When I read what Sri Aurobindo writes in The Synthesis, how things should be and what they are now, when I see the two, that's when I feel we're turning in circles.

It's more and more a universal yoga - the whole earth - and it is like that day and night, when I walk and when I speak and when I eat. It's constantly like that. As if the whole earth were ... it's like kneading dough to make it rise.

But when I read his Yoga of Self-Perfection and see ... simply what we are ... phew! What yeast we would need to make all that rise!

But this is not true: HE alone is doing it, it's always He.

page 400 , Mother's Agenda , volume - 1, 12th July 1960
I'm continuing The Yoga of Self-Perfection. It's really something ... I shall never tire of saying it's 'fabulous.' Everything, absolutely everything, in detail, everything is there. And he foresaw - foresaw, gave the remedy; foresaw, gave the remedy; foresaw, gave ...

Have you read it?

Long back.

What have you brought me?

I'll soon finish re-reading 'Essays on the Gita' ...

page 407 , Mother's Agenda , volume - 1, 10th Aug. 1960
There are moments while reading the Synthesis of Yoga when I feel so clearly why he put this particular word in that particular place, and why it could not have been otherwise - that's what makes the translation difficult.

For the placement of words is not the same in English and in French. In English, for example, the place an adverb occupies is of major importance for the precise meaning. In French also, but generally it's not the same! If at least it were exactly the opposite of English it would be easier, but it's not exactly the opposite. It's the same thing for the word order in a series of modifiers or any string of words; usually in English, for example, the most important word comes first and the least important last. In French, it's usually the opposite - but it doesn't always work!

The spirit of the two languages is not the same. Something always escapes. This must surely be why' revelations' (as Sri Aurobindo calls them) sometimes come to me in one language and sometimes in the other. And it does not depend on the state of consciousness I'm in, it depends on what has to be said.

page 429 , Mother's Agenda , volume 1 , 8th Oct. 1960 .
I'm just now finishing the Yoga of Self-Perfection ... When we see what human life is and, even in the best of cases, what it represents in the way of imbecility, stupidity, narrowness, mean
ness (not to mention ignorance because that is too flagrant) ... and even those who believe themselves to have generous heart, for example, or liberal ideas, a desire to do good! ... Each time the consciousness orients itself in one direction to attain some result, everything that was in existence (not just one's personal existence, but this sort of collectivity of existences that each being represents), everything that is contrary to this effort immediately presents itself in its crudest light.

It happened this morning while I was walking back and forth in my room. I had finished my japa ... I had to stop and hold my head in my hands to keep from bursting into tears. 'No, it is too dreadful,' I said to myself; 'and to think that we want Perfection!'

Then naturally there came as a consolation: only because the consciousness is getting closer to THE REAL THING can it see all this wretchedness, and the contrast alone makes these things appear so mean.

And it's true, those things I saw this morning which seemed so ... above all stupid and ugly (I've never had a sense of morality at any time in my life, thank God! But stupid and ugly things have always seemed ... I've always done my best to distance myself from them, even when I was very small). And now I see that these things which seem not only ridiculous but, well, almost shameful were considered, as I recall, remarkably noble earlier on and they represented an exceptionally lofty attitude in life - the very same things. So then I understood that it's quite simply a question of proportion.

And that's how the world is - things which now seem totally unacceptable to us, things we CANNOT tolerate, were quite all right in the past.

The day before yesterday, I spent the whole night looking on. I had read the passage by Sri Aurobindo in The Synthesis on 'supramental time' (wherein past, present and future coexist in a global consciousness). While you're in it, it's marvelous! You understand things perfectly. But when you're not in it ... Above all, there's this problem of how to keep the force of one's aspiration, the power of progress, this power which seems so inevitable - so inevitable if existence (let's simply take terrestrial existence) is to mean anything and its presence to be justified.

(This ascending movement towards a progressive 'better' that will be eternally better) - How is this to be kept when you have the total vision ... this vision in which everything coexists. At that moment, the other becomes something like a game, an amusement, if you will. (Not everyone finds it amusing!) And when you contain all that, why allow yourself the pleasure of succession? ... Is this pleasure of succession, of seeing things one after the other, equal to this intensity of the will for progress? ... Words are foolish!

The effort to see and to understand this gripped me all night. And when I woke up this morning, I thanked the Lord; I said to Him, 'Obviously, if You were to keep me totally in that consciousness, I could no longer ... I could no longer do my work!' How could I do my work? For I can only say something to people when I feel it or see it, when I see that it's what must be said, but if I am simultaneously in a consciousness in which I'm aware of everything that has led to that situation, everything that is going to happen, everything I'm going to say, everything the other's going to feel - then how could I do it!

There are still many hundreds of years to go before it becomes entirely what Sri Aurobindo describes - there's no hurry!

page 430-32 , Mother's Agenda , volume 1 , 11th Oct. 1960 .
I am just finishing The Synthesis of Yoga, and what Sri Aurobindo says is exactly what has happened to me throughout my life. And he explains how you can still make mistakes as long as you are not supramentalized. Sri Aurobindo describes all the ways by which images are sent to you - and they are not always images or reflections of the truth of things past, present or future; there are also all the images that come from human mental formations and all the various things that want to be considered. It is very, very interesting. And interestingly enough, in these few pages I have found a description of the work I have spent my whole life doing, trying to SIFT out all we see.

I can only be sure of something once a certain type of picture comes, and then the whole world could tell me, 'But things didn't happen like that'; I would reply, 'Sorry, but I see it.' And that type of picture is certain, for I have studied it, I have studied their differences in quality and the texture of the pictures. It is very interesting.

page 436 , Mother's Agenda , volume 1 , 11th Oct. 1960 .
During these last days, I was face to face with a problem as old as the world which had taken on an extraordinary intensity.

It's what Sri Aurobindo calls disbelief, and it's located in the most material physical consciousness - it isn't doubt (which mainly belongs to the mind), it is almost like a refusal to accept the obvious as soon as it doesn't belong to the little daily routine of ordinary sensations and reactions - a sort of incapacity to accept and recognize the exceptional.

This disbelief is the bedrock of the consciousness. And it comes with a ... ('thought' is too big a word for such an ordinary thing) a mental-physical activity which makes you ... (I am forced to use the word) 'think' things and which always foresees, imagines or draws conclusions (depending on the case) in a way which I myself call DEFEATIST. In other words, it automatically leads you to imagine all the bad things that can happen. And this occurs in a realm which is absolutely run-of-the-mill, in the most ordinary, restricted, banal activities of life - such as eating, moving ... in short, the coarsest of things.

It's fairly easy to manage and control this in the realm of thought, but when it comes to those reactions that rise up from the very bottom ... they're so petty that you can barely express them to yourself. For example, if someone mentions that so-and-so ate such-and-such a thing, immediately something somewhere starts stealing in: 'Ah, he's going to get a stomach-ache!' Or you hear that someone is going somewhere - 'Oh, he's going to have an accident!' ... And it applies to everything; it's swarming down below. Nothing to do with thought as such!

It's quite a nasty habit, for it keeps the most material state in a condition of disharmony, disorder, ugliness and difficulty.

I tried every possible way ... To get out of it is relatively easy. But then it doesn't change.

The problem appeared again to me very intensely when I read Sri Aurobindo's The Yoga of Self-Perfection. I was confronted with a whole formidable world to be transformed - to transform what is already luminous is quite easy, but to transform that! ... ugh - this stuff of life, so low and so coarse, so ordinary ... it's much more difficult.'

For the last several days, I've been at grips fighting with it. How can I stop this idiotic, coarse and above all defeatist automatism from constantly manifesting? It's truly an automatism; it doesn't respond to any conscious will, nothing. So what will it take to ... ? And it's QUITE INTIMATELY related to the body's illnesses (the old habits the body has of coming out of its rhythmic

1. Later, Mother added the following: 'In this regard - I don't know where, but somewhere - Sri Aurobindo spoke of this physical mind, and he said that there was nothing you could do with it; it must only be destroyed.' Mother may be alluding to the following passage from The Synthesis of Yoga: 'There is nothing to be done with this fickle, restless, violent and disturbing factor but to get rid of it whether by detaching it and then reducing it to stillness or by giving a concentration and singleness to the thought by which it will of itself reject this alien and confusing clement.' (sent. Ed., Vol. XX, p. 300.)

Mother may be alluding to the following passage from The Synthesis of Yoga: 'There is nothing to be done with this fickle, restless, violent and disturbing factor but to get rid of it whether by detaching it and then reducing it to stillness or by giving a concentration and singleness to the thought by which it will of itself reject this alien and confusing clement.' (sent. Ed., Vol. XX, p. 300.) movement, of entering into confusion) - the two things are very intimately linked.

I'm deep in the problem.

For me, 'the problem' doesn't mean explaining the thing (it's easy to explain), but controlling, mastering and transforming it. That will take some time.

We shall see.

page 492-93 , Mother's Agenda , volume - 1, 13th Dec. 1960


And I am ... how to put it? Nothing we say is ever absolutely true, but, to stretch it a bit, while I am ... not worried, not perturbed, not discouraged, I feel I can't get anything done; I spend all my time, all my time, seeing people, receiving and answering letters - doing nothing. I haven't touched my translation [[Mother generally worked a little every day on the French translation of The Synthesis of Yoga. ]] for over a week.

page 17 , Mother's Agenda , volume 2 , 7th Jan. 1961
I am continuing my reading of the Veda. I had to stop for some days because of a sore throat. But anyway, I'm starting again.

The Vedas, after all, were written by people who remembered a radical experience, which must have taken place on earth at a given moment, as an example of what was to come. (This always happens in the yoga: a first radical experience comes like a herald of the future realization.) So in the terrestrial yoga - in the yoga of the earth, of the planet earth - there was a moment when it came; they who are called the forefathers must have created, through their effort and their yoga, at least an image of the supramental realization. And those who wrote the Vedas, who composed all these hymns, remembered or kept the tradition of that experience. And oh, mon petit, it had the same effect on me as when I read the 'Yoga of Self-Perfection' in The Synthesis of Yoga (Mother catches her breath): there is such a gulf between what we are, what life on earth and human consciousness now are, even among the most enlightened, the most advanced, and THAT! ...

page 152 - Mother's Agenda, volume 2, 7th April - 1961

After more than a month I have resumed my translation [of The Synthesis of Yoga], and I fell exactly - it's splendid! - exactly on the passage that helped me understand what has happened, why there are all these difficulties. And the Synthesis and the Veda go hand in hand, so reading that passage brought some improvement; it's like being able to shift position, you know, so that now it's a bit better. Anyway....

page 157 - Mother's Agenda, volume 2, 8th April - 1961

in one chapter of The Synthesis of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo says that there is a state of consciousness in which all is from all eternity - everything, without exception, that is to be manifested here....

In detail?
In a certain state of consciousness (I no longer remember what he calls it - I think it's in the 'Yoga of Self-Perfection'), one is perfectly identified with the Supreme, not in his static but in his dynamic aspect, the state of becoming. In this state, everything is already there from all eternity, even though here it gives us the impression of a becoming. And Sri Aurobindo says that if you are capable of maintaining this state, [[Satprem had assumed that this state of consciousness was accessible only through a kind of trance or samadhi and that when Mother said one had to be capable of 'maintaining this state,' she meant that one should be capable of bringing it back here, into the waking consciousness. However, Mother rectified: 'It is a state with no "here" or "there". I have had this experience in the waking consciousness and both perceptions (the true and the false) were simultaneous.' ]] then you know everything: all that has been, all that is and all that will be - in an absolutely simultaneous way.

But you must have a firm head on your shoulders! Reading some of these chapters in 'Self-Perfection,' I thought it would be better if it didn't fall into just anyone's hands.

page 170 - Mother's Agenda, volume 2, 18th April - 1961

There are successive curves, each second of which would have to be noted down; and in the course of one of these curves, something is suddenly found. For example, at the beginning of The Yoga of Self-Perfection, Sri Aurobindo reviews other yogas, beginning with Hatha Yoga. I had just translated this when I remembered Sri Aurobindo saying that Hatha Yoga was very effective but that it amounted to spending your whole life training your body, which is an enormous time and effort spent on something not essentially very interesting. Then I 'looked' at it and said to myself, 'But after all,' (I was looking at life as it is, as people ordinarily live it) 'one spends at least 90% of one's life merely to PRESERVE one's body, to keep it going! All this attention and concentration on an instrument which is put to hardly any use.' Anyway, I was looking at it with that attitude, when suddenly all the cells of my body responded, in such a spontaneous and WARM way.... How to say it? Something so ... so moving. They told me, 'But it's the Lord who is looking after Himself in us!' Each one was saying: 'But it's the Lord who is looking after Himself in us!'

It was truly lovely. Then I gave my reason a good poke: 'How stupid can you be! You always forget the essential.'

It was very spontaneous and quite lovely.

So there you are-things like that happen, one thing or another, but it's nothing.


page 208 - Mother's Agenda, volume 2, 19th May - 1961

Here is something interesting. I am translating the 'Yoga of Self-Perfection.' My first look at it stiffened me - now it's a delight! And I have done nothing in between but simply let it work within; it's so easy!

My translation is poorly written, hardly French at all, but to me it is limpid.

And I see that the translation would go quickly if one moved into another domain. In one domain it is laborious, terrible, difficult, and the result is never very satisfying. But contrary to what I had thought, the domain of comprehension does not suffice, even the domain of experience does not suffice: something else is needed (oh, how to explain it?), a state in which effort is left totally behind. There is a state (which probably must be beyond the mind, because one no longer thinks at all, not at all) where everything is smiling and easy, and the sentences come to you all by themselves. It's peculiar - I read, and even before I finish reading the sentence to be translated I know what's in it; and then without waiting - almost without waiting to know what's in it - I know what to put for it. When it's like that I can translate a page in half an hour.

But it doesn't last - it ought to last. Usually it ends in a trance: I go off into the experience, I am in a beatific state ... and ten minutes later I notice that I've been in that state with my pen poised in my hand. It's not favorable to the work! But otherwise it's-I can't even say it's like someone dictating (it's not that, I don't 'hear'); it comes by itself. Oh, the other day there were one or two sentences! ... I wrote something and suddenly saw what I was writing - and doing so pulled me out of that state. 'Well,' I said to myself, 'how nicely put!' And plop! (Mother laughs) Everything was gone.

Be in that domain, and you will never grow tired.


page 220 - Mother's Agenda, volume 2, 2nd June - 1961

What struck me is that he never wanted to write anything else. To write those articles for the Bulletin [[Mother had asked Sri Aurobindo to write something for the Ashram 'Bulletin.' It was later published as The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth. ]] was really a heavy sacrifice for him. 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.

page 334 - Mother's Agenda, volume 2, 23rd Sep. - 1961

He mentions it when he explains mental equality [[In The Synthesis of Yoga. ]] - that a state is reached where one is unable to initiate any activity; only the stimulus of an impulsion from above can move you. So you do nothing, you just stay like that, perfectly immobile in your mind (not only physically - especially in your mind): you don't initiate anything.

Before, the mind was always creating, setting actions, wills and movements into motion, producing consequences; and it's very frightening when that stops - you feel you're becoming an idiot. But it's quite the opposite! No more ideas, no more will, no more impulsions, nothing. You act only when something makes you act, without knowing why or how.

This "something" doesn't come from below, of course, it mustn't come from below. But that condition can truly be achieved only when all the work below has been completed.

page 112 - Mother's Agenda , volume 3 , 6th March 1962

Oh! You can't imagine the discoveries I have made since I withdrew and supposedly have no more dealings with the outside....

I was already more than eighty, and had seen nearly every country in the world and every possible kind of person - and, well, I made some more discoveries, and I am making still more.

There's such a wonderful passage in The Synthesis of Yoga ("The Yoga of Self-Perfection"), where he mentions four things (you surely remember this), four things the disciple needs (I have just translated it). I knew this, of course, but the passage is especially timely now - particularly after that last experience, which is a jolt for a physical being. The fourth thing is wonderful. The first three we know: equality, peace and (a hard one) a spiritual ease in all circumstances. He added the word "spiritual" so people wouldn't think only of material ease - it's an ease in feelings, in sensations, in everything. But when you have a lot of pain it's obviously not so easy! When physical pain keeps you from sleeping and eating, when you are plagued by constant physical pain - or rather by a whole host of physical pains! - well, that bodily "ease" becomes difficult. It's the one thing that has seemed difficult to me; but anyway, it's being investigated - I think it was sent for me to investigate.

But the last thing he mentions is a marvel - the joy and laughter of the soul. And it's so true, so true! Always, all the time, no matter what happens, even when this body is in dreadful pain, the soul is laughing joyously within. Always, always, always.

page 154-55 , Mother's Agenda , volume 3 , 22nd May 1962

I am translating "The Yoga of Self-Perfection": what the body must be and must become to serve as an instrument. It's touching....

page 196 , Mother's Agenda , volume 3 , 6th June 1962

It's a sort of reply to something I am translating in The Synthesis of Yoga. You know, there are these three aspects that must always be kept united in one's consciousness: jiva (the individual), Shakti, and Ishwara (the Supreme). He gives a wonderful description of how we have all three together in a kind of inner hierarchy. So while reading that (as I translate I have all the experiences, they come spontaneously), I kept saying to myself, "No, that jiva hampers me; that jiva hems me in! It's not natural to me." What's natural to me is ... it's probably Mahashakti. There is always that sense of creative Power, and of the Lord. The infinite, marvelous, innumerable joy of the Lord, you see, which is so intermingled with the Power - you can sense the presence of the Lord, yet you cannot distinguish or differentiate between the two. It's all a delectable play. So to introduce the individual, the jiva, into this spoils everything, makes everything so small!

I wanted to put all this into my sentence.


page 307 , Mother's Agenda , volume 3 , 11th Aug 1962.

I don't have far to go on my translation of The Synthesis of Yoga (it's going very quickly), and I have found what I'll do next.... It will be something like those notebooks [Prayers and Meditations]. I am going to take the whole section of Savitri (to start with, I'll see later) from "The Debate of Love and Death" to the point where the Supreme Lord makes his prophecy about the earth's future; it's long - several pages long. This is for my own satisfaction.

Page 347 , Mother's Agenda , volume 3 , 18th Sept 1962

My translation [of The Synthesis of Yoga] will be finished soon - I'll miss it.

page 392 - Mother's Agenda , volume 3 , 30th Oct. 1962

But the body very distinctly feels that things are ALWAYS that way. Always that way. And that everything ... oh, the feeling of just how artificial all life's complications and problems are, and how different it could be! That's always in the background. For example, whenever the body feels ill at ease or something isn't working right, there's always a kind of deep feeling behind that it's just bad habits - which are lingering, fading away, losing their force and becoming more and more unreal. But it's ... it's like a machine that takes time to run down.

In the other consciousness (the human consciousness), you have the joy, the excitement of the experience; that has completely gone away, absolutely. There's neither the joy of the experience nor the wonder nor.... Everything is so obvious, so obvious: that's IT. And it's not something you're looking at: it's LIKE THAT. That's all, it's just like that.

Somewhere in the active consciousness something KNOWS, constantly, that all the complications and miseries and misfortunes (I mean all the things we call life's "misfortunes") are ... a bad habit, nothing more. And it's hard for us to change our habits. Yet THE TIME HAS COME to change habits.

It's just a bad habit.

I can see I am still (and God knows how long it will last!) in that transitional period Sri Aurobindo describes in "The Yoga of Self-Perfection." A period when the true thing is getting established but the tail of the old thing trails behind, mixes in and colors things. Well, it's an old habit, and it takes SUCH a long time to go away.

page 434 , Mother's Agenda , volume 3 , 27th Nov. 1962

But the last part ["The Yoga of Self-Perfection"] is the longest, and it's difficult, too.

He didn't complete it.

He never completed the last chapter, he even told me, "You will complete it when I have completed my yoga," and then he went, left everything.

Afterwards, several times, he told me that I should be the one to complete it - I answered him that I didn't have the brain for it. Or else I would have to write it in a mediumistic way, but I am not a good medium, I am too conscious - the consciousness is immediately awake in the background and watches the phenomenon, so it stops working.

page 434 , Mother's Agenda , volume 4 , 31st Dec 1963