Film "The Mother's Life"
The Mother on Herself
I AM WITH YOU...
(Bulletin, February 1958)
I am with you because I am you or you are I.
I am with you, that signifies a world of things because I am with you on all levels, in all planes, from the supreme consciousness down to the most physical. Here, at Pondicherry, you cannot breathe without breathing my consciousness. It saturates the atmosphere almost materially, in the subtle physical and extends to the Lake, 10 kilometres from here. Farther, my consciousness can be felt in the material vital, then on the mental plane and other higher planes, everywhere. When I came here for the first time, I felt the atmosphere of Sri Aurobindo, felt materially, at a distance of ten miles, ten nautical miles, not kilometres. It was very sudden, very concrete an atmosphere pure, luminous, light, light that lifts you up.
It is now long since Sri Aurobindo had this reminder put up everywhere in the Ashram that you all know: "Always behave as if the Mother was looking at you; because she is, indeed, always present." This is not a mere phrase, not simply words, it is a fact. I am with you in a very concrete manner and they who have a subtle vision can see me.
In a general way my Force is there constantly at work, constantly shifting the psychological elements of your being to put them in new relations, defining to yourself the different facets of your nature so that you may see what should be changed, developed, rejected.
But that apart, there is a special personal tie between you and me, between all who have turned to Sri Aurobindo's and my teaching, - it is well understood, distance does not count here, you may be in France, you may be at the other end of the world or at Pondicherry, the tie is always true and living. And each time there comes a call, each time there is a need for me to know so that I may send out a force, an inspiration, protection or any other thing, a sort of message comes to me all of a sudden and I do the needful. These communications reach me evidently at any moment, and you must have seen me more than once stop suddenly in the middle of a sentence or work; it is because something comes to me, a communication and I concentrate.
With those whom I have accepted as disciples, to whom I have said "yes", there is more than a tie, there is an emanation of me. This emanation warns me whenever it is necessary and tells me what is happening. Indeed I receive intimations constantly, but all are not recorded in my active memory, I would be flooded; the physical consciousness acts like a filter. Things are recorded in a subtle plane, they are there in a latent state, something like a piece of music that is recorded without being played. When I need to know with my physical consciousness, I make the contact with the subtle physical plane and the disc begins to turn. Then I see how things are, their development in time, the actual result.
And if for some reason or other, you write to me asking for my help and I answer "I am with you", it means that the communication with you becomes active, you come in my active consciousness for a time, for the time necessary.
And this tie between you and me is never cut. There are people who have long ago left the Ashram, in a state of revolt, and yet I keep myself informed of them, I attend to them. You are never abandoned.
In fact I hold myself responsible for everyone, even for those whom I have met only for one second in my life.
Now remember one thing. Sri Aurobindo and myself are one and the same consciousness, one and the same person. Only, when this force or this presence, which is the same, passes through your individual consciousness, it puts on a form, an appearance which differs according to your temperament, your aspiration, your need, the particular turn of your being. Your individual consciousness is like a filter, a pointer, if I may say so, it makes a choice, fixes one possibility out of the infinity of divine possibilities. In reality, the Divine gives to each individual exactly what he expects of Him. If you believe that the Divine is far and cruel, He will be far and cruel, because it will be necessary for your ultimate good that you feel the wrath of God; He will be Kali for the worshippers of Kali, and Beatitude for the Bhakta. And He will be the All- Knowledge of the seekers of Knowledge, the transcendent Impersonal of the illusionists; He will be atheist with the atheist and the love of the lover. He will be brotherly and close, a friend always faithful, always ready to succour those who feel Him as the inner guide in each movement, at every moment. And if you believe that He can wipe away everything, He will wipe away all your faults, all your errors tirelessly, and at every moment you can feel His infinite Grace. The Divine is indeed what you expect of Him in your deepest aspiration.
And when you enter into this consciousness where you see all things in a single look, the infinite multitude of relations between the Divine and men, you see how wonderful all that is, in all details. You can look at the history of mankind and see how much the Divine has evolved according to what men have understood, desired, hoped, dreamed and how He was materialistic with the materialist and how He grows every day and becomes nearer, more luminous according as human consciousness widens itself. Everyone is free to choose. The perfection of this endless variety of relations of man with God through-out the history of the world is an ineffable marvel. And all that together is only one second of the total manifestation of the Divine.
The Divine is with you according to your aspiration. Naturally that does not mean that He bends to the caprices of your outer nature, — I speak here of the truth of your being. And yet, sometimes He does fashion Himself according to your outer aspirations, and if, like the devotees, you live alternately in separation and union, ecstasy and despair, the Divine also will separate from you and unite with you, according as you believe. The attitude is thus very important, even the outer attitude. People do not know how important is faith, how faith is miracle, creator of miracles. If you expect every moment to be lifted up and pulled towards the Divine, He will come to lift you and He will be there, quite close, closer, ever closer.
The Mother's Aspiration
(CWM, vol.8, p.161)
At the beginning of my present earthly existence I came into contact with many people who said that they had a great inner aspiration, an urge towards something deeper and truer, but that they were tied down, subjected, slaves to that brutal necessity of earning their living, and that this weighed them down so much, took up so much of their time and energy that they could not engage in any other activity, inner or outer. I heard this very often, I saw many poor people ― I don’t mean poor from the monetary point of view, but poor because they felt imprisoned in a material necessity, narrow and deadening.
I was very young at that time, and I always used to tell myself that if ever I could do it, I would try to create a little world ― oh! quite a small one, but still… a small world where people would be able to live without having to be preoccupied with food and lodging and clothing and the imperative necessities of life, so as to see whether all the energies freed by this certainty of a secure material living would turn spontaneously towards the divine life and the inner realisation.
Well, towards the middle of my life ― at least, what is usually the middle of a human life the means were given to me and I could realise this, that is, create such conditions of life. And I have come to this conclusion, that it is not this necessity which hinders people from consecrating themselves to an inner realisation, but that it is a dullness, a tamas, a lack of aspiration, a miserable laxity, an I-don’t-care attitude, and that those who face even the hardest conditions of life are sometimes the ones who react most and have the intensest aspiration.
That’s all. I am waiting for the contrary to be proved to me.
I would very much like to see the contrary but I haven’t yet seen it. As there are many energies which are not utilised, since this terrible compulsion of having something to eat or a roof to sleep under or clothes on one’s back does not exist ― as one is sure of all that ― there is a whole mass of energies which are not utilised for that; well, they are spent in idle stupidities. And of these, the foolishness which seems to me the most disastrous is to keep one’s tongue going: chatter, chatter, chatter. I haven’t known a place where they chatter more than here, and say everything they should not say, busy themselves with things they should not be concerned with. And I know it is merely an overflow of unused energy.
From Prayers and Meditations
January 5, 1914
FOR a long while I have been sitting with this notebook before me, unable to make up my mind to write, so much is all within me mediocre, worthless, insipid, hopelessly commonplace. Not a single thought in my head, not a single feeling in my heart, a complete indifference to everything and an insurmountable dullness.
How can such a state be of any use?
I am a veritable zero in the world.
But all this is not at all important. And provided Thy work is accomplished, Thy manifestation takes place and the earth becomes more and more Thy harmonious and fruitful kingdom, it matters little whether I accomplish this Work or not.
And as it is certain that It will be done, I should have no reason to worry even if I felt like it. From the depths to the outermost surface, all this, my being, is only a handful of dust; it is but natural that it should be scattered on the winds and leave no trace behind....
February 22, 1914
When I was a child of about thirteen, for nearly a year every night as soon as I had gone to bed it seemed to me that I went out of my body and rose straight up above the house, then above the city, very high above. Then I used to see myself clad in a magnificent golden robe, much longer than myself; and as I rose higher, the robe would stretch, spreading out in a circle around me to form a kind of immense roof over the city. Then I would see men, women, children, old men, the sick, the unfortunate coming out from every side; they would gather under the outspread robe, begging for help, telling of their miseries, their suffering, their hardships. In reply, the robe, supple and alive, would extend towards each one of them individually, and as soon as they had touched it, they were comforted or healed, and went back into their bodies happier and stronger than they had come out of them. Nothing seemed more beautiful to me, nothing could make me happier; and all the activities of the day seemed dull and colourless and without any real life, beside this activity of the night which was the true life for me. Often while I was rising up in this way, I used to see at my left an old man, silent and still, who looked at me with kindly affection and encouraged me by his presence. This old man, dressed in a long dark purple robe, was the personification – as I came to know later – of him who is called the Man of Sorrows.
Now that deep experience, that almost inexpressible reality, is translated in my mind by other ideas which I may describe in this way:
Many a time in the day and night it seems to me that I am, or rather my consciousness is, concentrated entirely in my heart which is no longer an organ, not even a feeling, but the divine Love, impersonal, eternal; and being this Love I feel myself living at the centre of each thing upon the entire earth, and at the same time I seem to stretch out immense, infinite arms and envelop with a boundless tenderness all beings, clasped, gathered, nestled on my breast that is vaster than the universe.... Words are poor and clumsy, O divine Master, and mental transcriptions are always childish.... But my aspiration to Thee is constant, and truly speaking, it is very often Thou and Thou alone who livest in this body, this imperfect means of manifesting Thee.
May all beings be happy in the peace of Thy illumination!
March 17, 1914
WHEN physical conditions are a little difficult and some discomfort follows, if one knows how to surrender completely before Thy will, caring little for life or death, health or illness, the integral being enters immediately into harmony with Thy law of love and life, and all physical indisposition ceases giving place to a calm well-being, deep and peaceful.
I have noticed that when one enters into an activity that necessitates great physical endurance, what tires one most is anticipating beforehand all the difficulties to which one will be exposed. It is much wiser to see at every moment only the difficulty of the present instant; in this way the effort becomes much easier for it is always proportionate to the amount of strength, the resistance at one’s disposal. The body is a marvellous tool, it is our mind that does not know how to use it and, instead of fostering its suppleness, its plasticity, it brings a certain fixity into it which comes from preconceived ideas and unfavourable suggestions.
But the supreme science, O Lord, is to unite with Thee, to trust in Thee, to live in Thee, to be Thyself; and then nothing is any longer impossible to a man who manifests Thy omnipotence.
Lord, my aspiration rises to Thee like a silent canticle, a mute adoration, and Thy divine Love illumines my heart.
O divine Master, I bow to Thee!
April 7, 1914
WHAT kind of courage is mine that I always try to avoid the fight? What kind of energy is mine, that I am instinctively frightened of the new effort to be made and try, without being aware of it, to go to sleep passively, relying upon the results of previous efforts? In order to act, I have to be compelled and my mute contemplation is partly made of laziness All this is becoming more and more clearly apparent to me. All that I have done till now seems to me to be nothing. The poverty and limitations of the instrument I put at Thy service, Lord, are evident to me, and I laugh a little sorrowfully at the idea that at times I could have a good opinion of my being, its efforts and their results. This threshold of the true life that I always think I have reached is like a hope bestowed upon me but never a tangible realisation; it is the toy promised to a child, the reward held out for a moment before the weak.
When shall I become a truly strong being, made entirely of courage, energy, valour and calm perseverance; when shall I have forgotten my own person completely enough to be nothing but an instrument moulded solely by the forces it has to manifest? When will my consciousness of unity be no longer tinged with any inertia; when will my feeling of divine love be no longer mixed with any weakness?
O Lord, all thought seems dead within me, now that I have asked these questions. I search for my conscious mind and I do not find it; I search for my individuality and I cannot discover it anywhere; I search for my personal will and it is not there. I search for Thee, and Thou art silent Silence.. . .
Now I seem to hear Thy voice: “Never hast thou known how to die integrally. Always something in thee has wanted to know, to witness, to understand. Surrender completely, learn how to disappear, break the last barrier that separates thee from me; accomplish unreservedly thy act of surrender.” Alas, O Lord, for a long time have I wanted it, but I could not. Now wilt Thou give me the power to do so?
O Lord, my sweet eternal Master, break this resistance which fills me with anguish . . . deliver me from myself!
January 5, 1914
FOR a long while I have been sitting with this notebook before me, unable to make up my mind to write, so much is all within me mediocre, worthless, insipid, hopelessly commonplace. Not a single thought in my head, not a single feeling in my heart, a complete indifference to everything and an insurmountable dullness.
How can such a state be of any use?
I am a veritable zero in the world.
But all this is not at all important. And provided Thy work is accomplished, Thy manifestation takes place and the earth becomes more and more Thy harmonious and fruitful kingdom, it matters little whether I accomplish this Work or not.
And as it is certain that It will be done, I should have no reason to worry even if I felt like it. From the depths to the outermost surface, all this, my being, is only a handful of dust; it is but natural that it should be scattered on the winds and leave no trace behind....
June 15, 1914
“Lie cradled in my heart and do not worry: what has to be done will be done. And it is just when thou doest it unknowingly that it is done best”...
I am in Thy heart, Lord, and nothing can take me away from it. And it is from the unfathomable depths of this heart, in the smiling peace of its beatitude, that I look at all the outer forms of Thy manifestation struggling and endeavouring to understand Thee better, manifest Thee better.
If the hour has come, as Thou lettest me know, for the new forms of Thy realisation, these forms will inevitably be born. Something in the being senses it but does not yet know; so it makes an effort to adapt itself, to prove equal to what Thou askest of it. But what is conscious of Thee and lives in Thy force knows that this new form is only an infinitesimal progress in the infinite progression of Thy manifestation, and looks at every form with the serenity of eternal plenitude.
And in this serenity is the very omnipotence of realisation.
One must know how to soar in an immutable confidence; in the sure flight is perfect knowledge.
June 25, 1914
What wisdom is there in wanting to be like this or like that? Why torment oneself thus? Art Thou not the supreme worker? Is it not our duty to be Thy docile instruments and, when Thou puttest the instrument aside for a time, will it complain that Thou abandonest it because Thou dost not make it work? Will it not be able to enjoy calm and repose after having enjoyed activity and struggle?
One must be always vigilant, attentive to the least call, so as not to be asleep or inert when Thou givest the signal for action, whether with the mind, the feelings or the body; but one must not confuse this constant state of expectation and devoted goodwill with an anxious and uneasy agitation, a fear of not being this or that and of displeasing Thee, that is, of not conforming with what Thou expectest of us.
Thy heart is the supreme shelter, that wherein all care is soothed. Oh, leave it wide open, this heart, so that all those who are tormented may find there a sovereign refuge!...
Pierce this darkness, let light flash forth;
Still this tumult, establish peace;
Calm this violence, let love reign;
Become the warrior, triumphant over obstacles;
Win the victory.
August 8, 1914
My pen is silent.... So absorbing is this material world! Why must we let it take so much place in our consciousness? Is it an incapacity in us? Is it Thy Will?
O my sweet Master, I would live only in Thee but Thou hast told me that I must live for Thee, and in thus living for Thee our consciousness turns towards external fields and we seem to go far from Thee.
I know this is not altogether true; but there is a resistance still in the being which refuses to yield, there is a door which remains closed, a certain door of luminous intelligence which no effort has been able till now to open, and this terribly impoverishes Thy manifestation.
When wilt Thou decide that the hour has come for all this resistance to disappear?
Monstrous forces have swooped down upon the earth like a hurricane, forces dark and violent and powerful and blind. Give us strength, O Lord, to illumine them. Thy splendour must break out everywhere in them and transfigure their action: their devastating passage must leave behind it a divine sowing....
O my divine Master, do not reject my offering. Make me worthy to be wholly Thine in the plenitude of the giving and the fullness of the manifestation.
Paris: November 2, 1915
(After a few moments spent in arranging familiar objects)
As a strong breeze passes over the sea and crowns with foam its countless waves, so a great breath passed over the memory and awoke the multitude of its remembrances. Intense, complex, crowded, the past lived again in a flash, having lost nothing of its savour, its richness.
Then was the whole being lifted up in a great surge of adoration, and gathering all its memories like an abundant harvest, it placed them at Thy feet, O Lord, as an offering.
For throughout its life, without knowing it or with some presentiment of it, it was Thou whom it was seeking; in all its passions, all its enthusiasms, all its hopes and disillusionments, all its sufferings and all its joys, it was Thou whom it ardently wanted. And now that it has found Thee, now that it possesses Thee in a supreme Peace and Felicity, it wonders that it should have needed so many sensations, emotions, experiences to discover Thee.
But all this, which was a struggle, a turmoil, a perpetual effort, has become through the sovereign grace of Thy conscious Presence, a priceless fortune which the being rejoices to offer as its gift to Thee. The purifying flame of Thy illumination has turned it into jewels of price laid down as a living holocaust on the alter of my heart.
Errors have become stepping-stones, the blind gropings conquests. Thy glory transforms defeats into victories of eternity, and all the shadows have fled before Thy radiant light.
It is Thou who wert the motive and the goal; Thou art the worker and the work.
The personal existence is a canticle, perpetually renewed, which the universe offers up to Thy inconceivable Splendour.
The Four Powers of the Mother
(From Sri Aurobindo "The Mother", SABCL, Vol.25, pp.19-41)
The four Powers of the Mother are four of her outstanding Personalities, portions and embodiments of her divinity through whom she acts on her creatures, orders and harmonises her creations in the worlds and directs the working out of her thousand forces. For the Mother is one but she comes before us with differing aspects; many are her powers and personalities, many her emanations and Vibhutis that do her work in the universe. The One whom we adore as the Mother is the divine Conscious Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many-sided that to follow her movement is impossible even for the quickest mind and for freest and most vast intelligence. The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Supreme and far above all she creates. But something of her ways can be seen and felt through her embodiments and the more seizable because more defined and limited temperament and action of the goddess forms in whom she consents to be manifest to her creatures.
There are three ways of being of the Mother of which you can become aware when you enter into touch of oneness with Conscious Force that upholds us and the universe. Transcendent, the original supreme Shakti, she stands above worlds and links the creation to the ever unmanifest mystery of the Supreme. Universal, the cosmic Mahashakti, she creates all these beings and contains and enters, supports and conducts all these million processes and forces. Individual, she embodies the power of these two vaster ways of her existence, makes them living and near to us and mediates between the human personality and the divine Nature.
The one original transcendent Shakti, the Mother stands above all the worlds and bears in her eternal consciousness the Supreme Divine. Alone, she harbours the absolute Power and the ineffable Presence; containing or calling the Truths that have to be manifested, she brings them down from the Mystery in which they were hidden into the light of her infinite consciousness and gives them a form of force in her omnipotent power and her boundless life and a body in the universe. The Supreme is manifest in her for ever as the everlasting Sachchidananda, manifested through her in the worlds as the one and dual consciousness of Ishwara-Shakti and the dual principle of Purusha-Prakriti, embodied by her in the Worlds and the Planes and the Gods and their Energies and figured because of her as all that is in the known worlds and in unknown others. All is her play with the Supreme; all is her manifestation of the mysteries of the Eternal, the miracles of the Infinite. All is she, for all are parcel and portion of the divine Conscious-Force. Nothing can be here or elsewhere but what she decides and the supreme sanctions; nothing can take shape except what she moved by the Supreme perceives and forms after casting it into seed in her creating Ananda.
The Mahashakti, the universal Mother, works out whatever is transmitted by her transcendent consciousness from the Supreme and enters into the worlds that she has made; her presece fills and supports them with the divine spirit and the divine all-sustaining force and delight without which they could not exist. That which we call Nature or Prakriti is only her most outward executive aspect; she marshals and arranges the harmony of her forces and processes, impels the operations of Nature and moves among them secret or manifest in all that can be seen or experienced or put into motion of life. Each of the worlds is nothing but one play of the Mahashakti of that system of worlds or universe, who is there as the cosmic Soul and Personality of the transcendent Mother. Each is something that she has seen in her vision, gathered into her heart of beauty and power and created in her Ananda.
But there are many planes of her creation, many steps the Divine Shakti. At the summit of this manifestation of which we are a part there are worlds of infinite existence, consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands as unveiled eternal Power. All beings there live and move in an ineffable completeness and unalterable oneness, because she carries them safe in her arms for ever. Nearer to us are the worlds of a perfect supramental creation in which the Mother is the supramental Mahashakti, a Power of divine omniscient Will and omnipotent Knowledge always apparent in its unfailing works and spontaneously perfect in every process. There all movements are the steps of the Truth; there all beings are souls and powers and bodies of the divine Light; there all experiences are seas and floods and waves of an intense and absolute Ananda. But here where we dwell are the worlds of the Ignorance, worlds of mind and life and body separated in consciousness from their source, of which this earth is a significant centre and its evolution a crucial process. This too with all its obscurity and struggle and imperfection is upheld by the Universal Mother; this too is impelled and guided to its secret aim by the Mahashakti.
The Mother as the Mahashakti of this triple world of Ignorance stands in an intermediate plane between the supermental Light, the Truth life, the Truth creation which has to be brought down here and this mounting and descending hierarchy of planes of consciousness that like a double ladder lapse into the nescience of Matter and climb back again through the flowering of life and soul and mind into the infinity of the Spirit. Determining all that shall be in this universe and in the terrestrial evolution by what she sees and feels and pours from her, she stands there above the Gods and all her Powers and Personalities are put out in front of her for the action and she sends down emanations of them into these lower worlds to intervene, to govern, to battle and conquer, to lead and turn their cycles, to direct the total and the individual lines of their fo"rces. These Emanations are the many divine forms and personalities in which men have worshipped her under different names throughout the ages. But also she prepares and shapes through these Powers and their emanations the minds and bodies of her Vibhutis, even as she prepares and shapes minds and bodies for the Vibhutis of the Ishwara, that she may manifest in the physical world and in the disguise of the human consciousness some ray of her power and quality and presence. All the scenes of the earthplay have been like a drama arranged and planned and staged by her with the cosmic Gods for her assistants and herself as a veiled actor.
The Mother not only governs all from above but she descends into this lesser triple universe. Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creations in diminished substance, her Nature-body and Nature-force, and they exist because, moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was there in the possibilities of the Infinite, she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda. In her deep and great love for her children she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of the Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother.
Four great Aspects of the Mother, four of her leading Powers and Personalities have stood in front in her guidance of this Universe and in her dealings with the terrestrial play. One is her personality of calm wideness and comprehending wisdom and tranquil benignity and inexhaustible compassion and sovereign and surpassing majesty and all-ruling greatness. Another embodies her power of splendid strength and irresistible passion, her warrior mood, her overwhelming will, her impetuous swiftness and world-shaking force. A third is vivid and sweet and wonderful with her deep secret of beauty and harmony and fine rhythm, her intricate and subtle opulence, her compelling attraction and captivating grace. The fourth is equipped with her close and profound capacity of intimate knowledge and careful flawless work and quiet and exact perfection in all things. Wisdom, Strength, Harmony, Perfection are their several attributes and it is these powers that they bring with them into the world, manifest in a human disguise in their Vibhutis and shall found in the divine degree of their ascension in those who can open their earthly nature to the direct and living influence of the Mother. To the four we give the four great names, Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, Mahasaraswati.
Imperial MAHESHWARI is seated in the wideness above the thinking mind and will and sublimates and greatens them into wisdom and largeness or floods with a splendour beyond them. For she is the mighty and wise One who opens us to the supramental infinities and the cosmic vastness, to the grandeur of the supreme Light, to a treasure-house of miraculous knowledge, to the measureless movement of the Mother's eternal forces. Tranquil is she and wonderful, great and calm for ever. Nothing can move her because all wisdom is in her; nothing is hidden from her that she chooses to know; she comprehends all things and all beings and their nature and what moves them and the law of the world and its times and how all was and is and must be. A strength is in her that meets everything and masters and none can prevail in the end against her vast intangible wisdom and high tranquil power. Equal, patient and unalterable in her will she deals with men according to their nature and with things and happenings according to their Force and the truth that is in them. Partiality she has none, but she follows the decrees of the Supreme and some she raises up and some she casts down or puts away from her into the darkness. To the wise she gives a greater and more luminous wisdom; those that have vision she admits to her counsels; on the hostile she imposes the consequence of their hostility; the ignorant and foolish she leads according to their blindness. In each man she answers and handles the different elements of his nature according to their need and their urge and the return they call for, puts on them the required pressure or leaves them to their cherished liberty to prosper in the ways of the Ignorance or to perish. For she is above all, bound by nothing, attached to nothing in the universe. Yet has she more than any other the heart of the universal Mother. For her compassion is endless and inexhaustible; all are to her eyes her children and portions of the One, even the Asura and Rakshasa and Pisacha and those that are revolted and hostile. Even her rejections are only a postponement, even her punishments are a grace. But her compassion does not blind her wisdom or turn her action from the course decreed; for the Truth of things is her one concern, knowledge her centre of power and to build our soul and our nature into the divine Truth her mission and her labour.
MAHAKALI is of another nature. Not wideness but height, not wisdom but force and strength are her peculiar power. There is in her an overwhelming intensity, a mighty passion of force to achieve, a divine violence rushing to shatter every limit and obstacle. All her divinity leaps out in a splendour of tempestuous action; she is there for swiftness, for the immediately effective process, the rapid and direct stroke, the frontal assault that carries everything before it. Terrible is her face to the Asura, dangerous and ruthless her mood against the haters of the Divine; for she is the Warrior of the Worlds who never shrinks from the battle. Intolerant of imperfection, she deals roughly with all in man that is unwilling and she is severe to all that is obstinately ignorant and obscure; her wrath is immediate and dire against treachery and falsehood and malignity, ill-will is smitten at once by her scourge. Indifference, negligence and sloth in the divine work she cannot bear and she smites awake at once with sharp pain, if need be, the untimely slumberer and the loiterer. The impulses that are swift and straight and frank, the movements that are unreserved and absolute, the aspiration that mounts in flame are the motion of Mahakali. Her spirit is tameless, her vision and will are high and far-reaching like the flight of an eagle, her feet are rapid on the upward way and her hands are outstretched to strike and to succour. For she too is the Mother and her love is as intense as her wrath and she has a deep and passionate kindness. When she is allowed to intervene in her strength, then in one moment are broken like things without consistence the obstacles that immobilise or the enemies that assail the seeker. If her anger is dreadful to the hostile and the vehemence of her pressure painful to the weak and timid, she is loved and worshipped by the great, the strong and the noble; for they feel that her blows beat what is rebellious in their material into strength and perfect truth, hammer straight what is wry and perverse and expel what is impure or defective. But for her what is done in a day might have taken centuries; without her Ananda might be wide and grave or soft and sweet and beautiful but would lose the flaming joy of its most absolute intensities. To knowledge she gives a conquering might, brings to beauty and harmony a high and mounting movement and imparts to the slow and difficult labour after perfection an impetus that multiplies the power and shortens the long way. Nothing can satisfy her that falls short of the supreme ecstasies, the highest heights, the noblest aims, the largest vistas. Therefore with her is the victorious force of the Divine and it is by grace of her fire and passion and speed if the great achievement can be done now rather than hereafter.
Wisdom and Force are not the only manifestations of the supreme Mother; there is a subtler mystery of her nature and without it Wisdom and Force would be incomplete things and without it perfection would not be perfect. Above them is the miracle of eternal beauty, an unseizable secret of divine harmonies, the compelling magic of an irresistible universal charm and attraction that draws and holds things and forces and beings together and obliges them to meet and unite that a hidden Ananda may play from behind the veil and make of them its rhythms and its figures. This is the power of MAHALAKSHMI and there is no aspect of the Divine Shakti more attractive to the heart of embodied beings. Maheshwari can appear too calm and great and distant for the littleness of earthly nature to approach or contain her, Mahakali too swift and formidable for its weakness to bear; but all turn with joy and longing to Mahalakshmi. For she throws the spell of the intoxicating sweetness of the Divine: to be close to her is a profound happiness and to feel her within the heart is to make existence a rapture and a marvel; grace and charm and tenderness flow out from her like light from the sun and wherever she fixes her wonderful gaze or lets fall the loveliness of her smile, the soul is seized and made captive and plunged into the depths of an unfathomable bliss. Magnetic is the touch of her hands and their occult and delicate influence refines mind and life and body and where she presses her feet course miraculous streams of an entrancing Ananda.
And yet it is not easy to meet the demand of this enchanting Power or to keep her presence. Harmony and beauty of the mind and soul, harmony and beauty of the thoughts and feelings, harmony and beauty in every outward act and movement, harmony and beauty of the life and surroundings, this is the demand of Mahalakshmi. Where there is affinity to the rhythms of the secret world-bliss and response to the call of the All-Beautiful and concord and unity and the glad flow of many lives turned towards the Divine, in that atmosphere she consents to abide. But all that is ugly and mean and base, all that is poor and sordid and squalid, all that is brutal and coarse repels her advent. Where love and beauty are not or are reluctant to be born, she does not come; where they are mixed and disfigured with baser things, she turns soon to depart or cares little to pour her riches. If she finds herself in men's hearts surrounded with selfishness and hatred and jealousy and malignance and envy and strife, if treachery and greed and ingratitude are mixed in the sacred chalice, if grossness of passion and unrefined desire degrade devotion, in such hearts the gracious and beautiful Goddess will not linger. A divine disgust seizes upon her and she withdraws, for she is not one who insists or strives; or, veiling her face, she waits for this bitter and poisonous devil's stuff to be rejected and disappear before she will found anew her happy influence. Ascetic bareness and harshness are not pleasing to her nor the suppression of the heart's deeper emotions and the rigid repression of the soul's and the life's parts of beauty. For it is through love and beauty that she lays on men the yoke of the Divine. Life is turned in her supreme creations into a rich work of celestial art and all existence into a poem of sacred delight; the world's riches are brought together and concerted for a supreme order and even the simplest and commonest things are made wonderful by her intuition of unity and the breath of her spirit. Admitted to the heart she lifts wisdom to pinnacles of wonder and reveals to it the mystic secrets of the ecstasy that surpasses all knowledge, meets devotion with the passionate attraction of the Divine, teaches to strength and force the rhythm that keeps the might of their acts harmonious and in measure and casts on perfection the charm that makes it endure for ever.
MAHASARASWATI is the Mother's Power of Work and her spirit of perfection and order. The youngest of the Four, she is the most skilful in executive faculty and the nearest to physical Nature. Maheshwari lays down the large lines of the world-forces, Mahakali drives their energy and impetus, Mahalakshmi discovers their rhythms and measures, but Mahasaraswati presides over their detail of organisation and execution, relation of parts and effective combination of forces and unfailing exactitude of result and fulfilment. The science and craft and technique of things are Mahasaraswati's province. Always she holds in her nature and can give to those whom she has chosen the intimate and precise knowledge, the subtlety and patience, the accuracy of intuitive mind and conscious hand and discerning eye of the perfect worker. This Power is the strong, the tireless, the careful and efficient builder, organiser, administrator, technician, artisan and classifier of the worlds. When she takes up the transformation and new-building of the nature, her action is laborious and minute and often seems to our impatience slow and interminable, but it is persistent, integral and flawless. For the will in her works is scrupulous, unsleeping indefatigable; leaning over us she notes and touches every little detail, fine out every minute defect, gap, twist or incompleteness, considers and weighs accurately all that has been done and all that remains still to be done hereafter. Nothing is too small or apparently trivial for her attention; nothing however impalpable or disguised or latent can escape her. Moulding and remoulding she labours each part till it has attained its true form, is put in its exact place in the whole and fulfils its precise purpose. In her constant a. diligent arrangement and rearrangement of things her eye is on all needs at once and the way to meet them and her intuition knows what is to be chosen and what rejected and successful determines the right instrument, the right time, the right conditions and the right process. Carelessness and negligence and indolence she abhors; all scamped and hasty and shuffling work, all clumsiness and a` peu pre`s and misfire, all false adaptation and misuse of instruments and faculties and leaving of things undone or half done is offensive and foreign to her temper. When her work is finished, nothing has been forgotten, no part has been misplaced or omitted or left in a faulty condition; all is solid, accurate, complete, admirable. Nothing short of a perfect perfection satisfies her and she is ready to face an eternity of toil if that is needed for the fullness of her creation. Therefore of all the Mother's powers she is the most long-suffering with man and his thousand imperfections. Kind, smiling, close and helpful, not easily turned away or discouraged, insistent even after repeated failure, her hand sustains our every step on condition that we are single in our will and straightforward and sincere; for a double mind she will not tolerate and her revealing irony is merciless to drama and histrionics and self-deceit and pretence. A mother to our wants, a friend in our difficulties, a persistent and tranquil counsellor and mentor, chasing away with her radiant smile the clouds of gloom and fretfulness and depression, reminding always of the ever-present help, pointing to the eternal sunshine, she is firm, quiet and persevering in the deep and continuous urge that drives us towards the integrality of the higher nature. All the work of the other Powers leans on her for its completeness; for she assures the material foundation, elaborates the stuff of detail and erects and rivets the armour of the structure.
There are other great Personalities of the Divine Mother, but they were more difficult to bring down and have not stood out in front with so much prominence in the evolution of the earth-spirit. There are among them Presences indispensable for the supramental realisation, -- most of all one who is her Personality of that mysterious and powerful ecstasy and Ananda which flows from a supreme divine Love, the Ananda that alone can heal the gulf between the highest heights of the supramental spirit and the lowest abysses of Matter, the Ananda that holds the key of a wonderful divinest Life and even now supports from its secrecies the work of all the other Powers of the universe. But human nature bounded, egoistic and obscure is inapt to receive these great Presences or to support their mighty action. Only when the Four have founded their harmony and freedom of movement in the transformed mind and life and body, can those other rarer Powers manifest in the earth movement and the supramental action become possible. For when her Personalities are all gathered in her and manifested and their separate working has been turned into a harmonious unity and they rise in her to their supramental godheads, then is the Mother revealed as the supramental Mahashakti and brings pouring down her luminous transcendences from their ineffable ether. Then can human nature change into dynamic divine nature because all the elemental lines of the supramental Truth-consciousness and Truth-force are strung together and the harp of life is fitted for the rhythms of the Eternal.
If you desire this transformation, put yourself in the hands of Mother and her Powers without cavil or resistance and let her do unhindered her work within you. Three things you must have, consciousness, plasticity, unreserved surrender. For you must be conscious in your mind and soul and heart and life and the very cells of your body, aware of the Mother and her Powers and their working; for although she can and does work in you even in your obscurity and your unconscious parts and movements, it is not the same thing as when you are in an awakened and living communion with her. All your nature must be plastic to her touch, -- not questioning as the self-sufficient ignorant mind questions and doubts and disputes and is the enemy of its enlightenment and change; not insisting on its own movements as the vital in man insists and persistently opposes its refractory desires and ill-will to every divine influence; not obstructing and entrenched in incapacity, inertia and tamas as man's physical consciousness obstructs and clinging to its pleasure in smallness and darkness cries out against each touch that disturbs its soulless routine or its dull sloth or its torpid slumber. The unreserved surrender of your inner and outer being will bring this plasticity into all the parts of your nature; consciousness will awaken everywhere in you by constant openness to the Wisdom and Light, the Force, the Harmony and Beauty, the Perfection that come flowing down from above. Even the body will awake and unite at last its consciousness subliminal no longer to the supramental superconscious Force, feel all her powers permeating from above and below and around it and thrill to a supreme Love and Ananda.
But be on your guard and do not try to understand and judge the Divine Mother by your little earthly mind that loves to subject even the things that are beyond it to its own norms and standards, its narrow reasonings and erring impressions, its bottomless aggressive ignorance and its petty self-confident knowledge. The human mind shut in the prison of its half-lit obscurity cannot follow the many-sided freedom of the steps of the Divine Shakti. The rapidity and complexity of her vision and action outrun its stumbling comprehension; the measures of her movement are not its measures. Bewildered by the swift alteration of her many different personalities, her making of rhythms and her breaking of rhythms, her accelerations of speed and her retardations, her varied ways of dealing with the problem of one and of another, her taking up and dropping now of this line and now of that one and her gathering of them together, it will not recognise the way of the Supreme Power when it is circling and sweeping upwards through the maze of the Ignorance to a supernal Light. Open rather your soul to her and be content to feel her with the psychic nature and see her with the psychic vision that alone make a straight response to the Truth. Then the Mother herself will enlighten by their psychic elements your mind and heart and life and physical consciousness and reveal to them too her ways and her nature.
Avoid also the error of the ignorant mind's demand on the divine power to act always according to our crude surface notions of omniscience and omnipotence. For our mind clamours to be impressed at every turn by miraculous power and easy success and dazzling splendour; otherwise it cannot believe that here is the Divine. The Mother is dealing with the Ignorance in the fields of the Ignorance; she has descended there and is not all above. Partly she veils and partly she unveils her knowledge and her power, often holds them back from her instruments and personalities and follows that she may transform them the way of the seeking mind, the way of the aspiring psychic, the way of the battling vital, the way of the imprisoned and suffering physical nature. There are conditions that have been laid down by a Supreme Will, there are many tangled knots that have to be loosened and cannot be cut abruptly asunder. The Asura and Rakshasa hold this evolving earthly nature and have to be met and conquered on their own terms in their own long-conquered fief and province; the human in us has to be led and prepared to transcend its limits and is too weak and obscure to be lifted up suddenly to a form far beyond it. The Divine Consciousness and Force are there and do at each moment the thing that is needed in the conditions of the labour, take always the step that is decreed and shape in the midst of imperfection the perfection that is to come. But only when the supermind has descended in you can she deal directly as the supramental Shakti with supramental natures. If you follow your mind, it will not recognise the Mother even when she is manifest before you. Follow your soul and not your mind, your soul that answers to the Truth, not your mind that leaps at appearances; trust the Divine Power and she will free the godlike elements in you and shape all into an expression of Divine Nature.
The supramental change is a thing decreed and inevitable in the evolution of the earth-consciousness; for its upward ascent is not ended and mind is not its last summit. But that the change may arrive, take form and endure, there is needed the call from below with a will to recognise and not deny the Light when it comes, and there is needed the sanction of the Supreme from above. The power that mediates between the sanction and the call is the presence and power of the Divine Mother. The Mother's power and not any human endeavour and tapasya can alone rend the lid and tear the covering and shape the vessel and bring down into this world of obscurity and falsehood and death and suffering Truth and Light and Life divine and the immortal's Ananda.
Films on The Mother
Nirodbaran on The Mother
From Nirodbaran's
Memorable Contacts with The Mother
The Great Moment
First Contact
It was in the first week of January 1930.
At about 3 p.m., I reached Dilip K, Roy's place. "Oh, you have come! Let us go," he said, and cutting a rose from his terrace-garden he added, "Offer this to the Mother." When we arrived at the Ashram he left me at the present Reading Room saying, "Wait here." My heart was beating nervously as if I were going to face an examination. A stately chair in the middle of the room attracted momentarily my attention. In a short while the Mother came accompanied by Nolini, Amrita and Dilip. She took her seat in the chair, the others stood by her side. I was dazzled by the sight. Was it a "visionary gleam" or a reality? Nothing like it had I seen before. Her fair complexion, set off by a finely coloured sari and a headband, gave me the impression of a goddess such as we see in pictures or in the idols during the Durga Puja festival. She was all smiles and redolent with grace. I suppose this was the Mahalakshmi smile Sri Aurobindo had spoken of in his book The Mother. She bathed me in the cascade of her smile and heart-melting look. I stood before her, shy and speechless, made more so by the presence of the others who were enjoying the silent sweet spectacle. Minutes passed. Then I offered into her hand my rose and did my pranam at her feet which had gold anklets on them. She stooped and blessed me. On standing up, I got again the same enchanting smile like moonbeams from a magic sky. After a time she said to the others, "He is very shy." She had been informed that I had taken a degree in medicine.
"When are you going and where do you intend to practise?" she asked me softly. I found my voice and replied that I would settle down in my native town. It was an impromptu answer, for I had not made up my mind at all. She approved and said, "Yes, that would be good." Then I did a second pranam and we came away. All the way home, I was in a trance-like condition wrapped in that beatific vision. The Mother's radiant look and smile, mingled probably with a tinge of amusement, had such an indefinable sweetness that I could not imagine how I, an utter stranger of a young man, could be the recipient of this rare boon. It was so divinely human!
We shall see later on, how after a good deal of wandering I had to return to my native place, thus carrying out the plan that had obtained the Mother's approval. How did this extraordinary meeting take place? Well, many surprises overtake us in a manner strange to our outward eye, and "exceeding Nature's groove", life voyages on an uncharted sea. This is particularly true for those who are meant to embrace a spiritual life. At least, it was so in my case. When I look back, I cannot rationally explain some decisive turns my life has taken without any pre-conceived plan. And yet, as I string together these disparate events, the culmination I reached seems inevitable and predestined.
After taking my degree I arrived all on a sudden at Pondicherry and presented myself to Dilip, like a European with a stick in my hand, but no hat on the head. For an instant he gaped in wonder. When recognition dawned on him, he cried, "Oh, it's you! I could never imagine.... Come, come, sit down." He was as affable as ever. He arranged an interview with the Mother, though she seemed to have remarked that I had not written to her anything about my visit. As I had no dhoti with me, he spared me one of his own and asked me to come to his house the next afternoon at the right hour. I felt quite embarrassed and did not know how to face the new test, even after passing so many tough medical examinations. My niece had given a very gracious picture of the Mother to allay my fears. Still, I felt extremely ill at ease, particularly because I had no idea of spirituality at all, nor had I much love for it. Suppose the Mother asked, "Do you want a spiritual life?" What answer would I give? Before starting, however, I thought I must take a bath. I felt even like praying a little. As soon as I sat down, my eyes closed and something startling happened of which my medical science had not dreamt even. I saw the upper pan of my body suspended in the air for a few seconds and the lower part non-existent. Frightened like a child, I opened my eyes and the thing vanished! In a dazed condition, I started for the Ashram, from my hotel. Dilip received me with his affectionate smile which helped me regain my composure. "Come, let us start," he said.
This is how the interview took place with its rapturous vision.
"Her look, her smile awoke celestial sense
Even in earth-stuff, and their intense delight
Poured a supernal beauty on men's lives...."
Today I understand how I had that strange experience. The Mother must have put some Force on me in order to test my receptivity and when, at the meeting, she found that the ādhāra was not bad, she was happy. This is the explanation I offer to myself of the divine action. Perhaps there was more to it than I could sound. Probably it was also a form of initiation.
The next evening, I was to leave for Calcutta. Dilip came to see me off. As soon as he started me off in a rickshaw, another wonder, a surpassing delight! I began to see the Mother's radiant face and smiling eyes whichever way I turned. I was thrilled. All through the ride to the station and until the train left, her face floated before me and would not leave me even for a second. So great was the burden of delight that I uttered, somewhat vexed: "Oh, when will it leave me?" And the ecstatic vision slowly receded and faded away. "Mortality bears ill the Eternal's touch." The din and rumble of the train and the chattering of the passengers took its place and "there was the common light of earthly day." It was only after I had returned and settled in the Ashram that I realised how foolish I had been to drive away the divine Presence that had come to me as an act of Grace.
Initiation
All this happened in the first week of January 1930. In February my niece and I visited the Ashram for the Darshan and stayed about a month. The inspiration came from her and I believe she enjoyed the stay much more than I did. I was still uncommitted. It was an altogether new mode of living, an esoteric life of the initiates into which I had stumbled without the least preparation. We took part in all the functions and observed the discipline of the Ashram: we never went out to the bazaar to have any refreshment, though we were often hungry during the day or at night. I had not yet become a tea-addict. The simple beauty, purity and quietness of the atmosphere and the dedication of the sadhaks were emblematic of the soul's aspiration for the Highest, and impressed me deeply. For them, the Mother and Sri Aurobindo were the Highest incarnate upon earth.
There were two occasions in the course of the day when the sadhaks could meet the Mother collectively: one for Pranam in the morning, the other during the soup distribution* in the evening.
* Its significance is thus described by the Master:
"The soup was instituted in order to establish a means by which the sadhaka might receive something from the Mother by an interchange in the material consciousness."
Both of them were silent communions. Of these two, the soup distribution was something unique of its kind. As Amal Kiran has given a memorable account of it in the book of talks. Light and Laughter and Narayan Prasad in his Life in Sri Aurobindo Ashram, I shall content myself with what concerned me for the most part. The soup distribution used to take place at 8 p.m. in the present Reception Room and lasted two hours. The inmates were about hundred in number and they sat inside the hall while we visitors had to sit in the verandah outside from where it was difficult to see the Mother - one had to peep over the shoulders of the people in front. Still, I preferred to remain outside, for from what I saw I could not bear sitting for two hours in a room surcharged with dimness, incense fume and an atmosphere mystic but sleep-inducing to my unaccustomed nature. Later on, we were given a chance to sit inside and then we had a good view of the Mother in her various moods, sometimes in trance, sometimes awake, smiling or grave, and very often pouring the soup in an in-drawn state, the hands shaking a little as she poured it. Each one had to wait for his turn and it was a long waiting for me. As I was not used to meditate, I had to struggle hard against losing my chance by falling asleep, and thus being marked "missing". If that happened, my niece was there, wide awake, to stir me into consciousness.
We felt as if we had entered into some "prophet cavern" or some ancient Greek temple where Eleusinian mysteries were being performed, the Mother being the presiding Priestess. Amal said, "This is exactly the impression I had. I told it to the Mother and I used the word 'ancient' for the presiding Priestess. Unfortunately this word means 'old' in French and the Mother was a little taken aback." After taking her seat, she would close her eyes; then her arms would stretch out and her hands spread over the soup vessel by way of channelling Sri Aurobindo's power into the liquid. Then her eyes would open and she would start the distribution. Some people used to see Sri Aurobindo's hands spread over hers in response to her call to him. As I had to wait quite an hour before my turn came, I spent my time partly in sleep-meditation, partly in looking at the quick-changing moods of the Mother. I could not vouch for any concrete experience. Neither could I say that she took any cognizance of my presence when I went before her, but she was invariably an impersonal sweetness. Once only, and that makes me remember it, she cast an inquiring look when I approached her for the soup, I could not make out what it meant. I knew that at the time I had a boil and it was causing me pain. Could the pain have been reflected on my face? But that would be too trivial a matter to draw her attention. Now I know that nothing that concerned our well-being, physical or otherwise was too trivial for her.
After the ceremony was over, a grand spectacle used to greet our eyes. The Mother would return to her room across the courtyard, which had an altogether different appearance. Two sadhaks held a lamp and a censer in front of her and some sadhaks followed her from behind. The rest of us would stand on the side watching her pass with a solemn gait, almost in semi-trance. Her resplendent face, with an enchanting half-smile, would fill the whole hushed atmosphere with a supraphysical ambience. "Eternal beauty wandering on its way" - one could repeat with Yeats.
The next ceremony of importance was the morning Pranam. Spiritually as significant, the atmosphere was quite different. Here the Mother appeared nearer to our earth - "Near to earth's wideness, intimate with Heaven." The Pranam was held at 7.30 a.m. in the room now occupied by Bula. A few of the sadhaks who had been in the Ashram for many years would sit inside the room and the rest would come, do their pranam and go away. Some would stand outside waiting to have the parting darshan when the Mother returned to her room. We found her sitting upon a cushion on a low seat in a simple manner, clad in a sari, the head bare, strikingly different from her orbed majesty at night. Here she was quite awake, "Smiling sweetly, smiling meetly" and giving flowers and blessings. Here too I remember the one and only occasion when she spoke to me during our month's stay. We had asked her permission for sea bathing - it was the rule to take permission for all movements beyond the prescribed Ashram life, so that her protection might accompany us. As she was going back, she saw us waiting outside and said in a sweet French tone, "You want to take a bath in the sea? Be careful; there are plenty of jelly-fish here."
These were the two "spiritual occasions" for us. Apart from them we passed the rest of the day in doing almost nothing. Dilip and Sahana used to visit us now and then; Sahana especially would talk about the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and the life in the Ashram. Another inmate, John Chadwick, alias Arjava, a name given by Sri Aurobindo, struck a friendship with us, invited us to tea and even offered us some butter when he learned that we took nothing except what was given from the Ashram. I must confess that though the Ashram food was tasty, the quantity was not adequate for us. In consequence we went half hungry. Our appeals for more went somehow unheeded. "Ask and thou shalt be given" did not seem applicable to material needs. We, being newcomers, were not allowed to join the common Dining Room. Our meals were sent to our rooms.
Sometimes we went to the Ashram to have the darshan of the Mother when she would go for a drive in the afternoon. Once we saw her attending a flower-show in the Colonial Garden, (now Botanical Garden) in which our Ashram also took part, and she along with another French lady was supervising the Ashram stall. This, in short, was all about our initial, or shall I say "initiate", period during the one month's sojourn.
It was time to return. Some friends wished that we should stay on for good; for the Mother seemed to have been pleased with us and would accept us if we wanted to remain. But I, at any rate, did not, and on the advice of our friends wrote a letter to Sri Aurobindo expressing my future plan of life. I said frankly that I was not at all ready for a spiritual life, I preferred to do Karmayoga outside. Strange that I used that word without knowing sufficiently what it meant. The very next day an answer came explaining at some length that I was quite right in my decision, that Karmayoga could be practised outside and it would be a good preparation for my future spiritual life, if I turned to it afterwards. My friends saw the letter and were not a little surprised to see that a newcomer had received such a nice long letter from Sri Aurobindo. The tone was indeed very affable, though I did not perceive it at that time.
It was curious that I had no spiritual experience to speak of during my long stay, while my previous short visit had been so strikingly different. Still a month's quiet sojourn in the spiritual atmosphere, with the daily touch of the Mother, could not have gone in vain. At least, it was a very welcome interlude after a life of bhoga in the West and before a plunge into darkness in my native land. During our stay in his house, Doraiswamy paid a visit to the Ashram at the week end. My niece requested him to get some blessing-flower from the Mother. When he returned I asked him, "Is there none for me?" He replied, "You didn't ask." I felt humbled: the first cognizance of the Mother's way of action.
Dawn
I received a letter from my niece to the following effect: "You are wasting your precious time. How long will the Mother and Sri Aurobindo wait for you? Should you not think of joining the Ashram and taking up the yogic life?" It seems she had her letters read by Sri Aurobindo before posting them or at least summarised the contents to him. From the day I received the letter my mind began to be haunted by it. Gradually the effect increased and the world began to lose all its charm and appear insipid. The salt had lost its savour. I could not but write for permission for Darshan and, if granted, I resolved not to come back. The permission came and one day, very secretly, without telling even my poor mother, I started for the Ashram. It was in February 1935, three years to the day after my last Darshan in 1930.
I arrived a few days before the February Darshan and was lodged in what was formerly called Boudé House near the Ashram Press. A little far but otherwise a nice quiet place on the seaside, ft was meant to be a halting station for the newcomers or even a jumping-board for prospective sadhaks. I had brought a silk dhoti for Sri Aurobindo and a well-known Bengal perfume for the Mother. The choice was made instinctively, or unthinkingly, if you like. My niece was much amused to see my present for the Mother and said with a laugh, "Do you imagine that the Mother uses such ordinary perfumes?" I looked very foolish. All the same, when an interview with her was arranged, I took my presents with me. The interview was not at all like the one on my first visit. She was quite serious as if I was not welcome or had done some wrong. This was my stupid human interpretation of the Mother's look, an example of an error from which we suffered so much and which Sri Aurobindo took such trouble to correct. Later on, I understood what she had wanted to convey. Yes, the Light I had received was lost in the interval. I told her, however, that I would like to stay on if I were allowed. She replied that after the Darshan I could write to Sri Aurobindo about my resolve. I wrote, "My aspiration and decision still stand. May I hear from you about it?" His answer, kind but non-committal, was, "Before deciding for ever, we can fix a period of time and see - say till August." I accepted the verdict knowing very well that if I was refused afterwards, it would entail a lot of difficulty. From February to August was a long gap, there being no April Darshan at that time. Perhaps Sri Aurobindo wanted to see how I adjusted myself to the Ashram life or did he want to suggest that acceptance needed a little more than the mere asking? Who could say? We know that his answers bear many levels of meaning, but he would certainly not have thrown me out after six months unless I had proved an utter failure. This was of course a later thought. So with the fear hanging over me I started preparing myself with all seriousness so that at the end of the period of trial I might present a better face and say, "Here am I, Master!" and he would graciously smile and answer, "Well done, young man. I accept you, but 'shall beat you a lot'." What actually turned out was nothing so dramatic; I simply stayed on. No question was raised on either side and no answer given.
During these months I felt some Force acting upon me and I could keep up an intense aspiration. The Mother would often pour upon me her lovely smiles at Pranam. From her response I felt an inner certitude that my place was here. As an outward sign of it, I was brought closer and given a room near the Ashram and some work in the Building Department under Khirode. The room was excellent, full of light and air with an opening to the sea. I was lucky indeed, to get so nice a room in such a short time. But the work could not catch my heart, particularly as it involved keeping monthly accounts. The fact was that I had always had an aversion to physical work. Neither had I taken up work seriously as an important part of sadhana. I had queer old notions about Yoga. I thought work was adopted as a device to keep us engaged as well as make us do useful service. I would spend my time in reading books. I used to see Dilip and other "intellectuals" of the Ashram engaged in literary activities and my subconscious ambition was to follow them and to become a "literary gent". But suddenly there was a change in my attitude — a psychological jolt lighted the Agni in the heart and instead of a litterateur, I became a Karmayogi overnight. It happened in this way: One day in our daily report to the Mother, I wrote, "Can reading be done during the working hours?" or something to that effect. Sri Aurobindo wrote back, "I don't know your work." I can't say what was there in that curt reply. I felt very humiliated and ashamed of myself. I thought, "If Sri Aurobindo doesn't know what is my work, then what kind of work am I doing?" Thus a simple sentence brought about my conversion. And, as I said, I blossomed into a Karmayogi, for which the Guru awarded me a grand certificate in these terms: "The timber godown made you make a great progress and you made the timber godown make a great progress too." I was happy beyond measure and patted myself for the big success which softened too the Guru's heart and was the ostensible cause of the sweetness in his letters to me.
I had to take a few days' rest, but, strangely enough, I looked forward to rejoining the work as soon as possible. I learnt that any work done with the right attitude creates interest and brings joy. Apart from this, I cannot claim to have had any positive spiritual experience at work, except one. It happened as far as I can remember after an interview with the Mother. She asked me how my aspiration was formulated. I could not understand what she meant. The language was too yogic or philosophic for my medical brain to understand. She therefore put it in a simpler form. Then I replied that what I wanted most was ānanda. She smiled and said that ānanda was very difficult to bring down. However, there was no harm in asking for it. That very afternoon when I had gone for my work and was looking at the blue sky overhead, a sudden downpour of ānanda came like a cascade upon me and made me feel like dancing, so overpowering it was! Not knowing how to contain it, I sat down to write some poetry and no sooner had I started than the whole experience stopped. How foolish of me to lose such a gracious boon from the Mother! Well-deserved was the scolding I received from the Guru when I narrated the story. In that interview the Mother had also explained the nature of the work that was being done here. She had said something like this: "You must have seen a pool where the water on the surface is clear, transparent and all the mud is quietly settled below. We are churning that mud: as a result all the water has become turbid. It is the process of purification. None has done this before." I could not understand much of it, but it remained stamped on my memory. Now I see the truth of it everywhere. God knows how long we shall have to wallow in this muddy business.
On another birthday interview with the Mother in 1936, I asked Sri Aurobindo, "Guru, any impression of the Mother on my birthday? I am afraid I wasn't calm but the whole day I felt peaceful."
Sri Aurobindo: Mother's verdict is "Not at all bad—I found him rather receptive." So, sir, cherish your receptivity and don't humbug about with doubt and despondency and then you will be peaceful for ever!
Fire-Baptism
At the time between 1950 and 1952, in spite of my daily contact with the Mother, I was not quite free from moods of depression. During such moods I would go to the Samadhi. One day, as I was standing there, I saw the Mother looking at the Samadhi from a window in the corridor of the first floor. Almost immediately my head began to reel and I was obliged to sit down. The next day, I told her of this queer feeling. She said, "I know why. When you were standing there and looking towards me, I saw a dark cloud of depression coming from you in my direction. Naturally I pushed it away. It went back to you and produced this sensation."
In the year 1953, the Mother fell ill and all our contact with her stopped. When after a time it was resumed I was not a part of it. I would watch from my office the Mother meeting people and giving them blessings. She could see me, but did not call me. I kept myself aloof waiting to be called. For, I had taken up an attitude like my friend Champaklal that I should not ask anything for myself. Things should come in their natural course. I do not know if this movement sprang from pride or humility. But throughout the rest of my life I have tried to follow this rule. Sometimes I doubted my sincerity and felt that I had lost much of the Mother's contact by sticking to a rigid attitude. Anyway, I had to wait pretty long before she called me and, though my attitude may have been right, I could not keep it up with equanimity. Besides, Dr. Sanyal who had settled in the Ashram at this time had the Mother's touch every day near my own office. He used to come in the morning and meditate in front of Sri Aurobindo's room at the east end. The Mother would come, making a shuffling sound with her Japanese sandals, and Sanyal would be ready to receive her. But the Mother, without ever looking at me, would walk straight to him and go back after blessing him. I would sit at a little distance, as a silent witness. As her apparently deliberate neglect would hurt my vanity, I would either move away or try to keep down my abhimān, teaching myself some samatā.
This painful period continued for many months, till one day I entered again into her Presence. After finishing her usual distribution of flowers she suddenly cast a glance towards me and beckoned me. I simply rushed forward. With a broad smile she received me and blessed me with flowers. From then onwards my pranam continued and became a daily rite and worship till the next interruption. I do not know what had been prepared, what seeds had been sown in my inner field before I was called.
On my birthday in 1953, the Mother greeted me with her usual "Bonne Fête" and then started in French, with a sweet smile, Quel âge avez-vous ? (How old are you?)
Myself: 51 ans passés, Douce Mère. (51 years over, Sweet Mother.)
Mother: Vous êtes encore enfant. (You are still a child.) Then holding both my hands, she resumed in English:
"You feel better now?"
Myself: Yes, Mother. I feel much better and stronger, but I can't get rid of the suggestion that I am getting on in age.
Mother: No, you must not listen to it. It is a collective suggestion thrown upon everybody. One can go on being active in spite of age. I have seen people of 90 who were younger than boys of 10. No, you must get rid of that suggestion altogether.
Myself: I don't feel at all that I am so old, but the suggestion is there. There are so many things left to be done.
Mother: Exactly. You must not allow that suggestion to disturb you. This year things are going to be hard for us. Difficulties will come to a head, I mean of things exterior. Even a small place like Pondicherry can be so hard, resistant.
Myself: Will there be physical trouble?
Mother: Yes, even an attack on the organisation. It is then that one has to be firm in one's loyalty, endure in spite of all struggle and put one's will and faith on the side of the Divine. In 1956 on 23rd April something decisive will happen, 23rd April makes 2,3,4,5,6. That happens to be the date of Surendra Mohan's birthday. I remember that when he was here I told him about that date and his face at once lit up. He said it was his birthday. Then I told him, "You must be here on that day." As I uttered 2,3,4,5,6, he got attracted: you know he is attracted by such things. Yes, it is he who sent some Bhrigu reading from Delhi, you remember, regarding Sri Aurobindo's departure and he was supposed to play an important part. Yes, it was a mantra to be repeated 10,000 times. I wanted to have the mantra and repeat it myself, but he could not get it. I don't know why. At any rate I did not believe till the last moment that Sri Aurobindo was going to leave his body,.* Afterwards it became clear to me what all the indications he had given meant.
Myself: Do you envisage his coming back?
Mother: Well, he has himself said that he would come back in a supramental body, the first supramental body.
The other day I had an interesting dream. I saw that both he and myself had gone somewhere and were living in a house. He was very young with broad shoulders and a thin waist. Only his eyes betrayed that he was Sri Aurobindo. I had my usual appearance — only younger, with the flowing hair of my early days. It was a rainy day; clothes had become damp. I wanted to bring out a blanket from his room. He was sleeping; the noise woke him and he said, "Why take all those old things again? Let us go out for a walk." He got up. He was in his dhoti and I was in my robe de chambre. We walked on and came to a place near a hill. There was a big house on the other side of the hill. Both of us sat together on a lawn. After a while a young boy came out from nowhere, looked at us and went away. Then four or five people in charge of the Ashram came near, did not like our sitting there and said among themselves, "Can't anyone tell these people that they are spoiling our lawn?" They didn't dare to say it to us. Then Sri Aurobindo said, "Don't they know who we are?" We wanted to see how the Ashram was getting on! It was not a dream, but a vision, the place was far off, somewhere near Hyderabad, and the people were dressed in the style there. This was the first time I saw Sri Aurobindo so young. Well, what meaning it can have, I don't know and when it will take place, shortly or after a millennium, I can't say.
* * *
According to Champaklal Speaks, on the morning of 9th December 1953 after meditation, the Mother informed Dyuman that she would go up to her room on the top floor from that night. After that day she started spending the nights there. But now and then she would also spend some time there during the day. From March 20, 1962 onward, however, after going back to the room from the Balcony Darshan she did not come down at all.
Now, one early morning in 1954, I was urgently called by Pranab to see the Mother in her room. This was my first visit to the room. I saw her sitting on the couch with her legs stretched out, the hair flowing down. I was told she had fallen in the bathroom and injured her head. Pranab showed me the site of injury. I saw a tiny cut near the crown, blood was oozing slowly, some hair was glued together due to clotting of the blood. The oozing was stopped by pressure and nothing farther seemed to be called for. Still, I felt that since it was a head injury, I had better call in Dr. Sanyal to share with me the divine responsibility. The Mother gave her consent. I found him still in bed. He heard the story, got up and quickly dressed himself. Both of us returned together. He examined the wound carefully and confirmed 'my observation. Pranab reminded me that the Mother strongly protested to the doctor's cutting the hair for the purpose of examining the wound. However, while he was dressing the cut, she started talking with him, first of her health, then of sadhana. She said that as usual she had gone to the bathroom and was preparing a gargle with alum salt as she had some gum trouble, when she suddenly fell down. She said she had a floating kidney; it functioned well, though, and the body was receptive. Her nerves had been shattered in 1915, when she had gone back to France from here. Her condition had become very critical; she just managed to write a few lines to Sri Aurobindo, but though the letter did not reach him, she was cured by him. It took several months to build up the lost health.
During the subsequent years in Pondicherry she was subjected to constant attacks by hostile forces. The fight was untiring especially between 3 and 5 a.m., when she used to work for the sadhaks and had to go out of her body. Just the time of getting up was the opportune moment for attack, because it was the most unguarded moment. That was how the accident happened. She seemed to have heard a voice, but did not obey it. She should have sat down. It was a case of black magic, according to her. She knew how the attack had come and who had made it, but she could not throw it back on the evil person.
"Why not punish such miscreants?" asked Sanyal.
Mother: I don't believe in punishment.
Sanyal: Can't these forces be changed?
Mother: If they want; otherwise they suffer their fate. But they serve a purpose: they show your weak points in the body and you work on them. Transformation of the body is not easy. If it were not for this aim, I would have gone to Heaven long ago.
As regards the talk on sadhana, the only part I remember was that the Mother said she would not abandon Sanyal. She would even force down the true consciousness into him. I wished inwardly that she would do the same for me, for the two doctors were similar in some respects. But surprisingly as soon as I formulated my desire, she, addressing me as if my thought had been communicated to her, said something I don't quite remember. We had many proofs of the Mother's sensitivity or thought-reading even at a distance.
After the talk was over, we came down. The next morning, Sanyal came early and enquired if there was any news. I said that everything was quiet. Then he asked me what we should do. Probably the Mother would come down as usual. Should we ask her about her condition? We decided, however, that both of us would stand in the corridor through which she would pass. Soon she came down, followed by Pranab, and silently passed by us. We also kept quiet, our question remained unuttered. Our conclusion was that she must be all right. This is the way of the Divine, I suppose.
The Mother's Ways of Action
Once during the Pranam in the 'thirties, I had to face a very embarrassing situation. I was going through a period of acute inner struggle As always, I used to write frankly about it to Sri Aurobindo. Extremely patient and affectionate, he let me fight it out, but I could not do so and groaned. Finally I became impatient and wrote a desperate letter saying that the tussle must end now. Next day was Pranam. The Mother came down as usual. I noticed behind her seat a garland of flowers called 'Courage". The hall was full of disciples. When it was half-empty, my turn came for pranam. As soon as I had knelt down before the Mother with folded hands, she fixed her concentrated gaze on my eyes and kept me immobile like a statue. The people around were witnessing the scene with awe and wonder. I felt all their strange vibrations. After about five minutes, she relaxed her grip and with a soft smile gave me the garland "Courage". It did its work.
Vivekananda, if I remember rightly, and Nivedita too perhaps have said what a fine life it would have been to pass one's days sitting at the feet of Sharada Devi, the
Mother of the Ramakrishna Ashram, instead of spending all one's energy in useless hectic activities! A moment's mood, it may be, but the truth of the feeling is unmistakable.
From the year 1953 when the Mother had begun to sleep in her new room, or perhaps a few years later till she had stopped going to the Playground, every night on her way to her room she gave her benedictions to Kamala, Champaklal and myself as we used to wait to wish her "Bonne nuit". One night Champaklal was not present. The Mother enquired, "Where is Champaklal?" I replied, "I don't know, Mother; perhaps he has gone down." She was not satisfied with the answer and was visibly concerned. She said, "Has he run away?" I was surprised to hear such a strange surmise from the Mother, but answered firmly, "Mother, how can he run away? It is impossible!" "I should think so," she answered dubiously. I cannot say how far she was assured by my reply, but leaving us in a perplexed mood, she went slowly up to her room. I do not remember now what made Champaklal absent himself that night or if there was any ground for her remark.
It was 21st February, 1971, the laying of the foundation stone of the Matrimandir at Auroville. Twelve sadhaks headed by Nolini were selected by the Mother to represent the Ashram. I happened to be one of them. I was not in physical contact with her at this time. The time fixed for the ceremony was early morning. Hundreds of people gathered in the vast open space; all kinds of vehicles were used to cover a distance of about ten miles; children, boys, girls, men, women old and young, Indians, Westerners - all had assembled for the solemn occasion. A sacrificial fire was lit-"A fire that seemed the body of a god" -with the chanting of Vedic hymns, and the Mother's music, in an atmosphere of hieratic stillness. The foundation-stone was laid by Nolini. Soon after, the Sun-God appeared in the eastern sky in his silent majesty and beauty. His beneficent smile kindled in our hearts a hymn of adoration to the supreme Deity - the Divine Mother.
On the Prosperity day, the Mother used to distribute our monthly material necessities to each of us. During the long distribution, some of us used to sit by her with her permission. To be so close to the Divine's physical Presence and watch at the same time the significantly changing expressions on her face was a delight to be envied even by the gods. Dante says of Beatrice:
What she appears when she smiles a little,
Cannot be spoken of, neither can the mind lay hold on it,
It is so sweet and strange and sublime a miracle -
This is true of the Mother much more.
One day a visitor managed to slip in and sit close to us. We noticed him, but none could tell him that it was not allowed, for we could not be impolite nor were we sure if the Mother would approve of our action. Suddenly she looked at me and with her eyes made a sign. It was a quick. glance which others had hardly perceived, but I understood and told the person that he had to go. How her single moment's glance could take note of so many things, small and big, at a time, was to us a perpetual wonder.
One word about discipline. We hear very often that the Mother has given us freedom. Freedom and discipline are therefore contradictions and people justified their free ways by quoting the Mother's authority. When it was referred to her, she vehemently protested and said, "Where and when have I supported indiscipline?" Well, this strong admonition should now dispel all such wrong ideas still going about in the Ashram.
Revelation
For days in succession, the Mother was unusually sweet with me during the morning Pranam. She would hold my hands, look intently into my eyes smiling all the while so bewitchingly that it would be difficult for me to turn away my gaze. As the other people around were watching with keen interest this mysteriously ecstatic communion, I used to feel embarrassed, but the Mother paid no attention and was absorbed in what she was doing. I felt as if she were looking into my very soul and suffusing my whole being with light. But what was the reason for it all, I could not tell. My friends, very much intrigued, would ask me afterwards for a clue. I had to disappoint them.
During this period or a few days earlier, in my daily morning meditation, I suddenly began to concentrate on the Mother in the heart. One day I saw that I was going somewhere in a carriage. It stopped at a place; I got down and began to walk through a wooded path. Then somebody appeared before me; I could see only the feet and they seemed like those of a woman. A voice said, "Follow me!" As I did so, I asked, "What about my carriage?" "Doesn't matter; you follow me," said the commanding voice. The wood was not dense, but trees, bushes, "hollow lands and hilly lands" punctuated the long track. Before it led anywhere the meditation ended.
Two days later the Mother said, "This morning you came to me, the feeling was strong. You are coming now very often. You are sometimes conscious of it, aren't you?"
"Yes, Mother."
"Listen! I will tell you something. Today Sri Aurobindo was also present. There was a branch of celery stuck on your window. 'It will do you good,' Sri Aurobindo seemed to be saying to you. I didn't hear the actual words, they were written on the window, as it were. I was wondering' what could be the meaning of celery or was there some mistake in the reception?"
She repeated the story.
The next day again she received me with a broad beaming smile and then said, "I will tell you a nice story when we are all alone." As I could not hear distinctly, I asked, "When we are- ?" "When we are all alone," she repeated, "One day; there is plenty of time. The story is continuing."
Exactly two months later, on my birthday, she said, "Tomorrow I will tell you that story. There is a short interview with X; after that I shall see you."
When she was giving me a bunch of Prayer flowers, she said, "Four granted prayers." I could not understand the meaning at once; so I asked, "Granted - ?" "Yes, granted prayers," she repeated. "When you come to me in the afternoon, come with these prayers formulated. But be careful about what you ask. They are granted. Don't ask for material things, for I can't give them. Ask what I can give."
"Mother, my material needs are very few. I don't need to ask for them," I replied.
In the afternoon, I went to her with the prayers written on a piece of paper. She read them and said, "They are all granted. I will speak about them tomorrow; they will be pan of our talk."
The following day when I met her, after a talk on personal matters, the Mother said in a very affable tone, "Do you want to hear my story? Well, it was somewhere at the beginning of the year, March or April, I don't remember, because I haven't noted it down. One night as I had gone into the subconscient -1 was working there, I actually went down -I came to a place filled with doubt, depression, etc. It was the abode of Doubt. There in a big public hall I was doing my work. Many people were constantly moving to and fro. I saw people trying hard to throw away their doubts but they were returning again and again.
"After some time, I saw that there was another hall inside and I was told that Sri Aurobindo was there. So I went in that direction and knocked at the door. I could not see anything inside. When someone came, I told him that I wanted to see Sri Aurobindo. He answered rather rudely, 'You can't see him; he won't see you.' A bit surprised, I came away quietly. After a while I went back and knocked again. This time I could have a glimpse of the interior through a slit in the door. I noticed particularly three people, you, D and S. Somebody came, the same person as before or another, I don't know, and opened the door. When I repeated my desire to see Sri Aurobindo he replied, 'You can never see him and he will never see you. You are insincere; what you are doing is all for power, fame and ambition.' As he said this, I saw a tall figure, taller than Sri Aurobindo; he was thin and appeared to be like Sri Aurobindo, but was really a hostile force. He came and stood in front as if to give support to his statement. He was cruel, hard, full of rigid principles; no love, no
compassion at all. It was, I believe, a sort of distant distorted figure of a part of Sri Aurobindo's mind, or what they believed to be Sri Aurobindo's mind. Looking at that figure I said, 'It is a negation of all spiritual experience.' Till then you were not taking any part in all this; you were sitting somewhere inside. But as soon as I uttered that sentence, you came forward like this (stretching out her arms) and exclaimed, 'Mother, you have helped me a lot; you have given Light, Force...' And immediately everything vanished. Sri Aurobindo came out and descended into my body, full of love.
"I uttered my sentence, 'It is a negation of all spiritual experience,' with great power, but you see, it required some exterior support and when you came out with that support, that hostile force could not withstand any longer.
"You remember Sri Aurobindo was writing to X about X's doubt, not to play with it but to throw it away, that it was fatal to harbour it. So perhaps X had made a formation with something from his own mind and mixed it with something of what he thought to be Sri Aurobindo's mind; it is all very complex. He was citing broken phrases and sentences from Sri Aurobindo; you know those sharp, compact expressions, but quite out of the context, they were absolutely false and meaningless.
"I wanted to follow up this experience and see what consequences it would produce. I began to work on it and then saw that a sort of big load was lifted off your head and you appeared luminous. There was a prodigious change in you. Formerly I used to see, while you were working at your table or at other times?, this dark load above your head. Now all that has gone for ever. That is why I said that your prayers were granted. Voilà.”
I was utterly speechless. Surprise, wonder, joy, love, gratitude made me dumbfounded. Emotions needed some time to become tranquil. Then I said, "Mother, is all this private?"
"Well, better not say it just now, because my work is not yet finished. You may note it down if you like. I will follow it up and, when it will be finished, I will let you know. I had not told you so long and would not have done yet, but since it is your birthday I have told you. Some days ago, S wrote that his doubts had been solved by Sri Aurobindo. So you see the work is going on. Sri Aurobindo is all the time busy with you."
There were some old sadhaks who had left the Ashram after Sri Aurobindo's passing. S was one of them. Sri Aurobindo was working upon them in an occult manner so that they might see their mistakes and be converted. That was what the Mother meant by "the work is going on". In fact two of them realised their grave error. One came back and settled in Pondicherry. The other also visited the Ashram, his eye-sight practically lost, and had to go away.
A truth of deep spiritual significance carrying a great solace to the disciple was revealed here in the Mother's remark that even if a disciple leaves his Guru in a mood of revolt, the Guru does not leave him. "Few are those from whom the Grace withdraws, but many are those who withdraw from the Grace," Sri Aurobindo has said. I know of a disciple to whom Sri Aurobindo had written that he would never leave him and when the disciple left, I asked Sri Aurobindo, "He has gone and you had said to him, it seems, you wouldn't leave him." He answered, "I don't propose to leave him." Only, when the disciple betrays the Guru by some act of treachery, I believe he cuts himself off from his protection and even then not completely because of the Guru's grace.
Nearly a month later, during the morning Pranam, the Mother said to me smiling, "You were quite a long time with Sri Aurobindo last night, quite a long time. And yesterday, when you came for Pranam and were taking flowers, I saw him behind you in a dazzling white light."
The following day Champaklal told me that during his meditation in the Mother's room he had a long dream in which Sri Aurobindo was telling me how all the pains that he had felt at each stage of his last illness were felt by Champaklal himself in his body. Champaklal was full of joy and gratitude for this recognition on the Master's part.
He also saw that Sri Aurobindo was teaching me Sanskrit, particularly how to read it correctly. This was very strange! for I had been thinking of learning it, specially to read in the proper way, not in the Bengali manner.
All this proves what the Mother had told me - that she used to see Sri Aurobindo busy with me. It is equally true of the Ashram, as a whole. I am quite sure that his vigilant eye is keeping watch day and night over all our movements and activities, as it had done before.
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