In the course of her conversations with a disciple, the
Mother on several occasions made comments about Sri Aurobindo’s transformative
epic Savitri. We are reproducing these here, with our deep and sincere
thanks to Narad
who has done this excellent piece of work. The series will cover these comments
yearwise. The expectation is that we will grow in the richness of the insights
and revelations given to us by the Mother.
Courtesy: http://savitribysriaurobindo.com/savitri_conversations.htm
25 November
1959
There is a difference between immortality and the
deathless state. Sri Aurobindo has described it very well in Savitri.
The deathless state is what can be envisaged for the
human physical body in the future: it is constant rebirth. Instead of again
tumbling backwards and falling apart due to a lack of plasticity and an
incapacity to adapt to the universal movement, the body is undone
'futurewards,' as it were.
There is one element that remains fixed: for each type
of atom, the inner organization of the elements is different, which is what
creates the difference in their substance. So perhaps similarly, each
individual has a different, particular way of organizing the cells of his body,
and it is this particular way that persists through all the outer changes. All
the rest is undone and redone, but undone in a forward thrust towards the new
instead of collapsing backwards into death, and redone in a constant aspiration
to follow the progressive movement of the divine Truth.
But for that, the body—the body-consciousness—must
first learn to widen itself. It is indispensable, for otherwise all the cells
become a kind of boiling porridge under the pressure of the supramental light.
What usually happens is that when the body reaches its
maximum intensity of aspiration or of ecstasy of Love, it is unable to contain
it. It becomes flat, motionless. It falls back. Things settle down—you are
enriched with a new vibration, but then everything resumes its course. So you
must widen yourself in order to learn to bear unflinchingly the intensities of
the supramental force, to go forward always, always with the ascending movement
of the divine Truth, without falling backwards into the decrepitude of the body.
That is what Sri Aurobindo means when he speaks of an intolerable
ecstasy; [1] it is
not an intolerable ecstasy: it is an unflinching ecstasy.
[1] Thoughts and Aphorisms: Cruelty transfigured becomes Love that is intolerable ecstasy...
12 November
1960
But it's explained very well in Savitri! All
these things have their laws and their conventions (and truly speaking, a
really FORMIDABLE power is needed to
change anything of their rights, for they have rights—what they call 'laws')...
Sri Aurobindo explains this very well when Savitri, following Satyavan into
death, argues with the god of Death. [1] “It's the Law, and who has the right
to change the Law?” he says. And then comes this wonderful passage at the end
where she replies, “My God can change it. And my God is a God of Love.” Oh, how
magnificent!
And by force of repeating this to him, he yields...
She replies in this way to EVERYTHING.
It's all right for winning a Victory, but not for
stopping the rain for one day!
So I'm trying to come to an understanding, to reach an
agreement—these are very complicated matters (!) For it's a whole totality...
You see, we are trying something here which really is contrary to all those
laws and practices, something which disturbs everything. So 'they' propose
things that have me advancing like this (sinuous
motion), without disturbing things too much, and without
having to call in forces... (Mother makes a gesture of a lance thrust
into the pack) forces
a bit too great, which may disturb things too much. Like that, we can keep
tacking back and forth.
A while ago... You know that I have TREMENDOUS financial difficulties. In fact, I have handed the
whole matter over to the Lord, telling Him, “It's your affair; if you want us
to continue this experience, well, you must provide the means.” But this upsets
some of 'them,' so they come along with all kinds of suggestions to keep me
from having to... to resort to something so drastic. They suggest all
kinds of things; some time ago they said, “What about a good cyclone, or a good
earthquake? A lot of damage to the Ashram, a public appeal—that would bring in
some funds!” (Mother laughs)
Yes, it's of this order! And it's all quite clear and definite—we
have veritable “conversations”!
I listen, I answer. “It's not satisfactory!” I told
them. But they've kept to their idea, they like it. When that first storm came
some time back (you remember, with those terrible bolts of lightning and that
asuric being PK saw and sketched): “Don't you want us to destroy something?...”
I got angry. But it was... This influence was so close and acute that it
gave you goose bumps! The whole time the storm lasted, I had to hold on tight
in my bed, like this (Mother closes
her fists tight as in a trance or deep concentration), and I
didn't move—didn't move—like a... a rock during the entire storm, until
he consented to go a bit further away. Then I moved. And even now, it comes—from
others (there's not just one, you see, there are many): “How about a good
flood?” A roof collapsed the other day with someone underneath, but he was able
to escape. So roofs are collapsing, houses... “Arouse public sympathy,
we must help the Ashram!” “It's no good,” I said. But maybe that's what's
responsible for this interminable rain. And they offer so many other things...
oh, what they parade past me! You could write books on all this!
But generally—and this is something Théon had told me
(Théon was very qualified on the subject of hostile forces and the workings of
all that 'resists' the divine influence, and he was a great fighter—as you
might imagine! He himself was an incarnation of an asura, so he knew how to
tackle these things!); he was always saying, “If you make a VERY SMALL concession or suffer a minor defeat, it gives you the
right to a very great victory.” It's a very good trick. And I have observed, in
practice, that for all things, even for the very little things of everyday
life, it's true—if you yield on one point (if, even though you see what should
be, you yield on a very secondary and unimportant point), it immediately gives
you the power to impose your will for something much more important. I
mentioned this to Sri Aurobindo and he said that it was true. It is true in the
world as it is today, but it's not what we want; we want it to change, really
change.
He wrote this in a letter, I believe, and he spoke of
this system of compensation - for example, those who take an illness on
themselves in order to have the power to cure; and then there's the symbolic
story of Christ dying on the cross to set men free. And Sri Aurobindo said, “That's
fine for a certain age, but we must now go beyond that.” As he told me (it's
even one of the first things he told me), “We are no longer at the time of
Christ when, to be victorious, it was necessary to die.”
I have always remembered this.
But things are PULLING backwards—phew, how they pull!... “The Law, the Law, it's a Law.
Don't you understand, it's a LAW, you
can't change the Law.”
—“But I CAME to
change the Law.”
—“Then pay the price.”
(silence)
[1] Yama: the god of Death. He is also the guardian of the Law.
12 January
1961
I am going downstairs on the 21st, for Saraswati Puja. [1]
They have prepared a folder with a long quotation from Savitri and five
photos of my face taken from five different angles.
The title of the folder is the line from Savitri that
gave me the most overpowering experience of the entire book (because, as I told
you, as I read, I would LIVE the
experiences—reading brought, instantly, a living experience). And when I came
to this particular line... I was as if suddenly swept up and engulfed in...
('the' is wrong, 'an' is wrong—it's neither one nor the other, it's something
else)... eternal Truth. Everything was abolished except this:
For ever love, O beautiful slave of God
(Savitri, 702)
That alone existed.
[1] Saraswati represents the universal Mother's aspect of Knowledge and artistic creativity. On this occasion, Mother would go down to the Meditation Hall and the disciples would silently pass in front of her to receive a message. This year they would receive a folder containing five photographs of Mother.
22 January
1961
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 labor...
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 Sri Aurobindo 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.
27 January
1961
I told you something concerning the power of the will,
didn't I? ...
Well, yesterday I saw R. He was asking me questions
about his work and particularly about the knowledge of languages (he's a
scholar, you know, and very familiar with the old traditions). This put me in
contact with that whole world and I began speaking to him a little about what I
had already said to you concerning my experience with the Vedas. And all at
once, in the same [absolute] way as I told you, when I entered into contact
with that world a whole domain seemed to open up, a whole field of knowledge
from the standpoint of languages, of the Word, of the essential Vibration, that
vibration which would be able to reproduce the supramental consciousness. It
all came, so clear, so clear, luminous, indisputable—but unfortunately there
was no tape recorder!
It was about the Word, the primal sound. Sri Aurobindo
speaks of it in Savitri: the essence of the Word and how it will express
itself, how it will bring in the possibility of a supramental expression that
will take the place of languages...
I began by speaking to him about the different languages, their limitations and
possibilities; and I warned him against the deformations imposed on languages
with the idea of making them a more flexible means of expressing something
else. I told him how completely ridiculous it all was, and that it didn't
correspond at all to the truth. Then little by little I began ascending to the
Origin. So yesterday again, I had this same experience: a whole world of knowledge,
of consciousness and of CERTAINTY—precluding
the least possibility of contradiction, discussion, or opposition; the
possibility DOES NOT EXIST, it doesn't
exist. And the mind was absolutely silent and immobile, listening with obvious
pleasure because these things had never before come into my consciousness; I
had never been concerned with them in that way. It was completely new—not new
in principle but completely new in action.
The experiences are multiplying.
A sound that can bring in the supramental Force?
Yes. While speaking, you see, I went back to the origin
of sound (Sri Aurobindo describes it very clearly in Savitri: the origin
of sound, the moment when what we called 'the Word' becomes a sound). So I had
a kind of perception of the essential sound before it becomes a material sound.
And I said, “When this essential sound becomes a material sound, it will give
birth to the new expression which will express the supramental world.” I had
the experience itself at that moment, it came directly. I spoke in English and
Sri Aurobindo was concretely, almost palpably, present.
Now it has gone away.
(silence)
4 July 1961
(Mother remarks in passing that the
inspiration coming to her from Sri Aurobindo when she writes is sometimes in
French and sometimes in English, and adds:)
Sri Aurobindo told me he had been French in a previous
life and that French flowed back to him like a spontaneous memory—he understood
all the subtleties of French.
How is your work going?
Tomorrow I'll begin on Savitri.
O lucky man! What joy!
You know, Savitri is an exact description—not
literature, not poetry (although the form is very poetical) —an exact
description, step by step, paragraph by paragraph, page by page; as I read, I
relived it all. Besides, many of my own experiences that I recounted to Sri
Aurobindo seem to have been incorporated into Savitri. He has included
many of them—Nolini says so; he was familiar with the first version Sri
Aurobindo wrote long ago, and he said that an enormous number of experiences
were added when it was taken up again. This explained to me why...
suddenly, as I read it, I live the experience—line by line, page by page. The
realism of it is astounding.
7 July 1961
The experience I described the day I said “I have something to tell you” [24 January
1961] was truly very pleasant and I did try to relive it—but I never could.
Whenever I try, whenever something in me insists on recapturing the experience,
I always see a Smile and something tells me, 'No, no! Let go! You'll see, you'll
see. So I let go. All right, that's enough-enough for you! And you - what are
you doing?
I'm re-reading Savitri.
Lucky man! I would love to read it again. And the more
you read, the more marvelous it becomes.
15 July 1961
In the final analysis, everything obviously depends upon the Supreme's Will
because, if one looks deeply enough into the question, even physical laws and
resistances are nothing for Him. But this kind of direct intervention takes
place only at the extreme limit; if His Will is to be expressed in opposition,
as it were, to the whole set of laws governing the Manifestation—well, that
only comes... at the very last second. Sri Aurobindo has expressed this
so well in Savitri, so well! At least three times in the book he has
expressed this Will that abolishes all established laws, all of them, and all
the consequences of these laws, the whole formidable colossus of the
Manifestation, so that in the face of it all, That can express itself—and this
takes place at the very last “second,” so to speak, at the extreme limit of
possibility.
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, [1] or the beings of higher regions) came upon
earth as soon as the corresponding element began to evolve out of its
involution. This accelerates the action, first of all, but also makes it more
perfect—more perfect, more powerful, more conscious. It gives a sort of
sanction to the realization. Sri Aurobindo writes of this in Savitri—Savitri
lives always on earth, with the soul of the earth, to make the whole earth
progress as quickly as possible. Well, when the time comes and things on earth
are ready, then the divine Mother incarnates with her full power—when things
are ready. Then will come the perfection of the realization. A splendor of
creation exceeding all logic! It brings in a fullness and a power completely
beyond the petty shallow logic of human mentality.
[1] In Sri Aurobindo's terminology, the “Overmind” represents the highest level of the mind, the world of the gods and origin of all the revelations and highest artistic creations—the world that has ruled mental man till now. in his gradations of the worlds, Sri Aurobindo speaks of two hemispheres, the upper hemisphere and the lower. The Overmind is the line between these two hemispheres, “This line is the intermediary overmind which, though luminous itself, keeps from us the full indivisible supramental Light, but in receiving it divides, distributes, breaks up into separated aspects, powers, multiplicities of all kinds.” In the words of the Upanishad, “The face of the Truth is covered by a golden lid.”
28 July 1961
The earth is a representative and symbolic world, a kind of crystallization and
concentration of the evolutionary labor giving it a... more concrete
reality. It has to be taken like this: the history of the earth is a symbolic
history. And it is on earth that this Descent takes place (it's not the history
of the universal but of the terrestrial creation); the Descent occurs in the
individual TERRESTRIAL being, in the
individual terrestrial atmosphere.
Let's take Savitri, which is very explicit on
this: the universal Mother is universally present and at work in the universe,
but the earth is where concrete form is given to all the work to be done to
bring evolution to its perfection, its goal. Well, at first there's a sort of
emanation representative of the universal Mother, which is always on earth to
help it prepare itself; then, when the preparation is complete, the universal
Mother herself will descend upon earth to finish her work. And this She does
with Satyavan—Satyavan is the soul of the earth. She lives in close union with
the soul of the earth and together they do the work; She has chosen the soul of
the earth for her work, saying, “HERE is
where I will do my work.” Elsewhere (Mother
indicates regions of higher Consciousness), it's enough just
to BE and things Simply ARE. Here on
earth you have to work.
There are clearly universal repercussions and effects,
of course, but the thing is WORKED OUT
here, the place of work is HERE. So
instead of living beatifically in Her universal state and beyond, in the
extra-universal eternity outside of time, She says, “No, I am going to do my
work HERE, I choose to work HERE.' The Supreme then tells her, “What you have expressed
is My Will.” ... “I want to
work 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.
23 September
1961
This analogy between the ancient form of spiritual
revelations and Savitri, this blossoming into poetry of his prophetic
revelation is... what could be called the most exceptional part of his
work. And what is remarkable (I saw him do it) is that he changed Savitri: he
went along changing it as his experience changed.
It is clearly the continuing expression of his
experience.
There were whole sections he redid completely, which
were like descriptions of what I had told him of my own experiences. Nolini
said this. When I recently reread Savitri, some phrases were very
familiar and I said to Nolini, “How odd, these are almost my very words!” And
he replied, “But this has been changed, it was written differently; it has BECOME like this.” As the thing became more and more concrete
for him, he changed it. The breath of revelatory prophecy is extraordinary! It
has an extraordinary POWER!
What struck me is that he never wanted to write
anything else. To write those articles for the Bulletin [1] was really a heavy
sacrifice for him. He had said he would complete certain parts of The
Synthesis of Yoga, [2] 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.
From time to time I use a line from Savitri, placing it in
the book like an open window. That's all I can do.
[1] Mother had asked Sri Aurobindo to write
something for the Ashram Bulletin. It was later published as The Supramental
Manifestation upon Earth.
[2] The third section, The Yoga of
Self-Perfection, which was never completed.
Courtesy: http://savitribysriaurobindo.com/savitri_conversations.htm