The dates ... I am no good at dates! And I don't have any papers left to give me precise details. But the realization of the inner Divine must have been in 1911, because that's when I started writing my Meditations. [[The first Prayers and Meditations date from November 1912, but there may have been earlier ones among the numerous texts Mother destroyed. ]] But since my earliest childhood, you know, this presence was always there, with an initial emphasis on consciousness, then on the vital and aesthetics, then on the mind ... and culminating here, in 1920, with action. page 291 , Mother's Agenda , volume 3 , 28th July 1962. |
People are getting restless, they want to publish a complete collection of my talks - in English. "Calm down!" I told them. "I don't want any of this; we will publish a French edition later, when it's ready." I don't want English. I don't want English! And more and more, I don't want English. For instance, the English translation of Prayers and Meditations is out of print and they wanted to reprint it. I said no: "If you want, you can reprint what Sri Aurobindo HIMSELF translated (there's not much, just a thin volume). That, yes, because Sri Aurobindo translated it." But even at that, it's not the same thing as my text - it's Sri Aurobindo's, not mine. Prayers and Meditations came to me, you know - it was dictated each time. I would write at the end of my concentration, and it didn't pass through the mind, it just came - and it obviously came from someone interested in beautiful form. I used to keep it under lock and key so nobody would see it. But when I came here Sri Aurobindo asked about it, so I showed him a few pages and then he wanted to see the rest. Otherwise I would have always kept it locked away. I destroyed whatever was left - there were five thick volumes in which I had written every single day (there was some repetition, of course): the outcome of my concentrations. So I chose which parts would be published (Sri Aurobindo helped in the choice), copied them out, and then I cut the pages up and had the rest burned. That's a shame!There are a few original fragments left from what was published - I distributed almost all of them; the ink has faded, it's practically white. I burned everything. It's really a shame.It wasn't written for anyone and wasn't meant to be read. I showed it to Sri Aurobindo because he was speaking of certain things and I said, "Ah, yes, that's the experience I had in...." Then I showed him my notebook for that date (there was something written for each day). Five thick notebooks, year after year.... Even here I kept on writing for a while. I wrote a lot in Japan. Anyway, everything of general interest was kept. But that's why there are gaps in the dates, otherwise it would be continuous - it was monumental, you know! It's only here that people started wanting to keep and keep and keep. (Mother makes a gesture of throwing everything over her shoulder.) The world is moving fast, the world is moving fast, fast, fast - why keep anything? (silence) So I've said that if people want to read what I have written (of course I have written certain things in English, like Conversations with the Mother, which I later rewrote in French - not exactly in the same way, but nearly; so that's all right, it's written in English) ... but those who want to read me, well, let them learn French, it won't do them any harm! French gives a precision to thought like no other language.You should obviously be read in French.Because it's something else altogether. Untranslatable, not the same mentality! Like French humor and English humor - they're far, far apart ... so far apart that they're usually impervious to each other! page 346-47 , Mother's Agenda , volume 3 , 15th Sept 1962 |
I don't want English. I don't want English! And more and more, I don't want English. For instance, the English translation of Prayers and Meditations is out of print and they wanted to reprint it. I said no: "If you want, you can reprint what Sri Aurobindo HIMSELF translated (there's not much, just a thin volume). That, yes, because Sri Aurobindo translated it." But even at that, it's not the same thing as my text - it's Sri Aurobindo's, not mine. Prayers and Meditations came to me, you know - it was dictated each time. I would write at the end of my concentration, and it didn't pass through the mind, it just came - and it obviously came from someone interested in beautiful form. I used to keep it under lock and key so nobody would see it. But when I came here Sri Aurobindo asked about it, so I showed him a few pages and then he wanted to see the rest. Otherwise I would have always kept it locked away. I destroyed whatever was left - there were five thick volumes in which I had written every single day (there was some repetition, of course): the outcome of my concentrations. So I chose which parts would be published (Sri Aurobindo helped in the choice), copied them out, and then I cut the pages up and had the rest burned. That's a shame!There are a few original fragments left from what was published - I distributed almost all of them; the ink has faded, it's practically white. I burned everything. It's really a shame.It wasn't written for anyone and wasn't meant to be read. I showed it to Sri Aurobindo because he was speaking of certain things and I said, "Ah, yes, that's the experience I had in...." Then I showed him my notebook for that date (there was something written for each day). Five thick notebooks, year after year.... Even here I kept on writing for a while. I wrote a lot in Japan. Anyway, everything of general interest was kept. But that's why there are gaps in the dates, otherwise it would be continuous - it was monumental, you know! It's only here that people started wanting to keep and keep and keep. (Mother makes a gesture of throwing everything over her shoulder.) The world is moving fast, the world is moving fast, fast, fast - why keep anything? Page 346-47 , Mother's Agenda , volume 3 , 15th Sept 1962 |
I don't have far to go on my translation of The Synthesis of Yoga (it's going very quickly), and I have found what I'll do next.... It will be something like those notebooks [Prayers and Meditations]. I am going to take the whole section of Savitri (to start with, I'll see later) from "The Debate of Love and Death" to the point where the Supreme Lord makes his prophecy about the earth's future; it's long - several pages long. This is for my own satisfaction. Page 347 , Mother's Agenda , volume 3 , 18th Sept 1962 |
Mother goes on sorting her notes Previously I used to tear them to pieces and throw them into the wastepaper basket, then I realized they collected all those torn pieces and went through a tremendous toil to put them back together! ... When I really want to get rid of something, I burn it myself.... I've burned lots of things. You know that I burned all those notebooks.... For - how many years? - at least four or five years, every day I used to write those Prayers and Meditations (I had several notebooks of them, big like this). Then, when Sri Aurobindo told me to make a book out of them (naturally, as it was written every day, there were some repetitions), I made my choice; I selected and extracted all those he wanted (I also kept a few, which I extracted and distributed), and as for the rest ... It was a long, long time ago, I was still living over there. [[François Martin Street. ]] The last times I wrote, it was after my return from Japan, that is, in 1920. In 1920 I still wrote a little, then stopped. Then Sri Aurobindo chanced on it, and he told me it had to be published. I said all right, made a selection, and what to do with the rest? So I burned it. I said, "Well, that's what you should do with your past: burn it with the fire of aspiration." Otherwise, you always remain hitched and fastened, a slave everywhere, with millstones around your neck. page 211 , Mother's Agenda , volume 8 , 8th July - 1967 |