WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

17 November 1971

Very strange. The whole view of things has changed.... And then, forgotten.

So totally changed...

But in this change of view, what makes the difference?

(After a long smiling silence) It is as if the consciousness was not in the same position with regard to things--I do not know how to say it. So they appear altogether different.

(Silence)

I do not know how to explain.... The ordinary human consciousness, even when it has the widest ideas, is always at the centre, and things are like this (gesture of convergence from all sides, like a spider's web). Things exist (all that one says only diminishes), they exist in relation to a centre. Whereas (gesture indicating a multitude of scattered points). I believe this is how it is best expressed: in the ordinary human consciousness one is at a point and all things exist in their relation to this point of consciousness (same gesture of a spider's web). And now, the point exists no more, so things exist in themselves.

This is the most exact thing to say. It is not that but...

So, my consciousness is in the things--it is not "something" which is receiving, it is much better than that, but I do not know how to say it.

It is better than that because it is not merely "in the things", it is in "something" which is in the things and which... makes them move.

I could say it in words. I could say: "It is no longer one being among others, it is," I could say, "it is the Divine in all [new p. 278][old p. 278]things." But it is not like this that I sense it... It is "that which moves things or which is conscious in things".

Evidently it is a question of consciousness, but not a consciousness as human beings have ordinarily. It is the quality of consciousness that has changed.

Collected Works of The Mother, First Edition, Volume 11, pp. 277-78