8

"The Seal of Solomon", Tagore's Visit to the

Ashram, Soup-Distribution, "Prosperity"

Meetings, Yogic Fulfilment

In the preceding chapter I announced that I would write what I had gathered, from the Mother herself and from some disciples who had been close to her, about Paul Richard's role in her life. But I have changed my mind in view of the fact that for reasons of her own the Mother always wanted to keep his name in limbo. In passing, I shall touch only on two topics. First, I shall repeat the story which I have told elsewhere and which I promised in my last article to relate in connection with Richard and the subject of gambling. Then I shall correct a report which has been going round for years and years as authoritative about his first meeting with Sri Aurobindo in 1910.

The gambling story has for its scene the boat on which the Mother was coming to India from France. She told it to me with the introductory words: "I have gambled only once." Richard played cards with his friends hour after hour and kept losing money all the time. His friends turned to the Mother, laughing: "Madame, why don't you take his chair and bring him some luck? The Mother answered: "I warn you that if I play I will take away all your money." They guffawed. The Mother took the seat — and she did take away all their money! It was by the exercise of an occult power. She explained to me: "I could see all their cards as if they had been transparent." So, knowing their hands she played hers. It was a good lesson to them. They had to beg her to stop playing.

Four years before this amusing incident Richard had arrived in Pondicherry on a political mission. Through a person named Zir Naidu who happened to know Sri Aurobindo

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he got the chance to have interviews with Sri Aurobindo on two successive days for two or three hours each time. The tale is current in the Ashram that the Mother had asked Richard to find out from some Yogi in India the meaning of the symbol which goes by the designation "Seal of Solomon", popularly called also "Star of David". Sometimes it is taken to be a pentagram such as the Middle Ages of Europe employed in magical practices and such as is supposed in India to cure the scorpion-sting if not the snake-bite too. But really it is a hexagram and, under its second name, it is at present the official emblem of the State of Israel — a six-pointed star made of two intersecting triangles with their apexes in opposite directions up and down. With the triangles isosceles in shape, enabling a square to be formed at the centre of their intersection and holding within the square some significant additional design — wavy lines for water and a lotus resting on them — the Seal of Solomon is also Sri Aurobindo's spiritual symbol. When it is said to have been shown to Sri Aurobindo by Richard, Sri Aurobindo is reported to have given an interpretation which completely satisfied the Mother when Richard conveyed it to her on his return to Paris. Unfortunately this fascinating tale has turned out to be mythical.

When a biography of Sri Aurobindo was being prepared by A. B. Purani in 1957, the Mother was asked to consider the statement: "Mother had given Richard some questions which he had to get solved by some spiritual person in India." The Mother inscribed a twice-underlined "Omit" above statement. In the margin she wrote: "Not correct. I never gave him any questions to be solved." She also commented on another sentence of Purani's. Purani had written: "One of the questions which the Mother had asked related to the symbolic character of the 'Lotus'." Above the words "which the Mother had asked", her comment ran: "Not I. Probably Richard himself."

All this, however, does not mean that the Mother had nothing to do with the Seal of Solomon or with the Lotus as symbols. The Ashram's Research and Archives Library is in possession of a manuscript of the Mother dating probably to 1912 and certainly earlier than 1914, the year of her first arrival in Pondicherry — a manuscript not only relevant to

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our study but even going beyond it to an astonishing fact. Here we see drawings, mostly geometrical figures. There are some triangles and a square, near which is written "Croix ou carré d’équilibre - réalisation quaternaire parfaite” ("Cross or square of equilibrium — perfect fourfold realisation"). Below this is a hexagram built of two intersecting triangles with a square in the middle, the symbol of Sri Aurobindo minus the wavy wateriness and the lotus! The hexagram-design is surmounted by the inscription: "Sceau de Solomon” ("Seal of Solomon").

What is a still greater surprise is that the same square-enclosing hexagram appears on the cover of the periodical Le Revue Cosmique started by the Mother's Egyptian teacher of occultism, Théon, and managed for a time by the Mother — but now with a mass of water supporting a lotus inside the square! The opening year was 1901-02. The Mother was managing it in 1904. Evidently, at some point after getting charge of the Pondicherry Ashram in 1926 she based Sri Aurobindo's symbol upon Théon's, giving the inner design a more stylised shape. The final version of it was fixed by her on 6th May, 1964.

The Mother's first visit to Pondicherry lasted about a year. Owing to circumstances created by the First World War she went back to France for a while and then sailed for Japan. In Japan she came into contact with Tagore. Tagore had the habit of meditating every morning at a fixed hour. The Mother once told us: "I could follow him in his meditation and know exactly what was happening. On the mind-level he used to get a touch of Sat-chit-Ananda."

The Mother left Japan in 1920 and came to join Sri Aurobindo. Several years later — some time after I had settled here in December 1927 — Tagore who was on a boat passing by Pondicherry stopped to pay a call on Sri Aurobindo. Nolini took him upstairs where at the other end of the meditation hall Sri Aurobindo was standing to receive him. As soon as Tagore entered and saw Sri Aurobindo he flung his cap away and ran towards him and made as if to embrace him. Sri Aurobindo extended his arms and caught Tagore's hands. Then they sat down for a talk. The Mother sat on a stool near Sri Aurobindo.

Nolini was also present at the meeting and that is how

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we came to know what happened there. Most of the talking was done by Tagore. He described what he had accomplished in Europe and asked Sri Aurobindo: "Why do you not got to Europe and spread your message?" Sri Aurobindo answered : "If Europe wants my message, it is bound to come here." Tagore seems to have been struck by Sri Aurobindo's lack of any desire to make himself famous or to preach his philosophy.

When the interview was over, Nolini brought Tagore down, followed by the Mother who halted near the bottom of the staircase. Later Tagore asked Nolini: "Who was that lady sitting near Sri Aurobindo? Is she his secretary?" Nolini answered: "She is the Mother." Tagore exclaimed: "Oh, Mirra Richard? I could not recognise her."

If I remember aright, the Mother had passed through an illness just before Tagore's visit. She had become rather emaciated. Perhaps that was partly why he could not recognise her. To some extent the reason may be that she was in a sari, a costume in which the Bengali poet had never before seen her. Another cause must be the fact that in the eight years since her stay in Japan she had grown in spiritual stature and could manifest a greater divine Presence.

A few years after Tagore's interview the Mother's body again suffered — now a much more serious illness as a result of nearly four years of the physico-spiritual practice of what we knew as Soup-distribution. Every evening, at first in the upstairs verandah of the "Library House" (9 rue de la Marine) and later in what is now the Reception Room downstairs in the same building, we used to sit in semi-darkness, meditating. The Mother would be in a chair in front of us. Champaklal would bring a big cauldron of hot soup and place it on a stool in front of her. He stood by while she went into a trance. After some minutes, with her eyes still shut, she would spontaneously stretch out her arms, and her palms were poised over the cauldron. She was transmitting the power of Sri Aurobindo into the soup. After a while her eyes opened and she withdrew her hands. Then the distribution started. Each of us went to her, bent down on our knees and gave her our enamel cup. Then with a ladle she poured the soup from the cauldron into our cups. Before handing each cup back she would again withdraw

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inward with eyes half shut and take a sip. Sometimes after the sip she was lost once more in a trance and we had to wait until she came out of it. When the time was rather long she gave a faint apologetic smile. The occult truth behind the ceremony was that she was putting something of her own spiritualised subtle-physical substance into the soup in our cups. This was naturally a strain on her which could be compensated only if something in our being went out to her in return. Unfortunately the yogic traffic was often one-way. The consequence was a severe strain on the Mother's body. This strain was the real cause of her illness. Sri Aurobindo is reported to have said under his breath: "Brutes!"

The Mother suffered for quite a time. At one point she called the best physician in the town. Dr. Amaladas, not to prescribe any medicine but to consider the outer symptoms and diagnose where the damage had resulted. His diagnosis was meant to help the Mother and Sri Aurobindo to focus their curative spiritual force.

The Soup-distribution was never resumed. But, of course, the Mother's giving of her energies to us went on in different ways, and many of the physical troubles she later had were due to the inner road-blocks in the course of her disciples' sadhana.

With the stoppage of the Soup-distribution there came an end also to the most interesting meetings she used to have with a few of us in the "Prosperity"— room above the soup-hall. Among other activities, some talks were given there by the Mother. I would take them down in shortened longhand, and reconstruct them afterwards. They have appeared, with the Mother's approval, in book-form as Words of the Mother, Third Series. The Mother once remarked to me that something of her living manner had come into the reports.

As far as I remember, the number of people she had decided to admit into those pre-soup sessions was 24. To each of us she gave a number. Number I was for René, the Mohammedan boy, originally named Yakub, who belonged to an aristocratic family from Hyderabad. Many members of it had become Ashramites. They were the first Mohammedans to join the Ashram, just as Lalita and I were the first

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Parsis. Both of us were included in the "Prosperity" — group. Her number was 2 and mine 15. I believe number 24 was that of Doraiswamy, the well-known advocate of Madras who used to come to the Ashram every week-end and was extremely devoted to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo.

An interesting bit of occult news I heard in the early days of my stay here when I was very chummy with the central group of the sadhaks — Nolini, Amrita, Purani, Anilbaran, Champaklal, Dyuman, Rajangam, Pavitra — was that, when in a past life of theirs Sri Aurobindo had been Leonardo da Vinci and the Mother Mona Lisa, Doraiswamy had been Francis 1, King of France (1494-1547).

Francis 1 was renowned for his love of art and chivalry, he was a patron of Renaissance learning and founded the Collège de France. In his arms Leonardo is said to have died.

It was one of the impressions of Sri Aurobindo that in a past life I myself had been in Renaissance Italy. So perhaps I had some connection not only with Leonardo and Mona Lisa but also, through the former, with Francis 1. That may explain why I was very friendly with Doraiswamy. We were also psychologically similar in one respect. The Mother said that in the "Prosperity"— group he and I were the two persons who were perhaps most inclined to feel helpless by ourselves and to call inwardly for her aid scores of times each day. I may here remark the curious fact that the digits of Doraiswamy's number — 24 — and those of mine — 15 — sum up equally to 6, the number which means, according to the Mother, "New Creation". A phenomenon of which both of us possibly felt the greatest need at every hour of our lives.

At present not all the members of the "Prosperity" - group survive in the Ashram. Some died and some withdrew from the Mother's side, through it is certain that the Mother's inner enfoldment of her children could never cease. Yes, she has specifically declared that she would never abandon anybody. This, however, does not mean that she would go all out to get a person back. Her action was always guided by spiritual insight into each particular case. I well remember once saying to her about a certain sadhak: "I am quite sure that if you gave the least sign he would come back to you." The Mother answered in effect: "I know he will come back

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if I call him. But the problem he faced in himself in the past will not be solved. It was a crisis of such a kind that it will recur in the future — unless his soul makes a free choice to come back to our fold. In all such critical and basic situations the decision must spontaneously come from the soul. I have to wait, even for lives, for the decisive turn to occur. Only with such a turn the true evolution takes place."

When the choice did not have a basic character, the Mother has acted differently. There was an old couple from France who after a year or so of stay in the Ashram became misguided enough to leave the Ashram and stay outside in Pondicherry in association with some friends. I came to know that they were badly disillusioned in their hopes of outside success. Two or three times I saw them standing opposite the Ashram and looking wistfully at it. I never had any special inclination towards them and I had also heard that they had said some unpleasant things about me to some mutual friends, but I saw that here was a need of the inner being and, putting aside personal dislike, I spoke to the Mother about them. I told her that if she could somehow let them know they were still welcome they would run back to her. I do not know what exactly she did but they were soon Ashram-members again. The old man died in the Ashram. His wife, after a while, went back to France because she liked to be buried in French soil. The old man's death was memorable in the sense that it was the first death in the Ashram's history.

However, we looked upon it as an exception and not as the beginning of a rule. I well remember the time when it was taken for granted that Sri Aurobindo would complete the Integral Yoga by a transformation of his very body so that, just as there would be no ignorance or obscurity in the mind and no impurity and incapacity in the vital being, the body would acquire a divine nature and be free from disease, ageing and death. What he as well as the Mother would achieve was intended to be repeated in their disciples. Not that one would be eternally bound to one physical frame: one could leave the body if one wanted but one would not be obliged to do so by any defect in it, any subjection to the so-called "laws of physical nature" which have obtained up till now. The death of the old Frenchman was not taken to

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contradict this expectation. It was important as a fact simply because no member of the Ashram had died but it had no far-reaching significance since he was a man of advanced age who had joined the Integral Yoga very late in life: no one could argue that the Yoga could suddenly put time in reverse and perpetuate a body naturally gone far on the way to a breakdown.

Incidentally, another condition for realising a transformed body comes out in a talk recorded by Nirodbaran between Sri Aurobindo and his attendants. Sri Aurobindo says there: "Amal once asked the Mother if he would realise the Divine. The Mother replied that he would unless he did something idiotic to cut short his life. And that is exactly what he very nearly did!" The reference is to my taking, under a wrong impression, a huge quantity of a powerful drug prescribed by a doctor friend during a visit of mine to Bombay. I took forty-eight times the normal dose and was about to die. Nirod, after meeting me on 21 March 1940 in Pondicherry, informed Sri Aurobindo of my conviction that I had been saved by a special divine intervention. Sri Aurobindo emphatically said: "Yes."

The same point is made in a letter by him on 1st August 1938 when I wrote from Bombay after my accident that I was all agog to know whether I should pack up for Pondicherry and come away with my heart still below normal by medical standards. Sri Aurobindo replied: "You must on no account return here before your heart has recovered. No doubt, death must not be feared, but neither should death or permanent ill-health be invited. Here, especially now when all the competent doctors have gone away or been sent to a distance from Pondicherry, there would be no proper facilities for the treatment you still need, while you have them all there. You should remember the Mother's warning to you when she said that you would have your realisation in this life provided you did not to something silly so as to shorten your life. That 'something silly' you tried your best to do when you swallowed with a cheerful liberality a poison-medicine without taking the least care to ascertain what was the maximum dose. You have escaped by a sort of miracle, but with a shaken heart. To risk making that shaky condition of the heart a permanent disability

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of the body rendering it incapable of resisting any severe physical attack or shock in the future, would be another 'something silly' of the same quality. So it's on no account to be done."

It took me almost ten years to regain half my vigour, which is all that has been possible. But, considering the old superabundance, it was enough for the Mother to base herself on it for the continuation of her work towards the goal she had set for each of her disciples. The nature of the goal is spotlighted by a short talk I had with her in the very early years of my Ashram-stay. I was despondent about myself and said: "I can see that I am not fit for this Yoga and will never be able to do it properly." The Mother calmly answered: "Do you think you know more about yourself than I do? I am not at all in doubt." Then I suggested: "Well, I may be able to do something in some other life, some future rebirth." The Mother's response was clear-cut: "When I speak of the fulfilment of our Yoga, I don't think of other lives. I refer only to the present one." During this talk there was no question of the body being kept intact for the realisation: the question was essentially of having the will to carry on and never yielding to dejection. This question, of course, held good at all times, as the Mother more than once reminded me in later years. But in the wake of my accident the question of the physical state kept recurring, and she took always a positive attitude. Even as late as 1966 or thereabouts she repeated that if I took reasonable care of my body I would "participate in the realisation of the New World". But we must remember that this was said before she retired from all of us and went through the terrible crisis of May to November 1973. With her own withdrawal from embodiment, who can usher within calculable time the New World in the realisation of which one may aspire to participate?

As the Mother established the Supramental Light, Consciousness and Force on a universal scale in the earth's subtle-physical layer in 1956, the evolution of the New World in the future by the Supermind's entrance into the gross-material is certain. But evolution is a slow, zigzag, back-and-forth, up-and-down process, and human nature is difficult to change without the Incarnate Divine's pioneering

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sadhana concretely proceeding amidst us and gathering us up into its own movement with its constant Grace. Spiritual evolution and spiritual revolution were a single prospect when the Mother was still present in her body. In my view, it can be the same only when she takes birth once more or in any other way reappears on earth.

However, if the Mother has changed her plans we should trust that she knows best what is Sri Aurobindo's ever-wise will for the world. We must go on preparing the field for their Yoga's fulfilment in the time to come. Hence the continued importance of the Ashram's role as a luminous rallying-point of the world's aspiration. Hence also the significance of the Auroville-experiment in international collective living, with the same fundamental goal as the Ashram, even though immediate self-consecration to Yoga is not insisted upon in so integral a way and more concessions are made to the common difficulties of human nature.

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