WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

17 August 1955

Sweet Mother, sometimes it happens that one was not ready for a meditation or concentration and then [old p. 282]suddenly one is forced into something and obliged to be silent; even if one wanted to get out then, one can't; one remains like that, sometimes for a long time, absolutely [new p. 278]carried away by the torrent of things. Does this enter the category of meditation?

This simply means that one suddenly comes under the influence of a higher force of which one is not conscious; one is conscious only of the effect, but not of the cause. That's all. It's nothing more than that. If you were conscious you would know what makes you silent, what makes you meditate, what kind of force has entered into you or acts upon you or influences you and puts you in the silence. But as you are not conscious, you are aware only of the effect, the result, that is, the silence that comes into you.

But one can become conscious, Sweet Mother, can't one?

Fully! But for this one must work a little within oneself. One must withdraw from the surface.

Almost totally, everybody lives on the surface, all the time, all the time on the surface. And for them it's even the only thing which exists--the surface. And when something compels them to draw back from the surface, some people feel that they are falling into a hole. There are people who, if they are drawn back from the surface, suddenly feel that they are crumbling down into an abyss, so unconscious they are!

They are conscious only of a kind of small thin crust which is all that they know of themselves and things and the world, and it is so thin a crust! Many! I have experienced, I don't know how often... I tried to interiorise some people and immediately they felt that they were falling into an abyss, and at times a black abyss. Now this is the absolute inconscience. But a fall, a fall into something which for them is like a non-existence, [old p. 283]this happens very often. People are told: "Sit down and try to be silent, to be very quiet"; this frightens them terribly.

A fairly long preparation is needed in order to feel an increase of life when one goes out of the outer consciousness. It [new p. 279]is already a great progress. And then there is the culmination, that when one is obliged for some reason or other to return to the outer consciousness, it is there that one has the impression of falling into a black hole, at least into a kind of dull, lifeless greyness, a chaotic mixture of disorganised things, with the faintest light, and all this seems so dull, so dim, so dead that one wonders how it is possible to remain in this state--but this of course is the other end--unreal, false, confused, lifeless!