Chapter 1June 3, 1963

(Mother prepares to read a letter of Sri Aurobindo in the original English.)

Do you understand when I read?

Certainly I do! But it will tire you....

No, it doesn't tire me.

(Mother reads)

The body-mind

And there is too an obscure mind of the body, of the very cells, molecules, corpuscles. Haeckel, the German materialist, spoke somewhere of the will in the atom, and recent science, dealing with the incalculable individual variation in the activity of the electrons, comes near to perceiving that this is not a figure but the shadow thrown by a secret reality. This body-mind is a very tangible truth; owing to its obscurity and mechanical clinging to past movements and facile oblivion and rejection of the new, we find in it one of the chief obstacles to permeation by the supermind Force and the transformation of the functioning of the body. On the other hand, once effectively converted, it will be one of the most precious instruments for the stabilisation of the supramental Light and Force in material Nature.

(XXII.340)

It corresponds exactly to my own experience.

It is this mind of the cells which seizes upon a mantra or a japa and eventually repeats it automatically, and with what persistence! That is to say, CONTINUALLY. That's what Sri Aurobindo means when he says it can be a help: it keeps at things indefinitely (Mother clenches her fist in an unwavering gesture).

A few days ago, at the end of an activity or a situation which demanded an effort, almost a struggle, I heard (it's odd), I heard the cells repeat my mantra! It was like a choir in which each cell was repeating the mantra, automatically.... "Well, this is odd!" I thought. And it was just after that, the next day and the day after, that someone showed me this letter.

It is astonishingly true. I heard it – I heard THE CELLS repeating the mantra. Automatically, in the difficulty (there was a difficulty), they were repeating the mantra. Like a choir, an immense choir in a church, it was very odd. As if there were lots of little voices, innumerable little voices repeating and repeating the same sound. It gave me the impression of a church choir, but with lots and lots and lots of choirboys – tiny little I don't think so.

Because it's also through japa, mantras, the awakening of the physical consciousness, that the Tantric power operates.

I think their power comes from a higher layer [higher than the cellular mind]. Because their action is very cerebral: its effect is always here (gesture at the forehead and temples), it takes you here (same gesture) – it's even painful!

It's cerebral.

But how does that power act in Matter? Because they do have a power over Matter.

Because it's very material – the brain is material! It's just a little less mechanical than the cellular mind. But it Is material; it isn't the higher mind, certainly: it's a mind confined to the body (same gesture to the temples). But the mind I was speaking of, the body-mind, is EVERYWHERE, in every cell: every cell has it within it; whereas that power is specifically situated at the brain level. It's a very cerebral action, enveloping the forehead and the lower part of the face, not even down to the throat.

* * * How is your "writing" coming on? All right?

Yes, I am no longer tired as I was before, but... It's a domain that seems so mechanical to me!

Yet I put the Force in it.

I put the Force in it, because I can SEE your yantram like this (Mother closes her eyes and says aloud): 6, 12, 30 I see it, it exists.

It has a reality now. And there's a rhythm – a very nice rhythm: 6, 12, 30, 48 Can you see when I say it? It has become real, I can assure you.

* * * Shortly afterwards:

Yesterday I saw a seven-month-old baby... who is a sage.

He looks at you with his soul. When I looked at him, his eyes lit up.

Doesn't cry, doesn't speak, but he made a sort of noise – he stretched out his arms to me and seemed to say, "Aaah!" Then I took him in my arms, and he laid his head there, on my heart – he didn't close