Chapter 8December 28, 1962

sentence again?

I said: "Sri Aurobindo succumbed to this work on December 5, 1950."

He didn't succumb.

We have to use another word, not "succumb." It was truly his CHOICE – he chose to do the work in another way, a way he felt would bring much more rapid results. But this explanation is nobody's business, for the moment. So we can't say that he succumbed. "Succumbed" gives the idea that it was against his will, that it just happened, that it was an accident – it CANNOT be "succumbed."

Yes, I understand.

You could simply say that he did the work up to that moment... that's all, giving no reason.

We could simply say: "Sri Aurobindo left this life on December 5, 1950."

Read the beginning of the passage again.

"The seeker of transformation must thus face all the difficulties, even death, not to vanquish but to change them – one cannot change things without taking them upon oneself. 'Thou shalt bear all things,' says Savitri, 'that all things may change.' Sri Aurobindo succumbed to this work..."

Can't you just put "that's why," without giving any explanation?... That's why Sri Aurobindo left his body. That's much more powerful. You said "even death," so just put: "That's why Sri Aurobindo left his body."

(Satprem reads Mother one last passage from his manuscript:)

Evolution does not move higher and higher, into an ever more heavenly heaven, but deeper and deeper; and each cycle or evolutionary round comes to completion a little further down, a little nearer the Center where the Supreme High and Low, heaven and earth, will finally join. Thus for the two poles to actually meet, the pioneer must cleanse the mental, vital, and material middle ground. When the junction is made, not merely mentally and vitally but materially, Spirit will emerge in Matter, in a total supramental being and supramental body, and...

This cleansing of the middle ground is the whole story of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother... "I had been dredging, dredging, dredging the mire of the subconscious.... The supramental light was coming down before November,241 but afterwards all the mud arose and it stopped."242 Once again Sri Aurobindo verified, not individually this time but collectively, that if one pulls down too strong a light, the violated darkness below is made to moan. It is noteworthy that each time Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had some new experience marking a progress in the transformation, this progress automatically materialized in the consciousness of the disciples, without their even knowing anything about it, as a period of increased difficulties, sometimes even revolts or illnesses, as though everything were grating and grinding. But then, one begins to understand the mechanism. If a pygmy were abruptly subjected to the simple mental light of a cultivated man, we would probably see the poor fellow traumatized and driven mad by the subterranean revolutions within him. There is still too much jungle beneath the surface. The world is still full of jungle, that's the crux of the matter in a word; our mental colonization is a minuscule crust plastered over a barely dry quaternary.... And the battle seems endless; one "digs and digs," said the Rishis, and the deeper one digs, the more the bottom seems to recede: "I have been digging, digging.... Many autumns have I been toiling night and day, the dawns aging me. Age is diminishing the glory of our bodies." Thus, thousands of years ago, lamented Lopamudra, wife of Rishi Agastya, who was also seeking transformation.... But Agastya doesn't lose heart, and his reply is magnificently characteristic of the conquerors the Rishis were: "Not in vain is the labor which the gods protect. Let us relish all the contesting forces, let us conquer indeed even here, let us run this battle race of a hundred leadings." (Rig-Veda 1.179)

(For a long time, Mother remains pensive)

Well, we have another year of "digging" ahead of us.

Happy New Year.

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