The Mother
with Letters on the Mother

Comments on Specific Entretiens

Entretiens avec la Mère is the Mother's translation of her conversations of 1929, which were spoken in English. This translation is now published as the first part of Entretiens 1929-1931 (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1994). The page numbers given after the quoted passages in this subsection refer to the 1994 edition.—Ed.

In Entretiens the Mother says: "Même ceux qui ont la volonté de s'enfuir [du monde], quand ils arrivent de l'autre côté peuvent trouver que la fuite ne sert pas à grand-chose après tout" [p. 28]. What does "arrivent de l'autre côté" mean? Does it mean "when they come into this world" or "when they go into the world of silence which they realised"?

No—"arrivent de l'autre côté" simply means "when they die". What Mother intended was that when they actually arrive at their Nirvana they find it is not the ultimate solution or largest realisation of the Supreme and they must eventually come back and have their share of the world action to reach that largest realisation.

2 May 1935

The Mother says in Entretiens: "En fait, la mort a été attachée à toute vie sur terre" [p. 41]. The words "En fait" and "attachée" tend to give the impression that after all death is inevitable. But the preceding sentence ("Si cette croyance pouvait être rejetée, d'abord de la mentalité consciente, ... la mort ne serait plus inévitable") brings in an ambiguity because it does not make death so inevitable; it introduces a condition, an "if" by which death could be avoided. But the categoricality of the sentence with "En fait" rather decreases one's expectation of a material immortality. Moreover, the "if" in the other sentence is too formidable to be satisfied.

There is no ambiguity that I can see. "En fait" and "attachée" do not convey any sense of inevitability. "En fait" means simply

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that in fact, actually, as things are at present all life (on earth) has death attached to it as its end; but it does not in the least convey the idea that it can never be otherwise or that this is the unalterable law of all existence. It is at present a fact for certain reasons which are stated,—due to certain mental and physical circumstances—if these are changed, death is not inevitable any longer. Obviously the alteration can only come "if" certain conditions are satisfied—all progress and change by evolution depends upon an "if" which gets satisfied. If the animal mind had not been pushed to develop speech and reason, mental man would never have come into existence,—but the "if", a stupendous and formidable one, was satisfied. So with the ifs that condition a farther progress.

31 July 1936

There are some lines in Entretiens which I do not find in the English Conversations. For example, in the conversation about hostile forces, the Mother speaks about some "êtres pervers et hostiles de plus grande envergure et d'une plus haute origine que tous ceux dont j'ai parlé jusqu'à présent" [p. 69]. These new hostiles are not of the lower cosmic plane. If they are of a "plus haute origine", they must belong to the higher worlds. Does this mean that the hostiles exist in the higher worlds up to the Supramental?

I believe the Mother was referring to the mental Asuras as opposed to the vital hostiles. There are no hostiles above the mind and cannot be, for it is with the mind that the opposition begins.

When the Conversations were translated, Mother made certain corrections so as to express the thought better than in the original report.

19 October 1935

In Entretiens the Mother speaks of "la marche interne de l'univers" [p. 100]. Is there really an internal progress in the universe? Except in a few individuals there is hardly any change or progress in countries. It seems to me that, internally and externally, the universe is moving in a circle and always

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crosses the same points on the circle, but essentially the quality of the points is the same.

"Univers" in French usually means not the whole universe but the "world"—the earth. There must be a progress in the earth-consciousness, otherwise there could have been no evolution. The evolution of mankind may go by circles or spirals, but there is all the same an opening of more and more complete possibilities till the possibility of the evolution of a higher race becomes valid.

1 September 1936

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