Chapter 7September 29, 1962

* * * (Later, Mother tries to remember a word that struck her while listening to Satprem read his manuscript

on Sri Aurobindo:)

... It's strange, I realize that I listen with a completely different type of consciousness. Nothing is left here (pointing to the forehead), all that comes there is sound, but I listen elsewhere.

I have no physical memory – I don't remember at all. But I had the impression.... I saw a word turning into living bluish light, so I thought, "Ah, a good word for my translation!" (Mother again tries to remember, then gives up.)

Anyway, the important thing is what you told me: the experience at Alipore is supramental.

Oh, yes! He used the word Narayana because he hadn't yet developed his own terminology; but he isn't referring to the gods: it's the supramental experience.

* * *

(A few days later Mother remarks, concerning her "forgetfulness" and her way of hearing

"elsewhere":)

And sometimes I hear a word that isn't even close to what was said!

For when I try to remember, I see a light, you understand – it came with a light. It was a white light fringed with blue. So maybe you said some word and I heard it "elsewhere."

I still see the same thing: it was white and fringed with blue; I said bluish, but to be exact, it was white fringed with blue.

Sometimes that happens to me when I read English for my translation: suddenly certain things come [from elsewhere], so I look for a translation, and when I want to refer back to the English text, I can't find the word I had seen at all – I don't find it!

So don't pay any attention! (Laughing) The doctors think I am cracking up!

"Beyond the shadow of a doubt, modern scientific perception comes much closer to expressing universal reality than, say, Stone Age perceptions did. Yet even science will suddenly find itself completely surpassed and probably turned upside down by the intrusion of something that DID NOT EXIST in the observed universe...." The trouble is, Sri Aurobindo said the thing was INSIDE already, involved. He always says it's "involved" and then evolves.

Yes, but "involved" simply means unmanifested. The intrusion of the new, supramental element is the intrusion of that involved, unmanifested element.

If it weren't already there, involved, it could never come out! That's obvious.

Then you say:

"This change, this abrupt transformation of the universal element, will most certainly bring about a kind of chaos in the perceptions, from which a new knowledge will emerge. That, in the most general terms, is the result of the new Manifestation." It's not a question of "new things," as if they didn't exist before, but they were unmanifested in the universe. Nothing can exist which doesn't already exist in the Supreme from all eternity. But it is new in the Manifestation. The element isn't new, but it is newly manifest, newly emerged from the Nonmanifest. Something "new"... what does that mean? It makes no sense! It is new FOR us, in the manifestation, that's all.

We always talk nonsense when we speak. But at any rate (laughing), some nonsense is closer to the truth than other nonsense! This nonsense is closer to the truth.