16 October
1963
(Mother first reads two
lines from The Debate of Love and Death in Savitri. She would
like to put them as epigraph to the conversation of September 7, the dialogue
with a materialist.)
Listen to this:
O Death, thou speakest Truth but Truth that slays,
I answer to thee with the Truth that saves.
(Savitri,
p. 621)
It's beautiful!
So the materialist ... "O Death, thou speakest Truth...." What can
he reply? It's the Truth!
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 Sri
Aurobindo!), 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! (Mother takes up Savitri)
She reposes motionless in its dust of sleep.
(Savitri,
p. 180)
Then:
For him she leaped forth from the unseen Vasts
To move here in a stark unconscious world.
(Savitri,
p. 181)
And then:
In beauty she treasures the sunlight of his smile.
Ashamed of her rich cosmic poverty....
(Savitri,
p. 181)
Splendid!
And woos his large-eyed wandering thoughts to dwell
In figures of her million-impulsed Force.
Only to attract her veiled companion
And keep him close to her breast in her world-cloak
Lest from her arms he turn to his formless peace,
Is her heart's business and her clinging care.
(Savitri,
p. 181)
There are lots of things which people don't even take
notice of in life (when they live an ordinary life, they don't take any
notice), there's a whole field of things that are absolutely … not quite
unconscious, but certainly not conscious; they are reflexes—reflexes, reactions to stimuli, and
so on—and also the response (a
semiconscious, barely conscious response) to the pressure exerted from above by
the Force, which people are totally unconscious of. It is the study of this
question which is now in the works; I am very much occupied with it. A study of
every second … You see, there
are different ways for the Lord to be present, it's very interesting (the
difference isn't for Him, it's for us!), and it depends precisely on the amount
of habitual reflex movements that take place almost outside our observation
(generally completely outside it) And this question preoccupied me very, very
much: the ways of feeling the Lord's Presence—the different ways. There is a way in which you feel it as
something vague, but of which you are sure—you are always sure but the sensation is vague and a bit
blurred—and at other times it
is an acute Presence [1] (Mother
touches her face), very precise, in all that you do, all that you
feel, all that you are. There is an entire range. And then if we follow the
movement (gesture in stages, moving
away), there are those who are so far away, so far, that they don't
feel anything at all.
This experience made me write something yesterday (but
it has lasted several days), it came as the outcome of the work done, and
yesterday I wrote it both in English and in French:
There is no other sin, no other vice than to be far
from Thee.
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.
It wasn't I who wrote it! There's no "I" in
it: it comes just like that.
The far from Thee is so, so intense in its
vibration, it has a concrete meaning.
And that's the only thing: all the rest, all moral
notions, everything, everything, even the notion of Ignorance ... it all becomes mental chatter.
But this, this experience, is marvelous. Far from Thee ...
[1] The Mother developed this passage in the conversation dated 11 December 1963.
31 December
1963
Ah, exactly! That's it. That's it! Every day, I look at
it. In the evening the date and the quotation are changed—I don't know what
tomorrow's text will be, we have to change the calendar and start
"January." Would you like us to do it? Bring the calendar here.
All this will go now!
We have December here. (Mother reads)
And earth shall be the Spirit's manifest home.
(Savitri, p. 707)
Is it the promise that came?
Yes, the promise of the G. The G always promises.
(Mother sets the calendar
to January 1, 1964, and reads Sri Aurobindo's quotation)
All can be done if God's touch is there.
There: All can be done. All.
I like this calendar a lot because of its quotations. I
change it every evening.
Tomorrow, I see here ... (Mother looks at her notebook) four, five, six,
seven, eight people, and two over there, which makes ten—tomorrow morning between 10 and 11 AM … (Laughing) "All
can be done if God's touch is there"!
So I'll see you next year.
Did I give you everything? Did I give you the second
calendar [with a photograph of Mother, printed in
You're too stern, little Mother!
Ah, there we are again! But I wasn't stern: I was in
contemplation!
A stern contemplation.
(On the second calendar,
the photograph shows Mother engaged in her translation work)
It's the last part of the Synthesis. [1] We were
supposed to revise it together, but it doesn't work.... (to the disciple) You
know what he does? He takes the English and starts translating again! (laughing) So there's
no work left for me!
The conclusion is that when he has finished his book,
I'll give you my manuscript to type. If my eyes were good, it would do, but
they're no good, the poor things (I can't speak ill of them, they've served
well, but anyway ...) Or else, he [the disciple] would have to correct
directly on my manuscript, but that he won't do.
Ah, no!
So it's no use.
(A little later)
In fact, in Savitri, Sri Aurobindo 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,
And wherever turned for help or hope his eyes,
In field and house, in street and camp and mart,
He met the prowl and stealthy come and go
Of armed disquieting bodied Influences.
A march of goddess figures dark and nude
Alarmed the air with grandiose unease;
Appalling footsteps drew invisibly near,
Shapes that were threats invaded the dream-light,
And ominous beings passed him on the road
Whose very gaze was a calamity:
A charm and sweetness sudden and formidable,
Faces that raised alluring lips and eyes
Approached him armed with beauty like a snare,
But hid a fatal meaning in each line
And could in a moment dangerously change.
But he alone discerned that screened attack.
(Savitri,
pp. 205-06)
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.
(silence)
And in his text, Sri Aurobindo 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:
There all could enter but none stay for long.
It was a no man's land of evil air,
A crowded neighbourhood without one home,
A borderland between the world and hell.
There unreality was Nature's Lord:
It was a space where nothing could be true,
For nothing was what it had claimed to be:
A high appearance wrapped a spacious void.
Yet nothing would confess its own pretence
Even to itself in the ambiguous heart:
A vast deception was the law of things;
Only by that deception they could live.
An unsubstantial Nihil guaranteed
The falsehood of the forms this Nature took
And made them seem awhile to be and live.
A borrowed magic drew them from the Void;
They took a shape and stuff that was not theirs
And showed a colour that they could not keep,
Mirrors to a fantasm of reality.
Each rainbow brilliance was a splendid lie;
A beauty unreal graced a glamour face.
Nothing could be relied on to remain:
Joy nurtured tears and good an evil proved,
But never out of evil one plucked good:
Love ended early in hate, delight killed with pain,
Truth into falsity grew and death ruled life.
A Power that laughed at the mischief of the world,
An irony that joined the world's contraries
And flung them into each other's arms to strive,
Put a sardonic rictus on God's face.
(Savitri,
pp. 206-07)
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 ...
(silence)
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" (!) (Mother
laughs), people would think you're not being serious.
Well. My children, I think it's time to go and do our
work. I wish you a happy new year!
[1] In fact,
the passage Mother is seen translating in the photograph is from Savitri (p. 55):
Our will [shall be] a force of the Eternal's power,
And thought the rays of a spiritual sun.
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