In the present case, of course, the body is always saying, 'I am ready for everything - I will do anything at all'; yet I still can't say that it has this.... It's trying to be completely 'pure' according to the spiritual concept - it doesn't sense its separate personality. More and more, year after year, it has been striving to feel only the divine Presence, the divine Life, the divine Force and the divine Will, all within itself; and to feel that without them it is nothing, it doesn't exist. This is fully realized in its consciousness (the conscious part). In the subconscient and inconscient, [[The terminology used by Mother and Sri Aurobindo is distinct from the terminology of Western psychology. This is how Sri Aurobindo defines 'inconscient' and 'subconscient': 'All upon earth is based on the Inconscient, as it is called, though it is not really inconscient at all, but rather a complete "sub"-conscience, a suppressed or involved consciousness, in which there is everything but nothing is formulated or expressed. The subconscient lies between this Inconscient and the conscious mind, life and body.' (Cent. Ed., XXII, p. 354) ]] obviously... it is not realized ... otherwise, logically, it shouldn't be ill.

The whole disorder evidently originates from the subconscient and inconscient; all the more so as it came with various indications (sent by the hostile forces - but this can always be useful, provided you are careful) saying, 'Yes, everything is going well in your higher centers, but...'(because the different points of attack have clearly followed the order of the centers). Four or five days ago, or maybe a week, before this latest difficulty occurred, I saw little beings coming out of the subconscient and saying, 'Ah! Your legs haven't had any trouble for a long time! It's the turn of the lower centers!' I swept it all away, of course, but....

page 79 , Mother's Agenda , volume - 2 , 11th feb , 1961

What is this spring?

The spring? It means exactly this: in the deepest depths of the Inconscient is the supreme spring that makes us touch the Supreme. It is like the Supreme making us touch the Supreme: that is the almighty spring. When you arrive at the very bottom of the Inconscient, you touch the Supreme.

So that is the shortest path!

Not the shortest path! Already for me, it was hard to touch the bottom of the Inconscient, but for others it would take an eternity.

It is something similar to what Sri Aurobindo has written in 'A God's Labour.'

Was it the Supreme at the very bottom of the Inconscient who cast you up directly to the Supreme?

Yes. Because at the very bottom of the Inconscient is the Supreme. It is the same idea as the highest height touching the deepest depth. The universe is like a circle - it is represented by the serpent biting its tail, its head touching its tail. It means that the supreme height touches the most material matter, without any intermediary. I have already said this several times. But that was the experience. I didn't know what was happening. I expected nothing and ... it was stupendous - in a single bound, I sprang up! If someone had had his eyes open, I assure you he would have had to laugh: I was bent over, like this, more and more, more and more, more and more, my head was just about to touch my knees when suddenly - vrrrm! Straight, straight up, my head upright in a single bound!

But as soon as you want to express it, it escapes like water running through your fingers; all the fluidity is lost, it evaporates. A rather vague, poetic or artistic expression is much truer, much nearer to the truth - something hazy, nebulous, undefined. Something not concretized like a rigid mental expression - this rigidity that the mind has introduced right down into the Inconscient.

This vision of the Inconscient ... (Mother remains gazing for a moment) it was the MENTAL Inconscient. Because the starting point was mental. A special Inconscient - rigid, hard, resistant - with all that the mind has brought into our consciousness. But it was far worse, far worse than a purely material Inconscient! A 'mentalized' Inconscient, as it were. All this rigidity, this hardness, this narrowness, this fixity - a FIXITY - comes from the presence of the mind in creation. When the mind was not manifested, the Inconscient was not like that! It was formless and had the plasticity of something that is formless - the plasticity has gone.

It is a terrible image of the Mind's action in the Inconscient.

page 232 - Mother's Agenda, volume 1, 11th Nov. - 1958




Oh, the subconscient! Every night it's a real invasion of things that are so ... the WHOLE subconscient keeps coming up, coming up, coming up - not just mine but everybody's. There seems to be no end to it.

But now I have the knack of forgetting - I just forget. Because when I used to remember, I had to fight for entire days. So as soon as I wake up, I erase it right away: go away! Gone!

But all night long I am fully conscious of a lot of things - they can't be called trivial, but.... Oh, it's as though everything that can comes to tell me: 'You think there will be a supramental transformation? Well then, just look: there is this and that and that and this, this one and that one, this circumstance, that thing, the world, people, things....' Oh, a deluge!


page 165 , Mother's Agenda , volume - 2 , 15th April , 1961
When one descends into the subconscient, a time comes when it's no longer personal - the whole world is there! Then what can we do? I'm not speaking of you, but what can people like us do to change it? It's a Sisyphean labor! Vibrations from the whole world keep coming in at each instant. How can we change it?
No, you have to approach the problem from the other direction. Evolution begins with the Inconscient, complete Inconscience; and from this Inconscient a Subconscient gradually emerges - that is, a half or quarter-consciousness.... There are two different things here. Consider life on earth (because the process is slightly different in the universe); earth-life begins with total Inconscience and little by little what was involved within it works out and changes this Inconscience into semi-consciousness or subconsciousness. At the same time, there is an individual working that awakens the INDIVIDUAL inconscient to an individual semiconsciousness, and here, of course, the individual has control - although it's not actually individualized because individualization begins with consciousness. The subconscient of plants or animals, for example, isn't individualized; what we call an animal's behavior doesn't arise from individualization but from the genius of the species. Consequently, the individual subconscient is something already evolved out of the general Subconscient. But when one descends to accomplish a work of transformation - to bring Light into the different layers of life, for instance - one descends into a cosmic, terrestrial Subconscient, not an individual Subconscient. And the work of transformation is done within the whole - not through individualization, but through the opposite movement, through a sort of universalization.

No, what I mean is that as we progress, we automatically become universalized....
Yes, necessarily.

And we are told that we have to change the Subconscient, to bring Light into it; but being universal it has no end! New vibrations keep coming in at every instant ...
No!

... vibrations from the outside, from here, there - it's endless. How can we change it?
No, it isn't endless - it's limited to the earth's atmosphere.

That's already quite a lot!
Yes, but not endless.

Then how can we act upon it - all these vibrations that keep pouring in from all over the world, from the whole earth?
It isn't difficult - the minute you become universalized you act upon the whole.

Even Buddha said that if you have a vibration of desire, this vibration goes all around the terrestrial atmosphere. The opposite is what's impossible! It's impossible to separate yourself. You can have the idea of being separate, but you can't be separate in reality. In fact, if you are trying to eliminate the Subconscient in yourself your movement must necessarily be general; it can't be personal, you would never get anywhere.

Yes, of course, but these vibrations are ceaselessly re-created.
No, they are not re-created.

But there are people having wrong movements at every instant, so ... ?
So it all keeps circling round and round in the earth's atmosphere. But compared to the universe, the earth's atmosphere is a very tiny thing. Well, all this keeps circling around within it. And in fact, because of the movement of evolution, there is a progress. The present Inconscient is not as unconscious as the initial Inconscient, and the present Subconscient is not as subconscious nor as generalized as it was at the beginning. This is the meaning of terrestrial evolution.

But if, as you say, it keeps circling around in the earth's atmosphere, doesn't this mean that vibrations are ceaselessly re-created?
Not re-created - they keep circling around, which is not the same thing!

A re-creation would mean that a new contingent of the Inconscient and Subconscient would come in from other spheres, or from the Supreme - well, this isn't the case. We consider the Inconscient to be an 'accident': if it happened, it happened; but it's not part of an infinite and eternal creation.

Then are our vibrations of consciousness effective for changing these general vibrations?
Ah, yes!

In fact, we are the first possible instruments for making the world progress. For example (this is one way of putting it), the transformation of the Inconscient into the Subconscient is probably far more rapid and complete now than it was before man appeared upon earth; man is one of the first transformative elements. Animals are obviously more conscious than plants, but WILLED (and thus more rapid) progress belongs to humanity. Likewise, what one hopes (more than hopes!), what one expects is that when the new supramental race comes upon earth, the work will go much more swiftly; and man will necessarily benefit from this. And since things will be done in true order instead of in mental disorder, animals and everything else will probably benefit from it also. In other words, the whole earth, taken as one entity, will progress more and more rapidly. The Inconscient (oh, all this comes to me in English, that's the difficulty!) is meant to go and necessarily the Subconscient will go too.

Broadly speaking, does this mean that physical Matter will become conscious?
Yes, in a certain way. It will become receptive. The mode of life won't necessarily change, but the form of life will change. Matter will become responsive. Do we say that in French?

Receptive? ...

 No, receptive is one thing and responsive is another. To respond: Matter will respond to the conscious will. Indeed, this is why there is hope - how else could there be a transformation? Things would always remain as they are! What kind of earth would it be for the supramental race to live on if no Matter gave response, if Matter did not begin to vibrate and respond to the Will? The same difficulties would always be there. And it isn't limited: for instance, even if we imagine a power over the body making corporeal life different, this new corporeal life still has to exist within an environment - it can't remain hanging in thin air! The environment must respond.

It's quite obvious that the Inconscient, the Subconscient and the semi-conscient are accidental; they are not a permanent part of the creation, so are bound to disappear, to be transformed.

Years ago, when Sri Aurobindo and I descended together from plane to plane (or from mode of life to mode of life) and reached the Subconscient, we saw that it was no longer individual: it was terrestrial. The rest - the mind, the vital and of course the body - is individualized; but when you descend below this level, that's no longer the case. There is indeed something between the conscious life of the body and this subconscious terrestrial life - elements are thrown out [[I.e., they are cast aside or eliminated from the individual Subconscient. ]] as a result of the action of individual consciousness upon the subconscious substance; this creates a kind of semiconsciousness, and that stays. For example, when people are told, 'You have pushed your difficulty down into the subconscient and it will resurface,' this does not refer to the general Subconscient, but to something individualized out of the Subconscient through the action of individual consciousness and remaining down there until it resurfaces. The process is, so to speak, interminable, even the personal part of it.

Every night, you know, I continue to see more and more astounding things emerging from the Subconscient to be transformed. It's a kind of mixture - not clearly individualized - of all the things that have been more or less closely associated in life. For example, some people are intermingled there. One relives things almost as in a dream (although these are not 'dreams'), one relives it all in a certain setting, within a certain set of symbolic, or at any rate expressive, circumstances. Just two days ago I had to deal with someone (I am actively at work there and I had to do something with him), and upon seeing this person, I asked myself, 'is he this one or that one?' As I became less involved in the action and looked with a more objective consciousness, the witness-consciousness, I saw that it was simply a mixture of both persons - everything is mixed in the Subconscient.... Already when I lived in Japan there were four people I could never distinguish during my nighttime activities - all four of them (and god knows they weren't even acquainted!) were always intermingled because their subconscious reactions were identical.

page 289-293 , Mother's Agenda , volume 2 , 2nd Aug. 1961.
No, sleep is something else. Yes, something else. It's more like a relapse into Inconscience - a sort of invasion of tamas. [[Tamas: inertia, obscurity. ]]

We all know, of course, that the Divine Consciousness is there in the depths of the Inconscient; but even so, sleep appears to be a fall, and there are people who fall almost completely back into the Inconscient and come out of their sleep far duller than when they entered it. But for some reason, probably due to the necessities of the Work, I have never to my knowledge had a fully unconscious sleep.

page 307 , Mother's Agenda , volume 2 , 5th Aug. 1961.

When I returned from Japan and we began to work together, Sri Aurobindo had already brought the supramental light into the mental world and was trying to transform the Mind. 'It's strange,' he said to me, 'it's an endless work! Nothing seems to get done - everything is done and then constantly has to be done all over again.' Then I gave him my personal impression, which went back to the old days with Theon: 'It will be like that until we touch bottom.' So instead of continuing to work in the Mind, both of us (I was the one who went through the experience ... how to put it? ... practically, objectively; he experienced it only in his consciousness, not in the body - but my body has always participated), both of us descended almost immediately (it was done in a day or two) from the Mind into the Vital, and so on quite rapidly, leaving the Mind as it was, fully in the light but not permanently transformed.

Then a strange thing happened. When we were in the Vital, my body suddenly became young again, as it had been when I was eighteen years old! ... There was a young man named Pearson, a disciple of Tagore, who had lived with me in Japan for four years; he returned to India, and when he came to see me in Pondicherry, he was stupefied. [[Pearson came to Pondicherry in April 1923. ]] 'What has happened to you!' he exclaimed. He hardly recognized me. During that same period (it didn't last very long, only a few months), I received some old photographs from France and Sri Aurobindo saw one of me at the age of eighteen. 'There!' he said, 'That's how you are now!' I wore my hair differently, but otherwise I was eighteen all over again.

This lasted for a few months. Then we descended into the Physical - and all the trouble began. [[In January 1925, mother had an inflammation of the knee. On May 25 of the same year, Sri Aurobindo noted in a letter, 'The condition here is not very good. I am at present fighting the difficulties on the physical plane.' (Cited by A.B. Purani, Life of Sri Aurobindo, p. 203.) Note that in 1925 the Nazi Party was founded. ]] But we didn't stay in the Physical, we descended into the Subconscient and from the Subconscient to the Inconscient. That was how we worked. And it was only when I descended into the Inconscient that I found the Divine Presence - there, in the midst of Darkness.

It wasn't the first time; when I was working with Theon at Tlemcen (the second time I was there), I descended into the total, unindividualized - that is, general - Inconscient (it was the time he wanted me to find the Mantra of Life). And there I suddenly found myself in front of something like a vault or a grotto (of course, it was only something 'like' that), and when it opened, I saw a Being of iridescent light reclining with his head on his hand, fast asleep. All the light around him was iridescent. When I told Theon what I was seeing, he said it was 'the immanent God in the depths of the Inconscient,' who through his radiations was slowly waking the Inconscient to Consciousness.


But then a rather remarkable phenomenon occurred: when I looked at him, he woke up and opened his eyes, expressing the beginning of conscious, wakeful action.

I have experienced the descent into the Inconscient many times (you remember, once you were there the day it happened - it had to do with divine Love [[We aren't sure, but this may refer to the experience of July 12, 1960, or to that of November 5, 1958, 'the almighty spring' (in fact, they are probably one and the same experience) which gave rise to the 1959 New Year Message: 'At the very bottom of the Inconscient, most hard and rigid and narrow and stifling, I struck upon an almighty spring that cast me up forthwith into a formless, limitless Vast, vibrating with the seeds of a new world.' ]] ); this experience of descending to the very bottom of the Inconscient and finding there the Divine Consciousness, the Divine Presence, under one form or another. it has happened quite frequently.

But I can't say that my process is to descend there first, as you write. Rather, this can be the process only when you are ALREADY conscious and identified; then YOU DRAW DOWN the Force (as Sri Aurobindo says, 'one makes it descend') in order to transform. Then, with this action of transformation, one pushes [the Force into the depths, like a drill]. The Rishis' description of what happens next is absolutely true: a formidable battle at each step. And it would seem impossible to wage that battle without having first experienced the junction above.

That is my experience - I don't say there can't be others. I don't know.

One can realize the Divine in the Inconscient rather quickly (in fact, I think it can happen just as soon as one has found the Divine within). But does this give the power to TRANSFORM DIRECTLY? Does the direct junction between the supreme Consciousness and the Inconscient (because that is the experience) give the power to transform the Inconscient just like that, without any intermediary? I don't think so. I simply haven't had that experience. Could all these things I've been describing be happening now if I didn't have all those experiences behind me? I don't know, I can't say.

One thing is certain - as soon as one goes beyond the terrestrial atmosphere, beyond the higher mind's 'highest' region, the sensation of 'high' and 'low' totally vanishes. There are no longer movements of ascent and descent, but (Mother turns her hand over) something like inner reversals.

I think the problem arises only when you try to see and understand with the mental consciousness, even with the higher mind.


I am telling you this because, as soon as I got your letter, I replied with what I'll read to you now; then I was immediately faced with something I couldn't formulate, the kind of thing that gives you the feeling of the unknown (all I knew was my own experience). So I did the usual thing - became 'blank,' turned towards the Truth; and I questioned Sri Aurobindo - and beyond - asking, if there were something to be known, that it be told to me. Then I dropped it, I paid no more attention. And only as I was coming here today was I told - I can't really use the word 'told,' but anyway, what was communicated to me concerning your question was that the difference between the two processes [the Rishis' and the present one] is purely subjective, depending upon the way the experience is registered. I don't know if I can make myself clear.... There is 'something' which is the experience and which will be the Realization; and what appears to be a different, if not opposite, process is simply a subjective mental notation of one SINGLE experience. Do you follow?

That's what I was told.

Now I'm going to read you my reply - it's the first reaction (when something comes, I stay immobile; then an initial reaction comes from above my head, but it's only like the first answering chord, and if I remain attentive, other things follow; what I have just told you is what followed). My immediate written response is based upon my own experience as well as upon what Madame Theon told me and what Sri Aurobindo told me. (Mother reads:)

'It is by rising to the summit of consciousness through a progressive ascent...' (that's what I meant just now by 'leaving the body,' but without going into details), 'that one unites with the Supermind. But as soon as the union is achieved, one knows and one sees that the Supermind exists in the heart of the Inconscient as well. When one is in that state, there is neither high nor low. But GENERALLY,' (I emphasized this to make it clear that I am not making an absolute assertion) 'it is by REDESCENDING through the levels of the being with a supramentalized consciousness that one can accomplish the permanent transformation of physical nature.' (This can be experienced in all sorts of ways, but what WE want and what Sri Aurobindo spoke of is a change that will never be revoked, that will persist, that will be as durable as the present terrestrial conditions. That is why I put 'permanent.') 'There is no proof that the Rishis used another method, although, to effect this transformation (if they ever did) they must necessarily have fought their way through the powers of inconscience and obscurity.'

Yes, the Rishis give an absolutely living description of what you experience - and experience continually - as soon as you descend into the Subconscient: all these battles with the beings who conceal the Light and so on. I experienced these things continually at Tlemcen and again with Sri Aurobindo when we were doing the Work - it's raging quite merrily even now!

As soon as you go down there, that's what happens - you have to fight against all that is unwilling to change, all that dominates the world and does not want to change.

page 379-383 , Mother's Agenda , volume 2 , 7th Nov. 1961.

I saw a text by Sri Aurobindo that I found interesting....
Oh!

Theresa question in fact. ...It's a letter [[In fact a conversation: see Talks with Sri Aurobindo by Nirodbaran, part I, p 179-180. ]] in which he refers to the first period in the Ashram, when everyone was having "great

experiences"; afterwards, there was a descent to the physical

level. So he says:

"Working on the physical is like digging the ground; the physical is absolutely inert, dead like stone. When the work

began there, all former energies disappeared, experiences

stopped; if they came they didn't last. The progress is

exceedingly slow. One rises, falls; rises again and falls again,


constantly meeting with the suggestions of the Vedic Asuras, 'You can't do anything, you are bound to fail.'

"You have to go on working and working year after year, point after point, till you come to a central point in the subconscient which has to be conquered and it is the crux of the whole problem, hence exceedingly difficult.... This point in the subconscient is the seed and it goes on sprouting and sprouting till you have cut out the seed."

7 January 1939

page 326-27 - Mother's Agenda , volume 11 , 19th Sep - 1970

The subconscient is a mass of defeatism. That's what keeps rising to the surface. As we ABSOLUTELY need to change that, the subconscient must be clarified so that the new race can come. We must clarify the subconscient. It's a mire. It's full of defeatism - defeatism, the first reaction is always defeatist. It's absolutely disgusting, mon petit, I've seen it, I am working there ... a disgusting place. We absolutely must ... we must be categorical and vigorous - fearless, you know. Change it MUST.

It's nasty.

And it keeps rising to the surface ... (gesture from below).

(silence)

A fantastic energy is checked by that, by that foul thing.


Defeatism belongs to the sub

conscient - it MUST change, it must. Defeatism is anti-divine.



page 225-26 , Mother's Agenda , volume 13 , 19th July - 1972-1973