Chapter 1September 4, 1965

(About a second operation that Satprem should – supposedly – undergo. Mother refuses and advises

some exercises:)

I was in fact asking for you to cure me without any operations!

No, the body must be helped! It goes without saying that in the exercises and in the material aids and in everything I will put the Consciousness, but one must help – one must help the body. It's a necessary modesty.

It's the same thing with food. We are obliged to eat, of course, and that's not interesting, it's not for pleasure, but... (Mother speaks to her body:) "Look here, be modest, indispensably modest: it's necessary to eat and you must eat." And in addition, we must eat what we SHOULD eat, what helps the body the most.... It's a story I have been telling myself for years, but it's absolutely true. And when you start getting proud, you get a good smack on the face, that is to say, a pain or an accident: "That's what you get! Now be modest, you understand?" Then it says, "Yes, yes, I've understood!"

(Mother reads a few lines from "Savitri" which she prepares to translate into French. It is Savitri's

heart that speaks:)

The great stars burn with my unceasing fire And life and death are both its fuel made. Life only was my blind attempt to love: Earth saw my struggle, heaven my victory.

(X. III. 638)

She says, Life and death are the fuel, then, In my blind attempt LIFE ONLY was my attempt to love.76 Because my attempt to love was blind, I limited it to life – but I won the victory in death.