Chapter 4October 15, 1966

explain. Very pleasant. And absolutely silent, but conscious, very conscious, and in perfect tranquillity – light, light, light, nothing but that: the essence of light.

The ascending curve went beyond that, into those regions Théon had given that barbarous name of "pathetism." When one went beyond and entered those regions, then there was... it was the Supreme outside the creation, beyond the creation. That’s where I saw the representative form of the new creation (and that was before I ever heard anything about Sri Aurobindo and the Supermind), that’s where I saw the form that must succeed the human form, like the symbolic representation of the new creation. That was two or three years before I heard of Sri Aurobindo and met him. So when he told me about the supramental creation, I said to him (laughing), "But of course, I know, I saw it up there!"

No one had told me anything. It’s only when I went to Tlemcen that Madame Théon told me what it was. She knew how to go through all the states of being, from one to the next, and on to the next... leaving the body corresponding to each state of being in its region and moving beyond. So then, quite spontaneously and naturally, I learned to do it. And I did it there, that’s how I saw this prototype, all the way up, all the way up.

Theon’s teaching wasn’t at all metaphysical and intellectual: everything was expressed in a sort of pictorial objectification; and as I said the other day about that vision [of the "birds"], it’s a richer expression, less limited than the purely intellectual and metaphysical expression. It’s more alive.

And that’s pleasant – I like meditating with you. It’s not "meditating," it’s a silent and very pleasant contemplation-concentration. That’s why, when you are here, I sit without uttering a word!

But you lose the sense of time altogether.

The conversation begins an hour and a half late.

All right. It’s 11:30. I am not starting anything – neither talking nor keeping quiet (because that lasts a long time!)

I’ll try to play some music on October 30, if I can. I don’t know what will come.... One day, as I was sitting quietly, I wondered whether it would come, and suddenly I grew very tall, very tall, with large hands, and I was sitting before an instrument that wasn’t this one: it was a much bigger instrument, and I started playing such a fugue! It was fantastic. I looked and saw myself with large hands, large arms, and a big instrument.... And it was very good (laughing), the MUSIC was very good!

It’s the first time I have seen myself like that. But there’s nothing left of the music, nothing at all in the memory, not a single note.