Joy
in The Body
I
feel we are turning a corner.
It's very narrow. Do you know mountain roads? … All
of a sudden, you come to a corner, a sharp turn, and you
can't see the other side—below is a precipice, behind
is the rock—and the path… it would seem to have
grown narrower in order to turn the corner, it's become
quite narrow. I've encountered that in the mountains - often.
And now, I feel we are turning the corner; but we are beginning
to turn it, in the sense that we are beginning to see the
other side, and the consciousness (always the body consciousness)
is on the verge of a bedazzlement, like the first glimpses
of something marvellous—not positively unexpected because
that is what we wanted, but truly marvellous. And at the
same time, there is that old habit of meeting difficulties
at every step, of receiving blows at every step, the habit
of a painful labor, which takes away the spontaneousness
of an unalloyed joy; it gives a sort of … not a doubt
that things will be that way, but you wonder, "Has
it already come? Have we reached the end?" and you
don't dare think you have reached the end. That attitude,
naturally, isn't favourable, it still belongs to the domain
of the old reason; but it receives support from the usual
recommendations: "You shouldn't give free rein to wild
imaginings and hopes, you should be very level-headed, very
patient, very slow to get carried away." So there is
an alternation of a sort of crouching, timorously moving
forward step by step in order not to slide down into the
hole, and a glorious sense of wonder: "Oh, are things
really that way!"
This
has been the body's feeling for three or four days.
But it keeps increasing, and that sort of "crouching"
is greatly lessened by the knowledge and experience that
if you are per-fect-ly calm, all goes well - always, even
in the worst difficulties… Very recently, the day before
yesterday, there was (always on the physical level; it can't
be called "health," but it's the body's functioning)
a rather serious attack, which found expression in a rather
unpleasant pain; it came with unusual brutality. Then, immediately,
the body remembered and said, "Peace, peace… Lord,
Your Peace, Lord, Your Peace…" and it relaxed
in Peace. And in an objectively perceptible way, the pain
went away.
It tried to come back and then went away, tried to come
back and went away…. The process lasted the whole night.
But
it was extraordinarily obvious! The physical conditions
were absolutely the same, and one minute earlier, there
was an almost intolerable pain, which went away like that,
in the Lord's Peace.
It's
already two days since it went away, and it hasn't come
back. I don't know if it will come back.
But then, the body is learning one thing, and learning it
not as an effort that has to be made, but as a spontaneous
condition: it's that ALL that happens is for progress. All
that happens is for reaching the true state, the one that
is expected of the cells so that the Realization may be
accomplished—even the blows, even the pains, even apparent
disorganizations, all that is on purpose. And it's only
when the body takes it in the wrong way, like a fool, that
it gets worse and insists; whereas if the body immediately
says, "Very well, Lord, what do I have to learn?"
and responds with calm, calm, the relaxation of calm, immediately
the difficulty becomes tolerable, and after a moment, it
gets better.
(silence)
If the work were limited to a single body, a single mass
or quantity, a single aggregate of cells, it would be very
easy by comparison, but the interchange, the union, the
reciprocity is automatic and spontaneous, and constant.
You feel that the effect going on here [in Mother's body]
naturally, necessarily and spontaneously has its consequences
very far and wide; only, it makes difficulties worse, and
that's why it takes a lot of time. There is a correspondence,
you see: something new occurs in the body, a new pain, a
new disorganization, something unexpected, and after some
time, I learn that this person or that person has the very
same thing!
That
too, the body knows, and it doesn't protest - that goes
without saying, it's the way things are. But it prolongs
the work considerably… Probably there will be a corresponding
endurance. Because there is neither regret nor revolt not
fatigue; really, the body is ready to be very happy; all
it wants is to be very happy—it dare not be yet, that's
the only point. It's something it dare not be: "Are
things… are they really as good as that!" it dare
not. But it's very happy: "I have no cause for complaint,
everything is fine; there are difficulties, but without
difficulties there is no progress."
Yes,
what it still has is the fear joy - not positively "fear,"
but… a timidity in the face of joy. Sometimes waves
of an intense Bliss come to it, waves of Ananda, in which
all the cells begin to swell with a joyous golden light,
and then… it's as if one dared not—one dare not.
That's the difficulty.
The people around me don't help. Those immediately around
me have no faith.
So that doesn't help, because the mental atmosphere isn't
favourable. Mentally, you look at it and smile; but the
body feels it a little bit, it feels a little the pressure
of defeatist formation around. But it knows why those around
are like that—from the material point of view, those
around are just what is needed; the body needs such an atmosphere
so that material difficulties aren't made worse. So it's
perfectly happy, only it dare not be joyous; it immediately
says, "Oh, it's still too beautiful a thing for life
as it is!"
I don't know how long it will last.
(silence)
Now
and then, when I am perfectly at rest and perfectly quiet
(when I know, for instance, that I have half an hour of
perfect quiet and no one will disturb me), at such time,
the Lord becomes very close, and often I feel Him saying
(not with words), saying to my body, "Let yourself
go, let yourself go; be joyous, be joyous, let yourself
go, relax," and the immediate result is that it completely
relaxes, and I go into a bliss—but I no longer have
any contact with the outside! The body goes into a deep
trance, I think, and it loses all contact; for instance,
the clock strikes, but I don't hear it.
One
should be able to keep that bliss while being quite active
and hard at work. I am not referring to the inner joy, not
at all, there's no question of that, it's out of the question,
it's immutably established: I am referring to that Joy IN
THE BODY ITSELF.
That sort of quiet satisfaction which it feels, now it feels
it even when there are sharp pains, with the trusting feeling
that it's all with a view to transformation and progress
and the future Realization. It no longer worries—it
no longer worries at all, it no longer frets at al, it no
longer even has the sense of the effort to be made in order
to endure: there's a smile.
But
the glimpses of the True Thing, all of a sudden, are so
wonderful that… Only, the gap between the present state
and THAT is still wide, and it seems that for THAT to settle
in once and for all, it must become natural.
Voilà.
30
October 1964
- The Mother
