It has been a revolution in the atmosphere, that's why I am telling you about it. Because all the experiences described in Savitri are precisely the experiences I have. So then, suddenly, in the body … I was over there in the music room, and Huta was reading to me; then when she had finished reading, all of a sudden the body sat up straight in an aspiration and a prayer of such intensity! It was a dreadful anguish, you know: "See, the whole experience is here, in me, complete, total, perfect, and because this thing, the body, has lived too long, it no longer has the power of expression." And it said, "But why, Lord? Why, why do You take away from me the power of expression because this has lived too long?" It was a sort of revolution in the body's consciousness.

Things have been much better since, much better. There has been a decisive change.

You see, it was the exact description of the body's present state, yet it constantly feels fragile, in a precarious balance. And then, with all its aspiration, it said, "But WHY? Why? … See, the experience is all there—why isn't it expressed?"

As always, I had the feeling that the Lord was laughing and saying to me, "But since such is your will, it will be that way!" Meaning simply: it's you who CHOSE to be like that.

And it's perfectly true. All our incapacities, all our limitations, all our impossibilities, it's this idiotic Matter that chooses them all - not with intelligence, but with a sort of feeling that "that's how things must be," that they are "naturally" like that. An adherence—an idiotic adherence—to the mode of the lower nature.

Then there was laughter, tears, a whole revolution, and afterwards all was fine.

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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: "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.

Sri Aurobindo had the feeling or the sensation that what was farthest from the Lord … 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, 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.

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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 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.

Then:

For him she leaped forth from the unseen Vasts
To move here in a stark unconscious world.

And then:

In beauty she treasures the sunlight of his smile.
Ashamed of her rich cosmic poverty …

Splendid!

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Buddha represented only one stage of consciousness. AT THAT TIME it was good to follow that path, therefore ...

We can conceive it was a particular necessity within the whole, of course. But these are all conceptions, it's still something mental—I recently had in my hands a quotation from Sri Aurobindo in which he said that there is "no problem the human mind cannot solve if it wants to." There is no problem that the mind cannot solve if it applies itself to it! But I don't care, I have no need of mental logic—no need. And it would have no effect on my action—that's not what I want, not at all! It's only because there is that increasingly acute contradiction between the Truth and what is. It's becoming painfully acute. You know, that suffering, that general misery is becoming almost unbearable.

There was a time when I looked at all that with a smile—a long time. For years and years it was a smile, the way you smile at a childish question. Now, I don't know why it has come ... it has been THRUST on me like a sort of acute anguish—which certainly is necessary to get out of the problem.

To get out, I mean, to cure, to change—not to flee. I don't like flight.

That was my major objection to the Buddhists: all that you are advised to do is merely to give you an opportunity to flee—that's not pretty.

But change, yes.

There are some lines in Savitri that all of a sudden are so magnificent! They come with such power, but once written down, that's not it any more.

For example, you SEE that image of the mask of Death covering the Supreme's face.

It's marvelous. So intense. And then that ignorant Power that took charge of the earth and made it ... that "seemed," SEEMED the Supreme's Will. It's so pregnant with meaning.

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Mother reads the concluding lines of Savitri: (p. 724)

Night, splendid with the moon dreaming in heaven
In silver peace, possessed her luminous reign.
She brooded through her stillness on a thought
Deep-guarded by her mystic folds of light,
And in her bosom nursed a greater dawn.

It heralds the Supermind.

But I had a feeling he hadn't completed his revision. When I read this, I felt it wasn't the end, just as when I read the last chapter of the Yoga of Self-Perfection, [The last chapter of the Synthesis of Yoga: Towards the Supramental Time Vision] I felt it was unfinished. He left it unfinished. And he said so. He said, "No, I will not go down to this mental level any more."

But in Savitri's case ... I didn't look after Savitri. I read Savitri two years ago, I had never read it before. And I am so glad! Because I read it at the time I could understand it. Both things at the same time.

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There may be (I can't say, it's all imagination because I don't know), there may come a few ... somewhat weird things. But there is an insistence on the need to keep to each line as though it stood all alone in the universe. No mixing up the line order, no, no, no! For when he wrote it, he SAW it that way—I knew nothing about that, I didn't even know how he wrote it (he dictated it, I believe, for the most part), but that's what he tells me now. Everything comes to a stop, everything, and then, oh, how we enjoy ourselves! I enjoy myself! It's more enjoyable than anything. I even told him yesterday, "But why write? What's the use?" Then he filled me with a sort of delight. Naturally, someone in the ordinary consciousness may say, "It's very selfish," but ... And then it's like a vision of the future (not too near, not extremely near—not extremely far either) a future when this sort of white thing—white and still—would spread out, and then, with the help of this work, a larger number of minds may come to understand. But that's secondary; I do the translation simply for the joy of it, that's all. A satisfaction that may be called selfish, but when he is told, "It's selfish," he replies that there is no one more selfish than the Lord, because all He does is for Himself! …

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Actually, words serve only to put people in contact with something else, a knowledge, a light, a force or an action, or... whatever. So as long as you manage to put one into the other, that's all that's necessary.

If you knew… You can't imagine how stupid people are! They put exactly what they want into what they read or hear, whatever they have in their heads. Only when you have the power to break that can something get in—and that can happen through any word at all, it doesn't matter.

There's just one thing… I don't know… it's when you say Sri Aurobindo "succumbed" on 5 December 1950. He didn't "succumb." It's not that he couldn't have done otherwise. It's not the difficulty of the work that made him leave; it's something else. You can't mention this in your book, of course, it's impossible to talk about for the moment, but I would like you to use another word… He didn't succumb.

We have to use another word, not "succumb." It was truly his CHOICE—he chose to do the work in another way, a way he felt would bring much more rapid results. But this explanation is nobody's business, for the moment. So we can't say that he succumbed. "Succumbed" gives the idea that it was against his will, that it just happened, that it was an accident—it CANNOT be "succumbed." … You could simply say that he did the work up to that moment… that's all, giving no reason.

Can't you just put "that's why," without giving any explanation? ... That's why Sri Aurobindo left his body. That's much more powerful. You said "even death," so just put: "That's why Sri Aurobindo left his body." …

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Yes, 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. …

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