It is in the subtle physical where the material life gets reorganized, that which cares for perfect form, where there is no more room for fault. This subtle physical is vast and it is a very curious place. There is a remarkable resemblance between what is seen there and things and objects that are here around us in the gross physical. In fact one would think if it is not the memory of these physical forms that is carried over there. But it is a coherent world, and not a disorderly imagination. If one is to extend this kind of thinking, it might even appear that the Overmind gods are also perceived in the same manner, that our physical habits give rise to those forms. Are all these objects and beings like that, seen in the way one is in that state, or is it that they are made out in that way because of our association with what is here? Is it anthropomorphism of a kind? The explanation becomes very simple, very easy when one enters into the consciousness where material reality itself becomes an illusion; it is illusory, it is not exact: the inner reality is truer than what we conceive it to be. It is perhaps only our mind that is astonished. This can even lead one to maintain that real ill-will, real hostility and real falsehood are very rare, that is to say, “real” in its absolute sense, in themselves, and conscious, deliberate—deliberate, absolute, conscious—that is rare. Sri Aurobindo used to say that all the rest is a kind of illusion of consciousness—of consciousnesses that intermingle with each other. That gives rise to a real problem, a problem in the context of the transformation to be achieved, a problem of immense magnitude. When one is there, in the subtle physical, things get done as if there is no sense of time, certainly not the sense of our time; it is the content of the action that matters. But what is done there, that disappears when one suddenly returns to this world. Even as the Presence becomes more intimate, more and more concrete, so concrete that it seems to be absolute, then another state of consciousness comes up and all has to be begun again. The great words, the great attitudes, the great experiences, but here nothing spectacular, everything is very modest. And this is the condition for progress, the condition for transformation.

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