Chapter 6December 22, 1962

It's very good, very good, excellent.

It's just the impression I have now: what's happening is something that has never happened before, and consequently, NOBODY can understand.

For instance, those who witness the phenomenon on a day-to-day basis (such as the doctor, for example) say, "I don't understand. Oh, is that how it is? I don't understand. Yes, of course, there are certain reasons...." When something happens, I ask him, "How do you account for this?" "I don't know." But if I tell him, "Well, I think I know what it depends on," he stares at me as if to say, "Bats in her belfry!" So I don't say anything. I tried two or three times, just to see – there's no reaction, nobody understands, nobody!

Even if I speak to someone more intelligent or better informed.... Once or twice I said something to Pavitra, to see what would happen: he immediately dogmatizes, makes a mental principle out of it (consistent with Sri Aurobindo's teaching, of course!). And it becomes something rigid, like a box. And he tries! He tries, he KNOWS he shouldn't do that, but.... Which means one cannot understand unless one has the experience – you must have the experience of all this somewhere, mon petit, otherwise you couldn't write about it!

But it's Sri Aurobindo!

And interestingly enough, as I told you last time, it follows my body's experience quite closely and regularly. There are so many sides to the problem, you see, so many ways of approaching the problem and attempting the transformation, and it [the book] seems to follow very, very well.... It's interesting. Your book, and also my translation – and yet they are so different! But of course, the experience itself is very, very diverse, multifaceted, with all sorts of side roads or forks, tiny little signs on the way, simply as clues – a whole world!

And I see clearly that trying to formulate it would spoil everything. You really can't formulate a curve until you come to the end of it – otherwise, you spoil its course.

But it's very interesting.

Well. Au revoir, mon petit; it's good – it's going well. That's what Sri Aurobindo told me a few days ago (I spent two hours with him at night, with all sorts of very interesting things happening). He told me (in his joking way), "You see! I've got him doing the book that makes him progress." So I said, "Good." Because he has been there all along since you embarked on this book, and he seems to be guiding you according to a plan he has worked out. That's what he told me. I have seen him with you very frequently (as I've told you), but the other day he told me this positively.

It's good. It's very good this time.

Did you bring your book?

It's not so great.

That doesn't matter.

Is it the end of the chapter?

Oh, no, just another part.

What is it on? The transformation? You've finished the "transformation" – no? The transformation isn't finished!

(Satprem reads a passage from his manuscript dealing with the Ashram's "bright period" in 1926,

when Mother had made an overmental creation and the gods were beginning to manifest.)

In the end, Sri Aurobindo told me it was an overmental creation, not the Truth. These were his very words: "Yes, it's an overmental creation, but that's not the truth we're seeking; it's not the truth, the highest truth," he said.

I made no reply, not a word: in half an hour I had undone everything – I undid it all, really everything, cut the connection between the gods and the people here, demolished absolutely everything. Because you see, I knew it was so attractive for people (they were constantly seeing the most astonishing things) that the obvious temptation was to hang on to it and say, "We'll improve on it" – which was impossible. So I sat down quietly for half an hour, and I undid it all.

We had to start over again with something else.

But I said nothing, I told no one about it except Sri Aurobindo. At the time I let no one know, because they would have been completely discouraged.

* * * A little later:

I have enough work for ten people....

If I spent the whole night writing, as Sri Aurobindo used to do, I might be able to keep up to date. But I have no intention of doing that, because my nights are very interesting!

I have had... some rather strange things have been happening. I don't know whether you understand the difference between the memory of an inner experience (from the subtle physical, the subconscient, all the inner regions) and the memory of a physical fact. There is a very great difference in quality, the same difference that exists between inner vision and physical vision. Physical vision is precise, well defined, and at the same time flat – I don't know how to explain it: it's very flat, totally superficial, but very accurate, with the kind of accuracy and precision that defines things which are really not defined 238This is the beginning of a phenomenon that will become quite acute over the years, as if an increasingly inexorable force were trying to swallow up Mother's conversations with Satprem – the story of the transformation, in other words – in favor of having seen certain people and things, spoken and organized certain things – several different scenes... of the PHYSICAL memory. Not at all things I saw with the inner vision while exteriorized, but the MATERIAL memory of having done certain things.

Afterwards, I had to look into it: it really was a memory. It suddenly struck me, and I wondered, "Did I really go downstairs physically?"... There are plenty of people here to prove that I didn't, that I didn't stir from here. And yet I have the physical memory of having done so, and of having done certain other things as well; I even remember going outside.

Well, it confronts me with a real problem. Not only is that memory absolutely physical, but the EFFECTS of what I said and did are there.

The effects are there?

Yes, they are. Tiny things, certain arrangements in a room, slight changes in regard to the meals, things of absolutely no importance in themselves – the little things life is full of, the things one does all the time, not big events (I know there's also an action on terrestrial events and all that, but it belongs to the other type of memory).

You've been able to verify these changes?

There's no question of verification – they happened!

Oh, they happened!

"Here's how this should be," I would say, and it became like that. For example, if I told someone to put something in a certain place, he did it. The person doesn't know I told him, because he's not in the same consciousness as I am, but he did it.

And I found out about the immediate effects of it even before recalling it, for it all unfolded in reverse: when a certain thing was done, I thought, "What on earth! This person is wonderful." And then I suddenly realized, "But I told him to do that!" I told him. Then the image came – "the image"... I don't mean the sort of memory one has of a vision, but the memory of something one has DONE. With that kind of image, it's not that you "look": it just enters into you quite naturally. It has a particular quality. That's how I became aware of these changes. I noticed them on my own.

And they are facts. There's nothing to discuss: they are facts. And yet materially, according to physical appearances, that is, I didn't stir from here.

So WHO was it, who did all that? I don't know.

Could it be some exteriorization in the subtle physical?

Not at all! The memory of an exteriorization in the subtle physical is VERY different. I have a lot of experience of it, you know! I have been familiar with the phenomenon for something like sixty years – it's completely different. But this is entirely the type of experience one has in the physical Falsehood, if you will, in the ordinary physical consciousness.

I haven't said anything because people here tend to think I am going off my rocker, and I don't want to add to their... impression! But even for me, it left me... it took me a little while (it didn't happen just