Agenda de l’action Supramentale sur la Terre. Mother experiences a cellular ubiquity: 'The body is everywhere!' A new cellular consciousness that will be a new kind of physics and the earth's next biology?
The year of Kennedy's assassination; the beginnings of the Sino-Soviet split. While the destructive giants respond faster and faster and science calls in question the laws of the universe, Mother is slowly hewing out the path to the next species on earth. "The path I seek is ever descending," into the consciousness of the cells. Will it be global death then, or, just as the birds followed the reptiles, the beginning of a new world? "I am on the threshold of a stupendous realisation, which depends on a very tiny thing." She is 85 this year. Will it be a more "intelligent" species within the framework of our physics, or one endowed with another kind of intelligence capable of changing the laws of physics, as the frog changes the laws of the tadpole in its fishbowl? In the course of this descent towards the self, Mother suddenly veers into another physical universe: "Everything looks as though you were seeing it for the first time, even the motion of the earth and the stars… There is no distance, no difference, there is not something that sees and something that is seen.... You become a mountain, a forest, a house.... You see simultaneously thousands of miles away and at very close range" - a kind of cellular ubiquity. And then, too, this astounding realisation: "The body is everywhere!" Is the next species ubiquitous? For what happens to the laws of the old physics when the fishbowl is shattered, when distance and "elsewhere" are abolished? "All the usual rhythms have changed.... a universal movement so tremendously rapid that it seems motionless.... A true physical that lies behind." And where is death for one who escapes the wear and tear of time inside the fishbowl? "If this condition becomes a natural thing, death can no longer exist!.... It would be a new phase of life on earth." And there is no need to look far for it: "The field of experience is right here, at every second.... people strive to enter into contact with something that is right here." A new cellular consciousness that will be a new kind of physics and perhaps the earth's next biology?
(Mère ouvre une page de «Savitri». Elle voudrait traduire le «Dialogue avec la Mort». La page s'ouvre «par hasard» sur les dernières lignes de la défaite de la Mort, que Mère lit à voix haute:)
And [Death] left crumbling the shape that he had worn, Abandoning hope to make man's soul his prey And force to be mortal the immortal spirit.1
(X.IV.667)
N'importe où on ouvre, n'importe où on lit, c'est admirable! C'est imédiatement admirable – c'est curieux, hein, ces trois lignes...
Abandoning hope to make man's soul his prey And force to be mortal the immortal spirit.
C'est admirable.
Ces gens pourraient m'attraper très facilement: il y a longtemps qu'ils veulent que je leur lise tout «Savitri» – c'est un travail! Mais ça, c'est irrésistible.
Alors, au fond (seulement mon cahier ne sera pas suffisant!), au fond, je voudrais traduire tout le dialogue [avec la Mort], il est admirable.
(Mère feuillette)
Quand elle dit... Je ne sais plus les mots, mais elle dit:
My God is love2
Oh! c'est...
(Mère revient en arrière au début du Livre X, Chant IV)
Voilà:
The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real3
Regarde-moi ça:
Or in bodies motionless like statues, fixed In tranced cessations of their sleepless thought Sat sleeping souls, and this too was a dream.4
(X.IV.642)
Ce sont les gens qui veulent atteindre le Nirvana... «And this too was a dream»! [Et ceci aussi était un rêve.]
(Mère feuillette encore)
C'est là que ça commence [le dialogue avec la Mort]:
Once more arose the great destroying Voice: Across the fruitless labour of the worlds His huge denial’s all-defeating might Pursued the ignorant march of dolorous Time.5
(X.IV.643)
Voilà, c'est là qu'il faudrait commencer.
Le Livre X est grand: «The Book of the Double Twilight»...6 Naturellement si je commence à lire...
Tu vas remonter jusqu'au début!
On irait jusqu'au bout!
(Mère revient en arrière)
"The Gospel of Death and Vanity of the Ideal"7
Ça, c'est précieux pour répondre à tout-tout-tout ce que les gens disent.
Ah, here we are! "The Debate of Love and Death."
That's where it begins.
It's Canto III.
There's a passage underlined here.
If it's underlined, it's not by me!... No, that's the place where I stopped when I was reading: I used to mark in red the place where I stopped.
He says... (Death to Savitri, in a supremely ironic tone):
... Art thou indeed so strong, O heart, O Soul, so free?... (X. III . 636)
... Art thou indeed so strong, O heart, O Soul, so free?...
(X. III . 636)
It's wonderful!
So we would have to start at the beginning of the "Book of the Double Twilight," Book X. Let's see how it goes....
(Mother reads)
All still was darkness dread and desolate; There was no change nor any hope of change. In this black dream which was a house of Void, A walk to Nowhere in a land of Nought, Ever they drifted without aim or goal.... (X599)
All still was darkness dread and desolate; There was no change nor any hope of change. In this black dream which was a house of Void, A walk to Nowhere in a land of Nought, Ever they drifted without aim or goal....
(X599)
My God, how wonderful! It's wonderful.
(Mother turns the pages)
And Book XII ["The Return to the Earth"].... I don't know.
(Mother reads the concluding lines of "Savitri":)
Night, splendid with the moon dreaming in heaven In silver peace, possessed her luminous reign. She brooded through her stillness on a thought Deep-guarded by her mystic folds of light, And in her bosom nursed a greater dawn. (XII.724)
Night, splendid with the moon dreaming in heaven In silver peace, possessed her luminous reign. She brooded through her stillness on a thought Deep-guarded by her mystic folds of light, And in her bosom nursed a greater dawn.
(XII.724)
It heralds the Supermind.
But I had a feeling he hadn't completed his revision. When I read this, I felt it wasn't the end, just as when I read the last chapter of the "Yoga of Self-Perfection,"8 I felt it was unfinished. He left it unfinished. And he said so. He said, "No, I will not go down to this mental level any more."
But in Savitri's case... (I didn't look after it, you know), he had around him Purani, that Chinmayi, and... (what's his name?) Nirod – they all swarmed around him. So I didn't look after Savitri. I read Savitri two years ago, I had never read it before. And I am so glad! Because I read it at the time I could understand it – and I realized that none of those people had understood ONE BIT of it. Both things at the same time.
(silence)
Let's see, open a page at random, I want to see if you find something interesting – concentrate a moment and open the book, I'll read it to you.
Just put your finger.... Do you want a blade? (Mother gives Satprem a letter opener)
(Satprem concentrates and opens the book)
Oh!
In the passion of its solitary dream It lay [the heart of the King] like a closed soundless oratory Where sleeps a consecrated argent floor Lit by a single and untrembling ray And an invisible Presence kneels in prayer...
C'est bien joli!
Oh! très bien... Je remonte un peu:
In the luminous stillness of its mute appeal It looked up to the heights it could not see; It yearned from the longing depths it could not leave. In the centre of its vast and fateful trance Half way between his free and fallen selves, Interceding twixt God's day and the mortal night, Accepting worship as its single law, Accepting bliss as the sole cause of things, Refusing the austere joy which none can share, Refusing the calm that lives for calm alone, To her it turned for whom it willed to be. In the passion of its solitary dream It lay like a closed soundless oratory Where sleeps a consecrated argent floor Lit by a single and untrembling ray And an invisible Presence kneels in prayer. On some deep breast of liberating peace All else was satisfied with quietude; This only knew there was a truth beyond. All other parts were dumb in centred sleep Consenting to the slow deliberate Power Which tolerates the world's error and its grief, Consenting to the cosmic long delay, Timelessly waiting through the patient years Her coming they had asked for earth and men; This was the fiery point that called her now. Extinction could not quench that lonely fire; Its seeing filled the blank of mind and will; Thought dead, its changeless force abode and grew....
Je ne vois plus clair... Mais je sais ce que c'est: c'est quand le Roi9 fait son dernier surrender [soumission] à la Mère universelle – il s'annule devant la Mère universelle et Elle lui donne la mission qu'il doit accomplir.
Its seeing filled the blank of mind and will; Thought dead, its changeless force abode and grew. Armed with the intuition of a bliss To which some moved tranquillity was the key, It persevered through life's huge emptiness Amid the blank denials of the world. It sent its voiceless prayer to the Unknown; It listened for the footsteps of its hopes Returning through the void immensities, It waited for the fiat of the Word That comes through the still self from the Supreme.10
(III.III.332)
Eh bien, c'est un beau choix! C'est ça, sûrement.
Quand il se réveille de là, il a la vision de la Mère universelle et il reçoit la mission.
Tout ça, c'est très bon, c'est une bonne indication.11
C'est passionnant, Savitri!
Je crois que c'est son Message – tout le reste, ce sont des préparations, mais Savitri, c'est le Message. Malheureusement, il y a deux imbéciles ici qui se sont amusés à vouloir le corriger – de son vivant! (surtout A, qui est un poète). C'est pour cela que Sri Aurobindo a écrit toutes ces Lettres sur la poésie. Je n'ai jamais voulu lire ça – ça m'outrage. Il a fallu qu'il explique tout un «principe poétique» – qu'est-ce que ça a à voir! C'est le contraire: ça descend d'en haut, et puis, APRÈS, on explique. C'est comme le coup de poing dans la sciure de bois: l’inspiration descend, et après, alors, on explique que tout est arrangé comme ça – ça ne m'intéresse pas du tout!12
Alors tu es venu (tu vois, c'est la réponse) pour manifester (c'est très bien, j'aime beaucoup cette réponse), manifester the bliss above [la béatitude nouvelle]. Tu as compris?... Il dépasse tout ce qui a essayé de s'unir au Suprême, parce que rien de tout ça ne lui suffisait – il avait l’aspiration à quelque chose de plus. Alors, tout ça, c'est annulé, il est entré dans un Néant, et, de là, il est sorti avec la capacité de s'unir à la Béatitude nouvelle.
C'est ça, c'est bien!
(traduction)
Dans l’immobilité lumineuse de son appel muet Il [le cœur du Roi] regardait vers des hauteurs qu'il ne pouvait [pas voir Et brûlait du fond d'un abîme ardent qu'il ne pouvait pas [quitter. Au centre de cette vaste transe fatidique À mi-chemin entre son moi libre et son moi déchu Intercédant entre le jour de Dieu et la nuit des mortels, Acceptant l’adoration pour seul loi Acceptant la béatitude pour seule cause des choses Refusant la joie austère que nul ne peut partager Refusant le calme qui vit pour le calme seulement, Il se tourna vers Elle pour laquelle il voulait être. Dans la passion de son rêve solitaire Il reposait comme un oratoire silencieux et clos Où sommeille un sol d'argent consacré Allumé d'un seul rayon sans vacillement Et s'agenouille en prière une invisible Présence. Sur une immense poitrine de paix délivrante Tout le reste était satisfait et en quiétude, Seul son cœur savait qu'il y avait une vérité par-delà. Tous les autres domaines restaient muets dans un sommeil [concentré Consentant au lent Pouvoir délibéré Qui tolère l’erreur du monde et sa douleur, Consentant au long cheminement cosmique, Attendant sans fin à travers les années patientes La venue de Celle qu'ils avaient demandée pour la terre et les [hommes, Tel était maintenant le point brûlant qui appelait Celle-ci. l’anéantissement ne pouvait pas éteindre ce feu solitaire, Sa vision remplissait le vide du mental et de la volonté; Morte, la pensée, sa force inchangée persistait et croissait. Armé de l’intuition d'une béatitude Dont la clef était dans une tranquillité ardente, Il persévérait à travers l’énorme nullité de la vie Parmi les négations nues du monde. Il envoyait sa prière muette vers l’Inconnu Attendant que le bruit de pas de ses espoirs Revienne à travers les immensités vides, Il attendait le fiat du Verbe Venu du Suprême à travers le moi immobile.
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