Chapter 1July 3, 1968

But I have work to do. I no longer have time. I no longer have time to do anything.

It’s a pity.

That is to say, now F. has taken it into her head to translate Savitri with me (all she does is look in the dictionary when I need a word), right from the start, and I’ve reached the second page! It’ll take ten or fifteen years!

But I find it very interesting, because I only have to be still, and Sri Aurobindo dictates to me. So there remains one or two little corrections in the French, and that’s that. He tells me the word: for this word, this word. Like that. It’s very interesting. Only, I do five or six lines every time.... But now I do it better than I used to.

* * * Soon afterwards:

The government (I don’t know who) has asked the chief of the Radio here to ask me for a message on India’s condition. At first I answered, "I don’t deal with politics." Then he told me, "No, it’s not from a political but from a spiritual standpoint." I said, "I don’t know." But he insisted, he told me, "I’ve been asked by the government; if I can’t give it to them, I’ll be in trouble...." The poor man knew how to get round me! (Mother laughs)

See, here’s his letter (Satprem reads): "I pray the Mother to record a message for my radio on ‘integration and unity of India’...."

I said this:

(Mother reads)

"It is only India’s soul who can unify the country. "Externally the provinces of India are very different in character, tendencies, culture, as

well as in language, and any attempt to unify them artificially could only have disastrous results.

"But her soul is one, intense in her aspiration towards the spiritual truth, the essential unity

of the creation and the divine origin of life, and by uniting with this aspiration the whole country can recover a unity that has never ceased to exist for the superior mentality."

My handwriting has become quite bad.... It’s not me who wrote this, I don’t remember it at all – it