Mother Or The Mutation of Death Satprem Translated from the French By Roger Harris and Marie Pontacq 1 2 To Her may our aspiration have the power to reveal what is hidden and to manifest the unexpected S. 3 PART ONE The Cell Without Code 4 Her single will opposed the cosmic rule.1 Sri Aurobindo 1 The Transformation of Matter Or the Negation of Matter? If this true Vibration, this small lining of Truth replaced the false vibration, we would be faced with an immensely transformed world⎯ unimaginably transformed, because we cannot imagine what is simple. We can imagine fairies, gods and all kinds of bedazzling complications or superartifices, but in fact we keep inventing complications to simplify our complications, but that which does not need any artifice, that which is as obvious as spring water…. A spring is new at every moment. Something which finds its path according to its slope of truth and opens its way through the simple power of what it is. To be is to be able to be what one is at every second: an apple tree, a gazelle, a song in one way or another, and it sings, that’s the way it is. Man, this human transition, was exactly to be capable of being what one is not, and as it is not truly possible, it was a power of unreality in a stronghold of unreality⎯ now the unreality is simply exploding in our faces, that’s all. But how about that real, suddenly real world, disillusioned … and clear? How about those not-yet-suffocated men suddenly opening their transparent eyes … by the million? It is very vertiginous. It is awfully miraculous! Perhaps it is also very funny, but what is it? A world where suddenly everything communicates⎯ for that was what the fortress was: nothing communicated. A world where one knows what is needed at every second and what exact amount is needed, as the bird does, very simply. One knows all that one does not know, because the fortress was what created the wall of not-knowing. Then, to begin with, all schools collapse. There only remains the immense School of the Game of Life, and also, perhaps, training schools for the body, or rather for the consciousness of the body. There is no more cramming, because there is no more fortress to cram: it is the great manor of the world. And everyone is 5 what they are, which makes for many different types of music; and since one no longer needs to rob his neighbour in order to fill one’s own cellars, earn a false living in order to try and stealthily make a true one with it, be anything other than what one is, it all results in a sudden collapse of all competition: one will not “succeed” in being like one’s neighbour. And everyone, every country, every group, if one still needs groupings, does not have to be other than what it is, very joyfully, because to be means the joy of being what one is, purely, without addition or subtraction. And without borders. There is nothing to gain! Except oneself, more and more beautifully, more and more limpidly, more and more powerfully. For one can also do all that one cannot do: the fortress was what created the wall of non- power⎯ though very wisely (or automatically, we could say), because we would have immediately grabbed hold of this Power to wring our neighbour’s neck and twist everything, as usual. But there, in this disillusioned world, there is no need of morals anymore, of policemen or of courts: it is the automatic power … of what we are, and naturally of accomplishing what we are. Where could the fakers be in this clear world? If they could possibly exist, they would be admirably visible: twisted like their thoughts, enveloped in grey and black like rats. There is no need to pretend: it can be seen, it is clear, and everybody out! But what is really marvellous is that, by themselves, the fakers will no longer be possible⎯ those poor fakers, they delude themselves a lot, harbour many illusions, thirst for everything, suffer and toil a lot to catch what they are not … but if they can no longer delude themselves? That’s it, a world where one can no longer delude oneself. Is one going to paint one’s face like a Punchinello? There is but one means of power left: to be, more and more. Who would choose cancer? The true cancer, that of Falsehood, that which creates all the little cancers in our skin. Of course, a world where there will be no more doctors, lawyers or.… The list of all our complications is very long. No more telephones, since communication is everywhere: it was a walled fortress. No more distance, or separation, it is consciousness everywhere: it was the fortress of unconsciousness. The web has given way and one runs, it runs everywhere. No more trepidation or hurry … hurry 6 for what? Tomorrow is perfectly today, each second is perfectly what it must be, new, like the little spring. An extraordinarily simple world … as truth is. Just a veil that tears. A few million clear gazes that suddenly stop and weigh together on the veil. The ghosts will say that it is not possible, because for them, everything is not- possible, except the cage that creates all of their power⎯ their evangelical, governmental, scientific, eternal and constitutional power. All tarred with the same brush. These are the evangelists of death, so they cling to it, of course! But there remains a point. A mortal point: this body. And this point of Death is like the key to Falsehood, or to the Truth hidden by that Falsehood⎯ for in fact, only Truth exists in the world, even Falsehood could not exist if there were not a Truth behind it. It is the great simulacrum of Falsehood stuck on an imperturbable Truth. The Falsehood comes off and the true Earth emerges⎯ it can happen tomorrow, it is not far, it does not take “time”: all those little consciousnesses have only to reach the “homogeneous point,” as almost happened in 1968, but without the knowledge of the process or of the reason or the Power behind it. The Amazon is there, radiant, funny, unveiled. A formidable world breathing. But this old body is still here⎯ this old body which worked out the transition so far, this old animal residue. What is happening to it? Mother had exactly reached that point: for her, all was unveiled, without limits, without possibility of illness, for illness is only the material, corporeal expression of Falsehood. She was in the true earth beforehand. She was preparing the true earth for everyone by wearing down the web in her own body. Illnesses are eliminated, even wear and tear can be eliminated: there is no more “friction” or trepidation in the cells of the clear world. But they are still animal cells nonetheless. And what is the point of lingering in a ninety-year-old body? And even if we can conceive⎯ as it can really happen⎯ of younger bodies, even very young ones, achieving the transition and breaking through the web at eighteen, what about this body which has to eat, digest, weigh something? It seems that its mode of functioning in itself, even pure, even freed from illnesses, contains its own seed of 7 death and decay: one eats, which necessarily means that one is also eaten. It seems that this body is the very symbol of Death. But what does death mean, when there is no more “other side”? The other side is here, isn’t it, when we have cut through the web. So, what happens then? We enter our “body of consciousness,” as one could say, the very one that is lining us and is our reality, our body of reality, the one that Mother saw more clearly than the fakers’ skin and bones, and which shone or faded depending on the quality of consciousness. It is an old story, we have always had a body of consciousness⎯ we even come back life after life to make this body grow, to develop it, universalize it and embellish it … to teach it how to love. For the cage is the site of Love⎯ the site of suffering. This is perhaps the great secret of the cage. One comes back to it again and again until one has learnt how to love everything and be everything⎯ in brief, how to be divine. There are not many people who do their true job in the cage, but a few of them do it. Fakers vanish, they have no body on the “other side,” they are only aggregated Matter, which dissolves. But what happens to the others at the end of the growth cycle, when the true body, the body of consciousness is fully shaped, developed, conscious and loving?… Does one drop the animal rag and disappear, disencumbered, into the true earth?⎯ like “ghosts” in reverse. We could easily imagine a world where all conscious bodies joyfully frolic … on earth, the true earth, while the “real” ghosts are in the foreground, the false earth⎯ and the two worlds remain as if superimposed, without communication. This is how things already are. It is the dwelling of Sri Aurobindo, and of many conscious beings. But this does not seem to be the evolutionary solution. If we have been shaped in Matter, it means that this Matter holds its own plenitude and its own accomplishment⎯ where is the seed that ends in a non-tree? Thus this seed of Matter, symbolized by this body, must have its own meaning and its own key.