistance.

And here is the last clue to the mystery:

67.153 -- When you stir water, it's no longer transparent: you create an agitation, and that agitation prevents the water from being transparent -- you can no longer see through it. The same thing applies to the body: when you are quiet and vast, everything becomes limpid. And through that limpidity, you see very clearly, you decide very clearly; everything falls into place and things organize themselves, by themselves, you don't even need to interfere.... (How can I say it?) The whole universe moves at a fantastic speed, in perfect immobility (the words sound stupid but it can be felt, it can be seen, it can be lived). A luminous immobility that moves at a fantastically rapid pace. And in that immobility, there is a perfect transparency, and the problem does not exist: the solution precedes the problem.

Illness, death, accidents do not exist, cannot exist: the solution precedes the problem, or prevents the problem from arising -- the problem is canceled as if it had never existed except in our own deceptive consciousness. "Ills" are, yes, made unreal or stripped of their illusory existence. And all our besieged existence becomes a perpetual miracle. A corporeal limpidity where all that no longer exists, no longer is. "A little something which disappears."

66.318 -- This body lived the truth several times this morning for a few seconds ... which could have been eternities. One doesn't know if it has lasted or not: all that is over. And it doesn't abolish a thing, that's what is so marvelous! Everything is there, it doesn't abolish anything, I mean it doesn't abolish anything of the world; you don't even feel that Falsehood is abolished: it doesn't exist. It's a little something ... which changes everything. That's how a dead man can come to life again -- like that, through that change.

And finally the picture became clear, and not only clear but promising and accessible to the humans that we are. That day, Mother held the key to the "little something" separating the two states: the old human state, which she calls here the state of imperfection, and the new state, which she calls the state of perfection. And these two states are not at an astronomical or transcendental distance from one another: they are here, together, within each other, on this earth.

64.1211 and 253 -- Perfection is always here, coexisting with imperfection: perfection and imperfection are always coexisting, and not only simultaneously but IN THE SAME PLACE, I don't know how to say it (here Mother puts the palms of her hands together). Which means that at any time and in any circumstances, you can attain perfection -- it isn't something that must be acquired gradually, through a gradual progress: perfection is an absolute state you can attain at any time. And so the conclusion is very interesting.... When truth manifests [that is, the other state], the vibration of falsehood disappears: it is canceled out as if it had never existed before the vibration of truth replacing it. You see, truth is here, falsehood is there (Mother puts her palms together), perfection is here, imperfection is there; they coexist in the same place. The minute you perceive perfection, imperfection disappears, illusion disappears. In other words, the capacity to live and be that true vibration seems to have the power to SUBSTITUTE that vibration for the vibration of falsehood, to the point where.... For instance, suppose that the outcome of the false vibration is an accident or a disaster; but if, amidst these vibrations, there is a consciousness capable of becoming conscious of the vibration of truth, that can -- that MUST -- cancel the other, prevent the disaster.... There's a growing feeling that what is true is the only way to change the world, all the other procedures of gradual transformation are always tangential -- they come closer and closer, but never get there -- and the ultimate step must be this: the substitution of the true vibration.

It is the substitution of the new, supramental physics for the old mental, scientific and mortal physics.
Could it be that one day suddenly the vibration of truth might come through the mesh of our web and cancel out, make unreal throughout the world, the horror, the pain, the death we live -- and that we might awaken in a new world ... in which the old laws of death will not make any sense, and will vanish like a futile dream? Not at all a gradual transformation, but a sudden change that would catch us so unprepared that we would drop our entire old arsenal -- and find ourselves bursting with an immense laughter.
And the earth looks at itself as if for the first time.
And let me add this: we should not make the mistake of thinking that that experience can be had only by a few phenomenal and privileged humans in exceptional circumstances -- it is an experience we can all have in a material way, in a corporeal way, and many have it without being aware of it. Because it seems so simple, so natural that one does not notice it. The trouble with the secret is that it is right under our nose.

[…]

60.1510 -- It's funny: the thing in itself doesn't exist for people! It's their attitude toward the thing that matters to them: what they think of it. How funny! In itself, each thing bears its truth -- its absolute truth, so luminous, so clear -- and when you touch THAT, everything falls marvelously into place. But people are NOT in touch with "that": they are always in touch THROUGH their thought -- the thought they have about it, the feeling they have about it, or sometimes worse.

Now what remains is to learn to practice the secret: how to cancel the physical mind and arrive at the natural state, the pure cell, without mental and catastrophic and scientific coating. That is where the extraordinary discovery of Mother and Sri Aurobindo lies: that of the "mind of the cells," the greatest biological revolution since a first living particle began to fight and flee to the frontier of inanimate matter, and life.
It is the second evolutionary transition, no longer from matter to life, but from life to something else Mother called the "overlife" and which could just as well be called "overdeath," for it is neither life as we know it, nor of course the death that goes with it.
It is what Sri Aurobindo called "the life divine."