4

The Mother and My Last Darshan

of Sri Aurobindo

I had come from Bombay with my wife Sehra and some friends on a visit for the Darshan of November 24 in 1950. Sri Aurobindo was reported to have been unwell. But he gave a long Darshan, with a short break after some hours. He kept himself in a tolerable condition in the following days — until the late evening of December 2 when the Ashram's Sports-demonstration was over. His condition worsened on the 3rd; and when the Mother returned from the Playground she found him running a temperature. The same night I was scheduled to leave for Bombay. The Mother had previously informed me that she would see me before I started for the station. On finding Sri Aurobindo with high fever she cancelled the appointment. However, about an hour before the departure-time of my train she sent word to me that she was waiting and that I should come at once to meet her. This was clearly a gesture of extreme Grace. I was called to the foot of the staircase, north of the present Samadhi, which leads up to the corridor outside the Mother's room on the first floor.

On reaching the place I saw her seated in a chair with a table-lamp beside it. She looked calm and radiant as if nothing in the world troubled her. I sat on the floor, put my head on her feet and received her blessed. I spoke of the editorial I had written for the next issue of Mother India, at that time a fortnightly of Bombay: "The Chinese Dragon."

She said: Don't write anything implying war for India. No such thought should be expressed. You can discuss, if you want, the possibility of war between China and America."

I replied: "All right, Mother. But Sri Aurobindo never asked me to refrain from such an implication."

"Yes, I know. But, although our aims are alike, our approaches can be somewhat different at times."

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I could easily understand this. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had necessarily different kinds of personality for the special individual work each had to do. In matters of high politics, Sri Aurobindo, with his grand background of past national leadership, could take the responsibility for certain gestures which the Mother would hesitate to make, being no particular figure in the political sphere. Even on the spiritual level, their modes of operation could be dissimilar. As the Shakti, the Divine Executive Power, she could be at times most dynamic and relentless but at other times most tender and considerate. Careful and conservative too she could be when the Force in her moved her not to be a breaker of norms and forms.

Now she continued: "After a short time Sri Aurobindo will resume reading your articles."

I was happy to hear this. A few more topics came up and then I took my leave with a long blessing-touch on my head.

Throughout the train-journey I kept thinking of Sri Aurobindo's resumption of work not only in relation to my editorials but also in connection with his own Yoga of physical supramentalisation. With my fellow-passengers I even discussed, in terms of such a transformed body, the way in which Sri Aurobindo's Yoga differed from all other Yogic paths. What a surprise I suffered when I reached Victoria Terminus at about noon and the man who had been asked to receive me handed me the express telegram my friend Yogendra had sent from Pondicherry to my Bombay address that very morning: "Sri Aurobindo passed away 1.26 a.m."

I repeatedly asked myself: "How could the Mother tell me that in a short while Sri Aurobindo would start reading my articles again?"

As I have recounted elsewhere. I emplaned the same night with two friends and arrived at Madras early the next morning and at Pondicherry by taxi round about 11.00 a.m. I need not repeat the story of the experiences while Sri Aurobindo's body lay incorrupt for five days. When, on the 19th, before leaving for Bombay I had my interview with the Mother I asked her several questions besides wanting to know why Sri Aurobindo had passed away. The sequel to the latter inquiry I have related more than once before.

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What I may record now are some statements of the Mother and a few of my own communications to her.

I: "Why did you tell me in the evening of the 3rd of December that Sri Aurobindo would take up his usual work with my editorials? Two days after this he passed away."

Mother: "It was not certain that he would have his body."

This was a strange declaration. It could mean either that Sri Aurobindo, for a reason of his own, kept secret from the Mother his decision to depart, or else that the uncertainty lay not in the Mother's consciousness but in Sri Aurobindo's own because he was working out momentous possibilities one way or the other. From the snatch of conversation between Sri Aurobindo and his attendants on the 4th of December, the second alternative seems unlikely. He was asked: "Aren't you using your Yogic force on yourself?" His reply was: "No." Astonished, the attendants stammered out: "Why?" He answered: "Can't explain. You won't understand." The conclusion that he was acting out a decision already made dawns also from the Mother's words soon after his departure: "When I asked him to resuscitate he clearly answered. 'I have left the body purposely. I will not take it back, I shall manifest again in the first supramental body built in the supramental way.'" Thus the first alternative should hold.

Then the sole reason one can think of is that the Mother had not accepted the idea of Sri Aurobindo's departure and would have tried to stop it if she had known anything before it was too late. We may recollect the talk they both had some time in April of the same year. When Sri Aurobindo said that one of them might have to go in the interests of their work, the Mother immediately offered to do so. Sri Aurobindo turned down the proposal and added that if necessary he would go. The Mother had to acquiesce. Perhaps a finer explanation for the Mother's unawareness of the precise time he had chosen for his withdrawal is that, although she had fully accepted his terrible resolve, he did not want to create any unpleasantness for her and she did not wish to cause any difficult situation for him. He knew that she preferred her own going to his and she knew that he was bent on departing rather than let her do so. Hence a veil was drawn tacitly by him over what was to take place on the 5th of December.

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To resume the account of my conversation with the Mother:

I: "At the last Darshan I observed that, when you saw me approaching both of you, you bent your head towards Sri Aurobindo and said something to him. What did you say?"

Mother: "I told him: 'Amal is coming.'"

I: "Why did you have to tell him that? He could surely know it by himself."

Mother: "His eyes had become so bad that he could not have seen you standing before him. Of course, he could contact your consciousness but not physically recognise you and have the outer relationship."

It is curious that the Mother should have told Sri Aurobindo about me on this particular Darshan and never before. I remember especially the Darshan on August 15, 1947. I had come to the Ashram after several years. When I approached Sri Aurobindo, I saw him looking at me as if he did not recognise me at all. I was very upset as well as deeply benefited because it knocked the bottom out of my ego and the result was a very painful but most liberating transcendence of the idea of my own importance. Now, listening to the Mother, I realised that Sri Aurobindo could not see even at close quarters. Some people have come to believe he was completely blind. But from what Nirodbaran has told me, this is not true. Nirod described to me how Sri Aurobindo had to take a table-clock close to his eyes in order to see what time it was. Most probably here was a case of advanced cataract in both eyes. The eye trouble must have started round about 1945. In that year he sent the last letter he wrote to me in his own hand, and the writing was shaky and the lines not quite straight. Studying a few late notebooks of his, I have seen that he wrote some of his prose and poetry in the rough without being able to judge correctly the breadth of the page or the space needed between the lines.

However, his super-shortsight could not be the only explanation of the Mother's telling him about me on November 24, 1950. Why had she not done the same either on August 15, 1947 or any of the two other occasions before the last Darshan? All actions of the Divine Incarnate have, whether the outer mind is allowed to know it or not, a truth-impulsion. Always at the right moment the right thing for

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the soul is done. On the present occasion, as never before, Sri Aurobindo smiled at me and, as I was told by Sehra afterwards, he kept smiling in my direction even when I had turned to go away. Later the Mother also referred to Sri Aurobindo's smiling at me all the time I was there. I am convinced that, through the word the Mother put in for me, I was blessed with a special final act of Sri Aurobindo's Grace, a sweet intimate farewell.

Eleven days after this, he took the drastic step of giving up his body in order to achieve a tremendous breakthrough in the process of the Integral Yoga, so that the Mother could confide to me subsequently: "As soon as Sri Aurobindo left his body what he had called the Mind of Light was realised in me." The Mind of Light, as she defined it afterwards, is the physical mind receiving the Supramental Light. The nature of the victory won may be gauged from the two opening lines of the poem I wrote in 1954, lines which the Mother declared to be absolutely revelatory of the state of consciousness she had realised:

The core of a deathless sun is now the brain,

And each grey cell bursts to omniscient gold.

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