|
The Mother on Savitri —A Compilation
Mother, suffering comes from ignorance and pain, but what is the nature of the suffering and pain the Divine Mother feels for her children—the Divine Mother in Savitri? It is because she participates in their nature. She has descended upon earth to participate in their nature. Because if she did not participate in their nature, she could not lead them farther. If she remained in her supreme consciousness where there is no suffering, in her supreme knowledge and consciousness, she could not have any contact with human beings. And it is for this that she is obliged to take on the human consciousness and form, it is to be able to enter into contact with them. Only, she does not forget: she has adopted their consciousness but she remains in relation with her own real, supreme consciousness. And thus, by joining the two, she can make those who are in that other consciousness progress. But if she did not adopt their consciousness, if she did not suffer with their sorrow, she could not help them. Hers is not a suffering of ignorance: it is a suffering through identity. It is because she has accepted to have the same vibrations as they, in order to be able to enter into contact with them and pull them out of the state they are in. If she did not enter into contact with them, she would not be felt at all or no one could bear her radiance. ... This has been said in all kinds of forms, in all kinds of religions, and they have spoken very often of the divine Sacrifice, but from a certain point of view it is true. It is a voluntary sacrifice, but it is true: giving up a state of perfect consciousness, perfect bliss, perfect power in order to accept the state of ignorance of the outer world so as to pull it out of that ignorance. If this state were not accepted, there would be no contact with it. No relation would be possible. And this is the reason of the incarnations. Otherwise, there would be no necessity. If the divine consciousness and divine force could work directly from the place or state of their perfection, if they could work directly on matter and transform it, there would be no need to take a body like man’s. It would have been enough to act from the world of Truth with the perfect consciousness and upon consciousness. In fact that acts perhaps but so slowly that when there is this effort to make the world progress, make it go forward more rapidly, well, it is necessary to take on human nature. By taking the human body, one is obliged to take on human nature, partially. Only, instead of losing one’s consciousness and losing contact with the Truth, one keeps this consciousness and this Truth, and it is by joining the two that one can create exactly this kind of alchemy of transformation. But if one did not touch matter, one could do nothing for it. Did Savitri foresee what she was going to do? She said so. You have not read it? She had even been told that she would be alone. And she said: I am ready to be alone. You have not read it? It is in the canto they recited last year, at the School Annual function, 1 December 1953. Did she know she would meet the Mother of Sorrows, the Mother of Might? Indeed she did. It is said all along that she knew all that was going to happen. It is written clearly. Indeed, to each of them she says clearly: I shall bring to you what you need. Consequently, she knows it. Else she would not say so. If she did not know it, how could she say so? In Savitri the Mother of Sorrows says: “Perhaps when the world sinks into a last sleep, I too may sleep in dumb eternal peace.” Ah! that, that is the human consciousness. It is the human consciousness. It is the idea of the human consciousness that when all suffering will be over, well, “I shall sleep”. It is indeed of this that SriAurobindo speaks. When there is this aspiration for a supreme peace, one feels that if there were a pralaya and the world disappeared, well, at least there would be peace. But the phrase itself is self-contradictory, for if there were a pralaya, there would be no more peace to be felt—there would be nothing at all any longer! But this is just one of the contradictions of the human consciousness: “As long as the world is there and suffering there, I shall suffer with the world. But if ever the world enters into peace, disappears in the peace of Non-Being, then I too shall rest.” It is a poetic way of saying that as long as misery is there in the world, I shall suffer with the world. Only when it ceases to be there, it shall cease for me also. Then what will the Mother of Sorrows do? What else can she do? She will be the Mother of Delight. Savitri represents the Mother’s Consciousness, doesn’t she? Yes. What does Satyavan represent? Well, he is the Avatar. He is the incarnation of the Supreme. There is a difference between immortality and the deathless state. SriAurobindo 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. That is what SriAurobindo means when he speaks of an intolerable ecstasy; it is not an intolerable ecstasy: it is an unflinching ecstasy. * *Thoughts and Aphorisms: 'Cruelty transfigured becomes Love that is intolerable ecstasy...’ There is a line by SriAurobindo 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. * *See also, 25 February 1961: There is only one thing you can do—ANNUL YOURSELF as much as possible. If you can annul yourself completely, then the experience is total. And if your ‘disappearance’ could be constant, the experience would be constantly there—but that’s still far away... . I don’t know if all this... . Sweet Mother, with what attitude should I read SriAurobindo’s books when they are difficult and when I do not understand? Savitri, The Life Divine, for example. Read a little at a time, read again and again until you have understood. 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 marvellous. …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')... SriAurobindo 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. 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! That alone existed. But all of that is wonderfully, accurately expressed and EXPLAINED in Savitri. Only you must know how to read it! The entire last part, from the moment she goes to seek Satyavan in the realm of Death (which affords an occasion to explain this), the whole description of what happens there, right up to the end, where every possible offer is made to tempt her, everything she must refuse to continue her terrestrial labour... it is my experience EXACTLY. Savitri is really a condensation, a concentration of the universal Mother—the eternal universal Mother, Mother of all universes from all eternity—in an earthly personality for the Earth's salvation. And Satyavan is the soul of the Earth, the Earth's jiva. So when the Lord says, 'he whom you love and whom you have chosen,' it means the earth. All the details are there! When she comes back down, when Death has yielded at last, when all has been settled and the Supreme tells her, 'Go, go with him, the one you have chosen,' how does SriAurobindo describe it? He says that she very carefully takes the SOUL of Satyavan into her arms, like a little child, to pass through all the realms and come back down to earth. Everything is there! He hasn't forgotten a single detail to make it easy to understand for someone who knows how to understand. And it is when Savitri reaches the earth that Satyavan regains his full human stature. It was about the Word, the primal sound. SriAurobindo 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 (SriAurobindo 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 SriAurobindo was concretely, almost palpably, present. Now it has gone away. 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 SriAurobindo 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. And with a sort of prescience I see that only the body can know—that's the extraordinary thing! And when the body makes this movement (gesture of stepping back from physical appearances)—what to call it? This movement of fusion (is it 'fusion'?), of no longer being a separate body, of being the Divine—there is something which... . There is a sort of abstraction of something (and even that is putting it too concretely). And sometimes it succeeds, the body floats in the Light; sometimes it's only partial. Sometimes all the inner consciousness is there, full and total—but HERE things remain as they are, stupid, stupid, utterly stupid! Blind, in shifting sands, painful (and it's not a thought, it's not even a sensation; I don't know what it is). And THERE the conscious will can do nothing. Nothing. All it could do it has done, and it continues to do all it can at each minute, and it's nothing, it is not THAT—what is it?? That is a true Secret. How splendid it will be when it is found. And at the same time there's a kind of prescience, like a sensation beforehand, of an omnipotence—the TRUE Omnipotence. And nothing but THAT can satisfy you, nothing else—all the rest is... nothing. 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 SriAurobindo seem to have been incorporated into Savitri. He has included many of them... . 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. I'm re-reading Savitri. Lucky man! I would love to read it again. And the more you read, the more marvellous it becomes. ... as I was saying at the beginning, the body's formation has a very minimal, a quite subordinate importance for a saint or a sage. But for this supramental work, the way the body is formed has an almost crucial importance, and not at all in relation to spiritual elements nor even to mental power: these aspects have no importance AT ALL. The capacity to endure, to last is the important thing. Well, in that respect, it is absolutely undeniable that my body has an infinitely greater capacity than SriAurobindo's had. That was the basic problem—because the identification of the two [SriAurobindo and the Mother] was almost child's play, it was nothing: for me to merge into him or him to merge into me was no problem, it wasn't difficult. We had some conversations on precisely this subject, because we saw that...(there were many other things, too, but this isn't the time to speak of them) the prevailing conditions were such that I told him I would leave this body and melt into him with no regret or difficulty; I told him this in words, not just in thought. And he also replied to me in words: Your body is indispensable for the Work. Without your body the Work cannot be done. After that, I said no more. It was no longer my concern, and that was the end of it. This was said in... 1949, just a little more than a year before he left. And that's really how it is. But now I am set face-to-face with the fact... the immensity, or the... something... . This work is so formidable! 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. SriAurobindo 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. 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, 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. SriAurobindo 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 splendour of creation exceeding all logic! It brings in a fullness and a power completely beyond the petty shallow logic of human mentality. ... 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, 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 HERE, and when all is ready, when the earth is ready, when humanity is ready (even if no one is aware of it), when the Great Moment comes, well...I will descend to finish my work.' That's the story. You understand, if I were British and writing in English, I could try to do a book on SriAurobindo using Savitri alone. With quotations from Savitri one can maintain a certain poetical rhythm, and this rhythm can generate an opening. But in French it isn't possible—how could it be translated? Yes, that's what I mean—but even in English... . 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! What struck me is that he never wanted to write anything else. To write those articles for the Bulletin was really a heavy sacrifice for him. He had said he would complete certain parts of The Synthesis of Yoga, 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. The Mother reads:
Not only is there
hope for godheads pure; 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. 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—SriAurobindo's power is so much with them... . The passage about the "white gods"—what was it that "the white gods had missed"? But SriAurobindo has written it all down in full, right here in the Aphorisms [88-92]. But I also remember reading The Tradition, before I met SriAurobindo (it was like a novel, a serialised romance of the world's creation, but it was very evocative; Théon 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 Théon, 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 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. 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. Théon 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 Théon 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 Théon, 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 Théon'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 Théon 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. Well, if you speak this way to philosophers and metaphysicians, they'll look at you as if to say, "You must be a real simpleton to believe all that claptrap!" But these things are not to be taken as concrete truths—they are simply splendid images. Through them I really did come in contact, very concretely, with the truth of what caused the world's distortion, much better than with all the Hindu stories, far more easily. Buddhism and all similar lines of thought took the shortest path: "The desire to exist is what has caused all the trouble." If the Lord had refrained from having this desire, there would have been no world! It's childish, very childish, really a much too human way of looking at the problem. To see it from the angle of delight of being is qualitatively far superior, but then there's still the problem of why it all became the way it is. The usual reply is: because all things were possible, and this is ONE possibility. But it's not a very satisfying feeling: "Yes, all right, that's just the way it is, it's a fact." People used to ask Théon too, "Why did it happen like this? Why...?" "Wait till you get to the other side, then you will know. And meanwhile do what's necessary to get there—that's the most urgent thing." But there is one advantage: without those beings, without the world's distortion, many things would be lacking. Those beings potentially embodied certain absolutely unique elements—understandably so, since they were the first wave. And precisely because they still WERE the Supreme to such a great extent, each one felt he was the Supreme, and that was that. Only it wasn't quite sufficient, for the simple reason that they were already divided into four, and one single division is enough to make everything go wrong. It's readily understandable: it's not something essentially evil, but a question of wrong FUNCTIONING; it's not the substance, not the essence. The essence isn't evil, but the functioning is faulty. 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. 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." * That went deep into me, and it returns each time difficulties arise, as if to say, “Don’t complain.” And there are plenty! ...
*I climb not to
thy everlasting Day, …in the history of earth, wherever there was a possibility for the Consciousness to manifest, I was there; 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. 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 SriAurobindo they would come and come and come to me, night after night and sometimes during the day—a mass of things! Afterwards I told SriAurobindo 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. But this one [the tall white Being] is not of human origin; it was not formed in a human life: it is a being that had already incarnated, and is one of those who presided over the formation of this present being [the Mother]. But, as I said, I saw it: it was sexless, neither male nor female, and as intrepid as the vital can be, with a calm but absolute power... . Ah, I found a very good description of it in one of SriAurobindo's plays, when he speaks of the goddess Athena (I think it's in Perseus, but I am not sure); she has that kind of...it's an almighty calm, and with such authority! Yes, it's in Perseus—when she appears to the Sea-God and forces him to retreat to his own domain. There's a description there that fits this Being quite well. ... During the whole time SriAurobindo was here, the four entities he speaks of, the four Aspects of the Mother, were always present. And I was constantly obliged to tell one or the other of them, "Now keep calm, now, now, calm down"—they were always inclined to intervene! 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 SriAurobindo 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. 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. (These are the last lines of Savitri the Mother translated. They were found in her notebook under the date 1 July 1970.)
But how shall I
seek rest in endless peace The Mother's translation, 1 July 1970:
Mais comment
puis-je chercher le repos dans une paix sans fin 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. 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. [The Mother is alluding to the passage in Savitri where SriAurobindo speaks of "the dark half of Truth."] … I've begun Savitri—ah!... As you know, I prepare some illustrations with Huta, and for her illustrations she has chosen some passages from Savitri (the choice isn't hers, it's Amal's and Purani'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 4. 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, 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), SriAurobindo 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 (the 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, I didn't reread my translation, I am doing it now for the first time. (The 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. 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 marvellous 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, Here there were a few more erasures. It will probably go on improving. But what a wonder, this passage, what beauty! (The Mother reads aloud her translation up to: "God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep") Splendid! (The 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, 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 (the 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. 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 SriAurobindo 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."[the 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." 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. I even find they should be avoided. They're bad. Somewhere they make me angry. It makes a very dark atmosphere, it clouds the atmosphere. Unfortunately, I have lost the habit of French, the words I use to express myself are quite limited and the right word doesn't come—something looks up in the word store and doesn't find the word. I can sense it as if elusively, I feel there is a word, but all sorts of substitutes come forward that are worthless. Now the sensation is altogether, altogether new. It's not the customary movement of words pouring in and so on: you search and suddenly you catch hold of something—it's no longer that way at all: as though it were the ONLY thing that remained in the world. All the rest—mere noise. Last night, we were together for quite a long time in SriAurobindo’s permanent dwelling-place in the subtle physical (what SriAurobindo called the true physical). Everything that took place there (far too long and complicated to relate) was organised, so to say, to express concretely the rapidity of the present movement of transformation. And with a smile, SriAurobindo told something like this: “Do you believe now?” It was as if he were evoking the three lines from Savitri:
God shall grow up
while the wise men talk and sleep; (Regarding a passage in Savitri in which SriAurobindo 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; What a marvellous 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 SriAurobindo 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 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 SriAurobindo told me that; previously, in this life, it hadn't even crossed my mind. In that sense Théon'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 (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 SriAurobindo...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!" (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! [The 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, marvellous 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. ... But it's amusing because I had never paid much attention to the questions of language, the experience is novel, almost the discovery of the truth behind expression. Before, my concern was to be as clear, exact and precise as possible; to say exactly what I meant and put each word in its proper place. But that's not it! Each word has its own life! Some are drawn together by affinity, others repel each other... it's very funny! …the rapidity of the present movement of transformation, and with a smile, SriAurobindo told something like this: “Do you believe now?” It was as if he were evoking the three lines from Savitri:
God shall grow up
while the wise men talk and sleep; My blessings SriAurobindo says in Savitri: All’s miracle here and can by miracle change. What is a miracle? That depends on how you look at it, from this side or that. You give the name of miracle only to things which cannot be clearly explained or for which you have no mental explanation. From this point of view you can say that countless things that happen are miracles, because you cannot explain the how or the why of them. I can’t see what a true miracle can be because, after all, what is a miracle? A true miracle...Only the mind has the notion of miracles; because the mind decides, by its own logic, that given this and that, another thing can or cannot be. But this represents all the limitations of the mind. Because, from the point of view of the Lord, how can there be a miracle? Everything is Himself which He objectifies. So here we come to the great problem of the way which is being followed, the eternal way, as SriAurobindo explains it in Savitri. Of course, one can conceive that what was objectified first was something which had an inclination for objectivisation. The first thing to recognise, which seems consistent with the principle of evolution, is that the objectivisation is progressive, it is not total for all eternity … It is very difficult to tell, because we cannot get out of our habit of conceiving that there is a definite quantity unfolding indefinitely and that there can only be a beginning if there is a definite quantity. We always have, at least in our way of speaking, the idea of a moment (laughing) when the Lord decides to objectify Himself. Like this, the explanation becomes easy: He objectifies Himself gradually, progressively, and this results in a progressive evolution. But that is only a manner of speaking; because there is no beginning, there is no end, and yet there is a progression. The sense of succession, the sense of evolution, the sense of progress only exists with the manifestation. It is only when one speaks of the earth that one can give an explanation that is both very rational and in accord with the facts, because the earth has a beginning, not in its soul but in its material reality. It is also likely that a material universe has a beginning. If you look at it this way, for a universe a miracle would be the sudden intrusion of something from another universe. And for the earth, this reduces the problem to something very understandable—a miracle is the sudden intrusion of something which did not belong to the earth: it produces a radical and immediate change by introducing a principle which did not belong to this physical world of earth. But there again, it is said that at the very centre of each element everything exists in principle; so even that miracle is not possible. One could say that the sense of miracle belongs only to a finite world, a finite consciousness, a finite conception. It is the sudden entry—the intrusion, the intervention, the penetration—without preparation, of something which did not exist in this physical world. So obviously, any manifestation of a will or a consciousness which belongs to a domain that is more infinite and more eternal than earth, is necessarily a miracle on earth. But if you leave the finite world, the understanding of the finite world, miracles do not exist. The Lord can play at miracles if it so amuses Him, but there are no miracles—He plays every possible game. You can begin to understand Him only when you feel in this way, that He plays every possible game, and “possible” does not mean possible according to the human conception, but possible according to His own conception! And there, there is no room for miracles—except that it looks like a miracle. If, instead of a slow evolution, something belonging to the supramental world appeared suddenly, man, the mental being, could call that a miracle, because it would be the intervention of something which he does not consciously carry within himself and which intervenes in his conscious life. And in fact, if you consider this taste for miracles, which is very strong—much stronger in children and in hearts that have remained childlike than in highly mentalised individuals—it is a faith in the realization of the aspiration for the marvellous, of something higher than anything one can expect from normal life... . This need for miracles must be changed into a conscious aspiration for something—which is already there, which exists—which will be manifested by the help of all these aspirations; all these aspirations are necessary or, if one looks at it in a truer way, they are an accompaniment—an agreeable accompaniment—in the eternal unfolding. (The Mother reads aloud)
And [Death] left
crumbling the shape that he had worn, 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 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. (The 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."] Oh, that's.... (The Mother goes back to the beginning of Book X, Canto 4) Here: The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real Look at this:
Or in bodies
motionless like statues, fixed They are the ones who want to attain Nirvana.... "And this too was a dream"! (The Mother looks further) It begins here:
Once more arose
the great destroying Voice: 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! (The Mother leafs back) “The Gospel of Death and Vanity of the Ideal”—This is invaluable to answer all, all, all the arguments people use. (The Mother leafs further) Ah, here we are! The Debate of Love and Death. He says:
... Art thou
indeed so strong, O heart, 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... . (The Mother reads...)
All still was
darkness dread and desolate; My God, how wonderful! It's wonderful. (The Mother turns the pages, Book XII, The Return to the Earth... . I don't know. The Mother reads the concluding lines of Savitri:
Night, splendid
with the moon dreaming in heaven 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 Synthesis of Yoga: 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 Savitri. I read Savitri two years ago, I had never read it before. And I am so glad! Because I read it at the time I could understand it. Let's see, open a page at random:
In the passion of
its solitary dream Pretty lovely! Oh, it's good... . Let me go back a little:
In the luminous
stillness of its mute appeal 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; 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 who fancied correcting him—while he was alive! (A. especially, he's a poet.) Hence all those Letters on Poetry SriAurobindo 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! 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! (The 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, Oh, this is... .
By Light we live
and to the Light we go. It's marvellous. As for me, I am debating with Death. It's exactly the universal state of mind: a state of disbelief, oh, terrible! If we didn't know that something will come to replace it, it would be terrible. This Savitri is wonderful, he foresaw everything, saw everything, everything, absolutely everything, there isn't one point he left unexplored! 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! 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. ... 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. I was asked to find an illustration for this line. When one comes into contact with eternal Love, the supreme Love, one immediately has—how to put it?—a perception, a sensation—it is not an understanding, it is something very concrete: even the most illumined material consciousness, however much it has been moulded and prepared, is incapable of manifesting That. The first thing one feels is this kind of incapacity. Then comes an experience: something which manifests a form of—one cannot call it exactly “cruelty”, because it is not cruelty as we know it—but within the totality of circumstances, a vibration appears and, with a certain intensity, refuses love as it is manifested here. It is precisely this: something in the material world which refuses the manifestation of love as it exists at present. I am not speaking of the ordinary world, I am speaking of the present consciousness at its highest. It is an experience, I am speaking of something that has happened. So the part of the consciousness which has been struck by this opposition makes a direct appeal to the origin of Love, with an intensity which it would not have without the experience of this refusal. Limits are broken and a flood pours down which could not have manifested before; and something is expressed which was not expressed before. When one sees this, there is obviously a similar experience from the point of view of what we call life and death. It is this kind of constant “brooding” or presence of Death and the possibility of death, as it is said in Savitri: we have a constant companion throughout the journey from cradle to grave; we are constantly accompanied by this threat or presence of Death. Well, along with this, in the cells, there is a call for a Power of Eternity, with an intensity which would not be there except for this constant threat. Then one understands, one begins to feel quite concretely that all these things are only ways of intensifying the manifestation, of making it progress, of making it more perfect. And if the means are crude, it is because the manifestation itself is very crude. And as it becomes more perfect and fit to manifest that which is eternally progressive, the very crude means will give way to subtler ones and the world will progress without any need for such brutal oppositions. This is simply because the world is still in its infancy and human consciousness is still entirely in its infancy. 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 is 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. (The Mother speaks in English in the presence of a disciple, who is a painter, so that he may convey her explanations to Huta, 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 (the 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 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 [The 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?…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. (The Mother reads out a passage from Savitri)
A slow reversal's
movement then took place: It's magnificent...magnificent. In French it would be poor. I don't seek to translate poetically, I only try to render the meaning. I read the English sentence until I SEE the meaning clearly, and once I see it, I put it into French, but very awkwardly—I don't claim to be a poet! Only, the meaning is correct. This translation will not serve any purpose—it serves a purpose only for me. But I don't even have the time, I can hardly spare half an hour a day for this work—I hope I can offer myself half an hour a day!
O Death, thou
speakest Truth but Truth that slays, The other day, in dealing with a question of work, I had occasion to explain my position from the standpoint of the materialists’ conviction. I do not know where they stand now, for I do not concern myself with that generally. For them, all the experiences that men have are the result of a mental phenomenon—it is that. We have attained a progressive mental development. They would be quite unable to say why or how!—but in brief, it is Matter that has developed Life, and Life that has developed Mind, and all the so-called spiritual experiences of man are mental constructions—they use other words, but I believe that this is their idea. In any case, it is a negation of all spiritual existence in itself and a negation of a Being or of a Force or of Something higher which governs everything. I repeat, I do not know where they stand now, but I was faced with a conviction like that. And so I said: “But it is very simple! I accept your point of view. There is nothing else except what we see, humanity as it is, and all the so-called inner phenomena are due to a mental, a cerebral action; and when you die, you die—that is to say, when the phenomenon of agglomeration reaches the end of its life and dissolves, everything dissolves. It is all right.” Probably if things had been like that, life would have appeared so disgusting… . It came in English. (I want to put it in the Bulletin to fill a gap!) We should put it in French, too. Love is... (no need to say that it's the condensation of an experience—an experience I leave unsaid). Love is not sexual intercourse. Love is not vital attraction and interchange. Love is not the heart's hunger for affection. Love is a mighty vibration coming straight from the One. And only the very pure and very strong are capable of receiving and manifesting it. Then an explanation on what I mean by "pure," the very pure and very strong: To be pure is to be open only to the Supreme's influence, and to no other. Far more difficult than what people consider purity to be! Which is something quite artificial and false. The last sentence I wrote in French, too (the two came together): Être pur, c'est être ouvert seulement à l'influence du Suprême et à nulle autre. It's simple and definite. Now we should translate the rest into French—I have so many papers that I am lost! (the Mother rummages among a heap of scraps of paper) I am snowed under with papers! At first I put, L'Amour n'a rien à 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. 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." Do you remember Savitri's debate with Death, The Debate of Love and Death?... According to it, SriAurobindo seems to be saying that Disorder arose when Life entered Matter.
Although God made
the world for his delight, In other words, that Power assumed the appearance of God's Will.
And Death's deep
falsity has mastered Life. And before, SriAurobindo 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 (The Mother repeats)
A darkness
occupied the fields of God, The shape of Death. Thy mask has covered the Eternal's face, It's marvellous! The Bliss that made the world has fallen asleep.
Abandoned in the
Vast she slumbered on: 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 Consequently, according to this, Death would exist only on the earth. That's where I am in my translation. (The Mother closes her notebook). 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 SriAurobindo 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. 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. ... 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. 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... . It had always seemed to me that way [the earth as a symbolic point of concentration], but I am so convinced that SriAurobindo 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 things? He who stayed behind only to help others... to get away faster. Then that means he saw only one side of the problem? ... Listen to this:
O Death, thou
speakest Truth but Truth that slays, It's beautiful! So the materialist..."O Death, thou speakest Truth...." What can he reply? It's the Truth! Written by the Mother at the beginning of a notebook containing quotations from SriAurobindo’s Savitri: Some extracts from Savitri, that marvellous prophetic poem which will be humanity’s guide towards its future realisation. 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 SriAurobindo!), 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! (The Mother takes up Savitri) She reposes motionless in its dust of sleep. Then:
For him she leaped
forth from the unseen Vasts And then:
In beauty she
treasures the sunlight of his smile. Splendid!
And woos his
large-eyed wandering thoughts to dwell Then, the entire world, the universe, appeared to me in that light, and at every point (which takes up no space), at every point of the universe and throughout the universe, it's that way. Not that there are far and near places in the universe, that's not what I mean (it's beyond space), but there is a whole hierarchy of nearness, up to something that doesn't feel and doesn't know—it's not that it is outside, because nothing can be outside the Lord, but it is as if the extreme limit: so far away, so far, so far—absolutely black—that He seems not to reach there. It was a very total vision. And such an acute experience that it seemed to be the only true thing. It didn't take up any space, yet there was that sensation of nearness and farness. And there was a kind of Focus, or a Center, I can't say (but it was everywhere), which was the climax of Thee—purely Thee. And it had a quality of its own. Then it began to move farther and farther away, which produced a kind of mixture with something...that was nothing—that didn't exist—but that altered the vibration, the intensity, which made it move farther and farther away to... Darkness—unconscious Darkness. And something kept coming again and again to me: there is no other sin...(because this followed a few lines I read in Savitri on the glorification of sin in the vital world, the words came to me because of that)... there is no other sin, no other vice than to be far from Thee. It seemed to explain everything. All earth shall be the Spirit’s manifest home, Is it the promise that came? Yes, the promise of the G. The G always promises. All can be done if the god-touch is there. There: All can be done. All. ... In Savitri, SriAurobindo 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, 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. And in his text, SriAurobindo 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: I was asked for an illustration for Huta; 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... . 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" (!) (the Mother laughs), people would think you're not being serious. (The Mother shows a sketch she has just drawn to illustrate the passage in Savitri in which SriAurobindo 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 Huta’s paintings, I did the sketch: Falsehood is the sorrow of the Lord. SriAurobindo 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 "farness"—it isn't a farness in feelings, not that, it's like a material fact; yet it isn't located in space), well, SriAurobindo, 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... .] 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 does not exist, Progress does not exist—Light, Life, Love do not exist. A negative nothingness, a dark nothingness. And it may be this that clung to evolution and made Darkness, which denied Light, Death, which denied Life, and Hatred, Cruelty and all that, which denied Love—but this is already diluted, it's already in a diluted state, there has already been a mixture. Oh, if we wanted to make poetry (it's no longer a philosophical or spiritual way of seeing, but a pictorial way), we could imagine a Lord who is a totality of all the possible and impossible possibilities, in quest of a Purity and Perfection that can never be reached and are ever progressive...and the Lord would get rid of all in the Manifestation that weighs down His unfolding—He would begin with the nastiest. You see it?... Total Night, total Unconsciousness, total Hatred (no, hatred still implies that Love exists), the incapacity to feel. Nothingness. We're on the way. I still have a little bit of it [that total Unconsciousness] left. It [21 February message] 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 volonté
solitaire affronta la loi du monde.
Her single will
opposed the cosmic rule. 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, I think that way, 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. (The date when the Mother and SriAurobindo first met... fifty years earlier)
Because thou art,
men yield not to their doom, She already wrote to me the other day, she's upset because I can't read anymore! (I used to read Savitri aloud and she wanted to record me.) I told her, "I can't read anymore, it's not possible." So she wrote to me that I must "make use of my Grace" in order to cure my eyes! … They can't get it into their heads! You know, for them, when they say that "there is a Grace," the purpose of the Grace is to do what they like, of course, and if it doesn't do what they like, there's no Grace! It's the same thing with those who accept the idea of God only if God does exactly what they like, and if He doesn't do what they like, there's no God: "It's not true, he's an impostor!" 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." * 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. SriAurobindo 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 was wrong."—That's rubbish.
*When darkness
deepens strangling the earth’s breast
And never lose the
white spiritual, Sans jamais perdre le blanc contact de l'Esprit Yesterday, I read with Huta. 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.] 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] It's a chapter that doesn't have a title. [Book VII Canto 7] (The Mother vainly looks for the passage in Savitri) 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, Book VII, Canto 5]. It's after that. After, there is Nirvana [Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute, Book VII, Canto 6]. 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. Then finds herself back in her body—that's where it begins. A chapter without a title [Book VII, Canto 7]. I'll find it some other time. (The Mother puts aside the book) 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 Huta 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 the 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. ... it was the exact description of the body’s present state... . After having translated "the" line from Savitri: Previously, I used to translate three or four lines every day; sometimes less, sometimes more, and it used to go very fast. But now, (laughing) I have no time left for anything! It's traditional or agreed upon that I "must" take something in the afternoon to make a break between morning and evening—I never have the time! Those who are supposed to leave at 4 o'clock leave at 4:45. (The translation of Savitri: The Debate of Love and Death.) (The 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. Not true, old chap!
Alors je te
donnerai tout ce que ton âme désire... 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.
My will, once
wrought remains unchanged through Time, 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," don't you remember?
[I have given thee
thy awful shape of dread Live, Death, awhile, be still my instrument.] A nice gift... . Oh, it is true that in many cases it's indispensable. ... It was, oh, certainly more than fifty years ago, because I had already come upon the "Cosmic," Théon's teaching and the inner divine Presence, and I knew that the new creation would be a creation of immortality—I immediately felt it was true (that it was a way of expressing something true). So then, when I read that, I thought, "Here's how people make everything topsy-turvy! Head and feet upside down." And I pondered for a long, long time over the problem: "How to bring this to the true position?" And I set to work.... Already at the time, I used to practice adopting that standpoint, looking at things from that standpoint, understanding how that standpoint could exist. And those two things made me ponder: the will to die, and what that man considered to be "perfect love"—two idiotic things. But I discovered what was true in it; that's what was interesting: I tried and tried to find, and suddenly I felt that aspiration towards the immutable, immutable peace. Well, it was upside down: only immutable peace can give you eternal existence. There, it was all upside down, the idea was to cease existence in order to find immutable peace. But it's immutable peace one is after and that's what compels the cessation of existence, in order to allow the transformation to take place. And love, which is unconditioned: it doesn't depend on whether you are loved or not, whether you are intelligent or not, whether you are wicked or not—that goes without saying. But it was put in a ridiculous way. But it goes without saying, love is unconditioned, otherwise it isn't love, it's what I call bargaining: "I give you my affection so you give me yours; I am nice to you so you are nice to me"! That's how people understand it, but it's stupid, it's meaningless. That's something I understood when I was quite small, I used to say, "No! You may wish others to be nice to you if you are nice to them, but that has nothing to do with love, no, nothing, absolutely nothing." The very essence of love is unconditioned. Is he going on? What does he offer Savitri? "Daughters," "sons"! Oh, he is base (laughing), base with vulgarity. Daughters of thy own shape in heart and mind Fair hero sons and sweetness undisturbed... See that joy! Oh!... How vulgar that being is! Can there really be people who are tempted by this? I think SriAurobindo deliberately made this Death very vulgar to discourage all the illusionists and Nirvanists. But even when I was quite small, five years old, it seemed to me commonplace, while if I had been told, "Let there be no more cruelty in the world," ah, there is something I would have found worthwhile. "Let there be no more injustice, let there be no more suffering because of people's wickedness," there is something one can dedicate oneself to. But producing daughters and sons... I have never felt physically very maternal. There are millions and millions who do that, so do it again?—No, truly that's not what one is born for. He [SriAurobindo] said he wanted to redo all this passage, but he never did it. And when he was asked (I don't know if it was Nirod or Purani who asked him), he said, "No, later." [It was Nirod] And he knew very well that there was no "later". At the time he already knew it. "No, later." I don't know.... ...And from the universal standpoint, it is this inertia, this unconsciousness that made the existence of death necessary—the "existence" of death!! Material mind—it had learned to keep silent and act, to keep silent and act. Oh, it was lovely! Every time I express it, it recedes farther into the past. Ah, I think we should take up Savitri... . It followed a long curve... .
The great stars
burn with my unceasing fire She says, Life and death are the fuel, then, In my blind attempt LIFE ONLY was my attempt to love. [The 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. 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. 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. 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?...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: 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 (the 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! There is a line in Savitri which freely translated is:
Annule-toi pour
que seul le Divin soit. 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, it's here, isn't it? You can see it! 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 have proof of the construction of something that had disappeared (that had been amputated or broken), I can’t say, but logically it’s the same thing. The Mother takes up the translation of Savitri:
Imagining meanings
in life's heavy drift, 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. (The Mother takes up her first lines of Savitri)
A savage din of
labour and a tramp There you are! That's it. 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. (The 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 SriAurobindo'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 SriAurobindo's blue. It shines and shines, and it moves along with my fingers. 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! (The Mother laughs)
Each in its hour
eternal claimed went by: All this is the same thing! It's amusing. He certainly had similar experiences [to the Mother's] when he wrote those lines.
Ascetic voices
called of lonely seers (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. I tell you, every night it's like that, something is demolished through the comical or the ridiculous. It's very interesting. Oh, when it comes to morality, there are some marvellous things, marvellous! But... (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... 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...
Once more arose
the great destroying Voice: 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. Théon 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. In other words, on earth (let's limit ourselves to the earth), it's only with Life that Death came in. 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. 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.
Behold the figures
of this symbol realm... But she will answer you!... I'd like to know what she will answer him. If we follow to its end the idea with which SriAurobindo 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 Théon 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. Théon'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), Théon'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 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. All this can be translated philosophically, intellectually and so on. It is told as a story so that the most physical intellectuality may understand. But in principle, it's the separation from the Origin that created the whole Disorder. And, as far as I know, in India too the Upanishads say the same thing; SriAurobindo, at any rate, says that Disorder came with the sense of Separation. So those are different ways of saying the same thing. In one case, seen in a certain way, it's a willed separation; in the other case, it's an inevitable consequence—inevitable consequence of... of what? I don't know. Because, according to theogonies, the gods have remained in contact with their Origin and they feel themselves to be the representation of the Origin, as in the Indian theogony in which they say that Shiva is the representative of the Supreme—Brahma, the creator, Vishnu, the preserver, Shiva, the transformer—and all three are conscious representatives of the Supreme, but partial ones. It's perfectly obvious that those are only manners of speaking. There are indeed entities, they do exist, but... it's only a way of telling the story; in one way or another, it's the same thing. Metaphysics is also one way of telling the story. And one isn't truer than the other. But to me, the problem is to find...You know, I am after the process that will lead to the power to undo what was done. When people asked Théon, "How did things come to happen that way?" (he used to say that the first Emanation and the next three separated themselves), "Why did they separate themselves?", he would reply very simply (laughing), "Why is the world as it is, in this state of disorder? Why is it like that?... That's not the interesting point: the interesting point is to make it what it must be." But after all those years, there is something in me that would like to have the power or the key: the process. And is it not necessary to feel or live or see (but "see," I mean, see actively) how it went this way in order to be able to go that way? That's the question. What's interesting is that now that this mind of the cells has been organized, it appears to be going with dizzying speed through the process of human mental development all over again, in order to reach... the key, precisely. There is of course the sense that the state we are in is a false unreality, but there is a sort of need or aspiration to find, not a mental or moral "why," nothing of the sort, but a HOW—how it got twisted this way, in order to straighten it out. The pure sensation has the experience of the two vibrations [the false and the true, the twisted and the straight vibrations], but the transition from one to the other is still a mystery. It's a mystery, because it cannot be explained: neither when it goes this way (gesture to the false direction) nor when it goes that way (gesture to the true direction). So there is something that says like Théon, "Learn to BE that way [on the true side] and stay that way." But there is an impression that the "stay that way" must depend on knowing why one is that way or how one is that way? I don't know if I make myself understood!... Only, the whole thing is that the time must have come, there must be only That left—all the rest spoils, whatever it is, even the highest, purest, noblest, most beautiful and marvellous things: all that spoils. Only That. (The Mother opens Savitri)
There! Don't you
think it's marvellous! But when the hour of the Divine draws near... (The 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 (the Mother laughs). Oh, there would be so many things to tell if we had time, very funny things. (The 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! (The 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, Why? Were you in the formless Void? I saw that, the formless Void, 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 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. Then disappointed to the Void he turns And in its happy nothingness asks release... 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 (the Mother 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." Let's see Savitri (the Mother takes her notebook). Savitri is full of wonders, oh, how true! What is it about? It's still Death speaking. Oh, he's going on—"he" is going on: I don't want it to be a "she"! (The Mother laughs) In French it's a mistake (laughing): it's a "he."[The French word for death, mort, is feminine.] Ah, let's take up Savitri. 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. (The Mother reads a few lines in which Death derides all human beliefs, concepts, philosophies, inventions....)
And sciences
omnipotent in vain It's really charming! I like this:
Ride through the
sky and sail beneath the sea, 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"! [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 the Mother sat in the middle of the mêlée), 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, 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. It was...it was so powerful and marvellous, such sublime joy that the body started quivering for a second. Afterwards it was gone. And after that, after that experience, all of it, all the revolt, all the negation, all of it was as if swept away. If one could keep that, that experience, keep it constantly—it’s there, it’s always there; it’s there, of course, but I have to stop in order to feel it. I have to stop—stop speaking, moving, acting—in order to feel it in its plenitude. But if it were here, ACTIVE... it would be All-Powerfulness. It means becoming “That” instantaneously. (The Mother goes into contemplation, then opens Savitri.) And earth [shall] grow unexpectedly divine. It's a consolation... 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. 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. Ah, let's work on Savitri a little... A few shall see what none yet understands; There, you see! 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. Oh, not just once but very often, while listening to his music, a door is immediately opened onto the region of universal harmony, where you hear the origin of sounds, and with an extraordinary emotion and intensity, something that pulls you out of yourself (gesture of abrupt wrenching). It's the first time I've had this while listening to music—I myself have it when I am all alone. But I never had it while listening to music, it's always something much closer to the earth. Here, it's something very high, but very universal, and with a tremendous power: a creative power. Well, his music opens the door. Now, some people have heard his music, and in Russia, France and the USA as well, they have asked for permission to copy it and spread it around. And the strange thing is that those people don't know one another, but they have all had the same impression: tomorrow's music. So to those who have asked I've answered, "Have some patience, in two years we'll give you a musical monument." It's much better to begin with a major work, because it immediately gives the position, otherwise you might think it's passing little inspirations—not that: something that strikes you on the head and makes you bow before it. I read out the lines (in English, naturally), and with that he does the music. And the words are probably mixed in with the music, as he always does. But then, my reading is simply the clearest possible pronunciation, with the full understanding of what's being said, and WITHOUT A SINGLE INTONATION. I think I have succeeded, because at a week's interval (I don't read every day), the timbre of the voice is always the same. Mother, about the vital world described in Love and Death you said that “those who live exclusively in the physical and the vital go there after death.” Does it follow that even animals and plants have to go there? How do they manage to come out from there? Except for very rare cases, the animals are not individualized and when they die they return to the spirit of the species. In Love and Death are Ruru and Priyumvada the first forms of Savitri and Satyavan? SriAurobindo told me nothing about that. (The 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. Do you think he hears me?
Think not to plant
on earth the living Truth
Truth comes not
there but only the thought of Truth, Basically, according to SriAurobindo, materialistic thought is the gospel of death. No? It's very interesting. That's basically the point. We say Savitri is an "epic"; so Savitri is the epic of the victory over death. 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... 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 somethingthat 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.
When darkness
deepens strangling the earth's breast Yet another example: Quelqu'un entrera INAPERÇU dans sa maison ["One who steps UNSEEN into his house"]. It came on the "screen" this morning (so much comes that it's impossible to remember, but it's so interesting), and when inaperçu [unseen] came, I told you, "Yes, that's better." 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 façon 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; 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?" 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. 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. 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!" I have just heard that though the Grace flows from all the limbs of the Guru (such as the eyes and hands), what emanates through the feet is the most dynamic and full of compassion. That is why, it is said, the Indian tradition enjoins Pranam to the feet. Is this true? Here is SriAurobindo’s answer to your query: ...where she presses her feet course miraculous streams of an entrancing Ananda. (The Mother)
All Nature dumbly
calls to her alone Blessings ...In the afternoon, the lists [of appointments] have lengthened to such a point that I have no time left. Before, I used to start my daily work (the mail to be signed and so on) at 3:30, then it became four, and now it's quarter to five. There was a time when I finished at four, so I did the translation of Savitri (that was a very, very long time ago); later I finished at 4:30, so I still had time to take something, eat a little; now I finish after five, so (laughing) that settles it! It MUST be like that since it is like that. (Message for Meditations on Savitri, an exhibition of paintings by an Ashram artist, drawn in collaboration with the Mother) The importance of Savitri is immense. Its subject is universal. Its revelation is prophetic. The time spent in its atmosphere is not wasted. Take all the time necessary to see this exhibition. It will be a happy compensation for the feverish haste men put now in all they do. [Paintings by Huta] Apropos of the Exhibition of Savitri Paintings by Huta, 10 February 1967, here is a letter from Shyam Sunder Jhunjhunwala to the Mother: The Savitri-exhibition is full of images of Savitri, the ascension of the being, the descent of the divinity, and the play of the Divine that radiates light, equally beautiful and powerful, that gives the sense that I am close to you. Is this my imagination or is it true? It is absolutely true and I am happy you have seen it. Blessings (Message for Mother's eighty-ninth birthday)
When darkness
deepens strangling the earth's breast SriAurobindo And there is a very amusing observation; it's exactly what SriAurobindo 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.] 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. 4 means Manifestation 5 means Power 6 means New Creation 7 means Realization. With this 4.5.67, there are quite amusing things. Some people 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 the 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." It's exactly that. And it's charming. *
*A few shall see
what none yet understands; Yesterday someone wrote to me asking: After all, what is the Divine? I answered. I told him that I was giving a reply to help him, but there could be a hundred which would all be good, one as good as another. The Divine is lived, but cannot be defined. And then I added: but as you put to me the question, I answer: “The Divine is the absolute of perfection, eternal source of all that exists, of whom we become conscious progressively, all the while being Himself from all eternity.” … I remember a very powerful line in Savitri which says it all wonderfully in a few words. He says, "The bodiless Namelessness that saw God BORN...."
The bodiless
Namelessness that saw God born The Mother reads Savitri:
A divine force
shall flow through tissue and cell I wanted to show you something, then I forgot. Maybe you've seen it? It's something I am supposed to have said to M [Mona Sarkar]. years ago, many years ago, about Savitri; he noted it down in French, and quite recently (that is, perhaps three or four weeks ago), he showed me what he had noted... . And as it happens, he showed it not only to me but to others (!). They've translated it into English and now they want me to read it aloud so they can play it at the Playground. I wanted to revise the French with you, but they want it in English. The English isn't too good, but that doesn't matter... . They are all enthusiastic and happy—as for me, I don't like it, because the form of it is so personal. ... Have you seen the French text? Yes, I have. So? He certainly caught something of your vibration, that can be felt. But I don't know how it would come out once you repeat it?... If you could say something anew on Savitri? Ah!... But, you know, I am no longer the same person! I no longer say the same things—it's impossible. Impossible. I have been looking at it; in fact this whole story has come back now as if to illustrate the huge difference—huge, but colossal difference in the state of consciousness. For me now, that [notation about Savitri] is such a personal vision of things... . Yesterday, I had an interesting day from that point of view. It's the physical ego that has been destroyed and is now like this (gesture with arms open upward)... . So it finds it odd! I don't know how to explain. This way of putting oneself in the center of things and seeing them in relation to that center of consciousness seems so...You understand, the consciousness is spread out; it's as much there or there as here, and it sees everything in relation to a higher, central Consciousness (the Mother brings her two arms together, joining the tips of her hands above her head in a triangle pointing towards the Supreme), which is like a kind of Beacon—an immutable, all-powerful beacon throwing the same light on all things, without the least personal reaction of any sort. And the last vestiges—yesterday they seemed to be the last ones, because of this text they had asked me to read...Naturally, when I speak I say "I" because it's the body that speaks, but it has no sense of "I," it...It's very hard to explain. Anyway, because of this affair, I said, "Ah, but how, how can that be said when it's not me?—There's no me, it's not me!" And at the same time, there was this Consciousness above, saying, "No personal reactions—there's no more 'me,' and if this must be done, let it be done." And for hours and hours, there was such a peculiar state in which everything...It was like kinds of vestiges, or pieces of bark, I don't know; pieces of something a bit hard or shriveled, which had crumbled and were turning into dust, and nothing, nothing but this Great Vibration (gesture like two great wings beating in the infinite), so powerful, so calm—the whole day. A sort of perception that life in a seemingly personal form like this one is only for action—only for action, for the requirements of action; and there must be no reactions, only the instrument acting—acting on the supreme Impulse, without reactions. And the perception was so clear that all, but all memories have been abolished, and are being increasingly abolished, so there may only remain a sort of...mass of vibrations organized so as to make you do what needs to be done in the whole for everything to be prepared and... (gesture of ascent) for everything to grow, to strive more and more towards... the transformation. That makes speaking difficult, because of this old habit (maybe also a necessity to make oneself understood) of using the word "I"—"I," what's this I? It no longer corresponds to anything, except for a mere appearance. And this appearance is the only contradiction. That's the interesting point: this appearance is clearly a contradiction of the truth; it's something that still belongs to the old laws, at least, in fact, in its appearance. And because of that, you are forced to say things in a certain way, but it doesn't correspond—it doesn't correspond to your state of consciousness, not in the least... . There is a fluidity, a breadth, a sort of totality, and above all, more and more strongly the sense that this (pointing to the body) must grow INCREASINGLY SUPPLE—supple, fluid, so to speak, so as to express without resistance or distortion the vision—the real vision, the real state of consciousness. To the consciousness, this possibility of fluidity, of plasticity, is growing more and more evident, with only, only just something outwardly which...is increasingly becoming an illusion. And yet, yet that's what others see, understand, know and call "me." And it truly strives and strives to adapt more and more, but... time still appears to have its importance. It's a curious state of transition. (Regarding an old conversation of the Mother's on Savitri, noted down from memory by a young disciple [Mona Sarkar].) They're so happy, so enthusiastic! Everyone comes and says, "Oh, how fine it is!" I thought, "How much must one err for people to find it fine! When one no longer errs, they no longer like it." There you are. And they want to publish it. SriAurobindo 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. I was all alone, concentrated, and two sentences came in answer to her letter, which I wanted to write down. I started writing, and I found myself writing with a tiny handwriting! I tried to make it bigger—impossible. Then I drew within, I looked, and I saw it was SriAurobindo who was writing! So naturally, I let him write. It's not his handwriting, but not mine either! It's a sort of combination of both... . I had the same experience years ago, very soon after that "illness," when I began translating Savitri here. One day, while writing, it was he who wrote; it was his handwriting, that is, nearly illegible! So (laughing) I said, "No, I don't want it!" (Because it was illegible—if it had been clearer than mine, I'd have been happy!) And I stopped. But it came the day before yesterday, and it was...I forget where I put that paper. (Here is the text, found later.) Divine life in the process of evolution, the divine Consciousness at work in Matter—here is, so to speak, what this existence represents. And at the same time, there was the clear vision, the very clear consciousness of the whole thing from the point of view of the earth's evolution: what's being worked out in the earth's evolution. SriAurobindo has written in Savitri:
Yes, there are
happy ways near to God’s sun; What a joy it would be to possess the required purity! When one is living among men with all their miseries, it is only the Grace that can bestow this state—even in those who by Tapasya have abolished their ego. It is beyond all personal effort. SriAurobindo speaks of Savitri’s firmness of purpose in the following line: Immutable like a fixed eternal star. This is the great mystery of creation: immutable and yet eternally renewed. Savitri says:
Not only is there
hope for godheads pure; What had the white gods missed? The conversion of the Asuras. Isn’t the power of the Asuras as boundless as the power of the gods? The vibrations of evil are in truth less powerful than the vibrations of good. Can one say that total sincerity and the abolition of the ego are closely interdependent? Only the Supreme Lord is perfectly sincere. And when the ego is abolished, only the Supreme Lord exists. But I have work to do. I no longer have time. I no longer have time to do anything. 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 SriAurobindo 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. In my perception the push the Mother gives me towards the transformation of my banality and my mediocrity, I recollect the phrase from Savitri: All can be done if the god-touch is there. Once one has the contact with the divine consciousness, then mediocrity of the outer being becomes evident, but the promise of Savitri is true and will be realized. Each time I come to you I must make it an occasion for making progress towards the goal.Aswapathy is pretty fortunate because for him
Each day was a
spiritual romance… The possibility is open to all in whom the aspiration is fervent. Persevere and you will have the experience.
A knowledge which
became what it perceived, Is SriAurobindo referring here to knowledge by identity? Yes, it is a very exact description.
A greater force
than the earthly held his limbs… What does the triple cord of mind mean? The cords symbolise the limitations of the mind; and there are three of them because there is a physical mind, a vital mind and a mental mind.
The days were
travellers on a destined road, Yes, there comes a time when nothing, absolutely nothing isoutside the yoga and the Divine’s Presence is felt and found in all things and all circumstances.
A last high world
was seen where all worlds meet; Is the Trinity supreme Sachchidananda? Yes. Our body’s cells must hold the Immortal’s flame. Is this the secret of the luminous body? It is a poetic way of expressing the transformation which is going to take place and which is more complicated than that. It seems to me that the flame that calls and the flame that responds are one and the same. Essentially they are the same; but the plenitude of the response far exceeds the intensity of the call. The response always exceeds our receptivity by far. None can reach heaven who has not passed through hell. But still doesn’t the soul chosen by the Divine go through hell in a different way than others? The quotation means that in order to reach the divine regions one must, while on earth, pass through the vital, which in some of its parts is a veritable hell. But those who have surrendered to the Divine and been adopted by Him are surrounded by the divine protection and for them the passage is not difficult. His failure is not failure whom God leads. Because it is part of the play? It is the human mind that has the conception of success and failure. It is the human mind that wants one thing and does not want another. In the divine plan each thing has its place and its importance. So it is not success that matters. What matters is to be a docile and if possible a conscious instrument of the Divine Will. To be and to do what the Divine wants, this is the truly important thing. All things shall change in God’s transfiguring hour. Can man delay or hasten the coming of this hour? Neither the one nor the other in their apparent contradiction created by the separative consciousness, but something else that our words cannot express. In the present state of human consciousness, it is good for it to think that aspiration and human effort can hasten the advent of the divine transformation, because effort and aspiration are needed for the transformation to take place.
All that
transpires on earth and all beyond One who unites himself with the One, does he know the plan? In the measure where it is necessary for execution, Yes; and depending upon the need, but not at once in its integrality. (The Mother records her translation of a few excerpts from Savitri, which are to be set to music.)
The master of
existence lurks in us Isn't it clear? [The recording, because of outside noise] (The Mother first reads a few fragments from Savitri which are to be set to music)
In Matter shall be
lit the spirit's glow... And I understood. I understood to what extent it was a grace—truly a wonderful grace—to have taken away my mind and vital. Naturally, it could be done only because the psychic was in full possession of the body, otherwise... . Which means the process isn't to be recommended: it was quite radical. But it was wonderful. And I found something in Savitri... something in the fifth Canto (I translated it yesterday and kept it to show you)... . Here:
This knowledge
first he had of time-born men. Not too great, the translation! That's the best I found, but it's not too great. And at one place he says:
He shore the cord
of mind that ties the earth-heart You see, he says the heartbeats stop... . When life had stopped its beats, death broke not in... That's it! And he says that the mind also stops. He dared to live when breath and thought were still. That's it.
Thus could he step
into that magic place 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. 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. In the context of what had happened on the 1st January [1969] the following lines from Savitri become more significant:
The superman shall
wake in mortal man Yes, without doubt that will happen. But with this Consciousness, there is the why of everything: everyone's reaction, why he acts in that way, and... And since it's been there, not once have I seen in this Consciousness a reproach-not once did it reproach anyone. It has explained everything in such a way that it becomes so luminous, so understanding as to make you wonder, "Why should one reproach anyone?..." Oh, for it, moral notions are something... something ultra-stupid. But I told it (I am still telling it) that they were necessary in the course of evolution to refine matter and open the way to certain forces: if people had been from the beginning wholly satisfied with themselves, they would never have progressed. But now, it's time to see-time to see. 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 SriAurobindo wrote in Savitri: God grows up on earth—God grows-but man... (laughing), the wise man talks and sleeps... and no one will notice it till the work is over. That's how it is. And he knew it. I used to have the habit of reading Savitri or one of Your books before going to bed at night. But now I have lost the habit and I do not even go to the Samadhi very regularly. I do not understand the true value of these things. Should one do them regularly or only when one feels like doing them? Why should one do these things and how should one do them? One reads Savitri to develop one’s intelligence and to understand deeper things. One concentrates at the Samadhi to grow in devotion and to put oneself in contact with SriAurobindo in order to receive his help. If these things have any value for you, you must do them regularly, because it is the laziness of unconsciousness that keeps you from doing them. You are born for a spiritual and conscious life—but perhaps you are still too young to have the will to realise it. Blessings 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. (Laughing) See if my translation is good! 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, but if you could suggest something to me... 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 "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 (The Mother laughs) "The crabbed ambiguous scroll"!... Is that all?
He saw the
unshaped thought in soulless forms, Yesterday, I read another part of Savitri which tells how the king is transformed [The World-Soul, Book II, Canto 14]—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. The mystery is always why he left. Yes. ... He clearly said (I asked him), he clearly said, “I’ll come back only in a supramental body.” Savitri goes into death in search of Satyavan... so the Mother is going to bring back SriAurobindo? But you know that SriAurobindo said he wanted to come back on the earth only in a superhuman body... a supramental body. 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?... I am reading Savitri, the second Book, I think, the transformation of the King, his experience. [Book II, Canto 14, 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. 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 SriAurobindo 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? When “the mortal eyes plunge their look into the other eyes which contemplate eternity”, then one finds one’s native country. That is to say, the Divine origin. That is true—you become a poet in your expression. (The 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 [the Mothers handwriting] is no longer good. It's no longer as it should be—but it doesn't tire me. So we'll put: (The Mother writes her French translation of the following verses:)
If thou art Spirit
and Nature is thy robe, That's for sure! Thou must die to thyself to reach... à la suprématie 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: Happiness? I, Death, am the gate of immortality. 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! (The Mother laughs) We'll continue in the same way.
But Savitri
answered to the sophist God: One can't slay the soul! Offer, O king, thy boons to tired spirits... (The Mother smiles)
And hearts that
could not bear the wounds of Time, 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, Is it Savitri who says that? Yes, Death told her one must leave one's body in order to find God's height.... (The Mother translates the sequel)
But how shall I
seek rest in endless peace Is there more? Yes, there is more. (Those were the last lines of the Debate of Love and Death the Mother was to translate.) (The message for August 15) Even the body shall remember God. (The Mother takes up the translation of a few extracts from Savitri.)
The great
World-Mother by her sacrifice That's interesting, I hadn't noticed: "has made her SOUL..."
The divine
intention suddenly shall be seen, It's interesting... .
Or we may find
when all the rest has failed Where did he write this? In Savitri. Oh, interesting. (The Mother takes up a few extracts from Savitri that are to be set to music.) A little point [shall] reveal the infinitudes. It's interesting. (The Mother translates a few fragments from Savitri which were chosen for her.)
A miracle of the
Absolute was born, That's really good. It's a pity it was cut into small bits! (The 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 The body of our state... Of our human state. (The Mother repeats) She has made her soul the body of our state... . So I had better try and read it out. (The Mother tries to read with difficulty a few lines from Savitri specially written for her in large characters.) It’s a curious phenomenon: it’s F who writes this, and she doesn’t understand well: for her it’s just words—and I can’t read! (The Mother translates a few extracts from Savitri, listens to half of the tenth chapter of Supermanhood and remains absorbed most of the time.) It goes on inside. (The Mother translates a few passages from Savitri, including this one)
It lends beauty to
the terror of the gulfs It's charming! That's exactly the nature of the vital, what Théon called the "nervous world." (The Mother translates a few fragments of Savitri)
This mire must
harbour the orchid and the rose, Yes, it's best to take The Life Divine. Or Savitri? Your translation of Savitri? Oh, that!... It would take a poet to do that... . You're speaking of my translation? It's worthless. But I've done very little of it. Well, you would have to "complete" it! (laughter) Did I do the end? A little at the beginning and then the end. I don't see anymore... . So I should go back to it then.... The Life Divine will take how many years? But if this new consciousness is not to be found on the peaks of the human, where then, are we to find it? Perhaps, quite simply in that which we have most neglected since we entered the mental cycle, in the body. The body is our base, our evolutionary foundation, the old stock to which we always return, and which painfully compels our attention by making us suffer, age and die. "In that imperfection," SriAurobindo assures us, "is the urge towards a higher and more many-sided perfection. It contains the last finite which yet yearns to the Supreme Infinite.... God is pent in the mire...but the very fact imposes a necessity to break through that prison." That is the old, uncured Illness, the unchanged root, the dark matrix of our misery, hardly different now from what it was in the time of Lemuria. It is this physical substance which we must transform, otherwise it will topple, one after another, all the human or superhuman devices we try to graft on it. This body, this physical cellular substance contains "almighty powers," a dumb consciousness that harbors all the lights and all the infinitudes, just as much as the mental and spiritual immensities do. For, in truth, all is Divine and unless the Lord of all the universe resides in a single little cell he resides nowhere. It is this original, dark cellular Prison which we must break open; for as long as we have not broken it, we will continue to turn vainly in the golden or iron circles of our mental prison. "These laws of Nature," says SriAurobindo, "that you call absolute... merely mean an equilibrium established to work in order to produce certain results. But, if you change the consciousness, then the groove also is bound to change." [AB Purani, Evening Talks, p. 92] (Texts from SriAurobindo for the message of April 24)
He comes unseen
into our darker parts That's excellent. I am eating less and less, so I am constantly uncomfortable—and so weak! [That day, I felt that the movement was going to accelerate and a time would come when a radically different way would have to be found—perhaps the supreme Pressure of death is necessary to release the "almighty powers shut in Nature's cells" that SriAurobindo mentions in Savitri? As though the supreme Power could only be released by the supreme contradiction of power-and Death shall reveal its mask of immortality.] I was thinking about something SriAurobindo wrote... . In Savitri, he clearly says, "Almighty powers are shut in Nature's cells." In...? In Nature's cells. Ohh!...Oh, that is interesting! ALMIGHTY powers. He doesn't say anything else? No, not on that subject... . The consciousness of the cells seems to be awakened but not the power. (The Mother did not hear well) You said the consciousness of the cells is... missing? No? No, the consciousness is there. The consciousness of the cells is awakened, but the power isn't. Ah!... You said "awakened"? Yes, Mother. Because had the power been awakened, there wouldn't be any weakness in your body. No. But it is THERE, SriAurobindo says it clearly: it is THERE, inside, within the very cells. Yes, there's no need to seek elsewhere. But how to awaken it? Through faith, our faith. If one knows that and has trust... . But you see, my physical, my body is deteriorating very rapidly—that could stop it from deteriorating? NB: This is a compilation of the Mother’s revelations about Savitri taken from various sources. Some editing has been made at places for keeping only the relevant parts together. For details please go to the original sources of the Mother’s words as per the dates. |