Chapter 6April 28, 1965

and suddenly I saw my face in a mirror, and that's how I knew it was someone else.

And it seems to be quite a daily occupation, a very regular occupation, with people totally different from one another, totally different, but all of them in contact with Sri Aurobindo's thought or Sri Aurobindo's Work. Some I know very well, with people around them whom I know very well; some others I don't know so well.

The previous night, it was difficult because I was ("I was" – who was I? I don't know) harassed and attacked by someone who didn't want to leave me alone and whom I found totally repugnant, who was to me an embodiment of falsehood and hypocrisy. It was a symbolic being (the whole thing was symbolic) and he represented something, almost like one of the human vices, something symbolic and very widespread, and what a nuisance it was, oh!... I called on everything to get rid of it. But I didn't find out who I was – it was "me," but outwardly I don't know.

But last night, as it happened, in the course of all the circumstances, I was with someone whom I know very well (not materially) and I had white hair, and that person told me, "Oh, it's very fine, just go ahead like that...." Then I saw my face.... I had a pale face, but not white, and white hair falling onto the neck, very white (the white of black hair), with a few black tresses in it – white hair. And I said, "But no! When one has white hair..." (I don't know what language I was speaking because one doesn't hear any sounds, one understands inwardly)... "white hair like this isn't pretty." So (laughing) when I came back to my usual state, I thought, "Oh, but what a strange face I had!"

It's a little tiring. Every time there's a new difficulty to be overcome, a problem to be solved, something to be set in order....

Mother looks absorbed:

...Ultimately, until one has the power to do everything, one knows nothing.

This has been my experience these last few days, increasingly clearly.

As long as you don't have the power to do everything, that is, as long as you don't have the supreme Power, you know nothing. And the supreme Power is... Let me make myself clearer (Mother smiles). Someone is dying from cancer in America. I said to that someone that what would happen would be the best for his soul; I said it at a time when the so-called human knowledge still imagined it could cure him. He has lost his speech, but not consciousness – neither hearing nor consciousness (it's a cancer of the brain). The doctor (most eminent, of course, the best you could find) says he only lives on through sheer willpower – and HE doesn't want to live! (Yet he lives on, life goes on.) He doesn't want to live, he wants to die. But of course he can't say so, he can't speak anymore. And the doctor, on his part, in his ignorance, bewildered by the phenomenon, says it's through his will that he lives on.

consciousnesses such as those) "Death" with a big question mark – what is it exactly? What happens exactly [when one dies]? What is the change in consciousness? Is there a change in consciousness? What happens?... Because my work (the promise I gave) consists in making him, before he leaves his body, conscious of the eternal Truth. So for at least three hours this morning I was confronted with this problem (that's why I was completely withdrawn when I came), and I said to myself, "But... until one is the master of life and death, one knows nothing!"

That's why I was a little absorbed.

(silence)

For so many, so many years I have had all kinds of experiences. For about sixty years I have been constantly looking after people who are said to be "dying" – constantly. Well, there are almost as many cases as there are people – there are categories, but the cases are innumerable (and I am not referring to external cases, to the material event: I am referring to the inner cases). This is to say that I have been put in almost constant contact with the phenomenon, and yet, it remains a problem.... At least twice in this existence, I have gone through what people call "death" – and both times the experience was different. The experience was different, yet the apparent fact was the same.

And if I look at it in a certain way (explanations, of course, are meaningless), if I look at it in a certain way, I mean, to have the true key... one has it only with the Power. Well, that Power... (Mother shakes her head)

It's hard to explain if I want to make myself understood. For instance, many times (many times, very often), people told me they wanted to die for some reason or other; and by doing a certain thing, it happened. The "thing" wasn't always the same, but the result was in appearance always the same: the person left his or her body. I even had near me, at least twice, very clearly and precisely, people who were supposedly "dead," who had left their body in that way, and they knew nothing about it! Therefore, for that part of their being, it made no difference.18 And it has also happened that I've "resurrected," as it is called, someone who had been declared dead. This is to tell you that all the various possibilities (not all, but many), all that has been shown to me.

Naturally, it is always a movement of the consciousness [that brings about death] and a certain movement of the will, but...

What I was wondering about today (not "wondering" – words are always wrong – because it isn't mental, I wasn't wondering mentally), but suddenly there came in front of me, like this (gesture indicating a cinema screen): could what is called "death" be by chance a multitude of different things?... We say "life," "death," and we oppose that death to life – could it be, by chance, that what people call "death" is a multitude of different things, of different possibilities?

(silence)

What is it?

Human science answers: there is an analogous phenomenon in all cases – decomposition. But that...

We are in a constant state of decomposition – everything, all life is constantly in a state of decomposition and transformation; all the food we absorb is constantly in a state of decomposition. So...