Matter matters

One of the oldest and most influential thought forms makes a distinction between spirit and nature, between the ideal and reality. In the West, this was powerfully exemplified by Plato’s Theory of Forms. Plato posited that everything in the material world has an ideal form which represents it in its essential purity. The ideal form can never be materialised, although its existence can be grasped through the exercise of reason.

This opposition of ideal and reality was also a tenet of the major religions. Heaven, salvation, always lay beyond. Life was a ‘vale of tears’, to be endured in devotion to an other-worldly deity if one wished to inherit redemption, which was only available after death.

That matter is dead, purposeless, is also one of central tenets of the materialistic outlook that underlies modern science and so much of modern thought. Rupert Sheldrake defined these tenets as follows: existence is mechanical and unconscious, nature’s laws are purposeless and fixed for all time, mind is an epiphenomenon of biology, and spirit is a delusion.

But another reason that this is such an enduring thought form is that it seems to confirm our own experience. What we can dream of, imagine, is often far in excess of reality. When we try to manifest these dreams, we are confronted by the dull stubbornness of matter which seems to resist all attempts to shape it into something closer to our ideal. It’s no wonder, then, that some people give up the practical attempt to change things and take refuge in ideal philosophies or escapist fantasies.

But Mother, like Sri Aurobindo, emphasised that matter could be transformed. Indeed, that the transformation of the physical is the indispensable foundation for the supramental change: as she put it, ‘Salvation is physical’. But how would that change come about?

Mother used her body as the laboratory and testing-ground for this exploration. And, through her deep research into the cells, she began to discover that matter is not what it seems.

But as you descend into that domain, the domain of the cells, even of the very constitution of the cells, how it (matter) seems less heavy! This sort of heaviness of Matter disappears – it begins again to be fluid, vibrant. This would tend to prove that the heaviness, thickness, inertia, immobility, is something added, it is not a quality essential to... it is the false Matter, that which we think and feel, but not Matter itself, as it is. This was clearly felt. (7th October, 1964)

On the 21st January, 1967, she talked about her discovery of what she called ‘true matter’.

All possible colours are joined together without being mixed up (same gesture of dotting), and joined together by luminous dots. Everything is as if made of that. And this seems to be the true way of being – I am not yet sure, but in any case, it is a way of being much more conscious... And you have a strange (for the body), a strange perception, at once of subtleness, of penetrability, if one may say so, of suppleness of form and positively not of an eradication but a considerable diminution of the rigidity of forms – eradication of rigidity, not eradication of forms: a suppleness in the forms.

In May, 1969, she enunciates the solution:

There is only one solution, it is the direct contact of the physical with the Supreme. That is the only thing.

Finally, in 1971, speaking of the need for matter to be permeated by the new force, she mentions a new possibility:

I believe something has been done to prepare Matter to receive as it must, in a suitable way – it was as though it received in a wrong way and it has learnt to receive in the right way. It will come. Perhaps, I do not know if it will take months or years for the thing to become clear.

This is why, in May, 1972, she could assert:

You understand; it is this which in human common sense says: “It is impossible, that has never been”; it is this which has come to an end. It is finished, it is foolish. It has become a stupidity. One might say: it is possible because it has never been. It is the new world and it is the new consciousness and it is the new Power, it is possible, and this is and will be more and more manifested because it is the new world, because it has never been. It will be because it has never been.

This is the great revelation. That matter, which we had always seen as the enemy of the ideal, will become increasingly ‘mater’, able to receive and manifest the Force that Mother was channeling through her body.

And yet... our daily experience of the fabric of Auroville seems to deny this possibility. For though the forests have bloomed, much of our architecture is ordinary, functional, lifeless, while the beauty in simplicity that Mother wanted is almost nowhere to be seen. We seem, once more, to be confronted by the opposition between ideals and impervious matter.

But is this really so? While it is easy to understand those who object to our 50th anniversary celebrations because we have not achieved what Mother expected of us, perhaps they, we, are overlooking something. And that is that the most external forms of matter will be the last to manifest change.

In 1967, speaking of her work upon the body, The Mother said:

_The work remains to be done. But now a certitude is there. The result remains still far off, very far; much has to be done before the crust, the experience of the most external surface as it is, manifests what is happening within (not “within” in the spiritual depths: within the body). To enable that to manifest what is within... This will come last, and it is good it is so, for if it came before time, one would neglect the work, one would be so satisfied as to forget to finish his work; everything should be done within, should be well and good, should be thoroughly changed, then the outside will speak it out._

Today, while we are far from ‘materialising’ our ideals, the inner work may have begun. It can be detected, for example, in Aurovilians’ aspiration for beauty in all forms and in their attempts to invest consciousness into art, into their meetings and other activities.

Mother talked of the need for new forms to reflect the new consciousness. These may take some time to emerge: we must be patient with our present material stumbling. The first signs of matter reflecting the new consciousness may be a new refinement, plasticity, even aetherialisation, of materials and forms. New materials and new properties of existing materials may be discovered, as may new capacities of the body; so-called ‘miraculous’ cures may become more common. New evidence of consciousness influencing matter, and not only at the sub-atomic level, will emerge.

Meanwhile, we have the Matrimandir. Constructed largely of steel and cement, Aurovilians transformed these conventional materials into something much more through their dedication to materialising a vision. Somehow, in spite of disagreements and controversies about aspects of the design, a channel was created for something extraordinary to manifest in matter.

Matrimandir is the forerunner, the promise, that matter is ready and able to express the new force. Only our doubts, our lack of faith, can prevent it happening sooner. As we embark upon the next 50 years, let us make our guiding inspiration, “It will be because it has never been”.