Oh! But now the whole being (the body has understood it quite well), the whole being knows that everything comes to make you go forward as quickly as possible, everything: obstacles, contradictions, lack of understanding, useless preoccupations, everything, everything, everything to make you go forward; it is for touching one point, then another, then yet another, and make you advance as fast as possible. If you are not concerned with this Matter, how can it change?
And it is very clear, it is quite evident that all objections, all contradictions come merely from a superficial mind which sees only the appearance of things. It is precisely to put your consciousness on guard against that, so that it might not be duped by such things and might see clearly that it is altogether external, superficial, and that behind this, all that is being done is moving as fast as possible towards… transformation.
[Long silence]
Intelligence at its higher level understands very easily that it knows nothing and it falls quite easily into the attitude required for progress, but even they who have this intelligence, when it is a question of material things, have the instinctive feeling that all that is known, understood and founded on established experiences; and there you become vulnerable. And that is exactly what 218the body is being made to learn, the uselessness of the present way of seeing and understanding things, based on the good, the bad, the fair, the foul, the luminous, the obscure… all these contradictories; and the whole judgment, the whole conception of life is based upon that (the material life), and it is to teach you the inanity of this perception. And I see it. The work has become very acute, very persistent, as though you were called upon to go quickly.
Even the practical part, which thought that it had learnt how to live and know what is to be done and how it is to be done, must also understand that it was not the true knowledge nor the true way of using external things.
[Silence]
There are even amusing things.… This Consciousness which is at work, it is as though “teasing” the body all the time; all the time it says to it: “You see, you have this sensation; well, what is its basis? You think you know it; do you really know what is there behind it?” and for all the small things of life, things of every minute. And then the body is like that [Mother opens big astonished eyes] and tells itself: “It is true, I know nothing.” But its answer is always the same, it says: “I do not claim that I know, let the Lord do whatever He wills”, it is like that. And then, there is this thing (if that could be caught permanently, it would be good): non-intervention in the work of the Lord (to say the thing in the simplest way).
[Silence]
It is demonstrated by the fact, by the experience of every minute that when a thing is done with this kind of feeling of acquired wisdom or of acquired understanding, of an experience lived through, etc., to what degree it is… one may say “false” (misleading, in any case) and that there is some other thing behind 219which makes use of that (as it does of everything) but is not tied to this knowledge nor dependent upon it nor upon what we call the experience of life nor upon anything of that sort. It has a much more direct, much more profound, much more “distant” vision; that is to say, it sees much farther, much wider and much in advance, something no external experience can give.… And it is a modest growth, without any outburst, not making a show of anything: it is a very little thing of every minute—every minute, every second, every thing. As though all the while there was something that was showing you the ordinary way of living, of seeing and doing, and then… the true way. Both, like that. For all things.
It is so to such a degree that the attitude towards certain vibrations brings you complete ease or it can make you completely sick! And it is the same vibration. Things like that, things bewildering. And every minute, it is like that—every minute, for everything.
Well, the consciousness here takes a certain attitude and then it is all delight and harmony; and the thing remains the same, but then [gesture of just a tilt to the left], a slight change in the attitude of the consciousness, and the thing becomes almost unbearable! Experiences of this kind, all the time, all the time… just to show that there is only one thing that has importance, the attitude of the consciousness: the old attitude of the individual being [gesture of contraction] or that [gesture of expansion]. It must be (to put it into words that we understand) the presence of the ego and the abolition of the ego. It is that.
And then, as I have said, for all the actions of life, even the most ordinary, it is demonstrated that if the presence of the ego is suffered (surely to make you understand what it is), it can really lead to an imbalance of health, and that the only remedy is the disappearance of the ego—and at the same time the disappearance of all illness. For things that we consider quite unimportant, quite… And it is for everything, for everything, all the while, all the while, night and day.
220And then it is complicated by all the misunderstandings and discontentments that come out [Mother makes a gesture as though a cart-load is being poured upon her], as though they were unfastened and they came out, and all that falls at the same time in order… in order that the experience might be total and in all domains.
It is as though a practical demonstration was being given at every minute of the presence of death and of the presence of immortality, like this [Mother slightly tilts her hand to the right and to the left], in the smallest things—in all things, the smallest and the biggest, and constantly; and constantly, you see… whether you are here or you are there [same gesture of tilting to one side or the other]. At every second, as if you were called upon to choose between death and immortality.
And for that, I see the body must go through a serious and very thorough preparation in order to be able to bear the impact of the experience without… without any vibration of anxiety or recoil or… it must be able to maintain its peace and its constant smile.
[Long silence]
There are things… extraordinary things.
As though in everything we were required to live the presence of the opposites to find… to find what is there when the opposites join together—instead of running away when they join. That produces a result. And that in the practical life.