There could be many reasons. It depends on the person you ask. If you
ask an astrologer he will tell you, "It is the stars, when the stars
come into the same position, the same conditions recur." Well, this
is not so wrong. It can be like that. It can also be the individual's reaction
to certain types of climate, you see, or to the sun's position; or it may
be quite simply a bad habit. That's all. (Laughter)
And if one forms... If by chance it has happened to you twice consecutively,
then you form… you have a good formation, you see, which remains like
that (gesture) in the subconscient, without showing itself - if you
don't observe it! And then, just when the time draws near, quite gently
it pushes up from within and tells you, "Take care, the time is coming,
the time is coming, the time is coming!" So naturally, that comes along
too. Usually these things are like that.
But almost everything that happens in the physical is like that. The first
time it may be quite simply a concurrence of circumstances; then, the mind
intervenes and makes a construction. Now, if one accepts the construction,
one is sure that it functions with clockwork precision. But even if one
says, "Oh, nonsense, it is only an idea!" and does this (gesture)
still the idea, instead of going away, enters inside, into the subconscient,
simply the subconscious mind, and there it remains quietly. And then, when
the time comes to manifest itself, from inside, like this, it makes a kind
of… as though it were tickling the memory a little, nothing more than
that, just that. If it rubs the memory just a little, like that, then suddenly
one day you remember: "Why, last year, at this time I was ill."
And crash! There it is, it has entered. It has entered the zone of the active
consciousness, and a few days later the thing happens.
But when you have had either an experience or, like this, some kind of
phenomenon or an illness (above all in the case of illness or even an accident),
the body remembers for a very long time. If you want to be completely cured,
you must cure this memory in the body, this is absolutely indispensable.
And whether you know it or not, you work in order to cure the memory in
the body. When the remembrance is effaced, the body is truly healed.
Unfortunately, instead of destroying the remembrance, you push it back.
Most of the time you push it down into the subconscient and sometimes into
the inconscient, still more deep. Well now, if it is pushed back, if it
is not completely effaced, then very gently, very gently, without seeming
to do so at all it comes up to the surface; and something of which you have
been cured for years, if by chance it crosses your mind simply like that,
just like a little dart, as fast as that, like a passing dart: "Why,
at this time I had that", you may be sure that sooner or later - a
few seconds, a few minutes, a few hours or days later, it will return. You
can... It may come back in a much milder form, it may come back in the same
form, it may come even more strongly. That depends on your inner state.
If you are in a pessimistic state, it will come back more strongly. If you
are in an optimistic state, it will be much weaker. But it will come back
and you will have to begin the battle all over again against the memory
of your body so as to destroy it - if this time you are more attentive.
If you can destroy it, you are cured. But if you don't destroy it, it will
return. It will take a longer or shorter time, it will be more or less total,
but it will return. It can come back in a flash. If you are wide awake and,
when it returns, if you have enough knowledge and indeed enough clear-sightedness
to tell yourself, "Well, here is that wretched remembrance come back
again to play its tricks", then you can give, can strike a violent
blow and indeed destroy its reality. If you know how to do this, then it
is an opportunity to get rid of the thing immediately. But it is not very
easy to do this.
How to do it?
How to do it? (Mother laughs.) How to do it? It is the same thing as, the
same method as, knowing how to destroy a formation, you understand.
It is a certain strength to dissolve things, which can undo formations.
It depends on the nature of the formation. If it is like this, a formation
of an adverse kind, then you need the force of a perfectly pure constructive
light. If you have this at your disposal, all that you have to do is to
bombard the thing with it, and you can dissolve it. But it is an operation
which must be performed with inner forces; it cannot be done physically.
That is why all physical remedies, you see, are simply palliatives; they
are not cures, because they are not strong enough to touch the living centre
of the thing.
*Heading is given by the editor
The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother, Vol.6. Pondicherry;
Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 1979, pp. 366-9.
