The Winds of Wonder

The creation can be wonderful

This is the Mother’s abridged Conversation dated 24 May 1969.

It’s difficult…. Everything is getting disorganized. But it’s getting disorganized TOWARDS a higher organization. It’s a very strange sensation: no relationship remains as it was before. Nothing: neither of the body with itself, nor of the body with others, nor anything. Now and then, a breeze passing by, something quite special—and charming, quite charming. The next minute, it’s gone. The body suddenly feels a sense of peaceful and luminous rest, something quite… adorable—the next minute, it feels pain all over. So everything is like that.

A sort of identification with everything, which gives a bizarre impression of life. At one time, things become so… repugnant, almost, that you feel like screaming. Another time… everything is so peaceful that you feel as if you are entering an eternity … suddenly there’s something absolutely marvellous; and the next minute, it’s… So the body, one can’t say it finds that very amusing, no, but it… It doesn’t rebel in the least, not in the least, it says, “Since it’s like that, it has to be like that.” Sometimes, now and then, it aspires to get somewhere. One day everything seemed to go haywire—everything everywhere: everybody, all circumstances, all things—everything, on the scale of the earth. Not on a small scale, on the scale of the earth. On a small scale: complete disorder; on a general scale: complete disorder. But even that the body can still see and smile at. … it says, “It’s like that, so it’s like that.” Because there is always the consciousness of… reaching, reaching the Lord, the Supreme Consciousness… reaching the Lord. This is stable. This is durable. And then: “If all this still has to dissolve, it will dissolve; if it can evolve, it will evolve; if it has to go through all these troubles, which really aren’t very pleasant, it will go through them.”

There are times when you feel it can’t last, it’s going to end; and there are times when you feel it can go on like that for an eternity. And then, when it’s like that, when there is that feeling… “Why? Why, why all this? Is it really any use to have a manifestation like this, which lasts eternally like this? What’s the use?…” If you have the vision of a Beauty and a Joy, a Harmony, then you say, “All right, let’s go through the difficulty and then we’ll arrive there,” but this way, if things must always be as they are… So there.

It’s obvious that the creation CAN be a wonderful thing—it seems to be the opposite of that. But how is the one going to change into the other?…

The body has reached a state of consciousness in which it knows that death can bring about a change, but isn’t—isn’t a disappearance (disappearance of the consciousness).

There’s the absolute CERTITUDE that there’s only ONE way out of all that, only ONE—only one, not two, there’s no choice, there aren’t a few possibilities, there’s only one: it’s… the supreme Door. The Marvel of Marvels. All the rest… all the rest is an impossibility. And all that is the experience of this body, it’s not mental, but wholly and completely material.

Now and then the body worries: “Why? Why, why all this, why?…” When it sees, when it’s in contact with suffering, people, miseries, difficulties, why, why? Why… why?. Since this Creation can be a marvel identical with the Supreme Consciousness, why, why did it have to go through all this? All the whys will not prevent things from being like that. All that we have to do is to find the way for them no longer to be like that, that’s all.

The body doesn’t even worry about its purification…. It’s ceaselessly, “What You will, Lord, what You will….” It is “What You will, what You want.” That’s all. And that’s its perpetual state.

At any rate, the consciousness striving to help the body in the work has made it understand per-fect-ly well that going away isn’t a solution. Even if there was earlier a curiosity to know what the body will be, that curiosity is gone; as for the desire to stay on, that went away long ago; the possible desire to leave when things become a bit… suffocating went away with the idea that it would change nothing at all. So only one thing remains for the body: to perfect acceptance. That’s all.

I don’t know. I don’t know what will happen. There are times when things become so difficult that I wonder if the body will be able to hold out, but I would like… I would like people not to put me in a box and shove the body… like that, because it will be aware of it, it will feel it, and that will mean adding one more misery to all those it has had. Let them wait till it deteriorates. I am saying this to you, so you will be able to say it to others if necessary. Because even long after doctors will have declared it to be dead, it will be conscious: its cells are conscious.

I don’t know… maybe… You know, there’s such a long way to go that it appears… absolutely miraculous. And the other thing [“death”] seems to me more and more idiotic. So I am like this (gesture in between). It’s really a queer condition: you’re not alive, you’re not dead.

https://incarnateword.in/agenda/10/may-24-1969

From the Conversation Satprem has picked up this: “I would like people not to put me in a box and shove the body… like that, because it will be aware of it, it will feel it, and that will mean adding one more misery to all those it has had. Let them wait till it deteriorates.” What the Mother said is perfectly understandable, understandable as a possibility, that which can happen, even an occult that can exploit human stupidity. But to hold that it has happened is impudence; to say that this has happened is certainly presumptuous. He repeatedly maintained that “they” have put her living body in the “box”. It is a serious charge and allegation, very confrontational, ill-conceived. There is a difference between “can happen” and “has happened” which becomes personal and subjective and therefore not dependable.

There is absolutely no doubt about her body being always “aware of it”. Her deepest Body-Yoga had that siddhi, that merit, that accomplishment. It remains aware even when she leaves it and steps into her new body. The old body had served the wonderful purpose of establishing the divine will in it, establishing “what Thou willest”. Can there be any greater victory for it than this? In fact one should remember what the Mother had commented on Amal Kiran’s draft regarding the significance of the passing away of Sri Aurobindo on 5 December 1950.

In his draft Amal had written: “The mortal remains of Sri Aurobindo were put in the Samadhi.” She at once said: “There is nothing mortal in Sri Aurobindo”. That is true for her too. The old body remains charged with all the divine Presence in it, dynamically yet active. It must also be remembered that at the time of building the Samadhi for Sri Aurobindo, after 5 December 1950, she had strongly instructed to make it double-chambered, the upper for her body. This is a significant occult decision, a very pertinent fact, and it must be fully grasped in its totality.

In this context let us go to the account of the Mother’s passing away as narrated by her personal attendant, since 1948, Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya; this was in a talk he gave in the Ashram Playground on 4 December 1973, within weeks after the Mother’s withdrawal on 17 November 1973. He tells about her last moments:

“I arrived at about five past seven and saw that Dr. Sanyal was already there examining Her. Dyumanbhai also had come. I went and felt the Mother’s pulse. It was still there, beating at long intervals. There was still some respiration. But slowly everything stopped. The doctor gave an external heart massage to Her. It had no effect. Then he declared that the Mother had left Her body. This was at 7:25 p.m. Then, being present and feeling my responsibility, I thought what I should do. At that time, there were present André, Champaklalji, Dr. Sanyal, Dyumanbhai, Kumud and myself. I talked with André and told him that I wanted to wait for some time and then take the Mother’s body down, place it in the Meditation Hall for people to see. We would keep the body in such a way that it was not disturbed, then we would decide what to do. André agreed to my proposal. He wanted to remain with us but as he was not well I suggested that he should go home and take rest and come back the next day. He left.”

To a question “Did the Mother say anything before leaving Her body?” Pranab answers: “She said nothing.” He continues and makes an important statement: “One thing She repeated to me often quite some time back, and to some other persons also. She said that all the work She was doing on Her body could be spoilt in two ways—one, this force She was pulling down on Her could be so strong, so great, that the body would not be able to tolerate it and the body might fail. That was a possibility.

“The second thing was that if ever She went into a deep trance and it looked to us that She had left her body, then if by mistake we put Her in the Samadhi, that would absolutely spoil Her work. And She gave instructions that we should give the body necessary protection, we should watch, and only when we were absolutely sure that She had left Her body we should put Her in the Samadhi.”

He assures: “I think we have done as She wanted. It is quite certain that She did not want to leave Her body and She worked up to the end. During all this time I appreciated how She was trying, and that invincible will of Hers I appreciated so much that I thought that unless one was doing one’s work effectively according to one’s plan one could not have this kind of will, this determination and strength.”

She left Her body but She would not withdraw Her consciousness. She told me, “I am not willing to go, I will not go, and this time there will be no tragedy; but if it so happens that I leave my body, then put my body under the Service Tree.”

“At that time there was a kind of brick-made platform on which there were some fern trees. She said to lay Her body there. And when Sri Aurobindo had passed away, She ordered Udar to make two chambers in the Samadhi vault, one upon the other. Then several times She said how She was working, how She was finding resistance and how sometimes She was finding the work difficult; and lately, say, after 15th August 1972, I felt that perhaps what has happened was going to happen.”

 “What do you think were the causes that made Her leave Her body?” Pranab replies: “It is a very delicate question, very difficult to answer also, but I would say that the physical laws still held tight and they could not be brought under control. That was on one side. One the other side, our insincerity, our unfaithfulness, our deceptions, our treachery. … But more the failing body I hold responsible for what happened. But I still think She had not decided—nobody can convince me that She had decided and therefore She left. I think this happened because it could not be otherwise. I am absolutely sure that if She had not the conviction that She would bring the Supramental Transformation in Her present body, She would not have been able to do all the Great Work that She has done. This conviction has made it possible to establish this Truth firmly in the earth- consciousness. For the moment perhaps what has happened is just a postponement of the work that She was doing on Her own body.”

For the complete talk please go the following link:

Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya’s Talk on the Last Days of the Mother