A Supreme Strategy

Alan’s analysis of The Mother’s supposed physical disappearance [see AVToday # 410 September 2013, eds.] struck a chord within me. This question, which has troubled us for over fifty years, has never been satisfactorily answered. Alan explores The Mother’s departure as a means of reuniting us in the embrace of her imperishable memory.

As for Satprem, his books on the matter are sometimes far too accusatory of the human condition, which according to him, is what did not allow The Mother to “conquer death”. But it was undoubtedly something entirely different than a departure caused by the ignorance of her disciples, something that we are not yet capable of understanding; in any case, something that is totally unknown. “Obviously, logically, I should be invisible until the day I appear in my new form”. (27/06/62)... “A mystery of the unknown [...] A very, very strange sensation. A sort of new vibration” (04/041970) “There will be a miracle. Death is not the solution” (27/10/71)

Admittedly, the state of the world, and of those close to her, her disciples, did not favour her task: “We have set our sights on overcoming this accident” (Death) (14/10/53)... “It’s almost as if it were THE one question I’ve been given to solve” (28/09/63). The Mother certainly had a sense of humour, She used to say, “Death is a bad habit” (11/01/56), until that memorable date of the 29th of February 1956, marked by the descent of the Supramental into the earth’s atmosphere, a moment awaited for millennia, which would herald the beginning of the realisation of a life divine on earth.

As contemporaries of this unique event in earth’s history – this New Creation – we have a tremendous responsibility and the extraordinary grace of being the first specimens with which the Divine is working out in individual consciousnesses the conditions for His divine Work. “Never will we be able to comprehend the marvellous immensity of Its action (the Grace) and the precision and exactness with which it accomplished itself. We will never be able to grasp the extent to which the Grace does everything, is behind everything, organises everything...”. (01/08/56) Suffice it to say that in the course of a few months, this Consciousness was at work, and that we had not yet grasped its full significance for the future of the earth, trapped as we are in our own little stories. “...It is only you yourselves, with your conception, your attitude and the acceptance of certain supposed principles, who are closing the door to the possibility of a miracle”. (03/10/56) To fail to link the great adventure of Auroville with the even greater adventure of our Masters is to betray both our coming to earth at this crucial time and our mission to participate in the creation of the “cradle of the Superman” in Auroville (as The Mother once said).

But I would like to come back to the mystery of The Mother’s disappearance to our physical eyes. Alan is right in insisting on the perpetuity of Her presence, which we can perceive when concentrated in silence. We can also listen to the indications She gives to our consciousnesses so that they are in line with both our personal development and our attitudes in everyday life, in our actions and in our relationships with others.

This separation between us and the earth is only a façade, and to be convinced of this we need to reread the unambiguous passages of Her Agenda with great care.

It reveals a strategy that was not yet obvious to Her, but which She was gradually discovering. It is us, reading the conversations compiled in The Agenda by Satprem, who are in a position to put forward hypotheses that may seem far-fetched to outsiders, but which open up horizons that will prove to be obvious in the future.

The very first key conversations were about the right to total and earthly immortality. “If Matter were to become sufficiently flexible to follow the inner progression, death would no longer be necessary”. (06/02/57) Thanks to Satprem, the question was being narrowed down. He was not a silent scribe; he carried within him The question of the earth, to which She mysteriously replied: “...One has the sense that there is an extraordinary secret to be discovered, that it is there, almost under one’s fingers.” (24/05/60) And then, in 1962, the question became so overwhelming that She was doubtful about the possibility of defeating Death: “Is it madness? No one has done it before, so there’s no one to tell me”. (13/02/62) Later, the accuracy of her vision was confirmed: “A kind of certainty from the depths of Matter that the solution is there.” (30/10/64)

After much experimentation and questioning, the Supreme’s strategy began to emerge. A strategy that would lead her to a state other than death as we understand it. And the signs were becoming clear: “What is needed is to universalise this body; that is the basic condition for the Supramental to be able to descend without everything breaking down”. (21/04/59) It was a sort of first step for the physical substance to undergo the process that was about to begin in Her body: “A sort of prescience that only the body can know.” (06/06/61)

By 1962, the mechanism was becoming clearer: “I feel that something is leading me towards the knowledge of the phenomenon (that life and death are the same thing) – that is, the power to change.” (08/09/62) The knowledge was given to her in the body through experiences at the level of her physical cells: “I am constantly faced with this problem: how can these cells remain cells without vaporising into a non-physical reality, and at the same time have this flexibility, this lack of fixity?” (12/01/62).

Satprem has dissected at length in his books, with logic and depth, The Mother’s journey towards victory over Death. Thanks to him we have been inspired, but he does not seem to have given a satisfactory explanation other than the pitfall of experience due to the conditions of ignorance of the world and its surroundings. I have never been satisfied with this conclusion.

The first clue that prompted my search for an outcome other than “this idiotic death”, as She called it, I found in certain passages of her Agenda: “The body was told that it would progress until the complete purification of the cells and that it would then decide for itself whether to continue or to dissolve: to act in agglomeration or to dissolve. This is obviously a new way of dying”. (31/07/63) This conversation is very important because it underlines for the first time the role of the cells in the body according to the choice it would have to make: to act in agglomeration or to dissolve after death. “There must be a difference even in the behaviour of the cells when you leave your body”. (10/08/63)

We must remember that The Mother always said that for the mental and the vital not to be dissolved after death they had to be ‘psychised’ and that then they would not be diffused into the universal mental and the universal vital. We are led to conclude that the same process concerns the cell. What is a psychised cell? Is it an immortal cell? Then everything becomes clear!

“The body is everywhere! It’s THE body, and it’s no more my body than other bodies”. (06/04/63) Could it be that The Mother was moving towards a possibility other than that of physical immortality, which, according to her, would be an impossibility in the current conditions of humanity, and which would overturn too many things?

“I’m faced with a problem: when the body dies, the cells return to dust. As a result, it would be a waste, I would have lost all my work. It’s before that something has to enter into it. In other words, before this_ body dissolves there has to be a new creation.” (26/08/64) And later it became more precise: “... The cells are in the process of becoming more and more conscious; so instead of dying and entering another body, all the cells come together to form within oneself a new body with matter superior to ordinary matter, and one enters into it. The other can dissolve, that no longer matters_”. (15/03/69)

The solution didn’t seem satisfactory, and neither was it to The Mother: “I feel ... on the threshold of a great secret, but ... something ...”. (09/04/71) “I am on the threshold of an extraordinary discovery, but…” (08/09/71) “A kind of certainty at the bottom of Matter that the solution is there.” 18/09/64)

We are approaching the strategy of the Supreme.

For her, of course, death was not the final outcome: “We are therefore looking for another solution. There must be another solution”. (21/11/64) “There should be a direct power from cell to cell”. (10/07/63) And a month later: “There must be a difference, even in the behaviour of cells, when one leaves one’s body.” (10/08/63) Is this direct power not the Mind of the cells that, as she said in 1966, would find the key to the transition? “A universalisation of Bodily Consciousness”. (30/03/68)

The last four years of her life were dedicated to the only solution she kept coming back to, which was that her cellular body alone served as an occult instrument for a new creation that would no longer be death. A kind of cellular ubiquity “ ... In its 91 years on earth, this body has never felt such happiness: no limits, no impossibilities, nothing. It became all the other bodies... These cells, other cells, it was life everywhere, Consciousness everywhere”. (15/02/69) “Bodily consciousness has become both individualised and independent, that is, it can enter into other bodies, a physical entry.” (12/03/69)

I don’t know whether such a statement is given its full weight. It explains what is meant by a new strategy other than death and the supposed process of agglomeration of immortal cells at the bottom of a tomb as imagined by Her in July of 1963, and the other process that She foresaw as a possibility, the scattering of Her cells in the Cells of Matter! “A kind of certainty in the depths of Matter that the solution is there”. (30/10/64) “It’s at the atomic level that things have to change.” 12/11/64) “A universalisation of body Consciousness.” 30/03/68)

And a certain question that seemed crucial kept coming up: “The only thing that is required of the body is this total, transparent immobility.” (04/12/68) As if preparing it for something else: “... The quality of time that changes.” 28/12/68. “The only remedy is to be like this... where time doesn’t exist [...] I feel, I know that my body is being acclimatised to something else”. (10/12/72) And then: “Why do I want to scream? I think it’s something so new that the body is frightened [...] a powerful immobility.” As if in an awakening death.

“Are you ready for anything?” (09/06/66) Let there be no doubt about it, the two solutions for the state of her body after death seemed to point towards an agglomeration of her cells or their diffusion, as had been indicated to her. But these two solutions should be seen as one and the same process. Nothing prevented her cells, which had been divinised, from remaining agglomerated in the tomb, and from having diffused occultly into the cells of Matter. “...Like an attempt to make you feel that there is no difference between life and death”. (09/12/72) “That it’s neither life nor death, it’s... something” (10/12/72)

“I’m accessing another world. Another way of being... dangerous but wonderful. [...] The impression that the relationship between life and death is becoming increasingly different, completely different. [...] It’s not death that’s disappearing, it’s not that at all: both are changing... into something we don’t yet know, which seems both extremely dangerous and utterly wonderful. A dangerous unknown”. (12/07/72)

And in fact, The Mother exists in each individual cell. As a result, it is us, with our unconsciousness and our bodies, who have made The Mother more or less dead, or to put it in a positive way, who have made The Mother more or less alive, depending on our level of spiritual sincerity.  

To conclude this long argument, what I wanted to say is that The Mother is not dead in the way we understand it, She who said: “There will be a miracle. Death is not the solution.” We still have to “awaken her in us”, through our attitude every single day, an attitude of Truth in every part of our being.