(Mother gives roses to Satprem, then breathes in the smell of a bunch of small yellow flowers near her.)
[Hymenantherum, small yellow daisies.]
It smells nice!
It’s for my own satisfaction. These, and the “New Birth,”1 oh, these two fragrances are so clean…. (Pointing to the bunch of daisies) This is “Simple Sincerity” You know, a sincerity that doesn’t make any fuss!
So what are you bringing me?
Nothing, Mother.
Nothing…
On the 1st, something really strange took place…. And I wasn’t the only one to feel it, a few people felt it too. It began just after midnight, but I felt it at 2, and others at 4 in the morning. It was… I told you a few words about it last time, but the surprising thing is that it didn’t correspond to anything I expected (I didn’t expect anything), or to any of the things I had felt. It was something very material, I mean it was very external—very outward—and luminous, with a golden light. It was very strong, powerful. But its character was a smiling benevolence, a peaceful joy, and a sort of blossoming in the joy and the light. And it was like a “happy new year,” like a wish. I must say it took me by surprise.
It lasted—I felt it for at least three hours. Afterwards, I stopped concerning myself with it, I don’t know what happened. But I told you a few words about it, and I spoke to two or three others: they had all felt it. Which means it was VERY material. They had all felt a sort of joy like that, but an amiable, powerful joy, and… oh, so sweet, very smiling, VERY BENEVOLENT… something… I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what it is, but it’s a kind of benevolence; so it was something very close to the human. And so concrete! So concrete. As if it had a taste, so concrete was it. Afterwards, I didn’t concern myself with it anymore, except that I told two or three people about it: they had all felt it. Now, I don’t know whether it has mingled or… It hasn’t gone, it doesn’t give the feeling of something that comes only to go away.
It was far more external than the things I usually feel, far more external…. Hardly mental at all, I mean there was no sense of a “promise” or… No. It would rather be like… My own impression was that of an immense personality, immense (meaning that for it, the earth was small, like this [Mother holds a small object in the hollow of her hands], like a ball), an immense personality, so very benevolent, and coming to… (Mother seems to gently raise the little ball in the hollow of her hands). It was the impression of a personal god (yet it was… I don’t know) who comes to help. So very strong! And so sweet at the same time, so understanding.
And it was very external: the body felt it everywhere, everywhere (Mother touches her face, her hands), all over like this.
What has become of it? I don’t know.
It was the start of the year. As if someone on the scale of a god (someone, that is) had come to say “Happy new year,” with all the power to make it a happy year. It was like that.
But what was it?…
So concrete…
I don’t know.
Is it… is it the personality (because it didn’t have any form, I didn’t see any form, there was only what it brought along [Mother feels the atmosphere with her fingers], sensation and feeling, these two things—sensation and feeling), I wondered if it wasn’t the supramental personality… which will, then, manifest later in material forms?
Since then, the body—this body—has been feeling (it has been permeated by that everywhere, a lot), it has been feeling much more joyful and less concentrated, living more in a happy, smiling expansion. For instance, it speaks more easily. There’s a note… a constant note of benevolence. A smile, you know, a benevolent smile, and all that with a GREAT FORCE…. I don’t know.
Haven’t you felt anything?
That day, I had a sense of contentment.
Ah, that’s it! Yes, that’s right.
Is it the supramental personality?… Which will incarnate in all those who will have a supramental body…?
It was luminous, smiling, and so benevolent because of its POWER: I mean that generally, benevolence in the human being is something slightly weak, in the sense that it doesn’t like battle, it doesn’t like struggle—but this wasn’t like that at all! A benevolence that imposes itself (Mother brings her two fists down on the armrests of her chair).
It interested me because it was entirely new. And so concrete! Concrete like this (Mother touches the arms of her chair), like what the physical consciousness usually regards as “others,” as concrete as that. Which means it didn’t come through some inner being, through the psychic being: it came DIRECTLY onto the body.
What is it?… Yes, it may be that…. The body’s feeling since that took place has been a sort of certitude; a certitude as if now it no longer were in an anxiety or uncertainty to know. “What will it be? What will this Supramental PHYSICALLY be like?” the body used to wonder. “What will it be like physically?” Now, it no longer thinks about it, it’s happy.
Very well.
Is it something that’s going to permeate the bodies that are ready?
Yes… I think so, yes. I feel it’s the formation that’s going to permeate and express itself—permeate and express itself—in the bodies… which will be the bodies of the Supramental.
Or maybe… maybe the superman? I don’t know. The intermediary between the two. Maybe the superman: it was very human, but a human of divine proportions, you understand.
A human without weaknesses and shadows: it was all luminous—all light and smile and… sweetness at the same time.
Yes, maybe the superman.
(silence)
I don’t know why, for a moment I have been thinking insistently: people who won’t know how things actually happened will say, once this supramental force has entered the earth’s atmosphere and penetrated them, they will say, “Well, WE are the ones who did this!”
(Mother laughs) Yes, probably!
It’s we, it’s our fine humanity that has… blossomed.2
Yes, certainly It’s always like that.
That’s why I say—I say that after all, for all of us here who have to face all the difficulties, it’s really a Grace! Because WE will know how—and we will not cease to be, of course.
We will know how it was done.
(silence)
Oh, I wanted to show you…
(Mother shows a photo taken by night of her illumined rooms)
Look, it’s pretty!
But when you are there, on your balcony, it looks very much like a big steamship, as if you are standing there at the captain’s command deck, and steering the ship!
***
(Soon afterwards, Mother turns to the question of Sri Aurobindo’s centenary, in 1972.)
They’re preparing here a publication in Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, and two other languages I forget, to which they intend to add Tamil and Telugu, of all the works of Sri Aurobindo. It’s a tremendous task.
At the same time, in America, there are two or three editions of Sri Aurobindo’s complete works: one edition for libraries, one for America, and one for India. They’ve sent me samples—they’re magnificent! The edition for America is a marvel: big like this, with a marvelous paper…
It’s a pity we aren’t doing the French.
Yes, in France they don’t respond much.
No. And also there should be someone to look after it. As for me, I’m not looking after it at all. There should be someone. But is it… maybe it’s not necessary.
But I’m looking after it a lot for France! To publish Sri Aurobindo in France…
Yes, but people answer you that they can’t do it!3
But there is a possibility, the last I read out to you.4
Yes…
So I am waiting. Maybe it’s going to start off there?
It would be good if we published the whole thing. It’s for 1972, his centenary… There was only six years’ difference between us.
There was some difference with Gandhi—it’s Gandhi’s centenary too, isn’t it?
It’s this year.
This year…
Yes, there’s “Some difference”!
(silence)
Now, under the pretext (what pretext, I don’t know) not to tire me (or I don’t understand what), they take things away from me, they don’t leave them with me (Mother laughs). I wanted to show you this American edition. which is very beautiful, and now… I don’t know where it is.
I would really like something to be done in France….
Yes, it would be good…. It would be good for the FRENCH!
Your book has had an enormous action, enormous. It’s still having it.
I remember that even here, when Pavitra read it, he told me (he was quite enthusiastic), he said to me, “Oh, he has made me understand something I hadn’t understood!” (Mother laughs) Pavitra, one of the old disciples who lived with Sri Aurobindo!
No, in France, things got off to a wrong start because of J.H., it was he who… Ambition and…
It has warped something.
Warped, yes. It has warped the French approach [to Sri Aurobindo].
***
(Towards the end, the conversation refers to the coming visit of Satprem’s mother.)
When is your mother arriving?
Next Saturday.
Saturday… Then we’ll change your date. Bring me the notebook….
Won’t it disturb you? It doesn’t cause too much complication?
No, there’s complication only when one wants it!
Is it your brother or another brother who’s just had a child?
No, it’s a sister.
Oh, you have a sister…
I have five!
What! Five sisters… ohh!… And three brothers… Oh, your mother, babah!
Yes.
What courage!
So you must have a multitude of nephews and nieces?
Oh, yes, all over the place!… I don’t much concern myself with them.
Oh, well, I didn’t know.
But I’ve always lived outside my family.
Yes, just like me with my family!… Last week I received a letter from someone (I forget her name) who writes to me, “Dear Aunt”! (Mother laughs) But the children of my brother [Mattéo], I don’t know them, even less their own children. My family is a large one too…. This one [who has written to Mother] is the daughter of a sister of… my grandmother! She writes (it seems she subscribes to the Bulletin) that I have “helped her for years” and she expresses her gratitude, and then says she is “dreaming of coming to India….”
One of my brother’s daughters (I think) married a Japanese and came here with her Japanese husband—I saw him—and she has a flock of kids! But my brother’s son and his other daughter, I don’t know them.
No, I don’t have any family sense!
Neither have I!
With my brother, we lived our whole childhood together, and very close, very close, until he entered Polytechnique5—for eighteen years—and he understood NOTHING. Yet he was an intelligent, capable man: he was a governor, and a rather successful one, in several countries. But he understood NOTHING…. He was friends with Jules Romains,6 and Jules Romains told him he had a very great desire to come here, but couldn’t. Jules Romains understood better than my brother, there you are!
Strangely, when he was… sixteen, I think, or seventeen… Did I tell you what happened to him?
Yes, a voice said to him…
Yes, it said to him, “Do you want to be divine?…” And he refused.7
He refused!
Wonderful!
Out of fear or skepticism?
No: narrowness of consciousness. He didn’t conceive of anything better than “helping others”—philanthropy That’s why he became a governor. When he came out of Polytechnique, he had a choice between different posts, and he deliberately chose that post in the colonies, because he wanted to “help backward races to progress”—all that nonsense!
Anyway, he did ONE good thing in his life, my brother. He was in the Ministry of Colonies, and the minister was a friend of his, a little older (I don’t know what post my brother held, but anyhow, everything went through his hands). When the war broke out (I was here, it was the first of the World Wars), the British government asked the French to expel Sri Aurobindo and send him to Algeria—they didn’t want Sri Aurobindo to be in Pondicherry, they were afraid. But we came to know of it (Sri Aurobindo came to know of it), and I wrote to my brother, saying, “This must not be passed.” The expulsion order had gone to the Ministry of Colonies to be ratified, and he got the ratification paper in his hands—he put it at the bottom of his drawer.
It disappeared completely, and we never heard of it again.
He redeemed himself!
It makes up for the rest….
Origanum vulgare, marjoram. ↩
At that moment, Satprem also thought that something similar must have taken place at the time of the hominids, a descent similar to this one, so that humans now regard their mental acquisition as the blossoming and natural fruit of their own human efforts. ↩
Three of the best French publishers rejected Sri Aurobindo's works or did not reply... ↩
A collection of "spiritual adventures" (in the plural) in which Sri Aurobindo might have found a place amidst drugs and psychedelia. ↩
The famous École Polytechnique in Paris. ↩
A renowned French writer (1885–1972). ↩
See Agenda II of August 5, 1961. ↩
***
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