Chapter 42“Are you ready for anything?”

total surrender. And then things like this come to me; all day yesterday, it was: “A dead person living on earth.” With the perception — not yet very marked, but quite clear — of the very great difference between this way of living and that of other people — all of them. It is not yet clear-cut or distinct or very precise, but it is very clear. It is very clear, very perceptible. It is another way of living.

One might be inclined to say that it is not a gain from the point of view of consciousness, since things fade away. I do not know, is it a gain?

It can only be a transition. It is a transitional state.

From the point of view of consciousness, it is a tremendous gain! Because every bondage, every attachment to outer things, all that is finished, it has fallen away completely — fallen away completely: an absolute freedom. That is to say, only That — the Supreme Master — is master. From this point of view, it can only be a gain. It is such a radical realisation.... This seems to be an absolute of freedom, something that is considered to be impossible to realise while leading an ordinary life on earth.

This corresponds to the experience of absolute freedom one has in the higher parts of the being when one is no longer at all dependent on the body. But what is remarkable — I insist strongly on this — is that the consciousness of the body has these experiences and it is a body which is still visibly here!

Obviously, there is nothing left of what gives “confidence in life” to human beings. Apparently there is no longer any support from the outer world, there is nothing but... the supreme Will. To translate this into plain words, well, the body has the feeling that it lives only because the supreme Lord wants it to live, otherwise it could not live.

Yes, but it seems to me that a state of perfection ought