The Mother

Agenda

Volume 11

June 6, 1970

(Satprem reads out to Mother a letter he has received from E, a disciple who tried hard to intrude into the conversations between Mother and Satprem, notably under the pretext of translating Savitri into French. Maneuvering was beginning to make itself felt.)

It would alter the whole character of our meetings, don't you think?...

I wasn't keen on it. (Mother looks relieved)

I think it's better she doesn't come.

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Wouldn't it be good to do the rest of the “Program for Auroville” with Aurovilians, since you started it?...

I had them speak to see what they would tell me....

Almost all of them are terribly lazy, so I'd like to tell them that manual work...

(Mother writes)

4. Work, even manual work, is indispensable to the inner discovery. If one does not work, if one does not put one's consciousness into matter, it will never develop. To let consciousness organize some matter through ones body is very good. To put things in order around oneself helps to put things in order in oneself.

Another point:

One should organize one's life not according to external and artificial rules, but according to an organized inner consciousness, because if one leaves life alone without imposing on it the control of a higher consciousness, it becomes hazy and inexpressive. It means wasting one's time, in the sense that matter remains without conscious utilization.

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Have you seen the aphorism?

(Satprem reads)

534 – The rejection of falsehood by the mind seeking after truth is one of the chief causes why mind cannot attain to the settled, rounded and perfect truth; not to escape falsehood is the effort of divine mind, but to seize the truth which lies masked behind even the most grotesque or far-wandering error.

[Mother comments:] Sri Aurobindo calls “divine mind” the prototype of the mental function that is totally and perfectly surrendered to the Divine and functions under the divine inspiration alone.

If a human being lives only by and for the Divine, his mind necessarily becomes a divine mind.

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(Then Mother takes up the reading of Savitri: the end of the Debate of Love and Death.)

Is it a speech by this gentleman?

Yes [laughing], yes, it's the end.

The end of his speech?

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

It's always better to have your handwriting! But if it tires you, it's quite easy for me to note it down.

“Tires,” oh no! It's just that it [Mothers handwriting] is no longer good. It's no longer as it should be – but it doesn't tire me. So we'll put:

(Mother writes her French translation of the following verses:)

Si tu es Esprit et que la Nature soit ta robe,

Rejette ton vêtement et sois ton être nu.

Immuable en sa vérité immortelle,

Seule à jamais dans le Seul muet.

Tourne-toi donc vers Dieu; pour lui laisse tout derrière;

Oubliant l'Amour, oubliant Satyavan,

Annule-toi dans sa paix immobile.

ô âme, noie-toi dans sa béatitude immuable.

Car tu dois mourir à toi-même...

[If thou art Spirit and Nature is thy robe,

Cast off thy garb and be thy naked self

Immutable in its undying truth,

Alone for ever in the mute Alone.

Turn then to God, for him leave all behind;

Forgetting Love, forgetting Satyavan,

Annul thyself in his immobile peace.

O soul, drown in his still beatitude.

For thou must die to thyself...]

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:

I, Death, am...

Happiness?

I, Death, am the gate of immortality.

Savitri, X.IV.647

He's clever!

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

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

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

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

It's a miraculous book! (Mother laughs)

We'll continue in the same way.