Mother's Agenda - volume - 1 , 1951-1960

On Savitri - 1959
There is a difference between immortality and the deathless state. Sri Aurobindo has described it very well in Savitri.

The deathless state is what can be envisaged for the human physical body in the future: it is constant rebirth. Instead of again tumbling backwards and falling apart due to a lack of plasticity and an incapacity to adapt to the universal movement, the body is undone 'futurewards,' as it were.

There is one element that remains fixed: for each type of atom, the inner organization of the elements is different, which is what creates the difference in their substance. So perhaps similarly, each individual has a different, particular way of organizing the cells of his body, and it is this particular way that persists through all the outer changes. All the rest is undone and redone, but undone in a forward thrust towards the new instead of collapsing backwards into death, and redone in a constant aspiration to follow the progressive movement of the divine Truth.

But for that, the body - the body-consciousness - must first learn to widen itself. It is indispensable, for otherwise all the cells become a kind of boiling porridge under the pressure of the supramental light.

What usually happens is that when the body reaches its maximum intensity of aspiration or of ecstasy of Love, it is unable to contain it. It becomes flat, motionless. It falls back. Things settle down - you are enriched with a new vibration, but then everything resumes its course. So you must widen yourself in order to learn to bear unflinchingly the intensities of the supramental force, to go forward always, always with the ascending movement of the divine Truth, without falling backwards into the decrepitude of the body.

page 332 - Mother's Agenda , volume -1 , 25th Nov. 1959
On Savitri - 1960
But what is surprising is that in a flash, no one was there any longer. No one, you understand - I was gone. Perhaps I was everywhere (but in fact I am always everywhere, I am always conscious of being everywhere at the same time), though normally there is the sense of the body, a physical center, but that evening there was no more center! Nothing, no one, not even the sense that there was no one - nothing. I was gone. There was indeed something handing out the medals which felt the joy of giving the medal, the joy of receiving it, the joy of mutually looking at each other. It was simply the joy of the action taking place, the joy of looking, this joy everywhere, but me? - Nothing, no one, gone. Only later, afterwards, did I see what had happened, for everything had disappeared, even the higher mind that understands and organizes things (by 'understand' I mean contain, which 'contains' things). That also was gone. And this lasted the entire distribution. Only when that [the body] had gone back upstairs to the room did the consciousness of what is me return.

There is a line by Sri Aurobindo in Savitri which expresses this very well: to annul oneself so that only the Supreme Lord may be.

And there are many, many experiences like this. It is only a small, a very small beginning. This one in particular came to mark the new stage: four years have elapsed, and now four years to come. Because everything has focused on this body to prepare it, everything has concentrated on it - Nature, the Master of the Yoga, the Supreme, everything ... So only when it's over, not before, will it really be interesting to speak of all this. But maybe it will never be over, after all. It's a small beginning, very small.

3rd Mars 1960, vol-1, page 359 , L'Agenda de M�re


And there are hundreds and hundreds of little experiences like that, like so many little stones marking the way. Then you see that the two things are ALWAYS together: the destructive and the constructive. You can't see one without seeing the other. A time comes when the effort is to conquer the negative parts of creation and death (as at the end of Savitri), and when you have conquered that, then you're above. And then if you look at all these things, even those which seem the most opposed to the Divine, even acts of cruelty done for the pleasure of cruelty, you see the Presence - the Presence that annuls their effects. And it's absolutely marvelous.

12th July 1960, vol-1, page 392 , L'Agenda de M�re


Let me see the wallet (Mother looks at it) ... Ah, so that has nothing to do with it!

As soon as the meditation began, I started seeing quite familiar scenes from ancient Egypt. And you, you looked a little different, but quite similar all the same ... The first thing I saw was their god with a head like this (gesture of a muzzle), with a sun above his head. A dark animal head with ... I know it VERY WELL, but I don't remember exactly which animal it is. One is a hawk,' but the other has a head like ... (Mother makes the same gesture)

Like a jackal?

Yes, like a jackal, that's it. Yes, that's what it was. With a kind of lyre above its head, and then a sun.#

1. Horus, the sun god, child of Isis and Osiris.

2. According to tradition, Anubis, the jackal-headed god, helped Isis to rebuild the body of her spouse, Osiris, who had been killed and dismembered by his brother Set. Osiris was the first god to rule over men. Owing to certain special rites, Isis, helped by Anubis, succeeded in bringing him back to life. So we are not very far from the legend of Savitri and Satyavan.

30th October 1960, vol-1, page 458 , L'Agenda de M�re


But it's explained very well in Savitri! All these things have their laws and their conventions (and truly speaking, a really FORMIDABLE power is needed to change anything of their rights, for they have rights - what they call 'laws') ... Sri Aurobindo explains this very well when Savitri, following Satyavan into death, argues with the god of Death.' 'It's the Law, and who has the right to change the Law?' he says. And then comes this wonderful passage at the end where she replies, 'My God can change it. And my God is a God of Love.' Oh, how magnificent!

And by force of repeating this to him, he yields ... She replies in this way to EVERYTHING.

It's all right for winning a Victory, but not for stopping the rain for one day!

1. Yama: the god of Death. He is also the guardian of the Law.

12th November 1960, vol-1, page 475 , L'Agenda de M�re



He wrote this in a letter, I believe, and he spoke of this system of compensation - for example, those who take an illness on themselves in order to have the power to cure; and then there's the symbolic story of Christ dying on the cross to set men free. And Sri Aurobindo said, 'That's fine for a certain age, but we must now go beyond that.' As he told me (it's even one of the first things he told me), 'We are no longer at the time of Christ when, to be victorious, it was necessary to die.'

I have always remembered this.

But things are PULLING backwards - phew, how they pull! ... 'The Law, the Law, it's a Law. Don't you understand, it's a LAW, you can't change the Law.'

- 'But I CAME to change the Law.'

- 'Then pay the price.'

(silence)

What can make them yield?

Divine Love.

It's the only thing.

Sri Aurobindo has explained it in Savitri. Only when Divine Love has manifested in all its purity will everything yield, will it all yield - it will then be done.

It's the only thing that can do it.

It will be the great Victory.

(silence)

On a small scale, in very small details, I feel that of all the forces, this is the strongest. And it's the only one with a power over hostile wills. Only ... for the world to change, it must manifest here in all its fullness. We have to be up to it ...

Sri Aurobindo had also written to the effect, 'If Divine Love were to manifest now in all its fullness and totality, not a single material organism would but burst.' So we must learn to widen, widen, widen not only the inner consciousness (that is relatively easy - at least feasible), but even this conglomeration of cells. And I've experienced this: you have to be able to widen this sort of crystallization if you want to be able to hold this Force. I know. Two or three times, upstairs (in Mother's room), I felt the body about to burst. Actually, I was on the verge of saying, 'burst and be done with.' But Sri Aurobindo always intervened - all three times he intervened in an entirely tangible, living and concrete way ... and he arranged everything so that I was forced to wait.

Then weeks go by, sometimes even months, between one thing and another, so that some elasticity may come into these stupid cells.

12th November 1960, vol-1, page 477 , L'Agenda de M�re



Mother's Agenda - volume - 2 , 1961
I am going downstairs on the 21st, for Saraswati Puja. [[Saraswati represents the universal Mother's aspect of Knowledge and artistic creativity. On this occasion, Mother would go down to the Meditation Hall and the disciples would silently pass in front of her to receive a message. This year they would receive a folder containing five photographs of Mother. ]] They have prepared a folder with a long quotation from Savitri and five photos of my face taken from five different angles.

The title of the folder is the line from Savitri that gave me the most overpowering experience of the entire book (because, as I told you, as I read, I would LIVE the experiences - reading brought, instantly, a living experience). And when I came to this particular line .. I was as if suddenly swept up and engulfed in ... ('the' is wrong, 'an' is wrong - it's neither one nor the other, it's something else) ... eternal Truth. Everything was abolished except this:



For ever love, O beautiful slave of God [[Savitri, Vol. 29, XI.I.702. ]]

That alone existed.



12th January 1961, vol-2, page 27 , L'Agenda de M�re



Well, yesterday I saw R. He was asking me questions about his work and particularly about the knowledge of languages (he's a scholar, you know, and very familiar with the old traditions). This put me in contact with that whole world and I began speaking to him a little about what I had already said to you concerning my experience with the Vedas. And all at once, in the same [absolute] way as I told you, when I entered into contact with that world a whole domain seemed to open up, a whole field of knowledge from the standpoint of languages, of the Word, of the essential Vibration, that vibration which would be able to reproduce the supramental consciousness. It all came, so clear, so clear, luminous, indisputable - but unfortunately there was no tape recorder!

It was about the Word, the primal sound. Sri Aurobindo speaks of it in Savitri: the essence of the Word and how it will express itself, how it will bring in the possibility of a supramental expression that will take the place of languages.... I began by speaking to him about the different languages, their limitations and possibilities; and I warned him against the deformations imposed on languages with the idea of making them a more flexible means of expressing something else. I told him how completely ridiculous it all was, and that it didn't correspond at all to the truth. Then little by little I began ascending to the Origin. So yesterday again, I had this same experience: a whole world of knowledge, of consciousness and of CERTAINTY - precluding the least possibility of contradiction, discussion, or opposition; the possibility DOES NOT EXIST, it doesn't exist. And the mind was absolutely silent and immobile, listening with obvious pleasure because these things had never before come into my consciousness; I had never been concerned with them in that way. It was completely new - not new in principle but completely new in action.

The experiences are multiplying.

A sound that can bring in the supramental Force?
Yes. While speaking, you see, I went back to the origin of sound (Sri Aurobindo describes it very clearly in Savitri: the origin of sound, the moment when what we called 'the Word' becomes a sound). So I had a kind of perception of the essential sound before it becomes a material sound. And I said, 'When this essential sound becomes a material sound, it will give birth to the new expression which will express the supramental world.' I had the experience itself at that moment, it came directly. I spoke in English and Sri Aurobindo was concretely, almost palpably, present.

Now it has gone away.

27th January 1961, vol-2, page 48 , L'Agenda de M�re


Something that veils?
I am up against this fact: how did Truth become Falsehood? I am not asking myself intellectually - that doesn't interest me at all! It is here, in Matter, that the thing must be found.

It is double, it is double.

How did it happen? (But not just 'how' as in a story: the MECHANISM). And how will we get out of it?

You see, all the things that have been told, even all the things Sri Aurobindo has said (he has said the most in Savitri), all that is necessarily ... (what can it be called?) mental, the super-intellectual spiritualized mind. But it is not THAT! It's a form, it's an image, it's not ... the concrete fact.



6th June 1961, vol-2, page 226 , L'Agenda de M�re



You know, Savitri is an exact description - not literature, not poetry (although the form is very poetical) - an exact description, step by step, paragraph by paragraph, page by page; as I read, I relived it all. Besides, many of my own experiences that I recounted to Sri Aurobindo seem to have been incorporated into Savitri. He has included many of them - Nolini says so; he was familiar with the first version Sri Aurobindo wrote long ago, and he said that an enormous number of experiences were added when it was taken up again. This explained to me why ... suddenly, as I read it, I live the experience - line by line, page by page. The realism of it is astounding.



4th July 1961, vol-2, page 249 , L'Agenda de M�re



I'm re-reading 'Savitri.'
Lucky man! I would love to read it again. And the more you read, the more marvelous it becomes.



7th July 1961, vol-2, page 256 , L'Agenda de M�re



In the final analysis, everything obviously depends upon the Supreme's Will because, if one looks deeply enough into the question, even physical laws and resistances are nothing for Him. But this kind of direct intervention takes place only at the extreme limit; if His Will is to be expressed in opposition, as it were, to the whole set of laws governing the Manifestation - well, that only comes ... at the very last second. Sri Aurobindo has expressed this so well in Savitri, so well! At least three times in the book he has expressed this Will that abolishes all established laws, all of them, and all the consequences of these laws, the whole formidable colossus of the Manifestation, so that in the face of it all, That can express itself - and this takes place at the very last 'second,' so to speak, at the extreme limit of possibility.



15th July 1961, vol-2, page 262 , L'Agenda de M�re



Take the experience of Mind, for example: Mind, in the evolution of Nature, gradually emerging from its involution; well - and this is a very concrete experience - these initial 'mentalized forms,' if we can call them that, were necessarily incomplete and imperfect, because Nature's evolution is slow and hesitant and complicated. Thus these forms inevitably had an aspiration towards a sort of perfection and a truly perfect mental state, and this aspiration brought the descent of already fully conscious beings from the mental world who united with terrestrial forms - this is a very, very concrete experience. What emerges from the Inconscient in this way is an almost impersonal possibility (yes, an impersonal possibility, and perhaps not altogether universal, since it's connected with the history of the earth); but anyway it's a general possibility, not personal. And the Response from above is what makes it concrete, so to speak, bringing in a sort of perfection of the state and an individual mastery of the new creation. These beings in corresponding worlds (like the gods of the overmind, [[ In Sri Aurobindo's terminology, the 'Overmind' represents the highest level of the mind, the world of the gods and origin of all the revelations and highest artistic creations - the world that has ruled mental man till now. in his gradations of the worlds, Sri Aurobindo speaks of two hemispheres, the upper hemisphere and the lower. The Overmind is the line between these two hemispheres, 'This line is the intermediary overmind which, though luminous itself, keeps from us the full indivisible supramental Light, but in receiving it divides, distributes, breaks up into separated aspects, powers, multiplicities of all kinds.' In the words of the Upanishad, 'The face of the Truth is covered by a golden lid.' ]] or the beings of higher regions) came upon earth as soon as the corresponding element began to evolve out of its involution. This accelerates the action, first of all, but also makes it more perfect - more perfect, more powerful, more conscious. It gives a sort of sanction to the realization. Sri Aurobindo writes of this in Savitri - Savitri lives always on earth, with the soul of the earth, to make the whole earth progress as quickly as possible. Well, when the time comes and things on earth are ready, then the divine Mother incarnates with her full power - when things are ready. Then will come the perfection of the realization. A splendor of creation exceeding all logic! It brings in a fullness and a power completely beyond the petty shallow logic of human mentality.



28th July 1961, vol-2, page 281 , L'Agenda de M�re



It wasn't so much a question of the 'why' as of the process.
The process? I am giving you an historical process that I know through experience.

Both are needed.
Yes. The earth is a representative and symbolic world, a kind of crystallization and concentration of the evolutionary labor giving it a ... more concrete reality. It has to be taken like this: the history of the earth is a symbolic history. And it is on earth that this Descent takes place (it's not the history of the universal but of the terrestrial creation); the Descent occurs in the individual TERRESTRIAL being, in the individual terrestrial atmosphere.

Let's take Savitri, which is very explicit on this: the universal Mother is universally present and at work in the universe, but the earth is where concrete form is given to all the work to be done to bring evolution to its perfection, its goal. Well, at first there's a sort of emanation representative of the universal Mother, which is always on earth to help it prepare itself; then, when the preparation is complete, the universal Mother herself will descend upon earth to finish her work. And this She does with Satyavan - Satyavan is the soul of the earth. She lives in close union with the soul of the earth and together they do the work; She has chosen the soul of the earth for her work, saying, 'HERE is where I will do my work.' Elsewhere (Mother indicates regions of higher Consciousness), it's enough just to BE and things Simply ARE. Here on earth you have to work.

There are clearly universal repercussions and effects, of course, but the thing is WORKED OUT here, the place of work is HERE. So instead of living beatifically in Her universal state and beyond, in the extra-universal eternity outside of time, She says, 'No, I am going to do my work HERE, I choose to work HERE.' The Supreme then tells her, 'What you have expressed is My Will.'.... 'I want to work





28th July 1961, vol-2, page 282 , L'Agenda de M�re



I have the right to 150 pages! The publisher is giving me 150 pages in his collection.... Terrible.... But in this 'Sri Aurobindo,' you understand, I would like to make his whole poetic aspect stand out, that poetry which is like the Veda, like a revelation, so a bit of space is required: it can't be squeezed into a few lines, or reduced to a skeleton.
This analogy between the ancient form of spiritual revelations and Savitri, this blossoming into poetry of his prophetic revelation is ... what could be called the most exceptional part of his work. And what is remarkable (I saw him do it) is that he changed Savitri: he went along changing it as his experience changed.

It is clearly the continuing expression of his experience.

There were whole sections he redid completely, which were like descriptions of what I had told him of my own experiences. Nolini said this. When I recently reread Savitri, some phrases were very familiar and I said to Nolini, 'How odd, these are almost my very words!' And he replied, 'But this has been changed, it was written differently; it has BECOME like this.' As the thing became more and more concrete for him, he changed it. The breath of revelatory prophecy is extraordinary! It has an extraordinary POWER!

23rd September 1961, vol-2, page 333 , L'Agenda de M�re


He had said he would complete certain parts of The Synthesis of Yoga, [[The third section, 'The Yoga of Self -Perfection,' which was never completed. ]] but when he was asked to do so, he replied, 'No, I don't want to go down to that mental level'! Savitri comes from somewhere else altogether. And I think that Savitri is the most important thing to speak about.

23rd September 1961, vol-2, page 334 , L'Agenda de M�re


Mother's Agenda - volume - 3 , 1962
I read a passage in Savitri which seems to link up exactly with what you were saying....
Ah, read it to me!

I'd rather you read it yourself, because my English.... I found it really striking - these four lines here....

(Mother reads:)

"Not only is there hope for godheads pure;

The violent and darkened deities

Leaped down from the one breast in rage to find

What the white gods had missed: they too are safe;

A Mother's eyes are on them and her arms

Stretched out in love desire her rebel sons."[[Savitri, Book X, Canto 2 (Cent. Ed. XXIX.613). ]]

Yes, that's it.

"What the white gods had missed...."
I didn't remember it. But that's it exactly. It's strange; when I read I see only what's needed at the moment. The rest seems to go unnoticed. And then as soon as it's needed, it comes back - as happened with what you just showed me.

Page 53



Yes, that's it - that's what just happened.

It's exactly like pulling open a curtain: everything is waiting there behind.

It's difficult for me to speak during these experiences because French comes to me more spontaneously, and the experiences all happen in English - Sri Aurobindo's power is so much with them....

All right, mon petit - when do I see you again?



I'd like to ask you a question about those lines from Savitri I showed you the other day. I don't know if you remember - the passage about the "white gods."

What did you want to ask? What was it that "the white gods had missed"? But Sri Aurobindo has written it all down in full, right here in the Aphorisms. He has mentioned everything, taken up one thing after another: "Without this, there would not have been that; without this, there would not have been that ..." and so on.[[88 - This world was built by Death that he might live. Wilt thou abolish death? Then life too will perish. Thou canst not abolish death, but thou mayst transform it into a greater living. 89 - This world was built by Cruelty that she might love. Wilt thou abolish cruelty? Then love too will perish. Thou canst not abolish cruelty, but thou mayst transfigure it into its opposite, into a fierce Love and Delightfulness. 90 - This world was built by Ignorance and Error that they might know. Wilt thou abolish ignorance and error? Then knowledge too will perish. Thou canst not abolish ignorance and error, but thou mayst transmute them into the utter and effulgent reason. 91 - If Life alone were and not death, there could be no immortality; if love were alone and not cruelty, joy would be only a tepid and ephemeral rapture; if reason were alone and not ignorance, our highest attainment would not exceed a limited rationality and worldly wisdom. 92 - Death transformed becomes Life that is Immortality; Cruelty trans. figured becomes Love that is intolerable ecstasy; Ignorance transmuted becomes Light that leaps beyond wisdom and knowledge. ]]

Page 54



But I also remember reading The Tradition, before I met Sri Aurobindo (it was like a novel, a serialized romance of the world's creation, but it was very evocative; Th�on called it The Tradition). That was where I first learned of the universal Mother's first four emanations, when the Lord delegated his creative power to the Mother. And it was identical to the ancient Indian tradition, but told like a nursery story; anyone could understand - it was an image, like a movie, and very vivid.

So She made her first four emanations. The first was Consciousness and Light (arising from Sachchidananda); the second was Ananda and Love; the third was Life; and Truth was the fourth. Then, so the story goes, conscious of their infinite power, instead of keeping their connection with the supreme Mother and, through Her, with the Supreme, instead of receiving indications for action from Him and doing things in proper order, they were conscious of their own power and each one took off independently to do as he pleased - they had power and they used it. They forgot their Origin. And because of this initial oblivion, Consciousness became unconsciousness, and Light became darkness; Ananda became suffering, Love became hate; Life became Death; and Truth became Falsehood. And they were instantly thrown headlong into what became Matter. According to Th�on, the world as we know it is the result of that. And that was the Supreme himself in his first manifestation.

But the story is easy to understand, and quite evocative. On the surface, for intellectuals, it's very childish; but once you have the experience you understand it very well - I understood and felt the thing immediately.

And once the world has become like that, has become the vital world in all its darkness, and they, from this vital world, have created Matter, the supreme Mother sees (laughing) the result of her first four emanations and She turns towards the Supreme in a great entreaty: "Now that this world is in such a dreadful state, it has to be saved! We can't just leave it this way, can we? It has to be saved, the divine consciousness must be given back to it. What to do?" And the Supreme says, "Thrust yourself into a new emanation, an emanation of the ESSENCE of Love, down into the most material Matter." That meant plunging into the earth (the earth had become a symbol and a representation of the whole drama). "Plunge into Matter." So She plunged into Matter, and that became the primordial source of the Divine within material substance. And from there (as is so well described in Savitri), She begins to act as a leaven in Matter, raising it up from within.

Page 55



And as She plunged into the earth, a second series of emanations was sent forth - the gods - to inhabit the intermediary zones between Sachchidananda and the earth. And these gods (laughing) ... well, great care was taken to make them perfect, so they wouldn't give any trouble! But they are a bit ... a bit too perfect, aren't they? Yes, a bit too perfect: they never make mistakes, they always do exactly as they're told.... In short, rather lacking in initiative. They do have some, but....

In fact, they were not surrendered in the way a psychic being can be, because they had no psychic in them. The psychic being is the result of that descent. Only human beings have it. And that's what makes humanity so superior to the gods. Th�on insisted greatly on this: throughout his story, humans are far superior to gods and should not obey them - they should only be in contact with the Supreme in his aspect of perfect Love.

I don't know how to put it.... To me, those gods always seemed ... (not those described in the Puranas, they're different ... well, not so very different!) but the way Th�on presented them, they seemed just like a bunch of marshmallows! It's not that they had no power - they had a lot of power, but they lacked that psychic flame.

And to Th�on, the God of the Jews and Christians was an Asura. This Asura wanted to be unique; and so he became the most terrible despot imaginable. Anatole France said the same thing (I now know that Anatole France had never read Th�on's story, but I can't imagine where he picked this up). It's in The Revolt of the Angels. He says that Satan is the true God and that Jehovah, the "only God," is the monster. And when the angels wanted Satan to become the one and only God, Satan realized he was immediately taking on all Jehovah's failings! So he refused: "Oh, no - thank you very much!" It's a wonderful story, and in exactly the same spirit as what Th�on used to say. The very first thing I asked Anatole France (I told you I met him once - mutual friends introduced us), the first thing I asked him was, "Have you ever read The Tradition?" He said no. I explained why I had asked, and he was interested. He said his source was his own imagination. He had caught that idea intuitively.



24-27th January 1962, vol-3, page 53-56 , L'Agenda de M�re



Besides, if you remember the beginning of Savitri (I read it only recently, I hadn't known it), in the second canto, speaking of Savitri, he says she has come (he puts it poetically, of course!) to (laughing) kick out all the rules - all the taboos, the rules, the fixed laws, all the closed doors, all the impossibilities - to undo it all.

I went one better; I didn't even know the rules so I didn't need to fight them! All I had to do was ignore them, so they didn't exist - that was even better.

But now I have first to undo and then redo - a sheer waste of time.

In the lower mind there was a whole world of difficulties I was unaware of. In the vital I knew, because I'd had to do battle there - which was fine with me! Just imagine, this time I have been given a warrior as my vital being. A magnificent warrior, neither male nor female, and as tall as this room [[About 15 feet high. ]] - he is splendid. I was so happy when I first saw him. "Well," I thought, "that's worth my while!"

Yes, there are battles galore there!


3rd February 1962, vol-3, page 65 , L'Agenda de M�re


A line from Savitri constantly haunts or assails me - it's when the Lord proposes that she come live a blissful life above, and she replies, "No, there are still too many battles to wage on earth."[[I climb not to thy everlasting Day ... Earth is the chosen place of mightiest souls; Earth is the heroic spirit's battlefield... Thy servitudes on earth are greater, king, Than all the glorious liberties of heaven ... Oh, to spread forth, oh to encircle and seize More hearts till love in us has filled thy world! ... Are there not still a million fights to wage? Savitri, XI,1 (Cent. Ed. XXIX.686). ]]

That went deep into me, and it returns each time difficulties arise, as if to say, "Don't complain."

And there are plenty! ..


17th February 1962, vol-3, page 85 , L'Agenda de M�re


You know, mon petit, I said one day that in the history of earth, wherever there was a possibility for the Consciousness to manifest, I was there[["Since the beginning of the earth, wherever and whenever there was the possibility of manifesting a ray of the Consciousness, I was there." March 14, 1952. ]]; this is a fact. It's like the story of Savitri: always there, always there, always there, in this one, that one - at certain times there were four emanations simultaneously! At the time of the Italian and French Renaissance. And again at the time of Christ, then too.... Oh, you know, I have remembered so many, many things! It would take volumes to tell it all. And then, more often than not (not always, but more often than not), what took part in this or that life was a particular yogic formation of the vital being - in other words something immortal. [[Each of these formations had an independent, immortal existence. ]] And when I came this time, as soon as I took up the yoga, they came back again from all sides, they were waiting. Some were simply waiting, others were working (they led their own independent lives) and they all gathered together again. That's how I got those memories. One after the other, those vital beings came - a deluge! I had barely enough time to assimilate one, to see, situate and integrate it, and another would come. They are quite independent, of course, they do their own work, but they are very centralized all the same. And there are all kinds - all kinds, anything you can imagine! Some of them have even been in men: they are not exclusively feminine.

At first, I used to think they were fantasies.

Before I met Sri Aurobindo they would come and come and come to me, night after night and sometimes during the day - a mass of things! Afterwards I told Sri Aurobindo about it, and he explained to me that it was quite natural. And indeed, it is quite natural: with the present incarnation of the Mahashakti (as he described it in Savitri), whatever is more or less bound up with Her wants to take part, that's quite natural. And it's particularly true for the vital: there has always been a preoccupation with organizing, centralizing, developing and unifying the vital forces, and controlling them. So there's a considerable number of vital beings, each with its own particular ability, who have played their role in history and now return.

27th June 1962, vol-3, page 222-223 , L'Agenda de M�re



None of those beings, those gods and deities of various pantheons, have the same rapport with the Supreme that man has; for man has a psychic being, in other words, the Supreme's presence within him. These gods are emanations - independent emanations - created for a special purpose and a particular action which they fulfill SPONTANEOUSLY; they do it not with a sense of constant surrender to the Divine but simply because that's what they are, and why they are, and all they know is what they are. They don't have the conscious link with the Supreme that man has - man carries the Supreme within himself.

That makes a considerable difference.

But with this present incarnation of the Mahashakti.... She is the Supreme's first manifestation, creation's first stride, and it was She who first gave form to all those beings. Now, since her incarnation in the physical world, and through the position She has taken here in relation to the Supreme by incarnating in a human body, all the other worlds have been influenced, and influenced in an extremely interesting way. [[Some days later, Satprem again brought up the above passage, asking whether the Mother hadn't been active on earth since the beginning of time and not merely "with this present incarnation of the Mahashakti." The reply: "It was always through EMANATIONS, while now it's as Sri Aurobindo writes in Savitri - the Supreme tells Savitri that a day will come when the earth is ready and 'The Mighty Mother shall take birth'.... But Savitri was already on earth - she was an emanation. So they were all emanations? They were all emanations, right from the beginning. So we have to say: 'With the PRESENT incarnation.'" ]] I have been in contact with all those gods, all those great beings, and for the most part their attitude has changed. And even with those who didn't want to change, it has nonetheless influenced their way of being.

Human experience, with this direct incarnation of the Supreme, [[I.e., with the psychic being or soul IN MAN, the direct incarnation of the Supreme in man: "This has come with humankind." ]] is ultimately a UNIQUE experience, which has given a new orientation to universal history. Sri Aurobindo speaks of this - he speaks of the difference between the Vedic era, the Vedic way of relating to the Supreme, and the advent of Vedanta (I think it's Vedanta):



30th June 1962, vol-3, page 234 , L'Agenda de M�re



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.

I am going to translate it line by line (not word by word - line by line), leaving a space between each line; and when I've finished

Page 347



I will try to recapture it in French (gesture of pulling down from above).

I am not doing it to show it to people or to have anyone read it, but to remain in Savitri's atmosphere, for I love that atmosphere. It will give me an hour of concentration, and I'll see if by chance.... I have no gift for poetry, but I'll see if it comes! (It surely won't come from a mentality developed in this present existence - there's no poetic gift!) So it's interesting, I'll see if anything comes. I am going to give it a try.

I know that light. I am immediately plunged into it each time I read Savitri. It is a very, very beautiful light.

So I am going to see.

First of all, I'll concentrate on it just as Sri Aurobindo said it in English, using French words. Then I'll see if something comes WITHOUT changing anything - that is, if the same inspiration he had comes in French. It will be an interesting thing to do. If I can do one, two, three lines a day, that's all I need; I will spend one hour every day like that.

I don't have anything in mind. All I know is that being in that light above gives me great joy. For it is a supramental light - a supramental light of aesthetic beauty, and very, very harmonious.

So now I don't mind finishing The Synthesis. I was a little bothered because I have no other books by Sri Aurobindo to translate that can help me in my sadhana: there was only The Synthesis. As I said, it always came right on time, just when it was needed for a particular experience.

When this new translation is finished (because I know Savitri, I know what it is), I know that when it's finished ... either I'll be there or else things will take a very long time.[[See in the Addendum the last lines of Savitri that Mother translated. ]]

All his other books that could help me are already translated. And with Savitri, the idea isn't to make a translation, but to SEE. To try something. To give me the daily experience of that contact.

I had some magnificent experiences when I read it the first time (two years ago, I believe). Wonderful, wonderful experiences! And since then, each time I read those lines, the same thing happens - not the same experience, but I come in contact with the same realm.

It will be an interesting thing to do.

Page 348



It's more interesting than listening to everybody's stories! Oh .. (Mother raps her head). That's all.

***

ADDENDUM

(These are the last lines of Savitri Mother translated. They were found in her notebook under the date July 1, 1970.)

But how shall I seek rest in endless peace

Who house the mighty Mother's violent force,

Her vision turned to read the enigmaed world,

Her will tempered in the blaze of Wisdom's sun

And the flaming silence of her heart of love?

The world is a spiritual paradox

Invented by a need in the Unseen,

A poor translation to the creature's sense

Of That which for ever exceeds idea and speech,

A symbol of what can never be symbolised,

A language mispronounced, misspelt, yet true. [[Here are the three following lines, which Mother never translated: Its powers have come from the eternal heights And plunged into the inconscient dim Abyss And risen from it to do their marvelous work. ]]

(X.IV.647)

(Mother's translation)

1.7.1970

Mais comment puis-je chercher le repos dans une paix sans fin

Moi qui abrite la force violente de la formidable M�re,

Sa vision attentive � lire le monde �nigmatique,

Sa volont� tremp�e par le brasier du soleil de la Sagesse

Et le silence flamboyant de son coeur d'amour?

Le monde est un paradoxe spirituel

Invent� par un besoin dans l'Invisible,

Page 349

Une pauvre traduction pour les sens des cr�atures

De Cela qui � jamais d�passe l'id�e et la parole,

Un symbole de ce qui ne peut jamais �tre symbolis�,

Un langage mal prononc�, mal �pel�, pourtant vrai.



18th September 1962, vol-3, page 248-50 , L'Agenda de M�re



That's what I am experiencing in my body now - exactly what you say: each step forward forces you to make ... not a step backward, but a step into the Shadow. And on the physical level it's terrible.

(silence)

But your book shouldn't give the impression that it's always that way - that the Light can't be established on earth until all the Shadow is transformed. In fact, the very work of transformation is to change all this shadow into its aspect of light.[[Mother is alluding to the passage in Savitri where Sri Aurobindo speaks of "the dark half of Truth." ]]

Not to reject it: to transform it.

(silence)

It's very, very true [one step up, one step down], very true, because it's true even for the most material body-consciousness. And you realize the difficulties that represents.... As soon as the body becomes more conscious of the divine Presence and Light, it's immediately as though you touched the dregs of unconsciousness and ... yes, of unconsciousness and material inertia. And that makes the work very hard, very hard.

And just last time, when I told you I wasn't very well, it happened during the night, and it was the equivalent of what you write here, but purely material, in the body. In your book you describe it rather psychologically, like a phenomenon of consciousness, that is; but here it's a phenomenon of the cells.... So hurry to bring me the triumph! (Mother laughs) I was telling myself just this morning how exhausting it was, this perpetual battle - oh, what a battle....

So when you write of the victory, perhaps I too will do a victory dance!



23rd November 1962, vol-3, page 429 , L'Agenda de M�re



You could simply say that he did the work up to that moment , .. that's all, giving no reason.

We could simply say: "Sri Aurobindo left this life on December 5, 1950."
Read the beginning of the passage again.

"The seeker of transformation must thus face all the difficulties, even death, not to vanquish but to change them - one cannot change things without taking them upon oneself. 'Thou shalt bear all things,' says Savitri, 'that all things may change.' Sri Aurobindo succumbed to this work ..."
Can't you just put "that's why," without giving any explanation?... That's why Sri Aurobindo left his body. That's much more powerful. You said "even death," so just put: "That's why Sri Aurobindo left his body."



25th December 1962, vol-3, page 469 , L'Agenda de M�re



Evolution does not move higher and higher, into an ever more heavenly heaven, but deeper and deeper; and each cycle or evolutionary round comes to completion a little further down, a little nearer the Center where the Supreme High and Low, heaven and earth, will finally join. Thus for the two poles

Page 469



to actually meet, the pioneer must cleanse the mental, vital, and material middle ground. When the junction is made, not merely mentally and vitally but materially, Spirit will emerge in Matter, in a total supramental being and supramental body, and ...

All earth shall be the Spirit's manifest home.[[Savitri, Cent. Ed., XXIX.707. ]]
This cleansing of the middle ground is the whole story of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother ... "I had been dredging, dredging, dredging the mire of the subconscious.... The supramental light was coming down before November,[[1934. ]] but afterwards all the mud arose and it stopped."[[Dilip K. Roy, Sri Aurobindo Came to Me, p. 73. ]] Once again Sri Aurobindo verified, not individually this time but collectively, that if one pulls down too strong a light, the violated darkness below is made to moan. It is noteworthy that each time Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had some new experience marking a progress in the transformation, this progress automatically materialized in the consciousness of the disciples, without their even knowing anything about it, as a period of increased difficulties, sometimes even revolts or illnesses, as though everything were grating and grinding. But then, one begins to understand the mechanism. If a pygmy were abruptly subjected to the simple mental light of a cultivated man, we would probably see the poor fellow traumatized and driven mad by the subterranean revolutions within him. There is still too much jungle beneath the surface. The world is still full of jungle, that's the crux of the matter in a word; our mental colonization is a minuscule crust plastered over a barely dry quaternary.... And the battle seems endless; one "digs and digs," said the Rishis, and the deeper one digs, the more the bottom seems to recede: "I have been digging, digging.... Many autumns have I been toiling night and day, the dawns aging me. Age is diminishing the glory of our bodies." Thus, thousands of years ago, lamented Lopamudra, wife of Rishi Agastya, who was also seeking transformation.... But Agastya doesn't lose heart, and his reply is magnificently characteristic of the conquerors the Rishis were: "Not in vain

Page 470



is the labor which the gods protect. Let us relish all the contesting forces, let us conquer indeed even here, let us run this battle race of a hundred leadings." (Rig-Veda 1.179)



28th December 1962, vol-3, page 470 , L'Agenda de M�re



Mother's Agenda - volume - 4 , 1963
I have finished my translation [of the Synthesis]. When you have finished your book and we have prepared the next Bulletin and we have a nice quiet moment, we'll go over it again. And then I've begun Savitri - ah! ... As you know, I prepare some illustrations with H., and for her illustrations she has chosen some passages from Savitri (the choice isn't hers, it's A.'s and P.'s and made intelligently), so she gives me these passages one by one, neatly typed (which is easier for my eyes). It's from the Book I, Canto IV.

Page 37

And then, as I expected, the experience is rather interesting.... I had noticed, while reading Savitri, that there was a sort of absolute understanding, that is to say, it can't mean this or that or this - it means THAT. It comes with an imperative. And that's what led me to think, "When I translate it, it will come in the same way." And it did. I take the text line by line and make a resolve (not personal) to translate it line by line, without the slightest regard for the literary point of view, but rendering what he meant in the clearest possible way.

The way it comes is both exclusive and positive - it's really interesting. There's none of the mind's ceaseless wavering, "Is this better? Is that better? Should it be like this? Should it be like that?" No - it is LIKE THIS (Mother brings down her hand in a gesture of imperative descent). And then in certain cases (without anything to do with the literary angle or even the sound of the word - neither sound nor anything, but meaning), Sri Aurobindo himself suggests a word. It's as if he were telling me, "Isn't this better French, tell me?" (!)

I am simply the recording machine.

It goes with fantastic speed, meaning that in ten minutes I translate ten lines. On the whole, only three or four times are there a couple of alternative possibilities, which I jot down immediately. Once, here (Mother shows a passage with erasures in her manuscript), the correction came, absolute. "No," he said, "not that - THIS." So I erased what I had written.

Here, read the English first.

Above the world the world-creators stand,

In the phenomenon see its mystic source.

These heed not the deceiving outward play,

They turn not to the moment's busy tramp,

But listen with the still patience of the Unborn

For the slow footsteps of far Destiny

Approaching through huge distances of Time,

Unmarked by the eye that sees effect and cause,

Unheard mid the clamour of the human plane.

Attentive to an unseen Truth they seize

A sound as of invisible augur wings....

(I.IV.54)

I didn't reread my translation, I am doing it now for the first time.

Page 38

(Mother reads aloud her translation up to:
"They turn not to the moment's busy tramp")

Here, there was some hesitation between de ['instant [the instant's] and du moment [the moment's]. Then he showed me (I can't explain how it takes place), he showed me both words, moment and instant, and he showed me how, compared to moment, instant is mechanical; he said, "It's the mechanism of time; moment is full and contains the event." Things of that sort, inexpressible (I put it into words but it loses all its value). Inexpressible, but fantastic! There was some hesitation between instant and moment, I don't know why. Then he showed me instant: instant was dry, mechanical, empty, whereas moment contained all that takes place at every instant. So I wrote moment.

(Mother reads the end of her translation)

It isn't thought out, it just comes. It's probably not poetry, not even free verse, but it does contain something.

So I made a resolve (because it's neither to be published nor to be shown, but it's a marvelous delight): I will simply keep it the way I keep the Agenda. I have a feeling that, later, perhaps (how can I put it?) ... when people can be less mental in their activity, it will put them in touch with that light [of Savitri] - you know, immediately I enter something purely white and silent, light and alive: a sort of beatitude.

This other passage is what I translated the first time:

In Matter shall be lit the spirit's glow,

In body and body kindled the sacred birth;

Night shall awake to the anthem of the stars,

The days become a happy pilgrim march,

Our will a force of the Eternal's power,

And thought the rays of a spiritual sun.

A few shall see what none yet understands;

God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep;

For man shall not know the coming till its hour

And belief shall be not till the work is done.

(I.IV.55)

Here there were a few more erasures. It will probably go on improving. But what a wonder, this passage, what beauty!

Page 39

(Mother reads aloud her translation up to:
"God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep")

Splendid!

(Mother reads her translation of the last two lines.)

Oh, I love this: "God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep."

So, I'll continue.

I may even keep the manuscript in pencil: the temptation to correct is very bad. Very bad because it's the surface understanding that wants to correct - literary taste, poetical sense and all those things that are down there (gesture down below). You know, it's as if (I don't mean the words themselves), as if the CONTENT of the words were projected on a perfectly blank and still screen (Mother points to her forehead), as if the words were projected on it.

The trouble is writing, the materialization between the vision and the writing; the Force has to drive the hand and the pencil, and there is a slight ... there's still a very slight resistance. Otherwise, if I could write automatically, oh, how nice it would be!

There may be (I can't say, it's all imagination because I don't know), there may come a few ... somewhat weird things. But there is an insistence on the need to keep to each line as though it stood all alone in the universe. No mixing up the line order, no, no, no! For when he wrote it, he SAW it that way - I knew nothing about that, I didn't even know how he wrote it (he dictated it, I believe, for the most part), but that's what he tells me now. Everything comes to a stop, everything, and then, oh, how we enjoy ourselves! I enjoy myself! It's more enjoyable than anything. I even told him yesterday, "But why write? What's the use?" Then he filled me with a sort of delight. Naturally, someone in the ordinary consciousness may say, "It's very selfish," but ... And then it's like a vision of the future (not too near, not extremely near - not extremely far either) a future when this sort of white thing - white and still - would spread out, and then, with the help of this work, a larger number of minds may come to understand. But that's secondary; I do the translation simply for the joy of it, that's all. A satisfaction that may be called selfish, but when he is told, "It's selfish," he replies that there is no one more selfish than the Lord, because all He does is for Himself!

There.

Page 40

So I will go on. If there are corrections, they can only come through the same process, because at this point to correct anyhow would spoil it all. There is also the mixing (for the logical mind) of future and present tenses - but that too is deliberate. It all seems to come in another way. And well, I can't say, I haven't read any French for ages, I have no knowledge of modern literature - to me everything is in the rhythm of the sound. I don't know what rhythm they use now, nor have I read what Sri Aurobindo wrote in The Future Poetry. They tell me that Savitri's verse follows a certain rule he explained on the number of stresses in each line (and for this you should pronounce in the pure English way, which somewhat puts me off), and perhaps some rule of this kind will emerge in French? We can't say. I don't know. Unless languages grow more fluid as the body and mind grow more plastic? Possible. Language too, maybe: instead of creating a new language, there may be transitional languages, as, for instance (not a particularly fortunate departure, but still ...), the way American is emerging from English. Maybe a new language will emerge in a similar way?

In my case it was from the age of twenty to thirty that I was concerned with French (before twenty I was more involved in vision: painting; and sound: music), but as regards language, literature, language sounds (written or spoken), it was approximately from twenty to thirty. The Prayers and Meditations were written spontaneously with that rhythm. If I stayed in an ordinary consciousness I would get the knack of that rhythm - but now it doesn't work that way, it won't do!

Yesterday, after my translation, I was surprised at that sense ... a sense of absolute: "THAT'S HOW IT IS." Then I tried to enter into the literary mind and wondered, "What would be its various suggestions?" And suddenly, I saw somehow (somehow, somewhere there) a host of suggestions for every line! ... Ohh! "No doubt," I thought, "it IS an absolute!" The words came like that, without any room for discussion or anything. To give you an example: when he says "the clamour of the human plane," clameur exists in French, it's a very nice word - he didn't want it, he said "No," without any discussion. It wasn't an answer to a discussion, he just said, "Not clameur: vacarme."[[Mother's translation is: Le vacarme du plan humain. ]] It isn't as though he was weighing one word against another, it wasn't a matter of words but the THOUGHT of the word, the SENSE of the word: "No, not clameur, it's vacarme."

Page 41

Interesting, isn't it?

But I would like us to revise the translation in the same way, because I am sure he will be here - he is always here when I translate. Then I will go back into that state, while you will do the work! (Laughing) You will write. And then, unless your vocabulary is very extensive (mine used to be extensive, but now it has become quite limited), we'll need a decent dictionary.... But I am afraid none will have anything to offer.



30th January , 1963, vol-4, page 36-42 , L'Agenda de M�re



(Regarding a passage in "Savitri" in which Sri Aurobindo describes the universe as a play between He and She. "This whole wide world is only he and she," He, the Supreme in love with her, her servitor; She, the creative Force.)

As one too great for him he worships her;

He adores her as his regent of desire,

He yields to her as the mover of his will,

He burns the incense of his nights and days

Offering his life, a splendour of sacrifice....

In a thousand ways he serves her royal needs;

He makes the hours pivot around her will,

Makes all reflect her whims; all is their play:

This whole wide world is only he and she.

(I.IV. 62)

What a marvelous work!

He goes into a completely different region, so much above thought! It's constant vision, it isn't something thought out - with thought everything becomes flat, hollow, empty, empty, just like a leaf; while this is full, the full content is there, alive.

It's an explanation of why the world is as it is. At the start he says, He worships her (here again, there are no words in French: Il lui rend un culte, but that makes a whole sentence). He worships her as something far greater than Himself. And then you are almost a spectator of the Supreme projecting Himself to take on this creative aspect (necessarily, otherwise it couldn't be done!), the Witness watching His own work of creation and falling in love with this power of manifestation - you see it all. And ... oh, He wants to give Her her fullest chance and see, watch all that is going to happen, all that can happen with this divine Power thrust free into the world. And Sri Aurobindo expresses it as though he had absolutely fallen in love with Her: whatever She wants, whatever She does, whatever She thinks, whatever She wills, all of it - it's all wonderful! All is wonderful. It's so lovely!

And, I must say, I was observing this because, originally, the first time I heard of it, this conception shocked me, in the sense that ... (I don't know, it wasn't an idea, it was a feeling), as though

Page 45

it meant lending reality to something which in my consciousness, for a very long time (at least ... millennia perhaps, I don't know), had been the Falsehood to be conquered. The Falsehood that must cease to exist. It's the aspect of Truth that must manifest itself, it's not all that: doing anything whatsoever just for the fun of it, simply because you have the full power.... You have the power to do everything, so you do everything, and knowing that there is a Truth behind, you don't give a damn about consequences. That was something ... something which, as far back as I can remember, I have fought against. I have known it, but it seems to me it was such a long, long time ago and I rejected it so strongly, saying, "No, no!" and implored the Lord so intensely that things may be otherwise, beseeched Him that his all-powerful Truth, his all-powerful Purity and his all-powerful Beauty may manifest and put an end to all that mess. And at first I was shocked when Sri Aurobindo told me that; previously, in this life, it hadn't even crossed my mind. In that sense Theon's explanation had been much more (what should I say?) useful to me from the standpoint of action: the origin of disorder being the separation of the primal Powers - but that's not it! HE is there, blissfully worshipping all this confusion!

And naturally this time around, when I started translating it came back. At first there was a shudder (Mother makes a gesture of stiffening). Then I told myself, "Haven't you got beyond that!" And I let myself flow into the thing. Then I had a series of nights with Sri Aurobindo ... so marvelous! You understand, I see him constantly and I go into that subtle physical world where he has his abode; the contact is almost permanent (at any rate, that's how I spend all my nights: he shows me the work, everything), but still, after this translation of Savitri he seemed to be smiling at me and telling me, "At last you have understood!" (Mother laughs) I said, "It isn't that I didn't understand, it's that I didn't want it!" I didn't want, I don't WANT things to be like that any more, for thousands of years I have wanted things to be otherwise!



15th February , 1963, vol-4, page 45-46 , L'Agenda de M�re



Then Mother speaks of her translation of "Savitri"

I do it exclusively for the joy of being in a world ... a world of overmental expression (I don't say supramental, I say overmental), a luminous, marvelous expression through which you can catch the Truth.

And it teaches me English without books! Now, whenever I have to write a letter, all the words come by themselves: the CONTENT of the word (just as I told you for moment and instant), now it works the same way with all words! Yesterday I wrote something in English for a doctor here (Mother looks for a paper): The world progresses so rapidly that we must be ready at any moment to over pass what we knew in order to know better. And you know, I never

Page 53

think: it just comes, either the sound or the written word (it depends on the case: now I'll see the written words, now I'll hear the sound). For instance, the word advance came first, and with it came quick, quickly, repeatedly ["the world advances so quickly"]. Then came progress, and quickly was out of the picture; and suddenly rapidly came forward. So I understood how it worked, how it works for all words! I understood: progress (the idea or inner meaning of progress) calls for rapidly; and advance calls for quickly. Putting it like this sounds like splitting hairs, but when I saw it, it was positively irrefutable! The word was alive, its content was alive, and along with it was its friend, the word that went with it; and the word that wasn't its friend was not to be seen, it wasn't in the mood! Oh, it was so funny! For that alone it is worth the trouble.



19th February , 1963, vol-4, page 53-55 , L'Agenda de M�re


There are two very different things.

First, one may ask: What is a miracle? Because Sri Aurobindo often says that "there is no such thing as a miracle," but at the same time, in "Savitri," for example, he says, "All's miracle here and can by miracle change."[[Savitri, I.V.85. ]]

It depends which way you look at it: from this side or from the other side.

People only call miracles things they can't explain clearly, in mental terms. From that point of view, innumerable things that happen can be said to be "miracles," because you can't explain the why or the how.

What would a real miracle be, then?

I don't see what a real miracle can be, because what's a miracle, ultimately?

A real miracle ... It's only the mind that has the notion of miracle, because following its own logic, the mind decides that given this and that condition, this or that circumstance can or cannot be. But these are merely the mind's limitations. Because from the Lord's point of view, how could there be a miracle? All is but Himself objectifying Himself.

Here we come to the great problem of the road we travel, the eternal Road Sri Aurobindo refers to in Savitri. It is easy to imagine, of course, that what was first objectified had an inclination to objectification. The first point to accept, a logical point considering the principle of evolution, is that the objectification is progressive, it is not complete for all eternity.... (silence) It's very hard to express, because we cannot free ourselves from our habit of seeing it as a finite quantity unfolding indefinitely and of thinking that only with a finite quantity can there be a beginning. We always have an idea (at least in our way of speaking) of a "moment" (laughing) when the Lord decides to objectify Himself. And put that way, the explanation is easy: He objectifies Himself gradually, progressively, with, as a result, a progressive evolution. But that's just a manner of speaking. Because there is no beginning, no end, yet there is a progression. The sense of sequence, the sense of evolution and progress comes only with the Manifestation. And only when we speak of the earth can we explain things truthfully and rationally, because the earth had a beginning - not in its soul, but in its material reality.

A material universe probably has a beginning, too.



6 Mars 1963, vol-4, page 66-67 , L'Agenda de M�re



(Mother opens "Savitri." She intended to translate "The Debate of Love and Death." The book opens "by chance" on the last lines of Death's defeat, which Mother reads aloud:)

Page 79



And [Death] left crumbling the shape that he had worn,

Abandoning hope to make man's soul his prey

And force to be mortal the immortal spirit.

(X.IV.667)

No matter where you open, no matter where you read, it's wonderful! Immediately it's wonderful - strange, these three lines, aren't they....

Abandoning hope to make man's soul his prey And force to be mortal the immortal spirit.

Wonderful.

These people could very easily lure me: for a long time they have been asking me to read them the whole of Savitri - quite a work! But this [translation] work is irresistible.

So, in fact (the trouble is, my notebook won't be thick enough!), in fact I would like to translate all of the "Debate" [of Love and Death], it's so wonderful.

(Mother leafs through the book)

When she says ... I don't remember the words, she says:

My God is love [["My God is love and sweetly suffers all." (IX.II.591) ]]

Oh, that's....

(Mother goes back to the beginning of Book X, Canto IV)

Here:

The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real

Look at this:

Or in bodies motionless like statues, fixed

In tranced cessations of their sleepless thought

Sat sleeping souls, and this too was a dream.

(X.IV.642)

Page 80



They are the ones who want to attain Nirvana.... "And this too was a dream"!

(Mother looks further)

It begins here:

Once more arose the great destroying Voice:

Across the fruitless labour of the worlds

His huge denial's all-defeating might

Pursued the ignorant march of dolorous Time.

(X.IV.643)

Here is where I should begin.

Book X is long: "The Book of the Double Twilight."... Of course, if I start reading ...

You'll end up at the beginning!
I would do the whole book!

(Mother leafs back)

"The Gospel of Death and Vanity of the Ideal"

This is invaluable to answer all, all, all the arguments people use.

(Mother leafs further)

Ah, here we are! "The Debate of Love and Death."

That's where it begins.
It's Canto III.

There's a passage underlined here.
If it's underlined, it's not by me! ... No, that's the place where I stopped when I was reading: I used to mark in red the place where I stopped.

He says ... (Death to Savitri, in a supremely ironic tone):

... Art thou indeed so strong, O heart, O Soul, so free?...

(X. III . 63 6)

Page 81



It's wonderful!

So we would have to start at the beginning of the "Book of the Double Twilight," Book X. Let's see how it goes....

(Mother reads)

All still was darkness dread and desolate;

There was no change nor any hope of change.

In this black dream which was a house of Void,

A walk to Nowhere in a land of Nought,

Ever they drifted without aim or goal....

(X599)

My God, how wonderful! It's wonderful.

(Mother turns the pages)

And Book XII ["The Return to the Earth"].... I don't know.

(Mother reads the concluding lines of "Savitri":)

Night, splendid with the moon dreaming in heaven

In silver peace, possessed her luminous reign.

She brooded through her stillness on a thought

Deep-guarded by her mystic folds of light,

And in her bosom nursed a greater dawn.

(XII.724)

It heralds the Supermind.

But I had a feeling he hadn't completed his revision. When I read this, I felt it wasn't the end, just as when I read the last chapter of the "Yoga of Self-Perfection,"[[The last chapter of the Synthesis of Yoga: "Towards the Supramental Time Vision." ]] I felt it was unfinished. He left it unfinished. And he said so. He said, "No, I will not go down to this mental level any more."

But in Savitri's case ... (I didn't look after it, you know), he had around him Purani, that Chinmayi, and ... (what's his name?) Nirod - they all swarmed around him. So I didn't look after Savitri. I read Savitri two years ago, I had never read it before. And I am

Page 82

so glad! Because I read it at the time I could understand it - and I realized that none of those people had understood ONE BIT of it. Both things at the same time.

(silence)

Let's see, open a page at random, I want to see if you find something interesting - concentrate a moment and open the book, I'll read it to you.

Just put your finger.... Do you want a blade? (Mother gives Satprem a letter opener)

(Satprem concentrates and opens the book)
Oh!

In the passion of its solitary dream

It lay [the heart of the King] like a closed soundless oratory

Where sleeps a consecrated argent floor

Lit by a single and untrembling ray

And an invisible Presence kneels in prayer

Pretty lovely!

Oh, it's good.... Let me go back a little:

In the luminous stillness of its mute appeal

It looked up to the heights it could not see;

It yearned from the longing depths it could not leave.

In the centre of its vast and fateful trance

Half way between his free and fallen selves,

Interceding twixt God's day and the mortal night,

Accepting worship as its single law,

Accepting bliss as the sole cause of things,

Refusing the austere joy which none can share,

Refusing the calm that lives for calm alone,

To her it turned for whom it willed to be.

In the passion of its solitary dream

It lay like a closed soundless oratory

Where sleeps a consecrated argent floor

Lit by a single and untrembling ray

And an invisible Presence kneels in prayer.

On some deep breast of liberating peace



Page 83

All else was satisfied with quietude;

This only knew there was a truth beyond.

All other parts were dumb in centred sleep

Consenting to the slow deliberate Power

Which tolerates the world's error and its grief,

Consenting to the cosmic long delay,

Timelessly waiting through the patient years

Her coming they had asked for earth and men;

This was the fiery point that called her now.

Extinction could not quench that lonely fire;

Its seeing filled the blank of mind and will;

Thought dead, its changeless force abode and grew....



I can't see clearly any more.... But I know what this is about: it's when the King [[In Savitri, the King represents the human aspiration to discover the Earth's secret beyond all already explored spiritual knowledge. ]] makes his last surrender to the universal Mother - he annuls himself before the universal Mother, and She gives him the mission he must fulfill.



Its seeing filled the blank of mind and will;

Thought dead, its changeless force abode and grew.

Armed with the intuition of a bliss

To which some moved tranquillity was the key,

It persevered through life's huge emptiness

Amid the blank denials of the world.

It sent its voiceless prayer to the Unknown;

It listened for the footsteps of its hopes

Returning through the void immensities,

It waited for the fiat of the Word

That comes through the still self from the Supreme.

(III.III.332)

Well, this is certainly a beautiful choice!

That's it, there's no doubt.

When he wakes up from that state, he has a vision of the universal Mother, and receives his mission.

This is very good, a very good indication.

It's captivating, Savitri!

I believe it's his Message - all the rest is preparation, while

Savitri is the Message.



Unfortunately, there were two morons here

Page 84



who fancied correcting him - while he was alive! (A. especially, he's a poet.) Hence all those Letters on Poetry Sri Aurobindo wrote. I've always refused to read them - I find it outrageous. He was forced to explain a whole "poetic technique" - the very idea! It's just the contrary: it comes down from above, and AFTERWARDS you explain. Like a punch in sawdust: inspiration comes down, and afterwards you explain why it's all arranged as it is - but that just doesn't interest me!

(silence)

So you came (you see, it's the answer) to manifest (it's very good, I like this answer very much), to manifest the bliss above. You understand? He goes beyond all past attempts to unite with the Supreme, because none of them satisfies him - he aspires for something more. So when everything is annulled, he enters a Nothingness, then comes out of it with the capacity to unite with the new Bliss.

That's it, it's good!


13 Mars 1963, vol- 4, page 79-85 , L'Agenda de M�re



(Mother first reads from her translation of "Savitri" a few excerpts about death. We give here the original English.)

A grey defeat pregnant with victory.

A whip to lash us towards our deathless state.

The inconscient world is the spirit's self-made room ...

Self-made.

Eternal Night shadow of eternal Day.

Night is not our beginning nor our end;

She is the dark Mother in whose womb we have hid

Safe from too swift a waking to world-pain....

Oh, this is....

By Light we live and to the Light we go.

Here in this seat of Darkness mute and lone,

In the heart of everlasting Nothingness

Light conquered now even by that feeble beam....

(X600)

It's marvelous.

Yes, it must be a joy to work on "Savitri."
Oh, mon petit! ... It makes you live in a marvelous atmosphere.

So, that's all. What did you bring?

Nothing, except a few Agenda conversations, as always.
Oh, but I am weary of my....

(silence)

It's a snail's pace, so there's nothing interesting. Really a snail's pace.

It's one year since ... When was that message? [the turning point of Mother's yoga, the great "pulsations"] In April '62?



23 Mars 1963, vol- 4, page 92-93 , L'Agenda de M�re





You see, Mahalakshmi is the Divine Mother's aspect of love, the perfection of manifested love, which must come before this supreme Love (which is beyond the Manifestation and the Nonmanifestation) can be expressed - the supreme Love referred to in Savitri when the Supreme sends Savitri to the earth:

For ever love, O beautiful slave of God!

(XI702)

It's to prepare the earth to receive the Supreme's manifestation, the manifestation of His Victory.

Seen in that way, it becomes clear - comprehensible, and comprehensive, too: it has a content.



(Mother suddenly points to a piece of paper on the table beside her, on which the figure 8 is written)

Did you notice this figure?... There's a line in Savitri (I can't quote exactly): "Wherever Nature is, He (the Supreme) too is there, for, in truth, He and She are one."[[As long as Nature lasts, he too is there; For this is sure that he and she are one. (I.IV. 72) ]] I was asked to find an

Page 135

illustration for this line, [[Mother helps a disciple, a painter, to illustrate some passages from Savitri. ]] and I found the 8.

The drawing starts here (Mother draws the first half of the 8): it's the Supreme leaning forward. Then, Nature in its base, Nature in sleep (the base of the 8). And here (the top of the 8), I put two little drawings (as if to symbolize an eye, a nose and a mouth) to evoke the summit of consciousness. So the Supreme is leaning forward like this and Nature rises like this (Mother draws the second half of the 8). All this (the top of the 8) is golden, then it becomes prismatic (the middle of the 8), and deep blue here (the base of the 8), in the most material part of the creation, and the blue becomes lighter and lighter (going upward again), and finally golden. Perpetually.





11 Mai 1963, vol- 4, page 135-36 , L'Agenda de M�re



Seeing that, there is obviously a similar experience in connection with what is called life and death. It's a sort of "overhanging" (it comes to me in English, that's why I have difficulty) of that constant presence of Death or possibility of death. As he says in Savitri, we have a constant companion all the way from the cradle to the grave, we are constantly shadowed by the threat or presence of Death. Well, this gives the cells an intensity in their call for a Power of Eternity which would not be there without that constant threat. Then we understand - we begin to understand very concretely - that all those things are only goads to make the Manifestation progress and grow more intense, more perfect. If the goads are crude, it is because the Manifestation is very crude. As it grows more and more perfect and apt to manifest something ETERNALLY PROGRESSIVE, those very crude methods will give way to more refined ones, and the world will progress without the need for such brutal oppositions. It is only because the world is in infancy and the human consciousness in its very early infancy.

It's a very concrete experience.

So, when the earth no longer needs to die in order to progress, there will be no more death. When the earth no longer needs to suffer in order to progress, there will be no more suffering. And when the earth no longer needs to hate in order to love, there will be no more hatred.

(silence)

It is the quickest and most effective method of pulling the creation out of its inertia and leading it on to its blossoming.



15th Mai 1963, vol- 4, page 141 , L'Agenda de M�re



(Mother asks for a box of paints to demonstrate practically the gradation of colors of the levels of consciousness, from the most material Nature to the Supreme. The point is to illustrate the symbol of Infinity, the figure 8, which Mother explained in the conversation of May 11: the infinite play of the Supreme reaching down to Nature and Nature rising toward the Supreme. Mother speaks in English in the presence of a disciple, who is a painter, so that he may convey her explanations to H., the disciple who is preparing illustrations for "Savitri.")

Of course, all these things are lights, so you can't reproduce them. But still, it must be a violet that is not dull and not dark (Mother starts from the most material Nature). What she has put is too red, but if it's too blue, it won't be good either - you understand the difficulty? Then after violet there is blue, which must be truly blue, not too light, but it must be a bright blue. Not too light

Page 143

because there are three consecutive blues: there is the blue of the Mind, and then comes the Higher Mind, which is paler, and then the Illumined Mind, which is the color of the flag [Mother's flag], a silver blue, but naturally paler than that. And after this comes yellow, a yellow that is the yellow of the Intuitive Mind; it must not be golden, it must be the color of cadmium. Then after this yellow, which is pale, we have the Overmind with all the colors - they must all be bright colors, not dark: blue, red, green, violet, purple, yellow, all of them, all the colors. And after that, we then have all the golds of the Supermind, with its three layers. And then, after that, there is one layer of golden white - it is white, but a golden white. After this golden white, there is silver white - silver white: how can I explain that? (H. has sent me some ridiculous pictures of a sun shining on water - it has nothing to do with that.) If you put silver, silver gray (Mother shows a silver box nearby shining brilliantly in the sun), silver gray together with white ... that is, it is white, but if you put the four whites together you see the difference. There is a white white, then there is a white with a touch of pink, then a silvery white and a golden white. It makes four worlds.

I have explained this [to H.] as I am explaining it to you, but H. has not seen it so she can't understand. I want to show her on paper. It is twelve different things [or twelve worlds], one after another. [[Mother seems to have forgotten the red of the vital, which comes between material Nature's violet and the Mind's blue. Thus we have twelve worlds: violet, red, blue (the Mind's three blues), yellow, then the Overmind's prismatic colors, which makes five lower worlds, then finally the three golds of the Supermind and the four whites of the supreme creative Joy or Ananda. ]]



18th Mai 1963, vol- 4, page 141 , L'Agenda de M�re





There's something here....

A slow reversal's movement then took place:

A gas belched out from some invisible Fire,

Of its dense rings were formed these million stars;

Upon earth's new-born soil God's tread was heard.

(II.101)

It's magnificent ... magnificent.



10 Juillet 1963, vol- 4, L'Agenda de M�re



At first I put, L'Amour n'a rien � voir avec ... [Love has nothing to do with ... ], and so on, but that's not true. So we'll put, L'Amour n'est pas ... [Love is not ...].

L'Amour n'est pas les relations sexuelles. L'Amour n'est pas les attractions et les echanges vitaux. L'Amour n'est pas le besoin d'affection du c�ur ...

It's from Savitri, in "The Debate of Love and Death," when Death tells Savitri, "What you call love is the hunger of your heart."

Could we translate: "L'Amour n'est pas le c�ur et son besoin d'affection" [Love is not the heart and its hunger for affection]?
But the heart can manifest Love! No: L'Amour n'est pas le besoin d'affection du c�ur [Love is not the heart's hunger for affection]. And then, the positive side:

L'Amour est une vibration toute-puissante eman�e directement de l'Un. Et seul, le tr�s pur et le tr�s fort est capable de la recevoir et de la manifester.



25th September 1963, vol- 4, page 320 , L'Agenda de M�re





Do you remember Savitri's debate with Death ["The Debate of Love and Death"]? ... According to it, Sri Aurobindo seems to be saying that Disorder arose when Life entered Matter.

(Mother leafs through her thick translation notebook[[We are giving here directly the original English of those passages and not Mother's translation into French. ]])

Although God made the world for his delight,

An ignorant Power took charge and seemed his Will

In other words, that Power assumed the appearance of God's Will.

And Death's deep falsity has mastered Life.

All grew a play of Chance simulating Fate.

(X.III.629)

And before, Sri Aurobindo writes:

O Death, this is the mystery of thy reign.

He seems to imply it's only on earth:

In earth's anomalous and tragic field

Carried in its aimless journey by the sun

Mid the forced marches of the great dumb stars,

A darkness occupied the fields of God,

(Mother repeats)

A darkness occupied the fields of God,

And Matter's world was governed by thy shape.

The shape of Death.

Thy mask has covered the Eternal's face,

It's marvelous!

The Bliss that made the world has fallen asleep.

Abandoned in the Vast she slumbered on: An evil transmutation overtook Her members till she knew herself no more.

(X.III.627)

And so on, a whole passage. And he seems to imply that it's when Life entered inert Matter that an ignorant Power ... what I read at the beginning:

An ignorant Power took charge and seemed his Will

And Death's deep falsity has mastered Life.

Consequently, according to this, Death would exist only on the earth.

(silence)

That's where I am in my translation. (Mother closes her notebook)

What are your conclusions?

I'll have to go to the end to understand what he wants to demonstrate.

You see, I was always under the impression that the earth was a symbolic representation of the universe in order to concentrate the Work on one point so that it could be done more consciously and deliberately. And I was always under the impression that Sri Aurobindo too thought that way. But here ... I had read Savitri without noticing this. But now that I read it and I am so immersed in that problem ... In other words, it's as if it were THE question given me to resolve.

I noticed it while reading.

(long silence)

It would seem to legitimize or justify those who want to escape entirely from the earth's atmosphere. The idea would be that the earth is a special experiment of the Supreme in His universe; and those who are not too keen on that experiment (!) prefer to get out of it (to say things somewhat offhandedly).

The difference is this: In one case, the purpose of the earth is a concentration of the Work (which means it can be done more rapidly, consciously and perfectly here), and so there is a serious reason to stay on and do it. In the other case, it's just one experiment amidst thousands or millions of others; and if that experiment doesn't particularly appeal to you, to want to get out of it is legitimate.

I don't see how it would be possible for one point of the Supreme not to be the whole Supreme. If there is a difficulty here, it's a difficulty for the WHOLE, isn't it?

Not necessarily.

Why should there be something apart from the rest?

It all depends, in fact, (laughing) on what He is driving at!

We can very well conceive that He may be carrying on some very different experiments. And so you could go from one experiment to another, you see.

It would be as Buddha said: it's attachment or desire that keeps you here, otherwise there's no reason for you to stay here.

(Satprem protests wordlessly)

Everything is possible to me, you know, absolutely everything, even the seemingly most contradictory things - really, I am totally unable to raise a mental or logical or reasonable objection either to this or to that. But the question ... (Mother leaves her sentence unfinished). That is to say, the Lord's Will is very clear to Him, and (laughing) the whole thing is to unite with that Will and know it.

It had always seemed to me that way [the earth as a symbolic point of concentration], but I am so convinced that Sri Aurobindo saw things more truly and totally than anyone did that, naturally, when he says something, you tend to consider the problem!

I don't know, I haven't reached the end of Savitri yet. Because I notice (rereading it after the space of a few months, barely two years) that it's altogether something else than the first time I read it. Altogether something else: there is in it infinitely more than what I had experienced; my experience was limited, and now it's far more complete (maybe if I reread it in a year or two, it would be still more complete, I don't know), but there are plenty of things that I hadn't seen the first time.

Perhaps that passage I've just read is only one aspect? ... I will see when I reach the end.



What he announces, and what I am sure of, is that the Victory will be won on the earth and that the earth will become a progressive being (eternally progressive) in the Lord - that's understood. But it doesn't preclude the other possibility. The future of the earth he has announced clearly, and it's understood that such is the future of the earth; only, if that possibility [of death as an exclusively earthly phenomenon] is what we could term "historically" correct, it would sort of legitimize the attitude of those who get away from it. How is it that Buddha, who undeniably was an Avatar, laid so much stress on Deliverance as the conclusion of

Page 329

things? He who stayed behind only to help others ... to get away faster. Then that means he saw only one side of the problem? ...

Oh, yes!
But if there is a whole universe, thousands of universes with altogether different modes, and if to be here is merely a matter of CHOICE ... then the choice is free, of course - there are those who like conquest and victory, and those others who like doing nothing.

But Buddha represented only one stage of consciousness. AT THAT TIME it was good to follow that path, therefore ...
We can conceive it was a particular necessity within the whole, of course. But these are all conceptions, it's still something mental - I recently had in my hands a quotation from Sri Aurobindo in which he said that there is "no problem the human mind cannot solve if it wants to." (Laughing) There is no problem that the mind cannot solve if it applies itself to it! But I don't care, I have no need of mental logic - no need. And it would have no effect on my action - that's not what I want, not at all! It's only because there is that increasingly acute contradiction between the Truth and what is. It's becoming painfully acute. You know, that suffering, that general misery is becoming almost unbearable.

There was a time when I looked at all that with a smile - a long time. For years and years it was a smile, the way you smile at a childish question. Now, I don't know why it has come ... it has been THRUST on me like a sort of acute anguish - which certainly is necessary to get out of the problem.

To get out, I mean, to cure, to change - not to flee. I don't like flight.

That was my major objection to the Buddhists: all that you are advised to do is merely to give you an opportunity to flee - that's not pretty.

But change, yes.

(silence)

There are some lines [in Savitri] that all of a sudden are so magnificent! They come with such power, but once written down, that's not it any more.

For example, you SEE that image of the mask of Death covering the Supreme's face.

Page 330

It's marvelous. So intense. And then that ignorant Power that took charge of the earth and made it ... that "seemed," SEEMED the Supreme's Will. It's so pregnant with meaning.

Page 331



28 Septembre 1963, vol-4, page 326-330 , L'Agenda de M�re





(Mother first reads two lines from "The Debate of Love and Death" in "Savitri." She would like to put them as epigraph to the conversation of September 7, the dialogue with a materialist.)

Listen to this:

O Death, thou speakest Truth but Truth that slays,

I answer to thee with the Truth that saves.

(X.III.621)

It's beautiful!

So the materialist ... "O Death, thou speakest Truth...." What can he reply? It's the Truth!



16 Octobre 1963, vol-4, L'Agenda de M�re



Yes. Its effect is like an electrical discharge that shakes up the tamas, shakes up inertia.

It's like in Savitri, when he speaks of the "consciousness that fell asleep in the dust" ... the divine Consciousness that fell asleep in the dust of its creation (I am embroidering). The divine Consciousness, the eternal Mother, that is, fell asleep in the dust of her creation; somebody wakes her up, and She realizes (this isn't from Sri Aurobindo!), She realizes (laughing) that it's the supreme Lord who shook her! So She does everything, all sorts of extraordinary things, anything to stop Him from going away! (Mother takes up "Savitri")

She reposes motionless in its dust of sleep.

(II.VI.180)

Then:

For him she leaped forth from the unseen Vasts

To move here in a stark unconscious world.

And then:

In beauty

Yes. Its effect is like an electrical discharge that shakes up the tamas, shakes up inertia.

It's like in Savitri, when he speaks of the "consciousness that fell asleep in the dust" ... the divine Consciousness that fell asleep in the dust of its creation (I am embroidering). The divine Consciousness, the eternal Mother, that is, fell asleep in the dust of her creation; somebody wakes her up, and She realizes (this isn't from Sri Aurobindo!), She realizes (laughing) that it's the supreme Lord who shook her! So She does everything, all sorts of extraordinary things, anything to stop Him from going away! (Mother takes up "Savitri")

She reposes motionless in its dust of sleep.

(II.VI.180)

Then:

For him she leaped forth from the unseen Vasts

To move here in a stark unconscious world.

And then:

In beauty she treasures the sunlight of his smile. Ashamed of her rich cosmic poverty....

Splendid!

And woos his large-eyed wandering thoughts to dwell

In figures of her million-impulsed Force.

Only to attract her veiled companion

And keep him close to her breast in her world-cloak

Lest from her arms he turn to his formless peace,

Is her heart's business and her clinging care.

(II.VI.131)

she treasures the sunlight of his smile. Ashamed of her rich cosmic poverty....

Splendid!

And woos his large-eyed wandering thoughts to dwell

In figures of her million-impulsed Force.

Only to attract her veiled companion

And keep him close to her breast in her world-cloak

Lest from her arms he turn to his formless peace,

Is her heart's business and her clinging care.

(II.VI.131)



27 Novembre 1963, vol-4, page 394-95 , L'Agenda de M�re



Sri Aurobindo wrote somewhere, I don't remember where (I am translating, it's not the exact sentence): "The body's cells must burn with the divine Flame."

Page 421

It's obviously somewhere where he explains transformation. The body's cells must burn with the divine Flame. And you feel it - you FEEL it. It's when they begin to be aflame, to burn with a flame that is clearer and clearer, purer and purer ... - when all the smoke is gone.

Page 422



14th Decembre 1963, vol-4, page 421 , L'Agenda de M�re





And earth shall be the Spirit's manifest home [[Savitri. ]]

(Sujata:) Is it the promise that came?
Yes, the promise of the G. The G always promises.

(Mother sets the calendar to January 1, 1964,
and reads Sri Aurobindo's quotation)

All can be done if God's touch is there

There: All can be done. All.



31st Decembre 1963, vol-4, page 432 , L'Agenda de M�re



But your Agenda is the end of the "Yoga of Self-Perfection"!
Well, it'll be a long end! (Mother laughs) In other words, when it's over (we must first wait for it to be over), when it's over, with those notes, we could establish something - you'll have to wait for some time! There are still several years to go.

It doesn't matter, we aren't bored, are we? (To Sujata:) Are you bored? Tell me frankly, are you bored? (Sujata laughs) I don't need to ask HIM, I know the answer: "Oh, it's endless, it lasts forever, nothing happens, nothing takes place...." (laughter) Anyway, my children, that's the way it is. I am going as fast as I can, I am the one most concerned! But you can't hurry, it's not possible. Not possible.

In fact, in Savitri, Sri Aurobindo went through all the worlds, and it so happens that I am following that without knowing it (because I never remember - thank God, I really thank heaven! - I asked the Lord to take away my mental memory and He took it away entirely, so I am not weighed down), but I follow that description in Savitri without mentally knowing the sequence of the worlds, and these last few days ... I was in that Muddle of Falsehood (I told you last time), it was really painful, and I was tracking it down to the most tenuous vibrations, those that go back to the origin, to the moment when Truth could turn into Falsehood - how it all happened. And it is so tenuous, almost imperceptible, that deformation, the original Deformation, that you tend to lose heart and you think, "It's still really quite easy to topple over ... the slightest thing and you can still topple over into Falsehood, into Deformation." And yesterday, I had in my hands a passage from Savitri that was brought to me - it's a marvel, but ... it's so sad, so miserable, oh, I could have cried (I don't easily cry).



The world grew full of menacing Energies,

And wherever turned for help or hope his eyes,

In field and house, in street and camp and mart,

He met the prowl and stealthy come and go

Of armed disquieting bodied Influences.

A march of goddess figures dark and nude

Alarmed the air with grandiose unease;

Appalling footsteps drew invisibly near,

Shapes that were threats invaded the dream-light,

And ominous beings passed him on the road

Whose very gaze was a calamity:

A charm and sweetness sudden and formidable,

Faces that raised alluring lips and eyes

Approached him armed with beauty like a snare,

But hid a fatal meaning in each line

And could in a moment dangerously change.

But he alone discerned that screened attack.

(II.VII.205)

It makes you wonder.... It's like something gluey surrounding you, touching you all over; you can't go forward, you can't do anything without encountering those black and gluey fingers of Falsehood. It was a very painful impression.

And last night, there was the Answer, as it were. This morning, when I got up, I didn't remember clearly, but in the middle of the night I knew it very well. (It's not going from sleep to the waking consciousness: it is coming out of one state to enter another one, and when I came out of that state to enter the so-called normal one, I remembered very well.) I was as if made to live the WAY of turning that Falsehood into Truth, and it was so joyful!... So joyful. In the sense that it's a vibration similar to joy that is capable of dissolving and overcoming the vibration of Falsehood. That was very important: it isn't effort, it isn't righteousness, or scruple or rigidity, none of that, none of that has any effect on that sadness (it is a sadness) of Falsehood - it's something so sad, so helpless, so miserable ... so miserable. And only a vibration of Joy can change it.

It was a vibration that flowed like silvery water - it rippled and flowed like silvery water.

Which means that austerity, asceticism, even an intense and stern aspiration, all sternness, all that: no action. No action - Falsehood stays put in the background.... But it cannot resist the sparkling of joy. It's interesting.

(silence)

And in his text, Sri Aurobindo says that the Lord joins the contraries, the opposites, puts them together so they fight each other, and that this will and action give Him a sardonic smile (I am commenting).

A tract he reached unbuilt and owned by none:

There all could enter but none stay for long.

It was a no man's land of evil air,

A crowded neighbourhood without one home,

A borderland between the world and hell.

There unreality was Nature's Lord:

It was a space where nothing could be true,

For nothing was what it had claimed to be:

A high appearance wrapped a spacious void.

Yet nothing would confess its own presence

Even to itself in the ambiguous heart:

A vast deception was the law of things;

Only by that deception they could live.

An unsubstantial Nihil guaranteed

The falsehood of the forms this Nature took

And made them seem awhile to be and live.

A borrowed magic drew them from the Void;

They took a shape and stuff that was not theirs

And showed a colour that they could not keep,

Mirrors to a fantasm of reality.

Each rainbow brilliance was a splendid lie;

A beauty unreal graced a glamour face.

Nothing could be relied on to remain:

Joy nurtured tears and good an evil proved,

But never out of evil one plucked good:

Love ended early in hate, delight killed with pain,

Truth into falsity grew and death ruled life.

A Power that laughed at the mischief of the world,

An irony that joined the world's contraries

And flung them into each other's arms to strive,

Put a sardonic rictus on God's face.

(II . VII. 206)

I was asked for an illustration for H.; I saw the image, the Lord's face with a sardonic smile. And then, after last night's experience, this morning suddenly that expression of the face changed, and I saw the image of the true, the true sorrow of Compassion - I don't know how to explain it.... The sardonic smile changed: from sardonic it grew bitter, from bitter it grew sorrowful, from sorrowful it grew full of an extraordinary compassion....

(silence)

So we could say that Falsehood is the sorrow of the Lord. And that His Joy is the cure for all Falsehood.

Sorrow had to be expressed so as to be erased from the creation.

And sorrow is Falsehood - the Lord's sorrow, sorrow in its essence, is Falsehood.

So to live in Falsehood is to hurt the Lord.

It opens up horizons....

And His Joy is the cure for everything.

That's the problem seen from the other angle.

So, if we love the Lord, we cannot give Him cause for sorrow, and necessarily we emerge from Falsehood and enter Joy.

That's what I saw last night. It was all silvery. All silvery, silvery....

There was even the vision of how the vibrations were in the cells: vibrations that were silvery, sparkling, rippling, but very regular, and precise ... (how can I put it?). It was the contradiction of Falsehood in the cells; like little flashes of silvery light.

But that [Falsehood] is the great obstacle, the extreme difficulty. It's something gluey which entered the creation and sticks to everything, and which has become a material habit too, because it's not only Mind that has Falsehood in it: there's Falsehood in Life, in Life itself. In the completely inanimate, I don't know.... Maybe it came with Life? (According to Savitri, the origin of Falsehood lies in Life.) But it's as though Unconsciousness, in order to go towards Consciousness, to return to Consciousness, had taken the path of Falsehood and Death instead of the path of Truth.

And Falsehood is this: the sorrow of the Lord.

I was asked for a message for next year, and things of that sort kept coming to me, so I didn't say anything. They wouldn't even understand, it's incomprehensible if you don't have the experience. And if you say just like that, almost dogmatically, "Falsehood is the sorrow of the Lord," it doesn't mean anything.

Or if you say it in a literary way, it's no longer true.

And if you said, "Falsehood is the Lord's way of being unhappy" (!) (Mother laughs), people would think you're not being serious.





31 Decembre 1963, vol-4, L'Agenda de M�re





My eyes fell on this sentence of Sri Aurobindo [on the calendar!

Ah, exactly! That's it. That's it! Every day, I look at it. In the evening the date and the quotation are changed - I don't know what tomorrow's text will be, we have to change the calendar and start "January." Would you like us to do it? Bring the calendar here.

All this will go now!

We have December here. (Mother reads:)

And earth shall be the Spirit's manifest home[[Savitri. ]]

(Sujata:) Is it the promise that came?

Yes, the promise of the G. The G always promises.

(Mother sets the calendar to January 1, 1964,
and reads Sri Aurobindo's quotation)

All can be done if God's touch is there1

There: All can be done. All.

31 Decembre 1963, vol-4, L'Agenda de M�re
Mother's Agenda - volume - 5 , 1964

(Mother shows a sketch she has just drawn to illustrate the passage in "Savitri" in which Sri Aurobindo speaks of the "sardonic rictus on God's face.")

I wanted to see this "sardonic laugh" of the Lord! So I looked, and instead of a sardonic laugh, I saw a face ... with such a deep sorrow - so deep, so grave - and full of such compassion.... It's after that that I said (you remember, it was over there, [[In the music room, on December 31, 1963. ]] I was seeing that): "Falsehood is the sorrow of the Lord." It was naturally based on the experience that everything is the Lord - there is nothing that cannot be the Lord. So what is this "sardonic" smile? ... I was looking at that, and then I saw this face.

So, as I am supposed to do sketches for H.'s paintings, I did the sketch: Falsehood is the sorrow of the Lord.

(Mother shows the sketch
representing the Lord's sorrowful face.
Long silence)

Sri Aurobindo had the feeling or the sensation that what was farthest from the Lord (I always base myself now on that experience, which is very concrete in its sensation, of the "nearness" or

Page 22

"farness" - it isn't a farness in feelings, not that, it's like a material fact; yet it isn't located in space), well, Sri Aurobindo, for his part, felt that the farthest was cruelty. That's what he felt farthest from; that vibration seemed to him the farthest from that of the Lord.

And yet, it sounds bizarre but in cruelty one can still feel, distorted, the vibration of Love; far behind or deep within that vibration of cruelty, there is still, distorted, the vibration of Love. And Falsehood - the real Falsehood that doesn't arise from fear or anything of the sort, that has no reason behind it - real Falsehood, the negation of Truth (the WILLED negation of Truth), is, to me, something completely black and inert. That's the feeling it gives me. It is black, blacker than the blackest coal, and inert - inert, without any response.

When I read that description in Savitri,[[ "A tract he reached unbuilt and owned by none...." II.VI1.206 (See conversation of December 31, 1963.) ]] I felt a sorrow which I thought I had been unable to feel for a long time - a long time. I thought I was (how shall I put it?) cured of that possibility. And last time, when I saw that, I saw it was still there; and while I was looking, I saw this same sorrow in the Lord, in His face, His expression.

The deliberate negation of all that is divine - of all that we call divine.

The Divine, for us, is always the perfection not yet manifested, all the marvels not yet manifested, and which must keep on growing, of course.

The far end of the Manifestation (assuming that there was a progressive descent ... there may have been one, I don't know - there have been so many perceptions of what happened, sometimes contradictory, always incomplete and humanized), but if you consider the aspect of evolution, you tend to consider a far end from which you proceed to another far end (it's obviously childish, but anyway ...), or an extreme way of being that grows towards the opposite Extreme Way of Being; well, what seems to me the blackest and most inert, the total negation of "that" to which we aspire, is what constitutes Falsehood.

In other words, this is perhaps what I call Falsehood; because falsehood in the human way is always mixed with all kinds of things - but Falsehood proper is this. It is the assertion that the Divine does not exist, Life does not exist, Light does not exist, Love



8th January 1964, vol-5, page 22-23 , L'Agenda de M�re




(The day after Mother's eighty-sixth birthday. Mother first reads the translation of the message she gave on the 21st:)

It was translated in an interesting way.... I read it, then I concentrated (A. was sitting here, not moving or saying anything), so first I said a word or two to him to "establish the atmosphere." Then I remained quiet, and it simply came - it isn't exactly a translation:

Sa volont� solitaire affronta la loi du monde.

Pour arr�ter la roue fatale, cette Splendeur se leva ...

Her single will opposed the cosmic rule.

To stay the wheels of Doom this greatness rose.

(Savitri, I.II.19)



22nd February 1964, vol-5, page 60 , L'Agenda de M�re





Yes, that's what it is, a sort of inebriation.

Somewhere in "Savitri," Sri Aurobindo says, "This wine of lightning in the cells...."[[And came back quivering with a nameless Force Drunk with a wine of lightning in their cells. (IV.IV 383) ]]
Oh! Do you know where it is? ...


22nd February 1964, vol-5, page 62 , L'Agenda de M�re



But it's my method for Savitri, too, it's a long time since I stopped translating: I follow the thought up to a point, and then, instead of thinking this way (same gesture of tipping to the right), I think that way (to the left), that's all. So it's not pure English, not pure French either.

Personally I would like it to be neither English nor French, to be something else! But for the moment, what words are to be used? ... I clearly feel that to me, both in English and French (and maybe in other languages if I knew any), words have another meaning, a slightly unusual and far more PRECISE meaning than they do in languages as we know them - far more precise. Because, to me, a word means exactly a certain experience, and I clearly see that people understand quite differently; so I feel their understanding as something hazy and imprecise. Every word corresponds to an experience, to a particular vibration.

I don't say I have reached the satisfactory expression - it's taking shape.

And the method is always the same: I never translate - never, never - I go up above, to the place where one thinks beyond words, where one experiences the idea or the thought of a thing, or the movement or the feeling (whatever), and when it's in a particular language, it goes like this (same gesture as before), while in another language, it goes like that: it's as if something up above tipped

Page 87

over. I don't translate on the same level at all, I never translate on the level of languages. And sometimes, I notice that for me the quality of the words is very different from what it is for others, very different.

I have given up all hope of making myself understood.



18th March 1964, vol-5, page 87 , L'Agenda de M�re





Because thou art, men yield not to their doom,

But ask for happiness and strive with fate.

(VII.IV. 507)


23rd March 1964, vol-5, page 103 , L'Agenda de M�re





I read a line in "Savitri" that struck me very much, because I saw a connection with what you said the other day about the coexistence of Falsehood and Truth: "And earth shall grow unexpectedly divine."[["When darkness deepens strangling the earth's breast And man's corporeal mind is the only lamp, As a thief's in the night shall be the covert tread Of one who steps unseen into his house. A Voice ill-heard shall speak, the soul obey, A power into mind's inner chamber steal, A charm and sweetness open life's closed doors And beauty conquer the resisting world The truth-light capture Nature by surprise, A stealth of God compel the heart to bliss And earth shall grow unexpectedly divine." (Savitri, I.IV.55) ]]
That's right! That's right ... unexpectedly divine.

And even the most skeptical will be compelled to see that something is changing, that it's not the same thing anymore.

Sri Aurobindo said (he said it to me personally and he wrote it), The time has come. Because he went away, people thought he was wrong; that was the general effect, they said to themselves, "He thought the time had come, but he went away because he saw he

Page 283

was wrong." - That's rubbish.

(Smiling) Besides, he didn't go so far away! I spend my nights with him, and with the most complete variety of work - it's a multiple, innumerable "Him" ... and so wonderfully adapted to all necessities: terrestrial necessities and individual necessities.

And for him, it's only one small part of himself; because it's with him (I told you the story the other day) that I had that experience of going out of humanity, going out of the material world: it was with him, in his "company," if I may say so!

14th November 1964, vol-5, page 283-84 , L'Agenda de M�re
Mother's Agenda - volume - 6 , 1965

(Every time Mother receives Satprem, she translates one line from "Savitri" that has been copied for her in large characters. Today's line is from the debate between Death and Savitri's heart:)

And never lose the white spiritual touch

(Mother repeats)

And never lose the white spiritual touch [[It can drink up the sea of All-Delight And never lose the white spiritual touch (X.III.655) ]]

Sans jamais perdre le blanc contact de l'Esprit



Yesterday, I read with H. Savitri's series of experiences when she begins with self-annulment: Annul thyself so that God alone exist (I no longer remember, but that's the idea).[[Annul thyself that only God may be. (Vll.VI.538) ]] It begins with self-annulment, then she has the experience of BEING the All, that is, of being the Supreme (the Supreme in herself) and the entire Manifestation and all things.



There are three passages. It's absolutely ... an absolutely wonderful description. It's extraordinarily beautiful.[[The world of unreality ceased to be ... She was a single being, yet all things The world was her spirit's wide circumference (Vll.VIl.554-556) ]]

It's a chapter that doesn't have a title.



First she meets her soul: a house of flames. She enters the house of flames and unites with her soul ["The Finding of the Soul," VII.V]. It's after that. After, there is Nirvana ["Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute," VII.VI]. She goes into Nirvana - and becomes just a violet line in Nothingness.[[Unutterably effaced, no one and null, A vanishing vestige like a violet trace, A faint record merely of a self now past, She was a point in the unknowable. (Vll.VI.549) ]] Then finds herself back in her body - that's where it begins. A chapter without a title [VIl.VIl].

I'll find it some other time.



It has been a revolution in the atmosphere, that's why I am telling you about it. Because all the experiences described [in Savitri] are precisely the experiences I have. So then, suddenly, in the body .. I was over there in the music room, and H. was reading to me; then when she had finished reading, all of a sudden the body sat up straight in an aspiration and a prayer of such intensity! It was a dreadful anguish, you know: "See, the whole experience is here [in Mother], complete, total, perfect, and because this thing [the body] has lived too long, it no longer has the power of expression." And it said, "But why, Lord? Why, why do You take away from me the power of expression because this has lived too long?" It was a sort of revolution in the body's consciousness.

Things have been much better since, much better. There has been a decisive change.

You see, it was the exact description of the body's present state, yet it constantly feels fragile, in a precarious balance. And then, with all its aspiration, it said, "But WHY? Why?... See, the experience is all there - why isn't it expressed?"

As always (laughing), I had the feeling that the Lord was laughing and saying to me, "But since such is your will, it will be that way!" Meaning simply: it's you who CHOSE to be like that.

And it's perfectly true. All our incapacities, all our limitations, all our impossibilities, it's this idiotic Matter that chooses them all - not with intelligence, but with a sort of feeling that "that's how things must be," that they are "naturally" like that. An adherence - an idiotic adherence - to the mode of the lower nature.

Then there was laughter, tears, a whole revolution, and afterwards all was fine.

But nobody on earth will be able to convince me it isn't because this material nature chooses to be that way that it is that way.



8 Mai 1965, vol-6, page 89-90 , L'Agenda de M�re



(Mother then takes up the translation of "Savitri":

The Debate of Love and Death.)

(Mother reads the text) Aha! What a joker!

... Then will I give thee all thy soul desires

He's a joker.

All the brief joys earth keeps for mortal hearts

But I don't want them! - He is a real joker.

And what happens to him?

... My will once wrought remains unchanged through Time

Oho, that's what you think!

And Satyavan can never again be thine.

X.III.636

Not true, old chap!

(Mother translates)

Alors je te donnerai tout ce que ton �me d�sire ...

[Then will I give thee all thy soul desires]

The soul doesn't desire anything! It's easy to say, "I will give thee all thy soul desires," the soul desires nothing. So he doesn't commit himself to much!

He's a joker - he made him quite a joker.



12th Juin, 1965, vol 6, page 123 , L'Agenda de M�re





(Mother takes up the translation of "Savitri," from The Debate

of Love and Death. Then she stops in the middle of a line:)



As if things were far, far away, far away from me: things, people, noises, images, everything, far, far away ... (Mother takes up "Savitri" again):

My will once wrought remains unchanged through Time

And Satyavan can never again be shine.

He made him a bit stupid, because even if Satyavan doesn't come back in this body, what prevents him from taking another!

He's bragging!

And Savitri (or "the Voice") afterwards tells him, you remember, "Ah, we'll keep you all the same, we still need you for a while." When he has been beaten hollow, when he is finished, she tells him, "We'll still keep you because we still need you,"[[I have given thee thy awful shape of dread And thy sharp sword of terror and grief and pain To force the soul of man to struggle for light ... Thou art his spur to greatness in his works, The whip to his yearning for eternal bliss, His poignant need of immortality. Live, Death, awhile, be still my instrument. (X.IV.666) ]] don't you remember?


I have given thee thy awful shape of dread

And thy sharp sword of terror and grief and pain

To force the soul of man to struggle for light...

Thou art his spur to greatness in his works,

The whip to his yearning for eternal bliss,

His poignant need of immortality.

Live, Death, awhile, be still my instrument. (X.IV.666)



14 Juin, 1965, vol 6, page 125-26 , L'Agenda de M�re



Then Mother takes up "Savitri": The Debate of Love and Death.

Is he going on? What does he offer Savitri?

"Daughters," "sons"!

Oh, he is base (laughing), base with vulgarity. (Mother reads:)

Daughters of thy own shape in heart and mind

Fair hero sons and sweetness undisturbed ... (X.III.637)

See that joy! Oh! ... How vulgar that being is! Can there really be people who are tempted by this?

I think Sri Aurobindo deliberately made this Death very vulgar to discourage all the illusionists and Nirvanists.



7 Juillet, 1965, vol 6, page 163-64 , L'Agenda de M�re







Mother takes up the translation of "Savitri," the Debate of Love and Death:

... And from the universal standpoint, it is this inertia, this unconsciousness that made the existence of death necessary - the "existence" of death!!


24 Juillet, 1965, vol 6, page 195 , L'Agenda de M�re



Which is why the mystics send us back to heaven, and the realists to the ever-receding perfect society and automatic leisure.

Sri Aurobindo opens a door in this world stifled by its material or heavenly excesses. He tells us, first, that there is something to be discovered and that we are rich, richer than we may ever think with our heads - we are like beggars sitting on a gold mine. But we must get down into the mine. And he tells us that we have the power, if only we are pure enough to seize it. The power over Death and over Life and over Matter, for the Spirit is in us and it is here below that It wants to conquer:

Heaven's touch fulfills but cancels not our earth. [[Savitri, XII.719. ]]

And he tells us that just because we have invented a few rockets and cultivated a few cerebral pyramids, that does not mean we have done with being men. A still greater adventure awaits us,

Page 214

divine and superhuman, if only we have the courage to get under way.

And he gives us the means to do so.



For "what Sri Aurobindo represents in the world's history is not a teaching, not even a revelation: it is an action."[[The Mother. ]] Sri Aurobindo is not a thinker or a sage, not a mystic or a dreamer. He is a force of the future that takes hold of the present and leads us towards,

The miracle for which our life was made.[[Savitri, 11. Xll. 278. ]]


7 Aout, 1965, vol 6, page 213-214 , L'Agenda de M�re



And then, the stupidity of people and things becomes cruel, because even in the ordinary consciousness, for me all those things are meaningless; but then with that need to keep two almost contradictory states together (a transitional period, of course), if you add to it a truckload of nonsense, it's not pleasant.

It's like this "gentleman" [Death in Savitri], all the rubbish he says!



21st Aout, 1965, vol 6, page 227 , L'Agenda de M�re



(Mother reads a few lines from "Savitri" which she prepares to translate into French. It is Savitri's heart that speaks:)

The great stars burn with my unceasing fire

And life and death are both its fuel made.

Life only was my blind attempt to love:

Earth saw my struggle, heaven my victory.

(X. III . 638)



Les grandes �toiles br�lent de mon feu incessant

La vie et la mort sont toutes deux son combustible.

La vie seule fut mon essai aveugle d'amour:

La terre vit ma lutte, le ciel ma victoire.



She says, Life and death are the fuel, then, In my blind attempt LIFE ONLY was my attempt to love.[[Mother later stressed again, "It's not Life was only, but Life only." ]] Because my attempt to love was blind, I limited it to life - but I won the victory in death.

It's very interesting. (Mother repeats:)

Earth saw my struggle, heaven my victory.

Yet, earth should see the victory? The victory should be on earth, shouldn't it?

Yes, but she couldn't win the victory on earth because she lacked heaven - she couldn't win the victory in life because she lacked death and she had to conquer death in order to conquer life.

That's the idea. Unless we conquer Death, the victory isn't won. Death must be vanquished, there must be no more death.

That's very clear.

(silence)

According to what he says here, it is the principle of Love that is transformed into flame and finally into light. It isn't the principle of Light that is transformed into flame when it materializes: it's the flame that is transformed into light.

The great stars give light because they burn; they burn because they are under the effect of Love.

Love would be the original Principle?

That seems to be what he is saying.

I didn't remember this passage. But I told you, my experience[[The experience of the "great pulsations" of divine Love (in April, 1962). ]] is that the last thing as one rises - the last thing beyond light, beyond consciousness, beyond ... - the last thing one reaches is love. "One," this "one" is ... it's the "I" - I don't know. According to the experience, it's the last thing to manifest now in its purity, and it is the one that has the transforming power.

That's what he appears to be saying here: the victory of Love seems to be the final victory.

(silence)

He said, Savitri, a Legend and a Symbol; it's he who made it a symbol. It's the story of the encounter of Savitri, the principle of Love, with Death; and it's over Death that she won the victory, not in life. She could not win the victory in life without winning the victory over Death.

I didn't know it was put so clearly here. I had read it, but only once.

It's very interesting.

How many times, how many times have I seen that he had written down my experiences.... Because for years and years I didn't read Sri Aurobindo's books; it was only before coming here that I had read The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, and another one, too. For instance, Essays on the Gita I had never read, Savitri I had never read, I read it very recently (that is to say, some ten years ago, in 1954 or '55). The book Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother I had never read, and when I read it, I realized what he wrote to people about me - I had no idea, he had never told me anything about it! ... You see, there are lots of things that I had said while speaking to people - that I had said just like that, because they came (gesture from above) and I would say them - and I realized he had written them. So, naturally, I appeared to be simply repeating what he had written - but I had never read it! And now, it's the same thing: I had read this passage from Savitri, but hadn't noticed it - because I hadn't had the experience. But now that I have had the experience, I see that he tells it.

It's quite interesting.

Maybe we'll have to reread Savitri?...

In fact, if we wanted to be really good, we would try to translate the whole of Savitri, wouldn't we? What we are doing now with the end [Book X], we would do with all the rest. There is a part I tried to translate all alone, but it would be fun to do it together. We could try. Not for publication! Because there is immediately a debasing: everything that is published is debased, otherwise people don't understand. We would do it for ourselves.

But it's very interesting.

Just the other day I noted something down on the subject (Mother looks for a note, then reads it):

"Very rare and exceptional are the human beings who can understand and feel divine Love, because divine Love is free of attachment and of the need to please the object loved."

That was a discovery.

That's why people don't understand; for them, love is so much like this (Mother intertwines the fingers of her two hands) that they cannot even feel or believe that they love if there isn't an attachment like this (same gesture). And necessarily, the consequence of attachment is the will, the desire, the need to please the object of one's love.

If you take away the attachment and the need to please, people scratch their heads and wonder if they love. And it's only when you take away those two things that divine Love begins!

This, mon petit, we'll talk about again, it's a revelation.



That's why they don't understand and that's why they can't feel it.


8 Septembre, 1965, vol 6, page 235-238 , L'Agenda de M�re







There is a line in Savitri which freely translated is:


Annule-toi pour que seul le Divin soit.[["Annul thyself that only God may be." (Vll.VI.538) ]]


A very free translation, but the idea is there. And that's the state in which "that" can exist. And it is evident that the body doesn't dissolve (Mother touches her own body), it's here, isn't it? You can see it!

(silence)


And it is the only - the only - infallible way to establish harmony in the body [this Smile of the Presence]. All the rest, all the precautions, all the remedies, all that seems so futile, so futile ... and so inadequate. The only way - for everything, everything.

I do not yet have proof of the reconstruction of something that had disappeared (that had been amputated or broken), I can't say, but logically it's the same thing.


We'll talk about it again when we have the proof.


13 Octobre, 1965, vol-6, page 273 , L'Agenda de M�re



(Then Mother takes up the translation of "Savitri" and stops abruptly, as if she were following something with her eyes:)

... As big as this, a sun, a sun scintillating with Sri Aurobindo's light, when I write, between me and the notebook, and it moves about with the pen! It's this big (a big orange), it's Sri Aurobindo's light, blue, that special blue, silver blue, scintillating, and it moves about every time I write in this notebook! (Laughing) That's why I have difficulty seeing: it moves about with the pen!



6 November , 1965, vol-6, page 290 , L'Agenda de M�re



page 309 ,



Mother takes up the translation of "Savitri":


Imagining meanings in life's heavy drift,

They trusted in the uncertain environment

And waited for death to change their spirit's scene.

(X.IV.641)

Yes, those are the people who are hoping to go to a beatific heaven.

The entire West is convinced, of course, that the earth has to be taken as it is and that it's a preparation for a life in another world, which according to your "faults" or "qualities" will be a heaven or a hell. But anyway, doing away with hell, all those who have goodwill will go to a beatific heaven.

It's a weird invention, isn't it!

Anyway ...

But there is an accumulation, an extraordinary compactness of knowledge in this whole Savitri, at every turn. There is nothing that's void of knowledge. It's truly interesting.



30 Novembre, vol-6, 1965, page 313 , L'Agenda de M�re



Because as for me, I have no reason to get out of it [the meditation]. This way I feel the world is fine at last! When I get out of it, the grating starts. When I am there, the world and everything is quite fine!

(Mother takes up her first lines of "Savitri")

A savage din of labour and a tramp

Of armoured life and the monotonous hum

Of thoughts and acts that ever were the same

(X.IV.641)

There you are! That's it.

***

Towards the end

This is my great remedy. Yesterday I stayed like that [in meditation] for most of the day. Everybody thought I was asleep (!) and they took great care not to wake me up (so much the better, that was kind). This way, it's all right, everything is fine. And the body too is better, it's the only cure; for me, it's the only cure: bringing down that Peace, that Light - a vast, vast light, and calm, calm - then the cells get used to being a little more harmonious.

Otherwise, everything goes wrong.

I don't believe in doctors. Try as I might, in spite of all my goodwill, I don't believe in treatments and I don't believe in doctors. When I am in that state the doctor gives me medicines - I observe the medicines: they cause as much disorder as they do good. They do good to one thing and harm to another. So afterwards that has to be set right. You never get out of it. And what's more, they do me the favor of giving me children's doses! If I were given adults' doses, I think ... It's interesting, very interesting (!)

Basically, in order to feel at home in the world as it is today, one must belong to the category I spoke of the other day, of those who have established a harmony with all the human faculties, who are satisfied, and also who are egocentric enough not even to notice that things aren't that way for others. Then it's fine; otherwise ... Sri Aurobindo very much belonged (in his outward being) to the

Page 318

category of those who want things to change, who push for progress, who want to move on, who want to reject the past ... very much so. He had to make a great effort to be satisfied with things and people; it was his compassion that made him accept people around him as they were. Otherwise he used to suffer a lot.



4th Dceembre, vol-6, 1965, page 318 , L'Agenda de M�re



The first poetry I was able to appreciate in my life was Savitri. Previously, I was closed. To me it was always words: hollow, hollow, hollow, just words - words for words' sake. So as a sound it's pretty, but ... I prefer music. Music is better!

This translation of Savitri gives me a whole lot of fun, it's great fun for me.

Much more fun than having to "tell things" ... that are unnecessary.



28th Dceembre, vol-6, 1965, page 341 , L'Agenda de M�re



Mother's Agenda - volume - 7 , 1966

(Mother copies out in her thick white notebook a few lines from her translation of "Savitri.")

... Near my pen, there is a small disk of Sri Aurobindo's light, which sparkles and sparkles.... I see it more than my handwriting. It's no bigger than this (two inches) and it shines, it shines brightly - blue light, of the silvery blue that was Sri Aurobindo's blue. It shines and shines, and it moves along with my fingers. [[Mother had already made a similar remark last year. See Agenda VI, conversation of November 6, 1965, p. 287. ]]

And when I speak, when I say things that "come," there are two disks (I don't know why). Not one, but two, and they are bigger (about four inches), one above the other. When I tell of an experience, for instance, or answer a question, there are two of them, slightly bigger.

And when I concentrate on someone while calling the Lord, then, generally, near the shoulder (gesture between the person's head and shoulder), there is a great golden light, like that, which sparkles and sparkles, shines and shines, very brightly, all the while. And when the light goes, the concentration goes.

But just now, it was amusing, it was quite small like this, moving along with my pen. Now it's finished, gone! (Mother laughs)



19th January, vol-7, 1966, page 20 , L'Agenda de M�re



Then Mother takes up the translation of "Savitri":

Each in its hour eternal claimed went by

Ideals, systems, sciences, poems, crafts

Tireless there perished and again recurred,

Sought restlessly by some creative Power.

But all were dreams crossing an empty vast.

(X.IV.642)

All this is the same thing! It's amusing.

He certainly had similar experiences [to Mother's] when he wrote those lines.



22nd January, vol-7, 1966, page 25 , L'Agenda de M�re



Then Mother takes up

her translation of "Savitri":

Ascetic voices called of lonely seers

On mountain summits or on river banks

Or from the desolate heart of forest glades

Seeking heaven's rest or the spirit's worldless peace,

Or in bodies motionless like statues, fixed

In tranced cessations of their sleepless thought

Sat sleeping souls, and this too was a dream.

(X.IV.642)

(Laughing) He's terrible! He has a knack for demolishing everything.

But it's wonderfully true. It immediately puts you in the atmosphere of the relativity of all those human conceptions.

The trouble is that the outer being finds it hard to forget its habit of regarding material things as true, real, concrete: "This is concrete, you touch it, see it, feel it...."

It's beginning to come.



26th January, vol-7, 1966, page 27 , L'Agenda de M�re



(Mother carries on with her translation of "Savitri": the vision of the plane where all the formations of the human mind are found.)

All things the past has made and slain were there [[As if lost remnants of forgotten light, Before her mind there fled with trailing wings Dimmed revelations and delivering words Emptied of their mission and their strength to save The messages of the evangelist gods, Voices of prophets, scripts of vanishing creeds. (X.IV.642) ]]

Quite interestingly, I am following all these experiences of Savitri. The experience of those different joys, I was surprised to have it a few days ago; I said to myself, "Strange, why am I made to see the joy in all those things: the joy of destroying, the joy of creating, the joy of laboring and conquering, and all of it?" I was very surprised, and then ...

Just last night, I must have been going about for some time among all human constructions, but those of a higher quality, not the ordinary constructions (those Sri Aurobindo refers to here: the philosophical, religious, spiritual constructions ...). And they were symbolized by huge buildings - huge - that were so high ... as if men were as tall as the edge of this stool, quite tiny, in comparison with those huge things - huge, huge. I was going about, and each person came (I saw now one come, now another), each person came saying, "Mine is the true path." So I would go with him to an open door through which an immense landscape could be seen, and just when we came to the door, it would close!

It was really very interesting. With all sorts of diverse details, each one with his own habits. I have forgotten the details now, but when I came out of that place last night, in the middle of the night, I was quite amused, I said to myself, "It's quite amusing!" You know, when they spoke you could see through a door vast expanses before you, in full light, it was superb; then I would go with that person towards the door and ... the door was closed. It was really interesting.

And so large, so large, so high - we were very small.

Page 37

There was no end to them.... And there were people, always new people: now men, now women, now young people, now old people, and from every possible country. It lasted a very long time.

I remember that I said to one of them, "Yes, all this is very fine, but it isn't true food, it leaves you famished." Then there was one who was ... I don't know which country he was from: he wore a dark robe, he had black hair, a somewhat round face (he may have been a Chinese, I can't say, I don't remember). He said to me, "Oh, not with me! Taste this and see." And he gave me something to eat - it was absolutely first-rate, oh, it was excellent! So I looked at him, and I said, "Oh, you are clever ... show me, show me your path." He told me, "I have no path."

Anyway, details ... If I noted all that down in the middle of the night, it would be very amusing. It was really amusing. And it corresponds to what we've just read in Savitri.

Yes, he was comfortably seated in front of a pillar (a pillar whose end couldn't be seen; it rose so high that its end couldn't be seen), and he said to me, "Oh, I have no path." (Mother laughs) But what he gave to eat was very good! I remember I crunched it, I bit into it, and it had a marvelous taste.

Who could it be?... I don't know. They must have been known people.

And it was rather strange: I was always a bit taller than all of them, and when I moved about, I did so with much greater speed than they, and I would reach the doors, just about to go through ... when they would come along and the door would close!

Very amusing. I could write volumes with all that!

But last night I didn't understand, I wondered, "Why do I go strolling in such places?" Now I understand!



11th February , vol-7, 1966, page 37-38 , L'Agenda de M�re



(Then Mother goes on to "Savitri," the beginning of the new dialogue
between Savitri and Death:)

Once more arose the great destroying Voice:

Across the fruitless labour of the worlds

His huge denial's all-defeating might

Pursued the ignorant march of dolorous Time.

(X.IV.643)

The ignorant march of dolorous Time.... That's quite it, we're poor devils.

That's exactly the state of mind I have been in for two days, but more particularly this morning.... Oh, as an experience it's very interesting.

The spontaneous activity of Matter is defeatist ["the all-defeating might"]. It has to surrender, it has to annul itself so that a creative power - truly creative and victorious - can manifest. That's quite interesting.

Th�on used to say that this defeatist state (the result of which is death), this destructive power, was born with the Vital's infusion into Matter. The rock, the stone, that is, the most exclusively material, isn't defeatist. The beginning of destruction came with the beginning of the entry of the vital force: with water - water, air, all that moves. All that begins to move brings along the power of destruction.

And in human matter, this destructive power is associated with movement.

Page 40

(silence)

In other words, on earth (let's limit ourselves to the earth), it's only with Life that Death came in.

(silence)

And certainly, the first manifestations of Life were water and air, the wind, weren't they?

Fire ... But fire, there's no fire without air - fire is the symbol of the supreme Power.

(long silence
Mother scribbles a few words)

Here's the answer:

Truth does not depend on any external form and shall manifest in spite of all bad will or opposition.

I've written this in answer to this gentleman [Death]. It came with a power: "Ah, you shall see."

But I'd like to know what Savitri says. What does Savitri say?...

There's no time left, we'll see that next time.

What does she say to him? I think she always says the same thing: the omnipotence of Love.

There you feel the Force. Otherwise it wouldn't be worth living - it really isn't worth it, it's no fun.



19th February , vol-7, 1966, page 40-41 , L'Agenda de M�re



(After the translation of "Savitri" -

the dialogue with Death)

Behold the figures of this symbol realm....

Here thou canst trace the outcome Nature gives

To the sin of being and the error in things

And the desire that compels to live

And man's incurable malady of hope.

(X.IV.64 3)

But she will answer you!... I'd like to know what she will answer him.

(silence)

If we follow to its end the idea with which Sri Aurobindo wrote this, Death would be the principle that created Falsehood in the world.... It's obviously either Falsehood that created Death, or Death that created Falsehood.

It's rather Falsehood that created Death!
Logically, yes.

According to the story (if it can be called a story) that Th�on told, it was Falsehood that created Death. But according to what we've just read, Death would be what created Falsehood.... Obviously it must be neither this way nor that! It must be something else, which we should find.

(silence)

Theon's idea (which also fits with the teaching here in India in which they say it was the sense of separation that created the whole Disorder - Death, Falsehood and all the rest), Theon's idea was that those first four Emanations, that is, Consciousness, Love, Life, and Truth (Love was the last, I think, but I no longer remember what he said), those four individual emanated Beings, according to him, in full consciousness of their power and existence, cut themselves off from their Origin. In other words, they wanted to depend only on themselves, they didn't even feel the need to keep the connection

Page 43

with their Origin (I am putting it very materially). So then, that cut is what instantly caused Consciousness to become Unconsciousness, Love to become Suffering (it wasn't Love - it was actually Ananda which became Suffering), Life to become Death and Truth to become Falsehood. And they hurled themselves into the creation like that. Then, there was a second creation, which was the creation of the gods, to mend the mischief caused by those four (the story is told in almost a childlike way in order not to be abstract, in order to become concrete). The gods are the second emanation and they came to mend. In India and everywhere, they were given various names and functions, and they are found in the Overmind region, that is to say, above the physical quaternary, the material quaternary. And the function of those gods is to mend the damage wrought by the others. And the region in which the others (the first Emanations) concentrated is the vital region.



26th February , vol-7, 1966, page 43 , L'Agenda de M�re



But when the hour of the Divine draws near [[But when the hour of the Divine draws near, The Mighty Mother shall take birth in Time and God be born into the human clay ... (X1.1.705) ]]

But when the hour of the Divine draws near ...

Page 76





(The following conversation, in which Mother speaks entirely

in English, took place while she listened to the English transla

tion of the conversation of March 4, in which she said in

particular: "It becomes just a choice: you choose things

to be like this or like that....")

I had the same experience in the cell-consciousness. It lasted for

Page 76

one hour and there it was truly almost miraculous.

The same Consciousness as this consciousness I had in what we can call the "material mental" (that is, the collective consciousness of the cells), but this morning it was in the cells themselves, this Consciousness [the eternal Consciousness Mother speaks of in the conversation of March 4], the same Consciousness. And it was truly miraculous. With the impression that with THAT there [in the cells], there is nothing impossible.

It comes, it stays in spite of everything, whatever I do, even if I speak, and it goes. And when it's gone it's gone, I can make an effort, it doesn't come back. But so long as it is there, it is all-powerful, it dominates everything and ... yes, the whole world seems to change. And yet everything is the same. You remember this sentence of Sri Aurobindo: "All was changed and yet everything was the same"? That is exactly that.

"And then, it becomes just a choice: you choose things to be like this or like that ..."
Yes, this same thing, this same experience in the cell-consciousness. What the human beings call "life" and "death," the continuation of this present organization or its cessation, it was absolutely a question of choice (something like a choice - there are some who say "the Divine's Will" or "the Supreme's Will"; it is a way of saying, but it is ... it is something that chooses). And there was at the same time the exact ... it was more than a feeling, it was a lived knowledge of what is the individual and why the individual and in what way the Supreme becomes the individual and how He can continue to be the individual or stop to be the individual.... Now that the experience is gone, naturally what I say has no meaning, but at that time it was the exact perception: the individual is that (gesture), that position taken by the Supreme, and if He chooses to continue it continues.

It becomes quite material, you see, no more mental at all (it is very difficult to express because of that). It becomes a living experience of just what makes the individual and how this individual can remain individual although it is united perfectly, united in perfect consciousness with the Supreme.

It lasted about fifteen to twenty minutes in complete stability and I continued doing my normal activities (it was during the time of my toilet - I wash my mouth and gargle), purposely it comes at that time to show that it is absolutely independent from the

Page 77

activity. And it comes more often at that time than when I sit in meditation. When I sit in meditation generally begins a kind of all-around-the-earth activity or even universal activity, it becomes conscious of that, but this body's experiences are not there - to have the body experience you must live in your body! It is why the ancient sages or saints didn't know what to do with the body, because they went out of it and sat, and then the body is no more concerned. But when you remain active, then it's the body that has the experience.

That is the secret.



30th march , vol-7, 1966, page 76-78 , L'Agenda de M�re



(Later, Mother copies out a few lines from "Savitri" which she has just translated, and her hand scratches out a word.)

Constantly, the whole time, thoroughly amusing little things happen. It was a small hand - a tiny hand - that took my hand for fun and wrote. Just for fun! So I have to be on my guard all the time!... It was someone who was laughing and laughing and laughing! It's so living - so living, so teeming with things - and we don't see anything. But I see. Previously I didn't see, but now I see it all (Mother laughs). Oh, there would be so many things to tell if we had time, very funny things.



6th April , vol-7, 1966, page 76-78 , L'Agenda de M�re



(Mother translates a line of "Savitri" without hesitation, then comments:)

You read here [in the physical book], then you keep still, open a door, and it comes.

It's amusing, I've just done that as if I had been made to do it. Usually it's always blank and still here (gesture to the forehead), and that's what it gets inscribed on; but just now it wasn't like that: I read, it came here, then I made a movement backwards: a door opened, and then it was clearly written!



16th April , vol-7, 1966, page 88 , L'Agenda de M�re



(Then Mother reads two lines from "Savitri," the Debate of Love and Death.)

Ah, it's still this gentleman

I had this whole experience a few days ago. It was so amusing!

In vain his heart lifts up its yearning prayer,

Peopling with brilliant Gods the formless Void

(X.IV.644)

Page 96

Why? Were you in the formless Void?
I saw that, it was so amusing! I saw it all. Oh, it was an extraordinary experience. All of a sudden I was outside and, I can't say "above" (but it was above), but outside the whole human creation, outside everything, everything man has created in all the worlds, even in the most ethereal worlds. And seen from there, it was ... I saw that play of all the possible conceptions men have had of God and of the way to approach God (what they call "God"), and also of the invisible worlds and the gods, all that: one thing came upon another, one upon another, it all went by (as it's written in Savitri), one thing upon another went by (gesture as if on a screen), one upon another ... with its artificiality, its inadequacy to express the Truth. And with such precision! A precision so accurate that you felt in anguish, because the impression was of being in a world of nothing but imagination, of imaginative creation, but in nothing real, there wasn't a feeling of ... of touching the Thing. To such a point that it became ... yes, a terrible anguish: "But then, what? What? What's truly TRUE and outside all that we can conceive?"

And it came. It was like this: (gesture of self-abandon) the total, complete self-annulment, annulment of that which can know, of that which tries to know - even "surrender" isn't an adequate word: a sort of annulment. And suddenly it ended with a slight movement as a child could have who doesn't know anything, doesn't try to know anything, doesn't understand anything, doesn't try to understand - but who abandons himself. A slight movement of such simplicity, such ingenuousness, such extraordinary sweetness (words can't express it): nothing, just this (gesture of self-abandon), and instantaneously, THE Certitude (not expressed, lived), the lived Certitude.

I wasn't able to keep it very long. But "it" is wonderful.

But the anguish had reached its peak: the sense of the futility of human efforts to understand - to embrace and understand - what isn't human, what's beyond. And I am talking about humanity in its supreme realizations, of course, when man feels himself to be a god.... That was still down below.

The experience lasted, oh, I don't know, perhaps a few minutes, but it was ... something.

Only, with a certainty that as soon as you come back, as soon as you just try to speak one word (or even if you don't speak), as soon as you try to formulate in one way or another: finished.

Yet there OBSTINATELY remains a certitude that the creation is

Page 97

NOT a transitory way to recapture the true Consciousness: it's something that has its own reality and that will have its own existence IN THE TRUTH.

That's the next step.

That's why that realization [the Void] isn't the goal, that's exactly why. A conviction that it isn't the goal. It's an absolute necessity, but not the goal. The goal is something ... the capacity to keep That here.

When will that come? I don't know.

But when it comes, everything will be changed.

Until then, let's prepare ourselves.

There is only one thing I have noted (that I am forced to note): there is a power of action on others which infinitely exceeds what it was before. Oh, it makes waves everywhere, everywhere, even in those people who were the most settled in their lives and basically fairly satisfied, as much as one can be - even those are touched.

We'll see, we'll see.

Anyhow, things are moving along.



27th April , vol-7, 1966, page 96-97 , L'Agenda de M�re



Mother takes up "Savitri"

Then disappointed to the Void he turns

And in its happy nothingness asks release

(X.IV.644)

That's the Nihilists: Shankaracharya and so on, the worshipers of Nothingness.

The worshipers of Nothingness ... I don't know, the farther I go, the more I have a sense of a ... very, very sweet, very full Nothingness, but still a Nothingness. It's absolutely void, yet it's full, and very sweet, but there's nothing.
You are playing on words.

No, no!
Ultimately, this taste for Nothingness is the most harmonious way to put an end to the ego. It's the ego coming to an end. It's, yes, the most harmonious way, the higher way to put an end to the ego. It's the ego coming to an end.

It is tired of being. Instead of feeling killed and crushed (Mother

Page 99

makes a gesture of self-abandon), phew!... A "phew" of relief: "Enough, enough of this battle to exist." We could say: Falsehood, tired of being, gives up.

Instead of a disappearance through crushing and trampling (same gesture of self-abandon): cease to be.

It's the divine way to annul the ego.

The ego is no longer necessary, it has finished its job, the consciousness is ready; then ... (same gesture) phew! "I am tired of being, I no longer want to be."



30th April , vol-7, 1966, page 98-99 , L'Agenda de M�re



Ah, let's take up Savitri.

Do you want to tell me something? (Laughing) I seem to have put you in a complete daze!

No, you say you don't draw conclusions, but I try to!
Oh, conclusions, I don't know.

In short, it's the consciousness of Eternity learning to enter into Time, into Matter?
Yes, that's an idea, maybe that's it!

Surely we'll see one day, we'll understand.

***

(Mother reads a few lines in which Death derides all human beliefs, concepts, philosophies, inventions....)

And sciences omnipotent in vain

By which men learn of what the suns are made,

Page 108

Transform all forms to serve their outward needs,

Ride through the sky and sail beneath the sea,

But learn not what they are or why they came....

(X.IV.644)

It's really charming!

I like this:

Ride through the sky and sail beneath the sea,

But learn not what they are or why they came

He's a monument of pessimism.

But it's true, that's the trouble, it's true! Only, something is missing: what she is going to say. Or does she say nothing?

Certainly, she is going to answer.
But she doesn't shut him up.... It's difficult.

But that's because it's "He"! [[Satprem means that Death is a mask of "Him," of the Supreme. ]]
The other day I had an extraordinary experience, in which all the pessimistic arguments, all the negations and denials came from all sides, represented by everybody. And then, those who believed in the presence of a God or something - something more powerful than they and ruling the world - were in a fury, a dreadful revolt: "But I want none of him! But he spoils all our life, he ..." It was a dreadful revolt, from every side, a truckload of abuse for the Divine with such force of asuric reaction from every side. So I sat there (as if Mother sat in the middle of the m�l�e), watching: "What can be done?..." You know, it was impossible to answer, impossible, there wasn't one argument, not one idea, not one theory, not one belief, nothing, nothing whatsoever that could answer it. For the space of a second, the impression was: it's hopeless. Then, all of a sudden ... all of a sudden ... It's indescribable (gesture of absolute abandon). There was that violence of revolt against things as they are, and, mixed with it, there was: "Let this world disappear, let nothing remain, let it not exist!" All that, which at bottom is a revolt, all that nihilist revolt: let nothing remain, let everything cease to exist. It reached a height of tension,

Page 109

and just at the height of tension, when you felt there was no solution, suddenly ... surrender. But something stronger than surrender - it wasn't abdication, it wasn't self-giving, it wasn't acceptance, it was ... something much more radical, and at the same time much sweeter. I can't say what it was. It had the joy and flavor of giving, but with such a sense of plenitude! ... Like a dazzling flash, you know, suddenly like that: the very essence of surrender, the True Thing.



14th May , vol-7, 1966, page 108-09 , L'Agenda de M�re



And earth [shall] grow unexpectedly divine (I.IV.55)

It's a consolation....

Page 119

(silence)

You'll see, there comes a point when you can tolerate yourself and life only if you take the attitude that the Lord is everything. See, that Lord, how many things He possesses: He plays with all that - He plays, He plays at ... changing the positions. And then, when you see it, that whole, you feel the limitless marvel, and that whatever the object of the most marvelous aspiration, it's all quite possible and will even be surpassed. Then you are consoled. Otherwise, this existence ... is inconsolable. But that way, it becomes charming. One day, I will tell you.

When you have the sense of the unreality of life - the unreality of life - compared with a reality that's certainly found beyond, but at the same time WITHIN life, then ... ah, yes, THAT is true at last - THAT is true at last and deserves to be true. That is the realization of all possible splendors, all possible marvels, all, yes, all possible felicities, all possible beauties - that, yes, otherwise ...

Do you understand?

That's the point I have reached.

So then, I feel as if I still have one foot here, one foot there, which isn't a very pleasant situation because ... because you would like there to remain nothing but That.

The present way of being is a past that really should no longer exist. While the other way, ah, at last! At last!... That's why there is a world.

And everything remains just as concrete and just as real - it doesn't become misty. It's just as concrete, just as real, but ... it becomes divine, because ... because it IS the Divine. It's the Divine playing.

There, mon petit.



25th May , vol-7, 1966, page 119 , L'Agenda de M�re



Ah, let's work on Savitri a little ... (Mother reads the first line):

A few shall see what none yet understands (I.IV.55)

There, you see!



2nd June , vol-7, 1966, page 128 , L'Agenda de M�re



Then Mother takes up

the translation of "Savitri"

Page 141

It's always the sound that guides me....

Do you know that Sunil has done some music for Savitri, and he is going to play it for me in early July. I don't think he wants to have an audience, it's quite private, because it must be played only in 1968 - in February '68 - and he will show me just a small piece to see if it's all right. But I thought you would be interested. I'll leave my windows wide open.



25nd June , vol-7, 1966, page 142 , L'Agenda de M�re



(Mother resumes her translation of the debate with Death.)

Think not to plant on earth the living Truth

That's just what I am doing, Sir.

(turning to Satprem with a smile)

Do you think he hears me?

Think not to plant on earth the living Truth

Or make of Matter's world the home of God;

Truth comes not there but only the thought of Truth,

God is not there but only the name of God.

(X.IV.646)

(Mother remains pensive)

Basically, according to Sri Aurobindo, materialistic thought is the gospel of death. No?

It's very interesting.

(silence)

That's basically the point. We say Savitri is an "epic"; so Savitri is the epic of the victory over death.

(silence)

Very interesting. Because once again, all these last few days I have lived almost minute after minute all those things [we've just read], but on a large scale: not on a personal but on a terrestrial scale.

This last line, this argument, it was so concrete: "No, it's not God, it's only his name" - that was yesterday or the day before, not earlier. And then ... (Mother recalls her experience) ... Strangely, the victories over these arguments have the same character of bursts as did those bursts of Love I lived up above - the same character - and they shatter the resistance. And the something

Page 177

that bursts forth is Love - true Love.

It's very interesting.

And from everywhere, but everywhere, the opposition, the resistance is rising up; and the more it rises up, the more imperative That is.

But at such times one feels how precarious the equilibrium of material life is.... Oh, it's very, very interesting. When I am able to say all this, it will be worthwhile.



19th August , vol-7, 1966, page 177 , L'Agenda de M�re





A few lines below,

Mother hesitates between

two translations:

And earth [shall] grow unexpectedly divine.

It's again the quality of the vibration: sans s'y attendre ["without expecting it"] is fuller - it's fuller, more golden. The other, d'une

Page 274



fa�on inattendue ["in an unexpected way"] is a bit cold and dry.

"Et sans s'y attendre, la Terre deviendra divine ..."



After reading an excerpt from the debate with Death:

If God there is he cares not for the world;

All things he sees with calm indifferent gaze,

He has doomed all hearts to sorrow and desire,

He has bound all life with his implacable laws;

He answers not the ignorant voice of prayer.

Eternal while the ages toil beneath,

Unmoved, untouched by aught that he has made,

He sees as minute details mid the stars

The animals's agony and the fate of man:

Immeasurably wise, he exceeds thy thought;

His solitary joy needs not thy love.

(X.IV.646)

Yes, but we need his joy.

All this was said to me this morning. Absolutely the same thing (with different words, but the very same thing), and not "said": lived, as if I were shown the thing so as to feel it. And I said, "Why? Why this test? What's the use?" It was my body that said, "What's the use?" Then it stopped.

I said, "Why? What does it all mean?" I didn't contradict, didn't argue, just this "What's the use?" (Mother gestures as if to sweep away a speck of dust)

You know, what the consciousness of this body is made to live is a sort of intensive discipline, at a gallop - every minute counts.

But it copes well, I can't deny it. [[It must be recalled that the next day is Darshan and therefore Mother is overburdened with visitors and letters. ]]

Page 275

We'll see how it stands the shock (that's quite the point!).

So this other Gentleman [Death] would say, "See! See there, the kind of pity people have for you!" But I answer, "I don't need pity.... (laughing) That's not what I want: I want the victory."

It's interesting.

Oh, if you knew what a crowd there is! ... And at the last minute, people come and tell me, "I've just arrived, I want to see you." Very well, I say, "All right." We'll extend the day! (Mother laughs)



19th November , vol-7, 1966, page 274-75 , L'Agenda de M�re



It's the first time this year it has happened to me. Previously, it used to happen fairly often, but it's the first time this year. It shows that, all the same, things are improving.... Oh, but it was terrible, people can't imagine what it is! It takes hold of everyone and everybody, every circumstance and everything, and it gives shape to disintegration - quite like this Gentleman (I think he's the one!), quite like him. But it doesn't have the poetic form [of Savitri], of course, it's not a poet: it has all the meanness of life. And it insists on that a great deal. These last few days it insisted on it a great deal. I said to myself, "See, all that is written and said is always in a realm of beauty and harmony and greatness, and, anyway, the problem is put with dignity; but as soon as it becomes quite practical and material, it's so petty, so mean, so narrow, so ugly! ..." That's the proof. When you get out of it, it's all right, you can face all problems, but when you come down here, it's so ugly, so petty, so miserable.... We are such slaves to our needs, oh! ... For one hour, two hours, you hold on, and after ... And it's true, physical life is ugly - not everywhere, but anyway ... I always think of plants and flowers: that's really lovely, it's free from that; but human life is so sordid, with such crude and imperious needs - it's so sordid.... It's only when you begin to live in a slightly superior vision that you become free from that; in all the Scriptures, very few people accept the sordidness of life. And of

Page 278

course, that's what this Gentleman insists on. I said, "Very well." This body's answer is very simple: "We certainly aren't anxious that life should continue as it is." It doesn't find it very pretty. But we conceive of a life - a life as objective as our material life - which wouldn't have all these sordid needs, which would be more harmonious and spontaneous. That's what we want. But he says it's impossible - we have been "told" it's not only possible but certain. So there's the battle.

Then comes the great argument: "Yes, yes, one day it will be, but when?... For the time being you are still swamped in all this and you plainly see it can't change. It will go on and on. In millennia, yes, it will be." That's the ultimate argument. He no longer denies the possibility, he says, "All right, because you have caught hold of something, you're hoping to realize it now, but that's childishness."

So the body itself says, "But of course, I certainly accept that, I perfectly understand! That's not what I want; I don't want this thing or that: I simply want what the Lord wants, nothing else - what He has decided will be. When He says it's over, it will be over; if He says it is to go on, it will go on." But then, as this Gentleman can't have his way like this, it comes from every side: this or that individual, this or that thing, that circumstance, all of it, all of it is going to be disorganized. Then I start working [to thwart the attack].

Today it was really very clever - very clever. He is very clever.

He is a big joker.



26th November , vol-7, 1966, page 277-78 , L'Agenda de M�re







Mother takes up the translation of "Savitri":

It's still this Gentleman....

Immortal bliss lives not in human air

(Laughing) Unfortunately the fact is easy enough to note! Immortal bliss lives not in human air. But she could answer him, "That's because of you, so you don't need to boast about it!"

30th November , vol-7, 1966, page 283 , L'Agenda de M�re

Mother's Agenda - volume - 8 , 1967

(Message for Mother's eighty-ninth birthday)

When darkness deepens strangling the earth's breast

And man's corporeal mind is the only lamp,

As a thief's in the night shall be the covert tread

Of one who steps unseen into his house.

A voice ill-heard shall speak, the soul obey,

A power into mind's inner chamber steal,

A charm and sweetness open life's closed doors

And beauty conquer the resisting world,

The truth-light capture Nature by surprise,



Page 61

A stealth of God compel the heart to bliss

And earth grow unexpectedly divine.

Sri Aurobindo
(Savitri, I.IV.63)



21st February , vol-8, 1967, page 61-62 , L'Agenda de M�re



Just the state of consciousness when I act spontaneously (the "I" is a habit of speech, it's to avoid having to make long sentences), when I act spontaneously, without objectifying myself, is generally unbearable enough: the reactions in others are difficult. I always have to ... [restrain myself]. It does happen, but generally I am

Page 94

obliged to be careful, especially when I have to speak.

And there is a very amusing observation; it's exactly what Sri Aurobindo wrote in Savitri: "The wise men talk and sleep...." God grows up while the wise men talk and sleep.[[A few shall see what none yet understands God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep; For man shall not know the coming till its hour And belief shall be not till the work is done. (I.IV.55) ]] And that's how it is: wholly unconscious of what goes on. I don't say it (I am saying it to you), but they are wholly unconscious. I constantly feel I am using a candle snuffer (!) so as not to be ... really unbearable.

When this luminous Power comes, it's so compact - so compact that it gives the impression of being much heavier than Matter. It's veiled, veiled, completely veiled, otherwise ... unbearable.



3rd April , vol-8, 1967, page 94-95 , L'Agenda de M�re







With this 4.5.67, there are quite amusing things. Some people

Page 129

have the attitude of "righter of wrongs" (there are people like that) and take their own example of a wrong they have suffered which must be righted; and they say, "This will be the Mother's symbol." Another would like cameras to be sensitive enough to photograph the "presence" invisible to the human eye. That also comes, they are things that come in the atmosphere [of Mother]. Another (several others, it seems) thinks that on that day the Indian new year will begin. Others ... everyone thus imagines something, and it comes into the atmosphere. It's amusing.

And I always think of that passage in Savitri in which he says, "God shall grow up ..." Grow up in Matter, of course (and you SEE the Divinity grow up in Matter, and Matter being made more and more capable of manifesting the Divinity), and he says, "... while the wise men talk and sleep."[[Savitri, I.IV.55. ]] It's exactly that. And it's charming.

(silence)

Sri Aurobindo once told me that one of the first results would be that governments would come under the supramental influence (not that WE would govern! But that governments would be influenced). And these last few days I have seen three ministers and five members of parliament! And I have received an offering from the prime minister [Indira Gandhi]. So it's going well! It's quite amusing.... Some come from Delhi just for a day, only to see me and go back. So one hopes - one hopes - that they will grow a bit wiser (!)



3rd May , vol-8, 1967, page 130 , L'Agenda de M�re



I am intentionally not giving any definition. Because my lifelong feeling has been that it's a mere word, and a word behind which people put a lot of very undesirable things.... It's that idea of a god who claims to be "the one and only," as they say: "God is the one and only." But they feel it and say it in the way Anatole France put it (I think it was in The Revolt of Angels): that God who wants to be the one and only and ALL ALONE. That was what had made me a complete atheist, if I may say so, when I was a child; I refused to accept a being, WHOEVER HE WAS, who proclaimed himself to be the one and only and almighty. Even if he were indeed the one and only and almighty (laughing), he should have no right to proclaim it! That's how it was in my mind. I could make an hour-long speech on this, to show how in every religion they tackled the problem.

At any rate, I have given what I find is the most objective definition. And as in the other day's "What is the Divine?", I have tried to give a feeling of the Thing; here I wanted to fight against the use of the word which, to me, is hollow, but dangerously so.

Page 170

I remember a very powerful line in "Savitri" which says it all
wonderfully in a few words. He says, "The bodiless Nameless
ness that saw God BORN...."[[The bodiless Namelessness that saw God born And tries to gain from mortal's mind and soul A deathless body and a divine name. (Savitri, I.III.40) ]]


7th June , vol-8, 1967, page 170 , L'Agenda de M�re



Mother reads "Savitri"

A divine force shall flow through tissue and cell

And take the charge of breath and speech and act

And all the thoughts shall be a glow of suns

And every feeling a celestial thrill.

Often a lustrous inner dawn shall come

Lighting the chambers of the slumbering mind;

A sudden bliss shall run through every limb

Page 352

And Nature with a mightier Presence fill.

Thus shall the earth open to divinity

And common natures feel the wide uplift,

Illumine common acts with the Spirit's ray

And meet the deity in common things.

Nature shall live to manifest secret God,

The Spirit shall take up the human play,

This earthly life become the life divine.

(XI.i.710)

25th October , vol-8, 1967, page 352-53 , L'Agenda de M�re
Mother's Agenda - volume - 9 , 1968
Sri Aurobindo used to write at night, and in the night I would have the experience; in the morning he would read it to me and I would recognize my experience - I hadn't said anything to him, he hadn't said anything to me. Interesting ...

But one always seems to be boasting, that's the trouble. No, in reality, one can SAY a thing like this, but writing and publishing it is quite another matter.



17th January , vol-9, 1968, page 33 , L'Agenda de M�re



And your translation of "Savitri"?
But I have work to do. I no longer have time. I no longer have time to do anything.

It's a pity.
That is to say, now F. has taken it into her head to translate Savitri with me (all she does is look in the dictionary when I need a word), right from the start, and I've reached the second page! It'll take ten or fifteen years!

But I find it very interesting, because I only have to be still, and Sri Aurobindo dictates to me. So there remains one or two little corrections in the French, and that's that. He tells me the word: for this word, this word. Like that. It's very interesting. Only, I do five or six lines every time.... But now I do it better than I used to.

3rd July , vol-9, 1968, page 189 , L'Agenda de M�re


Mother's Agenda - volume - 10 , 1969
(Then Mother records her translation of a few excerpts from
"Savitri," which are to be set to music. Satprem suddenly notices
that a corner of Mother's left eye is slightly bloodshot.)
The master of existence lurks in us
And plays at hide and seek with his own Force;
In Nature's instrument loiters secret God.
The immanent lives in man as in his house;
He has made the universe his pastime's field,
A vast gymnasium of his works of might ....
He is the explorer and the mariner
Of a secret inner ocean without bourne:
He is the adventurer and cosmologist
Of a magic earth's obscure geography ...
Or passing through a gate of pillar-rocks ...
He leaves the last lands, crosses the ultimate seas,
He turns to eternal things his symbol quest;
Life changes for him its time-constructed scenes,
Its images veiling infinity.

(I.IV.66-70)

Isn't it clear?

A car was just passing by.
I'll have to do it again ....

Won't it tire your eye?
What's wrong?



5th April , vol-10, 1969, page 118 , L'Agenda de M�re



(Mother first reads a few fragments from "Savitri"
which are to be set to music.)
In Matter shall be lit the spirit's glow ...
A few shall see what none yet understands;
God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep;
For man shall not know the coming till its hour
And belief shall be not till the work is done.
Page 128


This transfiguration is earth's due to heaven:
A mutual debt binds man to the Supreme:
His nature we must put on as he put ours;
We are sons of God and must be even as he:
His human portion, we must grow divine.
Our life is a paradox with God for key.
*
But none learns whither through the unknown he sails
Or what secret mission the great Mother gave.
In the hidden strength of her omnipotent Will,
Driven by her breath across life's tossing deep,
Through the thunder's roar and through the windless hush,
Through fog and mist where nothing more is seen,
He carries her scaled orders in his breast.
*
A power is on him from her occult force
That ties him to his own creation's fate,
And never can the mighty traveller rest
And never can the mystic voyage cease,
Till the nescient dusk is lifted from man's soul
And the morns of God have overtaken his night.
*
This constant will she covered with her sport,
To evoke a person in the impersonal Void,
With the Truth-Light strike earth's massive roots of trance,
Wake a dumb self in the inconscient depths
And raise a lost power from its python sleep
That the eyes of the Timeless might look out from Time
And the world manifest the unveiled Divine.
For this he left his white infinity
And laid on the Spirit the burden of the flesh,
That Godhead's seed might flower in mindless Space.

Savitri, I.IV.55-73



12th April , vol-10, 1969, page 128-29 , L'Agenda de M�re













And at one place he says:

He shore the cord of mind that ties the earth-heart
And cast away the yoke of Matter's law.
The body's rules bound not the spirit's powers ....

(I.V.74)

You see, he says the heartbeats stop ....

(Mother looks for the passage,

which Satprem reads out:)

When life had stopped its beats, death broke not in ....
Page 139
That's it! And he says that the mind also stops.

(Satprem reads)

He dared to live when breath and thought were still.
That's it.

Thus could he step into that magic place
Which few can even glimpse with hurried glance ....
When I read it, I didn't know he had spoken of that experience of the abolition of the mind - he did speak of it, and he says the heartbeats have stopped, but that one isn't dead. That's it.

I don't know, when I read it, I suddenly felt he was describing the transition from ordinary life to a supramental life.

I don't know why, but I very strongly said to myself that I absolutely had to show you this.

(Satprem reads out the translation)

I don't know if the translation is very great, but it's the best I could do. (I am slowly translating the whole of Savitri - it'll take ten years!) You remember, we had translated a good deal of it, but it was the end of Savitri; this is the beginning.

But the abolition of the mind, isn't it the same as the complete tranquillity of the mind?
No.

It's not the same thing.
No.

What can be done to abolish the mind?
No, I don't think it should be done. I think what's necessary is this absolute tranquillity so That may go through without being distorted. The abolition [in Mother] was done because the body wanted to attempt the process of transformation of the cells, and it was already quite old, you see, so things had to go fast. It was for the movement to be swift. But of course, I can see it's risky



16th April , vol-10, 1969, page 139-140 , L'Agenda de M�re



The vast majority of humanity is unconscious (what I call unconscious, that is, without contact with the Consciousness, not CONSCIOUSLY in contact with Consciousness), the vast majority; but for one who is capable of being above circumstances with a clear and precise vision of the why and the how ... it's wonderful.

There.

It's what Sri Aurobindo wrote in Savitri: God grows up on earth -God grows-but man ... (laughing), the wise man talks and

Page 169

sleeps ... and no one will notice it till the work is over. [[Savitri, I.IV.55. ]] That's how it is. And he knew it.





3rd may , vol-10, 1969, page 169-70 , L'Agenda de M�re



(Mother wants to revise with Satprem a few passages
of her translation of 'Savitri.')
But now I've come to notice that they cut these quotations, they leave out two lines in the middle - suddenly I'll say to myself, "But it doesn't hang together!" I'll ask, and F. tells me, "Yes, they left out one line, two lines ...." So what's to be done?

It's absurd.

Here, all this is ready.

I don't need to see it again: it's for you to see it. It's my translation.

What should I do?
(Laughing) See if my translation is good!

But Mother, listen ... why?
No, because some things might be put in a better way.

Yes, but I'm wary. You know, I have learned that what's thought
to be "better" according to literary knowledge isn't necessarily
better from the standpoint of the true force.
I quite agree with that.

Listen, basically what you should do is to see (you can see it right away) if you find something you think isn't too good. I've done it "like that"; I can't say I am attached to my translation, not at all,

Page 259

but if you could suggest something to me ... (Satprem starts reading out a passage).

As you said, the French might be a bit awkward, but it may be the only way to translate precisely. Sometimes I did it purposely.

Admitted through a curtain of bright mind
That hangs between our thought and absolute sight,
He found the occult cave, the mystic door
Near to the well of vision in the soul
And entered where the Wings of Glory brood
In the sunlit space where all is for ever known.

(I.V.74)

"Brood"? ...
It's the image of a hen brooding on its eggs! "The Wings of Glory" brood on things so they may be realized.

There in a hidden chamber closed and mute
Are kept the record graphs of the cosmic scribe,
And there the tables of the sacred Law ....
The symbol powers of number and of form,
And the secret code of the history of the world
And Nature's correspondence with the soul
Are written in the mystic heart of life.
In the glow of the Spirit's room of memories
He could recover the luminous marginal notes
Dotting with light the crabbed ambiguous scroll ...

(ibid.)

(Mother laughs) "The crabbed ambiguous scroll"! ...

Is that all?

He saw the unshaped thought in soulless forms,
Knew Matter pregnant with spiritual sense,
Mind dare the study of the Unknowable,
Life its gestation of the Golden Child.

(I. V. 76)

A Will, a hope immense now seized his heart,
And to discern the superhuman's form
He raised his eyes to unseen spiritual heights,
Aspiring to bring down a greater world.

(ibid.)

(silence)

Page 260

Yesterday, I read another part of Savitri which tells how the king is transformed [[The World-Soul, II.XIV. ]] - those are ALL the experiences my body is now going through! I knew nothing about it (I don't remember that at all), and I seemed to be reading all the experiences my body is now going through .... It's interesting.

There's EVERYTHING in this Savitri!

And to be able to describe those experiences like that, he must have had them.


26th July , vol-10, 1969, page 259-261 , L'Agenda de M�re


(Then Mother returns to the previous conversation about materi
alizations, and Satprem's note in which he asked, "But Savitri
goes into death in search of Satyavan ... so Mother is going
to bring back Sri Aurobindo?')
I've received your note .... But you know that Sri Aurobindo said he wanted to come back on the earth only in a superhuman body ... a supramental body. [[For a long time Mother at times confused "superhuman" with "supramental," but she clearly means the latter and not the former. ]]

(silence)

A host of problems have instantly arisen .... You see, there's a considerable difference between human life and animal life, and there will be a considerable difference between superhuman life and human life (supramental life and human life). But then, IN WHAT SENSE? ... Take wholly ... practical things: Will they have houses? How will they live? ...

We can conceive that food will no longer be needed, that there will be another method of sustenance, but ...


30th July , vol-10, 1969, page 272 , L'Agenda de M�re


I am reading Savitri, the second Book, I think, the transformation of the King, his experience. [[Book Two, Canto XIV, "The World-Soul." ]] I had read it very long ago, I didn't remember at all, not at all; these days I have been reading it again ... and it's like a detailed description of the experience my body is now having! Ex-traor-di-nar-y. When I read it again, I was flabbergasted.

Page 277

It's absolutely as if my body were trying to copy that! And I didn't remember at all, not in the least .... which would mean that Sri Aurobindo had SEEN the thing - did he see it, or did he experience it? I don't know ... And that's what he regards as the supramentalization of the physical being. Do you remember that in Savitri?


2nd August , vol-10, 1969, page 277-78 , L'Agenda de M�re


Mother's Agenda - volume - 11 , 1970

(Then Mother takes up the reading of Savitri: the end of

the Debate of Love and Death.)

Is it a speech by this gentleman?

Yes [laughing], yes, it's the end.
The end of his speech?

One of us should write.... If it's more convenient for me to write, I'll write.

It's always better to have your handwriting! But if it tires you,
it's quite easy for me to note it down.
"Tires," oh no! It's just that it [Mothers handwriting] is no longer good. It's no longer as it should be - but it doesn't tire me. So we'll put:

(Mother writes her French translation

of the following verses:)

If thou art Spirit and Nature is thy robe,
Cast off thy garb and be thy naked self
Immutable in its undying truth,
Alone for ever in the mute Alone.
Turn then to God, for him leave all behind;
Forgetting Love, forgetting Satyavan,
Annul thyself in his immobile peace.
Page 229
O soul, drown in his still beatitude.
For thou must die to thyself ...
That's for sure! Thou must die to thyself to reach ... � la supr�matie divine [divine supremacy]?...

"To reach the divine heights"?
No, we must put "God" in Death's mouth.

For thou must die to thyself to reach God's height:
I, Death, am ...
Happiness?

I, Death, am the gate of immortality.

Savitri, X.IV.647

He's clever!

Every time you read it again, it's new.

But that's a very interesting phenomenon. Every time I read Savitri, I feel as if I am reading it for the first time, really. It's not that I understand differently, it's that its completely new: I never read it before! It's odd. Its at least the fourth time I read it.

And truly there's everything in it. All the things I've discovered lately were there. And I hadn't seen it. It's odd.

The first time I read it was a revelation; it hung together perfectly well from beginning to end, and I felt I had understood (I did understand something). The second time I read it, I said to myself, "But this isn't the same thing as what I read!..." It hung together, it made up a whole - and I understood something else. Then, recently when I read, at every passage I said to myself, "How new this is! And how the things I have found since are there!" Today again, that's how it is, as if I read it for the first time! And it puts me into contact with the things I have just discovered.

It's a miraculous book! (Mother laughs)

We'll continue in the same way.



6th June , vol-10, 1969, page 229-30 , L'Agenda de M�re



(Mother takes up her translation of Savitri: Savitri's

answer to Death.)

But Savitri answered to the sophist God:
"Once more wilt thou call Light to blind Truth's eyes,
Make knowledge a catch of the snare of Ignorance
And the Word a dart to slay my living Soul?
One can't slay the soul!

Offer, O king, thy boons to tired spirits ...
Page 239

(Mother smiles)

And hearts that could not bear the wounds of Time,
Let those who were tied to body and to mind,
Tear off those bonds and flee into white calm
Crying for a refuge from the play of God,
Surely thy boons are great since thou art He!"

Savitri, X.IV.647



20th June , vol-10, 1969, page 239 , L'Agenda de M�re



Do we have time for some Savitri?

Yes, Mother. In the last verses, Savitri said:
Let those who were tied to body and to mind,
Tear off those bonds and flee into white calm
Is it Savitri who says that?

Yes, Death told her one must leave one's body in order to find God's height....

(Mother translates the sequel)

But how shall I seek rest in endless peace
Who house the mighty Mother's violent force,
Her vision turned to read the enigmaed world,
Her will tempered in the blaze of Wisdom's sun
And the flaming silence of her heart of love?
The world is a spiritual paradox
Invented by a need in the Unseen,
A poor translation to the creatures sense
Of That which for ever exceeds idea and speech,
A symbol of what can never be symbolised,
A language mispronounced, misspelt, yet true....

Savitri, X.IV.647-648

Is there more?

Yes, there is more.

(those were the last line

of the Debate of Love and Death

Mother was to translate)



1st July , vol-10, 1969, page 247 , L'Agenda de M�re



(Mother gives Satprem the message for August 15:)

"Even the body shall remember God."

Savitri, XI.I.707



1st August , vol-10, 1969, page 291 , L'Agenda de M�re



(Mother takes up the translation of a few extracts from Savitri.)

The great World-Mother by her sacrifice
Has made her soul the body of our state ...

II.I.99

That's interesting, I hadn't noticed: "has made her SOUL..."

The divine intention suddenly shall be seen,
The end vindicate intuitions sure technique.

II.I.100

It's interesting....



5th August , vol-10, 1969, page 298 , L'Agenda de M�re



"Or we may find when all the rest has failed Hid in ourselves the key of perfect change."
Where did he write this?

In "Savitri," Mother.
Oh, interesting.

(Satprem reads the introduction)
"Secrets are simple, because the truth is simple........ And what
looked like a human impossibility will become child's play."
It's magnificent, mon petit, magnificent!

It's just the thing needed.

What could we do to spread it?... It should be ... (gesture in every direction). A book isn't enough. We need something that would go everywhere.



7th October , vol-10, 1969, page 342 , L'Agenda de M�re



Then Mother takes up a few extracts from Savitri

that are to be set to music.)

A little point [shall] reveal the infinitudes.

II.I.100

It's interesting.





14th October , vol-10, 1969, page 347 , L'Agenda de M�re



(Mother translates a few fragments from Savitri which were

chosen for her.)

Page 356

A miracle of the Absolute was born,
Infinity put on a finite soul,
All ocean lived within a wandering drop,
A time-made body housed the Illimitable.
To live this Mystery out our souls came here.
...........
A figure sole on Nature's giant stair,
He mounted towards an indiscernible end
On the bare summit of created things.

II.I.101-102

That's really good. It's a pity it was cut into small bits!



24th October , vol-10, 1969, page 357 , L'Agenda de M�re



(Mother tries to read with difficulty a few lines from Savitri

written in large characters. These passages are meant

to be set to music.)

At times I read very clearly, and at other times ...

There walled apart by its own innerness
In a mystical barrage of dynamic light
He saw a lone immense high-curved world-pile
Erect like a mountain chariot of the Gods
Motionless under an inscrutable sky.
................
Once in the vigil of a deathless gaze
These grades had marked her giant downward plunge,
The wide and prone leap of a godheads fall.
Our life is a holocaust of the Supreme.
The great World-Mother by her sacrifice
Has made her soul the body of our state....

II.I.97-99

The body of our state ...

Of our human state.
(Mother repeats) She has made her soul the body of our state....

(silence)

So I had better try and read it out.

No, Mother, you'll tire your eyes.
I don't see clearly.

Yes, Mother, there's no need to try.
If you aren't tired sitting ...

Oh, no, Mother!
We can stay another ten minutes. You're not tired?



28th October , vol-10, 1969, page 358 , L'Agenda de M�re



(Then Mother translates a few passages from Savitri,

including this one:)

It lends beauty to the terror of the gulfs
And fascinating eyes to perilous Gods,
Invests with grace the demon and the snake.

II.II.106

It's charming!

That's exactly the nature of the vital, what Theon called the "nervous world."



28th November , vol-10, 1969, page 376 , L'Agenda de M�re



(Then Mother translates a few fragments of Savitri:)

This mire must harbour the orchid and the rose,
From her blind unwilling substance must emerge
A beauty that belongs to happier spheres.

II.II.107

2th Dcember , vol-10, 1969, page 381 , L'Agenda de M�re



Mother's Agenda - volume - 12 , 1971