Works of Sri Aurobindo

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January 6, 1968

I wanted to show you something, then I forgot. Maybe you’ve seen it? It’s something I am supposed to have said to M. years ago, many years ago, about Savitri; he noted it down in French, and quite recently (that is, perhaps three or four weeks ago), he showed me what he had noted…. And as it happens, he showed it not only to me but to others (!). They’ve translated it into English and now they want me to read it aloud so they can play it at the Playground. I wanted to revise the French with you, but they want it in English. The English isn’t too good, but that doesn’t matter…. They are all enthusiastic and happy – as for me, I don’t like it, because the form of it is so personal..

Have you seen the French text?

Yes, I have.

So?

He certainly caught something of your vibration, that can be felt. But I don’t know how it would come out once you repeat it?… If you could say something anew on “Savitri”?

Ah! … But, you know, I am no longer the same person! I no longer say the same things – it’s impossible. Impossible. I have been looking at it; in fact this whole story has come back now as if to illustrate the huge difference – huge, but colossal difference in the state of consciousness. For me now, that [notation about Savitri] is such a personal vision of things…. Yesterday, I had an interesting day from that point of view.

It’s the physical ego that has been destroyed and is now like this (gesture with arms open upward)…. So it finds it odd! I don’t know how to explain. This way of putting oneself in the center of things and seeing them in relation to that center of consciousness seems so … You understand, the consciousness is spread out; it’s as much there or there as here, and it sees everything in relation to a higher, central Consciousness (Mother brings her two arms together, joining the tips of her hands above her head in a triangle pointing towards the Supreme), which is like a kind of Beacon – an immutable, all-powerful beacon throwing the same light on all

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 things, without the least personal reaction of any sort.

And the last vestiges – yesterday they seemed to be the last ones, because of this text they had asked me to read … Naturally, when I speak I say “I” because it’s the body that speaks, but it has no sense of “I,” it … It’s very hard to explain. Anyway, because of this affair, I said, “Ah, but how, how can that be said when it’s not me? – There’s no me, it’s not me!” And at the same time, there was this Consciousness above, saying, “No personal reactions – there’s no more ‘me,’ and if this must be done, let it be done.” And for hours and hours, there was such a peculiar state in which everything … It was like kinds of vestiges, or pieces of bark, I don’t know; pieces of something a bit hard or shriveled, which had crumbled and were turning into dust, and nothing, nothing but this Great Vibration (gesture like two great wings beating in the infinite), so powerful, so calm – the whole day. A sort of perception that life in a seemingly personal form like this one is only for action – only for action, for the requirements of action; and there must be no reactions, only the instrument acting – acting on the supreme Impulse, without reactions. And the perception was so clear that all, but all memories have been abolished, and are being increasingly abolished, so there may only remain a sort of … mass of vibrations organized so as to make you do what needs to be done in the whole for everything to be prepared and … (gesture of ascent) for everything to grow, to strive more and more towards … the transformation.

That makes speaking difficult, because of this old habit (maybe also a necessity to make oneself understood) of using the word “I” – “I,” what’s this I? It no longer corresponds to anything, except for a mere appearance. And this appearance is the only contradiction. That’s the interesting point: this appearance is clearly a contradiction of the truth; it’s something that still belongs to the old laws, at least, in fact, in its appearance. And because of that, you are forced to say things in a certain way, but it doesn’t correspond – it doesn’t correspond to your state of consciousness, not in the least…. There is a fluidity, a breadth, a sort of totality, and above all, more and more strongly the sense that this (pointing to the body) must grow INCREASINGLY SUPPLE – supple, fluid, so to speak, so as to express without resistance or distortion the vision – the real vision, the real state of consciousness. To the consciousness, this possibility of fluidity, of plasticity, is growing more and more evident, with only, only just something outwardly which … is increasingly becoming an illusion. And yet, yet that’s what

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others see, understand, know and call “me.” And it truly strives and strives to adapt more and more, but … time still appears to have its importance.

(long silence)

It’s a curious state of transition.

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