complete control but anyway already represents a stage: to have the ability to do this in
your head (Mother moves her hand across her brow), to annul all the movements, to stop
the vibrations. And the mental surface becomes smooth. Everything stops, as when you
open a book at a blank page—but almost materially, you understand... blank!
Try a little when you are at home, you will see, it is very interesting.3
Shifting the stress of consciousness
It all depends upon where the consciousness places itself and centralises itself. If the
consciousness places or associates itself within the ego, you are identified with the ego—if
in the mind, it is identified with the mind and its activities and so on. If the consciousness
puts its stress outside, it is said to live in the external being and becomes oblivious of its
inner mind and vital and inmost psychic; if it goes inside, puts its centralising stress
there, then it knows itself as the inner being or, still deeper, as the psychic being; if it
ascends out of the body to the planes where self is naturally conscious of its wideness
and freedom, it knows itself as the self and not the mind, life or body. It is this stress
of consciousness that makes all the difference. That is why one has to concentrate the
consciousness in heart or mind in order to go within or go above. It is the disposition of
the consciousness that determines everything, makes one predominantly mental, vital,
physical or psychic, bound or free, separate in the Purusha or involved in the Prakriti.4
Silence of consciousness
Sweet Mother,
What is meant by the “silence of the physical consciousness” and how can one remain
in this silence?
The physical consciousness is not only the consciousness of our body, but of all that
surrounds us as well—all that we perceive with our senses. It is a sort of apparatus for
recording and transmission which is open to all the contacts and shocks coming from
outside and responds to them by reactions of pleasure and pain which welcome or repel.
This makes in our outer being a constant activity and noise that we are only partially
aware of, because we are so accustomed to them.
But if through meditation or concentration we turn inward or upward, we can
bring down into ourselves or raise up from the depths calm, quiet, peace and finally
silence. It is a concrete, positive silence (not the negative silence of the absence of noise),
immutable so long as it remains, a silence one can experience even in the outer tumult of
a hurricane or battlefield. This silence is synonymous with peace and it is all-powerful; it
is the perfectly effective remedy for the fatigue, tension and exhaustion arising from that
internal over-activity and noise which generally escape our control and cease neither by
day nor night.
This is why the first thing required when one wants to do Yoga is to bring down and
establish in oneself the calm, the peace, the silence.5
- Compiled from: Sri A W&