Chapter 7January 25, 1967

happen), so they rush back into ordinary common sense to escape. It's the equivalent – not the same thing, but the equivalent of what happens in the material: you feel all the usual stability is vanishing. Well, for a long time – a long time – there was that retreat into habit, and then you are quite at peace and you start all over again. But now, the cells no longer want that: "Come what may, we'll see soon enough!" The great adventure.

How will we be? – How will we be? How... You understand, it's the cells asking, "How should we be? How will we be?"

It's interesting.

(Nolini reads out to Mother his translation into English of the conversation of January 11 for the Ashram Bulletin. Mother remarks that she used the French word "injure" [=insult] where she meant a

blow or a scratch, because she heard the English word "injury.")

I so often hear Sri Aurobindo speak, and I say it in French, but I use the English word because I hear him speak.

Often the thought alone comes, but quite often it's the exact words; and then, while speaking in French I tend to use the English words. While I take my bath, for instance, he always speaks to me and tells me the things I have to write or say; so afterwards, when I come out of the bathroom, I very often have to ask for a piece of paper and a pen, and I write.

It's constantly, constantly like that. I remember, some time ago, at night, I said to him (I see him almost every night, but for a few days I hadn't seen him, then I met him at night... because he is always there [Mother makes a gesture enveloping her], but at night, in that subtle physical world, I see him objectively, as if I were meeting him), and I said to him, "I haven't seen you for a few days," like that, in jest. Then he put on his most serious air, but with all his irony: "Oh, I am very busy these days." And... (laughing) the next day I learned they were shooting a film on Sri Aurobindo's life!9 So I thought he must have been busy sending them good suggestions. But it was so comical! With straight-faced seriousness: "Oh, I am very busy." (Mother laughs)

That's how "injury" came.

(Satprem:) In the text of those "Instructions" [in the event of cataleptic trance], you also use the

word "injure"; you say that in that trance state, your body will have to be kept "a l'abri de toute you'd like to keep in those Instructions?

That day he told me (it was he who told me to say that), "The bites of insects, the bad contacts, things like that." He said, "All injuries, poisoning by an insect, etc."

(Then Mother listens to the English translation of the conversation of September 30, 1966, for the "Notes on the Way." The subject was the disappearance of the bone structure in the new being and the

need for intermediary stages. Mother, speaking in English, turns to Nolini:)

Do you think people will understand?... Not much?

(Nolini:) Some will understand.

Some!... a few.

And yet, for me, it is already far behind. It's funny, when you were reading the translation, I had the impression of something that was pulling me back in a condition that is no more mine.

Things are going quick, quick, quick. I am just living the thing, so it is difficult to describe... But it is quite a new condition. After some time I will be able to say... (Mother remains silent for a long while) what is meant exactly by the irreality of this apparent matter.

It is just in the experiencing, I can't yet describe it. It takes some time. There, in this "talk" [about the disappearance of the bone structure], I have the impression of having still one foot here, one foot there.

* * * After Nolini has left:

So, what's new?

What about you?

You know, I have the impression, exactly an impression (it's a transcription), the impression of being on the verge of finding a key – a key or a "trick"... a procedure (I don't know how to put it: all this is popularization), but something which, if you got hold of it without being wholly on the true side... in one second you could be the cause of a frightful catastrophe. That's why the integral preparation of the consciousness must go side by side with the perception of the Power. And then, there are such subtle differences that for the understanding (I am not referring to the ordinary understanding, but even for a quite spiritualized and prepared state of consciousness, which is not THE consciousness), an insignificant, almost imperceptible tiny little movement could bring about catastrophe.