Chapter 2September 8, 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.

Earth saw my struggle, heaven my victory.

Yet, earth should see the victory? The victory should be on earth, shouldn't it?

Yes, but she couldn't win the victory on earth because she lacked heaven – she couldn't win the victory in life because she lacked death and she had to conquer death in order to conquer life.

That's the idea. Unless we conquer Death, the victory isn't won. Death must be vanquished, there must be no more death.

That's very clear.

(silence)

According to what he says here, it is the principle of Love that is transformed into flame and finally into light. It isn't the principle of Light that is transformed into flame when it materializes: it's the flame that is transformed into light.

The great stars give light because they burn; they burn because they are under the effect of Love.

Love would be the original Principle?

That seems to be what he is saying.

I didn't remember this passage. But I told you, my experience77 is that the last thing as one rises – the last thing beyond light, beyond consciousness, beyond... – the last thing one reaches is love. "One," this "one" is... it's the "I" – I don't know. According to the experience, it's the last thing to manifest now in its purity, and it is the one that has the transforming power.

That's what he appears to be saying here: the victory of Love seems to be the final victory.

(silence)

He said, Savitri, a Legend and a Symbol; it's he who made it a symbol. It's the story of the encounter of Savitri, the principle of Love, with Death; and it's over Death that she won the victory, not in life. She could not win the victory in life without winning the victory over Death.

I didn't know it was put so clearly here. I had read it, but only once. It's very interesting.

How many times, how many times have I seen that he had written down my experiences.... Because for years and years I didn't read Sri Aurobindo's books; it was only before coming here that I had read The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, and another one, too. For instance, Essays on the Gita I had never read, Savitri I had never read, I read it very recently (that is to say, some ten years ago, in 1954 or '55). The book Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother I had never read, and when I read it, I realized what he wrote to people about me – I had no idea, he had never told me anything about it!... You see, there are lots of things that I had said while speaking to people – that I had said just like that, because they came (gesture from above) and I would say them – and I realized he had written them. So, naturally, I appeared to be simply repeating what he had written – but I had never read it! And now, it's the same thing: I had read this passage from Savitri, but hadn't noticed it – because I hadn't had the