Preparing for the Miraculous

idge across the afterlife 161has been modified drastically. One reads now about thefive ages of the brain and the fact that it continues evolving,even in advanced age, on condition that one does not stopstimulating it, in other words that one remains mentallyactive – or, as the Mother said, that one remains “young.”In one of the first chapters of The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindowrote: “For it will be evident that essential Matteris a thing non-existent to the senses and only ... a conceptualform of substance, and in fact the point is increasinglyreached where only an arbitrary distinction in thought dividesform of substance from form of energy.” 10 Now youfind popular science books with a title such as The MatterMyth, and physicists who say: “Speaking as a physicist, Ijudge matter to be an imprecise and rather old-fashionedconcept. Roughly speaking, matter is the way particles behavewhen a large number of them are lumped together. ...Matter is weird stuff ...” (Freeman Dyson) 11 Or: “Quantumfield theory paints a picture in which solid matter dissolvesaway, to be replaced by weird excitations and vibrationsof invisible field energy. In this theory, little distinction remainsbetween material substance and apparently emptyspace, which itself seethes with ephemeral quantum activity.... Quantum physics undermines materialism because itreveals that matter has far less ‘substance’ than we might believe.... Even the apparent solidity of ordinary matter meltsaway into a frolic of insubstantial patterns of energy.” 12Already during the First World War, when writing theinstalments that would become The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo’sinterpretation of the terrestrial evolution containedelements which would only later enter the scientific discussionabout the development of the life-forms. In those texts10 Id., p. 18.11 Freeman Dyson: Infinite in all Directions, p. 8.12 Paul Davies and John Gribbin: The Matter Myth, pp. 8 and 229.