6 June 1970

 

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

Is it a speech by this gentleman?

 

Yes (laughing), yes, it's the end.

 

The end of his speech?

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

(Mother writes her French translation of the following verses)

 

If thou art Spirit and Nature is thy robe,

Cast off thy garb and be thy naked self

Immutable in its undying truth,

Alone for ever in the mute Alone.

Turn then to God, for him leave all behind;

Forgetting Love, forgetting Satyavan,

Annul thyself in his immobile peace.

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, p. 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.

 

20 June 1970

 

(Mother takes up her translation of Savitri: Savitri's answer to Death.)

 

But Savitri answered to the sophist God:

"Once more wilt thou call Light to blind Truth's eyes,

Make knowledge a catch of the snare of Ignorance

And the Word a dart to slay my living Soul?

 

One can't slay the soul!

 

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

 

(Mother smiles)

 

And hearts that could not bear the wounds of Time,

Let those who were tied to body and to mind,

Tear off those bonds and flee into white calm

Crying for a refuge from the play of God,

Surely thy boons are great since thou art He!"

(Savitri, p. 647)

 

1 July 1970

 

Do we have time for some Savitri?

 

Yes, Mother. In the last verses, Savitri said:

Tear off those bonds and flee into white calm…

 

Is it Savitri who says that?

 

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

 

(Mother translates the sequel)

 

But how shall I seek rest in endless peace

Who house the mighty Mother's violent force,

Her vision turned to read the enigmaed world,

Her will tempered in the blaze of Wisdom's sun

And the flaming silence of her heart of love?

The world is a spiritual paradox

Invented by a need in the Unseen,

A poor translation to the creatures sense

Of That which for ever exceeds idea and speech,

A symbol of what can never be symbolised,

A language mispronounced, misspelt, yet true …

(Savitri, pp. 647-648)

 

Is there more?

 

Yes, there is more.

 

(Those were the last line of the Debate of Love and Death Mother was to translate.)

 

29 July 1970

 

There's this sentence of Sri Aurobindo we should send him, you know it: "In the hour of God all is possible...." I don't remember. Just yesterday evening I translated it.... "Nothing is impossible in the Hour of God …" One single sentence. It's the only thing I'd like to tell him. (The disciple looks for the reference in vain)

 

Mother, we can simply send him the sentence as from you.

 

"Me," it's worthless. It was short: "Nothing is impossible when the Hour of God has come ..." or "At the Hour of God ..." [1] My memory ... I remember a whole lot of impressions I have, but I don't remember words and sentences.

 

And then, I see too many people and do too many things.

 

It's the only thing I want to tell him … Because I have just had a fantastic vision ... A vision without form ... of (how can I express it?) the cradle of a future ... not a very distant future. A future ... I don't know.

 

But it refuses to be told.

 

Just this: it's a pro-di-gious mass (gesture) hanging over the earth.

 

[1] The exact quotation is:

All things shall change in God's transfiguring hour.

(Savitri, p. 341)

 

1 August 1970

 

(Mother gives a disciple the message for August 15)

 

Even the body shall remember God.

(Savitri, p. 707)

 

(Then she translates another quotation from Sri Aurobindo)

 

"Whatever sufferings come on the path, are not too high a price for the victory that has to be won and if they are taken in the right spirit, they become even a means towards the victory."

(Letters on Yoga, p. 1636)

 

5 August 1970

 

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

 

The great World-Mother by her sacrifice

Has made her soul the body of our state ...

(Savitri, p. 99)

 

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

 

The divine intention suddenly shall be seen,

The end vindicate intuitions sure technique.

(Savitri, p. 100)

 

It's interesting …

 

14 October 1970

 

(Then Mother takes up a few extracts from Savitri that are to be set to music.)

 

A little point [shall] reveal the infinitudes.

(Savitri, p. 100)

 

It's interesting.

 

24 October 1970

 

(Mother translates a few fragments from Savitri which were chosen for her)

 

A miracle of the Absolute was born,

Infinity put on a finite soul,

All ocean lived within a wandering drop,

A time-made body housed the Illimitable.

To live this Mystery out our souls came here. …

A figure sole on Nature's giant stair,

He mounted towards an indiscernible end

On the bare summit of created things.

(Savitri, pp. 101-02)

 

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

 

28 October 1970

 

(Mother tries to read with difficulty a few lines from Savitri written in large characters. These passages are meant to be set to music.)

 

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

There walled apart by its own innerness

In a mystical barrage of dynamic light

He saw a lone immense high-curved world-pile

Erect like a mountain chariot of the Gods

Motionless under an inscrutable sky …

Once in the vigil of a deathless gaze

These grades had marked her giant downward plunge,

The wide and prone leap of a godheads fall.

Our life is a holocaust of the Supreme.

The great World-Mother by her sacrifice

Has made her soul the body of our state …

(Savitri, pp. 97-99)

 

The body of our state ...

 

Of our human state.

 

(Mother repeats) She has made her soul the body of our state …

 

(Silence)

 

So I had better try and read it out.

 

No, Mother, you'll tire your eyes.

 

I don't see clearly.

 

Yes, Mother, there's no need to try.

 

If you aren't tired sitting …

 

Oh, no, Mother!

 

We can stay another ten minutes. You're not tired?

 

28 November 1970

 

(Then Mother translates a few passages from Savitri, including this one:)

 

It lends beauty to the terror of the gulfs

And fascinating eyes to perilous Gods,

Invests with grace the demon and the snake.

(Savitri, p. 106)

 

It's charming!

 

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

 

2 December 1970

 

(Then Mother translates a few fragments of Savitri)

 

This mire must harbour the orchid and the rose,

From her blind unwilling substance must emerge

A beauty that belongs to happier spheres.

(Savitri, p. 107)

 

8 April 1972

 

(Mother then listens to several texts from Sri Aurobindo for the message of April 24. A disciple suggests the following passage from Savitri, which Mother immediately accepts)

 

He comes unseen into our darker parts

And, curtained by the darkness, does his work,

A subtle and all-knowing guest and guide,

Till they too feel the need and will to change.

All here must learn to obey a higher law,

Our body's cells must hold the Immortal's flame.

(Savitri, p. 35)

 

That's excellent.

 

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