(Mother wants to revise with Satprem a few passages of her translation of 'Savitri.')
But now I’ve come to notice that they cut these quotations, they leave out two lines in the middle—suddenly I’ll say to myself, “But it doesn’t hang together!” I’ll ask, and F. tells me, “Yes, they left out one line, two lines….” So what’s to be done?
It’s absurd.
Here, all this is ready.
I don’t need to see it again: it’s for you to see it. It’s my translation.
What should I do?
(Laughing) See if my translation is good!
But Mother, listen… why?
No, because some things might be put in a better way.
Yes, but I’m wary. You know, I have learned that what’s thought to be “better” according to literary knowledge isn’t necessarily better from the standpoint of the true force.
I quite agree with that.
Listen, basically what you should do is to see (you can see it right away) if you find something you think isn’t too good. I’ve done it “like that”; I can’t say I am attached to my translation, not at all, but if you could suggest something to me… (Satprem starts reading out a passage).
As you said, the French might be a bit awkward, but it may be the only way to translate precisely. Sometimes I did it purposely.
Admitted through a curtain of bright mind
That hangs between our thought and absolute sight,
He found the occult cave, the mystic door
Near to the well of vision in the soul,
And entered where the Wings of Glory brood
In the sunlit space where all is for ever known.
(I.V.74)
“Brood”?…
It’s the image of a hen brooding on its eggs! “The Wings of Glory” brood on things so they may be realized.
There in a hidden chamber closed and mute
Are kept the record graphs of the cosmic scribe,
And there the tables of the sacred Law….
The symbol powers of number and of form,
And the secret code of the history of the world
And Nature’s correspondence with the soul
Are written in the mystic heart of life.
In the glow of the Spirit’s room of memories
He could recover the luminous marginal notes
Dotting with light the crabbed ambiguous scroll…
(ibid.)
(Mother laughs) “The crabbed ambiguous scroll”!…
Is that all?
He saw the unshaped thought in soulless forms,
Knew Matter pregnant with spiritual sense,
Mind dare the study of the Unknowable,
Life its gestation of the Golden Child.
(I.V.76)
A Will, a hope immense now seized his heart,
And to discern the superhuman’s form
He raised his eyes to unseen spiritual heights,
Aspiring to bring down a greater world.
(ibid.)
(silence)
Yesterday, I read another part of Savitri which tells how the king is transformed1—those are ALL the experiences my body is now going through! I knew nothing about it (I don’t remember that at all), and I seemed to be reading all the experiences my body is now going through…. It’s interesting.
There’s EVERYTHING in this Savitri!
And to be able to describe those experiences like that, he must have had them.
(silence)
The mystery is always why he left.
Yes.
I remember quite clearly and precisely (I still see the whole setting, in his room) a conversation I once had with him—in what connection, I don’t know…. It was… (I forget what preceded, you understand), he told me, “We can’t both remain upon earth, one must go.” Then I said to him, “I am ready, I’ll go.” Then he told me, “No, you can’t go, your body is better than mine, you can undergo the transformation better than I can do.”
And the strange thing is that… It took place just before all his physical difficulties.
But I didn’t attach too much importance [to that conversation]; it’s only when he left that it suddenly came back, and I thought, “So there, he knew!…” It was… I don’t know. It was almost like a speculation, you understand, which he was just mentioning. It was at the time of our moving from the other house to this one,2 because it took place one day in that room, here [downstairs], and it was before his accident, before he broke his leg.3 In what connection, I forget. That’s gone. But I remember clearly, so clearly, I still see the room and everything, how he was, how he told me, “We can’t both remain upon earth.” That’s all.
But why can’t “both” remain?
Ah, that’s the question.
Why?
But when he said it to me, I found it so obvious that I didn’t even ask him. So it must have followed something, and that something is gone.
Because I remember, I told him, “I am absolutely ready, I’ll go.” Then he looked at me, and he said, “No, no, your body is better than mine, it can undergo…”
Why?… How many times since then I have asked myself that question.
Yes, one would be tempted to think that with two, one can better support each other…
(after a silence)
These last few days it came once again; once again I looked and looked, and… (Mother opens her hands, in a gesture expressing that she does not know).
It depended on something, but what? I don’t know.
(silence)
I remember another thing, but then much more recent. After he left, long ago, years and years ago (it was not very long after he left, maybe a year or two), I was downstairs, in the bathroom downstairs, and in that bathroom, early in the morning I was taking my breakfast on the corner of a table, like that. Then, while I was beginning to eat, he came and stood there (gesture beside Mother), and he was so concrete that I felt as if… it would take VERY LITTLE for him to become material again. So I said to him, “Oh, you are coming back!” Like that. And then… he answered me, “I’ll be with you, but I can’t come back materially—I MUST NOT come back materially.”
It was so material that I suddenly felt, “Oh, nothing, a mere nothing would be enough… [for him to materialize].”
But doesn’t it mean that Your presence here could help him, on day, to materialize in another body?
Yes, yes…. That he said clearly (I asked him), he clearly said, “I’ll come back only in a supramental body.”
That was before what I have just told you.
So it would be you who would help him to materialize?
Yes, yes.
But there’s the big question of that supramental body, I don’t know.
Yes, but if it materializes, that’s different. It’s not the same thing as creating it.
Yes.
If Sri Aurobindo materializes again, but in another body…
Ah, in a living body…
In a living body, but made of another substance than the physical substance.
Yes, but that’s what I said: that substance, when, how, what?…
But on a much lower level, lasting materializations have been made—like those stones that were thrown in the Guest House, for instance.4
Yes.
So why couldn’t this substance of light materialize in the same way?
(long silence)
The beings who do those materializations (all those mediums) always have a very fat body, and it’s a special substance. Those materializations aren’t permanent.
That of the stones was—those stones that were thrown.5
(silence)
Oh, that reminds me of something: you know that long-haired S.B.?… Dr. S. has just gone to see him—he came back with a ring. I always thought it was some conjuring trick or other, but the Doctor seems to say… he says, “He made a gesture (like a sleight of hand), and he put this in my hand.”
It may be a materialization.
Yes, but he does that sort of materialization—he does it a lot, that man—but he uses the lowest entities of the vital world; he is a man who has disgusting dealings with lower entities.6
Oh?
Yes, whereas this [supramental materialization] is another kind of materialization…. He uses the lowest entities.
At any rate, when the Doctor came back, I SAW: it takes place exclusively in the vital. I am sure of that.
But he does materialize.
He does.
(silence)
In any case, I don’t know about all that. It’s completely outside my consciousness.
Yes, but that [trick of the ring] is all the way down. This would be another kind of materialization.
(long silence)
We’ll see.
As for me, I don’t know.
(silence)
In a childish imagination, we may picture a Sri Aurobindo whose luminous substance grows, develops, and when the time is ready, there would only be a transition to be made.
That may be. At any rate, that he is in the subtle physical is certain. He is there all the time.
But this body knows very well that it isn’t endowed with exceptional capacities…. It doesn’t delude itself. All it has is a faith ardent, constant, intense, oh!… A faith nothing can shake. But that’s all.
It has never had a desire or ambition to work miracles—it’s not interested in that. It has seen many miraculous things, but it has always felt it was… the Supreme Lord who was doing all that (which it finds quite natural, by the way). But imaginings… when they come it drives them back, it says, “No, that doesn’t interest me.” Things people find “marvelous,” all of that doesn’t interest it. it wouldn’t be surprised to see Sri Aurobindo walk in one day—not in the least; but it doesn’t have… it feels no urge to do it, you understand! It feels no need to astound people—none at all.
Yes, of course!
We’ll see.7 (Mother laughs)
The World-Soul, II.XIV. ↩
In February, 1927. ↩
On November 24, 1938. ↩
In 1920. ↩
Some disciples (Amrita for instance) kept them for several years. ↩
In this connection, the reader will read with interest (when they are published) Pavitra's records of evening talks with Sri Aurobindo, in particular the talk of 12 May 1926. ↩
This same afternoon, Satprem, struck by a sudden thought, wrote the following note to Mother: "Following this morning's conversation, I have suddenly thought, 'But Savitri goes into death in search of Satyavan... so Mother is going to bring back Sri Aurobindo?'" Mother seems to have replied to the person who brought her the note, "Something of the sort." ↩
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