For days in succession, the Mother was unusually sweet with me during the morning Pranam. She would hold my hands, look intently into my eyes smiling all the while so bewitchingly that it would be difficult for me not to turn away my gaze. As the other people around were watching with keen interest this mysteriously ecstatic communion, I used to feel embarrassed, but the Mother paid no attention and was absorbed in what she was doing. I felt as if she were looking into my very soul and suffusing my whole being with light. But what was the reason for it all, I could not tell. My friends, very much intrigued, would ask me afterwards for a clue. I had to disappoint them.

During this period or a few days earlier, in my daily morning meditation, I suddenly began to concentrate on the Mother in the heart. One day I saw that I was going somewhere in a carriage. It stopped at a place; I got down and began to walk through a wooded path. Then somebody appeared before me; I could see

only the feet and they seemed like those of a woman. A voice said, "Follow me!" As I did so, I asked, "What about my carriage?" "Doesn't matter; you follow me," said the commanding voice. The wood was not dense, but trees, bushes, 'hollow lands and hilly lands' punctuated the long track. Before it led anywhere the meditation ended.

Two days later the Mother said, "This morning you came to me, the feeling was strong. You are coming now very often. You are sometimes conscious of it, aren't you?"

"Listen! I will tell you something. Today Sri Aurobindo was also present. There was a branch of celery stuck on your window. 'It will do you good,' Sri Aurobindo seemed to be saying to you. I didn't hear the actual words, they were written on the window, as it were. I was wondering what could be the meaning of celery or was there some mistake in the reception?"

The next day again she received me with a broad beaming smile and then said, "I will tell you a nice story when We are all alone." As I could not hear distinctly, I asked, "When we are - ? "When we are all alone," she repeated, "One day; there is plenty of time. The story is continuing."

Exactly two months later, on my birthday, she said, "Tomorrow I will tell you that story. There is a short

When she was giving me a bunch of 'prayer' flowers, she said, "Four granted prayers." I could not understand the meaning at once; so I asked, "granted -?" "Yes, granted prayers," she repeated. "When you come to me in the afternoon, come with these prayers formulated. But be careful about what you ask. They are granted. Don't ask for material things, for I can't give them. Ask what I can give."

"Mother, my material needs are very few. I don't need to ask for them," I replied.

In the afternoon, I went to her with the prayers written on a piece of paper. She read them and said, "They are all granted. I will speak about them tomorrow; they will be part of the talk."

The following day when I met her, after a talk on personal matters, the Mother said in a very affable tone, "Do you want to hear my story? Well, it was somewhere at the beginning of the year, March or April, I don't remember, because I haven't noted it down. One night as I had gone down into the subconscient -I was working in the subconscious, I actually went down-I came to a place filled with doubt, depression, etc. It was the abode of doubt. There in a big public hall I was doing my work. Many people were constantly coming and moving to and fro. I saw people trying hard to throw away their doubts but they were returning again."

"After some time, I saw that there was another hall inside and I was told that Sri Aurobindo was there. So I went in that direction and knocked at the door. I could not see anything inside. When someone came, I told him that I wanted to see Sri Aurobindo. He answered rather rudely, 'You can't see him; he won't see you.' A bit surprised, I came away quietly. After a while I went back and knocked again. This time I could have a glimpse of the interior through a slit in the wall. I noticed particularly three people, you, D and S. Somebody came, the same person as before or another, I don't know, and opened the door. When I repeated my desire to see Sri Aurobindo he replied, 'You can never see him and he will never see you. You are insincere; what you are doing is all for power, fame and ambition.' As he said this, I saw a figure tall, taller than Sri Aurobindo; he was thin and appeared to be like Sri Aurobindo, but was really a hostile force. He came and stood in front as if to give sanction to his statement. He was cruel, hard, full of rigid principles; no love, no compassion at all. It was, I believe, a sort of distant distorted figure of a part of Sri Aurobindo's mind, or what they believed to be Sri Aurobindo's mind. Looking at that figure I said, 'It is a negation of all spiritual experience.' Till then you were not taking any part in all this; you were sitting somewhere inside. But as soon as I uttered that sentence, you came forward like this ( stretching out her

arms) and exclaimed, 'Mother, you have helped me a lot; you have given light, force. . .' And immediately everything vanished. Sri Aurobindo came out and descended into my body, full of love.

"I uttered my sentence, 'It is a negation of all spiritual experience' with great power, but you see, it required some exterior support and when you came out with that support, that hostile force could not withstand any longer.

"You remember Sri Aurobindo was writing to X about his doubt, not to play with it but to throw it away, that it was fatal to harbour it. So perhaps X had made a formation with something from his own mind and mixed it with something of what he thought to be Sri Aurobindo's mind; it is all very complex. He was citing broken phrases and sentences from Sri Aurobindo; you know those sharp, compact expressions, but quite out of the context, they were absolutely false and meaningless.

"I wanted to follow up this experience and see what consequences it would produce. I began to work on it and then saw that a sort of big load was lifted off your head and you appeared luminous. There was a prodigious change in you. Formerly I used to see, while you were working at your table or at other times, this dark load above your head. Now all that has gone for ever. That is why I said that your prayers were granted. Voila."

"Well, better not say it just now, because my work is not yet finished. You may note it down if you like. I will follow it up and, when it will be finished, I will let you know. I have not told you so long and would not have done yet, but since it is your birthday I have told you. Some days ago, S wrote that his doubts had been solved by Sri Aurobindo. So you see the work is going on. Sri Aurobindo is all the time busy with you."

There were some old sadhaks who had left the Ashram after Sri Aurobindo's passing. S was one of them or perhaps he went away a few years before. Sri Aurobindo was working upon them in an occult manner so that they might see their mistakes and be converted. That was what the Mother meant by "the work is going on." In fact two of them had realised their grave error. One came back and settled in Pondicherry. The other also visited the Ashram, his eye-sight practically lost and had to go away.

A truth of deep Spiritual significance carrying a great solace to the disciple was revealed here in the Mother's remark that even if a disciple leaves his Guru in a mood of revolt, the Guru does not leave him. "Few are those from whom the Grace withdraws, but

many are those who withdraw from the Grace," Sri Aurobindo has said. I know of a disciple to whom Sri Aurobindo had written that he would never leave him and yet when the disciple left, I asked Sri Aurobindo "He has gone and you said, it seems, you won't leave him." He answered, "I don't propose to leave him." Only, when the disciple betrays the Guru by some act of treachery, I believe he cuts himself off from all protection and even then perhaps not completely. I remember someone who had committed such a treachery. When she was suffering from a long illness and asked the Mother's pardon, the Mother told me, "You know what she has done." If I were Champaklal, I would have appealed to her compassion, but I kept silent. We heard, however, that the person had been repeating the Mother's name and had a peaceful end.

Mother complimented me on the success. But it was a bit hastily done, for the bleeding started after a couple of days; I had a fear that it might recur. "The fear was the cause," she affirmed. "But why should you fear? If it comes, surrender it to the Divine: that's the way to get rid of it." The bleeding continued all the same. "Why don't you do some sadhana?" she said. As I wore a puzzled expression, she explained, "I mean, try to get down peace. Once you can bring it down, the disease will be cured." "I am trying but peace is the one thing I fail to get. I get force," I said. After a few more days, however, the bleeding stopped.

I could not draw that force nor did the bleeding stop and I was getting weaker. At last I told the Mother that I would like to try local injections.

How to explain the vagaries of our physical consciousness ? At one time it responds to the Force or to a medicine; at another time it does not. That is why I suppose some outer support is needed now and then.

Now I shall relate a revelatory experience in connection with the bleeding from piles on another occasion. It happened after 1962, as far as l remember, when the Mother had stopped coming down. I did not write anything to her about the incident.

I caught a chill and had slight fever. Some antibiotics were given. The fever stopped but bleeding from the piles started. Though a little weak, I went to take a class in the afternoon. After a while, my head began to reel and before I could control myself, I fainted and fell face down on the floor, both my hands tucked and twisted under my chest, causing a good deal of pain. The students in great consternation rushed to my help. The doctor was called. He said that the median nerve must have been injured. I was, however, more concerned

about the bleeding, for, as we know, it produces a kind of irrational nervous fear far out of proportion to the quantity of blood lost. At night when I had gone to bed in Sri Aurobindo's room, I could not sleep. I was groaning in pain, but my mind was more troubled by the apprehension of bleeding the next morning. Suddenly I heard Sri Aurobindo's voice saying, "It is the pain which is more serious, not the bleeding." I was startled by the voice and extremely surprised, since I had not prayed nor said anything to him. Yet how did he know all that had happened or what I had been worrying about? And his prognosis was so true, for the bleeding stopped soon but the pain in the arms continues even now intermittently in a mild form. I cannot do any vigorous exercise with my hands without producing as a reaction a subacute pain of a twitching nature. But the wonder of wonders was the voice! It bears out the truth of what the Mother had said, "I see Sri Aurobindo all the time busy with you." The irony of it is that he is seen or heard only at critical times!

This was in 1949 when I was attending on Sri Aurobindo. I think the reference here is to my piles for which Sanyal suggested a minor local operation if

I was sleeping in the passage in front of Sri Aurobindo's room. I heard someone calling out "Nirod" in a very sweet and melodious voice which was very distinct. I was startled out of my sleep and exclaimed, "Who is there? Who is calling." Somebody was perhaps asking for help, I thought. I switched on the light and saw it was 3.25 am. I took it to be the Mother's voice. In the morning, when I told her about it she said, "Ah! but I told you many things." About the time also she replied, "Yes, that's exactly the time."

Nearly a month later, during the morning Pranam, the Mother said to me smiling, "You were quite a long time with Sri Aurobindo last night, quite a long time. And yesterday, when you came for Pranam and were taking flowers, I saw him behind you in a dazzling white light."

The following day Champaklal told me that during his meditation in the Mother's room he had a long dream in which Sri Aurobindo was telling me how all the pains that he had felt at each stage of his last illness were felt by Champaklal himself in his body. Champaklal was full of joy and gratitude for this recognition on the Master's part.