July 3, 1968
And your translation of “Savitri”?
But I have work to do. I no longer have time. I no longer have time to do anything.
It’s a pity.
That is to say, now F. has taken it into her head to translate Savitri with me (all she does is look in the dictionary when I need a word), right from the start, and I’ve reached the second page! It’ll take ten or fifteen years!
But I find it very interesting, because I only have to be still, and Sri Aurobindo dictates to me. So there remains one or two little corrections in the French, and that’s that. He tells me the word: for this word, this word. Like that. It’s very interesting. Only, I do five or six lines every time…. But now I do it better than I used to.
* * *
Soon afterwards
The government (I don’t know who) has asked the chief of the Radio here to ask me for a message on India’s condition. At first I answered, “I don’t deal with politics.” Then he told me, “No, it’s not from a political but from a spiritual standpoint.” I said, “I don’t know.” But he insisted, he told me, “I’ve been asked by the government; if I can’t give it to them, I’ll be in trouble….” The poor man knew how to get round me! (Mother laughs)
See, here’s his letter (Satprem reads): “I pray the Mother to record a message for my radio on ‘integration and unity of India’….”
I said this:
(Mother reads)
“It is only India’s soul who can unify the country.
"Externally the provinces of India are very different in
character, tendencies, culture, as well as in language,
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and any attempt to unify them artificially could only
have disastrous results.
"But her soul is one, intense in her aspiration towards
the spiritual truth, the essential unity of the creation
and the divine origin of life, and by uniting with this
aspiration the whole country can recover a unity that
has never ceased to exist for the superior mentality."
My handwriting has become quite bad…. It’s not me who wrote this, I don’t remember it at all – it doesn’t evoke any memory in me.
I also put (and this is from me), “the essential unity of the creation and the divine origin of life.” That whole formula, I know, was an attempt to express the thing without using the word “God,” because … There was in my life a period of at least twenty years during which those words used to make me bristle, so I understand very well the feeling it evokes in people. Later, it was Sri Aurobindo who made me rise above all that; but it’s because he pulled me very high up that I rose above all that, otherwise, on an intellectual level, it didn’t do at all. It evokes the narrowest religiosity, and … it won’t do. So I don’t want that – the country is now fully in it, here in India. I don’t want to raise that first obstacle. That’s why I made this long sentence.
* * *
Towards the end
Do you have news of P. L.?
I got a letter. He doesn’t say anything in fact, he says he was
summoned to the Vatican but doesn’t give any detail. Other
wise, he says he is well and feels your presence.
Yes, that I know.
And he says that Cardinal T., who is the Cardinal of France, as
well as Msgr. R., both insisted that he should stay at his post at
the Vatican.
Oh!… I thought they wanted to nominate him cardinal over there ….
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Yes, he [P.L.] wanted to pull out of the Vatican.
Yes, HE did.
But they want him to stay at his post at the Vatican, at least for
the time being.
Oh! …
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