May 8, 1965

(Every time Mother receives Satprem, she translates one line from "Savitri" that has been copied for her in large characters. Today's line is from the debate between Death and Savitri's heart:)

And never lose the white spiritual touch

(Mother repeats)

And never lose the white spiritual touch [[It can drink up the sea of All-Delight And never lose the white spiritual touch (X.III.655) ]]

Sans jamais perdre le blanc contact de l'Esprit

(silence)

Yesterday, I read with H. Savitri's series of experiences when she begins with self-annulment: Annul thyself so that God alone exist (I no longer remember, but that's the idea).[[Annul thyself that only God may be. (Vll.VI.538) ]] It begins with self-annulment, then she has the experience of BEING the All, that is, of being the Supreme (the Supreme in herself) and the entire Manifestation and all things. There are three passages. It's absolutely ... an absolutely wonderful description. It's extraordinarily beautiful. [[The world of unreality ceased to be ... She was a single being, yet all things The world was her spirit's wide circumference (Vll.VIl.554-556) ]]

It's a chapter that doesn't have a title.

(Mother vainly looks for the passage in "Savitri")

First she meets her soul: a house of flames. She enters the house of flames and unites with her soul ["The Finding of the Soul," VII.V]. It's after that. After, there is Nirvana ["Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute," VII.VI]. She goes into

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Nirvana - and becomes just a violet line in Nothingness. [[Unutterably effaced, no one and null, A vanishing vestige like a violet trace, A faint record merely of a self now past, She was a point in the unknowable. (Vll.VI.549) ]] Then finds herself back in her body - that's where it begins. A chapter without a title [VIl.VIl].

I'll find it some other time.

(Mother puts aside the book)

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 H. 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 Mother], 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 (laughing), 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.

But nobody on earth will be able to convince me it isn't because this material nature chooses to be that way that it is that way.

And the Lord looks on, smiles, waits ... (laughing) for the body

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 to be cured of its idiocy.

He does all that is needed, but ... we don't take any notice.

It's the trigger of FAITH that's not there, that famous faith Sri Aurobindo always mentions.

When people write me long letters (what letters I receive! laments all the time: my health is going wrong, my work is going wrong, my relationships are going wrong - laments all the time), and I always see, behind, that Consciousness, luminous, magnificent, marvelous - sun-filled, you know - exactly as if to say, "Whenever will you be cured of that mania!" The mania of the tragic and the lower.

Somewhere in the reason, one understands - it isn't that reason doesn't understand, but the reason has no power to make this matter obey.

And every minute, I have now the feeling of a choice between victory and defeat, sun and shadow, harmony and disorder, the easy solution ... truly, the comfortable or pleasant and the unpleasant; and the feeling that if you don't intervene with authority, there's a sort of ... oh, it's a combination of cowardice and spinelessness: it's something limp - limp, you know, slack.

When I speak like this, it's very simple and it seems very easy, but EVERY MINUTE you are hanging between three possibilities (generally three) for the body: the fainting or the acute suffering, the indifferent, mechanical movement, or the glorious Mastery. And I am talking about washing your eyes, rinsing your mouth, doing any of those absolutely indifferent little things (in big things it always goes well because nature is in the habit of thinking that one should bear oneself "properly" to rise to the occasion - all that is ridiculous), but in little things, that's how it is. So the head whirls, and hup! ... And you can see - you can see with extreme precision - the three possibilities, and if you aren't constantly attentive (gesture of a closed fist, of authority and control), the physical nature, with such repulsive spinelessness, you know, absolutely disgusting, lets itself go.

This repeats itself hundreds upon hundreds of times a day.... So if this isn't called "sadhana," I don't know what a sadhana is! You see, eating is a sadhana, sleeping is a sadhana, washing is a sadhana, everything is a sadhana. What's a sadhana least of all is, for instance, receiving someone, because the body immediately keeps quite still - it calls the Lord and says, "Now be here," and then everything is fine (because it keeps still). The visitor comes, the body smiles, everything is fine - the Lord is there, so of course

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everything goes very smoothly. But when we're dealing with what we call "material" things, the things of daily life, it's hell, because of that idiot.

The other day, after you left, I couldn't eat anything! I couldn't eat because the body felt it was being diluted in the world like that (expansive gesture); so it was being diluted (which is quite all right, the experience is proceeding well), but it had a feeling that it couldn't eat - why? I don't know. And it was impossible. The doctor, who was there as always during my meals, said, "What's wrong?..." (Because the day before, there had been an attack, a sort of malice: I started vomiting; it happens to me once in six or seven years; an affair recurring at long intervals; and it was serious, but it didn't last long.) But the other day it was something else: the body felt it was being diluted (you remember, you said I was white), and when it came to eating, the body said (in a moaning tone), "Look how I am, I can't eat." If I had had a little time (laughing), I would have given it a good smack and told it not to make such a fuss! But I didn't have time, it was time for me to sit down and eat - and I couldn't eat. So I had difficulty the whole day, because naturally those little pranks make life difficult.

But what to people is unconscious, what they don't understand or call "illness," is to me as clear as daylight; and it's always a CHOICE, there is always a choice every minute (for the material nature), and if the will isn't unshakable, if you aren't holding on to the higher Will with desperate and unrelenting eagerness, you let yourself go; and then the body becomes stupid: it faints, it has pains.... That same day when I couldn't eat (after lunch I always rest for some time to ... well, those are the hours when I put the body in direct reception of the Force - it doesn't last very long, I don't have much time), but as soon as I lay down on the chaise longue, such pains! Howling pains that take hold of you ... (gesture to the waist) at those spots that are open to the adverse attacks. I was lying down, but I was fully conscious then and I said to myself, "Oh, very well! You want to make a big scene.... All right, I will bear everything and I won't make a sound - and I won't budge, and you're going to keep still." Then I started repeating my mantra quietly, as though the body weren't in any pain. And after a while, the pain went away. The body saw it was no use, so it went away!

And I KNOW it's the same for everything, for all "illnesses," without exception. I see, I know the "origin" of illnesses, of the various disorders, all that is now crystal clear (it's a story that

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 it could take hours and days to tell), and that's how it is. So when, in a more or less dogmatic or literary way, the sages say, "Disorder occurs because the nature has decided to be in disorder," it's not so silly.

It's ... oh, a spinelessness which is one of the things most contrary to the divine Glory. The spinelessness that accepts illness, you know. And I am saying this to my body, not to anyone else - others, that's not my business, it's their work, not mine; I mean, I am present [in them] only as the divine Consciousness, and then it's very easy, a very easy work; but the work here, the sadhana in here ...

But sick people ... when I tell them, "Be sincere," I know what I mean: if they REALLY want the Divine, all that must stop. That's all.

I've made myself late again!

You know what's called self-pity? (Mother caresses her cheek) "Poor little thing, how you suffer! How you are to be pitied!" Well, the material nature is like that, it says, "I want to be like You, Lord; but then why do You leave me in this condition?" - a good slap and march!

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