January 30, 1971
(Again Mother is not well, she receives Satprem an hour late.
And first she sees Satprem’s mother for a few minutes.)
So, how do you find him?
(Satprem’s mother, solid as a Breton rock:) Quite well.
He has written a splendid book. I am counting on this book to revolutionize the world…. You can be proud of your son.
(Satprem’s mother smiles and goes out)
Well, you have brought the book?
You want me to read to you this morning?
Of course, that’s what I am waiting for!
Are you sure you’re not too tired?
Oh, that doesn’t tire me. That’s not what tires me.
What’s tiring you right now?
My system is beginning to refuse to work in the old way, so how am I to eat? … No attraction for food whatsoever. It seems stupid, and yet one “has to” take it. And then the doctors want everything to function as usual — it’s impossible. So it puts me in a state of … it creates a sort of conflict in the nature.
You see, things are going too fast and at the same time there is a resistance of the old nature — encouraged by the doctors and habits.
There are times when … (gesture of tugging).
But that’s all a symbol of something else.
(Mother laughs) Of course!… It’s the symbol of everything in Nature that resists the transformation.
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Well, the whole world!
But I well understand that if the transformation were lightning swift, it would be frightful for people.
Yes….
For instance, they say that my troubles come from not eating enough — according to the old system, it’s true; so they’d like me to eat more, whereas personally, I feel that eating detracts from the Work.
It’s difficult too…. The attraction for food is completely gone, completely — it seems so useless, yet I realize that not taking it upsets the old system too much. So … (gesture of tugging between the two).
Oh, read to me! That’s far more interesting.
(Satprem reads the next part of “Sociology of the Superman”
and, in particular, in the text he quotes this passage
from Sri Aurobindo about propaganda:)
“I don’t believe in advertisement except for books etc., and in propaganda except for politics and patent medicines. But for serious work it is a poison. It means either a stunt or a boom — and stunts and booms exhaust the thing they carry on their chest and leave it lifeless and broken high and dry on the shores of nowhere — or it means a movement. A movement in the case of a work like mine means the founding of a school or a sect or some other damned nonsense. It means that hundreds or thousands of useless people join in and corrupt the work or reduce it to a pompous farce from which the Truth that was coming down recedes into secrecy or silence. It is what has happened to the ‘religions’ and is the reason of their failure.”
October 2, 1934
On Himself, XXVI. 375
That passage should be typed and put up in Auroville. It is INDISPENSABLE. They all have a false idea about propaganda and publicity. It should be typed in big letters; at the top, “Sri Aurobindo said,” then put the quotation, and send it to Auroville.
Say I am the one who’s sending it.
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(at the end of the reading)
That’s all?
It’s half the chapter.
It’s a pity…. I could listen to it for hours, it’s really very good. Is there any more?
About a dozen pages.
It will be for next time.
You give me joy.
But Mother, it’s you who have given me everything!
We have to do something about the translation…. Yes, I would very much like … something tells me (gesture above) that it should be translated into Russian.
You see, they’ve gone through an experience, they’ve exhausted their possibility and realized it led nowhere, and unfortunately they’re now going backwards — it is the right time to give them the book.
If it were really translated into very good Russian … it ought to be spread throughout the country. Now is just the time when it needs something. It has lost faith in what it thought it had found.
And this very obstinately keeps recurring: “In Russian, it has to be in Russian.”
Do we know a Russian?
There’s S. Do you want me to speak to her?
She doesn’t know Russian.
No, but maybe she knows some Russians?
You could ask her. You could tell her that I would very much like the book to be translated into Russian by someone who writes well, who has a lively style — not something dry and arid: someone who has a lively and appealing style. And we would arrange to print it somewhere.
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I’ll speak to S. about it.
(silence)
It did me good.
Oh, Mother, it’s you who do us good!
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February