Ah!
I said that through personal experience and then that...
There's no why about it, is there? Everyone should find
this out for himself, or not find it out. But I have heard
from those who are interested in earth-chemistry that
there are certain rays—(turning to Pavitra)
isn't that so? Tell us, do you know about it? sun-rays
which remain active in the atmosphere till midnight, and
other rays which become active afterwards, and these give
you strength and those draw it out of you. But there are
many things like that; at least this, you understand,
is something we hear of or read in books. I am giving
it to you for what it is worth, I know nothing. Somebody
who is very well up in the subject could give you a fuller
explanation. (Laughing) But certain things are
true, in practice. I cannot say why; perhaps they are
only personal things! But still, I have heard of a similar
experience from others also. For instance, you go into
the sea, remain there a few minutes and you come out full
of strength. You go into the sea and remain in it for
an hour and you come out completely exhausted! Even with
a hot bath it is the same thing. You have a hot bath;
you are very tired; you get into it; you remain there
at the most for a moment; you come out and feel quite
fresh. You remain there for a quarter of an hour, you
come out, you have lost all your strength, your energy,
there's nothing left, you are drained out.
I tell you this, I cannot speak to you with any competence
about the reason, but the fact is there. It is like that.
For myself I have an explanation, but it is good only
for me, it does not work for others. So it is useless.
As for these stages of sleep which are spoken about here,
if one is conscious of one's nights, one can cover them
in a few minutes. One does not need to wait for hours
of sleep to do this, you understand; if one is conscious,
one can pass through all that in a few minutes. To begin
with, when one is conscious of one's nights, the first
thing to do before falling fast asleep, just in the state
when one begins to relax, relax all one's nerves—I
have explained this to you already, one relaxes all the
nerves and lets oneself go... like this... you know—well,
at that moment, one must relax very carefully all mental
activity and make that quiet, as quiet as possible, and
not go off to sleep until the mind is quite calm. Then
you escape quite a long period of useless excitement which
is extremely tiring. If you can so manage that the mind
relaxes and enters into a complete peace first, your sleep
will immediately become very peaceful and very refreshing;
naturally, your vital must not be in a turmoil, for then,
in that case, it will take you into all sorts of places
and make you commit all kinds of stupidities, and the
result will be that you will wake up even more tired than
when you went to sleep.
But if you are conscious, after having calmed your vital,
when you begin to come out from your physical consciousness
and enter a more subtle consciousness, you put your vital
to sleep, you say to it, "Rest now, keep very quiet",
and then you enter your mental activity and say to the
mind, "Rest now, remain very quiet", and you
put it to sleep also; and then you come out of the mind
into a higher region, and there, if it begins to interest
you, for instance, if it is the first time you have gone
there, you may look at what is happening, have your experience,
learn things—at times one learns very interesting
things; and then, sometimes one can become aware of a
certain general state also, have ideas about other people,
other things; it is interesting! And later, if you have
had enough of this, you say, "Keep quiet, sleep,
don't move", and you put that to sleep, and rise
to a still higher consciousness, and so on, till you reach
a state where you are on the borders of form, I
am not speaking of physical form—on the borders of
all form, much higher than the form of thought, naturally;
on the borders of all form and all vibration, in the perfect
silence, what here we call Sachchidananda. And when you
are there, everything stops, all vibrations subside, and
if you remain there just three minutes, you come back
to your body absolutely rested, refreshed, fortified,
as though you had slept for hours! This is something one
can learn to do. I don't say it can be done overnight,
a little work is necessary and also some persistence,
but still... this one must learn to do; and when you are
very anxious, very tired, very... for instance, when you
have just undergone violent attacks from hostile forces
in one form or another and are very tired, if you follow
this process consciously, well, within a few minutes all
that disappears completely. It is something worth learning.
Only, one must be very, very, very persevering, for...
Wait a bit, I am going to tell you something more about
it.
When I began studying occultism, I became aware—that
just when I began to work upon my nights in order to make
them conscious—I became aware that there was between
the subtle-physical and the most material vital a small
region, very small, which was not sufficiently developed
to serve as a conscious link between the two activities.
So what took place in the consciousness of the most material
vital did not get translated exactly in the consciousness
of the most subtle physical. Some of it got lost on the
way because it was like a—not positively a void but
something only half-conscious, not sufficiently developed.
I knew there was only one way, that was to work to develop
it. I began working. This happened sometime about the
month of February, I believe. One month, two months, three,
four, no result. We go on. Five months, six months...
it was at the end of July or the beginning of August.
I left Paris, the house I was staying in, and went to
the countryside, quite a small place on the seashore,
to stay with some friends who had a garden. Now, in that
garden there was a lawn—you know what a lawn is,
don't you? grass—where there were flowers and around
it some trees. It was a fine place, very quiet, very silent.
I lay on the grass, like this, flat on my stomach, my
elbows in the grass, and then suddenly all the life of
that Nature, all the life of that region between the subtle-physical
and the most material vital, which is very living in plants
and in Nature, all that region became all at once, suddenly,
without any transition, absolutely living, intense, conscious,
marvellous; and this was the result, wasn't it?, of six
months of work which had given nothing. I had not noticed
anything; but just a little condition like that and the
result was there! It is like the chick in the egg, yes!
It is there for a very long time and yet one sees nothing
at all. And one wonders whether there is indeed a chick
in the egg; and then, suddenly "Tick!", there
is a tiny hole, you know, and then everything bursts and
out comes the chick! It is quite ready, but it took all
that time to be formed; that's how it is. When you want
to prepare something within you, that is how it is, it
is like the chick in the egg. You need a very long time,
and this without having the least result, never getting
discouraged, and continuing your effort, absolutely regularly,
as though you had eternity before you and, moreover, as
though you were quite disinterested about the result.
You do the work because you do it. And then, suddenly,
one day, it bursts and you see before you the full result
of yourwork.
But you understand, don't you? One speaks like this, very
easily, of becoming conscious of one's nights, having
control over one's sleep-activities and all sorts of things
of this kind, but you need to do many such little works
like the one I have just described to you. Many of these
are needed to obtain this result. When one is acomplished,
you realise that there is another missing, and when this
is done, you realise there is still another, and so on,
until one fine day you can do what I said, and you go
from one plane to another, like that, putting all to rest,
until you come out of all activity and enter the supreme
rest, consciously. It is worth the trouble.
There you are!
Another question? No?
Finished.
23
june 1954
- The Mother
