What I mean by "experience" is something totally different from what people normally understand. It's something almost ... not new as such but assuming a new reality. It is not "experiencing what one knows" - that's taken for granted, it's banal - but.... We would need another word. Instead of knowing something (even a knowledge far superior to mental knowledge, even a very integral knowledge), you ... become the power that makes it BE.

Essentially, it is becoming the tapas [energy] of things - the tapas of the universe.

The Manifestation is always said to begin with Sachchidananda: first Sat, pure Existence; then Chit, the awareness of this Existence; and then Ananda, the Delight of Existence which makes it go on. But between Chit and Ananda there is Tapas - that is, Chit realizing itself. And when you become this tapas, this tapas of things, you have the knowledge that gives the power to change.[[ Tapas: literally, heat. It is the concentrated energy constituting everything - not generated by some mechanism, but by the very concentration of the power of Consciousness (chit). In Indian tradition, the world was created by Tapas in the form of an egg - the primordial egg - which broke open from the incubating heat of consciousness-force and gave birth to the world. To "become the tapas of things" is to uncover in one's own material, bodily substance that same formidable, supramental seat of energy (what physicists, following Einstein, call atomic energy: E = mc2), the energy that animates the stone and the bird and the universe - for then like can act upon like. Mother was reaching that point. ]] The tapas of things is what governs their existence in the Manifestation.

You see, I am expressing this for the first time, but I began to live it a while back. When you are THERE, you have a feeling of (what shall I say?) of such formidable power! The universal power, really. You have the sense of total mastery over the universe.

But you can't put that in.

page 93 , Mother's Agenda , volume 3 , 24th Feb 1962

You see, all of a sudden, through the intensity of the aspiration, of that sort of thirst for "the Thing," contact is made - contact is made; it isn't even a contact between two different things, it is ... That which is all. But it is in Time that the Thing is expressed, and then it doesn't last, so much so that even the resulting effect doesn't seem to be able to last. Although there is something there that contradicts: the effect is lasting, but imperceptible as long as it isn't general; so immediately it's a translation into the world of Time, Space, and so on.

Whereas "That" is beyond Time and Space. When you have gone from the Creation to Noncreation (which do not follow each other, they are concomitant), if you go beyond, you encounter this "something" which, I don't know why, I call Love.... Probably because the vibration of true Love (what I call divine Love, which is at work in the world) bears the closest resemblance to That. It is something absolutely inexpressible, which belongs neither to "receiving" nor to "giving," neither to uniting nor to absorbing, nothing like all that.... It's something very particular.

(long silence)

I remember, that night I spoke of, I WAS that Pulsation, and each burst of pulsation created. Well, it was the first expression of That in the Manifestation; and it was already in action, it was already in movement. But the Vibration BEHIND that is ... I might say the potentiality of everything - of everything that becomes perceptible to us through the Manifestation; because it is everything that in our consciousness gets divided into various possibilities, like truth, love, life, power, etc. (but all that is nothing, of course, it's dust in comparison). And it's everything together; not the union of different things: it's EVERYTHING - everything, and it is absolutely ONE, but everything is there. And That is what one finds beyond the Manifestation and the Nonmanifestation - the Manifestation almost looks like child's play in comparison. That Pulsation was the origin of the Manifestation.

And Nonmanifestation is blissful Immobility - it's more than that, but it's essentially that: blissful Immobility. It's the supreme and supremely divine essence of rest. And both [Manifestation and Nonmanifestation] are together, and they come from That.

I have a very strong feeling that it's only That, only with That that things can change, all the rest is inadequate.

And if I remember right, Sri Aurobindo said that this manifestation (which he too calls Love) would take place AFTER the supramental manifestation, didn't he?

First Truth, then Love.
Then Love.

Yes, he said there were different "levels" in the Supramental - but that (smiling) is the sauce that makes things more easily digestible (!) Everyone says things in the way he finds the easiest to assimilate.

But the experience - the experience - is always beyond words, always.

page 55-56 , Mother's Agenda , volume 6 , 20th March - 1965

For the whole, it's always, every instant, the most favorable to the divine evolution. And for the elements consciously attuned to the Divine, it's the best for the perfection of their union.

But it shouldn't be forgotten that it's constantly changing, it isn't a static best; it's a best that, if retained, wouldn't be the best of the next moment. And it's because the human consciousness always tends to want to retain statically what it finds or considers to be good that it finds this best always eludes it. That effort to retain is what warps things.

(silence)

I looked at the problem when I tried to understand the position of Buddha, who reproached the Manifestation for its impermanence; to him, perfection and permanence were one and the same thing. In his contact with the manifested universe, he had observed a perpetual change, and so his conclusion was that the manifested world was imperfect and had to disappear. And the change (the impermanence) does not exist in the Nonmanifest, therefore the Nonmanifest is the true Divine. When I looked and concentrated on this point, I saw that his observation was indeed correct: the Manifestation is absolutely impermanent, it's a perpetual transformation.

But in the Manifestation, perfection is to have a movement of transformation or unfolding identical to the divine Movement, the essential Movement. Whereas all that belongs to the unconscious or tamasic [[Tamasic: Belonging to inertia or obscurity (tamas). ]] creation tries to keep its existence unchanged, instead of lasting by constant transformation.

page 95 - 96 , Mother's Agenda , volume 6 , 19th May - 1965

I had the perception of this manifestation - a "pulsatory" manifestation, I might say - which opens out, shrivels up, opens out, shrivels up again ... and there comes a point when the opening out is such, the fluidity, the plasticity, the capacity for change are such that there is no need anymore to reabsorb in order to shape anew, and there will be a progressive transformation. Théon used to say (I think I've already told you about it) that this is the seventh universal creation, that there have been six pralayas[[Pralaya: the end of a world. ]] before and this is the seventh creation, but that it will be possible for this one to be transformed without being reabsorbed - which obviously is perfectly unimportant because, the moment you have the eternal consciousness, whether things go this way or that way doesn't matter in the least. It's for the limited human consciousness that there is a sort of ambition or need for something that doesn't end, because, within, there is what we might call "the memory of eternity" and that memory of eternity aspires for the manifestation to partake of that eternity. But if the sense of eternity is active and present, you don't lament - you don't lament if you discard a worn-out garment, do you? (You may be attached, but anyway you don't lament.) It's the same thing: if a universe disappears, it means it has wholly fulfilled its function, it has reached the limit of its possibilities, and another must replace it.

page 52 , Mother's Agenda , volume 7 , 4th March - 1966