8 January
1964
(Mother shows a sketch
she has just drawn to illustrate the passage in Savitri in which Sri
Aurobindo 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, [1] 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. [2]
(Mother shows the sketch
representing the Lord's sorrowful face. Long silence)
Sri Aurobindo 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, Sri Aurobindo, 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, [3] 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. [4] 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.
Ah, let's get to work.
[1] In the music room, on December 31, 1963.
[2] Falsehood is the sorrow of the Lord—a Sketch
[3] A tract he reached unbuilt and owned by none…
(Savitri, p. 206. See conversation of 31 December 1963.)
[4] Mother is not referring to an intellectual and human negation, but to a material fact that one finds at the very roots of life, in the most material consciousness, and which shows itself as an abyss of black and stifling basalt. It is intimately linked with death. It is the very secret of death.
22 February
1964
I had a strange night last night.
The whole day yesterday, I had an impression—not a
vague impression: a very precise sensation—of the Pressure of something that
was trying to manifest. But it was so material that it was almost like a
physical pressure. And then a kind of Force that not only resisted, but
revolted, trying to make a muddle of everything—to create unpleasant
circumstances, trouble people, all sorts of perfectly unpleasant little nothings.
I was watching all that.
And in the evening the resistance and revolt took a
concrete form, as it were. Then, in response, there was in all the cells of the
body a call, a desperate call for the Truth, as if all the cells were crying
out, "Ah, no! We've had enough of this Falsehood, enough, enough, enough!—the
Truth, the Truth, the Truth…."
It put my body in a very deep trance. And it had the impression of a very, very
intense struggle.
I was looking, and everywhere there were ... as if the world were made of huge
engines with enormous pistons that were falling—you know, like in engine rooms:
they were rising and falling, rising and falling … It was like that everywhere. And it was pounding Matter—it was
frightful. To such a degree that the body felt pounded.
It was a compression—a mechanical compression—and at
the same time (both things at the same time), such an intensity of aspiration!
There is in these cells an extraordinary intensity: "The Truth, the Truth,
the Truth..."[1] Then, in
the middle of all this, I went into a state of very deep trance, a sort of
samadhi, from which I emerged five hours later—it lasted from 10 at night to 3
in the morning—five hours later, beatific, and conscious that I had been
conscious all the time, but of something inexpressible. And what a light! A
light, a light ... a fantastic
light.
But this morning, the body is a bit ... (what's the word?) giddy.
Dizzy?
Not exactly dizzy ... the sensation of a sort of
lack of consistency. Yes, like when one is giddy—a giddiness, rather. Because
it was such a pounding!
Mother, some fifteen days ago, I dreamed that very
thing. There was a sort of enormous "drill" boring into Matter; then
you came, and you were very interested, as if you participated actively in it.
An enormous black drill, like the ones they use to drill wells, boring into a
sort of Matter with a color like yellow clay. It struck me very much. About ten
or fifteen days ago ... A tremendous power.
Yes, yesterday I had the feeling that I was brought
into contact with something that's going on ALL THE TIME.
Then that's it.
Like this, a pounding: you know, those machines that
rise and fall and rise and fall … And
there were scores and scores and scores of them ... it was endless.
But then (laughing), this poor body was lying
underneath! I even heard (although I was in trance), I heard my body letting
out little cries, "Ah! ah! ..." Just a little "ah"!
So that's how I am this morning, a little giddy. These
are powerful methods!
(silence)
I have never seen such an intensity in the cells, in
the consciousness of the cells ...
you know, an almost desperate intensity: "We've had enough, enough of this
Falsehood!—the Truth, the Truth, the Truth ..." And then that Light ... bah-bah! ...
They were conscious of the light. Conscious of a dazzling light.
Look, it's the kind of giddiness one has when one has
drunk a bit too much—that's it, the giddiness caused by alcohol.
But I didn't have the sense of a definitive thing: I
had the sense of a beginning! It's only a beginning!
Which means that the gap between what they are used to
receiving through infiltration and a radical descent is a tremendous one.
Several times in his letters, Sri Aurobindo wrote that
if the higher Light were to descend abruptly, or if divine Love were to descend
abruptly, without preparation ...
the matter would be shattered. It appears to be quite true!
(silence)
Even now (Mother touches her hands and fingers), one
feels ... not the pounding, but the aspiration in all the cells ...
(Mother goes into
contemplation)
Yes, that's what it is, a sort of inebriation.
Somewhere in Savitri, Sri Aurobindo says, "This wine of
lightning in the cells …" [2]
Oh! Do you know where it is? ...
[1] A few days later, Mother had a very bloodshot eye.
[2] And came back quivering with a nameless
Force
Drunk with a wine of lightning in their
cells.
(Savitri, p. 383)
18 March 1964
Then Mother takes up the translation of a letter from
English to French.
To translate I go to the place where things are
crystallized and formulated. Nowadays my translations are not exactly an
amalgamation, but they are under the influence of both languages: my English is
a little French and my French is a little English—it's a mixture of the two.
And I see that from the standpoint of expression, it's rather beneficial, for a
certain subtlety comes from it.
I don't "translate" at all, I never try to
translate: I simply go back to the "place" where it came from, and
instead of receiving this way (gesture
above the head, like scales tipping to the right for French) I
receive that way (the scales tip to
the left for English), and I see that it doesn't make much
difference: the origin is a sort of amalgamation of the two languages. Perhaps
it could give birth to a somewhat more supple form in both languages: a little
more precise in English, a little more supple in French.
I don't find our present language satisfactory. But I
don't find the other thing [Franglais] satisfactory either—it hasn't been found yet.
It's being worked out.
Each time, something in me grates a little.
It's on the way.
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 (same
gesture of tipping to the right), I think that way (to the left), 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.
I don't say I have reached the satisfactory expression—it's
taking shape.
And the method is always the same: I never translate—never,
never—I go up above, to the place where one thinks beyond words, where one
experiences the idea or the thought of a thing, or the movement or the feeling
(whatever), and when it's in a particular language, it goes like this (same gesture as before), while
in another language, it goes like that: it's as if something up above tipped
over. I don't translate on the same level at all, I never translate on the
level of languages. And sometimes, I notice that for me the quality of the
words is very different from what it is for others, very different.
I have given up all hope of making myself understood.
(Mother makes some
remarks on the disciples' "understanding," then adds)
Do you know the story?
It's a story told by the Muslims, I think (but I am not
sure). Jesus is said to have raised people from the dead, made the dumb speak,
restored sight to the blind ...
until he was brought an idiot to be made intelligent—and Jesus ran away!
Afterwards, people asked him, "Why did you run
away?" He answered, "I can do anything—except give intelligence to an
idiot." (laughter)
It was Théon who
told me the story.
26 September
1964
(Towards the end of the conversation,
an "urgent" letter from a disciple is brought to Mother. Mother
laughs and, without reading the letter, scribbles her answer.)
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!
I didn't answer her. But just now, as I finished
speaking to you, it came—my answer. It came, that is, He told me, "Write
this to her." So I wrote this:
There is no I to take a decision, there is only the
Lord's Will that decides everything. And if He decides that my eyes will
recover the reading capacity, I will recover.
That's that, finished, no more problem!
Now she must be upside-down because I haven't yet
answered!
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!"
It's comical.
14 November
1964
Very well, we will see.
I always say, "We will see," because ... in reality, I am not worried, not
worried at all, I am very sure—very sure. I have such an absolute certitude
that the Wisdom that acts in the world is infinitely superior to all that we
can imagine. We are like ignorant and stupid children in front of
"something" that acts with a CERTITUDE, and so luminous, so luminous. With a superharmony that turns into
harmony the things that seem to us the most discordant.
So when I see the anxious human thoughts trying to know
(Mother smiles)—"Don't
worry, we will see." And when I say, "We will see," I have the
joy of a certitude that what we will see will be a thousand times more
beautiful than anything we can imagine.
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." [1]
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.
Sri Aurobindo 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.
(Smiling) Besides, he didn't go so far away! I spend my nights
with him, and with the most complete variety of work—it's a multiple,
innumerable "Him" ...
and so wonderfully adapted to all necessities: terrestrial necessities and
individual necessities.
And for him, it's only one small part of himself;
because it's with him (I told you the story the other day) that I had that
experience of going out of humanity, going out of the material world: it was
with him, in his "company," if I may say so!
I like it when it's with him because it gives me a sort
of certainty that it isn't an experience of my subjectivity—it's impersonal,
entirely impersonal. Even if my subjectivity is worldwide, I don't want my
experience to be subjective: I want every consciousness, whatever it may be,
human or nonhuman, every consciousness awakening in that field, to have an
identical experience, if it is truly objective. So when it's with him, I am
quite sure.
(silence)
He continues to be happy with your book and its effects—besides,
it's his book (laughing) as
much as yours!
Oh, yes, I have no sensation of being an
"author"!
He is happy.
[1] When
darkness deepens strangling the earth's breast
And man's corporeal mind is the only lamp,
As a thief's in the night shall be the
covert tread
Of one who steps unseen into his house.
A Voice ill-heard shall speak, the soul
obey,
A power into mind's inner chamber steal,
A charm and sweetness open life's closed
doors
And beauty conquer the resisting world
The truth-light capture Nature by surprise,
A stealth of God compel the heart to bliss
And earth shall grow unexpectedly divine.
(Savitri, p. 55)
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