THE ASHRAM ATMOSPHERE

AN inner revoluti on is not like an outer which comes like a " storm and passes off. It is much more subtle and far-reaching in its effect.

There is no preaching here, the very atmosphere of the Ashram is charged with the Master's teaching. When one is accepted as a disciple he is not initiated into any mantra or asked to follow a set yogic discipline. The Ashram does not follow any religious creed, tradition or convention. It is from the atmosphere one has to choose and take the course of his sadhana. Further, it is the atmosphere of the Ashram that tells on a visitor's soul first of all. So, if possible, let us sense it through a few facts.

Our Shastras say : Like a picture on a piece of canvas the Guru sits immobile under the shade of a banian tree, silently radiating his influence, his message and answering the questions that arise in the minds of seekers. How the Guru by his silence can kindle the light of Knowledge in the heart of a spiritual aspirant is above the comprehension of the modern mind.

Let us hear Sri Aurobindo: "There are two great forces in the universe, silence and speech. Silence prepares, speech creates. Silence acts, speech gives the impulse to action. Silence compels, speech persuades...

"The knowledge of the Yogin is not the knowledge of the average desire-driven mind. Neither is it the knowledge of the scientific or of the worldly-wise reason which anchors itself on surface facts and leans upon experience and probability. The Yogin knows God's way of working and is aware that the improbable often happens, that facts mislead. He rises above reason to that direct and illuminated knowledge which we call vijnanam...The strength of noise and activity is, doubtless, great,.... But infinite is

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the strength of the stillness and the silence in which great forces prepare for action."¹

1926-1938

After 1926 there came a perceptible change in the inner and outer atmosphere of the Ashram. Sri Aurobindo always preferred "...to communicate through the silent consciousness, because speech addresses itself to the mind while through the silent consciousness one can reach something deeper."²

Before 1926 Sri Aurobindo used to give a short speech on 15th August. The above extract is from his speech on 15th August 1924. From 1926 this practice was discontinued.

Instead, there reigned a silence, pregnant with Power, emanating divinity. Peace became the basis of our sadhana and of our activities—an inner calm upbearing all outer movements. It was from such creative silence that the Ashram began to emerge and grow.

The silence that intensified itself on Darsan days and created a wonderful atmosphere could be sensed and experienced rather than expressed. What the Mother and Sri Aurobindo gave on Darshan days seemed to deepen the spiritual atmosphere of the pervasive silence.

A state of indrawnness appeared to be the general experience. 'Darsan is coming' was on everybody's lips. The Ashram would vibrate with various activities but there was no vital exuberance. The atmosphere was marked by a compelling silence and a feeling of its impact by everybody. If on great occasions like this the inner state of man has an outer reflection it could be said that the sadhaks looked fully collected and concentrated. Each would approach with a prayerful heart and come down enriched with something ineffable.

1.The Ideal of the Kannayogin.

2.Life of Sri Aurobindo by A. B. Purani, p. 228.

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The following remarks by Sri Aurobindo may give us an idea of how rapid was the progress in the beginning and why the sadhana was brought into the physical:

"...if the Mother were able to bring out the Divine Personalities and Powers into her body and physical being as she was doing for several months without break some years ago, the brightest period in the history of the Ashram, things would be much more easy and all these dangerous attacks that now take place would be dealt with rapidly and would in fact be impossible. In those days when the Mother was either receiving the sadhaks for meditation or otherwise working and concentrating all night and day without sleep and with very irregular food, there was no ill-health and no fatigue in her and things were proceeding with lightning swiftness...Afterwards, because the lower vital and the physical of the sadhaks could not follow, the Mother had to push the Divine Personalities and Powers,... behind a veil and came down into the physical human level and act according to its conditions and that means difficulty, struggle, illness, ignorance and inertia."³

The Force of Inner Discipline

What the Ashram had been before the advent of the Mother and what it became afterwards can be seen from Sri Aurobindo's own words :

Q : "X seems to have told Y that the old sadhaks who were here before the Mother took up the work in 1926, had many experiences of the Cosmic Consciousness and the sadhana was much better and more serious than now. How far is this true ? "

SRI AUROBINDO: "Before the Mother came all were living in the mind with only some mental realisations and experiences. The vital and everything else were unregenerate and the psychic

3. Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother, p. 383.

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behind the veil. I am not aware that anyone of them at that time entered the Cosmic Consciousness. At that time I was still seeking my way for the transformation and the passage to the Supra-mental (all the part of the yoga that goes beyond the ordinary Vedanta) and acted very much on a principle of Iaissezfaire with the few sadhaks who were there. X is one of those who have never ceased regretting that Iaissezfaire—he regrets the vital liberty and absence of discipline they then had." (27-7-1934)

How the Mother has awakened us to self-discipline and made us discipline-minded, filling the air with the spirit of dedication, laying more and more stress upon sincerity to one's inner call, correcting our attitude of approach to the Divine is an achievement possible only for the Mother. It is the foundation-stone on which the ever-growing structure of the Ashram is being built. Now everyone has to imbibe everything from the atmosphere and proceed according to his opening and aspiration.

It is not given to all to win the hearts of others. Could fifteen hundred heads remain ever bent before one who could not win their hearts ? Without that, could the inner being remain athirst for her benign smile, for a ray of her light, for a particle of her Grace ? Can external checks and controls, rules and regulations bring about the spirit of worshipful submission which finds its fulfilment in absolute surrender, the crowning achievement of life ?

To D the Mother had said that she had to frame some rules simply because no institution could possibly be run or any kind of corporate life be held together without some laws laid down for general guidance. "But", she added, "I do mean it when I say that I would have no rules at all if the Ashram could be run without them. But I am wide awake and have always held that all rules should come from within. So I never consent to formulating more rules or codes of general conduct than are absolutely necessary and minimum."

Yet a discipline is there, not easy to define, not external but

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inly-binding on all.

In the thirties, the atmosphere of sadhana was marked by a spirit of self-imposed discipline. Everybody was careful not to do anything that the Mother might not approve of. That was almost the law that ruled our life. We knew only one delight: to sense what the Mother would like us to do and then to act accordingly.

One would not call on another without his consent or without the Mother's approval. No present would be accepted without reference to the Mother. Presents made to a sadhak would be sent up to the Mother who would send them back to the sadhak concerned. Then would the person feel free from any sense of having succumbed to a temptation.

Most of us were exclusively shut up within themselves. There was no off-time enjoyment of mutual companionship or talk, no merry-making, feasting or gossiping.

Why this isolation ? Let us listen to the Mother:

"Usually you open yourself in all directions to everything and everybody in the world. You open your surface being and receive there all influences from all quarters. So inside you there comes about what we can call a hotch-potch of all contrary and contradictory movements : and that creates difficulties without number....If one can surround oneself with an atmosphere that acts as a filter, then all that come from outside are checked and sifted before they reach you or touch you. That needs a good training and a large experience. That is why people in ancient days who wanted an easier path took to solitude, into the depths of the forest, on the top of a hill or under a cave so that they might not have to do with people—for that naturally reduces undesirable interchange."⁴

The evening service in the dining room being over by sunset, hardly anybody could be seen in the streets except for some urgent work. Day and night were divided between work and rest,

4. The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, Part Eight by Nolini Kanta Gupta, p. 127.

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sadhana pervading both as far as possible.

Practically there was no separate cooking. To avoid heaviness in the stomach which might hamper meditation (during the days when there was soup distribution) some of us would prefer to go without evening meal or have only a slice of bread or a banana. Our needs were modest and few. Till 1939 the Mother gave Rs. 21- to each permanent member, as pocket money, at the Prosperity time. We did not know what to do with it. Some did not feel any need at all. Others collected it month by month and made an offering of the sum on their birthdays.

A single instance will show how the inmates by themselves try to keep up with the discipline now. The dining service opens for the second time at 11.15 and closes at 12.30 (Sri Aurobindo used to have his lunch at this time in 1914).

One day a new-comer from overseas finding the dining service closed was quietly going back. A sadhak offered to intercede and get him food. At the sadhak's repeated persuasion he politely replied, 'It was my mistake, I didn't care to be in time. In order to keep discipline I have decided not to have anything to-day.'

By the way, in the course of a further talk with the sadhak he said, 'I was a tramp, a vagabond, I have travelled much but when I saw the Mother, I felt, 'Here is India in her depths; I shall no more move about.'

When a youth, newly turned to spirituality, felt it difficult to carry out so many instructions of X through whom he had come here, the Master wrote : "X has said these things in order to help you and put you in the right way. A certain inner and outer discipline is necessary in order that one may grow into the spirit of the yoga and the natural cupidity of the vital cannot be a guide to action there. One had to perceive what one should or should not do and impose this discipline on oneself; for that X's advice and guidance can be of great help to you."(20-10-1936)

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The Mother's way of working is quite her own :

"Mastery means to know how to deal with certain vibrations...To master something, a movement, for example, means, by your simple presence, without any word, any explanation, to replace a bad vibration by the true one. By means of the word, by means of explanation and discussion, even a certain emanation of force, you exert an influence upon another, but you do not master the movement. Mastery over a movement is the capacity to set against the vibration of the movement a stronger, truer vibration that can stop the other vibration.

"If words are necessary to explain a certain thing, then you have not the true knowledge. If I have to speak out all that I mean to say in order to make you understand, then I have not the mastery, simply I exercise an influence upon your intelligence and help you to understand, awaken in you the desire to know, to discipline yourself etc. etc., But if I am not able, simply by looking at you, without saying anything, to make you enter into the light that will make you understand, well, I have not mastered the state of ignorance."⁵

We feel tempted to reproduce here a letter from the pen of the great Bengali litterateur, Sarat Chandra Chatterji. It refers to Barindra's reaction to the Ashram discipline and to his feeling about the Mother as he had seen her while he was here in the twenties (1920-29): "I often meet Barin these days. He says he will not turn his face again towards Pondicherry. He wonders how he could remain caged in so long under such rigorous discipline ! But in the depths of his heart he has intense devotion for your Mother. He says that it is hardly possible to meet a personality like hers. Her power of subtle vision, says he, is unequalled. Her capacity for action is as high as her intellect and inner faculty of maintaining discipline. Problems of every sadhak are always before her eyes..."⁶

5.The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo by Nolini Kanta Gupta Part Nine, p. 85.

6.Sarat Patravali (in Hindi).

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And Barindra himself discloses his own depths in the Khulna-vasi of February 21, 1940.⁷

"In the Yoga-Ashram of Pondicherry the Mother is the living embodiment of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga. The touch of her creative genius has given the Ashram its present shape. The work of each department bears the stamp of her originality and constructive genius. It is doubtful if there is any other place on earth where such a big family could be seen carrying on like clock-work its day-to-day activities in silence and in harmony, without a shade of conflict. The constructive power of the West and the wholehearted surrender and self-giving of the East are moving hand in hand in the life of the Ashram.

"But to have given a perfect shape to the Ashram is not the Mother's greatest achievement. She is the living image and the outer expression of the Yogic Power that is operating everywhere with the Ashram as its centre. To attribute Divinity to a human being may seem to others a sheer fantasy of the devotees or nothing but sentimentalism. But one who has had the slightest touch of the spiritual Power of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga knows for certain that the open-sesame of his Integral Yoga lies in the Mother alone.

"Sri Aurobindo once said to me that he doubted if there was in the past any figure embodying so great a Yogic power. He added that he had done ten years' Yoga by one year's contact with her. The Yogic Power of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo opened wide the doors of the unostentatious Ashram, so long in the grip of want and difficulty, to the steady inflow of sufficiency and prosperity. Spontaneous offerings came from disciples and admirers. The most ordinary men found in themselves an outflowering of the poetic power, a wonderful talent for painting, a capacity for meditation, occult vision and skilfulness in work. Day by day the Pondicherry Ashram grew into a Yogic place of pilgrimage for the entire world. An aspirant had a vision : the

7. Reproduced from Mother India, February 1964.

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Mother and Sri Aurobindo were inside a golden tabernacle on the top of a luminous hill, and men from different climes from all directions thronged to the place in endless streams. To-day his vision has materialised.

"In the course of repeated experiences, a restless fellow, mad after work, with impurities unpurged, a man of vitalistic temperament, I have realised, from the play of the Mother's miraculous Power, how true were the words of Sri Aurobindo. From the angle of Yogic vision the Mother has no equal even in India the tapobhumi, the land of Tapasya.

'To-day is the Mother's birthday. On this blessed day this is a tribute at her Feet from her erring child. Whatever my deviations into wrong paths, however grave my errors, my labyrinthine movements will at length lead me into the Temple of the Mother's Consciousness, for where else except in the Mother's lap can her son find the end of his journey ?"

An extract from Ajit Sur's article in the Basumati, a Calcutta Bengali daily of 19 Srawan 1366 B.E. regarding Barin's last wish, though not relevant here, will be of interest; "Of late there has been a longing in me to see Sri Aurobindo. Many of those who see visions have seen him after his passing but I have never happened to see him with these physical eyes.

"Only yesterday as I was trying in my sick-bed to concentrate a little, to my surprise, I saw a flood of light filling my room and in a corner I saw Sri Aurobindo in a luminous figure. I seemed to perceive that he made a sign with his hand as if by way of a call. After that his brilliant form slowly disappeared. At that time I felt free from the agony of my sufferings."

One must bear in mind that nothing is imposed on us. "I believe," repeats the Mother in one of her recent writings, "more in the power of the atmosphere and of the example than in any rigorous teaching. I rely more on the thing that awakes in the being by contagion than by a regulated, disciplined effort,

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"Perhaps after all something is preparing and one day it will leap forth outside. That is my hope."⁸ Long ago, Sri Aurobindo wrote :

"Always behave as if the Mother was looking at you, for she is indeed always present."

The Mother confirms the 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 relation, defining to yourself the different facets of your nature so that you may see what should be changed, developed, rejected."⁹

Here are some illustrations:

On a Dewali occasion, when fireworks are the rage, a small boy of the infant section of the Ashram School invited another of his age to such play. The latter said, "But Mother doesn't like it."

"Mother is not here now."

"She is everywhere and She sees everything."

And there rested the matter.

A girl of nine, at table, was asked about some food not cooked well, "Do you like the dish ?"

"I like everything. Mother has made everything."

On another occasion when her aunt was talking of some trouble, the girl spoke out: 'Talk always of joy, not of trouble."

"I do have trouble—how can I help it ? "

"Why, call upon the Divine. Whatever you will ask He will give."

"I want neither gold nor joy but the Divine. Where can I see Him?"

"In the photo."

"He does not talk nor hear our cry."

8.Bulletin, November 1958, p. 123.

9.Bulletin February 1958, p. 75.

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"If you have devotion he will come out of the photo. I have read so in my books."

All eyes at once turned to her in speechless wonder and admiration.

A sadhak playfully asked a small girl of under five, 'Well, will you tell me how to meditate ?'

"Yes," came the reply. "Sit down properly, not in a shuffling way, think of nothing, only call upon the Mother in silence."

Recently a child put a very striking question to the Mother— "Are you God?"

The Mother replied: 'The question can be put to any human being and the answer is: Yes, potentially, and the task of everyone is to make of it a real fact."

Another question by a child: "Who made the Divine?"

"Himself," said the Mother.

We saw the Mother every day but how many of us could feel her inner grandeur. Once a young boy accompanied by his parents went up for Darshan. When he reached the Darshan Room holding his mother by the sari he asked in a soft voice, "Why is there another Mother inside the Mother ?"

Narrating his reminiscences the Principal of a reputed institution said: "When I came here for the first time about twenty years ago, I was full of admiration and adoration for the Master, but had not a very high regard for the Mother. What, thought I, could a lady from France, the centre of fashion and luxury, know about Yoga and spirituality. But the change that came upon me by her very first Darshan has left a mark which cannot be effaced.

"When after mechanically bowing before Her as others in the queue were doing I stood and met her gaze with these poor eyes of mine, I saw a vast sea of divine grace surging behind the revealing rays of her gaze. From that moment she became for me an object of my spontaneous worship.

"I had approached her with indifference but was struck

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speechless by what I saw.

"Another time I was standing in a queue waiting for my tum. There were about eight persons before me, the last was Miss Wilson, the daughter of the late President Wilson of America. She took rather a long time talking with the Mother. I stood there fidgeting, "Is it because she is the daughter of a President she is allowed to take so much time while we poor mortals are allowed not even a few seconds !"

"I resolved not to stir till she asked me to go." With this resoluteness I approached the Mother but as soon as she saw me she burst into laughter. I never knew she could so easily read the secrets of my heart. I felt abashed that my mischievous resolve had been detected. I could not stand before her any longer. I came away but I was satisfied that the goddess of fortune had smiled upon me."

Even at the risk of some digression, let us say all we have come to know about Miss Wilson.

The first American lady to take up Ashram life was Margaret Wilson, the eldest daughter of the famous President Wilson. She heard of Sri Aurobindo at a meeting in America from Dhangopal Mukherjee. At the end of the meeting she asked him about Yoga. He advised her to contact Sri Aurobindo saying that his brother had been a fellow-worker of Sri Aurobindo in the Swadeshi days.

She wrote to the Arya Publishing House and obtained a few books by Sri Aurobindo that were then available.

Going through them she became so attracted that she wrote to Sri Aurobindo for permission to come here.

The answer was, "Not now."

Remaining in America she started sadhana and maintained the touch by correspondence.

After a time permission was granted.

When she reached Bombay, the head of the Ramakrishna Mission told her, "You are going to the greatest Yogi of India."

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Learning from a newspaper report that she was coming X asked Sri Aurobindo about her. He replied that she had been practising this Yoga and has now been permitted to come and settle in the Ashram, and that X should guide her through the streets for a time, because many of the streets looked alike and she might be lost in them.

On taking up the Ashram life she was given the name Nistha. Sri Aurobindo, while thus naming her, wrote: 'The word means one-pointed, fixed and steady concentration, devotion and faith in the single aim—the Divine and the Divine Realisation."

(5-11-1938)

Before coming here, while reading Essays on the Gita in the mammoth Public Library in New York in the late twenties she became so absorbed that the library closed for the day with her a prisoner.

One day X asked her "Have you read Essays on the Gita?" "Essays on the Gita ? Oh ! that's my Bible!"¹⁰ came her quick answer.

While she was here The Life Divine saw the light of the day in book form. A few copies she sent to Sri Aurobindo with a request to give his autograph and blessings on them which she sent to her friends. Thus it was she who earned for us the joy of having the Master's autograph on his books. It was in America that The Life Divine has so far been published three times.¹¹

One set was sent to Will Durant. He spoke highly of the book

10.H had a great love for the Gita, and had read as many commentaries as came his way. Once in Delhi he asked a librarian to give him a commentary but he kept him waiting long. Having lost patience he spoke out, how long would he keep him waiting?

In reply the librarian said, "Wait, wait, I shall give you one that will break your head." After a time he gave him Essays on the Gita. The book captured the heart of H so much that he got lost in it and said he had never come across such a commentary in this life. The book brought him, though a man of very scanty means, to Pondicherry.

11.1949, 1951, 1965.

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haracterising Sri Aurobindo's style as 'gracious'.

Another to receive a set was a lady friend who had an exceptional intellect whom Nistha considered an incarnate of Saraswati, goddess of learning. It came to Nistha something of a shock when her friend wrote, "I could make nothing of the book."

Nistha herself was very fond of Sri Aurobindo's books and spent much time in reading them. The Life Divine she read and read endlessly.

She had a nice sense of humour. While out on a walk one day she commented to X : Brahman seems to me like a centipede— Transcedental Brahman, Cosmic Brahman, Static Brahman, Dynamic Brahman, Para Brahman, etc.

Once she spoke of Sri Aurobindo :

"Here is one on earth whom one can love all one's life and in whom one can lose oneself."

What fire of aspiration for the Divine must have drawn Nistha to India! A talented American lady whose music was a joy to soldiers in the first World War, eldest daughter of the President of America, what on earth could not be at her disposal! Still she set out on a long voyage to cross the sea of sadhana and struggled six to seven years to reach the distant shore.

Physically she was rather weak. According to Y who knew her well, "Even before she came to Pondicherry she had been warned by doctors that she had only a few months to live, as she was suffering from an incurable disease. Yet on coming to Pondicherry she gave up all medical treatment and relied only on Sri Aurobindo and the Mother's Grace."

She forced upon herself the discipline of the Ashram and lived for six years as others lived, asking for nothing.

After that, again her health began to fail. Seeing her reduced to a skeleton, one day X asked her in a loving tone : "Don't you think a change of air will do you good ?"

Turning round upon him her deep-socketed eyes she said in a

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feeble but firm tone: "You see, if I die here my soul will be in the Mother's hand but if I die outside who will take care of my soul ?" X stood speechless.

She was dying inch by inch, nothing was left of the body except skin and bone. She could have the best treatment available in the world, yet she preferred not to leave the Ashram atmosphere. Again and again she is reported to have said, "Don't send me to New York. I want to die at their feet."

The most striking fact was that she remained conscious¹² till the end, constantly uttering the words, "Mother, Sri Aurobindo". She breathed her last in 1944.

What is it in the Ashram that touches the soul of a newcomer ? What do people find more appealing than a few extended hands of welcome ? Wherefrom emanate the Peace and the Presence that pervade the Ashram atmosphere?

In one word, the answer is : from the inherent power of Sri Aurobindo's tapascarya and the Mother's universal Love and luminous personality. It is this power and this Love that saves everyone here from the fire which consumes the world. Taking all the burden on herself the Mother keeps her children care-free. To feel the Mother's influence and to profit by it, the minimum need is a bit of sensibility and responsiveness.

It is common experience that any deviation at once causes a reaction. Every moment one is tested how far one is siding with the light of the truth or running counter to it.

Once when a person passed some remarks about the Ashram, a sadhak spoke something in the same vein. At once he heard a voice in his heart in a challenging tone, "You also speak like that ?" Then and there he became conscious of his folly.

12. Almost daily the Mother was giving her the flower symbolising 'Consciousness'.

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A visitor from Bombay used to ask whomsoever he met to tell him something of his experience, what he had gained by his stay here. He was a businessman—so a sadhak took him to another businessman connected with the Ashram for a fairly long time. He was about one hour with him and returned overwhelmed. What struck him most was to find that the gentleman was staying sometimes in Calcutta and sometimes in Madras, carrying on business in both places, yet his heart was full to the brim of faith. Faith is the subtle presence of God himself. If faith is there, what cannot one aspire after and achieve ?

"Work is an enjoyment, a pleasure," observed the second businessman, "if you know how to remain care-free. Since everything belongs to the Mother, why should you worry ?

"Any step in the wrong direction will at once create an uneasiness, an unpleasantness. You must step back and correct yourself. If you don't mind the inner alarm-bell and go on repeating the same mistakes, you may feel a prick in the consciousness but you won't feel the same uneasiness as before. Then you go on doing whatever you like, there is no one to check or hinder you. Sincerity demands absolute frankness and complete exposure of one's inner as well as outer being to the Mother."

When someone asked : "I feel that when the Mother comes down to give meditation in the Meditation Hall, the atmosphere of the Hall extends to all the Ashram houses. Am I right in my feeling ?"

Sri Aurobindo said : "It is natural that it should be so as the Mother, when she concentrates on the inner work, is accustomed spontaneously to spread her consciousness over the whole Ashram. So to anyone who is sensitive, it must be felt anywhere in the Ashram, though perhaps more strongly in the nearer houses on an occasion like the evening meditation."(7-11-1934)

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"Every house¹³ in which the sadhaks of the Ashram live is in the Ashram precincts."

"She (the Mother) is trying to bring down the right consciousness in the atmosphere of the Ashram..."

An American journalist said, "We can never find fault with an institution where the atmosphere is so charged with Ananda." Dr. K. R. Srinivas Iyengar, the first biographer of Sri Aurobindo (in English) says: The Ashram is but a rough sketch of the Promised Land, of 'a new Heaven and a new Earth.'

A pleader from Bengal decided to have his eldest son educated in the Ashram Centre of Education. His was a family of pleaders and advocates. When his friends dissuaded him from sending his son to the Ashram he said pointedly: "I don't know where is heaven but if there is any heaven on earth, it is Pondicherry. Even if my son secures no place and comes last I would like to have him educated there."

Ashram—A Force of Oneness

The force of oneness in action triumphs over all distinctions of race, sex, age, religion or culture in the Ashram. It recognises no caste or creed or religion and its gates are open to all provided they are willing to follow the spiritual path shown by it. Men of all religions, all nationalities and cultures meet here without having to forego the least bit of their culture or nationality. On the

13. For comfortable accommodation of two people from a reputed firm from Calcutta the Sri Aurobindo Society secured a big, well-furnished house facing the sea.

When I happened to meet one of them on their visit for the great day of 4-5-67 he said, "The atmosphere that is there in the Ashram houses is incomparable. Once arrangements were made for us in a house borrowed from someone, though full of comfortable things yet we could not be comfortable there. The atmosphere there was so vitiated that no attempt to sense the Ashram atmosphere by kindling incense sticks etc. could be of any avail. Quite a different atmosphere was there."

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contrary, each culture has its scope of free growth and development. Each member of the Ashram can act according to his aptitude for the higher life and yet all members from a homogenous whole. Thus the Ashram is so organised and so conducted that it will ever remain a source of inspiration into the efforts towards the growth of a universal culture. Miss Hodgson from England (known in the Ashram as Datta) and P. Barbier Saint-Hilaire from France (known by the name of Pavitra) were the first to lend the Ashram an international complexion. I shall speak about them in the proper place.

A youth of a noble family distantly related to the Nizam of Hyderabad came as a visitor and afterwards felt a call to take up the Ashram life. Then followed his mother, his sister and two brothers. The Mother received them so lovingly and they mixed with all so freely that no question of any distinction ever arose in anybody's mind. This, of course, does not mean that people who joined the Ashram years ago had not to fight down their inherent samskaras.

In 1945 X came for Darshan with the intention of staying for good. He had taken up sannyasa at the age of 21 and had come here when 36, having observed silence and lived on food prepared by himself all these years. He was shocked to see that he would have to take brown bread and have his meals along with others.

In those days C served rice in the dining room. Looking at his bearded face, X pondered the question again and again : Is he a Mohamedan ? He dared not put the question to anybody. He could conceive of no greater topsyturvydom. Days passed. He could not still his restless mind and reconcile himself to this situation. Leavened bread was also a frying experience for him.

He had the feeling that those having Darsan were invariably blessed with some vision or experience. But the great day of the Darsan came and went without his having had any. He had been

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greatly attached to Rama. While repeating the name of Rama he found himself spontaneously repeating the name of Sri Aurobindo.

Now a bitter repentance seized him. He had moved away from his former discipline and lost his loyalty to his istadevata; sixteen years' tapasya all gone! He went up to his terrace and shed tears over his tragic frustration. At this moment of crisis appeared before him the glorious figure of the Divine Mother. From that moment, a sharp change came over him and his sadhana took a turn which definitively set him on the Path.

The weeds of pettiness, rigidity, bigotry have been so cleanly uprooted from the soil of the Ashram that they have no chance of sprouting again. The wonder of it is how such deep-rooted sectarianism could be completely abolished without raising any kind of storm.

Gandhiji in one of his speeches said, "You should know that at Sri Aurobindo Ashram there is no distinction of caste or creed, race or religion. I heard this from the lips of no less a man than the late Sir Akbar Hydari himself who told me that he used to go there every year as on pilgrimage."¹⁴

A youth from M.P. was thinking of taking up yoga for a pretty long time. He thought that after getting his wife accepted he would join the Ashram. She was accepted and he went back alone.

When he reached home and broke the news to his father, the old man got stunned. "What will people say ? A daughter-in-law of my family taking to Ashram life ! With what face can I go out ?" He told his son to go to the Ashram that very moment or else he would break his head and actually he became violent.

The poor son had no other way but to return to Pondicherry by the next available train. Till his son returned with his wife, the old man did not come out of his house. A year or so later, the young couple were blessed with a son. As the boy grew up to be six or seven, whenever he found his father coming to Pondicherry,

14. Among the Great by Dilip Kumar Roy,

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he insisted on accompanying him.

After a time the mother of the youth from M.P. died. She left some money. With that the youth's father, who had fought shy of the Ashram, came for permanent stay. When he insisted upon my securing permission for him, I asked, "Well, if Mother refuses, what then ?"

"No, no, don't say so, if the Mother says no, I shall drop down dead."

He was kept on trial for six months and then made permanent. He joined marching exercises and started; at the age of 60, learning English right from the alphabet. Four or five young men from his place had taken up the Ashram life but none could continue for long. But as long as the grandfather lived he and his grandson continued their journey hand in hand.

At present, there are inmates of widely varied ages ranging from 3 to 83 and they include boys and girls as students, and men and women from all social and professional levels. Even people having physical disabilities of various kinds are not barred. Arrangements are there for special care of each.

In February 1960, a doctor of 75 was accepted as a permanent member.¹⁵ Those below five live either with their parents or under the care of someone in the Ashram. A good many instances can be cited of families coming here and going back but their children choosing to stay behind for good : even cut off from their parents, they feel quite at home here. The youngest boy in

15. Some interesting precedents about him are that he had been attracted to Sri Aurobindo by reading at Baroda College, his English rendering of Bande Mataram. Then he met him in Bombay when the Master was on a tour of the country after the Surat Congress. He and some of his friends arranged an "at home" to Sri Aurobindo and his co-workers. He presented him with an address and a Kashmiri shawl.

One of his letters to Sri Aurobindo was produced before the court in Alipore, to which the public prosecutor vainly gave a twisted meaning.

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the Ashram Residential Home without any of his relatives, was a five year old. There are several from the age of seven upwards, settled here for education in the Ashram atmosphere. Since the doors of the Ashram were thrown open to children, the whole picture of the Ashram has changed.

One or two instances may show what call within brings these youngsters and how the Mother receives them.

Two girls of 4 and 6 came with their parents in 1952. During Pranam time the younger one spoke something to the Mother in her mother-tongue. L who was standing a little away explained to the Mother that she and her elder sister wanted to stay here and the Mother agreed then and there. But who would take charge of them ? An elderly sadhika offered to keep them with her. Leaving them to her charge their parents went away.

One day, at the close of the Mother's distribution in the Playground, the girl came forward and clasped the Mother with her little arms.

Generally parents approach the Mother through the Secretary but in this case the parents did not know that their daughters had any intention to stay away. A four-year girl coming from 1600 miles away did not feel the least hesitation in speaking to the Mother direct and coming to a decision which was to change the whole course of her life. The parents came to know this after everything had been settled.

On the occasion of the November Darshan in 1960, there came a family including four children. One of them, a girl of seven or eight, refused to return home with her parents. When she was told that without permission nobody could stay here, she said, "Speak to Mother, she will never refuse me."

The Mother looked into her eyes a few seconds at the monthly Prosperity Blessings. Since then she has been staying here but was kept out of school and Playground activities for want of room. This isolation, however, did not damp her confidence. "Mother

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will allow me," was her refrain and her confidence justified itself a few months later when she was taken in as a regular student.

M has been here for fourteen years. Now she is seventeen. Right from her arrival when she was three she had free access to the Mother every day as long as the Mother was generally accessible. The story that we hear about her leads us to believe that the Mother is her heaven.

These instances give us an idea of what stuff they are made of. You will find them always smiling like flowers, flitting about like birds and full of fun. To look at them is to feel a new life about to spring up from the Ashram soil.

Children in Ashram Life

From 1926 to 1938 things went on smoothly; then there came several changes. Our attempt here will be to portray the Ashram life as it evolved after 1938 and the events that reflected themselves in the atmosphere.

The year 1943 saw a very small beginning of what has now developed into the Sri Aurobindo Internationa] Centre of Education. Thanks to the admission of children to the Ashram, access to the Mother became unexpectedly easy. That we should enjoy the Mother's Presence from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. daily and be able to speak to her at need, even play with her—all this had been beyond even our wildest dreams. All important functions, seasonal games, dances, dramas were graced by her Presence. It looked as if she had lost herself in the younger section of the Ashram. She gave them lessons, narrated stories, personally gave them marks and took interest in almost all their activities. Her evening classes of little children, ending with distribution of sweets, were beautiful scenes in which restless and noisy children grew quiet and silent, as if discipline had sprung into being among them.

The combination of physical culture with spiritual life in sharp contrast to the prevailing Indian ideas of Ashram life sprang a

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surprise upon all. When youthful girls of aristocratic families took to sports in shorts and shirts, throwing shyness and reserve aside, it was for all a happy wonder.

It also marked a sudden change in their outlook on life. A new strength and overwhelming joy seemed to seize on them. Many of them had various sorts of physical trouble. Whoever sought medical treatment was advised to take physical exercises. Even ladies with grey hair were seen running, doing march past, like men in a separate group.

The use of medicine was reduced to the minimum. An elderly lady had been suffering for long from a pain in the legs; the Mother wished her to take some sort of exercise. Generally speaking, whoever wanted to join Playground activities got encouragement from the Mother.

Asked what is the ideal of Physical Education for a girl, the Mother said: "I do not see why there should be a special ideal of physical education for girls and another for boys.

'The aim of physical education is to develop all the possibilities of a human body, possibilities of harmony, strength, plasticity, skill, agility, endurance, and to increase the control over the functioning of the limbs and the organs, and to make of the body a perfect instrument at the disposal of a conscious will. This programme is excellent for all human beings, equally, and there is no point in wanting to adopt another for girls."

To the query, what should be the ideal of a woman's physical beauty, her answer was :

"A perfect harmony in the proportion, suppleness and strength, grace and force, plasticity and endurance and above all, excellent health, unvarying and unchanging which is the result of a pure soul, a happy trust in life and an unshakable faith in the Divine grace."

To-day life in the Ashram is not so austere as before. The scare of desert-crossing is now almost a thing of the forgotten

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past. Nonetheless one cannot escape the difficulties of the sadhana. "If one is not prepared for labour and tapasya, control of the mind and vital, one cannot demand big spiritual gains,...¹⁶ says Sri Aurobindo.

With the entry of the children there opened up a new phase in Ashram life. Almost everything naturally came to be dealt with according to the needs of the younger ones.

Reactions to this changed atmosphere were varied. There was an air of all-round good cheer. With the mood of inwardness were now combined intense forms of physical activities. The Ashram covered wider fields. The inner no longer remained divorced from the outer.

" Oh for the days that are no more! Oh for the serenity, the peace, the silence, the joy that filled the air before the forties!" -— these were the feelings of some and are unhappily still so, though much less.

Well, if the Ashram was only for those who were given to meditation and a solitary life how could there be an integral yoga ? Recluses there are in the Himalayas in hundreds. If the Ashramites were to be carbon copies of those recluses, how would multi-faceted life have a chance of transmutation, how could the Grace find a wider scope for its action ?

Closely seen, is not the Ashram now a vaster laboratory than before ?

The following words of the Mother on the special concentration that formerly occurred only on Darshan days will give pleasant food for thought: "This special concentration now occurs at other moments, not particularly on the days of Darshan. It occurs more often on other occasions, in other circumstances. The movement has been much more speeded up; the forward march, the steps of the march succeeded each other much more quickly. And it is perhaps more difficult to follow or, in any case, if one does

16. Letters of Sri Aurobindo, Second Series,

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not take care to follow, one is left behind much more quickly than before; you get the impression that you are belated, or you are abandoned. Things are changing rapidly...

"The use of these days is a little different; it is specially for going farther, to have a vaster field, to reach more distant points."¹⁷

One meditates in the hurly-burly of London, another in a cave. Which is the more capable of the two ?

Once in 1947, when after her class the meditation was about to start on the first floor, a good number of workmen on the terrace of the house started their work with repeated strokes of mallets. R asked the Mother if he should stop the work for a time.

"Why ? You should be able to meditate even under the booming of guns," said the Mother.

In the course of a talk a regular visitor from the Tagore family staying in the Ashram guest-house, Golconde, remarked : "The peace I enjoy in Golconde makes me feel as if I were sitting in a cave. You don't know what charm is there in the Ashram atmosphere, simply because you are used to it. When one enters a room in which there is a heap of jasmins one at once feels the impact of their fragrance. But when one gets accustomed to it one does not feel anything unusual."

By allowing boys and girls to meet in a natural commonalty at school, in the Playground and at work, what risk and responsibility the Mother took upon herself! That she has been able to maintain the sanctity of the atmosphere is due only to her superhuman power.

It is like letting loose a roaring lion but with the inhibition from thirsting for blood ! It must suffer itself to be tamed and guided by its unseen master, the Soul.

Neither ritual nor initiation, neither text nor sermon, nor even an order imposed by convention : still there is a discipline not easy to break.

17. Bulletin February 1961, p. 59.

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Some months back a well-educated lady from the Punjab said that her daughter wanted to stay here and learn French. She added, "If she goes anywhere for a day or two I have to accompany her. I cannot let alone a youthful girl. But here in the atmosphere of the Ashram there's no fear."

Unhappily, there are in the world people born only to see the dark side of things. A boy and girl, both good-looking, were running about, playing and making merry within the Ashram courtyard; it was before 1940. A visitor whispered to a sadhak :

"Is it good to give such liberty to a boy and a girl within the Ashram ?"

Giving no direct reply, the sadhak took the visitor to the place where they were playing, and asked the girl, "How many brothers have you?

"Five", was her smiling answer.

"Where are they?"

"Four in Calcutta," and pointing to the boy, "one here always making mischief."

The visitor looked abashed.

How the Ashram appears to those who are in the know of things may be gathered from the observations of Mr. B. Sanjiva Rao, I.E.S. (Retd.) one of the foremost educationists of the country. For long he was associated with Dr. Annie Besant both in the Home Rule Movement and her educational activities in Benaras. At the time he was guiding the development of the Rajghat School and the Vasanta College in the same city.

"...I went to Pondicherry to discover what was being attempted there and how the Mother was organising the educational work. That was my intention and my method of approach...

"Naturally the people whom I met would be a small section of the younger population. But there is no doubt that they are the hope of the future...

"In every Institution where boys and girls meet and work

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together there is the sex problem. So naturally I was deeply interested in the way in which the Mother is tackling this problem. In our existing schools, work is boredom. Boredom is the natural result of the non-exercise of the creative faculties in man. To create something with one's hands, express on the material plane some conception of the human mind is a joy. Mental creation results in the joy of a higher order. The highest joy comes into being when the individual becomes the intelligent instrument of the Divine—when a human being is creatively working, the sex problem finds its natural place in the scheme of Nature. The creative energies in man are intended to build up the physical, the vital, the intellectual in man—when a boy or girl is deeply interested in the multitudinous variety of the manifestations of the Spirit, then their interest in the opposite sex, their purely biological urges assume a subordinate position.

"In modern life, the cinema, the advertisements, the pictures in the periodicals have made sex an enormous problem—also the suppression of all creative urges makes sex the only escape from dullness and boredom. It is the giving to the boys and girls of the Ashram a wide variety of interests that has enabled the Mother to reduce the difficulties of adolescence to a minimum. Great care is given to the development of the physical body— Games, Physical Culture, Swimming, Drill and a variety of exercises maintain the harmony of the human being on the physical plane. A rich intellectual pabulum feeds the mind—and on the level of the spirit, the inspiration of Sri Aurobindo and of the Mother herself is a continual uplifting force."

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