(Mother laughs) Because everyone finds the words aren’t the ones he wants…. There has been quite a to-do with the Communists and the Soviet consul, a very intelligent man, it seems, who has read Sri Aurobindo, is quite interested, wants to be useful… and he says, “What can I do with ‘divine consciousness’!1 (Mother laughs) In our country the word ‘divine’ is banned.” He was told, “This has nothing to do with God” (a ban on God I quite understand, you see, because you can put whatever you like in the word), but he said, “I can’t.” They sent a Russian translation, which luckily came after the ceremony; it was the translation of their own thought, not at all of my text! So we answered them it had come too late. It’s T. who did the translation, but she refused to read it out [at the inauguration], because, she said, it was “too heavy a responsibility”! (Mother laughs) They are all like that. Finally it was read out by S. But then, we have a Communist architect, a Russian, who has been working a great deal for Auroville, on the models and so on (a young man, he is very nice), and yesterday he came with a prayer: whether he could change the word “divine.” I asked him, “What are you offering me?” He said, “The universal consciousness.” Then I answered (laughing), “You are making it shrink terribly!” He was bothered: what’s to be done? I told him, “Listen, I’ll make a concession for you; if you like, we’ll say ‘perfect consciousness,’ that’s harmless.” So he was happy, I wrote “perfect consciousness” on his paper, and he left with it!
But here, the group of… (what shall we call them?) Y.’s disciples, the “forward” group, don’t at all like “divine consciousness,” and the woman who translated it into German (not a direct disciple of Y.’s but one of M.’s) went to M. to ask for his help (moral help, probably), and the best they could find was “highest consciousness”…. So I asked, “Where is your ‘high’? Where is your ‘low’?”
They didn’t ask me anything, they are too sure of themselves. But their text was read out in Auroville, and some people who heard it and know German asked me, “How come?”… That’s how I found out. “How come in the German version they translated ‘divine consciousness’ by ‘highest consciousness’?”
So everyone is sticking his oar in!
But we’re going to prepare a little brochure with the message and all these translations—into Japanese, Hebrew, Arabic, etc. It will all be photographed, and then we’ll restore the German text. Oh, the Russian text…
But as a “city of peace,” it’s amusing! (Laughing) It’s promising!
I don’t care. What I find quite petty is when they don’t tell me and do it on the sly. To hope I won’t know is childishness, and the tendency to hide things from me isn’t very-nice.
But on the whole, it went off well.
We have an Auroville flag which is quite pretty, it was brought there; there were only two flags (other countries had banderoles), but there were the Ashram’s flag and Auroville’s. It’s this color (Mother points to an orange hibiscus on her table).
As to the young delegates, it was somewhat mixed: those who came spontaneously from their country or were recruited by UNESCO were quite decent; but then, in Delhi, they were recruited almost through propaganda (many came from the embassies there), and that was… some were dubious. Some smoke, one even got so drunk that… But still, when they were assembled together, they behaved decently. And one of them—a Czechoslovak—no longer wants to go! In any case he said he would wait as long as necessary, but that before going he wanted to see me.
But one can see—one can clearly see how the Force and the Grace work through everything.
Yes.
Because, really, if there had only been these elements left to themselves, well, there was nothing but confusion. One can see that it’s working… it works making use of anything!
No, it turns even the worst things to advantage! That’s what is interesting.
(silence)
I’ve heard some unpleasant remarks on “=1” from people who are quite outside the whole thing.2 First they told me it was very intellectual, very nebulous…
Oh, yes!
And that they evidently push themselves forward and claim all the “credit.”
But that’s mostly the problem!
And the third thing they told me is that Sri Aurobindo’s name is barely mentioned at the end, like that, by chance.
Yes. Here, have you seen their issue? (Mother takes out a copy) The format is very good, very good—she enjoyed herself to her heart’s content. It’s very well presented.
Yes, it’s a pity. All this is perverted talent.
Perverted: my foremost impression is one of perversion.
But just this (Mother points to the cover) is terribly aggressive. Instead of aspiration blossoming out (Mother opens her arms upward)…
It’s like the blade of a guillotine.
You see, the aspiration of flowers blossoms out; with Nature, it rises and widens as much as it can to receive. This (Mother points to the review “= I”) is like a knife. It’s quite symbolic.
I’ve never said anything.
But it’s done with much taste.
It’s the mind that has become perverted. (Mother leafs through the issue) All this is aggressive, it all has an aggressive nature.
***
Soon afterwards
Yesterday (I can’t say “yesterday morning”), I came back from there [the music room] after seeing seventy-eight people…. It was 3 o’clock: the time when, usually, I resume my work after taking my bath—so didn’t have lunch. Well, the so-called lunch has long gone to the winds.
(silence)
For three things one should be on one’s guard. One is the collective suggestion of “disease”—“disease” is something that doubtless exists, in the sense that there are obviously adverse forces at work trying to disorganize and delay the work; but, for the individual, those so-called diseases… Outwardly they are based on the idea (they call it “knowledge”), on the knowledge of microbes, germs and so on, but that’s taking things upside down, heels over head, because those microbes and germs and all those things are EFFECTS, not causes.
It’s the effect of a combination of three things: bad will (at the worst, a refusal to follow the movement), a more or less total bad will; an ignorance of the laws and their consequences, that is, the causes and effects (a complete ignorance); and, of course, a form of inertia—it’s all a form of inertia, but the greatest form of inertia is the incapacity to receive and respond. These three things combined are what creates diseases and so on, and the final effect—death. That is, the disintegration of created harmony.
But from the collective point of view, the point of view of collective influence, it’s the other way around; in other words, that’s what is taken to be the “cause” of disorders: instead of being the effect, it’s the cause—which is absurd.
And then, from the point of view of the transformation of the cells and the organism, this collective influence is a state like a bath in which you are plunged, and when people wanted to escape from it, they would cut themselves off: they tried to isolate themselves. The result is that they would leave the material zone, because it’s impossible to be like this (gesture as in a shell), like something without any connection with the whole. So they would renounce life.
In the relationship with the whole, there are roughly three… we might call them “means of defense,” or attitudes one can take. The attitude of isolation, which can’t be total unless you withdraw, and which is only very relatively effective. The attitude of attack: a power fighting and repulsing adversaries (that has a big drawback which is that if you use forces on the same plane, they are ineffective, or very relatively effective; and if it’s supreme forces, then… the effect is rather catastrophic: it would amount to destroying in order to conquer, which is certainly not the Supreme’s intention). And finally, there is the way of the contagion of the higher Force, but that implies what expresses itself here as time. That is the attitude which has been adopted. But it implies time—which is why ages go by.
The result is certain, with the least amount of damage. But that least amount is still quite considerable.
And for the human consciousness, it takes long. But as you remarked just before, it’s pretty. It feels like something going like this (gesture like a tide spreading out), very slowly for the human consciousness, certainly, but quite implacable towards resistances, and so sov-er-eign-ly sure of its victory…. That’s pretty. And with the least amount of damage, undeniably. Not to mention that what looks like “damage” may only be, seen in the whole, a means of higher realization.
"To live in Auroville one must be a willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness." ↩
"= 1" is an "Aurovilian" review. ↩
***
February 28, 1968
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