We are told that when you ascend both beyond Nirvana or Nothingness and beyond Existence (the two SIMULTANEOUS and complementary aspects of the Supreme), there is a state of consciousness where all simultaneously and eternally exists. Thus - although God knows, it may be yet another stupidity - we can conceive of a whole set of things passing into Non-Being, and for our consciousness this would be disappearance or destruction.

page 242 - Mother's Agenda , volume 2 , 27th June - 1961
It's like that famous Nirvana - you can find it behind everything. There's a psychic nirvana, a mental nirvana, even a vital nirvana. I think I already told you about the experience I had with Tagore in Japan. Tagore always used to say that as soon as he started meditating he entered Nirvana, and he asked me to meditate with him. We sat together in meditation. I was expecting to make a very steep ascent, but he simply went into his MIND, and there ... (what I do, you see, is tune in to the person I am meditating with, identify with him - that's how I know what happens). Well, he started meditating, and everything quite rapidly came to a halt, became absolutely immobile (this he did very well), and from there he sort of fell backwards, and it was Nothingness. And he could remain in that state indefinitely! We did in fact stay like that for a rather long time; I don't remember how long, three quarters of an hour or an hour, but anyway it was long enough. I was keeping alert the whole time to see if, by chance, he would go on into something else, but there he stayed - he stayed there nice and calm, without stirring. Then he came back, his mind started up again, and that was that.

I said nothing to him.

But it was a true nirvana: Nothingness. Not a single sensation, not a movement - no thoughts, of course - nothing, not a vibration: just like that, Nirvana. So I quite naturally concluded that there is a nirvana behind the mind, since he went there directly. And through my own experiments in the different zones of the being I became aware that, indeed, there is a nirvana behind everything (there must be a nirvana behind the physical cell too - maybe that's what death is! Who knows, it's possible). A nothingness, nothing stirs any more. And nothing's there any more - nothing's there, there's nothing to stir (Mother laughs). It's the Nothing.

page 395 , Mother's Agenda , volume 3 , 30th Oct. 1962

(Regarding an old "Playground Talk" of 1950 and noted from memory by a disciple, which Mother asks Satprem to scrap. The subject was Nirvana, which one was to reach - or so the notation said - by withdrawing all one's energies into the psychic being or soul.)

None of that is true! In the first place, we should say that each realm has an energy of its own. But what people generally feel as energy is vital energy; and vital energy ... (hem!) is vital! Therefore to say that those who withdraw withdraw all their energies and consciousness into the psychic to attain Nirvana is nonsense!

There is a nirvana behind the vital, a nirvana behind the psychic, a nirvana behind the mind; there is a nirvana on every level, even behind the physical - it's death. And those who withdraw, who try to attain Nirvana, NEVER go into the psychic - the psychic is something essentially linked to divine manifestation, not to divine nonintervention, not to Nirvana.

All that is fit for the wastepaper basket!


page 275 , Mother's Agenda , volume 4 , 13th Aug 1963

You see, to be free from all attachments doesn't mean to run away from opportunities for attachment. All those people who assert their asceticism not only run away, but warn others that they shouldn't try!

It seems to me so obvious. When you need to run away from a thing in order not to experience it, it means you aren't above it, you are still on that level.

All that eliminates and diminishes or lessens doesn't free. Freedom must be experienced in the totality of life and sensations.

In this connection, there has been a whole period of study of this subject, on the purely physical level.... To rise above all possibility of error, you tend to eliminate the opportunities for error; for instance, if you don't want to utter unnecessary words, you stop speaking. People who make a vow of silence imagine it gives a control over speech - that's not true! It only eliminates the opportunities to speak, and therefore of saying unnecessary things. For food, it's the same problem: how to eat only just what is needed?... In the transitional state we find ourselves in, we no longer want to live that wholly animal life based on material exchanges and food,but it would be folly to think we have reached the state in which the body can live on without any food at all (still, there is already a big difference, since they are trying to find the nutritional essence in foods in order to reduce their volume); but the natural tendency is fasting - which is a mistake!

For fear of acting wrongly, we stop doing anything; for fear of speaking wrongly, we stop saying anything; for fear of eating for the pleasure of eating, we stop eating anything - that's not freedom, it's simply reducing the manifestation to its minimum. And the natural outcome is Nirvana. But if the Lord wanted only Nirvana, there would be only Nirvana! He obviously conceives the coexistence of all opposites and that, to Him, must be the beginning of a totality. So, of course, you may, if you feel that you are meant for that, choose only one of His manifestations, that is to say, the absence of manifestation. But that's still a limitation. And it's not the only way of finding Him, far from it!

It's a very widespread tendency, which probably comes from an old suggestion, or perhaps from a poverty, an incapacity: to reduce and reduce - reduce one's needs, reduce one's activities, reduce one's words, reduce one's food, reduce one's active life, and it all becomes so cramped! In the aspiration not to make any mistakes, you eliminate the opportunities of making them - that's no cure.

But the other path is far, far more difficult.


page 190-91 , Mother's Agenda , volume 5 , 16th Sep - 1964