Chapter 7November 23, 1968

I’ve had an interesting experience.... Not yesterday evening but the evening before, someone I won’t name told me, "I am fully in the physical consciousness: no more meditations, and the Divine has become something up above, so far away...." Then, instantly, while he was speaking, the whole room FILLED with the divine Presence. "Oh," I told him, "Not up above: HERE, right here." And at that moment, EVERYTHING, the whole atmosphere... you know, the very air seemed to change into divine Presence (Mother touches her hands, her face, her body): you understand, everything was touched, touched, permeated, but with... above all, there was a dazzling Light, a Peace like this (massive gesture), a Power, and also such Sweetness... something... you felt it would be enough to melt a rock.

And it hasn’t left. It has remained.

It came like that, and has remained. And the whole night was like that – everything. Even now the two things are there: a little of the ordinary consciousness, as if mechanically, but I just have to remain still or concentrated for a second and it’s there. And it’s the BODY’S experience, you understand, physical, material, the body’s experience: everything, absolutely everything is full, full, there’s NOTHING but That, and we are like... everything is like something shriveled, you know, like dried-up bark, something dried up. You get the impression that things (not completely – superficially) have become hard, dry, and that’s why they don’t feel. That’s why they don’t feel Him, otherwise everything, but everything is NOTHING but That; you can’t breathe without breathing Him, you understand; you move about, and it’s within Him that you move about; you are... everything, the whole universe is within Him – but MATERIALLY, physically, physically.

It’s the cure of the "drying up" that I am now seeking. I feel it’s fantastic, you understand.

And then, when I listen, It also says things; I told Him, "But then, why do people always climb up above?" And with the most extraordinary, fantastic humor: "Because they want me to be very far from their consciousness!" Things like that, but not formulated so precisely: impressions. Several times – several times I heard: "Why do they go so far away to seek what’s..." (you know, the theories that have said, "It’s within you")... "to seek what’s everywhere?"

I didn’t say it to that person, first of all because the experience wasn’t a continuous thing as it now is.

And above all, there was: NO NEW RELIGIONS! No dogmas, no fixed teaching. Avoid – at any cost avoid turning it into a new religion. Because the moment it was formulated in an... elegant way that imposed itself and had a force, IT WOULD BE OVER.

You get the impression that He is everywhere, but everywhere, and there’s nothing else. And we aren’t aware of it because we are... shriveled up (I don’t know how to put it), dried. up. We’ve made (laughing) tremendous efforts to separate ourselves – and we’ve succeeded! We’ve succeeded, but only touches her forehead).

Perhaps the experience came because, for several days, there had been a very great concentration to find, not exactly the why or the how, but the FACT, the fact of separateness, the fact that everything appears so stupid, so ugly.... I was assailed, assailed by kinds of living memories of all sorts of experiences (all sorts: from things read to paintings, films, and life, people, things), memories of this body, all the memories we might call "antidivine," in which the body had a sensation of repulsive or bad things, like negations of the divine Presence. It began like that. For two days I was like that, to such a point that the body was almost desperate. Then the experience came, and it hasn’t moved. It hasn’t moved. It came: vrrff! finished, hasn’t moved. You see, experiences come and then draw back – but this hasn’t moved. It’s there right now. So the body is trying to be fluid (Mother makes a gesture of spreading), it’s trying to melt; it’s trying, it understands what it is. It’s trying – not succeeding, obviously! (Mother looks at her hands) But its consciousness knows.

But that experience is having effects: some people have felt relieved all of a sudden, one or two absolutely cured. And when something goes wrong in the body, it doesn’t need to ask: the trouble is set right quite naturally.

That hasn’t even given the body a need to stop doing anything and to remain wholly concentrated in its experience, no: no desire, nothing. Like this: floating... floating in a luminous immensity... which is within! (Mother laughs) The immensity isn’t only outside: it’s within. It’s within. This (Mother touches her hands, this separate appearance), you really feel it’s... I don’t know how to put it, but it only has reality in the deformation of the consciousness – but not the human consciousness: something that happened, something that took place in the Consciousness... (Mother shakes her head) I don’t understand.

(silence)

All the theories, all the explanations, all the stories that are at the root of every religion, it all seems to me... like a distraction. So then, you wonder, you wonder... (I am going to say something...) whether the Lord hasn’t been putting on an act for Himself!...

But it’s difficult to express. I’ve spent days when I really lived all the horrors of the creation (and in the consciousness of their horror), then that brought about this experience, and... the whole horror vanished.

It wasn’t moral things at all: it was mostly physical sufferings. Especially THE physical suffering. And that physical suffering, I saw it: a physical suffering that lasts – unceasing, going on night and day. And all at once, instead of being in that state of consciousness, you are in the state of consciousness of this exclusive divine Presence – the pain is gone! And it was physical, quite physical, with a physical reason.116 You understand, doctors might say: "It’s for this reason, that reason..." – quite a material thing, absolutely physical: poff! gone.... Your consciousness changes – it comes back.

And if you stay long enough in the true consciousness, the appearance, that is, what we call the physical "fact" itself, disappears, not just the pain.... I have the feeling of having touched... (there’s no mind to understand, thank God!), of having touched the central experience.

But it’s a very small beginning. One would have the impression or certitude of having touched the supreme Secret only if the must everything, but everything be transformed?... That I don’t know.

It would happen if the play – the play of separateness – came to an end. That would be the solution of the transformation. A phenomenon of consciousness.

But it’s so concrete, you see!

(silence)

Only, the other consciousness is still there.... Just now, this morning, I saw a considerable number of people: everyone of them came, and I looked (there was no "I looked": for the PERSON there, it was like that, I was looking at him), the eyes were fixed [on the person] like that, and then there was the perception and vision (but not "vision" as it’s understood: it’s all a phenomenon of consciousness), the awareness of the Presence; the Presence permeating that sort of bark, of hardened thing, permeating, permeating everywhere. And when I look, when the eyes are fixed, it makes a sort of concentration [of this Presence].... But it’s certainly quite a transitory and intermediate state, because the other consciousness (the consciousness that sees things and deals with them as usual, with the perception of what goes on in the individual, what he thinks – not so much what he thinks as what he feels, the way he is), that’s there. It’s obviously necessary, too, to maintain contact, but... It’s clearly still an experience, not an established fact. What I mean by "established fact" is the consciousness established in such a way that nothing else exists, it alone is present – it’s not yet like that.

(long silence)

And what about you? What do you have to tell me?

I have felt a change in the atmosphere.

Ah!

Oh, yes. Five or six days ago, I had a sense of something oppressive...

(Mother laughs)

Oppressive. And last night, oddly enough, at one point I saw you lying flat on the ground. Then I

drew near you and asked you, "Wouldn’t you like a cushion under your head?" You told me, "No, nothing." And you were lying flat on the ground....

Well, well!

What does it mean?

(Mother remains silent

for a long time and

does not answer)