24 December 1969

Last time I read to you my homage to Sri Aurobindo, and today I will read the counterpart or the complement to it, the homage to Mother by Madhav, a very genuine and moving record of his love and gratitude to the Mother of Love:

Whatever the form the Ashram as an organisation may assume to meet the exigencies of the community, to us sadhaks it is and it will

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continue to be what it has always been: our Mothers Home. We came here because our Mother was here, we live here because She is present here and we will follow Her wherever She is - not merely in this life but in all lives to come. All our lives are centred round Her Person, even as all life in the Ashram is woven round Her Personality. Every leaf, every brick in the Ashram vibrates with only one note, Mother, Mother! The entire Ashram is so much permeated with the Presence of the Mother that some years ago, a visitor - a Dutchman of some consequence, if i remember right - asked the Mother if this was not a dictatorship. All around were taken aback, incensed. The Mother did not take offence. She nodded and added with a smile, "Benevolent dictatorship!" Indeed, a divine lordship under whose hegemony we die to live.

If to us it is the Home of God into whose portals we are grateful to be admitted, what is the Ashram to Her? To the Mother, the Ashram is Her own extended Body in which She receives all who seek the Light of Truth, nourishes their growth with Her own life-blood and builds up a reservoir of a Truth-Consciousness which shall ensure to Man a New life of terrestrial Immortality. Naturally, human terms and human values have no relevance to Her. She sees and works in terms of Forces that are at play, and knows that men and circumstances are only the physical ends of these invisible agents that are battling for the domination of the earth. The Ashram is for Her the chosen field where the ancient combat between the army of Light and the Hosts of Darkness shall at last be decided. The Adversary has all the means of material power, wealth and numbers at his disposal. She has only one means which is at once Her weapon and Her armour: LOVE.

With sheer Love, She has come into this world of hate and falsehood to front the Enemy in his own fief. Unknown to man, for whose deliverance She has come, She developed Her physical embodiment into a live mould for the Earth's aspiration and when She stepped on the scene, it was Sri Aurobindo, the Seer sempiternal, who proclaimed Her advent to the sons of God and laid at Her feet the domains of the three worlds awaiting transformation, placed in Her hands all the treasures of the Spirit he had garnered from of old.

Such is She, Love Incarnate, Empress of our hearts, whose one single look is enough to transport us to heights of heroism, extremes of self-abnegation, sublimities of ecstasy. To serve Her, in whatever way She allows us to do, is our life's highest privilege. To see Her,

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to get a word from Her, gives a sense of fulfillment to out deepest soul.

Speaking today, in 1965, in the 87^th year of Her golden body, through every pore of which seep the soothing drops of Love divine, through the limpid blue eyes of which stream forth torrents of melting Compassion, this writer cannot but recall the first day he met Her, over twenty-five years ago. Oh, the marvel of that moment! His soul burst out of its prison-bars in a flood of tears and tears and tears, and each time he looked up to Her, She spoke through Her indrawn eyes in the only language they have ever spoken to him thereafter, the language of Love.

Much has happened during the intervening years. Much has he tried Her phenomenal patience; much has he hurt Her heart of tender solicitude; much has he strayed in the blindness of his ego, which she suffered in silence. But not once did She greet him without that familiar glance of Love.

Gradually, increasingly, totally, there came over a change. She had dug and dug tirelessly into the hard layers of his ignorance and lit the chambers of his soul which leaped into the arms of its Maker. All became a sea of Love.

—M. P. Pandit

After reading this piece, I don't feel like saying anything more, but you will be disappointed if I don't, I suppose.

Well, this leads us naturally back to the period where we had abruptly broken our narrative and had taken, at your request, a very big leap at the end of the last session. We shall try to recover this unexplored phase, which is very significant, though I am afraid we don't know much about it. As per the principles of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga, you can't leave anything unfinished. You have to go back till you've conquered the problem fully. The intervening period, from about 1920 to 1938, a long span of time, we shall try to cover hurriedly, with whatever little information is at our disposal, gathered from various sources.

It was a very important period in the Ashram life. We remember that the Mother came and made the Ashram Her home. She took charge of the few sadhaks who were with Sri Aurobindo. There was no Ashram at that time - it was a sort of 'club', if I may use the term! (Laughter) She took charge of Sri Aurobindo's physical and material

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well-being also, since His friends were not taking good care of Him. She started building up the Ashram, step by step, which is now flourishing like a Banyan tree on all sides - till, as Madhav says, every leaf, every brick in the Ashram, and I'd add a little further, every one of you too, vibrates with only one note: Mother! And Sri Aurobindo is in the background, supporting her action.

If you will allow me, ladies, to address you particularly, you would have no place here in the Ashram, had there been no Mother. If I may go further, Sri Aurobindo would have gone on exploring the invisible and the visible spheres or planes, beyond the Supermind, without paying any attention to creating an ashram. I have given you a glimpse of His early life, His life before He came here. If I may now recall, you know, what sort of a life it was here before Mother came. He came to Pondicherry from British India, with a few brave young revolutionaries, living a very precarious, a kind of bohemian life -what we would call 'living dangerously'; on the one hand, the police,³¹⁹ and, on the other hand, no money in their pockets. It was a kind of communistic adventure - they all had only one towel, which they used in common, and Sri Aurobindo used it last, after everybody else; and we now have three or four each! (Laughter) This is communism par excellence - no private property. There was hardly any distinction between Sri Aurobindo and His 'disciples'. They lived like comrades -in the outer life. Sri Aurobindo refused to call Himself 'Guru'. There was hardly any respect given to Him; they addressed Him not as Sri Aurobindo, but as 'Moshai',³²⁰ and Sri Aurobindo treated them just like young friends. He said once, "This Guruship has been imposed on me."

I don't know how far the story is true. It seems, once, a visitor was shocked to see the few inmates behaving so riotously, behaving with Sri Aurobindo as if He was their pal, and this visitor tried to teach them some manners, tried to reform them. And when he objected

319The police were constantly monitoring his residence. There were always policemen in mufti outside the house and, astonishingly, one of them even entered the house as an inmate!

320Sir - in Bengali.

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to their behaviour, Sri Aurobindo admonished him, saying: "Leave them alone, I know how to deal with them." This was the life they used to lead. Later, Mother tactfully managed everything, and taught the children and the other elders to respect Him; She put order into the chaos. She took charge of attending to Sri Aurobindo personally; She arranged for some proper, nourishing food for Him since He had become thin, fragile, ascetic-looking, and tried to give other home-comforts, and finally took charge of the whole Ashram.

I shall read out to you something apropos of this from the talks we had with Sri Aurobindo [Reading from Talks with Sri Aurobindo (2001), 1:182):

[Nitod-da:] You once spoke of the brilliant period of the Ashram.

[Sri Aurobindo:] Yes, it was when sadhana was going on on the vital level. And if we had stopped there, we could have started a big religion or a vast organisation. But the real work would have been left unattempted and unachieved.

Why did you retire ? Was it to concentrate more on your work?

No. It was in order to withdraw from the general physical atmosphere. If I had to do what the Mother is doing, I would hardly have found time to do my own work; besides, it would have entailed a tremendous labour.

The Mother's coming must have greatly helped you in your work and in your sadhana.

Of course, of course.

I remember - while saying this, Sri Aurobindo was very much moved; He was otherwise not very easily moved.

All my realisations - Nirvana and others - would have remained theoretical, as it were, so far as the outer world was concerned. It is the Mother who showed the way to practical form. Without her, no organised manifestation would have been possible. She has been doing this kind of sadhana and work from her very childhood.

So you've heard His reply to our question. Further, He has pronounced in no unmistakable terms that His yoga is not possible for those who do not accept the Mother as Guru. Again and again, He has been

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thundering at us: Mother is the gate, She is the way, She is the Word, the Mediatrix. There were some who refused to accept Her, and the consequences were disastrous. They were ready to accept Him, but not Her, and they were deluded for She is the Shakti for transformation, manifestation.

Did He also foresee that one day He would leave us? Long, long ago, He hinted once that He would have to go. That is why, when He withdrew in 1926 after His Siddhi,³²¹ he enjoined all the inmates to accept the Mother as Guru, to call Her 'Mother', not Mira. He Himself once said that what He would have done in ten years, He achieved in one year with Mother's cooperation and collaboration. So you can see what a tremendous force She has brought with Her. What Sri Aurobindo brought down, Mother received instantly, like an electric current. So very receptive! She is the Shakti, you can feel it when you stand before Her; if something has gone wrong in you, you feel it immediately, in Her presence; whereas in Sri Aurobindo's presence, you didn't feel the same thing, for He was a wide, wide ocean. We naughty fellows could even go on with our mischief! (Laughter) The transformation of our nature is the very fundamental process of our yoga. Due to it, there have been some revolts, which is the sad part of the story.³²²

I used to wonder, friends, while reading Prayers and Meditations, at the similarity of the ideas of Mother and Sri Aurobindo about yoga, transformation of nature, the subconscience, etc. There is so much parallelism in Mother's practising the yoga of the Gita in Paris! The two were widely separated by space, custom, culture, and yet they had the same spiritual destiny.

321'Siddhi' means perfection, completion. In yoga, it means attainment of mukti or liberation, enlightenment. For Sri Aurobindo, the Siddhi day is November 24, 1926, when he attained the Overmind, the Krishna Consciousness, just one grade below the Supermind.

322In the traditional paths of yoga, it is enough to get liberation. Your consciousness rises to a level higher than the mind and you let your outer nature of body, life and mind carry on in the old, entrenched, imperfect man. All desires and negative character traits may remain, but the sadhak is not identified with it, so he feels no imprisonment. He is free. But in the Integral Yoga, the aim is liberation and also the transformation of the outer nature, to make it perfect and free of defects.

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One day, everything flashed before my eyes, as it were! It may simply be my imagination, friends, but I had a vision - a poetic vision. I saw, through a moments parting of the skies, the gods seated in all their splendour, eyes turned to Lord Vishnu, with his consort, Lakshmi, seated on a golden throne in their majesty and grandeur. There was a solemn hush in the Assembly, as if they were waiting for some momentous event or for some important announcement. Narada, the divine sage, was sitting there, and he stood up and began singing a hymn of praise to the Lord, and then prayed, "Lord, the suffering earth is crying for Thee!" The Lord heard and kept quiet for a moment. And then, "Yes, Narada, I have heard the cry, the call," He replied in a slow, delicate speech, his face shining like a thousand-petalled sun. "I am going down to the earth, to the East, and Lakshmi, your beloved queen, will go down to the West. You gods and goddesses who want to take part in our leela,³²³ go down and prepare the field ..." Then Narada, very happily singing on his lyre, floated down, and the earth could hear his ecstatic music and lived in hope. Through its agony and distress, the world heard the divine song, and there was a mood of prayer. Soon after, I saw two shafts of light, one blue, another white, shooting down, one towards the East - to the sacred soil of India, and the other towards the West - to the sacred soil of France.

I don't need to explain the vision, ladies and gendemen, it is quite clear. You know how, before She came here, Mother used to see in her visions so many sadhus, but one was constant, whom She called 'Krishna', and she recognised that very face when She met Sri Aurobindo, and She understood that by His side Her work would begin and continue.

There, in Paris, in a very strange manner, She got a worn-out copy of the Gita, and She began practising its yoga from Her very early youth. That's how destiny works. From this you can see that my vision is not just a firework-flash of imagination! They have come with a mutual pact. I cannot conceive of any Indian woman doing in the

323 Leela is the Divine Creation of the Cosmos. The Lord creates out of Joy, Bliss, so it is His play.

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material plane what Mother is doing with Her superb and supreme powers of organisation. The West is master in the material field, and India, at the present, is weaker in that field. So it was destined that Mother should be born in the West, and Sri Aurobindo in the East, and Mother, crossing the seven seas, should come and join Him here, after having imbibed the best of the Western culture for Her (and His) purpose.

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