Works of Sri Aurobindo

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-04_January 10_1968.htm

January 10, 1968

For an hour in the morning, I arrange flowers in my bathroom over there; all the flowers are kept there so I select them (I make a distribution every morning). And it’s so beautiful! It’s wonderful. All the flowers speak, like that, they have a life – they FEEL. And as I am very fond of them, they vibrate and vibrate. Then, as some have closed up in the night, I take them, look at them, tell them they are pretty – and they open up. Really a pleasant sight. Just look at this! (Mother holds out a rose)

* *

Soon afterwards

Now, there has come a message for February 29 [third anniversary of the supramental manifestation]. The message for the 21st is a jest, and this is the charitable explanation … which comes a week later!

Oh, it’s very simple (Mother reads):

Truth alone can give to the world
the power of receiving and manifesting
the Divine’s Love.

It’s an explanation, the beginning of an explanation. Because there [in the message for February 21], I say, “Serve the Truth and

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 you will hasten the coming of Divine Love.”[[Message for February 21: “The best way to hasten the manifestation of the Divine’s Love is to collaborate for the triumph of the Truth.” ]] – “Ah, what does that mean?” So here I say, “Truth alone can give the world the capacity to receive …” and so on.

Now I have to make a decent copy of it (Mother stops and puts the palms of her hands on her eyes as though she was tired).

Already at this hour, they’ve made me write some twenty birthday cards, so a sort of fatigue comes over the eyes, that’s the trouble…. Then I close my eyes, and when I do so they all think I’ve fallen asleep! (Laughing) And as they’re very nice, they politely wait until I “wake up”!

(Mother starts copying the

 message, then hesitates)

Isn’t there an ambiguity? Should we put “Truth alone” or “Alone the Truth”?… When it comes, it’s with such precision! But then, when it’s put into words there’s always something that sounds like a wavering. For a half-hour the other day, I sat there wondering, “Should I put it this way or that way?” For instance, the place of the word alone: The Truth alone, or Truth alone, or Alone Truth … to insist on the fact that Truth isn’t alone, without anything else, without the collaboration of the rest, but that it’s only the Principle of Truth that has the power to … I don’t even know how to explain myself!

I don’t mean that only Truth is at work, or that when it works it will work alone; I mean that its presence is indispensable (that’s very roughly the nuance). To magnify the meaning, I might say either “Truth must work alone to do the thing,” or “Truth alone is capable …” But then, it becomes heavy and impossible. And what we want is “Truth alone is capable,” it’s not that it works alone.

(Mother closes her eyes

and goes into a contemplation)

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