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Some Ways of the Mother's Working

All of us have enchanting memories of the Mother's sweetness and understanding — a divine enfolding of us and entry into the most sensitive chambers of our hearts. But the Mother was no ordinary spiritual Guru. The Supramental Divine acts from a level which can often leave us agape at its unclassifiable originality.

A very unusual feature at times was the Mother's reception of physical facts reported by the sadhaks. Physical facts so impress and obsess us that we find any disrespect to them, or brushing away of them, a very disturbing if not incomprehensible matter. I have heard Champaklal say to me that these things mean much to our exterior consciousness but from the Mother's inner and higher viewpoint they can become very small and insignificant. This was said after observing the manner in which the Mother had faced some issue involving directly or indirectly a plant known to have been of Pujalal's rearing. She had shaken her head as if saying "No" to that information. The reason for her queer-seeming behaviour was, as both Champaklal and I realised, her concern primarily with spiritual truth, the true God-touched consciousness she was bent on evoking, encouraging and strengthening in us. If she found a sadhak reporting something physically factual with a wrong attitude or unseemly loss of inner poise due to resentment against somebody, she would either ignore the excited reportage or even go to the extent of saying "No" to what our normal senses had certified as undeniable. She was concentrated on our inner development. If a surprising negation of what seemed clear as daylight to our eyes could serve to give a jolt sending us bewildered from the too- outward-gazing mind into a sudden search of inner reality, she would not hesitate to do what we might ordinarily consider as calling day night and night day.

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Not that she was indifferent to "truth-telling". She frequently insisted that a sadhak should never tell a lie. The supreme Truth-Consciousness, which is Supermind and which secretly holds the perfect divine original of everything here and gradually works itself out in an evolving manifestation, cannot find a full and permanent home in a being addicted to lying or even prone to be lax in accuracy. But that did not necessarily imply that every so-called accurate account was acceptable to the Mother at all moments. Even though she might take it as a genuine statement she was not bound to show herself to be receiving it as such at all times. At any particular instant when it came with the aura of an inner condition out of touch with the equanimity and impersonality characteristic of the supreme Truth-consciousness' influence on our being, her spiritual mission could impel her to deny importance to it and set it aside as if it were not worth crediting.

Of course, there is also the ancient right of the Guru to test the faith of the disciple by — as it is said in Indian parlance — dubbing the sun moon and the moon sun. Whatever word falls from the Guru's lips has to be accepted by the disciple without question. Every command of his has to be carried out and every statement taken as God's truth. Thus alone can the disciple open himself thoroughly to the Divine Power streaming through the Guru and put away the gross physical consciousness which is the main obstacle to the growth of the inner being. I do not know whether the Mother ever exercised the right of faith-test in the strict sense. She was too modern to go in for traditional methods. I have found her always ready to be corrected even when she had previously made a sweeping declaration. But the correction proposed by the sadhak had also to come with an approach proper from the spiritual standpoint. If there was uppishness on the part of the sadhak she ignored the offered idea — not because the uppishness offended any egoistic sense in her but simply because it arose from such a sense in the sadhak. I once pointed out to her what I regarded as a mistake in a geographical detail in a statement she had made for publication, but she refused to accept my correction and said I was not being compelled to reproduce in print the interview with Chamanlal in which the detail

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had occurred. I realised later that I had made an elaborate, schoolmasterish and rather showy approach and had been scorned on account of it. At another time she wrote to me that mistakes should always be admitted and set right and herself made some changes I had proposed in a writing of hers on Auroville.

What a difference is made in result between the right approach and the wrong I knew when the University Centre edition of Savitri was to be published practically under my editorship. Perhaps her action had also a tinge of the other movement. I noted the whole incident in my diary soon after its occurrence.

It was April 10, 1954. The day proved one of the most decisive in my inner life. I took to the Mother some suggestions with regard to Savitri. I had written them down. The Mother looked strange and said "I can answer without even reading your note. I won't allow you to change even a comma in Savitri."

I knew she was striking out at something which in the past had led me to make some "editorial" adjustments in three letters of Sri Aurobindo in Mother India. There had been three related questions about the Mother, to each of which he had simply answered "Yes". I put the questions together, followed by only one "Yes". I realised afterwards that a needed affirmative emphasis had been watered down by a misguided sense of economical elegance. Later, when the second volume of the first edition of Savitri was under preparation, a sadhak had stressed to the Mother the danger of sending the proofs to me. The Mother seems even to have passed an order against sending them. But Prithwisingh and Nirod made urgent representations to her, saying that it would be a great mistake not to let me see the proofs, for I had made very appropriate suggestions in the past, which had been found correct when the typed copy had been compared with the original manuscript. So the Mother cancelled her order but left, of course, the final decision in the hands of Nolini and Nirod. In fact, I, being in Bombay at that period, had no power over what the press would print since whatever I might propose would have to pass under their eyes. The press was not dealing directly with me.

When the proof-reading was finished, Nolini wrote to me

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thanking me for the important and valuable work I had done. Now, before the new single-volume edition of Savitri was started, I made another long list of suggestions, many of which came to be accepted. The proofs of the new edition were passing through my hands as I was in the Ashram at the time, and suggestions again were being made by me.

"Mother," I said, "I am not wanting you to sanction the changing of commas and such things. All I want is that in some sort of Publisher's Note we should say that certain passages in Parts II and III did not receive final revision: otherwise critics will think that they are what Sri Aurobindo intended them finally to be."

The Mother exclaimed: "Do you think there is anybody in the world who can judge Sri Aurobindo? And how do you know what Sri Aurobindo intended or did not intend? He may have wanted just what he has left behind. How can you say that he did not give the final revision? How can you judge?"

I said: "It is not only my own opinion. Nirod agrees with me, and I think Nolini also."

The Mother replied "It is presumptuous for anyone to have such an opinion. Who can enter into Sri Aurobindo's consciousness? It is a consciousness beyond everything and what it has decided how can any one know?"

"Mother, from the fact that Sri Aurobindo sometimes corrected his own things on our pointing out oversights we conclude that passages may be there which needed revision."

At this, the Mother exploded like a veritable Mahakali: "Yes, I know. People used to pester him with letters, pointing out grammatical mistakes and other things. He used to make changes just for the sake of peace. He was very polite and did not let people see what a nuisance they were. But when he and I were together and alone and like this" — here she put her two palms together two or three times to show the intimacy — "he used to say: 'What a bother, what a nuisance!' And once he said: 'But I had a purpose in putting the thing in this way. I wanted it like this.' Sri Aurobindo made many concessions out of politeness and a wish to be left in peace. When a great being comes down here to work he wants peace and not botheration. Yes, he was very polite, and people took advantage of his compassion and misunderstood

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it and got all sorts of ideas. Sri Aurobindo was polite — but I have made it a point not to be polite. I am not polite at all. The other day Pavitra brought me somebody's idea about Sri Aurobindo's passing. Somebody said Sri Aurobindo had died because of this or that. I told Pavitra: 'Let him think anything — I simply don't care. The truth will remain what it is.'"

I raised the question: "Take the Epilogue to Savitri, Mother. It comes from an early version and is not equal to the rest of the poem. In some places it is almost like a sort of anticlimax as regards the plane of spiritual inspiration."

At this moment Nirod walked in and said: "Sri Aurobindo asked me: 'What remains now to be done in Savitri' I replied: 'The Book of Death and the Epilogue.' He remarked: 'We shall see about them later.'"

The Mother turned to Nirod and said: "That may be his way of saying that nothing more needed to be done. We can't form any conclusions. At most you may write a Publisher's Note to say: 'We poor blind ignorant human beings think Sri Aurobindo did not intend certain things to be the final version. And we are giving our opinion for what it may be worth.'"

Just then a black lizard came and stood at Nirod's feet and looked up at him. The Mother saw it and said: "It seems to have a fascination for your feet. Why? Could it be symbolic?"

Nirod: "That is for you to say."

The Mother's whole outburst made me wonder about my discussions through the years with Sri Aurobindo over Savitri, the innumerable comments I used to make and he used to welcome and consider patiently. Was he just being polite with me? It hurt very much to think that. It also seemed impossible, non-factual. But I tried to open my being to the Mother and to accept wholly what she had said. I thanked her for the new outlook she had given me, and bowed down to her. She smiled and blessed me. She had made in me a wide opening. I opened out into a sense of Sri Aurobindo's vastness and divineness. Something in the physical mind seemed broken and to make room for the higher and wider Consciousness.

Later, the physical mind attempted a strong come-back and I passed through a whole afternoon of

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severe conflict. Should I accept the Mother's statement without reservation? May it not be that Sri Aurobindo's discussions with me on Savitri were an exception to his practice of being merely polite? But to insist on an exception and to refuse to accept the opposite showed only the resistance of ego, of amour propre, the intellect's pride and vanity. I felt I must reject all these self-regarding attitudes and truly grant that Sri Aurobindo might have been nothing more than polite and compassionate in considering all my suggestions to him. Then my ego would be thrown out and my physical mind become clear and grow receptive to the vast divine Consciousness of both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. I chose to take without any question her words, however contrary they might appear to my own sense of factuality. Moreover, I said to myself: "Your heart will not go anywhere else in search of a Guru. All your hope and help are in this Ashram. Whatever the pain, submit. You have no alternative. But at the end you will surely find light and delight as the Mother's gift through every move of hers."

Now for the first time, even in my most outer awareness, I realised what she and Sri Aurobindo truly were. The whole poise of physical being experienced a change. A new life began, and I knew then that a fundamental obstacle — intellectual self-esteem — had essentially disappeared.

What is of extreme interest to note is the sequel to the whole incident. Some time afterwards, when I was putting together the letters which Sri Aurobindo had written to me on Savitri to serve as a supplement in the last part of the volume. I spoke to the Mother of an introductory note to them. She consented to listen to what I had a mind to write. In that note most of the points which I had previously put to her but which she had rejected came in again, amidst some other matters. She approved of all of them unconditionally. And when I proposed that this note might go as a footnote in small print she expressed her wish that it should go as a real introduction in its own right.

I learned how the state of mind in which we approach the Mother and the attitude we bring to any situation related to her determines the consequences.

A second lesson was that the Mother's actions, no matter how bewildering, are directed always

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towards the flowering of our true soul.

Another danger to guard against is leaping to conclusions about the Mother's decisions by taking the face-value of any chain of events. There was a resident of Pondicherry, known to many of us, who had turned critical of the Ashram and of the Mother's way with sadhaks. Several reports had been conveyed to the Mother about him and she had even come to learn that he had been speaking against her. But she did not stop him from coming to the daily pranam and taking her blessings. This went on for quite a long time. Then one of the four darshan days arrived. He came to the darshan and Sri Aurobindo saw him. After he had left, Sri Aurobindo remarked to the Mother: "Are you still letting this humbug come to you?" Once Sri Aurobindo had spoken thus, she could no longer allow the man to continue at the pranam. Word was sent to him that he should keep away.

He took the prohibition as the result of an adverse report having been made after a certain incident before the darshan. At that time the daughter of the poet Sarojini Naidu was on a visit to Pondicherry. She had a friend in the Ashram who took Purani and me as well as the man in question to see her. At a meeting the last-named had aired some unfriendly views about the Ashram. Purani was present. When the order not to attend pranam was conveyed to the man, he inferred that Purani had complained about him and thus brought on the Mother's disfavour. When I reported this opinion to the Mother, she said: "My order has nothing to do with any report." And then she recounted to me what had happened after the man had had darshan of Sri Aurobindo.

An incident which taught me never to make snap judgements as well as focused a facet of the Mother's incalculableness took place after Sehra had prepared for her a lovely set of curtains and chair-covers. The Mother admired them and had them put to use in her bathroom. A little later several holes were found in many of them as if somebody had stuck sharp pins in them just to spoil them. Pujalal who used to sweep and clean the bathroom noticed them too and felt rather distressed. There was only one other person who had access to the bathroom in the natural course of the day's work. It struck both Sehra and me as

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obvious that out of some freak of jealously this person had done the disfigurement. I mentioned our condemnatory conclusion to Champaklal. He did not seem convinced. But I asked him: "Is there any other possible person on the scene?" Pujalal and I put our heads together and decided that the matter should be brought to the Mother's notice.

When the Mother, after the lunch, came to see me where I had been waiting for her outside the bathroom, Pujalal who was ready to go into it reported that very strangely a number of holes had been found in the set of new hangings. At once the Mother exclaimed: "Yes, several times I found it very convenient to stick my pins in the cloths." I was extremely surprised and at the same time very ashamed indeed to have jumped to a condemnation. I made a resolve never to judge anybody without proper inquiry and also oriented my mind to expect the unexpected of the Mother.

The field where perhaps the unexpected is most to be expected is that of the Divine's Grace. Grace is understood to occur without rhyme or reason for the thinking mind; else it would be not Grace but Justice. Actually the Aurobindonian Yoga may be described as essentially one of Grace. The Supreme Consciousness of the Mother offers to take up our sadhana and asks of us simply not to stand in its way but to let it handle all our difficulties and remove all our obscurities. This could be taken as the self-surrender which is at the heart of the dynamics of the Integral Yoga. The Integral Yoga is also known as the Supramental Yoga. Sri Aurobindo has said that nobody by his own efforts can reach the Supermind. One can rise to the Overmind by one's personal spiritual endeavour but one can only implore the Supermind to be realised and the realisation of the Supermind would be an act of the Divine's Grace. The power of the Transcendent Mother alone can lift us up to it or bring it down into us.

Before the supramental experience, there is also the constant play of Grace. Our whole residence in the Ashram is itself the Grace choosing us. Once when somebody complained that justice was not being done as it should in the Ashram, the Mother said "The Ashram is not a place of justice, it is a place of Grace. Otherwise how many would have the right to be here?" When we stumble on the way, the Mother

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has never preached a sermon or even attached importance to the difficulty that caused the stumbling. She has only extended her hand to pick us up — provided, of course, we have wanted to be picked up. Sometimes even without our wanting it she has set us moving again. I would even go so far as to say: "There is no hole so deep that the Mother cannot lift us out of it sky-high." Our own little capacities are not concerned, the infinite capacity of the Divine who incarnated amongst us is the deciding factor. So while there is no call for complacency, there is also no room for despair and depression. There would be room if we de- pended for our progress on ourselves exclusively and the Divine Grace were not ever at work. Despair and depression would be signs of an inverted egoism, for not only would we be unduly concentrated on ourselves but we would be regarding our own powers as the sole possible agent of success.

I have said there is no rhyme or reason to Grace but perhaps we might venture to say that though there is no reason there can be rhyme. A certain happy harmony in our consciousness, a natural ringing of deep responses — in short, the unison of the various parts of us around the spontaneous sweetness and light and strength of what Sri Aurobindo has termed the psychic being, the inmost soul in us — can be designated the rhyme that creates the condition in which the Grace is likely to vibrate towards us most often. Even this, however, cannot be considered an absolute determinant. The emergence of the psychic being may itself be a result of the Grace. The Grace looks at some secret within its own radiant heart rather than on any pinpointable fact of our lives. Or, if some fact or other appears to be prominent in any situation where Grace operates, the operation still looks so enormously out of proportion to it.

From the numerous instances possible to cite relating to various people I may quote one or two connected with my own self. I have already written elsewhere of how on the night of the Supramental Manifestation on February 29,1956 the Mother appeared to me in the railway compartment in which I was travelling from Madras to Bombay after leaving Pondicherry the same morning. She told me afterwards

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that she had come to intimate to me the Great Event in fulfilment of a promise given eighteen years earlier when the same manifestation had been first visioned as coming though it did not material that year. At that time too I was to leave Pondicherry for a while and the Mother, after hinting at the wonderful future, assured me that she would immediately let me know of the happening. Her tremendous Grace on that night was beyond anything a poor erring disciple could deserve.

A fresh example may be offered. One morning, meditating in my room (which by the way had been Sri Aurobindo's own room for nine years and was itself a gift of Grace), I felt a keen urge in the heart to go to the Ashram and up the staircase leading to the apartment on the first floor where all heaven seemed situated because the Mother and Sri Aurobindo lived there. I just went and stood on the landing between the two sections of the staircase and looked at the door upstairs. Suddenly the door opened and the Mother stood on the threshold. She looked down and softly said: "Would you like to come in?" I was surprised beyond words for a second. Then I stammered out: "Oh, yes. May I?" She took me inside and let me do a pranam to her. She gave her blessing and a flower and saw me to the door. After this it became a daily event that after the general pranam I should go up to her. She would hold my hand and take me right inside to what used to be a small dressing-room. She would sit down on a pouf and, after my pranam, do again the hand-in-hand walk and see me out. Lalita was also taken inside in the same way. Why such a windfall of intoxicating Grace had come to me is still — in a phrase à la Churchill — a riddle within an enigma wrapped in a mystery.

I may add a second small episode where not only I but also a friend of mine was involved. Owing to a disturbance in the established management of Mother India the whole responsibility of running it fell practically on my shoulders, with Navajata appointed by the Mother as a background support. As I was all alone he provided to me a young man from Orissa as a helper. He was a very good-hearted and willing assistant, but his future was unsure because he had not yet been accepted by the Mother. He had been asked to make an application, give his history, detail his intentions,

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attach a photograph and so on. All these routine procedures, though gone through, had not borne any fruit yet because of some delay due to over-pressure on the channel by which they had to reach the Mother. On one of the periodic occasions when I saw the Mother I mentioned this young man to her and asked her whether he could be admitted into the Ashram. She just asked me: "Do you need him?" I said he would certainly be of use to me but she had to attend to his application, see him and then be the judge of the case and approve or not. How could I determine her decision merely by my need? Again she asked: "Do you want him?" I answered: "Yes, but..." Before I could speak any further she said "He is to be admitted." Thus at one stroke the long technical bother was cut short and the Mother, without troubling to know any particulars or even look at the photograph, took the young man into her fold.

I should like to relate at some length a Grace-story which has a greater touch on my own life, carries many shades of significance and compasses a more striking sequence of ups and downs. I shall tell it by some extracts from my diary-notes.

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