Memories of First Darshan

I Bow to the Mother

Those of you who came to the Ashram as children recognised the Mother and called her by that name practically from your birth, that is, from the moment you began to recognise things. We the grown-ups did not have that privilege. It has taken us a long long time to open our eyes and know. We have lost valuable time, almost wasted it. But, as you know, it is never too late to mend and it is possible to recover and even to make amends for lost time; there lies an interesting secret.

But as I was saying, you did not have to be told about the Mother, for you have almost been born and brought up in her lap. In our case somebody had to introduce us to the Mother, for we had been born and brought up in a step-motherly lap, although that too was one of her own forms, her form of Maya.

The first time I heard about the Mother was shortly after our arrival here. It was Sri Aurobindo himself who told us about a French lady from Paris who was a great initiate. She was desirous of establishing personal contact with Sri Aurobindo.

. . .

When it first came to be bruited about that a Great Lady like this was to come and live close to us, we were faced with a problem: how should we behave? Should there be a change in our manners? For we had been accustomed to a bohemian sort of life, we dressed and talked, slept and ate and moved about in a free unfettered style, in a manner that would not quite pass in civilised society. Nevertheless, it was finally agreed that we should stick as far as possible to our old ways even under the new circumstances, for why should we permit our freedom and ease to be compromised or lost? This indeed is the way in which the arrogance and ignorance of man assert the glory of his individuality!

The Mother arrived. She would meet Sri Aurobindo in company with the rest of us at our afternoon sessions. She spoke very little. We were out most of the time, but also dropped in occasionally. When it was proposed to bring out the Arya she took charge of the necessary arrangements. She wrote out in her own hand the list of subscribers, maintained the accounts herself: perhaps those papers might be still available. And afterwards, it was she herself who helped M. Richard in his translation of the writings of Sri Aurobindo into French for the French edition of the Arya. The ground floor of Dupleix House was used as the stack-room and the office was on the ground floor of the Guest House. The Mother was the chief executive in sole charge. Once every week all of us used to call at her residence accompanied by Sri Aurobindo and had our dinner together. On those occasions the Mother used to cook one or two dishes with her own hands. Afterwards too, when she came back for good, the same arrangement continued at the Bayoud House; I have told you of that before.

. . .

As I told you in the beginning, the Mother did not appear to us, the older people, as the Mother at the outset; she came to us first in this garb of Beauty. We received her as a friend and companion, as one very close to ourselves, first, because Sri Aurobindo himself received her like that, and secondly because of her qualities. Now that we are on this subject of her qualities, although it is not necessary for a child to proclaim the virtues of his mother, I cannot here refrain from telling you about another point in her teaching. This concerns something deeper. The first time Sri Aurobindo happened to describe her qualities, he said he had never seen anywhere a self-surrender so absolute and unreserved. He had added a comment that perhaps it was only women who were capable of giving themselves so entirely and with such sovereign ease: This implies a complete obliteration of the past, erasing it with its virtues and faults. The Mother has referred to this in one of her Prayers and Meditations. When she came here, she gave herself up to the Lord, Sri Aurobindo, with the candid simplicity of a child, after erasing from herself all her past, all her spiritual attainments, all the riches of her consciousness. Like a new-born babe, she felt she possessed nothing, she was to learn everything right from the start, as if she had known or heard about nothing.

Now to come back to a personal experience. The first thing I heard and came to know about the Mother was that she was a great spiritual person. I did not know then that she might have other gifts; these were revealed to me gradually. First I came to know that she was a very fine painter; and afterwards that she was an equally gifted musician. But there were other surprises in store. For instance, she had an intellectual side no less richly endowed, that is to say, she had read and studied enormously, had been engaged in intellectual pursuits even as the learned do.

. . .

As I was saying, this capacity for an entire rejection of the past has been one of the powers of her spiritual consciousness and realisation. It is not an easy thing for a human being to wash himself clean of all his past acquisitions, be it intellectual knowledge or the habits of the vital, not to speak of the body's needs, and step forth in his nude purity. And yet this is the first and most important step in the spiritual discipline. The Mother has given us a living example of this. That is why she decided to shed all her past, forget all about it and begin anew the a-b-c of her training and initiation with Sri Aurobindo. And it was in fact at the hands of Sri Aurobindo that she received as a token and outward symbol her first lessons in Bengali and Sanskrit, beginning with the alphabet.

But all this is simply an attempt on the part of the small to comprehend something of the Vast; it is as if a particle of sand was trying to reflect a little of the sun's rays, a dwarf trying to catch at the high tree-top with his uplifted arms, a child prattling of his mother's beauty.

In the beginning, Sri Aurobindo would refer to the Mother quite distinctly as Mira. For some time afterwards (this may have extended over a period of years) we could notice that he stopped at the sound of M and uttered the full name Mira as if after a slight hesitation. To us it looked rather queer at the time, but later we came to know the reason. Sri Aurobindo's lips were on the verge of saying "Mother"; but we had yet to get ready, so he ended with Mira instead of saying Mother. No one knows for certain on which particular date at what auspicious moment, the word "Mother" was uttered by the lips of Sri Aurobindo. But that was a divine moment in unrecorded time, a moment of destiny in the history of man and earth; for it was at this supreme moment that the Mother was established on this material earth, in the external consciousness of man.

Let me now end this story for today with a last word about myself.

I have said that so far the Mother had been to us a friend and companion, a comrade almost, at the most an object of reverence and respect. I was now about to start on my annual trip to Bengal — in those days I used to go there once every year, and that was perhaps my last trip. Before leaving, I felt a desire to see the Mother. The Mother had not yet come out of her seclusion and Sri Aurobindo had not yet retired behind the scenes. I said to him, "I would like to see Her before I go." — Her with a capital H, in place of the Mother, for we had not yet started using that name. Sri Aurobindo informed the Mother. The room now used by Champaklal was the Mother's room in those days. I entered and waited in the Prosperity room, for Sri Aurobindo used to meet people in the verandah in front. The Mother came in from her room and stood near the door. I approached her and said, "I am going," and then lay prostrate at her feet. That was my first Pranam to the Mother. She said, "Come back soon." This "come back soon" meant in the end, "come back for good."

— Nolini Kanta Gupta

(Reminiscences by Nolini Kanta Gupta and K. Amrita, published by Mother India, 1969, pp. 75–83)

My First Happy Meeting

It was during my stay at the Gardens that I had my first meeting and interview with Sri Aurobindo. Barin had asked me to go and see him, saying that Sri Aurobindo would be coming to see the Gardens and that I should fetch him. Manicktolla was in those days at the far end of North Calcutta and Sri Aurobindo lived with Raja Subodh Mullick near Wellington Square in the South Calcutta area. I went by tram and it was about four in the afternoon when I reached there. I asked the doorman at the gate to send word to Mr. Ghose — this was how he used to be called in those days at the place — saying that I had come from Barin of the Manicktolla Gardens. As I sat waiting in one of the rooms downstairs, Sri Aurobindo came down, stood near me and gave me an inquiring look. I said, in Bengali, "Barin has sent me. Would it be possible for you to come to the Gardens with me now?" He answered very slowly, pausing on each syllable separately — it seemed he had not yet got used to speaking Bengali — and said, "Go and tell Barin, I have not yet had my lunch. It will not be possible to go today." So, that was that. I did not say a word, did my namaskāra and came away. This was my first happy meeting with him, my first darśan and interview.

- Nolini Kanta Gupta

(Reminiscences by Nolini Kanta Gupta and Amrita, published by Mother India, 1969, pp. 16–17)

First Contact

It was in the first week of January 1930.

At about 3 p.m., I reached Dilip K. Roy's place. "Oh, you have come! Let us go," he said, and cutting a rose from his terrace-garden he added, "Offer this to Mother." When we arrived at the Ashram he left me at the present Reading Room saying, "Wait here." My heart was beating nervously as if I were going to face an examination. A stately chair in the middle of the room attracted momentarily my attention. In a short while the Mother came accompanied by Nolini, Amrita and Dilip. She took her seat in the chair, the others stood by her side. I was dazzled by the sight. Was it a "visionary gleam" or a reality? Nothing like it had I seen before. Her fair complexion, set off by a finely coloured sari and a headband, gave me the impression of a goddess such as we see in pictures or in the idols during the Durga Puja festival. She was all smiles and redolent with grace. I suppose this was the Mahalakshmi smile Sri Aurobindo had spoken of in his book The Mother. She bathed me in the cascade of her smile and heart-melting look. I stood before her, shy and speechless, made more so by the presence of the others who were enjoying the silent sweet spectacle. Minutes passed. Then I offered into her hand my rose and did my pranam at her feet which had gold anklets on them. She stooped and blessed me. On standing up, I got again the same enchanting smile like moonbeams from a magic sky. After a time she said to the others, "He is very shy."

She had been informed that I had taken a degree in medicine.

"When are you going and where do you intend to practise?" she asked me softly. I found my voice and replied that I would settle down in my native town. It was an impromptu answer, for I had not made up my mind at all. She approved and said, "Yes, that would be good." Then I did a second pranam and we came away.

All the way home, I was in a trance-like condition, wrapped in that beatific vision. The Mother's radiant look and smile, mingled probably with a tinge of amusement, had such an indefinable sweetness that I could not imagine how I, an utter stranger of a young man, could be the recipient of this rare boon. It was so divinely human! We shall see, later on, how after a good deal of wandering I had to return to my native place, thus carrying out the plan that had obtained the Mother's approval.

How did this extraordinary meeting take place? Well, many surprises overtake us in a manner strange to our outward eye, and "exceeding Nature's groove", life voyages on an uncharted sea. This is particularly true for those who are meant to embrace a spiritual life. At least, it was so in my case. When I look back, I cannot rationally explain some decisive turns my life has taken without any preconceived plan. And yet, as I string together these disparate events, the culmination I reached seems inevitable and predestined.

To mention one or two such inexplicable events. My going abroad with my niece for medical studies and not, as I had desired, for Law was a sheer desperate venture. For, my education had been non-scientific by deliberate choice. I did not like cutting human bodies dead or alive, besides other unaesthetic adjuncts of Medical Science. Further, people dubbed my ambitious project a Don-Quixotic adventure because of my young age and inadequate financial resources to cope with a long six-year course. But that I should go abroad, was my adamantine resolve. And there in Europe our meeting with Dilip Roy sealed my fate for a final renunciation — another Quixotic dash.

Most unexpectedly my niece and I met him in Paris. He had come on a tour after his celebrated interview with Sri Aurobindo. He stayed a few days with us in Edinburgh and we came to know from him something about the Mother, Sri Aurobindo and the Ashram. But it was my niece who, being some sort of an idealist, was attracted by the idyllic picture of life in the Ashram while the picture of human bones and human cells loomed before my eyes and made the quest of Matter dearer than that of the nebulous Spirit. My physical crust was impermeable — "too thick", to quote the Guru's later words. A seed was sown in the fertile emotional soil of my niece and it sprouted so fast that on her way back to India she visited the Ashram. Dilip who had made the Ashram his home welcomed her with a warm heart. He had hoped that she would come one day for good. She had the exceptional privilege of meeting the Mother at Dilip's place more than once and fell under the spell of her divine beauty. She wrote to me a glowing account of her unique experience and of her complete conversion to a new mode of life. At the same time she urged upon me to visit the Ashram when I returned to India.

After taking my degree I arrived all on a sudden at Pondicherry and presented myself to Dilip, like a European with a stick in my hand, but no hat on the head. For an instant he gaped in wonder. When recognition dawned on him, he cried, "Oh, it's you! I could never imagine. . . . Come, come, sit down." He was as affable as ever. He arranged an interview with the Mother, though she seemed to have remarked that I had not written to her anything about my visit. As I had no dhoti with me, he spared me one of his own and asked me to come to his house the next afternoon at the right hour. I felt quite embarrassed and did not know how to face the new test, even after passing so many tough medical examinations. My niece had given a very gracious picture of the Mother to allay my fears. Still, I felt extremely ill at ease, particularly because I had no idea of spirituality at all, nor had I much love for it. Suppose the Mother asked, "Do you want a spiritual life?" What answer would I give? Before starting, however, I thought I must take a bath. I felt even like praying a little. As soon as I sat down, my eyes closed and something startling happened of which my medical science had not dreamt even. I saw the upper part of my body suspended in the air for a few seconds and the lower part non-existent. Frightened like a child, I opened my eyes and the thing vanished! In a dazed condition, I started for the Ashram, from my hotel. Dilip received me with his affectionate smile which helped me regain my composure. "Come, let us start," he said.

This is how the interview took place with its rapturous vision.

Her look, her smile awoke celestial sense
Even in earth-stuff, and their intense delight
Poured a supernal beauty on men's lives. . . .

To-day I understand how I had that strange experience. The Mother must have put some Force on me in order to test my receptivity and when, at the meeting, she found that the ādhāra was not bad, she was happy. This is the explanation I offer to myself of the divine action. Perhaps there was more to it than I could sound. Probably it was also a form of initiation.

- Nirodbaran

(Memorable Contacts with the Mother by Nirodbaran, Sri Mira Trust, 1991, pp. 1–5)

Meeting the Master at Pondicherry

I

I WENT out from Pondicherry in 1947 when India was on the eve of securing her partitioned freedom. On my return-journey in the month of July 1947, I became conscious of the fact that it was my return to a place where I had passed nearly twenty-five years at a stretch. The memory of my first visit in 1918 awoke in me all the old impressions vividly. I saw then that even at that early period Sri Aurobindo had been for me the embodiment of the Supreme Consciousness. I began to search mentally for the exact time-moment when I had come to know him. Travelling far into the past I found it was in 1914 when I read a notice in the Bombay Chronicle about the publication of a monthly magazine — the Arya — from Pondicherry by Sri Aurobindo. I hastened to register my name in advance. In those days of political storms, to avoid the suspicion of the college authorities and the police, I had ordered the magazine to be delivered to an address outside the college. Sri Aurobindo then appeared to me to be the personification of the ideal of the life divine which he so ably put before humanity in the Arya.

But the question: "Why did I order the Arya?" remained. On trying to find an answer I found that I had known him before the appearance of the Arya.

The Congress broke up at Surat in 1907. Sri Aurobindo had played a prominent part in that historical session. From Surat he came to Baroda, and at Vankaner Theatre and at Prof. Manik Rao's old gymnasium in Dandia Bazar he delivered several speeches which not only took the audience by storm but changed entirely the course of many lives. I also heard him without understanding everything that was spoken. But ever since I had seen him I had got the constant feeling that he was one known to me, and so my mind could not fix the exact time-moment when I knew him. It is certain that the connection seemed to begin with the great tidal wave of the national movement in the political life of India; but I think it was only the apparent beginning. The years between 1903 and 1910 were those of unprecedented awakening and revolution. The generations that followed also witnessed two or three powerful floods of the national movement. But the very first onrush of the newly awakened national consciousness of India was unique. That tidal wave in its initial onrush defined the goal of India's political ideal — an independent republic. Alternating movements of ebb and flow in the national movement followed till in 1947 the goal was reached. The lives of leaders and workers, who rode, willingly and with delight on the dangerous crest of the tidal wave, underwent great transformations. Our small group in Gujerat got its goal fixed — the winning of undiluted freedom for India.

All the energies of the leaders were taken up by the freedom movement. Only a few among them attempted to see beyond the horizon of political freedom some ideal of human perfection for, after all, freedom is not the ultimate goal but a condition for the expression of the cultural Spirit of India. In Swami Shraddhananda, Pandit Madanmohan Malavia, Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi — to name some leaders — we see the double aspect of the inspiration. Among all the visions of perfection of the human spirit on earth, I found the synthetic and integral vision of Sri Aurobindo the most rational and the most satisfying. It meets the need of the individual and collective life of man of today. It is the international form of the fundamental elements of Indian culture. It is, Dr. S. K. Maitra says, the message which holds out a hope in a world of despair.

This aspect of Sri Aurobindo's vision attracted me as much as the natural affinity which I had felt on seeing him. I found on making a serious study of the Arya that it led me to very rational conclusions with regard to the solutions of the deepest problems of life. I opened correspondence with him and in 1916, with his permission, began to translate the Arya into Gujerati.

But, though I had seen him from a distance and felt an unaccountable familiarity with him, still I had not yet met him personally. When the question of putting into execution the revolutionary plan, which Sri Aurobindo had given to my brother, — the late C. B. Purani — at Baroda in 1907, arose, I thought it better to obtain Sri Aurobindo's consent to it. Barindra, his brother, had given the formula for preparing bombs to my brother and I was also very impatient to begin the work. But still we thought it necessary to consult the great leader who had given us the inspiration, as the lives of many young men were involved in the plan.

I had an introduction to Sj. V.V.S. Aiyar who was then staying at Pondicherry. It was in December 1918 that I reached Pondicherry. I did not stay long with Mr. Aiyar. I took up my bundle of books — mainly the Arya — and went to No. 41 Rue François Martin, the Arya office, which was also Sri Aurobindo's residence. The house looked a little queer; on the right side as one entered were a few plantain trees and by their side a heap of broken tiles. On the left at the edge of the open courtyard four doors giving entrance to four rooms were seen. The verandah outside was wide. It was about 8 in the morning. The time for meeting Sri Aurobindo was fixed at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. I waited all the time in the house, occasionally chatting with the two inmates who were there.

Sri Aurobindo was sitting in a wooden chair behind a small table covered with an indigo-blue cloth in the verandah upstairs when I went up to meet him. I felt a spiritual light surrounding his face. His look was penetrating. He had known me by my correspondence. I reminded him about my brother having met him at Baroda; he had not forgotten him. Then I informed him that our group was now ready to start revolutionary activity. It had taken us about eleven years to get organised.

Sri Aurobindo remained silent for some time. Then he put me questions about my sadhana — spiritual practice. I described my efforts and added: "Sadhana is all right, but it is difficult to concentrate on it so long as India is not free."

"Perhaps it may not be necessary to resort to revolutionary activity to free India," he said.

"But without that how is the British Government to go from India?" I asked him.

"That is another question; but if India can be free without revolutionary activity, why should you execute the plan? It is better to concentrate on yoga — the spiritual practice," he replied.

"But India is a land that has sadhana in its blood. When India is free, I believe, thousands will devote themselves to yoga. But in the world of to-day who will listen to the truth from, or spirituality of, slaves?" I asked him.

He replied: "India has already decided to win freedom and so there will certainly be found leaders and men to work for that goal. But all are not called to yoga. So, when you have the call, is it not better to concentrate upon it? If you want to carry out the revolutionary programme you are free to do it, but I cannot give my consent to it."

"But it was you who gave us the inspiration and the start for revolutionary activity. Why do you now refuse to give your consent to its execution?" I asked.

"Because I have done the work and I know its difficulties. Young men come forward to join the movement, driven by idealism and enthusiasm. But these elements do not last long. It becomes very difficult to observe and extract discipline. Small groups begin to form within the organisation, rivalries grow between groups and even between individuals. There is competition for leadership. The agents of the Government generally manage to join these organisations from the very beginning. And so the organisations are unable to act effectively. Sometimes they sink so low as to quarrel even for money," he said calmly.

"But even supposing that I grant sadhana to be of greater importance, and even intellectually understand that I should concentrate upon it, — my difficulty is that I feel intensely that I must do something for the freedom of India. I have been unable to sleep soundly for the last two years and a half. I can remain quiet if I make a very strong effort. But the concentration of my whole being turns towards India's freedom. It is difficult for me to sleep till that is secured."

Sri Aurobindo remained silent for two or three minutes. It was a long pause. Then he said: "Suppose an assurance is given to you that India will be free?"

"Who can give such an assurance?" I could feel the echo of doubt and challenge in my own question.

Again he remained silent for three or four minutes. Then he looked at me and added: "Suppose I give you the assurance?"

I paused for a moment, considered the question with myself and said: "If you give the assurance, I can accept it."

"Then I give you the assurance that India will be free," he said in a serious tone.

My work was over — the purpose of my visit to Pondicherry was served. My personal question and the problem of our group was solved! I then conveyed to him the message of Sj. K. G. Deshpande from Baroda. I told him that financial help could be arranged from Baroda, if necessary, to which he replied, "At present what is required comes from Bengal, especially from Chandernagore. So there is no need."

When the talk turned to Prof. D. L. Purohit of Baroda Sri Aurobindo recounted the incident of his visit to Pondicherry where he had come to inquire into the relation between the Church and the State. He had paid a courtesy call on Sri Aurobindo as he had known him at Baroda. This had resulted in his resignation from Baroda State service on account of the pressure of the British Residency. I conveyed to Sri Aurobindo the good news that after his resignation Mr. Purohit had started practice as a lawyer and had been quite successful, earning more than the pay he had been getting as a professor.

It was time for me to leave. The question of Indian freedom again arose in my mind, and at the time of taking leave, after I had got up to depart, I could not repress the question — it was a question of very life for me: "Are you quite sure that India will be free?"

I did not, at that time, realise the full import of my query. I wanted a guarantee, and though the assurance had been given my doubts had not completely disappeared.

Sri Aurobindo became very serious. The yogi in him came forward, his gaze was fixed at the sky that could be seen beyond the window. Then he looked at me and putting his fist on the table he said:

"You can take it from me, it is as certain as the rising of the sun tomorrow. The decree has already gone forth — it may not be long in coming."

I bowed down to him. That day I was able to sleep soundly in the train after more than two years. And in my mind was fixed for ever the picture of that scene: two of us standing near the small table, my earnest question, that upward gaze, and that quiet and firm voice with power in it to shake the world, that firm fist planted on the table — the symbol of self-confidence of the divine Truth. There may be rank Kaliyuga, the Iron Age, in the whole world but it is the great good fortune of India that she has sons who know the Truth and have the unshakable faith in it, and can risk their lives for its sake. In this significant fact is contained the divine destiny of India and of the world.

After meeting Sri Aurobindo I was quite relieved of the great strain that was upon me. Now that I felt Indian freedom to be a certainty, I could participate in public movements with equanimity and with a truer spiritual attitude. I got some experiences also which confirmed my faith in Sri Aurobindo's path. I got the confident faith in a divine Power that is beyond time and space and that can and does work in the world. I came to know that any man with a sincere aspiration for it can come in contact with that Power.

There were people who thought that Sri Aurobindo had retired from life, that he did not take any interest in the world and its affairs. These ideas never troubled me. On the contrary, I felt that his work was of tremendous significance for humanity and its future. In fact, the dynamic aspect of his spirituality, his insistence on life as a field for the manifestation of the Spirit, and his great synthesis added to the attraction I had already felt. To me he appeared as the spiritual Sun in modern times shedding his light on mankind from the height of his consciousness, and Pondicherry where he lived was a place of pilgrimage.

II

The second time I met Sri Aurobindo was in 1921, when there was a greater familiarity. Having come for a short stay, I remained eleven days on Sri Aurobindo's asking me to prolong my stay. During my journey from Madras to Pondicherry I was enchanted by the natural scenery — the vast stretches of green paddy fields. But Pondicherry as a city was lethargic, with a colonial atmosphere — an exhibition of the worst elements of European and Indian culture. The market was dirty and stinking and the people had no idea of sanitation. The sea-beach was made filthy by them. Smuggling was the main business.

But the greatest surprise of my visit in 1921 was the "darshan" of Sri Aurobindo. During the interval of two years his body had undergone a transformation which could only be described as miraculous. In 1918 the colour of the body was like that of an ordinary Bengali — rather dark — though there was a lustre on the face and the gaze was penetrating. On going upstairs to see him (in the same house) I found his cheeks wore an apple-pink colour and the whole body glowed with a soft creamy white light. So great and unexpected was the change that I could not help exclaiming:

"What has happened to you?"

Instead of giving a direct reply he parried the question, as I had grown a beard: "And what has happened to you?"

But afterwards in the course of talk he explained to me that when the Higher Consciousness, after descending to the mental level, comes down to the vital and even below the vital, then a transformation takes place in the nervous and even in the physical being. He asked me to join the meditation in the afternoon and also the evening sittings.

This time I saw the Mother for the first time. She was standing near the staircase when Sri Aurobindo was going upstairs after lunch. Such unearthly beauty I had never seen — she appeared to be about 20 whereas she was more than 37 years old.

I found the atmosphere of the Ashram tense. The Mother and Datta, i.e. Miss Hodgson, had come to stay in No. 41 Rue François Martin. The house had undergone a great change. There was a clean garden in the open courtyard, every room had simple and decent furniture, — a mat, a chair and a small table. There was an air of tidiness and order. This was, no doubt, the effect of Mother's presence. But yet the atmosphere was tense because Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were engaged in fighting with forces of the vital plane.

- A. B. Purani

(Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo recorded by A. B. Purani, published by Sri Aurobindo Society, Pondicherry, 1982, pp. 14–21)

First Experience of Her Force

In the preceding chapters I kept the Mother somewhat in the background because to the superficial view hers must appear a personality very distinct from that of Sri Aurobindo. But one who has won to the deeper vision and tried to follow the phenomenal growth of the Ashram cannot but be persuaded that without her dominating presence, superhuman patience and genius for organisation (not to mention her ineffable personality of light and grace and courage) Sri Aurobindo's Synthetic Yoga would never have found the convincing shape it has: in other words, his gospel could not have found an adequate medium of expression in the practical field. But even this is by no means the whole story. For none can hope to understand Sri Aurobindo fully without a basic understanding of his estimate of the place of the Mother's divinity in his Yoga. One of his oldest and staunchest disciples, Rajani Palit, wrote to him (in August, 1938): "There are many who hold that the Mother was human once upon a time — to judge from her Prayers — but has outgrown her humanity through her sadhana. But, to my psychic feeling, she is the Mother Divine herself, putting on the cloak of obscurity and suffering in order that we, humans, may be delivered out of our ignorance into knowledge, and out of our suffering into bliss." To that Sri Aurobindo replied categorically: "The Divine puts on an appearance of humanity, assumes the outward human nature in order to tread the path and show it to human beings, but does not cease to be the Divine. It is a manifestation that takes place, a manifestation of a growing divine consciousness, not human turning into divine. The Mother was inwardly above the human even in childhood, so the view held by the 'many' is erroneous."

It will serve no useful purpose to go into the why and wherefore of it all. For after all the recognition of the Mother's greatness or her Yogic Force is not like the posting of a scientific hypothesis to be 'assumed and accepted tentatively' subject to revision and modification as new data come to light. Still, as one of the major aims of my reminiscences is to testify to Yogic truths and experiences as I and others have realised them in the Ashram, a personal impression of the Mother may well be recorded here as germane to my purpose. Naturally, I hesitate to deal with a personality such as the Mother's in such a summary fashion, but she will, I hope, pardon such babbling tributes knowing that even in our inspired moods we can hardly expect to express more than a fraction of what we owe to her.

I shall describe in brief my first experience of her Force since it may help my readers to glimpse in her what we ourselves did intermittently in the course of our day-to-day struggles with our obstinate egos opposing her will.

When I met her for the first time in August 1928, I was struck by her sweet personality and felt a deep exhilaration which I could not account for. The joy left a cadence of music in my heart though, of course, there could be no question of surrendering my will to hers. The first question I asked her was whether what Sri Aurobindo called Yogic Force acting through her personality could achieve anything "tangible".

She gave me an amused smile.

"What do you mean by 'tangible'?"

"You see, Mother," I answered, "I have been praying daily before Sri Ramakrishna's photograph for years — since my adolescence. But though I have often felt an upsurge of bhakti, I have never yet felt anything else, far less seen any gardens of gleam, letters of light, figures of flame etc. I have therefore come to the conclusion that I am too opaque to the inward ray of the spirit. I know really less than nothing about Yogic Force. Let me add that though my interest in life as it is, is fast petering out I cannot yet make up my mind to take the plunge — breaking away from my moorings. To cut a long story short, I would ask you if you could possibly initiate me in your Yoga — for I understand I have to obtain initiation, first and last, from you. I can accept to wait till I feel more sure about your Yogic Force being a living reality. My position is this: I can stake everything I still cherish — but only for something real and concrete, not something vague and apocryphal. In short, I cannot take a leap blindfold into the unknown. So I have come to ask you very simply — but trenchantly — whether you can possibly give me a trial so as to convince me about the reality of your Yogic Force. But mind you, I want the Force to speak to me in a way which cannot possibly be explained away as auto-suggestion, wishful thinking or hallucination."

Mother smiled once more.

"I can try," she said simply. "You are at the Hotel? When do you retire for the night? At nine? Meditate at that hour in your room — try to open yourself to me and I will concentrate on you from here. Maybe you will get something which cannot be explained away even by such impressive names scientific or otherwise."

(I have of course given here, as usual, only the gist of our talk. But as we did not talk of anything very profound I can claim to have given a fairly faithful description of what passed between us on the 16th August, 1928.)

The experience came in a most curious way. As, after dinner, I went up to my room in the Hotel, I sat down on the floor. It was quite cool with the fan whirling at top speed. I must here inform the reader that I have never been timid by nature, nor had I, hitherto, ever experienced anything eerie or even strange during my meditations. An old disciple had indeed once advised me, casually, to take the Mother's name should anything 'untoward' happen. But I had only smiled at the word. How could anything untoward happen to me when I only wanted Krishna? Besides, ghosts and spirits were too fantastic to be able to exist except, of course, as vapours of a heated brain.

So, naturally, I sat down to meditation in a flawlessly confident mood. I did indeed expect to see so many things, lights, colours, some figures, with luck maybe even a radiant form — who knows? But then, I told myself, I must be on my guard: strong desires and expectations might very well take shape as forms in one's meditation and auto-suggestion must, above all, be staved off — and so on. In short, in my wise folly, I was unwittingly arming myself with vigilance against my Gurus.

Suddenly I found my body stiffening and I started perspiring profusely; then — to complete my discomfiture — my heart beat so fast that I got scared. What is all this? Suddenly I remembered and took the Mother's name. At once the palpitation ceased. But I was wet all over with perspiration, and the tension in my body increased till my muscles became so stiff that I felt a positive pain.

As soon as the palpitation ceased, my fear left me but not my astonishment. For, palpably, some extraneous force was acting on my body — a force the like of which I had never experienced so vividly before! Also, obviously, it had nothing to do with auto-suggestion since I had never even imagined that an invisible Force could so convincingly twist the live, material muscles of a strong sceptic — healthy, wide-awake and normal to his finger-tips! So I did not know what to make of it all: what came to pass was too outlandish to be true and yet wasn't it too concrete to be dismissed as fanciful!

* * *

But that was, alas, all. I saw nothing — not even a grasshopper, to say nothing of a benevolent deity — felt no joy, no peace, no strength, no bhakti. Most disappointing and yet in a way so utterly, overwhelmingly impressive! For a person almost inaccessible to fear was here getting scared, a heart which had never palpitated was fluttering causelessly! And last, though not the least, profuse perspiration, in a cool room, attended by the sensation of one's muscles being actually manhandled all over the body! I was convinced that a definite Force was taking liberties with me — albeit in an almost impertinent way!

Next morning, after relating to Mother the whole gamut of my curious experiences, I asked her why she had so oddly wanted to cause me this kind of meaningless pain when she could well have given me peace and joy and so many other things worthwhile.

"But I didn't want to cause you pain at all," she laughed, vastly tickled. "Only, you were resisting, so my Force could not give you the peace and joy which you would have felt if you had not opposed it tooth and nail, with all the weapons of your wise scepticism and assured ignorance. One must have trust in the Divine."

"But you need not worry," she added, mollifyingly, "for I have found you quite receptive. I will say no more now. Go on with your meditations: my help will always be with you. The tension and pain will disappear after a week or two — or perhaps sooner if you can manage to trust the Divine grace which brought you to Sri Aurobindo."

* * *

What she had foretold came to pass afterwards, in due course. I was impressed, naturally. So there were, really and literally, "more things in heaven and earth" than could be dreamt of by the "philosophy" of reason and science!

- Dilip Kumar Roy

(Sri Aurobindo Came to Me by Dilip Kumar Roy, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1952, pp. 424-30)

Old Long Since

In our village and all around, four names of four great personages were being continually talked of. It was the time when Independence, Foreign Rule, Slavery were the cries that used to fill the sky. And the four great names that reached our ears in this connection were Tilak, Bipinchandra Pal, Lajpatrai (Lal-Bal-Pal) and Aurobindo.

Of these only one name caught my heart and soul. Just to hear the name — Aurobindo — was enough.

All the four persons were pioneers in the service of the country, great leaders of the front rank. Why then did one name only out of the four touch me exclusively? For many days to come the mystery remained to me a mystery.

In 1905 I came to Pondicherry for study. In 1910 Sri Aurobindo also arrived here. What a coincidence! He came to the very town where I had come! I was full of joy, thrilled with delight.

A strong desire arose in me that I must see Sri Aurobindo. He had been there in our town for six months, very few knew of his arrival, but I knew of it on the third day itself. My uncle was engaged in politics and was in contact with the national workers and leaders. He came to know of the incident on the very day. In fact the number of those who knew could be counted on one's fingers. The idea gained on me that somehow I must see Aurobindo. Hearing must be translated into vision.

Day after day, night after night, this was my sole thought. Two years passed by.

Finally one day, at about six in the evening, my friend Krishnaswami Chettiar and I started from Muthialpet, a suburb of Pondicherry, — near about our present Sports Ground and proceeded towards the beach where Sri Aurobindo's house stood. We walked the whole distance. I was a boy of about fourteen years. Chettiar had his cycle, but he was wheeling it by him as he walked along. As it had become somewhat dark, Chettiar proposed to leave the cycle in Sri Aurobindo's house before going to the beach. He thought it would be burdensome to carry a cycle with us and we would not be free to walk about as we liked. That was the only reason why we went to Sri Aurobindo's house.

. . .

In the Mission Street (Rue des Missions Étrangères) close to the Dupleix Street there was a house with its front facing west. It extended from the Mission Street backward down to the Rue de la Cantine on the East. It consisted of three courtyards. Each courtyard had four verandas around it; Sri Aurobindo's room was in the third block. The front block was occupied by Nolini, Sourin, Bejoy; Moni was in the second block. I heard it said that Sri Aurobindo would daily walk round and round the courtyard from about five in the afternoon till the other inmates returned from their playground at about eight or eight-thirty in the evening.

When Chettiar and I approached Sri Aurobindo's house, we found the door bolted. We both knocked at it with some hesitation. All on a sudden the door opened and was left ajar. Sri Aurobindo had come quietly and turned back immediately as the door opened — it looked as if he did not want to let us have a glimpse of his face.

In that fading twilight only his long hair hanging gracefully upon his back and his indescribably beautiful small feet caught my eyesight! My heart throbbed within me as though I had been lifted up into the region of the gods! It took me long to come back to normal composure.

I did not know what were the feelings and thoughts of Chettiar and I did not care to know!

1910–1914

All these five years served the need of my preparation. It should be called a pilgrimage to Sri Aurobindo.

Each act of mine, each event of my life had become, as it were, offerings in the sacrifice done unknowingly by me. Prior to my surrender to Sri Aurobindo, Bharati helped me a great deal to attain wideness in the heart, to loosen the ties of old samskaras and the like, to impart purity and newness to my thoughts, by means of his words, his deeds and his way of living.

Because of Bharati's association with Sri Aurobindo and his immense respect and devotion for him, I felt in me a great inexplicable attraction to Bharati.

. . .

Now as I cast a retrospective look, I perceive that the past was in a way a period of tapasya before reaching the Gurudeva.

As I said, not a single evening would pass without Bharati's calling on Sri Aurobindo. . . .

On his way to Sri Aurobindo's house, Bharati would first call at Srinivasachari's, go with him to the beach, stay there till 7 p.m., and then make for Sri Aurobindo's house. The three together would jocularly discuss a variety of subjects. Bharati, on his way back, would often halt for a while at Srinivasachari's and then go home. As soon as they reached home from Sri Aurobindo's, the people assembled there would put the identical question: "What did Sri Aurobindo say today?" It was as though the Jivatman wanted to know the Will of the Paramatman.

Two years passed in this way.

. . .

I had to pass through a period when my inner being would say one thing and my outer life would express something else. Gurudeva, whom I had not yet seen with naked eyes, caught hold of my heart and brought about its radical change. Bharati was very helpful in effectuating my inner nearness to Sri Aurobindo. Often it would occur to me: "Why did I not have, like Bharati, courage enough to act according to the inner voice?" . . .

. . .

I made repeated requests to Bharati to take me to Sri Aurobindo. He, however, kept silent each time I made this request. Several times I requested my late uncle also. But no definite reply from him either. I used to hear that a very limited number of persons had permission to see Sri Aurobindo; that only Bharati and Srinivasachari could see him daily; that my uncle had his Darshan only once a month.

It had been made evident to me after those numerous attempts that Sri Aurobindo's Darshan was a rarity and to obtain it with the help of Bharati or Srinivasachari or my uncle was well-nigh impossible. Then how was I to have Sri Aurobindo's Darshan? In the core of my heart burnt a living faith incessant and unwavering, that somehow some day I would have his Darshan.

During that period, one day at about five-thirty or six in the evening, I happened to meet on the beach Ramaswami Iyengar, who a few years later became well renowned as Va Ra. He had been living then in Sri Aurobindo's house. As intimacy with him grew, I felt a singular attraction for conversation with him. His remarks were always trenchant and scintillating. Never would he speak of anyone with respect. His face had charm. His eyes beamed. While returning home from the beach I would always feel sad to break off conversation with him. And the hope to meet Sri Aurobindo through him drew me all the more to his company.

. . .

It became a habit with me to meet Ramaswami Iyengar on the beach every evening at about 5.30 just after leaving school. It was natural for my school friends also to accompany me.

. . .

One day all of a sudden a thought arose in me; I told Ramaswami while on the beach, "I would like very much to dine with you once." I could make out from his face that this proposal of mine came to him like a thunderbolt. The proposal was not made in the presence of others, I whispered it into his ears, when I found myself alone with him; very clearly there was but one motive behind it. I hoped that if I dined with him, Sri Aurobindo also would be there. Ramaswami, evidently bewildered, thought for a moment and then questioned me, "But it is no vegetarian meal in Sri Aurobindo's house; how do you propose to dine there?" He said this somewhat hesitatingly and hoped it would put an end to the matter. But I was not to be baulked so easily. A little perplexed, I too retorted, "What if there be no vegetarian meal? I am ready to dine with you all." He must have been terribly vexed to get such an unexpected reply and in such a categorical manner, without a moment's hesitation. He however gave no expression to his surprise, but asked me to come next day straight from the school at 12 noon and join him. I was beside myself with joy.

Next day the closing bell at the Calvé School went ding-dong at 11.30 sharp. Along with the other students, I too walked out of the school. I went straight home to Muthialpet, took my bath — rather hurriedly — and reached Sri Aurobindo's house at 12 noon precisely. Plunged in the thought that in a little while I would be seeing Sri Aurobindo, I became forgetful of everything else.

The main door of Sri Aurobindo's house in Mission Street was left open. As soon as I entered, Ramaswami came and received me. There was none else. The house lay dead silent in the intense heat of broad daylight. My heart too was motionless.

Ramaswami made a move and said, "Let us go to the hotel." On hearing these words I felt as if I had suddenly been thrown down from a height to which I had been lifted up. I could not understand anything. I was then almost dying with hunger. The citadel built by me was cast down by one breath as it were. Well, I started trudging, in that excessive heat, with Ramaswami towards a hotel more than a mile away; I walked the distance with bare feet, without sandals. The meal was served for me alone. Silently, without uttering a single word, I swallowed the food and then proceeded towards my school, Ramaswami accompanying me. I entered the Reading Room of the school, the classes were to start at 3 p.m. And I tried my best to attend to my lessons. In the same street, just a little to the south, lay Sri Aurobindo's house and Ramaswami moved towards it. So far as I remember this happened in the first week of July in the year 1913.

In the Matakoil Street, called Mission Street, Sri Aurobindo lived for six months in a house with a tiled roof. That house has at present undergone a radical change; the very spot is unrecognisable. It was in this house that I had Sri Aurobindo's Darshan. There I had the first opportunity of seeing him but from a distance.

During his stay in this house I had the habit of meeting Ramaswami Iyengar every evening on the beach, as I have already said. His heart started melting in my favour little by little even as ants slowly and persistently leave a trail on granite. The result was: he began to welcome me to his room. The school remained closed two days in the week, Sundays and Thursdays. Those days I could meet Iyengar in Sri Aurobindo's house at about 4 p.m. From 4 to 5 p.m. we would be alone conversing with each other. Our relation thus began to ripen. After 5 we would go straight to the beach and join other friends.

Because of my friendship with Iyengar Sri Aurobindo's house appeared to me as my own. That is why I felt no timidity or shyness to go to Iyengar's room; whether he was at home or not, I would go there. But I never took courage to go farther than his room; to do so seemed improper.

As I got more and more familiar with Iyengar, the names of the inmates of Sri Aurobindo's house came to be known to me.

. . .

During this period I requested Iyengar once or twice to introduce me to Sri Aurobindo. But my requests seemed to carry no weight with him.

Sri Aurobindo's birthday was drawing near — August 15, 1913. I requested Iyengar once more. I appealed to him to take me to Sri Aurobindo on his birthday. He replied, wonderful to say, in a consenting tone. I felt an immense joy.

On the 15th August Iyengar asked me to come at about 4.30 p.m. I reached there slightly earlier. All the invitees started coming one by one from all sides. By about 5 or 5.15 all of them had arrived. It was probably one hour before sunset. This I surmised by the dimness of the light inside the house.

In the hall of the front portion of the house some twenty or twenty-five banana leaves were laid out on three sides just as it is done during a marriage feast. As far as I can remember, no sooner was the main gate bolted from within than Sri Aurobindo came into the hall and stood on one side; some one garlanded him with a rose garland; all present clapped their hands and Sri Aurobindo spoke something in English. All this I can recollect but vaguely. This vagueness of memory is due, I suppose, to an overwhelming joy and palpitation in me on that occasion.

All of us sat down before the banana leaves as we do at a collective dinner. I was one of the guests; with eyes full of delight I saw Sri Aurobindo as he stood before each banana leaf, looked at the person seated there, gently passed on to the next and thus to the last person — meanwhile someone walking by his side served various kinds of sweets and other preparations.

In the courtyard a big jar full of water was kept and by its side a small tumbler. We took some refreshments and after washing our hands we gathered together and kept chatting for a short while. In the meantime Sri Aurobindo had gone to the verandah of the middle portion of the house and sat there in a chair kept for him before a table covered with a cloth. Evidently he was waiting for some other item in the programme. By then it had become dark. In each section of the house one or two lighted hurricane-lamps were put up. The guests took leave one by one or by twos and threes and went home.

I kept on waiting, not knowing what to do. As soon as the guests left, Iyengar came and told me that three big persons, namely, Bharati, Srinivasachari, V.V.S. Ayer, would see Sri Aurobindo to pay their respects to him. If I could wait till they left, there would only be the inmates of the house, five or six, alone with Sri Aurobindo. He had a mind to take me then to Sri Aurobindo. But for that Sri Aurobindo's permission was required, he said finally. I nodded assent immediately. It might have already struck seven or gone on to seven-fifteen. A fear lurked in me that I would be questioned at home, "Why this delay?" But still I ventured to give my consent.

Iyengar once again asked me, "Do you intend to see Sri Aurobindo with Bharati and others? Or with the inmates?" I could not make out what answer to give. Whether in the midst of Bharati and others or in the midst of the inmates of the house Sri Aurobindo would be the same Sri Aurobindo. I began to revolve in my mind how there could be any difference. A little while, it might be less than a minute, I wavered in mind and replied, "When the inmates are there." "If so, you must wait for some time," said Iyengar and left.

I had to wait till 8 p.m. Bharati, Srinivasachari and Ayer at the time of going out of Sri Aurobindo's house looked closely at me with a view to recognise me. They did not expect me there so late. They at once doubted and wondered if I had become an inmate of Sri Aurobindo's house. Their faces betrayed this mixed feeling.

At about 8.15 p.m. Iyengar came to me and said: "You may get Sri Aurobindo's Darshan as you pass before his table. Go with folded hands. But no permission to speak with him. While passing by his right just stand in front, stop awhile, join your hands, silently take leave of him and go home." Iyengar's words were imprinted upon my mind.

I was soon called in. I got up and approached Sri Aurobindo's table. From the ceiling hung a hurricane-lamp that served to dispel the darkness only partially. Going round Sri Aurobindo by way of pradakṣiṇa I stood in his presence with joined palms and made my obeisance to him. Sri Aurobindo's eyes, it seemed, burned brighter than the lamp-light for me; as he looked at me, in a trice all gloom vanished from within me, and his image was as it were installed in the sanctum sanctorum of my being. Nothing was very clear to me. I went behind him, stood again in front, offered my homage to him and not knowing whether to stay or go I staggered perplexed. Sri Aurobindo made a gesture with his heavenly hands to one of those who stood there. A sweet was given me once again. I felt within that he had accepted me though I did not quite know it. I left Sri Aurobindo's house and proceeded towards my own.

When I reached home, it was 9.30 p.m. What happened at home? What trouble befell me? All this is of little importance.

- Amrita

(Reminiscences by Nolini Kanta Gupta and Amrita, published by Mother India, 1969, pp. 141–59)

THREE SECONDS FOR ALWAYS

It was the 24th of April 1946. I was twenty-two and a half years old.

I knew nothing about Sri Aurobindo when I arrived at the “Pondicherry Government.” I knew only that he was a “revolutionary,” that he had been jailed by the British, and that he had almost been sent to the gallows.

That made me like him immediately!

People said he was also a “sage.”

But I was a complete layman in regard to the “Wisdom of the East.” I had greater understanding of Vasco da Gama, Christopher Columbus, and the Breton pirates boarding the Spanish galleons. And, to be perfectly frank, I preferred Spartacus to the Buddha.

But on that particular 24th of April, everything was overturned toward a new, unknown sea.

It was half past two in the afternoon. And the heat was suffocating. Pavitra, a French graduate from Ecole Polytechnique (God!), was waiting for me on the first floor of the “Ashram.” He was such a fraternal and straightforward man, with a smiling gleam in his eyes. I followed him up a narrow staircase thronged with disciples, then onto a landing, and then into this... absolutely silent – one could almost say solidly silent – room draped in white linen. Two people were sitting inside.

Somewhat mechanically. I stepped forward and folded my hands in the Indian fashion, as I had been told to do. There He was – a mass of immobile power. His face was suffused in blue light (I thought it was neon lights). He looked at me. That look felt so vast, oh, vaster than all the sands of Egypt, softer than all the seas! And everything seemed to be engulfed in... something unknown. It lasted three seconds.

Then Mother, seated on his right, tilted her neck and chin toward me and gave me a broad, radiant smile as if to say, “Aah!” I was completely dumbfounded. Three seconds.

I returned to my room at the “Governor's Palace,” sat on my huge bed, which probably dated back to the Compagnie des Indes, and stayed there, stunned, much as I had been stunned by the Valley of the Kings and Thebes. Something kept on vibrating, vibrating in the depths, far, far away, beyond all known horizons, and I no longer knew anything. I only knew I had encountered “something for always.” Three seconds for always. A unique being unlike anyone I would ever meet. A being.

Then I felt as if a thumb were being driven into my skull through the top of my head. It was very strange – a physical sensation. It felt very still, powerful, yet without sense. Nothing made any sense!

And yet, I never felt as alive as I did on that day.

We are so very poor at expressing what is in our hearts.

We are always obliged to use some convoluted process that goes in roundabout ways. When will we speak in music?

- Satprem

(The Revolt of the Earth, by Satprem)

And the day I saw Sri Aurobindo

And the day I saw Sri Aurobindo, all of a sudden... well, I was filled by that same thing I had... gropingly experienced as a child, that I had touched in the camps.

And it was RIGHT THERE. It was looking at me and filling me – right in front of me.

It was in front of me, alive. It was right there, in a gaze.

Towarnicki: Try to remember. Tell me about that meeting. How does one meet, in India, a man like Sri Aurobindo?

With Sri Aurobindo it was a little special. He never received anybody. But three or four times a year, his disciples,

and whoever wished to, were allowed to pass in front of him to see him (what is called a "darshan" in India).

So that day, I followed the crowd and passed in front of him, thinking he was a great thinker, you see, and that's all. Sri Aurobindo was a "thinker," a "philosopher." Through the little I had read of him on arrival, to acquaint myself, I thought he was a great thinker.

Towarnicki: But where was he?

He was seated in a big armchair, with Mother beside him. And there was a sort of procession – actually, you passed before him in order to be LOOKED AT by him. Not to look at him, but in order for his gaze to open up... that door in us, that door that fills.

Towarnicki: Did you already know his work?

No. But as soon as I arrived in India, before meeting him, I immediately read Essays on the Gita; I read a number of books.... And immediately I felt: this isn't like anything you've ever read before, not like anything you've understood before. It's something different.

But to me he was still a "thinker." And suddenly, I was before something that was not a "thinker," before a being unlike any I had met on earth. A being who was a BEING, living. Not a man in a three-piece suit, or even with a white chaddar on his back. Something that was... that embodied in a gaze, in a body, in his atmosphere, what I had experienced on the open sea, in my boat. That whole immensity was there, in a being. And IT was looking at me.

So, it's as if I suddenly recognized my home. I recognized the place where I could breathe, the place I came from – I was home.

Towarnicki: And it all happened in the flash of a look?

It lasted, I don't know, four seconds.... Four seconds. And I never forgot it.

Towarnicki: As when Swami Vivekananda met Ramakrishna for the first time. It lasted a fraction of a second.

It's a recognition, you see. That's exactly it. It isn't that you discover something different; you suddenly recognize something.

It's... like a "yes," but so much deeper than a "yes." That is "IT," you see. It's no longer a stranger. It's me looking at myself – it's ME, suddenly. Me, really me, precisely the what's-left after it has been stripped of all its falsehood and superfluity. That's what's-left.

That's what was in those eyes.

Towarnicki: It was your first meeting.

Yes. I never forgot it.

So I decided I had to live that. I said to myself: If one man can embody that, can BE that, which I felt as being "mine," well, that's what I must live, what I must find.

- Satprem

(My Burning Heart, Satprem's interview)

A Radiant Personality

At that time I was athirst for light — especially light on his yoga. I was then on a musical tour gleaning data on different styles of our music in different provinces. But somehow my work didn't grip me although it still interested me. So I grew more and more eager to meet him once face to face.

At this time I was drawn and yet scared by the idea of yoga or rather by my fanciful conception of the conditions of yoga. This was partly because mine had been pre-eminently a social temperament exulting in the sunlit soil of travel, music, laughter and robust optimism which, in Sri Aurobindo's language, support the "vital egoistic life" of worldly activism. Be that as it might, it cannot be gainsaid that all I had stood for outwardly had been utterly out of tune with what the authentic yoga with its life of one-pointed aspiration and uncompromising self-surrender demanded. No wonder I was scared by what I then thought yoga had in store for its devotees: a life of awful austerities, desiccating discipline and withering solitude, all of which meant for me an utter stultification of life.

Yet I was so attracted by Sri Aurobindo's analysis of our world and his idea of evolution from the spiritual point of view, that I sincerely wished I could somehow practise his "integral yoga". I particularly liked his teaching arrogant reason its place, for I was deeply dissatisfied with the arid view of science that Life was an accident. I was growing sceptical of the learned ignorance of the reasoning mind which, in the end, led nowhere. . . .

. . .

So I wrote to him asking to see him. He consented. I made immediately for Pondicherry.

It was in January, 1924 that I saw him for the first time. I had the privilege of having a long talk with him on the 24th. The next day the duration of the talk was shorter. I kept an elaborate record of all that had passed and this report I sent him subsequently for revision. He approved of it substantially and made only a few minor corrections. But as these two interviews were not published then and as I received from him after I had come to live in his Asram permanently as his disciple in 1928 numerous letters throwing further light on his yoga, I have thought fit to add some extracts here and there from these letters written in answer to my deeper and more obstinate questionings. This device will, I hope, serve as a partial corrective to my own (necessarily) inadequate representation of his replies to which no penmanship can ever contrive to do justice. These subsequent explanatory notes, whether added to his talk or substituted for my original report of it, I have placed inside double brackets "( ( ) )"

It was about eight in the morning. Sri Aurobindo lived then in the house which stands at the main entrance to the Asram. He was seated in a chair in the front verandah. I made him my pranam, and took another chair in front. An oblong table stood between us.

"A radiant personality!" sang the very air about him. A deep aura of peace encircled him, an ineffable yet concrete peace that drew you almost at once into its magic orbit. But it was the eyes that fascinated me most — shining like beacons. His torso was bare except for a scarf thrown across.

"The greatest living yogi of India!" — my heart beat fast! Hitherto I had seen but a few sadhus and sannyasis but a real yogi, who lived thus for years in seclusion and yet took some interest in my doings.⁸ He appraised me with his soothing yet penetrative gaze. It would be impossible adequately to portray my reactions. . . . After a time I pulled myself together with an effort.

"I have come," I stammered out, "to know . . . to ascertain rather . . . if I can be initiated . . . I mean I want to practise your yoga to start with, if possible."

He simply said: "You must tell me clearly what it is exactly that you seek, and why you want to do my yoga."

I was lost. Why? Did I know myself? How then to put it all clearly and cogently. I strove hard to find some light in my bewilderment.

"Suppose," I found tongue at last, "I suggested — or rather suffer me to ask if you could help me in attaining, or shall we say discovering, the object of life?"

"That is not an easy question to answer," he said, "for I know of no one desideratum which is cherished equally by all, any more than I know of an object of life equally treasured by all. The object or aim of life cannot but vary with various people, and seekers, too, approach yoga with diverse aims. Some want to practise yoga to get away from life, like the (illusionist) mayavadi: these want to renounce life altogether, since, this phenomenal life, they contend, is an illusion, maya, which hides the ultimate reality. There are others who aspire after a supreme love or bliss. Yet others want from yoga power or knowledge or a tranquil poise impervious to the shocks of life. So you must first of all be definite as to what, precisely, you seek in yoga."

"I want to know," I proffered desperately, "if yoga could, in the last resort, lead to a solution of the anomalies of life with all its native sufferings and humiliations."

"You mean transcendent knowledge?"

"If you like — but then no — for I want bliss too, crowning this wisdom."

"You can certainly get either from yoga."

"May I then aspire to an initiation from you?"

"You may, provided you agree to its conditions and your call is strong."

"Couldn't you give me an idea about the nature of these conditions. . . and about this call you speak of . . . may I ask what you mean exactly?"

"I gathered from your booklet Yogic Sadhan," I pursued before he could reply to my question, "that you called yourself a Tantrik who believed in lila, and not a follower of Shankara believing in maya. You have written for instance: 'To fulfil God in life is man's manhood.' And if my memory doesn't fail me, you said in your Life Divine: 'We must accept the many-sidedness of the Manifestation even while we assert the unity of the Manifested.' "

"It is true that I am a believer in lila," he nodded. "But why exactly do you refer to that?"

"I wanted to make sure whether you really meant what you wrote in your Yogic Sadhan. I hope, too, that your yoga doesn't make it binding on one to live like a cave-dweller who disowns the many-mooded, active life or, shall we say, like a passive pensioner whose day is done? This hope, happily, has been fostered by your repudiation of mayavada."

"I see what you mean," he said, giving me an indulgent smile. "Well, yes, I am not a mayavadi, happily, for you as well as for me. But, incidentally, I am not the author of the book Yogic Sadhan."

"How do you mean?"

"Haven't you heard of automatic writing?"

"Planchette?"

"Not exactly. I merely held the pen while a disembodied being wrote off what he wished, using my pen and hand."

"May I ask why you lent yourself to such writing?"

(("At the time I was trying to find out how much of truth and how much of subliminal suggestion from submerged consciousness there might be in phenomena of this kind."))

"But let that pass," he added. "To return to your main question. You asked about the active life. Well, it isn't binding on you to renounce all that you value in your active life. What you must be ready to renounce is attachment to everything on that plane whether you live within or outside the wheel of karma, action. For if you keep these attachments, the Light from above will not be able to work unhampered to effect the radical transformation of your nature."

"Does that imply that I must forego, say, all human sympathy and true friendship, all joy of life and fellow-feeling?"

"It doesn't." (("Absence of love and fellow-feeling is not necessary to the Divine nearness, on the contrary a sense of closeness and oneness with others is a part of the Divine consciousness into which the Sadhaka enters by nearness to the Divine and the feeling of oneness with the Divine. An entire rejection of all relations is indeed the final aim of the Mayavadin and in the ascetic yoga an entire loss of all relations of friendship and affection and attachment to the world and its living beings would be regarded as a promising sign of advance towards liberation, moksha. But even there, I think a feeling of oneness and unattached spiritual sympathy for all is at least a penultimate stage, like the compassion of the Buddhist before turning to moksha or nirvana."))

THIS decided me: I wanted to draw him out further.

"I would ask you to bear with me a little," I made bold to say, "and give me a patient hearing. My difficulty is that I have lived and loved life amply and I believe, intensely. But in my boyhood I came under the influence of Sri Ramakrishna's mysticism. As a result this certitude germinated in my mind that he had touched the bedrock of Truth with the categorical assertion that 'the object of human living is to achieve Divine union.' Then, I went on to say, "I fell within the orbit of the Western this-worldiness with all its spell and glamour and romance, luxuriating in living and in making the most of life and nature. I did not stop to think that the wealth of sunshine might have a worthier message for us than that of goading us to make a few paltry pleasures of hay. I made haste to snatch what I could before the shadows closed in. In my own case, however, they crept in even before sunset, for my vital enthusiasm waned quickly and the old starry perception of my boyhood re-emerged. It said in clear accents: it isn't any of these — wealth or youth, fame or family, action or art — no, not even service to the community or country, but only the Divine, nothing but His unique touch that can impart significance to it all, since He is the sole reality, all the rest is a mimicry, a shadow-dance."

"On my return from Europe," I continued, "I became popular and made friends, numerous friends — thanks to my patrimony, musical gifts, social qualities and lastly the pathetic awe and esteem that people feel when you can talk glibly about continental culture in continental languages. But strangely enough, among my numerous friends I met none interested in God or things of the spirit unless diluted with big doses of coloured art and popular humanism, with the sole exception of Ronald Nixon, an English Professor of Lucknow. Thus it was a foreigner who discussed with me the wisdom of our authentic spirituality. It was he who first told me about your great yogic stature and made me read your books. Since meeting him my old nostalgia for the spiritual life has reasserted itself with redoubled force and I cannot rest in peace without the inner harmony which only the Spirit can give. In other words, I want to practise yoga. But then here I have the deepest misgivings as to my capacity. And I have had this persistent feeling that I can never succeed without a Guru and that Guru must be no other than yourself, even though I don't know whether you will accept me. That is my position. But the trouble is that Life, too, calls me with her coloured lanterns as you must have inferred yourself from my questions regarding social give-and-take, sympathy, love, friendship, etc., with all their attendant obligations and responsibilities. To stake all that for something that has not yet crystallised in my consciousness — or maybe that the dilemma lies in this that the satisfaction that these social pleasures give, though fast dwindling, are yet too tangible to be dismissed, out of hand? Anyhow the prospect of having to do without my chains causes a strange malaise. I say strange, because I can't quite account for the tug-o-war that is going on within me — a conflict which is quite concrete even when the forces seem so imponderable. But I don't know if I have been able to put it all clearly before you?"

I paused as he smiled kindly, his deep glance spraying a kind of peace upon me . . . giving me a feeling of his compassion . . . not a mere human compassion but something far more pervasive and soothing.

"I quite understand," he said reassuringly. "It is like this: Human society, human friendship, love, affection, fellow-feeling are mostly and usually — not entirely or in all cases — founded on a vital basis and are ego-held at their centre. It is because of the pleasure of being loved, the pleasure of enlarging the ego by contact and penetration with another, the exhilaration of the vital interchange which feeds their personality, that men usually love and there are also other and still more selfish motives that mix with this essential movement. There are of course higher spiritual, psychic, mental, vital elements that can come in; but the whole thing is very mixed even at its best. This is the reason why at a certain stage with or without apparent reason the world and life and human society and philanthropy — which is as ego-ridden as the rest — begin to pall.

"There is sometimes," he continued, "an ostensible reason — a disappointment of the surface-vital, the withdrawal of affection by others, the perception that those loved, or men generally, are not what one thought them to be and a host of other causes. But often the cause is a secret disappointment of some part of the inner being, not translated or not well translated into the mind, because it expected from these things something they cannot give. For some it takes the form of a vairagya, which drives them towards ascetic indifference and gives the urge towards moksha. For us what we hold to be necessary is that the mixture should disappear and that the consciousness should be established on a purer level."

"Till then," he went on after a pause, "love and affection and sympathy and friendship could not yield to us their full quota in significance and joy, because for that their basis has to be spiritual, their foundation pure. But for such a consummation there must be a transmutation of the very substance of our human nature. It is only then that the rhythm and mode of its self-expression can change when the lead will have been taken by the psychic self in us. When this self of ours comes to the forefront, it will express in the truest way the authentic movements of the deeper emotions which are of the psychic. This is, in a nutshell, the inner message of my yoga."¹

"Consequently," he added, "this must be the ideal, your ideal, that is, if you would practise yoga, bearing in mind that you mustn't be bound by anything that is irrelevant to your aspiration for the Divine. Nothing — no attachment however laudable — must be a rival to your aspiration for the Divine."

"But is that possible — I mean feasible, for me?"

"Not at the start: if it were, you would be a liberated being already. You can't achieve liberation overnight. What I wanted to stress was that if you cared for yoga you must always hold on to your vision, your ideal of inner liberation, so that you may be ready to comply whenever you are called upon to forego anything that militates against this ideal."

"But must I necessarily be called upon to forego — everything?"

"You may not be — outwardly, that is," he said. "But that won't make any very material difference, since your inner attitude has to be that of complete freedom all the same — the ideal must be nirliptata, non-attachment. If you can be truly non-attached within, you need not have to tear off the outward strappings of bondage. But remember that you must always be ready to shove aside anything that is incompatible with yoga, for that surely is one of its major conditions."

"Does that apply to things that do not, properly speaking, belong to the material plane, say music which I love so dearly? Must I renounce that too?"

"I haven't said you must," he smiled again indulgently, "only, if yoga were the central thing in your life you would not be so nervous at the prospect of having to give up music for its sake, would you?"

I hung my head discountenanced.

"I would not have you infer," I pleaded, "that I couldn't possibly give up music. Only I am not yet persuaded that yoga will make it up to me. My problem may be somewhat naive but it is a problem nonetheless. It is like this: I don't find it hard to give up a lower thing for a higher one provided I have some foretaste of the latter. But so long as I have no clear idea of what yoga has to give, why must I gamble away the tangible for the elusive? Before I burn my boats can't I legitimately claim even a glimpse of what the deep has in store for me?"

"Didn't I tell you just now that you need not necessarily give up your music or something just as tangible for that matter: what is obligatory is that should any activity or idea or habit or attachment or preconception prove an impediment on the way, you have to discard it when so required."

"But you haven't answered my question about the compensation. Or perhaps it is taboo to have such an intellectual curiosity or scepticism, if you will?"

"Not quite, only yoga, you must know, is not a matter of intellectual appraisement or recognition: it is essentially a matter of realisation through self-dedication. As for your other question, surely the compensations of yoga are deep as well as abiding. Only, you can't summon them to prove their validity before your mental dock. But let me tell you here that your difficulties aren't what you presume them to be: I mean they are not mental at bottom. The truth of the matter is this: so long as the joys which belong to the lower planes continue to be too vividly real and covetable you will find ready enough reasons why you shouldn't decline them. You can forego them only when you have had a call of the higher joys, when the lower ones begin to pall, sound hollow. The Promised Land of the Spirit begins from the frontier of worldly enjoyments, to start with."

"But why is it," I asked after a pause, "that one can't expect to have even a glimpse beforehand of this Land? Because of the thick walls of our worldly desires?"

"Your premise here is not quite correct," he objected. "For even when we live in the world of these desires the glimpse, the call, comes to us through chinks and rifts of dissatisfaction and surfeit. Only, it doesn't last long until you are somewhat purified, for then only do you really begin to be open to it. The darkness returns intermittently after the light because it takes long to get our whole being open to the light. That is why yoga pushes us urgently upwards to altitudes where the light can be shut out no more by clouds. And it is just because yoga is such an ascent of consciousness, that any attachment to or desire for lures and prizes on the lower planes, material, intellectual or aesthetic, must eventually prove a shackle."

"Why then do you write so appreciatively of materialism as also of the intellectual and aesthetic delights? And why are your own writings so illuminating intellectually? Why have you praised art? Why write at all: 'The highest aim of the aesthetic being is to find the Divine through Beauty?'"²

"Why not? Intellect, art, poetry, knowledge of matter, etc., can all help our progress appreciably provided you direct them properly. It is at bottom, a case of evolution. That is why I once wrote: 'Reason was the helper, Reason is the bar'; which means simply that our intellect can be a help in our evolution only a part of the way. But when it presumes to judge what is beyond its domain, it must be put in its place. Besides, different recipients are differently constituted for different disciplines — seeking different fulfilments, each approaching truth in the way of his nature, swabhava. To put it in other words, those who are best recipients for the light of the intellect are mentally more evolved than those who are not so gifted intellectually. But that doesn't mean that there are no realisations higher than the mental ones. Assuredly there are, as we can concretely verify as we open ourselves to the realisations of the Spirit, when we find the mental joys inadequate, the aesthetic joys no longer satisfying. With this opening we glimpse worlds higher than those we have been used to. Do you follow?"

"You mean that yoga enlarges our consciousness more and more?"

"That is my view of evolution," he nodded, "this gradual unfolding of the consciousness ascending to its higher reaches. And it is yoga which is to bring down further light and power in the next step of human evolution — the next stage of the evolution of human consciousness."

I reverted to my difficulty: "But what about my taking to yoga?"

"Everybody can practise some yoga or other, suited to his nature," he replied non-committally.

"But my question was about your Integral yoga — of self-surrender."

"Ah!" he said slowly as though weighing his words. "About that I can't pronounce here and now."

"But why?"

"Because the yoga that I have been pursuing of late — whose aim is the entire and radical transformation of the stuff and fabric of our consciousness and being including our physical nature — is a very arduous one, fraught with grave perils at every step. In fact so great are these dangers that I would not advise anybody to run them unless his call is so urgent that he is prepared to stake everything. In other words, I can accept only those with whom yoga has become such a necessity that nothing else seems worthwhile. In your case it hasn't yet become so urgent. Your seeking is for some sort of partial elucidation of life's mysteries. This is at best an intellectual seeking — not an urgent need of the central being."

"Allow me to explain a little further," I said with a keen sense of disappointment, "for I am afraid you haven't quite seen where the shoe pinches. I can assure you that mine is not merely a mental curiosity — "

"I said seeking, not curiosity," he corrected. "And I referred to the present only: I did not mean this could not develop later on into a real need of your central being."

"Let me make it more explicit all the same," I insisted. "From 1919 till 1922 I was in Europe meeting many thoughtful people including a few notable thinkers. Each of these I prodded with the one test-query: 'What is the truth of truths?' I have all along felt, with the Gita, that the truth-seeker must approach the Wise — the Tatwa-darshi — with 'homage, enquiry and service'. I have indeed gained a great deal through contacts of men like Bertrand Russell, Romain Rolland, Mahatma Gandhi, Tagore, Duhamel, and many others who are less celebrated but highly evolved personalities. To all of them I owe a debt of deep gratitude. But I have reached no solution of life's master problem — none could point me the way to it. I continued to be tormented by life's endless tragedies and sorrows and disharmonies; I was pained by the senseless wastefulness of Nature's ways and what chiefly troubled me was the persistent fact that mankind in the mass should go on preferring evil to good, falsehood to truth, darkness to light. Time and again have I asked myself if we must go on for ever groping in vain for a panacea to it all, if there was no real remedy to the 'ills our flesh is heir to'. If there was, how was it that we, the children of Immortality should never chance upon it through centuries of striving? And why should we still be clamouring and scrambling for the ephemeral — often, alas, even the infernal — instead of the everlasting good? Besides, I used to ask myself —" I pulled up suddenly, somewhat abashed for my effusion.

"Go on," he said in a very kind tone, "I am listening."

"I well remember," I resumed, encouraged, "how, whenever I came in contact with somebody out of the ordinary, I used to hear a distinct voice deep down within me: 'But has he achieved his poise in the ultimate Truth? Has he realised lasting peace?' And an answering voice returned with equal distinctness: 'No.' There was but one exception. I have told you I came early under the influence of Sri Ramakrishna. Whenever I used to meditate before his picture I used to have a deep certitude that he had attained yamm labdhvaa caaparamm laabhamm manyate naadhikamm tatahh — 'the boon of boons beside which all others look like baubles.' And this certitude came again with the same rhythm of deep joy when I saw you just now — but I'm afraid I am getting too autobiographical —"

"It is all right, go on."

"I used often to probe my soul with the questioning: how to attain that poise — yasmin sthito na duhhkhena gurunnaapi vicaalyate — which made one impervious to life's hardest blows — and gave one the unshakable foundation of eternal peace and bliss? Music gave me a brief foretaste — though even there by snatches — of such felicity, that is why I have loved music passionately since my childhood. With age this love grew; yet I was continually visited by an anxious questioning whether it was justifiable to seek refuge in the delightful retreats of art in a world where suffering was so widespread and tragically persistent? At times a sob came up: was there really no way of changing this — no way of release from these dark underworlds of pain and misery into radiant spheres of joy and happiness? If not, then what sense can there be in any human endeavour? Have we to accept, after all, the findings of the mayavadis as the ultimate verdict of human experience that no stable haven of fulfilment is attainable in the conditions to which we are born?" I stopped suddenly dead, somewhat abashed by my crescendo of rhetoric of which I had suddenly become conscious.

Sri Aurobindo fixed on me a long gaze. An ineffable radiance of compassionate sympathy suffused his face . . . his eyes gleamed like jewels shedding light without heat. I knew he had understood. Hasn't he written in a poem about his own yearning in face of human sorrows:

Rose of God, vermilion stain on the sapphires of heaven, Rose of Bliss, fire-sweet, seven-tinged with the ecstasies seven! Leap up in our heart of humanhood, O miracle, O flame, Passion-flower of the Nameless, bud of the mystical Name.

Rose of God, great wisdom-bloom on the summits of being, Rose of Light, immaculate core of the ultimate seeing! Live in the mind of our earthhood; O golden Mystery, flower, Sun on the head of the Timeless, guest of the marvellous Hour.

Rose of God, damask force of Infinity, red icon of might, Rose of power with thy diamond halo piercing the night! Ablaze in the will of the mortal, design the wonder of thy plan, Image of Immortality, outbreak of the Godhead in man.

Rose of God, smitten purple with the incarnate divine Desire, Rose of Life, crowded with petals, colour's lyre! Transform the body of the mortal like a sweet and magical rhyme; Bridge our earthhood and heavenhood, make deathless the children of Time.

Rose of God, like a blush of rapture on Eternity's face, Rose of Love, ruby depth of all being, fire-passion of Grace! Arise from the heart of the yearning that sobs in Nature's abyss: Make earth the home of the Wonderful and life beatitude's kiss.

"I quite see your difficulty," he said softly. "For I too wanted at one time to transform through my yoga the face of the world. My aim was to change the fundamental nature and movements of humanity, to exile all the evils which afflict helpless mortality."

I felt a heave within — in my very blood. For one like him to talk so intimately to a stranger! Gratitude surged within me and I hung upon his words, eager to imbibe the sweet cadences of his liquid voice.

"It was with this aspiration that I turned to yoga in the beginning," he added, "and I came to Pondicherry because I had been directed by the Voice to pursue my yoga here."

"I read in the famous letters you wrote to your wife that you had turned to yoga to save our country."

"That's right. I told Lele when agreeing to follow his instructions that I would do his yoga only on condition that it didn't interfere with my poetry and service to the country."

"And then?"

"Lele agreed and gave me initiation. But soon afterwards he left, bidding me turn solely to my inner guidance.

"Since then," he went on, "I have followed only this inner Voice which has led me to develop what I named the Integral yoga. It was then that my outlook changed with the knowledge born of my new yogic consciousness. But then I found, to my utter disillusionment, that it was only my ignorance which had led me to believe that the impossible was feasible here and now."

"Ignorance?"

He nodded. "Because I didn't realise then that in order to help humanity out it was not enough for an individual, however great, to achieve an ultimate solution individually: humanity has to be ripe for it too. For the crux of the difficulty is that even when the Light is ready to descend it cannot come to stay until the lower plane is also ready to bear the pressure of the Descent."

I was reminded of what he had written in his Essays on the Gita: "No real peace can be till the heart of man deserves peace; the law of Vishnu cannot prevail till the debt to Rudra is paid . . . Teachers of the land of love and Oneness there must be, for by that way must come the ultimate salvation, but not till the Time-Spirit in man is ready, can the inner and the ultimate prevail over the outer and immediate reality. Christ and Buddha have come and gone but it is Rudra who still holds the world in the hollow of his hand."

"Consequently," he went on, "the utmost you can do, here and now is to communicate only partially the light of your realisations in proportion as people are receptive. Even this is not very easy, mind you; for the fact of your having received something does not necessarily make you capable of making a free gift of it to others. You see, capacity to receive is one kind of aptitude, capacity to give — quite another. Indeed, the latter is a very special kind of gift. Some there are who can only imbibe but not communicate, because, for one thing, what you communicate, everybody cannot receive, even when they earnestly want to. To sum up, the number of those is very limited who are capable both of giving and receiving. So you can understand the problem is by no means a simple one. What is one to do? Everybody does not want bliss or enlightenment: men are at different stages of development and this makes any universal panacea for life's evils an impossibility as the history of human experience has proved again and again."

I was reminded of the story of the sceptic who asked the Buddha why he did not confer his gift of nirvana on all and sundry here and now if he was really convinced of its efficacy in this sorrow-ridden world. Buddha simply asked him to go round from door to door enquiring what they severally wanted. He came back and reported that the boons coveted were endless: money, power, fame, children, women, health, beauty, long life and so on. "But what about nirvana?" asked Buddha. "Did anybody want it?" — "Not one," he replied. "Well," Buddha smiled, "how can I force a boon on people who won't have it?"

"But what about the widespread misery and fear and suffering?" I said after a pause.

"How can you help that so long as men choose as they do to hug ignorance which is at the root of all suffering? As long as they cherish the darkness of attachment rather than the light of liberation and knowledge, how can they expect to see? How would you evade the inexorable law of karma?"

"What are you then striving for through your yoga?" I asked. "For your own liberation or fulfilment?"

"No," he said, "that wouldn't have taken so long. But," he added, "it is not possible to answer you more convincingly just now, for if I were to tell you why I am doing yoga, you would either not understand or misunderstand. Suffice it to say that I want to invoke here on earth the light of a higher world, to manifest a new power which will continue to exist as a new influence in the physical world and will be a direct manifestation of the Divine in our entire being and daily life."

"Is this what you have named the Supramental Divine?"

"That's right — though the name is immaterial. What matters is to remember that for a variety of reasons the direct action of the Supramental has never yet been brought to bear on our earth-nature and consciousness."

"Because the time was not favourable for such a descent?"

"Partly; but there were other reasons also which I can't go into as they cannot be communicated through mental language, and so, if attempted, may only lead to fresh mystification."

He wrote to me later, in 1933 about the functioning of the Supramental: "What the Supramental will do, the mind cannot foresee or lay down. The mind is Ignorance seeking for the Truth, the Supramental by its very definition is the Truth-consciousness: Truth in possession of itself and fulfilling itself by its own power. In a Supramental world imperfection and disharmony are bound to disappear. But what we propose just now is not to make the earth a Supramental world but to bring down the Supramental as a Power and established consciousness in the midst of the rest — to let it work there and fulfil itself as Mind descended into life and matter has worked as a Power there to fulfil itself in the midst of the rest. This will be enough to change the world and to change Nature by breaking down her present limits. But what, how, by what degrees it will do it is a thing that ought not to be said now — when the Light is there, the Light itself will do its work — when the Supramental Will stands on earth, that Will will decide."

"But tell me at least if the yogis of yore knew of this Power."

"Some did.³ But — how can I put the truth of the matter to you? — what happened was that they used to rise individually to this plane and stay there in union: they didn't bring it down to act upon our terrestrial consciousness. Perhaps they did not even attempt to. But I would rather not tell you more about this because, as I said, the mind cannot even glimpse the Supramental Truth, to say nothing of understanding it."

"But, forgive me, isn't the world going from bad to worse daily — nay, hourly? I am an unrepentant rationalist — realist — I hope you will pardon me for saying this?"

"I will," he said smiling. "For I myself have stressed repeatedly this desperate plight of the earth. And the conditions will become more desperate still. The usual idea of the occultists about it is that the worse they are the more probable is the coming of an intervention or a new revelation from above. The ordinary mind cannot know: it has either to believe or disbelieve — wait and see."

I was reminded of the Gita's message that whenever there is in this world a shipwreck of the spiritual values through the upsurge of rebel Darkness, the Divine incarnates himself again to restore the reign of victorious Light.

"But on whom and what will this Supramental work?" I asked.

"Why, on our life-material of course — down to matter and the physical."

"Didn't the ancient yogis attempt this either?"

"Not with the Supramental instrumentation. Their preoccupation was not so much with our basic material physical, because to transform it with the spiritual force is the most difficult of all achievements. But that is precisely why it must be achieved."

"But does the Divine seriously want some such big thing to be achieved?"

"Unquestionably. As to whether the Divine seriously means something to happen, I believe it is intended. I know with absolute certitude that the Supramental is a truth and that its advent is in the nature of things inevitable. The question is as to the when and the how. That also is decided and predestined from somewhere above; but it is here being fought out amid rather a grim clash of conflicting forces."

"Forgive me, I don't quite follow this."

"I know," he intervened. "For it is somewhat abstruse. It is like this. In the terrestrial world the predetermined result is hidden and what we see is a whirl of possibilities and forces attempting to achieve something with the destiny of it all concealed from human eyes. This is however certain that a number of souls have been sent to see that it shall be now. That is the situation. My faith and will are all for the now. I am speaking of course on the level of human intelligence — mystically — rationally, as one might put it."

"Please be a little more explicit."

"To say more would be going beyond the line."

"But tell me at least when the miracle will happen."

"You don't want me to start prophesying. As a rationalist, you can't."

So I pursued another line. "You have written in your Synthesis of Yoga," I said, "that we mustn't turn our back on the material world because it is so incurably recalcitrant to the light of the spirit."

I quote the passage below: "The obstacle which the physical presents to the spiritual is no argument for the rejection of the physical; for in the unseen providence of things our greatest difficulties are our best opportunities. A supreme difficulty is Nature's indication to us of a supreme conquest to be won and an ultimate problem to be solved; it is not a warning of an inexplicable snare to be shunned or of an enemy too strong for us from whom we must flee."

He smiled and nodded.

"But tell me one thing," I said, flying off at another tangent, "didn't any of your predecessors make this attempt — I mean what you call the integral transformation of the physical consciousness?"

"The attempt might have been made, it is not certain. But what is certain is that nothing decisive was achieved on the physical plane."

"How do you infer that?"

"Because all achievements leave some legacy of traces for posterity to follow up. A spiritual realisation once completely achieved could never be wholly obliterated afterwards."

"You must then realise it yourself first?"

"Obviously. Be it a new realisation or light or idea — it must first descend in one person from whom it radiates out in widening circles to others. Hasn't the Gita too said that the ways of the best of men act as models to the rest? In the Integral yoga, however, the work starts after the realisation, whereas in most other yogas it ends with the realisation. The reason is that I aim primarily at manifestation for which I must, obviously, reach the Supramental myself before I can bring it to bear on our earth-consciousness. For this, ascent has to be the first step — descent is the next."

"How will the descent work, to start with?"

"When the Supramental touches our being, our consciousness will overpass its twilit stage of the mental (where the divine Truth is distorted) into the upper regions where light has free play — that is, where there are no such distortions. This will in its turn bring about the transformation of mind, life and body as that will be one of the functions of the Force at its inception in the world of matter, generally, to usher in subsequently the new era in man's living.⁴ You must not misunderstand me. What I want to achieve is the bringing down of the Supramental to bear on this being of ours so as to raise it to a level higher than the mental and from there change and sublimate the workings of mind, life and body. But this is not to say that the Supramentalisation will be effectuated overnight so that all will be completely transformed. That is hardly feasible."

"Because we are not mature for such a transformation?"

"Not only that — there are other obstinate impediments and hostile forces to reckon with. This world of matter has been for ages the bulwark of darkness, falsehood's most redoubtable citadel where, hitherto, inertia has reigned supreme. To carry there the message of Truth, to make it responsive to the shock of Light is far from easy. Yet the Supramental power can work its way if once it can descend there, that is to say if once the earth-consciousness can bear it to start with."

"Suppose it does, on whom will the Force be dynamic in its inception?"

"On those who have acquired the power to be its medium or vehicle. Each of these will serve as an indicator of what humanity is potentially capable of becoming, once it is transformed.⁵ Do you follow?"

"After a fashion I suppose," I said. "But tell me please, if this power or influence will benefit many or only a handful of isolated individuals here and there."

"Many, certainly. My Integral yoga would be of little use if it were meant for one or two individuals. For you must remember that my object is not the abandonment of the physical-material life to drift by itself but to transform it fundamentally by the power of this higher light and seeing."⁶

"But I hope your followers and successors won't have to emulate you in your superhuman sadhana, if they are to arrive?"

"No," Sri Aurobindo smiled, "and that was what I really meant when I said some time back that my yoga was meant for humanity. The first that hews his way through a trackless jungle acts necessarily as the pathfinder clearing the way for his followers. He faces much to make it easier for the others."

I was reminded of a saying of the great yogi Sri Ramakrishna: "The man who makes a fire has to take a lot of trouble but, once lit, all who come near may safely reap the benefit of its warmth." As I pondered the significance of this simile, a deep sense of reverence pervaded my being in the ensuing silence. What I had heard had slowly infiltrated into the depths of my being. I wondered how few among us even imagined that such a man was living in our midst! But then hasn't it always been so from time immemorial? How many of us had truly appreciated the greatness of Sri Ramakrishna in his life-time? I felt suddenly a strong impulse to make him my pranam once more. I restrained myself with effort.

Sri Aurobindo's gaze was on me, unwaveringly. Suddenly I felt a curious upsurge of scepticism so utterly out of tune with my nascent adoration.

"But are you convinced it will be possible — really feasible?" I said.

"For a single individual I have seen it to be possible," he put an emphasis on 'seen'. "For I have seen the working of this tremendous victorious force annihilating at a sweep the force of darkness and inertia which conspire to keep the spirit under the thrall of matter and flesh. To give a concrete instance: a yogi could here and now achieve complete immunity from the forces of disease if he could isolate himself completely from his surroundings."

"But why does he fail when he reverts to the world?"

"Because of the universal suggestion of disease when he comes out of his seclusion."

My scepticism took yet another line. "But do you think this to be such a great achievement after all, seeing that even the great Buddha attached so little importance to the physical aspect of our suffering?"

"You forget Buddha had a different outlook on life, a different object. He wanted through nirvana a final exit from this phenomenal world of the senses. It may be that, at that stage of our human evolution man was not mature yet for a greater realisation. But whatever the reason, you cannot get away from the fact that Buddha wanted fulfilment by turning away from all play of expression which is Life's mode of self-manifestation, whereas I want its transformation, complete transformation. My aim is not to disown life but to transmute it through the alchemy of the light of the Spirit. In other words my aim is not to cast off the material life, but to conquer Matter for the Spirit: to make the body a conscious and perfect instrument instead of a limitation and an obstacle must therefore be an essential part of this aim."

For some time I did not know what to say next. Then a sort of curiosity — or shall I say eagerness — got the better of me in spite of my misgivings.

"But what about my yoga?" I brought myself to say apropos of nothing. The next moment I felt a strange self-questioning: was I really calling for an answer? I could not quite decide.

His glance cut into me like a knife. "Yours is still a mental seeking," he said. "For my yoga something more is needed. Why not wait till the time comes?"

"When it does, may I count on your help?" I asked anxiously.

He nodded and smiled.

At that time he had only about a dozen disciples in his Ashram. In point of fact, it had not yet grown into a proper Ashram. It was very different from the Ashram today with more than seven hundred initiates of both sexes within it. But even at that time the Guru gave the disciples all the help they needed. The few who were there spoke enthusiastically about his yoga, his elevating personal contact and loving help and wisdom born of his great realisation. Some of his beautiful letters were lent to me and I copied them out with eagerness. Among these there was his famous letter, written in November 1922, to the late Deshbhandu Chitta Ranjan Das, beloved of Bengal. I must quote a few lines:

Dear Chitta,

I think you know my present idea and the attitude towards life and work to which it has brought me. I see more and more manifestly that man cannot get out of the futile cycle the race is always treading, until he has raised himself on to a new foundation. I have become confirmed in a perception which I had always, less clearly and dynamically then, but which has now become more and more evident to me, that the true basis of work and life is the spiritual: that is to say, a new consciousness to be developed only by yoga. But what precisely was the nature of the dynamic power of this greater consciousness? What was the condition of its effective truth? How could it be brought down, mobilised, organised, turned upon life? How could our present instruments — intellect, life, mind, body — be made true and perfect channels for this great transformation? This was the problem I have been trying to work out in my own experience and I have now a sure basis, a wide knowledge and some mastery of the secret . . . I have still to remain in retirement. For I am determined not to work in the external field till I have the sure and complete possession of this new power of action — not to build except on a perfect foundation.

I shall never forget the cumulative effect of our first meeting nor the avidity with which I read those letters again and again that night. And the thrill, almost of romance! Sri Aurobindo's yoga and its message at first hand! I could not sleep that night — for sheer joy. How could one sleep after having seen his radiant face with eyes like stars!

- Dilip Kumar Roy

(Among the Great by Dilip Kumar Roy, Jaico Books, 1950, pp. 208–30)

Living Examples

You once asked me what were my impressions when I first met Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Well, it is difficult to describe them. But I remember this much, that I felt I was in the presence of Shiva when I saw Sri Aurobindo. When I saw the Mother, I felt an extraordinary closeness to her and saw in her an embodiment of Beauty.

Now, after all these years of stay with them, the total impact on me is this:

Sri Aurobindo is a living example of complete surrender.
The Mother is a living example of perfect service to the Lord.

- Champaklal

(Champaklal Speaks, edited by M. P. Pandit, revised by Roshan, published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2002, p. 39)

We Arrive

[The following account is based on Champaklal's diary.]

At last, Natwarlal, Kanti and myself arrived at Pondicherry at 6 a.m. on April 1, 1921. Feeling that it was not proper to sit in rickshaws pulled by human beings we did not hire one. We walked the distance from the railway station to the residence of our host Narandas in Mary Street. Though it should have taken only ten minutes, it took us half an hour as we did not know the way. On reaching Narandas's house, we presented to him the letter of introduction given by Motilal Mehta. After we had our bath, we were blandly informed that there was a measles case in the house and so no meals could be served to us. I cooked my own meal, as I always did, and my companions went to Amanivasam [a popular restaurant in town].

My mind was impatient to see Sri Aurobindo and, though I attended to the daily chores, my attention was fixed there. But when we got ready to set out we were told not to go outdoors between 11.30 a.m. and 3.30 p.m. as it was scorching hot. Even dogs were not allowed to run about in the streets during that time, as it was believed that heatstroke caused rabies. We were told that unless they carried a proper collar, dogs found in the streets at this time were killed by government order.

However, we could not remain confined to the house for long and started out at 1 p.m. and came to the Guest House, where Sri Aurobindo was then staying. There we met Amrita and informed him that we had come from Bharooch in Gujarat. "Babuji is sleeping," he replied (Sri Aurobindo was addressed as 'Babuji' in those days) and told us to come back a little before 5 p.m. We said we would sit there and wait. But he told us that we couldn't sit there and must go back and come at the specified time. We felt dejected.

Then we went to the seashore and, in spite of our depression, found the place beautiful. We sat under a tree and passed some time thinking about Babuji. But we were forced to get up because of ants and went to the pier. Then with our minds still on Sri Aurobindo we went back and sat under another tree. In the cool breeze and peaceful atmosphere we were overpowered by sleep. We woke up at 3.45 p.m. and with our attention once more focussed on Babuji, came back to his temple. We sat in the verandah inside and asked Amrita for some water to drink. It was given and we eagerly quenched our thirst. I may mention here that though it was true that we were thirsty due to the climate, what made us ask for water was the desire to taste the tirtha in Sri Aurobindo's house. After Amrita had gone back we sat on. Some time later he came back and said, "Babuji is busy; I will call you." The call came at ten minutes to five.

Before that, as we were sitting in the verandah, we heard someone coming down the stairs. As soon as his foot touched the floor I spontaneously ran forward. I felt it must be Sri Aurobindo. I touched his lotus feet and prostrated myself in sashtanga dandavat pranam [with feet, trunk, shoulders, palms and head touching the floor like a rod — signifying surrender of the whole being]. Then he proceeded to the courtyard. Later I was to learn from the Mother that it was at a corresponding spot on the first floor that she had first seen Sri Aurobindo; that was at 3.30 p.m. on 29th March 1914. And I had, rather I was granted, the good fortune of meeting him just at that spot.

When we went upstairs Sri Aurobindo was seated in the verandah. I saw nothing except him and when I prostrated before him I lay there for one full hour. I just could not get up. No one disturbed me. At the end of that hour Sri Aurobindo placed his hand on my head, blessed me and said, "Tomorrow." Then I got up.

A number of chairs had been placed near the table in front of Sri Aurobindo's chair. We were asked to sit there but we squatted on the floor by his side. He asked us our names and enquired about Dikshit-bhai and Punamchand-bhai; then he asked me: "Do you know English?" I said I did not. He began in Hindi and asked how we all had come.

C: "A group led by Dikshit-bhai walked down from Bharooch to Bilimora and thence we three were sent by train."

Sri Aurobindo: "How long do you wish to stay here?"

C: "As long as you will permit us."

He looked around and smiled. Then he told us to come the next day and added that he would receive us after 4.30 p.m. He got up and we too stood up. He did namaskar and we did the same. Then he started towards his room and we remained standing till he entered it. When Amrita asked us to leave it was almost 6.10. When we left we were in a trance-like condition, our eyes could hardly remain open. No wonder we lost our way. Somehow we reached home, cooked our meal, ate it and, after some polite conversation with Narandas, still thinking of Babuji we fell asleep.

You ask me what were my reactions on my first darshan of Sri Aurobindo. Well, after getting up from my sashtanga dandavat pranam at his feet upstairs, I felt that I had nothing more to do in my life. This feeling itself was evident proof of our having 'arrived'.

The next day (2nd April), we went through the morning duties, had our afternoon rest and got ready to leave around four o'clock, but throughout, our thoughts remained centred on Babuji. We reached his house and sat in the verandah downstairs. It was 4.30 but nobody came down and we became impatient for Babuji's darshan. Finally, at 4.55 p.m. Amrita came and escorted us upstairs. As soon as we approached Sri Aurobindo we prostrated and our eyes touched his lotus feet. For about fifteen minutes we sat quietly, then the following conversation took place.

Sri Aurobindo: "How many people are there at Kashi-bhai's?" He stopped after uttering Kashi-bhai's name. The ashram was known as Dikshit-bhai's, not Kashi-bhai's.

C: "Twenty, and a family associated with the ashram there."

Sri Aurobindo: "What are Dikshit and Punamchand doing there?"

C: "Why do you ask that? You know everything."

Sri Aurobindo smiled and almost whispered: "Yes, I know." Then looking round at all sitting there he laughed heartily.

Sri Aurobindo: "What are you doing in yoga?"

C: "I don't know what is yoga. I am practising something taught by Dikshit-bhai and Punamchand-bhai."

Sri Aurobindo: "What is the practice you are doing?"

C: "Whatever work I do I offer to the Lord and I offer through you."

Sri Aurobindo: "How many practise yoga there? Give me their names."

I gave the names.

Sri Aurobindo: "Do you feel anything during this practice?"

C: "Yes, sometimes peace; I see at times light also."

Sri Aurobindo smiled very sweetly. Then he asked: "Yes, but has Dikshit explained to you how to dedicate everything?"

C: "No. He has only told us that we must be complete instruments."

Sri Aurobindo: "How?"

C: "I don't know."

Sri Aurobindo: "You see, the peace which you feel shows that God is near you. The Light you see suggests that you will be able to meet him in that peace and light. Gradually you will be able to stay in this state."

C: "Sometimes I feel that the light is inside me."

Sri Aurobindo: "It means God is within you. Are you practising this?"

C: "Yes."

Sri Aurobindo remained silent for some time. Then asked: "What made you come here?"

I answered in some detail.

Sri Aurobindo: "Do they read any papers there?"

C: "I don't know."

Sri Aurobindo: "Do you read the Standard Bearer?"

C: "At times. When I find there something that ought to be practised I note it down."

Sri Aurobindo: "How long did you stay in Bombay?"

C: "Four days."

Sri Aurobindo: "Where did you stay?"

C: "Near Motilal Mehta's bungalow."

Sri Aurobindo: "Now what are you going to do at your place?"

C: "We have not decided yet. We are thinking of doing some farming."

Sri Aurobindo: "Someone went to Chandernagore with Dikshit. Who was that?"

C: "Dwarkanath Harkare who lived in Gandhi Ashram."

Sri Aurobindo: "Who is he?"

C: "A Maharashtrian." (Harkare had once stayed in our study-home in Patan and taken a keen interest in me.)

It was 6.05 p.m. by now and Sri Aurobindo went into his room saying: "Now, tomorrow."

Now the third day. We got up at 6 a.m. After the day's routine we sat waiting for 4 o'clock. Our hearts were full of expectations and ardent for Babuji's darshan. Today, my mind had decided, there must be a long discussion with Sri Aurobindo; specific questions needed to be asked, and if time was too short, at least one particular one was indispensable. Joy seemed to be overflowing. But time refused to move! A thought came that we could pass the time in sleep! But today that too became difficult; finally, since we were determined, the goddess of Sleep enveloped us. After waking up we got ready quickly and set off. We went to the seashore and after a brief walk reached Babuji's temple at 4.10 p.m. Several times we sent word to Amrita. He would only say: "Babuji will see you at five. You will be called." Thereafter we tried to spend the time in japa and meditation, but it was very difficult to keep waiting. Finally we were called at 5 p.m.

After pranam when Sri Aurobindo started speaking, I said: "Please indulge us by speaking in Gujarati."

He laughed and said: "I knew Gujarati when I was in Baroda but now I have forgotten it."

C: "You know everything."

He laughed and laughed.

C: "You can speak at least in Hindi."

Sri Aurobindo: "That too I don't know."

C: "You certainly know Hindi."

And then he spoke in Hindi explaining what is meditation.

During our stay of eight days, several other things happened. Sri Aurobindo asked me to try to see the Divine Shakti of the Lord that is at work everywhere, in everything. When I asked him what books I should read, he told me to read Prakriti Rahasya (Secret of Nature) in Gujarati and Shandilya's Bhakti Sutra. He explained the subject dealt with in Prakriti Rahasya and told me that it was written by a disciple of Motilal Roy of Chandernagore who lived in Navsari. When I read that book I experienced the awakening in me of something that perceived beauty everywhere.

Once I asked Sri Aurobindo: "When will I have realisation?"

In reply he told me the following story of Narada:

Two devotees were doing their sadhana in a forest for many years. Once when Narada passed by, one of them asked him, "Bhagavan [a form of addressing holy and venerable souls], you are regularly visiting the Lord. Would you kindly ask Him on my behalf when I shall be able to get His darshan?" A little further Narada met the second devotee. He too entreated him to ask the Lord the same question. On his return Narada told the first devotee, "You will see the Lord after as many births as there are leaves on the tree under which you are doing your tapasya." The devotee was utterly disappointed and gave up his sadhana. When Narada met the second devotee and told him the same thing, he felt unbounded joy and began to dance in delight: "Oh, after all I am certain to see the Lord!" The promise filled him with such an intense joy that he lost all sense of self and realised the Lord that very instant.

Thus Sri Aurobindo described to us how the time when we will realise the Divine depends on the one-pointedness and intensity of our aspiration.

When I asked Sri Aurobindo if we could see his room, he smiled, said "Yes", and pointed towards his room. The three of us went inside unescorted. There, on his table, I saw an old pocket-watch. A thought crossed my mind that if I had the means I would get a better watch for his use and request this one for myself. The thought arose and disappeared like a sudden wave. (It had an interesting sequel. One day, after I had settled here and started working with the Mother, she brought that watch and asked me if I would like to keep it. I was amazed but did not answer because I had firmly decided never to take anything from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, but to offer whatever I could. All the same she gave it to me.)

We had not decided on which day we would leave Pondicherry. On the eighth day we all felt it to be the last day; for every evening, when we took leave of Sri Aurobindo after being near him for an hour, he used to say, "Now, tomorrow." But this time he said, "Whenever you meet with a difficulty, remember me", and after a pause, "Write to me." So we understood it was the last day. The wonder was that all that we wanted to ask Sri Aurobindo, all that we had to tell him, was over in the first two or three days, and yet every day, when we were leaving he used to say, "Now, tomorrow." This shows how he showered his infinite grace to keep us in his presence for some more days.

- Champaklal

(Champaklal Speaks, by Champaklal, edited by M. P. Pandit, revised by Roshan, published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2002, pp. 6-14)

My First Meeting with Sri Aurobindo

As related to M. P. Pandit, August 1949.

It was April 1917. I had received an invitation in Madras to deliver a lecture in connection with the Shankara Jayanti celebrations at Pondicherry. There was some hesitation on my part in accepting the invitation, for the organisers of the function were known to be a rather orthodox set of gentlemen and though my way of life conformed to the usual standards of orthodoxy, I had my own doubts whether my opinions and views which ran counter to the rigidly conservative outlook would be palatable to my hosts. But they pressed their invitation. There was another and a more intimate factor which decided my choice. I had long wanted to see Sri Aurobindo. Here was an opportunity too good to be missed particularly since, as I fondly imagined then, the police would not bother one who goes on such a pious mission as to participate in a religious function like the Shankara Jayanti. Events, however, turned out to be otherwise; police attentions were not wanting, but that is a different story.

I had first heard of Sri Aurobindo under peculiar circumstances. In 1907, Bepin Pal had come down to Madras on his lecture tour and the city was all agog over his thunders on the Marina. Being caught up in the general whirlpool of the raging new spirit, I could not help attending those lectures. And it was after one of these that a friend, who was a college student then and later retired as the Principal of a local college, took me aside and said: "This Pal is a loud speaker; inspired, he orates, true, but he is not the chief leader. There is another man behind the scenes, working at the desk, giving directions. His name is Aurobindo Ghose — a saintly man, a Shakti-Upasaka." I got interested and when in the course of a year another friend returned from Nagpur where he attended a lecture by Sri Aurobindo (after the Surat Congress on his way from Bombay to Calcutta), I lost no time in getting as much information as possible from him. He was all admiration and respect while describing the leader. "He does not have a loud voice. But when he started speaking slowly in distinctive tones, we all felt a kind of rhythm creeping over the vast concourse and when the lecture was over, we woke up as if from an enchantment," he said. It is outside the scope of this brief narration to trace the course of my further acquaintance with Sri Aurobindo's activities and writings — first political and then the epoch-making Arya.

So then, I decided to take the trip with this main object of visiting Sri Aurobindo. On arrival at Pondicherry, I called at Poet Bharati's. He was then living in Ishwaran Dharmaraja Kovil Street and when I was announced, his little daughter led me up to the first floor where I found him singing:

Victory in this life is certain
O Mind, fear there is none.

Then after a pause he made enquiries of one or two friends in Madras. I had met Bharati before in Mylapore; the last I saw him was a little before 1907. But what a change! Circumstances had conspired to wreck the physique and the handsome and spirited face of the inspired poet, the national poet of Tamilnad; he was shrunken, pale and setting. Suddenly he burst out:

In the secret cave, O growing Flame,
Son of the Supreme.

I knew Bharati had some knowledge of Sanskrit which he had studied at Kashi but not that he had acquaintance with the Vedas deep enough to give expression to such an essentially Vedic Conception as the growing Flame in the heart of man. Besides, the poet identifies Agni as Guha, Kumara, son of the Supreme. When I asked him how he caught the idea, he gave an interesting explanation in the course of which he said:

"Yes, I have studied 200 hymns (I do not quite recollect whether he said hymns or Riks) under Aurobindo Ghose."

It was from Bharati himself that I learnt he got the inspiration and general knowledge of the Vedic gods and hymns from Sri Aurobindo. Later he translated into Tamil some of the Vedic hymns to Agni.

So the talk switched on to A.G. (as he used to be known in those days).

"Where is he living?" I asked.

"There," he pointed in the direction of the European quarters.

"I want to see him."

"But now-a-days he is very much disinclined to see people. I myself do not meet him as often as I used to do before. Anyway I shall ascertain."

"Please mention that I have come on a pilgrimage to him," I pressed, as if on impulse. Indeed the pilgrimage had commenced somewhere and that long ago.

Bharati wrote out a brief note in Tamil — a characteristically humorous one — to Nagaswami who was attending on Sri Aurobindo at that time, and signed himself as Shakti-Kumar, and he sent me with an escort to the house where Sri Aurobindo lived.

It was 3 p.m. when we arrived there. Nagaswami was obliging. He took the note, went up to A.G. and was back within a couple of minutes. "He will see you at 6 p.m. today," he said.

Dilemma of dilemmas! The hour for which I had looked forward with so much eagerness had arrived. But the timing was embarrassing. For precisely at 6 the meeting was also scheduled to commence at which the lecture was to be delivered. Neither of these could be missed. And yet both could not be fulfilled at the same time. "Was it the proverbial sattva-parīkṣā?" I wondered. I thought for a while and sent word to the organisers of the function that the meeting could commence a little later [than] the fixed hour.

At six, I was escorted up the stairs of the house of Sri Aurobindo. It is now known as the Guest House — which name it acquired after Sri Aurobindo shifted to another building now in the main Ashram block. As I went up the stairs and reached the threshold, there stretched in front of me a long hall with a simple table and two chairs at the centre. At the farther end was a room on the threshold of which stood Sri Aurobindo. Like a moving statue — such was his impersonal bearing — he advanced towards the table as I proceeded from my end and we both met at the centre. Like Rama, the Aryan model of courtesy and nobility held up by Valmiki, Sri Aurobindo spoke first, purva-bhāṣī. I had carried with me a lemon fruit as a humble expression of my esteem for him and after he sat down, I placed it on the table in his front and said: sudinam asid adya (a happy day today).

Sri Aurobindo leaned over to the youngster who was still there and seemed to ask him if I knew English. He was assured I knew and with what smattering of the language I had, we commenced the conversation. It would be an omission if I fail to tell here what happened the moment I stood face to face with Sri Aurobindo at the table.

The age is past when matters of this kind had to be kept to oneself and concealed from others for fear of scoffings from rationalists and sceptics. Man has come to realise that there are more things on earth and in heaven than are written in books and discovered in laboratories. Well, as soon I saw him, even from a distance, there was set in motion, all of a sudden, a rapid vibratory movement in my body from head to foot. There was a continuous thrill and throb. I seemed to stand on the top of a dynamo working at top speed and it was as powerful as it was new. It lasted for nearly four to five minutes. It did not really stop at all. In fact it continued ever since for long and every time I went to see him later, or for his Darshan after his retirement, the phenomenon tended to repeat itself.

A spiritual personality continually pours out spiritual emanations from within and it would seem that when any one with some secret affinity or even a point of contact somewhere in the being comes within the ambience of these vibrations, there is an attempt by something subtle in us to imbibe as much of these sustaining and strength-giving radiations as possible. But the physique not being so supple cannot support this occult commerce for long; it lacks the necessary nerve-force to keep up the flow and the physical palpitating movement is the result. Of course, I find this explanation now. All that I knew at that time and could not help knowing was that I was in the presence of an unusually mighty personality. Was it the sunflower turned to the sun, or was it the filings in a tremulous dance before a block of magnet or was he the mystic spider, ever watchful, taking his prey alive to preserve it within his web biding his hour?

I had three important questions to ask, two of them are not of moment here. The question of the country's future was naturally uppermost in my mind and I was eager to know what Sri Aurobindo thought of it. I wanted to have a word of hope, if that was possible, from this statesman and prophet, from this rare gift of God to the nation, in regard to the prospects before the country and asked:

"What are the immediate possibilities of India?"

"Why possibility? It is a certainty," he returned with emphasis.

The Hindu-Muslim problem was lurking in the minds of thinking politicians who were few; in spite of Tilak and the Lucknow Pact the fear was there. "We have to bargain and purchase patriotism from them," I put in. He agreed it was a serious hurdle but hoped that reform movements would come on and influence the progressive sections of the communities. "A larger Hinduism could find a solution and it is a necessity," he added thoughtfully.

It was seven o'clock now, the hour to which the lecture was postponed arrived and I rose to take leave. To a question of mine, while parting, he said: "You can come here tomorrow, but by this time."

Did I part the same person who came at six o'clock? Apparently I did. But not for long. For, something had happened to me of which I was not fully mindful nor did I imagine the full significance of what took place in my first meeting with Sri Aurobindo.

Something had been set going which carried me on its wings — this is more than a figure of speech — shuttling me from and back to him with an irresistible intensity till at last I came back to him six years later (1923), in a different role this time, as a seeker seeking the feet of the Teacher, and exclaimed marvelling at the change in his appearance:

"What other proof is required, Sire! Then your complexion was dark-brown, now it is fair; today the hue is a golden hue. Here is the concrete proof of the Yoga that is yours."

- T. V. Kapali Sastry

(Collected Works of T. V. Kapali Sastry, Volume 2, published by Dipti Publications, 1979, pp. 231–36)

You Are My All

In 1920 I heard Sri Aurobindo's name for the first time. I heard that Sri Aurobindo, a political leader, was doing yoga and always remained six inches above the ground! Naturally I was impressed by this. But slowly the memory faded. Then I heard his name again. In our school we had several boy-scout troops. Each of them was named after some great person — Vivekananda Troop, Tilak Troop, etc.; our troop was called "Aravinda Troop".

. . .

The aunt of our Kamalaben, Bhaktiba, was fond of me. I worked with her, as a volunteer works for his leader. In January 1924 Bhaktiba returned from a visit to Pondicherry and went to stay at Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's house. One afternoon I was spinning cotton in my hostel, for it was my day to do twenty-four hours' non-stop spinning. Bhaktiba sent Sardar Patel's nephew to me with a message, though it was four miles away from Sardar Patel's house. He came and said simply, "Bhaktiba has come from Pondicherry. She wants to see you."

I was spinning. The word "Pondicherry" went on re-echoing in my being. And in one moment everything else dropped away. . . . Everything was obliterated from the canvas of my consciousness. Only one thing remained: Pondicherry.

In this state of mind I went to meet Bhaktiba. She knew of my inner aspiration and my way of life. I would have done anything for her. She said, pronouncing my old name, "Chunnibhai! your place is not with us. Your place is with Aravinda Babu. Go to him."

I was only a youth. She was telling me to go to Aravinda Babu, but how should I go? Bhaktiba got permission for me from Sri Aurobindo and arranged everything for my trip. On 11 July 1924 I reached Pondicherry with my wife Kashibai — we had been married at the age of eight.

We arrived at the Ashram and sat at the place where the gate-keepers sit now. Amrita, then a young lad, came and said, "Chunnibhai, go upstairs. Sri Aurobindo is waiting for you." We both went up.

Dark-complexioned and lean, he was sitting in a massive chair. He asked, "Why have you come?" I answered, "For yoga." "What do you know of yoga?" he asked. But before I could answer he started speaking about yoga, and continued for almost an hour. He said many things, but I remember only this: that my heart simply became his and has remained his up to now, even after sixty-five years. People have questions and doubts, but no doubt ever arose in my mind, my heart never questioned. I felt, "You are my all. This is my life, this is my home." I did not call it "the Ashram", I called it "home". I had this unshakable conviction: "Sri Aurobindo is my Lord and Pondicherry my home. Whatever they have belongs to me. So I do not have to think of anything."

Kashibai offered her gold bangles to Sri Aurobindo. He asked, "What shall I do with them?" I replied, "You decide. If you want, sell them." And that one Darshan changed everything. Everything was settled.

. . .

For me, even before I came here, Sri Aurobindo was more than Lord Krishna.

Sri Aurobindo named Mirra Alfassa as the Mother in November 1926; but for me she had been the Mother since my first visit in 1924, even though I had not seen her then. In 1924 she was living in seclusion and people had to take special permission to see her. To some it was a question, "Who is the Mother?" but never for me.

- Dyuman

(As recorded by Shyam Kumari in How They Came to Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, Volume 1, published by Mother Publishing House, Bombay, 1990, pp. 1-3. The text was drafted by Shyam Kumari and seen and approved by Dyuman.)

Love at First Sight

I had the Darshan of the Mother for the first time in the Playground. That very first Darshan sealed my destiny. It was love at first sight. Ever since the [. . .] spiritual experience that I had at the age of fifteen, I had been in search of a person who could bring down paradise on earth. Now the search was ended. I had found her.

- Tarachand Barjatiya 

(How They Came to Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, Volume 1 by Shyam Kumari, published by Mother Publications, Bombay, 1990, p. 92)

Darshan of Sri Aurobindo

They were coming still, the stream of visitors to the Ashram swelled day by day till it grew into a flood on the day of darshan. Men, women and children, with their packages and their hold-alls, their Sunday Hindu and their umbrellas, crowded near the gate of the Ashram on the morning of the fifteenth of August 1943 — and the sadhaks discharging "gate duty" patiently coped with the rush with a quiet assurance, with a ready smile for one and all. From the four ends of India — from obscure nooks and by-paths, from distant cities and inaccessible hamlets — the pilgrims had assembled in Pondicherry in the vicinity of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

They had come braving the hundred and one annoyances minor and major that our imperfect society engenders in its midst; they had come — these princes and paupers, these financiers and politicians, these landlords and merchants, these poets and philosophers, these students and teachers, these sinners and saints, these seeming scoffers and these half-hearted believers — they had all converged towards the sanctum sanctorum, desiring to have darshan of Sri Aurobindo. Did they know — did all of them know — what darshan meant? What precise experience was in store for them, how exactly it was going to grow into their being and shape their future — they cared not, perhaps, to speculate about all this or, if they did, their minds were baffled in an instant and they quickly gave up the struggle.

Maybe, it was only an idle curiosity that brought some of the visitors to Pondicherry; maybe, some had caught the contagion of enthusiasm from their friends and had therefore proceeded to the Ashram on darshan day to put their half-baked aspirations through the acid test of experience, so that the fluidities of enthusiasm may harden into the pure gold of faith or — failing in the test — break into so many drops and atoms of disillusionment; maybe, some had accidentally chanced to read Yoga and Its Objects or Baji Prabhou or Heraclitus or The Mother or an instalment or two of The Future Poetry, had been swept off their feet, the spark thus enkindled had, day by day, hour by hour, blazed into a bonfire of adoration — unreasoned, irrational adoration — and the poor victims had by sheer gravitational pull, been drawn to the Ashram, they had to count the minutes, the seconds, that divided them from the "unhoped-for elusive wonder" . . . "the illimitable" . . . "the mighty one" . . . "the minstrel of infinity"; maybe, again, some had learned by slow degrees to follow and admire the career of Sri Aurobindo as a nationalist, as a poet, as a philosopher, and yet had failed to go further, had in fact nurtured a giant scepticism about the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, had even — once or twice — dubbed it all mysticism and moonshine, and had accordingly, come to satisfy themselves whether their own views were not, after all, the correct views, Sri Aurobindo was not, essentially, a poet and an apostle of nationalism rather than a saint and a mahāyogin.

There were men and women of all categories, and children too of all categories, some carrying heaven in their hearts, others merely frolicsome and gay, many suddenly charmed and chastened by the Ashram atmosphere, but few stubbornly resisting even its invisible currents and persisting in their own unique life-force movements and convolutions.

One heard casual remarks, stray greetings, whispered confidences. The premises of the Ashram were filled with a suppressed excitement. One heard the accents of many Indian languages. One idly wandered hither and thither: one gazed and gazed about oneself and — one felt fairly at home in those seemingly exotic and unusual surroundings. What did it matter if one didn't know who one's neighbour was? One knew what he was, or seemed to be, — a co-pilgrim to the shrine of fulfilment. One might speak to one's neighbour if occasions arose — or if the formal introductions had been made — but it was safer, on the whole, to sit or move about quietly. It was better to participate in the luxurious repast of silence; it was more becoming to seek refuge in the wisdom and strength of a chastening and uplifting reticence.

Many of the sādhaks, and many even among the visitors, had a noticeably abstracted air. They sat, by themselves or in little clusters, on the pavements or on the steps of a flight of stairs — and seemed to be lost in thought; of them perhaps it was written:

wisdom's self
Oft seeks a sweet retired solitude,
Where with her best nurse contemplation
She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings,
That in the various bustle of resort
Were all too ruffled and sometimes impaired.

And there were others too — other groups and clusters — and the men and women were agitatedly conversing in pointed jerks, expressive gesticulations, and impatient exclamations. But the generality belonged, perhaps, to neither of these categories. The majority of those who had come to the Ashram for the first time wore just a puzzled air: they had indeed come to an Ashram, they were on the threshold of a unique experience (if the sādhaks were to be believed), they were suddenly projected into a strange new world — and they just wondered, they wondered in their ignorance, they wondered in their humility and awe, they just wondered whither all that pageantry was leading, what priceless revelation was waiting for them round the corner, and how exactly they were going to embalm it and preserve it during all the savourless tomorrows of their star-crossed lives.

The queue was being formed at last. It was about two in the afternoon. It was a bright day in Pondicherry, and it was a great day for Pondicherry. The queue was forming, and though the endless line of pilgrims hardly seemed to move, it actually did move on; the coil curved upwards towards the library and reading room, and curved downwards, emerging into the garden, followed for a little while a straight course, soon turning sharply towards the meditation hall. It moved on, like an impossibly long centipede, enveloping the pillars, scaling the stairs now in one direction now in another and at last reaching the very hall, the very spot. . . . The queue was long, with its cusps and crests, links and breaks, its ascents and descents, it swayed and moved, it stopped and moved and swayed, and a hushed expectancy filled the pores and cells of the human frame and even the very chambers of the obscure human heart. How patiently they awaited their proper chance — how statuesque many of them stood, their eyes avoiding the midday glare of the sun, their fingers firmly clasping the Tulsi garland or the fair white flower or the bright red rose — they waited and they moved, they moved and they prayed. "I cannot believe. . . I want to believe. . . I must believe. . . I will believe. . . let me believe" . . . thus even the agnostic prayed, and hope and despair warred in his bosom, and he held the garland in a yet firmer grasp.

The last turn was taken. One's eyes grazed over the intervening pilgrims and rested on the two figures seated together in unblenched majesty and aura serene. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo! The great moment had come . . . the presence was a flood of Light and Truth . . . and the mere mind staggered under the blow, the mere human frame lurched forward mechanically, but the eyes were held irretrievably in a hypnotic spell. Thought was impossible then . . . the mind had abdicated its sovereignty for the nonce . . . and one (dare one say it?) had become almost a living soul. The crowning moment of all! One faced the Mother, one faced the Master . . . it was impossible to stand the smile, it was impossible to stand the penetrating scrutiny of those piercing eyes. A second or two, perhaps, no more . . . but how can one take count of the fleeting units of Time? One rather glimpsed then the splendorous truth — "There shall be no more Time!" Eternity was implicated in a grain of Time . . . one all but crossed the boundaries of Space and Time . . . one experienced a sudden upsurge of glory that was nevertheless grounded on a bottomless humility. And — but already one was out of the room!

The pulses of life started beating once again; the wires, the machinery of the mind were resuming their work once more; the feet knew whither they should go. The heart was agog still with the agitations of the hour — and one returned to one's room to gather, to piece together, the thousand and one fancies, the thousand and one aspirations, that had welled up in prodigious exuberance during that one great moment of timeless Time. One grew quieter, serener, one registered a feeling of singular, inexpressible fulfilment. One was abnormally calm, but one was also radiantly, almost divinely, happy!

The presence that thus flooded my storm-tossed soul and chastened it with the gift of grace bore little resemblance to the published photographs and even less to one's deliberate mental imaginings. And yet — how can I account for it? — it was a truly familiar face. Where had I seen the Master before? I had seen Him ever so often — yet where? The mind raced through the dizzy corridors of thirty-five years of terrestrial life . . . where, O where had I seen His face before? Was it the face of Zeus that had once held me enraptured as I chanced upon it in a book of mythology? . . . Or was it rather the face of Aeschylus? — Perhaps, Vasishta looked even like this when he blessed Dasaratha's son; and it was thus, perhaps, that Valmiki sat when the whole of Ramayana, to the minutest particularity, shaped itself before his wise and lustrous eyes! And the vision of the Mother and of the Master — were they in very truth the cosmic Mahashakti and the all-highest Ishwara? — the vision remained, the experience persisted, the memory of the smile eased yet the multitudinous pricks of the work-a-day world, and the memory of the brahmatej, austere yet inconceivably beautiful, that was resplendent on Sri Aurobindo's face yet gave one the hope and the strength to bear the heavy and the weary weight of all this unintelligible world — nay, gave one even the strength to aspire to change it all and boldly to nurture the incipient hope that even the frailest and the foulest clay can evolve — however long the journey and arduous the path — into the supermanhood of the Gnostic Being and the triune glory of Sachchidananda!

- K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar

(This article was written by Dr. K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar in August 1943 immediately after his first darshan — before, in fact, he completed the first draft of his well-known book on Sri Aurobindo. It was printed in November of the same year in a paper called Human Affairs published from Udipi. That paper has been discontinued for many years. The article is of particular interest as having been the author's very first piece of writing on the Master, a charming passage towards a corpus of biographical and expository literature that is, to use one of his happy pet adjectives, "multifoliate" and, to employ accurately for once an epithet too frequently cheapened, "brilliant". — K.D.S.)

(Mother India, August 1969 pp. 492–95)

'Encounter' with the Infinite

It was in 1941 that I first saw the 'siddhi' photograph of Sri Aurobindo in the house of V. Chandrashekharan's niece. His bright eyes transfixed on some distant splendour, he looked a Jnani of the Timeless with a special magnetism of his own, and destined to salvage the human race. An unaccountable wonder captivated me forever. Thereafter I kept my initiation alive by reading whatever little informative literature I could procure from friendly sources. A few booklets on his sublime philosophy and Yoga served only to whip up my hunger for the Illimitable.

Five years later, in 1946, as a student of M.A. Philosophy, I had the singular opportunity of reading the first volume of The Life Divine for detailed study as part of our post-graduate syllabus. And Prof. S. K. Maitra was our esteemed teacher and guide. Indeed it was providential. In a well modulated voice he would slowly read line by line the Master's magnum opus, leaving us all not a little dumbfounded and bewildered — dumbfounded because of the overwhelming theme, and bewildered because we could not understand by ourselves the high argument of the supreme Yogi. Moreover, our Professor would not at all condescend to explain it. With the result that while our interest in the monumental work steadily increased, our enthusiasm was not correspondingly served or spawned. After three months of painful endurance, at the behest of two of my close friends and benchmates, I ventured to request our sage-professor to explain the text to which he said simply, "Even if I explain it now you will not understand it, but a time will come when you will understand everything." The truth is that nothing of Sri Aurobindo can be understood except by the merciful agency of the Mother's Grace.

None of my friends then knew anything of the Ashram at Pondicherry. The stray stories that wafted in the groups were both amusing and mystifying. One such incredible narration bordering on fabrication was that Sri Aurobindo remained in his room ever absorbed in the Transcendent oblivious to the earthly environment. And that during Darshan time he was wrapped up in dhoti by his close disciples and presented as the presiding Yogi-figure of the Ashram. During this period I scribbled a few lines of poetry, entitled it 'Consciousness', and sent it to the Ashram as my humble tribute-offering to the great Master. Promptly I received a postcard from Anilbaran who while acknowledging receipt of my letter significantly observed: "We are happy to note that people in the universities are taking interest in Sri Aurobindo."

I was in the final year of my Master's programme when I discontinued my studies to contribute my wee bit to the freedom struggle in my home State. Soon I got disillusioned by the nature of the struggle, and withdrew to a distant place where I could read all the three tomes of The Life Divine. Finally, I decided to go to Pondicherry to have Sri Aurobindo's Darshan on 15.8.1949.

To go to French Pondicherry in those days it was required to have a visa permit of sorts both from the Nizam's Government as well as from the Madras Central Secretariat. The City Police Commissioner, Hyderabad, very wryly remarked, "Why do you want to go to Pondicherry? Those who have gone there have either never returned or keep commuting again and again." I did not answer, and kept quiet. It was a call — an irresistible summons from beyond. Earlier I had written to the Mother for permission to visit the Ashram. She graciously permitted me to do so. Subsequently I obtained her permission also for my brother, L.

Parc à Charbon was the place of our stay in the Ashram, it already gave us a mystic feel of the unique 'grotto' of dynamic tapasyā.

Here is an intimate account of my adoring encounter with the Infinite — of the meeting of wayside human man with the almighty Divine Man, of a close reckoning of the mystery of new birth of an almost lost soul. Wandering for long through the wilderness of Time the pilgrim had at last arrived at the gates of the Timeless. Voyaging aimlessly across the uncharted seas of stark ignorance he had stepped on the frontiers of infinite Light.

It was the 15th of August, 1949. The Ashram was more like a veritable beehive resplendent with immortal Soma. Seeker-souls from different parts of the world had converged upon the place to drink to their fill the ambrosia of divine life. In the very atmosphere there was the charge of effulgent silence; a celestial peace had precipitated as it were around us all. And we waited patiently and prayerfully for the great event.

In addition to the inmates there were several hundred visitors waiting to have a glimpse of the great Master. At the scheduled hour the queued up devotees fully drenched with devotion started moving slowly in a state of semi-trance towards the Darshan room on the first floor.

On entering the front room, to my utter surprise, I found it fully charged with golden light. The meagre furniture, the windows and walls seemed to radiate a powerful vibration. Verily, it was a chamber of golden sunshine. Very soon I discovered the radiant source. It was Sri Aurobindo sitting in an empyrean posture in the adjoining front room facing the approaching devotees. Lo and behold, I saw the one and only God — the Purushottama, the Golden Purusha. I was deluged by a flood of deep silence and honeyed light. There was installed in our midst the very embodiment of celestial splendour — a Guru with sublime dimension, a God with infinite span. The cosmos itself was like a temple built in honour of his advent, and I felt certain that a thousand suns must have borrowed their radiance from the glowing face of Sri Aurobindo. The wonderment is too towering and massive for words!

Divi sūryasahasrasya bhaved yugapad-utthitā
yadi bhāḥ sadṛśī sā syād bhāsas-tasya mahātmanaḥ.
(Gita, XI. 12)

If the light of a thousand suns were to flare forth all at once in the sky that might resemble in some measure the splendour of that Supreme Being.

His eyes of light had transformed me into a transparent facade, his distant luminous look transported me into another world of pure consciousness. The exhilarating and extraordinary Vedic experience, once again came alive and vibrant before my soul's eyes:

Idaṃ śreṣṭhaṃ jyotiṣtāṃ jyotir-uttamaṃ viśvajid dhanajid ucyate bṛhat
(RV X. 170. 3)

It is this Light, the best and foremost of all Lights, the Veda declares, is the all-conquering and radiant winner of felicities many.

The Supreme, for the ancient Rishis, is suffused with light; he is the perennial source and the unbounded body of light. Diffusing glory and grace, the All-Creator is the apotheosis of infinite radiance:

Vibhrājañ jyotiṣā svar-agaccho rocanaṃ divaḥ
yenema viśvā bhuvanany-abhṛtā viśvakarmaṇā viśvadevyāvatā.
(RV X. 170. 4)

Illumining the universe with thy radiance Thou hast scaled the shining score of heavens. It is by Thee that all living beings are supported, Thou art indeed the all-Creator and the divine substance of everything.

His lambent looks penetrating through all inner spaces, indeed he appeared as the very embodiment of the Infinite and Eternal. He was here upon earth to give a new lease of life to earth itself and radically change forever its course of evolution. Seized with an unnameable beatitude I felt pulled towards his radiant feet in utter gratitude.

After seeing Sri Aurobindo on 29.3.1914 the Mother wrote in her diary the next morning:

It matters not if there are hundreds of beings plunged in densest ignorance. He whom we saw yesterday is on earth: His presence is enough to prove that a day will come when darkness shall be transformed into light, when Thy reign shall be indeed established upon earth.

And what must have happened to the limited and vainglorious mortal human mind of a university educated youth? A tidal wave of super-reason had swept him off his feet. No longer was seen anywhere the rule of limping dialectics, only the logic of the Infinite reigned supreme. The very presence of the Supreme had melted down all that dross and gross of his embodied existence. Verily, it was an alchemy of Grace! Did not Sri Aurobindo precisely come for that, come to totally transform, nay to spiritualise our inconscient earth?

By the side of Sri Aurobindo, to his right, was seated a figure of tangible Love and Grace wrapped up in sheer compassion — the Mother of infinite felicities. With folded hands, totally soaked with the sovereign radiances of the twin infinitudes, I offered my humble Pranams to Them from an intimate distance as no one was allowed to touch Their hallowed feet. The world around had lost its solidity, Time itself had stilled, and I returned to my lodgings in a state of mystic somnambulism.

In the evening I went to the nearby beach; sitting on the seafront wall I watched the immense expanse of waters. But compared with what I had seen in the morning it was a mere play-plaza.

Nearly thirty years later when I happened to narrate to N my 'golden' experience of Sri Aurobindo, he listened with solicitous silence, and thereafter asked me to repeat what I had seen of the Lord. Yes, he was of golden complexion, radiating golden light — the supreme Sun of all suns. Many years of intense Yoga had indeed mellowed down his otherwise light brownish dark complexion but still he was not golden yellow as I had seen him, said N. He then added: "Once he (Sri Aurobindo) told us that his subtle physical body had that complexion." Nevertheless I had to go by what my eyes had seen, pratyakṣa pramāṇa. When I had the unique good fortune of having his darshan again in August, 1950, then too I saw him as before as the ultimate of golden radiance. What could be seen only after absolute and impeccable purification of the senses and by deep and profound reflection was revealed to me by his transcendent Grace.

My adoration and my gratitude are laid at his refulgent feet.

- V. Madhusudan Reddy

(The Alchemy of Her Grace – Grateful Remembrances by V. Madhusudan Reddy, published by Institute of Human Studies, Hyderabad, 1996, pp. 1–8)

Do You Remember?

Do you remember the climb up the narrow twisting stairs?
Do you remember waiting on the terrace above the tops of
trees, clutching your bunch of flowers
and listening to the sound, in winter,
of the mumbling sea?
Do you remember those noisy crows looking in her window?
Do you remember then the call and the gesture and the
open door and the room filled with light?
Do you remember sometimes not even finding her for a
moment in all that light?
Do you remember the look? The investigations? Now then,
she seemed to be saying, what have we
got here. And then the reaching out. . .
Do you remember her laughter, like ancient crystal bells?
Do you remember your tears, happy as rainclouds?
Do you remember her silences?
Do you remember her "hey?" when you couldn't untangle your tongue?
Do you remember the fragrance of her silver hands?
Do you remember the touch, as gentle as a child's kiss?
And do you remember her grip when she
held you as firm as the foundations
of the universe?
Do you remember the eternal depths of her eyes?
Do you remember the infallibility of her choice when
she gave you back flowers? And when
she gave you roses, do you remember
the roses? O God, what roses!
Do you remember the way she peeled your blessings
packet from the bundle as if they
were the Lord's rupee notes?
Do you remember leaving, and her crisp and clean
formidable strength going out with you?
And do you remember promising yourself that this time,
this time, you would keep her with you for ever. . .
Do you remember?

- Norman Thomas (Navoditte)

(Invocation – An Anthology of Spiritual Poems selected by Lloyd Hefman and Vignan Agni, published by IntEnt, Auroville, 2007)

My First Darshan

My first Darshan was in the Meditation Hall upstairs.

There is a big sofa there even now — Mother and Sri Aurobindo used to sit on it and give us Darshan. At that time we were very few in the Ashram, and very few visitors were permitted for Darshan. The day previous to the Darshan, or two days in advance, the list of the names of all those who would be going for it was made and put up in the hall downstairs for everyone to read. One copy of it used to be with Sri Aurobindo at Darshan time. According to the order in which the names were written in the list, we had to go, and when Sri Aurobindo saw a new person coming he took up the list to see who that person was. I have still with me the list of the names of the people who went for Darshan on 21st February 1928. I should have brought it to show to you.

I was to go for Darshan with my brother. We took flowers — we could offer flowers. From outside the Hall, from the staircase steps we could see what the previous person was doing but we would enter the Hall only individually. Each one was allowed some time to make his offering and do Pranam to both Mother and Sri Aurobindo. Generally the Darshan would start at about 6 or 6.30 in the morning. It did not last very long as there were not many people, but still it lasted two or three hours as people were allowed some time. Since we used to see Sri Aurobindo only thrice a year, we were not hurried on.

On the day of my first Darshan there were about 65 people — sadhaks plus visitors. In the afternoon Mother would distribute among the sadhaks the garlands received at Darshan time. She gave each one of us a garland. And then at night we used to get soup from her, as on all other days. But on Darshan days we used to decorate with flowers a canopy over her seat.

That very year or the next, the Darshan room was changed. The Darshan was held in the small room at the further end of the upstairs Meditation Hall.

- Vasudha

(Mother India, August 1975, p. 639)

Recollections

1. First "Darshan" of the Mother

My first sight of the Mother was on the very day I reached Pondicherry on December 16, 1927. I had been taken by Pujalal, who had received my wife and me at the station, to Purani's room — previously Sri Aurobindo's for 6 years and afterwards mine for 9. Looking out the north window I saw the Mother walking on the roof-terrace of her house, drying in the sun her just-shampooed hair. This was the most enchanting vision and my heart leapt out to her and since then has kept leaping. The word "leap" is very appropriate to my response to her as compared to my answer to the Divine Call through Sri Aurobindo. I do not leap but sweep towards Sri Aurobindo. A warm deeply reverent continuity of movement is experienced in regard to him, whereas in regard to the Mother there is always a swift and sudden movement of exultation. If I may pick up a clue from this last word, I may say that face to face with the Mother I feel my heart intensely exultant. Fronting Sri Aurobindo I know my heart to be immensely exalted. The heart is concerned and dynamised in either case — profound love is astir, but on the one side it is tugged by a dazzle of beauty and bliss while on the other it is drawn by a tranquil glow of compassionate grandeur.

15.6.1992

2. First Darshan Day

. . . my first Darshan Day was approaching — it was the 21st of February [1928], the Mother's birthday. People were not very encouraging at that time, they left me in doubt whether I would be able to attend the Darshan or not. Up to almost the last minute I didn't know my fate. I had to go and scrutinise the list of names put up. At last I found my name. "Good!" I said, "I am lucky to be allowed." Later I took my place in the queue. Of course in those days the queue was a small one: I think there were only 40 people staying in the Ashram and perhaps as many visitors.

The Darshan used to be in the long front room upstairs. I went in my turn — first, of course, to the Mother because Sri Aurobindo I didn't know, while the Mother I had seen again and again. I knelt down at her feet, she blessed me; then I went to Sri Aurobindo's feet and looked at him. My physical mind came right to the front: "What sort of a person is Sri Aurobindo? How does he look?" I saw him sitting very grandly, with an aquiline nose, smallish eyes, fine moustaches and a thin beard. . . . I was examining him thoroughly. At length I made my Pranam. He put both his hands on my head — that was his way — a most delightful way with his very soft palms. I took my leave, looking at him again. . . .

The next day I met the Mother and asked her: "Mother, did Sri Aurobindo say anything about me?" She answered: "Well, he just said that you had a good face."

3. An Impression of Radiance

Q: Would you describe your first darshan with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother? What experiences did you have with them?

The first darshan with the Mother I had the impression of a radiance all around her. When I first saw Sri Aurobindo I had the sense of something leonine, as well as a mountainous calm. He leaned forward and blessed me with both hands about my head. The Mother kept smiling all the time as if to set me at ease in the presence of Sri Aurobindo. My turn to go to them was to follow an American couple that I overheard discussing whom to bow to first. They solved the problem by bowing between them. This way they touched the feet of neither but had the rare experience of being blessed by both of them at the same time.

. . . Sri Aurobindo had a soft, very soft voice, I am told, but I never heard him speak.

(1999)

- Amal Kiran (K. D. Sethna)

1. Life-Poetry-Yoga, Some Personal Letters, Vol. 3, pp. 30–31.
2. Light and Laughter — Some Talks at Pondicherry by Amal Kiran and Nirodbaran, "Talk One" delivered by Amal on August 26, 1970, p. 14.
3. The Golden Path – Interviews with Disciples of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother from the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and Auroville by Anie Nunnally, published by East West Cultural Center, California, 2004, pp. 11–12.

A Child at Play

Q: Tell me about your early days in the Ashram.

Well, I was just an infant and there was actually not much of an Ashram community at that time and no school. I remember one story that my father [A.B. Purani] told about me when I was still in the crawling stage. My father's quarters were just across from Sri Aurobindo's rooms. The talks with sadhaks would take place in the evenings. The sadhaks meditated, also, with Sri Aurobindo and perhaps I heard them speaking about meditation. Sometimes, as Sri Aurobindo's room had swinging doors, I would crawl into Sri Aurobindo's room and settle into a chair. My father would come looking for me and apologise to Sri Aurobindo and ask me, "What are you doing?" I would say "jeu, jeu". At times doors to both quarters were left open. One night I crawled from my father's flat into Sri Aurobindo's rooms and I was heard repeating the words "dana", "dana". It was surmised that I had heard the sadhaks during these evening talks discussing sadhana so often that I was trying to imitate the sound of the word!

- Anu Purani

(The Golden Path – Interviews with Disciples of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother from the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and Auroville by Anie Nunnally, published by East West Cultural Center, California, 2004, pp. 179–80)

My First Darshan

07.11.71

In 1969, while running a TV magazine in Holland, I one day remarked to a close musician friend of mine: "Oh dear, I wish I had something to believe in . . . I have so much energy and it's such a waste to use it only for these dumb little stories we have to feed the public with. . . !"

Some weeks later my friend brought me a magazine, Bres Planète, in which I found an article by Ruud Lohman, "They build their own city". "I think this is what you are looking for!" said my friend. I read the article, got in touch with a contact address given in it, went to a reading with slide shows and started reading Satprem's The Adventure of Consciousness, in Dutch.

New worlds opened for me. . . Yes, yes, yes . . . I kept thinking and feeling and sensing, this was it for me.

In order not to come with empty hands, I kept my job for another year, and it was in September 1971, after a half year of travelling in India (because "once I disappear in Auroville, I probably never will get out of it. . .") that I arrived in Pondicherry, now Puducherry.

Immediately attracted by the very special energy field prevailing in the Ashram, I inwardly had the strong sense that I first needed to get closer, more familiar, more intimate with the Mother before going to Auroville. So I decided to remain in the Ashram for some time.

And then a bizarre problem arose. . . . While I had given up my all and everything, had burned all my ships in order to come to the Mother and Auroville, I now found myself embodying an enormous resistance. For days and days I walked around Pondy, in the park, at the beach, sat in the Playground, and near the Samadhi, continually struggling with thoughts like, "How can she be divine. . . , she was married. . . , even had children. . . , what is divine anyway. . ." etc, etc. . . Until the day came that I finally shook myself, realising, "What on earth do I care who she is or what she did. . . , let me listen to her message at least. . !"

Having made up my mind, I then was ready. I asked for a darshan and, when the day came, went to the Ashram's flower section to search for a flower to give to Mother. When asked which flower I wanted, I had absolutely no idea and suggested they give me something white.

A friendly sadhak gave me a bunch of white plumeria and there I went, to the Samadhi, waiting downstairs. . . , waiting up the stairs. . . , waiting half way. . . , it was a dreamlike, timeless waiting with a strange sort of intensity, as if there was no past and no future. . . , just a very full everlasting moment of waiting. . . , awaiting. . . .

It was as if the space outside of me and the space inside of me had become exactly the same, mingling and getting stronger and stronger. . . , I could hear its sound. . .

And then I found myself in the room. . . and there she was. . . , so very, very fragile and almost transparent. . . , almost blue. . . She was so light. . . , hardly sitting in her chair, — and the space intensified, throbbing, sounding. . .

When it was my turn I gave my flower and knelt down for her as I had seen the ones before me do. In one of Sri Aurobindo's Letters On Yoga I had read that one had to "let Mother look into your heart", so in all my naiveté I looked up at her, opening my eyes for her to look into them. I didn't look at her face, at her looks, I just held my head a bit backwards and found myself opening my eyes, wide, like doors.

And there it came. . . , it was as if two beams or streams bored themselves, very steadily and gradually straight down into me. . . , almost like two rods physically drilling downwards, very slowly, very gently. . . And after staying there for some silent, ageless, timeless time. . . , the two beams very gently and slowly withdrew again. I felt them leaving me, and then. . . I looked at her. . . I saw her face, and she saw mine. . . , and we smiled and smiled. . . , and I felt her little tick on the top of my head and someone gave me a flower, and I floated and smiled and beamed out of the room, downstairs, into the world. . .

The message had been received . . . and from that time onwards everything, everything was different. . .

- Mauna

A Peace and a Bliss that Did 'Pass All Understanding'

But it is one thing to be conscious of one's congenital handicaps and quite another to get rid of these. The first step, however, is to grow conscious. This I learnt from the Mother herself who told me, the very first thing, that in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga one had to aspire intensely and sleeplessly to the consciousness of what we were in every strand of our being — to become keenly aware, that is, how far we were from what we had to become. She told me also what I had never heard before I met her — that the very act of consciousness was in a way a movement in the direction of transformation. It sounded to my ears a little queer albeit strangely convincing because I took her to mean (by a simile which occurred to me) that it was as if the right diagnosis itself brought automatically the right medicines! But that is another story.

. . .

I saw and talked to Sri Aurobindo for the first time in 1924. I have given a faithful record of my conversations with him in my Among the Great. I have described there the magnetic pull I felt directly I came in contact with his radiant personality. But I did not adequately describe something else: he induced in me often enough a peace and bliss that did "pass all understanding". I remember how I simply sat alone in silent causeless ecstasy for hours and hours, especially after a contact with him however fleeting. To think that even a momentary glimpse of him, after standing in a long weary queue, could father such spells of the most marvellous bliss! It was years ago but I can even today recapture my first experience of the kind as if it happened only yesterday! I may as well say something about it in a few words though I wonder if it will mean anything to those who have never had the experience.

Let me own at the outset that I have never visioned anything out of the common while or after seeing him or even talking with him — as has happened with many another. And how often have I bitterly regretted that he did not (as I put it to him ignorantly then) grant me so much as a glimpse of a miracle star or a flash of light or some form of ether and flame, as had fallen to the lot of so many and so frequently! I could almost see my fat self-esteem melt away under my nose as, time and time again, they came — these who were not even his disciples — and recounted to me in thrilled voices, what they had seen! Could I, after such repeated discomfitures, help bearing him a grudge as it were for having conjured up nothing for me to glimpse as I contemplated his marvellous face of calm and light? Nothing of the sort I had looked forward to ever happened, I saw nothing in full consciousness, then or afterwards, which I could sing hallelujah to in a triumphant accent.¹ Nay, I was no authentic mystic, I said to myself with a sigh, not even a clairvoyant, woe is me!

But mystic or not, I did feel something, sometimes, which might have been acclaimed by me as equally startling if not miraculous had not my preconceptions led me to focus my expectation on something entirely different — something I missed and therefore regretted, regretted and therefore repined, repined and therefore blamed myself till, at the end of the logical sequence, I decided, with a pang in my heart that I was a fellow too matter-of-fact by temperament to be declared passport-worthy to the Treasurer of the apocalyptic thrills of Yoga.

But something did come through — something at least as unforgettable as what my Guru humorously dubbed "yogic miracles". What happened was that I felt that wherever I looked dripped bliss — sheer, unqualified, flawless bliss and what amazed me was that I could not trace its genesis in any shape or form. And once it was so intense and unwaning, this all-pervasive bliss, that I could not help feeling a little intrigued in the midst of my causeless rapture and asked myself how I would describe it if a friend were to drop in and cross-examine me as to its exact nature. A curious question formulated itself instantly (I was sitting intoxicated on the beach alone), "What is it that a human being loves most in life?" The answer burgeoned at once equally from nowhere, voiced by my heart in ecstasy: "Air and light." And startled, as though my heart had suddenly developed a tongue, I heard it say to my imaginary cross-examiner in a voice deep with intoxication: "Well, what I feel is something that can enable me not to miss even light and air, supposing somebody kept me in a dark underground cell for the rest of my life."

A strange question and a strange answer! And what is perhaps stranger still is that the experience was repeated several times in my Ashram life though it did not last as long as it did when it possessed me for the first time: for full two days and a half.

But miraculous though it may sound to believers, hard-baked rationalists are unlikely to be impressed by this response which culminated so often in ecstasy. But as Gurudev has shown us by his luminous life how to live up to the supreme teaching of the Karma-yoga of the Gita: "You have right to works but not to fruits thereof," so without taking cognisance of the rational explanations of omniscient psycho-analysts who would explain it all away by word-spinning — like auto-suggestion, wish-fulfilment, hypertrophy of human or religious sensitiveness and what not — I would just recapitulate here a vivid experience I had on the 15th of November, 1928 in Lucknow: in other words, the antecedent call whose cumulative effect invoked the subsequent response. Those who have never experienced "a call", as mystics put it, may not find it convincing, but those who know something about spiritual verities will not, I am sure, find my description uninteresting in spite of the inadequacy of my penmanship. I only regret that I will have to put it briefly because to tell it as I should would require too much space . . . .

When I left Sri Aurobindo in 1924 — as I have described in my Among the Great — he did, in effect, reject me calling my seeking a mere "mental" one. I was indeed cut to the quick but I simply had to wait till I might develop in me the strength I then lacked to cut the Gordian knot, to exploit a vivid if a well-known metaphor.

But, as it turned out with me, I did not find that mere waiting helped; rather it increased my deep reluctance to take refuge in him unconditionally. Besides, I had felt anything but at my ease in the silent atmosphere in and about the Ashram. I was still too social and merry and free-lance to relish the prospect of capitulating overnight to the grim Judiciary of Yoga, as I often put it in my care-free irreverence. I knew indeed that I was a seeker, but a seeker still vowed to reason as his conscience-keeper. The motto of the great Paul Valerie still rang in my ears: "Bacon dirait que cet intellect est un idole. J'y consens, mais je n'en ai trouvé de meilleur."²

At the same time, my father's mysticism recurred to me: the devotional songs he had composed towards the end of his life I often sang now in a moved voice and with a deepening nostalgia (I translate here the closing lines of one of these):

My day is done . . . a truce to chaffering . . .
My debts are paid . . . I hear footfalls of Night . . .
World-weary now, to thee, O Mother, I cling:
Grant me thy lap where the dark dissolves in white.

My grandfather also: had he not turned eventually from agnosticism to God-reliance? Had he not said on his deathbed that he did not want to be consoled, since the One who had provided for him so well in this world would surely take equal care of him in the next!

But, unlike them, I was in a peculiar position, a dilemma: on the one hand I was called to cut away from my moorings here and now while, on the other, I had not yet won anything which I might hold on to; so I hesitated and suffered till, in the end, I blurted it out to a friend who has since departed this life. He gave me a quizzical smile and said: "I will buy a ticket for you tomorrow; make straight for your Guru's Ashram where you belong. Surrender all you have and are to him."

"It's all very well to suggest remedies," I demurred ruefully. "But are you sure of the diagnosis?"

Being a medical man he smiled appreciatively. Then he looked straight at me and asked: "What is the trouble?"

"I wish I knew," I answered bitterly. "I only know that I am groping and suffering in deep darkness. My Guru has not given me anything tangible yet. Surely you don't expect me to give up everything for nothing?"

His face fell.

"Dilip," he said, after a pause, "you have been weighed and found wanting. You are bargaining with the Divine! Quid pro quo?³ This is not the spirit which had moved those who staked their all in the past for the All-in-all. I was mistaken in you."

The shaft went home . . . . The whole night I could not sleep: I was bargaining! . . . bargaining! . . . bargaining . . . I felt small in my own eyes . . . . And yet I could not take the plunge.

The next morning I sat down to meditate. I prayed to Gurudev as never before. Suddenly, when I found the pain in my heart unbearable, something happened. I cannot explain what it was but I felt that this time it was he who came to me.

I got up and took the next available train — in twenty minutes — to Bombay en route for Pondicherry after despatching him a telegram.

* * *

Mother told me, on November 22nd, that I had had a sudden psychic opening and so I had heard his call.

- Dilip Kumar Roy

(Sri Aurobindo Came to Me by Dilip Kumar Roy, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1952, pp. 26-33)

Kali, the Destroyer of Obstacles

I came to Pondicherry from London at the very start of 1972. I had wanted to come immediately after I discovered Sri Aurobindo and the Mother a few months earlier, but the Bangladesh war intervened. Having used the months of waiting to read much of the works of Sri Aurobindo, I arrived at the Ashram and very soon met Navajata. I don't know what he saw, but he mentioned me to the Mother and She asked me to come to see Her. I went to Her a few days later, which was perhaps the 17th of February. It was a totally unexpected grace to see Her; I knew that She was seeing very few people at that time. I went to see Her again on the 20th of February, which was my birthday. And again I saw Her on the 21st at the Darshan at the Ashram. These four days were a revelation and deepened my connection immeasurably.

I began to work with Navajata on relation first with the United States and then on relation between Auroville and the outside. The story that I want to tell you is very personal but for those who have not known the Mother, I think it shows the extraordinary grace that She could bestow on all of us, in a very tangible form. I was living in the Ashram and at a certain point, perhaps it was in March, I wrote to Her — I cannot recall the subject exactly but it had to do with my sadhana. She asked me to come to see Her. So I went on my own, and not through Navajata or Shyamsundar or any of the other secretaries people went through. I waited upstairs on Her terrace and went in when I was called.

In my previous visits to Mother, [. . .] nothing existed in the room but the Mother and She was enormous. You would walk in with flowers, you would place your head on Her lap, look into Her eyes, She would touch your hand, give one a flower and off you go. This time it was very different. As She was looking at me, perhaps She saw an obstruction in my inner being and decided to do some 'spiritual surgery'.

Holding both my hands between Her two hands, I suddenly felt an enormous pressure, — certainly too great to originate from a very frail, small, ninety-three year old person. It was very, very powerful. And Her face went from that smile — as all those who have seen the Mother will remember, it went from ear to ear, vast — and took on the ferocious face of Kali by an imperative determination. Her right eye seemed very distant, perhaps in other worlds, but Her left eye appeared to begin to spin around as though it were a drill, and She bored down into my deepest heart right down to the level of my chest. She hit a deep, tenacious layer of what felt like hard rubber. She pushed against it and it barely budged. It actually hurt physically. She pulled back out, and smiled broadly from ear to ear while patting my hands. Then again, She dove back in, — with Her eye spinning, — entering through my eyes, with Her consciousness. She hit the same obstruction. Again She came back up, reassuring me in the same way, then dove back in a third time with an ever greater intensity. This time the obstruction ripped open. Her consciousness went right into my heart centre and opened it. It was an incredibly powerful experience. When She came back out, She said, "Et Voilà, mon petit," and She patted my hands and gave me a big smile along with a transformation flower.

It was an extremely intense experience. That is the kind of work that She could do and it was a great grace. It was the turning point of my life and it is what, I believe, truly made me what I now am. I thank Her forever with a heart absolutely full of gratitude. I left Her room with a mixture of thankfulness and post-surgical pain, but soon I felt only an intense, constant connection with Her presence that lasted for ten days.

A giant dance of Shiva tore the past;. . .
Savitri, Book III, 4

- Roger Toll

(Darshan – Remembering Sweet Mother and Sri Aurobindo, published by Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Educational Research, Auroville, 2006, pp. 47–48)

Known for Ages

There were, however, one or two striking vision-experiences which revealed their meaning to me later. The first was the vision of two feet with golden anklets. While seeing them I had the distinct feeling that they were the Mother's feet. The second experience came to me in response to a telegram I had sent to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother conveying some good sentiments after I was refused permission for Darshan in November, 1932. I saw a marble staircase rising in front of me up to 8 or 10 steps then taking a turn to my right then turning again arising straight up into infinity. I saw a lady swiftly descending from its invisible top and coming and stepping in front of me at the first bend. She opened out her arms wide. Her face was European and her dress of the Greek type. It was difficult to judge her age, but no doubt she was young. This scene has remained stamped on my consciousness even four decades after.

It was in 1934 November that a friend wrote to Sri Aurobindo asking him whether I could come for the November Darshan that year and the request was immediately granted and I came for Darshan. On the 3rd or 4th day of my stay here, as I was lying down at night I had a peculiar experience. It was as if someone was drilling a hole in my head. In a spiral of light I saw a little figure entering through my head, entering into the heart and stopping there in the heart. Immediately I recognised the figure to be the same lady with a European face that I had seen two years earlier.

During that visit every time I approached the Mother for Pranam I experienced a strong impulse to give and give. If I had a gold button on my shirt I would take it out and place it at her feet. If there were a few coins in my pocket I would do the same thing. I could not resist the push.

You ask what was my experience at Darshan of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. The moment I had sight of him from a distance, there was a surge of emotion and I strongly felt that I had known him for ages. There was such a joy that I could not contain myself and I embraced the man who was in front of me. When my turn came, Sri Aurobindo looked at the Mother and Mother looked at Sri Aurobindo and he nodded.

Before going back I met the Mother. She asked a few questions about myself and then asked "Will you come here?" "Yes, Mother" was my answer. And it was not long before I was back.

- S.T.

(Breath of Grace, edited by M. P. Pandit, published by Dipti Publications, 2nd edition 2002, pp. 184–85)

'Seeing' Sri Aurobindo

Q: Would you describe your first darshan with Mother and Sri Aurobindo or share any of the darshan experiences you had with them?

I saw the Mother twice a day. She used to give darshan in the mornings in the meditation hall. In the evenings we would go up for darshan to the top of the staircase. I remember my first darshan of the Mother. I saw her sitting at the top of the stairs wearing the most exquisitely beautiful blue sari. Her eyes were something indescribable. I was overwhelmed by the experience. She took us over immediately. Sri Aurobindo's power was quite different. I saw him only when he gave darshans four times a year. We passed by him one by one very quickly but he transferred so much Force into each of us in such a short amount of time. I remember one April darshan in the afternoon sitting in the courtyard waiting to go upstairs. I could feel, palpably, the entire courtyard rocking back and forth from the amount of Force emanating from his presence. This is one of the reasons children were not allowed in the Ashram until a certain age. The Force was too strong. They would often fall ill.

During my first darshan, as I was approaching the inner room, when I reached the door I could feel two rays of light entering my chest. I was still standing at the door when I felt this. When I stood in front of Sri Aurobindo it was as though I was in a trance and I walked away still in that state. Once, however, I was talking to the Mother prior to a darshan with Sri Aurobindo. I said, "Mother, I don't 'see' Sri Aurobindo during the darshans. Of course I see him physically, but I feel that I don't see him inwardly." The Mother said, "Yes, it is true, this is very difficult." "But Mother, others tell me that they 'see' him." She said, "Then, perhaps they are only pretending." After that next darshan I "saw" Sri Aurobindo in a totally different way. The Mother had opened my inner sight and given me the ability to truly "see" Sri Aurobindo.

- Tehmi

(The Golden Path – Interviews with Disciples of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother from the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and Auroville by Anie Nunnally, published by East West Cultural Center, California, 2004, pp. 71–72)

That Eternal Moment

It was at the end of December 1970 when I was landing at New Delhi airport on a four weeks surprise trip to India. I was warmly greeted by the golden rays of an early morning sun when coming down the gangway and breathing in the fresh air of a misty dawn. It was my first encounter with India and it was during that first day that I was struck by an overwhelming and deep sensation of finally coming home.

When travelling through Northern India the following weeks that intensive impression never left me and did warmly colour my daily encounters. It was like looking through the eyes of the soul and the soul only. An atmosphere of inner calm and timelessness took hold of me. I was as if embraced by Mother India and had no choice but to dismiss my scheduled return flight and instead to embark on a long lasting memorable journey through the whole of India with just a hundred dollars left in my pocket. At that moment of utter freedom it was only logical to choose Pondicherry as the very first goal and destiny because there was the Sri Aurobindo Ashram which persistently had remained in my memory.

Way back in Germany, after having been part of the student revolt at West Berlin's universities seeking a radically new way of life I came across a book of a newly published paperback edition, a series of monographs, the first one being dedicated to Sri Aurobindo. This simple and honest account of his life, thoughts and universal work had an enormous impact on my life: finally I had found somebody who could convincingly 'explain' to me everything and without flaw — no questions left!

It triggered in myself a stunning recognition of the essential oneness of all life and beyond all mental comprehension it became the one book carrying the one magic word changing my life. This experience stayed on in my body like a rock, it never left me.

Now, just one year later, having been thrown into India as if out of the blue and following its call against all odds, it was only natural to turn my attention to Pondicherry straight away, what else?! It was the beginning of a new adventure: The early morning ride from the station through the small township was graced by a serene atmosphere which became ever more tangible when coming closer to the Ashram.

Days later in the Ashram guest house I heard news about the 'birthday darshan of the Mother' whose portraits were seen everywhere. At first I did not pay much attention to frequent invitations to come to her 'darshan'. This 'Mother' was barely in my mind and even less on my agenda. Obviously didn't she leave the same impression in that famous book? Moreover I wasn't too much interested to see a 'guru' or a 'grande dame' at her balcony. Yet, as destiny willed I was gently encouraged by one of those early pioneers from Auroville to go anyway so as to see for myself what's on with 'the pope on the balcony'. Well, it turned out to be the most memorable event of my life.

It was February 21st under a warm Indian afternoon sun when we arrived in that small street adjacent to the main ashram building where already thousands of devotees had gathered. It seemed they had come from all over India, most of them in their traditional white clothing, a few westerners among them. There was a lot of chatting and excitement mixed with an atmosphere of intense expectation for that special moment to come. I landed just in the middle of the packed crowd getting fully the feel of it all. By then one or the other was looking intensely up to the roof terrace where the Mother was to appear at any moment.

Suddenly a great silence descended on all and everybody, the air felt still and compact, when a small hand was seen groping along the railing up there. Then a little face was emerging slowly from behind radiating the presence of a great power. I was stunned. [. . .] When hearing two westerners next to me talking to each other like: oh; she is old and fragile, I was wondering in utter disbelief — look, can't you see, can't you see the eternal himself?! During those minutes of eternity and feeling the massive experience in my body I followed Her when she was slowly moving down the railing from one end to the other. At one moment she suddenly was like throwing herself over the railing with such a concentrated power so to reach out to everybody, no one to be left out, to perceive all, to be seen by everyone who had gathered there from one end of the street to the other — and everybody was looking up to her.

I was caught by her overwhelming glance, a stream of compact energy from eye to eye, soul to soul, in utter abandon and trust. . .

Long after the Mother had retreated to her room and the crowd had dissolved I was still standing there all alone in the deserted street, I had not moved an inch as if glued to that sacred power point where that Presence was still there all powerful, that feeling of total bond without fear. . . and no time, no time.

It sounded as if from far away when my companion, trying to get me back to time-bound reality, appealed to me: Peter, she is gone since long, let's go! — yes, yes, I made an attempt to gather myself and to get going, but only to sit down a few steps further at the edge of the street. . . remaining there for a very long time keeping my sacred space.

For many years I didn't talk to anybody about my precious experience. To myself I could say that I never felt such a power emanating from a human being, an overwhelming power, which instead of closing me because of fear it opened me up like a flower to the sun, because it is the power of all encompassing love. At that eternal moment there was no more outside, there was only that immense presence lived through the feeling of an indestructible bond of consciousness-force.

Much later, when asked and recounting my experience to friends and seekers alike, it dawned on me that this very day may have been really my day, 'my' darshan.

Anyway it happened to be the last and decisive encounter which changed the course of my life, all beginning with a simple book on Sri Aurobindo, the divine word in action with the discovery of Mother India as being my spiritual homeland, and Auroville, the promised land, 'the tower of Babel in reverse'.

I remain for ever grateful that I have been offered these four essential gifts of my life which nourish me, give me strength and the power of joy.

- Peter A.

(Darshan – Remembering Sweet Mother and Sri Aurobindo, published by Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Educational Research, Auroville, 2006, pp. 208–11)

Mother's Gaze

You who from my soul's rest roused me
Who to earth's sphere compelled me
Out of my nest of space and light,
With a look both musing and sure you drew me
So that I thought nothing of hovering
The long fretful years away
Gazing upon the ocean
And wondering if it was that
Or a bright flower below,
Or a bird's call,
Or a single sparkling day,
Which made the coming to earth worth it.
And stilled the why and the wherefore
Of life's intermittent gray,
Ever broken by the memory . . . the memory of what?
When I arrived and I saw you
My heart rose then dipped with a sigh,
Slipped through your eyes and at last alighted
And knew why,
Knew the why and the wherefore,
Knew itself from the beginning anchored
As well as in the sky of your eyes,
In the days that were now all brightness,
And in oceans and birdsong and flowers
And in each everyday good
Born of the gaze of your eyes.

- Maggi

(Seeds by Maggi, published by the author, 2006, p. 41)

Tryst with the Divine Mother

'Darshan' was a word familiar in my childhood. There were the usual festivals at home which were celebrated with traditional Prasad. If it was Janmashtami, amma⁵ would prepare salt and sweet 'seedai'; Diwali meant 'okkorai' and 'marundhu' (a herbs-based sweet appropriately termed 'medicine'); Sri Rama Navami would bring 'panakam' (a drink made of jaggery and dry ginger) and buttermilk. The Karadaiyan Nonbu was special too. This was the Savitri vrata (in our Tamil Brahmin family) when women at home recalled the Savitri legend, wore auspicious threads dipped in turmeric around their neck and ate hot 'adai' (a sweet made of jaggery, rice flour and lentils) with fresh butter melting all over it saying, "I have performed this vrata with adai and non-clarified butter. May my husband never leave me." As our house had immense reverence for the short and squat "University edition" of Savitri which was often read and occasionally explained to us by father, the association kept 'Karadaiyan Nonbu' and the Sri Aurobindo Ashram at distant Pondicherry very close to the child's heart.

There was an equally joyous but untraditional celebration in our house which my friends could not comprehend. This was what I could explain only as Darshan Day. "I had today 'Kesari'," I would boast to my friend. "Why, anything special?" "Of course, it is Darshan Day." "What is Darshan Day?" "It's Darshan Day, that is all", I would say with impatience and we would then go on with our skipping or hop-scotch. When I had attended a Darshan Day in Pondicherry and returned home I could not explain much to my friends about it either. I remember telling them how we stood in a queue and a beautiful lady smiled at me when my turn came and gave me a flower. That was all. This was perhaps in 1946.

But this first day at Pondicherry has remained clear with me as a few images. One was, the Mother. She was familiar because of the photographs at home, but as we had been asked to keep strict silence, I was very anxious lest I speak something or exclaim about this or that. And it was a moment's encounter and my amma who was behind me gently pushed me onwards and herself did pranam. I turned back a wee little bit to see amma getting up and receiving a flower and a very big smile. Once again a fleeting moment and I could feel amma's hand shaking a little as she held my hand when we moved out. I believe I told amma that the Mother looked like grandmother!

Shankar Gowda Patil and father were standing a little away and we went to them. We showed our flowers. I do not remember what flower I had received but I remember amma's for Patil uncle saw it and told my father: "Psychological Perfection! So apt for your wife!" Then father explained what was meant by "psychological perfection" in Tamil to amma. It was the Champa or Pagoda flower which bloomed in abundance in our garden at Waltair. From that day onwards the flower was referred to only as "Annai Kodukkum Poo" (the flower that Mother gives) in our house. I remember amma happily saying often, "Today the tree is so full of Annai Kodukkum Poo that you cannot see the leaves."

The other image is Patil uncle giving me two lotuses and teaching me how to hold them by the stem. And Paru-bai instructing me how once I had moved near Mother in the queue, I should offer the flowers and do pranam. Very, very vague films in the back of memory. But how precious!

On two of my subsequent visits in the late 'fifties, I had the wonderful opportunity of Balcony Darshan. We all stood expectant, prayerful. By now I had begun my research work on Savitri and had drawn close to the Aurobindonian world. I was standing beside my father who assured me that the Mother would be looking directly at me. And so it had been, when she appeared, walked a little, held on to the balcony, leaned forward and gazed at us, intense yet smiling. Yes, she looked at me! I am sure this was the feeling of each one of us in the crowd, for she certainly flung on us her "vast, immortal look". One felt a deep sense of satisfaction. For me, it was beautiful and memorable for father walked with me reciting lines from 'The Symbol Dawn', his favourite routine:

Ambassadress twixt eternity and change,
The omniscient Goddess leaned across the breadths
That wrap the fated journeyings of the stars
And saw the spaces ready for her feet.

At this time in 1957, when I had begun working on Savitri for my research dissertation, he gave me a portrait of the Mother, standing with a smile, a card in her right hand held forward. He told me that the Divine Mother is always ready to give you whatever spiritual treasures you want; but you must go forward and hold out your hand for her to drop her message of grace into it. The portrait has been with me all this time, reminding me of father's words whenever I gaze at it. And so sweet Mother's message too, printed below, has been my favourite during this half a century:

A Power greater than that of Evil can alone win the victory.
It is not a crucified but a glorified body that will save the world.

This is a picture of Savitri herself! So it became easier for me to understand the descriptions of Savitri by Sri Aurobindo in the epic as I was drawn deeper into it for my research work:

The great World-Mother now in her arose:
A living choice reversed fate's cold dead turn,
Affirmed the spirit's tread on Circumstance,
Pressed back the senseless dire revolving Wheel
And stopped the mute march of Necessity.
A flaming warrior from the eternal peaks
Empowered to force the door denied and closed
Smote from Death's visage its dumb absolute
And burst the bounds of consciousness and Time.

It was in 1961 that I received the joyous news that my doctoral dissertation on Sri Aurobindo's Savitri had been passed summa cum laude by a panel of examiners from England: Professor Vivian de Sola Pinto, Prof. T. J. B. Spencer and Prof. H. O. White. This was the first time someone had taken up the epic for doctoral research and the message was immediately conveyed to Sri Nolini Kanta Gupta by my father. In the Ashram, eminent Aurobindonians like Nirodbaran, A. B. Purani, Kishor Gandhi and K. D. Sethna expressed their joy and I was told the Mother was very happy to get the news. On the suggestion of my father, I had submitted a copy of my thesis to the Mother before sending the other copies to the Registrar's Office in Andhra University on their onward journey across the seas. The Mother now gave the copy to K. D. Sethna to go through it and suggest corrections and improvements if any, and also asked the Ashram to print and publish the work. I had been a scholar of the University Grants Commission and the Commission now gave a grant for publication as well. The book was published in 1962.

A little before the book was out, the Mother was pleased to grant me an interview. I believe she said that she wanted to see the girl who was Iyengar's daughter. I went with my father. This remains the most wonderful half an hour in my life. Interestingly enough, the actual conversation in the room remains a blur. I was behind my father. He performed pranam to the Mother and I heard a very, very sweet voice, saying quietly: "Srinivaaasaaa, it is a long time since you came here." He grew emotional but controlled himself immediately and brought me to the front. "This is Prema, your child." And the sweetest of smiles, a deep, penetrating look into my eyes from the Mother. M. P. Pandit who had brought us into the room held out a plate to the Mother. She took out the symbols of Sri Aurobindo and herself and a rose and put them in my hands. I bowed to her and sat down while she spoke to father on his work and Sri Aurobindo-related articles. He spoke about his lectures on Sri Aurobindo at the Leeds University and how there was an increasing interest in Sri Aurobindo's writings in academia. There was then another beautiful smile from the Mother as she held out her hands in blessing while father and me performed pranam and withdrew. I still felt close to her as I did with my paternal grandmother. The gifts she gave were placed in my jewel box by me and there they have remained guarding me, as always.

The Balcony Darshans after this momentous audience with the Mother became even more entwined with my studies in Savitri and the marvel of the moment has been indescribable. One could notice with a pang the slight change in the human frame but the Ananda remained, giving a sense of fulfilment each time. Father has tried to describe the scene and perhaps succeeded too, to an extent:

But what's this bewildering drama of
The Divine in human mould?
To suffer our painful mutations — yet
Be gloriously divine!
The Avatar's descent is also her
Rehearsing our transcendence.
In defiance of scientific laws
A great new Force is abroad . . .
And She appears above the human sea,
The brief nectarean Dawn.
Walking with trembling steps and clutching at
The railing, — Mother of Love!⁶

The Balcony in Pondicherry still draws us. She is there! Recently a group of us, strangers all, remained standing for a while looking up at the Balcony. I could see the same anxious expectation and total faith in the other faces as it was in the earlier days. What was it but the Mother's Love that bound us together as we stood on the pavement? There was a meditative silence, undisturbed by the occasional cyclist or a speeding car. And then we turned to look and smile at each other. At last, as dear friends parting, we went our ways with a sense of fulfilment. How true it is: this faith in all of us does emblazon the Divine Mother's Living Flame.

- Prema Nandakumar

A Very Special Event at a Very Special Place

Q: When did you come to the Ashram for the first time and when did you have darshan of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother?

It was in 1942 and I was eight years old. I came with my parents and I was so taken with the Mother's beauty, her love, the flowers everywhere and the quiet, nightly meditations under the service tree. I wanted to stay and go to the school that Mother was forming at that time, but there was not as yet a boarding facility and neither of my parents could stay with me there, so we had to return to Africa. I had darshan of Sri Aurobindo that August 1942 but I don't remember how he looked. I remember the garlands we carried for the Mother and the Tulsi (basil) garlands for Sri Aurobindo. The predominant feeling for me then was that of a very special event at a very special place where I felt that I wanted to be.

Q: When did you return for your final stay?

I returned in 1951 when I was sixteen. My father had sent me to the Ashram on a special visit specifically to ask the Mother if I should take up medicine or law for my further education. . . . The first day I went for the Mother's darshan she gave me a flower and smiled so sweetly. In the evening in the playground I stood with the visitors. As the Mother distributed prasad she asked me, "Don't you want to join the other children in exercises?" I said, "Yes, Mother, I'd like to." She said, "Tomorrow you give your measurements for shorts and shirts." That next evening one pair of shorts and a shirt were given to me and a new life began without my even knowing about it or deciding about it on my own.

Q: Could you describe what it was like to be in the Mother's presence in those days?

The Mother used to dress in a long gown with matching scarf on her head. When she came out on the terrace outside her room the time was between 10 and 11 a.m. Her close companion, Chinmayee, carried a parasol to protect the Mother's head from the scorching sun. A crow would invariably come and hop onto the ledge of the terrace. Chinmayee would hand over to the Mother some biscuits with which she would feed the crow! I mostly looked at her lovely pastel-coloured clothes and matching parasols and her lovely smile. In the evenings, when she would give darshan at the head of the staircase, she was like a goddess from the scriptures. She wore saris and embroidered bands over her forehead. She looked taller than when I saw her during the mornings. She radiated light, light and more light. She received our flowers and we bowed down to her feet. She looked into our eyes and smiled down on us as we looked up at her. Often her smile was like a silent laugh. She gave us some flowers and then we came down the staircase. I did not want to look at anyone because her image was in my eyes and I wanted to hold on to it for as long as I possibly could.

- Sunanda

(The Golden Path – Interviews with Disciples of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother from the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and Auroville by Anie Nunnally, published by East West Cultural Center, California, 2004, pp. 89–91)

Lustrously White

I went to Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry for the first time in February, 1949. I had the first darshan then. On my return my father asked me about Sri Aurobindo's complexion. When I said "lustrously white", he remarked that during his Bengal days, it was a bit darkish, but the complexion of yogis has been known to change. An uncle of mine also spoke similarly about him.

- Shyam Sundar

(Darshan – Remembering Sweet Mother and Sri Aurobindo, published by Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Educational Research, Auroville, 2006, p. 132)

Moments That Do Not Fade

I left Belgium on the 17th of January 1970 — now 38 years ago. I flew via Frankfurt. 17th of January: the airport was white, under the snow. We flew through the night on a Boeing 707 of which the name was Lhotse, one of the high mountain tops in the Himalayas, I'll never forget that name. Then we landed in Bombay, 5 o'clock in the morning, 30 degrees centigrade — hot sunshine! Another world. Then Madras. There I had to take a bus. At that time, 38 years ago, there were not so many buses as there are today. Then I arrived in Pondicherry, in a state of shock. I did not even know whether my luggage was on top of the bus or not. But luckily it was there. Then I landed in a small hotel at the seaside that is no longer there, just next to the Ashram Press. And after I had put my luggage in my room, I threw my jacket over my shoulder and went out to see the Ashram.

In my head the Ashram was a white building with a palm tree next to it under a blue sky. Whether the Mother was there or not, I didn't know. So I started walking. There is a church nearby there, and in front of that church was a European lady talking with somebody. A very fashionably dressed lady, in shorts and well made up. So I asked her: "Where is that Ashram here somewhere?" She answered in English with an accent. I said: "Oh, you are French!" "Well, yes," she said. "See, you go on and you come to the Consulate with the French flag, and there you go to the left and you will see the Ashram." So I did. It was a Sunday afternoon, very quiet. You didn't see many people in the street at that time. I entered the School courtyard, the gate was open. And there I saw all those timetables signed by the Mother, with that very specific signature. I thought: "Where on earth am I!" All at once a voice behind me said: "Are you looking for something?" It was the voice of a young Frenchman, Jean Pierre, who afterwards became Guruprasad. He is still in Auroville — Goupi. "I'll take you to the Ashram," he said. But I understood 'La Chambre' instead of 'L'Ashram'. So I thought: "Oh, there must be a holy room here somewhere." And I went with him. He took me across the street, through a gate. There, on the chairs known so well by all of you, sat four old, grey-bearded people. It looked as if that was the entrance to heaven with St. Peter and other saints. Then Goupi asked somebody: "When can he meet him and where?" (I had asked Goupi to meet the only person whose name I knew.) Behind my back, somebody answered, the same woman's voice I had heard in front of the church. I turned around and there was that same lady, no longer in shorts and fashionably dressed, but in a long white robe, holding a plate full of flowers! I thought: "What is going on here?!" I didn't realise that I stood in the Ashram because I thought Goupi was taking me to 'La Chambre'. (That impressive-looking lady in the long robe and with the flowers was, as I found out later on, none other than Pournaprema, then still called Françoise, the Mother's granddaughter.) "You can have an appointment with the person you are looking for at the seaside around five o'clock," she said, and disappeared around the corner of the building.

I had the appointment, and afterwards I found a room in Goyle's New Guest House in the Rue Suffren. There I heard that the Mother was still alive and that one could meet Her. You had to put your letter to Her in the box that is still there at the Ashram entrance. I was told: "You go and put your letter to the Mother in that box." Unbelievable but true, for three days I turned around the central Ashram building, asking everybody: "In God's name, where is that Ashram?" Even though Prithwi Singh (I got to know who he was afterwards), who was sitting there in the balcony street, told me: "It is here," I didn't believe him! In my opinion the entrance gate was too small to be that of the Ashram of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. So when finally I found the box and was putting my letter in it, a miracle happened: behind me stood again that same Frenchman I had met that Sunday afternoon. I asked, rather vexedly: "Can you tell me at last: where is the Ashram?" He said: "But you are in the Ashram! Come with me and see." In a French magazine I had seen a photo of the Samadhi and behind the Samadhi a kind of tiled roof, the one in front of Nirodbaran's room. Therefore I had thought to myself: "If I see the Samadhi and that roof behind it, I am in the Ashram." And he took me to the Samadhi and I saw that roof and I knew that I was in the Ashram.

I dropped my letter to the Mother and She sent me in Her own handwriting an answer brought to the guest house by Suresh Joshi, who was Her messenger. The Mother's answer was — I still have the letter — : "You can come . . ." — it was in French — "You can come . . . mais ce sera une entrevue silencieuse — it will be a silent meeting." What did that mean? I had already had so much trouble to write my letter! For what should I write — 'Madame'? 'Mother'? I had strong inhibitions against writing Mother! I had had a mother and she was dead! I have kept that letter because the Mother had written Her answer at the bottom of it. She invited me to go and meet Her.

On the day I went to meet the Mother a kind of ceremony took place in Goyle's guest house. But see, a lot of flowers were laid out before me; from those I had to choose some to take them to the Mother. I was not a flower man, for me such things meant nothing but sentimentality. All the guests in the guest house were standing behind my back to see which flowers I would choose. I failed the test miserably. I had chosen some flowers which I had found very beautiful — but I had not chosen Humility, which to me looked more like a herb than a flower. Then Michou (the Canadian girl whom some of you may remember and whom I met 35 years later in Montreal) took me through the park to the Mother's room.

After some time Champaklal called my name and I went in. What was I to do? What do you do when you come in front of . . . I had no more than a vague idea of who the Mother was . . . what do you do when you come in front of such a Being? For in the meantime I had seen people meditating on the wall at the seaside, I had seen people on their belly at the Samadhi, I had seen people in all postures of religiosity and meditation and all that — I felt very much disoriented and insecure. So I went through that door of the Mother's room, known to all of you, and what did I see? I saw that very thin arm of the Mother resting on the armrest of Her chair. And I went in front of Her. . . and the rest I cannot tell, because I don't know. And when I came to myself again, there was the face of the Mother, smiling, giving me one packet of blessings, and then a second one.

Some time after I had left the Mother's room, "it" started working in the body, in the spine, in the subtle body. And since I didn't want to be in the guest house with all those chattering visitors at that time, I walked by the seaside for some time, with tears in my eyes. Then I lay down, still with tears in my eyes. Something decisive had happened. I am such a naive fellow that everything that has happened in my life, spiritually, I have understood only afterwards. And I am happy for this because, if you try to interpret things at the very moment that they are happening, you distort them. You give them a fixed shape in your thought, which is how you will remember them.

You know where I got the explanation of what happened between the Mother and me on that 29th of January, 1970? I got it in a Temple of Freemasons in Ghent, a town in Belgium. I had given a talk in that Temple and after the talk I had conversations with many of those Freemasons. They were very interested. They were judges, professors, lawyers, priests, doctors. . . They were extremely open and interested. And when I told them the experience which I have just told you, one of them said: "Oh! That is the initiation." Later I read what the Mother had said in one of Her conversations: "What I call initiation is when a person meets me and recognises me." I suppose that in those seconds or eternities I have recognised something which I had known for a long time and which is always with me.

- Georges Van Vrekhem

(Remembering the Mother with Gratitude, published by Sri Aurobindo Centre for Advanced Research, 2003, pp. 95–99. Revised by the author)

My Diary-Leaves

1928

August 13

Recently S. Doraiswamy gave a copy of Uma Sahasram for Sri Aurobindo's perusal who seemed to have deeply appreciated it. And the Mother expressed on her own: "If Ganapati Sastri is inclined to come for the August 15th Darshan he is welcome." It was communicated to Nayana⁷ at Tiruvannamalai. Sri Ramana seems to have said 'When this suggestion by the Mother came unsought by Nayana, it must be a Daiva Sankalpam.'

August 15

Sri Aurobindo's birthday celebration in the Ashram — and all of us had the privilege of Darshan of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. Nayana, though pessimistic at first, after he had the actual Darshan, expressed "O, divya murtulu — O, Divine Personalities!" so much so, he stayed on till September 1st.

August 16

Nayana's interview with the Mother for 30 minutes. They meditated together; Nayana felt spiritual current passing into him from all directions. Later on the Mother said to S. Doraiswamy: "He is the one man who immediately entered into my spiritual Consciousness and stuck to it to the end."

August 19

Nayana's second interview with the Mother for 45 minutes. He recited verses composed on the Mother. Talked of present Avatara. The Mother got into trance. Nayana perceived light passing through her toe and then a glowing halo around her entire being, the whole atmosphere surcharged with divine current.

- K. S. Venkataraman

(Breath of Grace, edited by M. P. Pandit, published by Dipti Publications, 2nd edition, 2002, pp. 343–44)

A Presence That Was Solid

Within months, more children came to the Ashram in twos and threes. All were about the same age. By the end of the year Mother said, "We will now start a school." We were about twelve children, three teachers and one classroom and had barely any books. This was December 2, 1943. Our joy knew no bounds because it was a new adventure. She organised work for us with teachers who were disciples in the Ashram — Sisir-da, my mother and one other person. She guided the teachers as to how to teach — not the usual process of teaching. She organised the subjects and followed our work in minute detail and the teachers sent a report of the work and the children's progress daily. She said at the time, "A teacher has to be in perfect control of himself if he is to guide the children." More children came and more teachers too, who joined the Ashram as disciples, and new subjects of study were added. She followed very closely the progress and growth of students and teachers, the inner as well as the outer. At this time every month or two when we went to her she would say the following words like a direct communication and these words were, "Find your psychic being. Be conscious." These words were like a concrete action from her. She acted on us little children with her power of consciousness, recreating our very beings. . . .

The four days in the year when we had the darshan of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, seated side by side, were of such power and presence that I would like to share how a growing young person experienced those moments. For days before each darshan the presence of Sri Aurobindo, of which we were conscious in our everyday lives, moved into a wider space and with greater intensity. It was felt all over the Ashram compound and the main Ashram building and flowed into the spaces of the streets around the Ashram. Our house was on a corner of one of those streets and one walked into this kind of presence that was solid and there was the feeling of entering something in a very concrete manner. This grew to its fullness on the day of the darshan itself. Sri Aurobindo was seated on a couch in the first room where he lived and the Mother was to his right; to one side was Nirod-da. In front of them was a large wooden box into which, as disciples approached them, they laid their offerings of flowers and garlands of Tulsi leaves ("Devotion"). We went up in a file standing only for a moment in front of the Divine Presence on earth and then moved on. As children we went with our parents. Soon I wanted to stand alone before Sri Aurobindo, so I started going on my own. I was about thirteen years old at that time. Sri Aurobindo sat with the majesty of the Divine, immobile and absolute. We looked into his eyes, into that vast, impersonal look. His eyes penetrated so deeply that one seemed to dwell only in the Immense. Even as a young person without understanding, without having the proper words to use, it came in very simple words that this was it. Whatever the "it" meant one did not know and who can say that it is known even now or will ever be known. But the feeling remained that there was nothing beyond. . . that this was the Absolute. On one occasion I just happened to be in the line behind Dilip Kumar Roy. There he was. . . his being and his very body swaying in his love, devotion and bhakti for Sri Aurobindo. Lost to the world and only conscious of him. Peeking from behind the flowing robes I saw the vast, impersonal look on Sri Aurobindo's face. Also, focussed in a look of recognition, the impersonal changed to the personal and became a point of Light. That golden face, where never a muscle moved during darshans, creased into a smile. This is what something in me was looking for. I wanted to experience this more often. I would wait in the courtyard for Dilip-da to enter the Ashram gate on darshan days, swaying in the ecstasy of the meeting to be, and as he took his place in the file I used to slip in behind him. This way I had a few more moments to see Sri Aurobindo. I peeped to the right of Dilip-da in the front, to the left — no one else noticed, no one else was stepping out of the file. I could see Sri Aurobindo so many more times and then Dilip-da stood in front of them and I peeped to the right and could see Sri Aurobindo with that look and that smile and feel something of that moment between them. Untouched by time, those moments still hold their power and sweetness for me.

- Aster Patel

(The Golden Path – Interviews with Disciples of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother from the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and Auroville by Anie Nunnally, published by East West Cultural Center, California, 2004, pp. 200–03)

Kneeling Before Her for Ages

I met the Mother first in the summer of 1971. She had already agreed to our staying (after seeing our black and white photographs taken in Pondy). Not having had any experience with which to measure our first darshan, we felt an out of this world, spacey experience; afterwards, sitting at the Samadhi, we were unable to leave.

Waiting on the sun drenched terrace before being admitted, I felt light and awkward at the same time in my red earth-stained first sari. Mother looked me intently in the eyes; it seemed I kneeled before Her for ages. She mumbled, "Ah, ma fille, c'est très bien que tu es venue." In retrospect that was probably the time I unconsciously decided to stay, which was not our plan.

I met Mother several times after that, mostly on birthdays and in the public darshan: down in the crowded street when an intense silence fell as She came out on the balcony, Her absolutely powerful presence pervading everybody and everything.

- Lisbeth

(Darshan – Remembering Sweet Mother and Sri Aurobindo, published by Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Educational Research, Auroville, 2006, pp. 204–05)

Like a Dream

I saw the Mother for the first time when I was 13 years old, in 1959. I came from the Delhi branch of the Ashram. The day was the 1st of December, and the Mother was distributing Prosperity to all the Ashramites in the room above the Reception hall, which is the one you see just as you enter the Ashram. When I went to her, she smiled and gave me a small soap cake as prasad. To the rest of the students she gave a delicate pink rose flower to each.

The first memory and impression that I have of the Mother is something very ethereal because she was fully clad in a spotless white sari. Light in various hues through the tinted glass panes of the upper part of the large middle door — especially violet — were reflecting on her white sari and somehow it seemed like a dream to me. It did not feel as though I really met and saw the Mother whom we had been worshipping at home for so long!

We all came out and down to the courtyard, did pranam to the Samadhi and started walking towards the playground. [. . .] As we came out, my friends were curious to know what the Mother had given me. When I said that it was soap, first they got quite upset as they all got a rose each. As one can expect, kids did not have much value for the rose initially. After a while one of them said, "You know the Mother is God, is she not? She knows very well that you do not bathe properly daily. So she gave you a piece of soap. We do not need it."

- Deepshikha Reddy

(Darshan – Remembering Sweet Mother and Sri Aurobindo, published by Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Educational Research, Auroville, 2006, p. 57)

Mother as at Forty

An interesting visitor is brought to me — Malcolm D'Cruz.

He relates how he and a friend of his arrived here on 21st to meet a girl friend who had told them that she would be in Pondy that day. He did not know anything about the Ashram. While searching for the girl, they saw a crowd waiting and a number of foreigners in that assembly. Thinking that their friend might be found there, they joined the crowd and asked someone what it was all about. "We are waiting for Mother's Darshan," was the reply. "Who is the Mother? What is Darshan?" were his queries. He learnt that Mother was 95 and would be coming on the balcony.

After the function, he exclaimed that the whole thing was a hoax. On being asked why, he replied that there was no 95-year-old lady there, the lady who came was just about 40, graceful and beautiful! The people who had talked to him took him inside the compound and showed him the recent photos of Mother. He was adamant that the lady who came on the balcony was not that person at all!

He was quite exercised about it. The common American friend who spoke to me of him brought him to me to convince him!

I explained to him the nature of the yogic action going on in Mother's body and told him that what he had seen was her subtle-physical form. He said he started feeling better after our talk and was getting convinced.

27.2.1972

Spoke to Mother re. Malcolm D'Cruz. She was pleased, laughed and asked me to show him the photo taken in 1950 by Cartier Bresson. She confirmed that he had seen her subtle-physical form.

He said he had seen her looking still younger and pointed to the picture taken in Japan — somewhere before 1920 — in which she is holding a flower in her hand. "For the first time in my life," he told me, "I understand what is beauty, what is grace."

- M. P. Pandit

(Mother and I by M. P. Pandit, published by Dipti Publications, 1984, pp. 210–11)

A Feeling of Certitude, of Stability

To begin with, how did I meet Sri Aurobindo?

There are several ways to meet a person; it can be as I am meeting you now, personally; or else one can meet a person through his works. Well, it so happened that I met Sri Aurobindo without realising how.

One day in Paris a very good lady-friend who was interested in India and who had been there and, knowing I was also interested, spoke to me of a young Indian who had just arrived in Paris to study science: would I like to introduce him to people and allow him to work with me at the University? Naturally I said "Yes". He was a charming young man born not far from Madras, whose name was Ramaya Naidu. We both gave our Physics examinations at the Sorbonne at the same time. He was actually from Pondicherry. He invited me to his house and there introduced me to a big, magnificent man named Paul Richard whose wife, I was told, had remained in Pondicherry and would stay there for the rest of her life. Though I was greatly surprised I did not doubt for a second that this was the Mother. Some time later the lady who had introduced Ramaya to me said, "You know that a journal was brought out in Pondicherry in French called the Arya." Then she lent me all the numbers she had. I was fired with this literature, and not long ago I found the Notes I had made while reading The Secret of the Veda. I never doubted what Sri Aurobindo was to be for me later. I had completely forgotten that reading, which was my first contact with him.

Many years passed. . . .

The first time I came down a lady whom many of you know, Suvrata (Madame Yvonne Robert Gaebelé) said to us, "You know, there are two absolutely extraordinary people in our town, and I must introduce you to them." She took us to the Darshan of November 24, 1935. That was the first time I saw Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

I see on this paper that the questioner would like to know what my first impression was. It is very difficult to say in a definitive manner what it was. When I saw Sri Aurobindo seated next to the Mother I had a feeling of certitude, of stability — an impression I had received often before on seeing a huge mountain. . . . At the first glance I had the surety that what I had so long searched for, the solution of my problems, was there. I did not know why, there was no logic in it; but it was an absolute certitude which has never since changed. At that time I did not know any of his works; I began studying them from that period on: that is, 1935–36.

One used to see the Mother pretty frequently then. I was very friendly with Pavitra and in order to see him without bothering anyone I used to go and have breakfast with him in the room he occupied above the Atelier. Later it became a big office. I had the opportunity of seeing the Mother there, who often needed to see Pavitra. She had the look of a kind, gentle, affectionate grandmother. She would come in her dressing gown, with her grey hair pulled back; it was extraordinarily comforting because one felt to what extent she was human, direct, and one could tell her anything, ask her anything. Naturally one avoided questioning her at that moment, but in other interviews I was able to ask for explanations on Sri Aurobindo's works that I was then getting acquainted with.

- G. Monod-Herzen

('A Talk to the Students of SAICE', Mother India, August 1972, pp. 496–97)

Meeting Sri Aurobindo

Q: Dikshit-bhai, in which year did you come here first and how did you come in contact with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother?

I came here in 1920. At that time I saw Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

[Later, Dikshit-bhai added a written note to the answer.]

We met Sri Aurobindo in the upstairs verandah of the Guest House. Sri Aurobindo came out from the western door of the room near the terrace. He came out at the given time to see us. He was dressed in a dhoti, part of which was used as a scarf to cover the upper body. We offered pranam at his feet. After pranam, he sat down on a chair. There was a table near the chair and he sat down facing south. I sat on his right, Punamchand in the front and Champaben on the left. After we were seated, he signed to me to ask what I wanted. I asked him three things. The first — I wanted to see the [Divine] Mother. He asked me, "What do you do?" I replied, "I try to remember Her. When I forget Her, I try to remember Her again." He said, "The Mother is above the head. Offer all your actions to Her." The second thing I said was, "I love knowledge." He told me, "There are two ways of acquiring knowledge. One is by the laborious method of studying books. The result is poor and uncertain. The second is to open oneself to the higher consciousness and receive the knowledge from there." The third thing I said was that I love education. He spoke for some time on education. What he said was pleasant and agreeable and I was lost in the joy of listening. Later, I remembered the substance of what he said and made some notes, covering about 16 points. They were shown to Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo showed them to the Mother. Both approved of them.

- Kesari Nanalal Dikshit

(The Golden Chain, May 2004, p. 27)

Captured by Her Eyes

The words — "God, Light, Bliss, Freedom, Immortality" — found a responsive chord within me. I knew I had found my Guru who promised me all that I was seeking and more: the Delight of Existence on this very earth.

. . .

I asked for permission to see Him for November 24th darshan in 1950. But I was told that He was not well, and I should wait for the February darshan. But He left His body on the 5th December 1950.

. . .

I wanted to pay my homage. So I decided to fly to Madras. . . . I got my ticket for the 8th. . . .

We arrived by train in the evening [of 9th], when the body of Sri Aurobindo was already interred. . . . I joined the line of people at the head of the Samadhi. . . Tears uninterruptedly rolled down, but my aspiration became stronger and my prayer as intense. It was all offered to Him, my Guru and the Lord.

. . .

People told me: "You can see the Mother. For She has the same Consciousness as Sri Aurobindo." I did not understand, nor did I know anything about the Mother. . . . The Mother gave darshan on the 12th December. I waited in the queue not knowing what awaited me, but aspiring as intensely for that golden moment. When I stood before the Mother, my eyes were captured by Her eyes. Neither of us blinked. I knew nothing else. I was transfixed. I could not move till the Mother nodded with a smile and handed me the card with Sri Aurobindo's last photo. I moved on still looking into Her beautiful eyes as if they followed me wherever I went. . . .

- Kailas Jhaveri

(I am with you by Kailas Jhaveri, published by Aditi-Utsang, Balasore, 2004, pp. 2–6)

My First Contact

My first contact with Sri Aurobindo took place in a strange way. I was thirteen. One afternoon I was idly browsing among books in the office-cum-library of my brother who was an advocate. The dusty book-shelves were full of old leather bound volumes of All-India Law Reports. Among them was a big green book which excited my curiosity. I pulled it out and found it was entitled "Alipore Bomb Case". I opened it and my eyes fell on a photograph with the words ARAVINDA GHOSE beneath. The name acted on me like a mantra and I found myself repeating it with obvious delight. It was something sweet and melodious. Later I spoke to my brother of this experience. He wrote about it to my mentor Sri Kapali Sastry who told me that the meaning of my finding the photograph in the book would become evident as I grew up. And it did.

For soon my childhood impulses towards God grew into a hunger and I devoured the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, the works of Swami Vivekananda and so on. I asked Sri Kapali Sastry whether I could go to Pondicherry and join him there. He was definite that I should continue my education and prepare myself for the Quest in the meanwhile. By that time The Bases of Yoga by Sri Aurobindo had been published. It was a beautiful bound volume costing three rupees and it became my companion.

Within a couple of years, in 1937, I had my first Darshan of Sri Aurobindo on August 15. It was overwhelming and I felt the only thing comparable to him was the Himalayas. I still remember the slight smile on his face moulded of compassion.

- M. P. Pandit

(Selected Works of M. P. Pandit Volume One, edited by Rand Hicks, published by Integral Knowledge Center, U.S.A., 1993, p. xi)

Two Poems

She

She comes down to our little globe
Enfolds us in the healing robe
And patiently prepares the ground
Sowing it with golden grain
And with Her laugh the worlds resound
Her slightest touch dissolves our pain
And opens the gates of hope again.

Her Transforming Face

Behind this tortured world a golden dawn
Prepares the hour of man's transcendent flight
And all our sorrow, suffering and sin
Shall disappear in radiant delight.
Prometheus and Atlas shall be freed
And evil overwhelmed by puissant grace,
Persephone released from Hades' grasp
And the world transformed by Her transforming face.

- Narad

The Absolute in Human Form

Q: Can you speak to me about your impressions of Sri Aurobindo. What do you remember?

Sri Aurobindo was a magnificent sight. He was gold coloured and looked the embodiment of majesty and grandeur. We saw the Mother every day but only saw Sri Aurobindo four times each year. I never saw him stand up but his grandeur seemed to me, at so young an age, to be a combination of all the kings of the world in one form! I always tried to get a good look at him before standing before him for darshan. I just immediately knew from within that he was the Absolute in human form. There was no talking, no words, only the offering of garlands to him.

- Jhumur Bhattacharya

(The Golden Path – Interviews with Disciples of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother from the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and Auroville by Anie Nunnally, published by East West Cultural Center, California, 2004, pp. 147–48)

First Darshan

In 1959, I started living at a place called Acharya House on Chetty Street where the main Ashram is located. This housed the Blind People's Association and Mr. Acharya, who was himself blind, was Secretary of the Association and lived in one of the rooms downstairs. There was a Gujarati family who lived in the other rooms on the ground floor. I rented the upper floor which had three tiny rooms, but it also had a wide terrace, which was a boon in the climate of Pondicherry. But the greater boon was that it was close to the main building of the Ashram. Those days the Mother used to give her 'Darshan' to the devotees every morning from the balcony of this building.

At that time, my attraction towards the Ashram was mainly by reading material on Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. The writings of Sri Aurobindo were too difficult for me to understand — particularly his book 'Savitri' and 'The Life Divine' — so I left them for a better period of my life when I hoped to become a little more mature. But his essays were not so difficult. However, the Mother's writings were simple and fantastic. In her simple way, she explained the most intricate of subjects. The added attraction was her Darshan every morning, which I received by standing on the road behind the main building and admiring her wonderful, peaceful and loving countenance.

Now as everyone knows, the Mother used to bless individuals on special occasions. I too desired this "personal" Darshan.

It was 15th August, the birthday of Sri Aurobindo. We lined up in a single file and entered in an extremely peaceful and quiet manner to obtain her blessings. I also went and knelt before her and she laid her hand on my head and blessed me. This was my first encounter. I found an extremely impressive, rather old figure, frail but fairly strong and her deep eyes, looking directly into mine. People — particularly some sadhaks in the Ashram — had told me earlier, "She passes spiritual power through her eyes when she gazes into yours. So do not be surprised and keep looking into her eyes till she herself will indicate that your turn is over." "Imbibe as much as you can," was the consistent advice.

Alas, being what I was, although I saw love and attraction, I did not feel the passing of any power or any supernatural feeling. But one thing was clear — she had absolutely clear, deep and beautiful eyes; very rarely have I seen (in my medical profession) such lovely eyes at that age! There was only a feeling of benevolence and I was tremendously fascinated.

I came back with a deep sense of respect and a sort of attachment, just like a small child for its mother.

The second Darshan came in December. By this time, I had made many friends in the Ashram — I was their physician and it was natural that we often talked about the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. As always, everyone started getting ready for Darshan. However, I had been going daily for her Darshan from the balcony. Those days I was the lone senior physician and work often kept me busy from morning till late in the evening or sometimes even at night. But that day, I was free. My Ashram friends were surprised that I did not go for this 'special' Darshan. They were not happy that I had avoided it and were even annoyed that I missed it, especially since I was free. When asked, I had to explain to them why I had done so.

I asked them, "Do you love Mother?"

They nodded, "Yes."

"Okay, then sit here, in the chair and move your hand two thousand times. How do you feel now? I cannot be the one to create such a strain for her — my mother. By not going, I am reducing the number of times she has to raise her arm and hand. I can close my eyes and easily imagine seeing her today or else go to the balcony tomorrow and have her Darshan."

Needless to say they were dumbfounded.

One of them said, "But the Mother likes it. She loves to bless her children!"

Smiling, I told him that he may be right but I strongly felt I was also not wrong.

- D. B. Bisht

(Mother and Me by D. B. Bisht, published by Sri Aurobindo Society, 2004, pp. 20–22)

At the Feet of Mother and Sri Aurobindo

The "Library House" was the name given to the building in front of the main gate. I saw Anilbaran living in the room which Sri Aurobindo had once occupied. The Mother's room on the north was now Champaklal's. Since then we have been seeing Champaklal as the most devoted servant of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. The library was set up on the ground-floor, and in the adjacent room were kept newspapers spread on mats. It was named "Reading Room" and visited by the sadhaks in their leisure hours.

The front courtyard had a kind of shed where the milkmen brought their cows to be milked after the udders had been washed with potassium permanganate. The sadhak-supervisor of this work used to filter this frothy milk through a clean piece of cloth (one cannot but wonder at the meticulous cleanliness and tidiness observed here in everything). The sadhak was named Dara by Sri Aurobindo. The affluent Mussulman family of Hyderabad to which he belonged had settled here a few months before me. There were three brothers, two sisters and their step-mother. They were very handsome people.

At the end of the large courtyard of the Library House was another house called by the Mother "Rosary House". You crossed a small yard to enter this house and on its left side was a thatched cottage — the Ashram kitchen. The maid-servants did the cooking and the sadhaks served the dishes. The sadhikas took up the cooking job a year or two after my arrival and I used to cook twice a week. The entire cooking work had to be done by oneself. No servants were available to help us. As I was a little liberal in the use of oil and ghee, Sri Aurobindo once jokingly said, "If Sahana were to cook, the Ashram would turn insolvent in three months."

The sadhak who had the sole charge of the cooking and the Dining Room was named "Dyuman" by Sri Aurobindo, his former name having been Chunibhai. The marketing and other supplies were in his hand. He lived on the top floor of the Rosary House from where began the building which lodged the Mother and Sri Aurobindo.

I had my first Darshan in this house and all the Darshans were given in the same room where the Mother and Sri Aurobindo used to take their seat side by side. It would be futile to describe to a layman what Darshan was — what the Two gave and what we received. The last joint Darshan was on the 24th November 1950.

Sahana

(At the Feet of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo by Sahana, translated from the original Bengali by Nirodbaran, published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department, 1985, pp. 6–7)

First Darshan of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother

[About the first Darshan in August 1937:]

There were very few people in the Ashram in those days so there was no long queue . . . . When I saw Sri Aurobindo for the first time I got a shock. I had seen kings and emperors in Europe, England and Asia whose clothes were majestic but the person inside quite ordinary. Here was a man wearing only a dhoti and chaddar (shawl) sitting bare-chested and looking like a king. I said to myself, "At last I have seen royalty and majesty." After that darshan we were very much drawn to the Ashram.

- Udar

(The Golden Path – Interviews with Disciples of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother from the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and Auroville by Anie Nunnally, published by East West Cultural Center, California, 2004, pp. 29-30)

A Divine Intervention

Q: When did you learn of Mother and Sri Aurobindo and when did you come to the Ashram to live? Can you describe your darshans with the Mother?

I was introduced to the Mother (and Sri Aurobindo) in 1971 while I was posted in Calcutta. We were preparing for the war with Pakistan that resulted in East Pakistan becoming an independent country — Bangladesh. I have given a comprehensive account of this in the book I have written under the title A Soldier's Voyage of Self Discovery in two chapters under the titles "War for the Liberation of Bangla Desh" and "Divine Intervention in 1971".

It happened while the crisis was building up before the actual war and after I had been told of the top secret plans. I was deeply involved in the preparation for war with limited resources at my disposal. One morning in my office, I must have been in a reflective mood in the light of the immensity of these impending operational challenges, when one of my officers, a Lieutenant Colonel who worked in the same headquarters, came to me and asked with a smile, "Sir, why are you so pensive these days, which is so unlike you?" I told him in a friendly tone, "Chum, you would be more pensive if you had some of the problems I am facing these days which I cannot share with you at present." He had come prepared (I had no idea that he was a long-time devotee of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother) and he promptly said, "Sir, you are my old instructor and I should not be advising you, but I have a humble submission; whatever your problems, write to the Mother for her blessings." I hesitated for a couple of days. I had heard of Sri Aurobindo but knew little about the Mother in Pondicherry. Then I wrote a few lines just to seek her blessings for some problems I was facing in my work which I could not specify. I received her blessings in a few days and the rest is history. Most of the top brass at the Eastern Army HQ had received the Mother's blessings prompted by the same source. It is amazing how successful the operation against Pakistan was when over 93,000 regular Pakistani army soldiers surrendered to the Indian Army.

From my point of view, it was clearly a Divine Intervention. The Mother had shown a great deal of interest in the developing situation in West Bengal. So, as soon as I could, I travelled to Pondicherry with my family. On February 22, 1972 we were granted a very powerful and special audience by the Mother. One by one we sat at her feet and gazed into her eyes as we were told to do. Not a word was uttered as each one of us received her blessings. She looked deeply into our eyes pouring her Force into us. She put her hand on our heads and gave each of us a rose and a blessing packet.

This meeting is what brought about the major change that was to take place in my life. Independently all the members of my family — my wife and our three daughters and I — decided to settle in Pondicherry in the Ashram and we moved there permanently in November 1976 after my retirement from the Army.

The biggest regret in my life has been that I never went to Pondicherry to see Sri Aurobindo during the intensive training we did in South India. It was in 1943, before we were sent to war in Burma. We were involved in exercises within close proximity to Pondicherry but I never even thought of going there to receive Sri Aurobindo's darshan. Perhaps I was just too involved in the preparation for war.

- Krishna Tewari

(The Golden Path – Interviews with Disciples of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother from the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and Auroville by Anie Nunnally, published by East West Cultural Center, California, 2004, pp. 224-26)

A Kind of Electric Current

. . . I subscribed for the weekly Bande Mataram and afterwards — after his release from jail — for his Karmayogin and the Dharma (Bengali). Evidently I entertained a soft corner for Sri Aurobindo. . .

Sri Aurobindo left for Pondicherry in 1910. I completely lost touch and got engrossed in my mundane life for years together. It was only by the end of the 30s that I awoke again to Sri Aurobindo. That was occasioned by my younger brother visiting the Ashram and staying away there itself. I began to hear of Sri Aurobindo, the Ashram and the Mother. About the Mother I could not reconcile myself to how a European lady could establish herself as the Mother in Pondicherry Ashram and even more as the Divine Mother. I remember I once questioned a woman pilgrim on her way to Pondicherry whether Sri Aurobindo was greater or the Mother. This was my mental attitude at that time.

However, as I wished to see my brother I thought of paying a visit to the Ashram in 1943 and seeing things for myself. But that was not to be. I thought of it again the next year, in 1944. I had heard that for the necessary permission one had to write directly to the Mother. I had heard also that the Mother was being addressed as the Divine Mother. I was in a fix when I took the letter pad to write for permission. I simply wrote "Mother" and added: "I want to go to Pondicherry for Darshan but I have no devotional heart; a Darshan may have a salutary effect on me having a yearning to get a true knowledge of things." Writing so far I stopped and thought to myself what an audacity it was to write thus. Then I felt that these words had come out through the pen without my thinking and so I had better let them remain as they were, whatever the consequences. I am glad to say that I received the permission.

I came to Pondicherry on the 6th of August 1944, early morning. I saw the Mother at about 11 a.m. the same morning walking on the terrace along with Chinmayi and looking at the devotees assembled in the Ashram courtyard. I was also in the crowd. Mother had worn a silken gown and Chinmayi had held a silken umbrella over the Mother's head. I was not happy to see the Mother at that moment.

During those days Mother used to come on the terrace of Madhav's office at dusk every evening and stand there for a short meditation. In the courtyard below mats were spread and sadhaks used to join the meditation. When the Mother appeared on the terrace I looked at her and immediately a kind of electric current passed through my body; I saw my own mother's face appearing on the Mother's but immediately that face changed into the image of Goddess Jagaddhatri of our conception. This set me seriously thinking. I felt that as I did not want to recognise the Mother as Mother, she had appeared before me first as my own mother and then showed her divinity.

I stayed here for full 24 days and on three occasions I saw a bluish halo over the head of the Mother when she sat for meditation in the Meditation Hall at night.

My first Darshan of Sri Aurobindo along with the Mother was on the 15th of August 1944. Since then I have had 10 Darshans but the impression formed at the first Darshan is still vivid in my mind although each subsequent Darshan was fruitful for me.

- Rakhal Das Bose

(Breath of Grace, edited by M. P. Pandit, published by Dipti Publications, 2002, pp. 89-91)

Pranam

The daily march of our life every morning began after bowing down to our Mother and with her blessings. She used to come downstairs at about 6.30 in the morning in one of the rooms on the eastern row of the courtyard. It is here that Bula, the sadhak in charge of the Electric Department is lodged now. A raised seat with velvet covering was placed for her. Just beside her in a tray were heaped flowers of various kinds. One by one as we approached to bow to her, she gave each one of us a flower after placing her hand on our heads. It was through these flowers that she gave her directions. We too took the flowers with an ardent effort to divine what she meant. With the flower in hand we used to come out of the room, except a few who sat in meditation there. Every living moment in those days was eked out in an attitude of becoming aware of the reason why life here was bound to something other, never to be forgotten, and why one was here. That which we felt seemed to open out a new line giving a fresh turn to everything — a change of one's point of view, as if we were learning things anew in a new light. Life was stirring to a new dream. Something within seemed to become alive rendering intensely concrete our asking and receiving.

There was a time when the Mother used to distribute soup every evening at eight o'clock in the reception room of the Library House facing the main gate. It was a ceremony rendering the atmosphere deep and intimate. She used to sit on a chair placed on a raised dais and all the lights, except a dim one, were put out. Just in front of her on a small table the large receptacle containing the soup was placed. She first meditated for a while keeping both her hands stretched full length over the container invoking Sri Aurobindo's power into it. The meditation over, the container was moved to the right side for her to begin the distribution. The disciples sat, each one at his place appointed by the Mother herself. Each one, an empty cup in hand, approached her and handing the cup over to her bowed down in pranam at her feet. As he or she got up the Mother gave him or her the cup. The cups received, the disciples, one by one, would leave the room. The distribution of soup took about an hour, and was accomplished in perfect silence; all were merged in a deep inner feeling in that dim light, a feeling of a different world, an impressive far-off existence pressed upon the consciousness of all and slowly spread all around the room surcharging the atmosphere as if a tangible influence was at work consolidating all that was external and inner in a seeming vagueness of one's personal existence. We hardly understood where we were but became aware of all kinds of feelings of many worlds. How enchanting the Mother appeared then to our eyes! Also, it was at that hour that diverse divine expressions used to manifest from her. If one looked into her eyes, one became aware of a look in them, not quite human, a look that penetrated into the inner depths of our physical body, observing all, into the farthest corners. Her smile was beyond comparison. Often she entered into trance with the cup in her hand, motionless as a statue. But as soon as she returned to her bodily consciousness the distribution went on as before as if nothing had happened a short while ago — utterly simple and natural as ever.

At the time when I came here, Sri Aurobindo along with the Mother granted three Darshans every year — once on his birthday on the 15th of August, once on the Mother's birthday on the 21st February and once again on the 24th November. It was on this date in 1926 that there happened the "Descent of the Overmind" and from that date he withdrew into seclusion. He later wrote to Nirodbaran — "It was the descent of Krishna into the physical. Krishna is not the Supramental Light. The descent of Krishna would mean the descent of the Overmind Godhead preparing, though not itself actually bringing, the descent of Supermind and Ananda. Krishna is the Anandamaya, he supports the evolution through the Overmind leading it towards Ananda." "It was also proclaimed that I was retiring — obviously to work things out." A few years later, from 1939 onwards — on the 24th April, the day of Mother's final arrival, another Darshan was granted, making four Darshans every year.

Let me relate here what it was that occurred, ushering in the Darshan in April as also of our painful feelings. Sri Aurobindo could be seen only on the Darshan days and no other. Therefore to get his Darshan was something to eagerly look forward to — to wait from one Darshan to another with a thirst in the heart beating eagerly but not easily appeased. Can one ever have his expectations fulfilled, having seen Sri Aurobindo only once? Just seeing him cannot be called a Darshan of Sri Aurobindo. Each Darshan in our life was an experience, nearly a supra-realisation. It brought to us the golden opportunity to reach out to the unattainable. He instilled into us something that no one else could. Thus as the Darshan day approached our minds too leaned to a self-gathering, with a view to receiving rightly; this occupied the whole of ourselves. Darshan was to start at seven o'clock in the morning. I had a room, those days, in a small one-storeyed building across the road, opposite to the Darshan room. I lived alone. The room where Darshan used to be is the very next one to the Mother's room, just above the gate of that building, easily visible from my room. The decorations of the Darshan room began usually from the previous night. From my room I could hear the hum of those engaged in the work and see the arrival of flowers in abundance and other paraphernalia. The awareness of all this gave rise to waves of joy in me to feel that as soon as the morning broke I would see Sri Aurobindo, approach him and receive his touch — things of such wonderful feelings. As I was proceeding for Darshan on the morning of 24th November 1938, someone told me, "There will be no Darshan today." I was shocked and promptly said, "What rot are you talking?" The speaker with a pale and hurt countenance said, "Please inform yourself," and moved away with his head lowered. In the meanwhile I had recovered myself enough to realise that I had been unnecessarily rude. I approached Nolini to find out what the matter was, meeting on the way many who had come for Darshan loitering with dejected mien. What I heard was that as Sri Aurobindo got up from his chair after replying to our letters, he stumbled on the stuffed head of a tiger skin. The fall was the cause of fracturing the bone above the knee. One could easily surmise the mental anguish of the ashramites at this news. A dark dejection enveloped me, I felt as if all daylight had been extinguished. I can hardly recollect how the day passed. In the evening the Mother alone gave Darshan in the hall just in front of Amrita's room. Her compassion flowing in a hundred streams began to wash away the dejection from our minds. She filled all the profound emptiness in our hearts with her incomparable heavenly smile. We were uplifted by her inspiration and strength and we found our feet to rise again. Still I must admit I could not bear for long to see her giving Darshan alone. The next Darshan was to be on the 21st February 1939, but this too did not take place. Then after these two lapses the first Darshan was on the 24th April 1939, which has become since then a regular one.

Another page of the chronicle of the Ashram was turned, a new era started: Sri Aurobindo's correspondence with the disciples came to an end as also the intimate interviews with the Mother. She gave her own room as well as the one where she used to grant interviews, for the attention and service needed for Sri Aurobindo.

- Sahana

(Breath of Grace edited by M. P. Pandit, published by Dipti Publications, 2002, pp. 114-17)

The Grace

This is not a polemic or an abstraction on the reality of the Divine Grace which the materialist might frown upon or [which might] draw the devotee to wax into high-sounding eulogy. What I recount is factual without a grain of fiction. Yet these might seem impossibles. Why? Take for example the capacity for literary or musical creation I am supposed to possess. From where did I imbibe them — from my family! Good heavens! No. None in our past generations had either been a poet, a critic or a musician. They were hard-boiled materialists bent on the utilitarian pastime of earning and producing wealth. And yet I would be all these though I must confess if left to my own I could not turn out a single piece of music or a single line of poetry. Perhaps I am putting the cart before the horse.

From the very early childhood I have a faint recollection of my parents meditating before some photographs all bedecked with flowers. I was strangely attracted by the perfume of flowers and incense. From that time I learned to associate incense, flowers and photographs with things sacred.

I came to the Ashram as a visitor in November 1929. But I was not allowed either to enter the Ashram or for pranam. But I had darshan of the Mother going out for a drive everyday at 4 p.m. in the afternoons. Also she went every Thursday to Duraiswami's place on foot, passing in front of our house, when once I offered a box of chocolates to her and rushed back into the house. I felt so shy. That was my first contact with the Mother. This shyness I have never been able to overcome.

My most significant darshan and the turning point of my life came on the 24th of November. I went with my father and bowed down to the Master and the Mother. I came home in a daze. Later, my father and Barin-da asked me how I liked the darshan. It was a casual question, more to humour a child than anything else. How could a child of nine feel the greatness of this stupendous spiritual personality which even to the adults was an enigma? Yes, neither my mind nor my heart was awakened enough, ready to seize the import. But I felt a great vastness, a height in Sri Aurobindo which to my childish mind seemed as great as the Himalayas.

There and then I made up my mind that I must stay on. What exactly attracted me, I cannot say, for there were no children (incidentally I was the first child admitted), no school, no games; only about a hundred men and women with serious faces moved about, met at pranams, meditations and withdrew to their homes. They were distant and uncommunicative, except for Purani whom I nicknamed the policeman, and Barin-da.

My father was not prepared for this strange decision, for I was brought here more or less on an experimental basis; for my mother had died three years earlier and I had none to look after me; my father being a touring government official had no fixed establishment. My father had hesitatingly put everything before the Master who replied to say that though children were not admitted in the Ashram he could bring his son. "Let us see what can be done," he added.

Again my father wrote to the Master when I told him my resolve to stay on. Sri Aurobindo advised me to go back for a few months and return after learning some English "so that he could talk to the Mother". Accordingly I left.

I returned in July 1930. My father stayed for a month and half. But he did nothing to arrange for my stay. And what could be done? There were no "homes", no people eager to keep boys. But the Divine Grace intervened in a strange way.

The wife of one of the first disciples of Sri Aurobindo agreed to look after me, while I stayed in an adjoining room vacated by her husband Bijoy Nag. All this happened almost without the knowledge of my father.

And I stayed on . . .

- Romen Palit

(Breath of Grace, edited by M. P. Pandit, published by Dipti Publications, 2002, pp. 92-95)

Long Back

I used to read the Arya when I was living in the Victoria Hostels in Madras. I was sixteen then. I found in those pages just what I needed and I intensely wished to obtain what was there. Small booklets like the Uttarpara Speech also came into my hands and appealed to me very much. I wanted to see Sri Aurobindo very much. The opportunity arrived on the 7th of April 1921 when I came to Pondicherry and stayed for fifteen days.

I first saw Sri Aurobindo in the verandah of the Guest House upstairs. He was quite different from the figure in the familiar pictures. He had a big body; the colour was golden, particularly there was a golden light on the head and in the feet which was perceptible to my intense vision. I offered Pranam to him.

Sri Aurobindo: What have you been doing?

I: I have read the Ideal of Karmayogin and have been practising it. I look upon the body as the chariot and Sri Krishna as the charioteer. I pray to Him.

Sri Aurobindo: All right, continue.

After I left and returned to my host's house I had an experience in which I lost the body consciousness. I found myself moving in the air, to distant places like a bird. I felt myself a bird. It was all light and delight.

Later when I reported this experience to him, Sri Aurobindo said:

It is a symbolic vision; promise of the Light to come. Bird is the symbol of the soul.

As he was saying this I felt highly gratified that I had achieved something special. That very moment he added that it was a common experience.

While leaving he told me to write to him though I was not to expect replies. Accordingly I used to write to him every week. What is remarkable is that even before posting the letters I used to feel the effect.

It was in 1923 that, after passing out from Medical College, I could come away to stay with Sri Aurobindo permanently. At that time Purani was functioning as the manager of the household. And I learnt that referring to my coming Sri Aurobindo had said to him "Yoke him when he comes."

And I was yoked blissfully. I was put in charge of purchases etc. Sri Aurobindo used to give me fifteen rupees per month for each of the inmates (for Mess expenses) plus Rs. 40/- p.m. for house rent.

I used to get opportunities to meditate in Sri Aurobindo's presence along with one or two others. At times there would be loud noise downstairs of opening wooden cases etc. When one of us complained to him that the noise was interfering with the meditation, he answered:

You must be able to meditate on the battlefield.

Naturally I used to get different experiences during these sittings. There would be extreme delight which the body could not bear. There would be great peace. When I asked him about this peace Sri Aurobindo said:

Mental peace is different from spiritual Peace. Spiritual Peace is unaltered by anything.

I also spoke to him of the Light that I used to feel descending into me. He remarked that what came from above was grappled by the mind and at times there was a mixture. I interrupted and said that there was no mixture in my case.

Sri Aurobindo: After thirty years of sadhana I find there is a mixture. And you . . .!

In those days it used to be a common sight to see Sri Aurobindo sitting amidst others but he was really somewhere beyond, unreachable.

- Rajangam

(Breath of Grace, edited by M. P. Pandit, published by Dipti Publications, 2002, pp. 85-86)

The Gaze of a God

In 1928, inspired by Krishna Shambhu, our manager Garde went to the Ashram for the November Darshan. He had a deep respect for Sri Aurobindo as a political leader but knew nothing about Yogi Sri Aurobindo. He returned from the Ashram with an unshakable faith in the divinity of Sri Aurobindo. One day he narrated his experiences at the Ashram. This is what he told us:

I reached Pondicherry on the morning of November 23 and was taken to an Ashram house. In the afternoon a sadhak came to me and said, "Come for the Mother's Darshan." The man further informed me, "We make Pranam at the feet of the Mother and she blesses us by putting her hand on our heads." I was from an orthodox Brahmin family. Also, I hardly knew anything about the Mother. I thought, "I have come here for Sri Aurobindo's Darshan. It would be better if the Mother didn't bless me." Thinking thus I reached the Ashram. In those days the Mother used to see people in the Library Room. When I bowed to her she didn't bless me and when I looked at her she said, "Sri Aurobindo will give Darshan tomorrow." I wondered, "Why did the Mother say this?" She must have known what was in my mind and heart because she didn't bless me, and also understood that I had come only for Sri Aurobindo's Darshan.

In those days every person had a fixed time for Darshan. While somebody went in for Darshan and Pranam, the next person awaited him on the stairs. No one was supposed to see another person doing Pranam. On the next morning while I was awaiting my turn, out of curiosity, I peeped from behind the door and my gaze settled on Sri Aurobindo. At the same moment Sri Aurobindo looked at me. Suddenly I saw a serious and frightening form of Sri Aurobindo — the Upanishadic words bheeshanam bheeshanam flashed into my inner being. Frightened I drew back and thought, "I did something forbidden and so it had to bring this retribution." Meanwhile my turn for Darshan came. After Pranam when I looked into the eyes of Sri Aurobindo I felt as if Sri Aurobindo's eyes were telling me, "If you want to know me you can know me through the Mother." And with this message some Power turned my neck towards the Mother. My eyes fell on the Mother who was looking at me with eyes full of infinite compassion. I did Pranam to the Mother and came out.

In late 1932 I received a letter from Krishna Shambhu. He suggested that I go to Pondicherry for the November Darshan.

. . .

In those days at 6 a.m. the Mother used to come to the Meditation Hall and receive the Pranam of the disciples. In the beginning there would be a meditation for five minutes and then everyone did Pranam. The seating arrangement of the sadhaks and the order in which they made Pranam was fixed. On the morning of November 17 I went to the Ashram with Krishna Shambhu. For a long time I sat and observed how the people made Pranam and how the Mother blessed them. This scene made a great impact upon me. When a soul offers its whole being at the feet of the Supreme Lord and when that Divine Being leans down and accepts its own individual manifestation into Itself, that impressive and luminous event is beyond description.

When my turn came I stood up and with a palpitating heart knelt in front of the Mother and placed my head on her feet. When she put her hand on my head in blessing I raised my eyes and looked at her. Oh! What is this! In front of my eyes was a large living image of the Mother made of white marble. She had very large penetrating eyes. I felt she was looking at each atom of my being inside and outside. "The Gaze of a God," — I remembered this description from a Bengali story. For a long time I felt as if something had touched all my limbs.

On November 24, at the fixed time, I went for Darshan. After offering Pranam, when I looked at Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, I saw two living images of white marble sitting on the throne. Both had large soul-touching eyes of Gods. My being filled with great faith and a divine light and something within said, "Uma, Maheshwar".

From my very first day in Pondicherry I felt as if I had entered a different world. Whole days passed in a strange yet felicitous way.

- Chandradeep

(How They Came to Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, Volume 3 by Shyam Kumari, published by Mother Publications, Bombay, 1990, pp. 113-15)

Their Presence: Vast and Unfathomable

I began my journey to Pondicherry, arriving on 11 August 1932.

In those days the main gate of the Ashram remained always closed. Outside the Ashram British spies kept constant vigil. Only in 1935 did this spying stop, due to the intercession with the Government by one of Sri Aurobindo's disciples, Duraiswami.

When I knocked at the Ashram gate, a sadhak serving as a watchman opened it and allowed me to enter. Then he asked, "What do you want?"

"I have come for the Ashram."

"Is anyone in the Ashram known to you?"

"No, but is Anilbaran Roy here? Could you see if he has received a letter about me?"

. . .

I asked the watchman for a piece of paper and a pencil and wrote a note to Anilbaran Roy which I gave to the watchman. I was told that Anilbaran did not see anyone or go out. Still the watchman told me to wait . . . .

At last Anilbaran Roy arrived and spared me about two minutes. I told him I had come to join the Ashram and requested his help. He told me I could write to Sri Aurobindo praying for permission for Darshan on August 15 and that he would deliver the letter and that the question of joining the Ashram would come later.

. . .

Darshan started. One by one sadhaks went upstairs. They were carrying flowers and garlands and many of them had envelopes in their hands. I thought that they were taking letters for Sri Aurobindo.

. . .

Anilbaran had earlier completed his Darshan and upon returning had assured me that he would come to take me upstairs when it was my turn. He came and gave me some flowers for offering. When he saw the letter in my hand, he told me that he would send it in the afternoon as now was not the proper time. I asked him, "What should I do in front of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother during Darshan?" He advised me to do whatever came from within.

On reaching upstairs I saw Sri Aurobindo and the Mother seated on a sofa. Their Presence was so vast and unfathomable that the whole of my being became submissive with reverence and gratitude. There was a Silence everywhere — so dense and complete that nothing could penetrate it. My inner being felt an indescribable glow of happiness. Somehow I was able to gather myself and move forward and surrender myself at their lotus feet. I felt the Mother was Parvati Uma and Sri Aurobindo was Lord Shiva blessing us upon the earth. I am a tiny human being, a small fry. How can I contain Sri Aurobindo — great like the Himalayas, vast like the ocean. But Sri Aurobindo was looking at me with divine compassion and the Mother was smiling with so much love and benevolence! It is beyond my capacity to express the feeling I had on that day.

- Yogananda

(How They Came to Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, Volume 3 by Shyam Kumari, published by Mother Publications, Bombay, 1990, pp. 245-50)

The Master as I See Him

It is not for the first time, in this life, that I see my Master. From age to age, through lives innumerable, have I known him and loved him and served him. As father, as lover, as friend, has he appeared unto me, again and again, and blessed my otherwise purposeless journeys on this planet. Now and then, clouds have obscured my vision, and I have failed to recognise my pole-star, but this has never been for long. Never has he, in his infinite compassion, forsaken me, a weak half-blind and insignificant creature pursuing his solitary path of self-seeking. His Shakti has lifted me out of the mire, led me out of the gloom, and taught me the art of seeking him, of seeing him, not in a heaven above, but in this ever-changing universe that surrounds me. Thus have I tasted of his grace, thus have I had glimpses of the Truth, again and again. I have my lapses into the semi-obscurity of my mental horizon. But these trouble me no longer, for has not the Master shown me the radiant face of the Sun of suns!

In fact, my mortal body and life and mind are ceasing to be a burden to me, for I know now that they are but the abode of my true and immortal Self. And my true Self, it is the Self of all, it is my Master's Self, it is the one Self in the universe and beyond. This body then, this life, this mind, is to me, not a prison as the illusionist wails, but the tabernacle of Him, the One without a second, the One that has become Many in his own infinite self-delight.

Lest I forget this, O Sovereign Lord! Thou hast appeared unto me in Thy dual personality, Purusha and Prakriti, Master and Mother, with Thy message of peace, peace over all the earth, and oneness of all with Thy eternal Self.

Long, very long, has man remained forgetful of his luminous self and his bright destiny. He has lost sight of the radiant gem in the lotus of his heart, and has been travelling along the devious paths of egoism, preying on his fellows and living on his environment. Messengers from on high have appeared, from time to time, to remind him of his true nature. He has listened to them for the while, but has, alas! forgotten it all again. Inspired individuals have come and achieved their own liberation and passed away. But the bondage of the world has continued. Nature has her own strides in the path of evolution, she will not be hustled.

Man, however, is her cherished product. It is through him, through her favourite child, that her evolution has to proceed. In the Master's words, the individual is the key of evolution. Starting as a speck of cosmic dust he has stage by stage progressed through the ages, arriving finally at manhood. Then began his serious trials. He did not mind. Through tangled forest and over arid plains, across mighty rivers and over lofty mountains, in fair weather and foul, he travelled, but ever going forward. Today a terrible tempest, a blinding blizzard, has overtaken him as he is struggling along in a deep morass, the deepest bog he has had to negotiate so far. He is up to his neck in group egoism, power lust and blood lust.

Yet, man can get through if he wills it, if he realises the divinity in himself. For it is only by the light of the gem within that he can see his way. He may choose to persist in his ignorance and leave his bones to rot in the slime of the marsh. He has the right to choose, for has he not been endowed with reason and intelligence! But in any case he cannot stop nature's evolution. If he drops out of it, nature will choose another medium. This is the Master's solemn warning.

Such crises, however, have always a spiritual seed or intention. Merely for an outward action, however great, the special manifestation of an avatar is not needed. Even such epoch-making events as the Reformation in Europe or the Revolution in France required a change in the general consciousness that was merely mental and dynamic, not spiritual, and consequently did not require the direct guidance of Divinity incarnate.

Before the battle of Kurukshetra a crisis with a deep spiritual significance had undoubtedly come upon India, and the Lord out of his immeasurable love for humanity came down to the earth, destroyed the wicked, delivered the good and established the kingdom of righteousness. Today, the crisis that has overtaken humanity is an infinitely more serious one. It seems as if all that man has achieved so far has gone into the melting pot. His ideals, his standards, his sense of values, everything appears to have gone awry. Unrighteousness is rampant and Dharma is fading away. The moment is propitious for the descent of the Lord, and He has so descended. Blessed are they that have bowed down at His feet!

Such is the Master I seek to serve. He has not yet declared Himself. He has not yet said, — The ignorant and the deluded do not recognise me in my human guise, they do not know me as the great Lord of all existences. But it matters not. Those eyes, what do they show but ineffable peace and supreme bliss! That face, every line of it indicates almighty might and infinite compassion! Through the transparent frame shines soft yet bright the Divine light of the One Eternal that transcends both Knowledge and Ignorance, both Heaven and Earth.

Lord, Thou hast, I know, come down to destroy the evil-doer and to deliver the righteous. But very much more hast Thou come down to show me what I can rise to become, to demonstrate to me that the humblest of men can become God in his terrestrial body. Thy descent into humanity will raise man into the Godhead. Thy descent is my ascent.

Such is the full significance of the Master's advent. May a distracted world realise this, and with the completest submission to Him take boldly the leap upward into the region of the Supermind.

- C. C. Dutt

(Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual Number 50, 1991, pp. 175-78)

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother as I Saw Them

"Difficulties come not single, but in battalions", came true in my case, even at the age of fourteen. But they were a blessing in disguise; for they turned me Godward. I was seized with the spirit of renunciation, and more so after I came into contact with the works of Shankara, Vivekananda, Ramatirtha and the Vairagya school of philosophy. Ascetic life is only a preparation for something higher, which I did not envisage clearly. There was a deep yearning and aspiration to know the Divine. But there was no guide to lead me towards the goal. Mantra and Japa helped me to a great extent. Pranayama I practised without anybody's guidance. Shyness to approach others was a drawback in me. And having approached some who could not give me the necessary help, I became desperate and depressed. At last I resigned myself to fate.

It is said that an earnest seeker after Truth will be taken to the Divine Guide or the latter himself will go to the seeker and help the aspiring soul. The former happened in my case. On one Christmas evening, in 1920, I suddenly started for Pondicherry to see the Great Master Sri Aurobindo. A friend of mine also followed me, though for a different purpose. Though there was an initial disappointment in not having the Darshan of the mighty Master, I had his Darshan the second day. I was also fortunate enough to meet the gracious Mother before I saw the Master.

How to describe these divine personalities? This is possible only to those who have dived deep and gone very high up and become wide and luminous. The serene, sweet and beautiful divine personality of the Mother touched me even at the first sight of her. I did not know then that she was destined to lead thousands of persons to Purity, Light, Strength, Peace and Perfection in future.

Sri Aurobindo appeared to me like the great Shiva whom I had been worshipping for a very long time. He was all golden, not figuratively but actually. In the ancient Hindu spiritual works, gods and goddesses and great Rishis are described as golden (hiranya varnam, hiranmayam), the supramental colour. With a smooth golden body emitting light and flowing locks over his shoulders glowing bright, and shining eyes penetrating deep into everything, Sri Aurobindo was majestic in his appearance. His gait was royal and when he was pacing to and fro in the verandah, he appeared to be drawing force and using it according to his divine will. Sri Aurobindo's touch was magnetic and awakened the slumbering cells into life and activity.

About four months after I had the first Darshan of the Master, I went to him again for a few days' stay. Afterwards, from July 1921, I stayed with the Master for three years. It is not possible to record here all the innumerable experiences I had due to the grace of the Master. As a matter of fact, everybody got experiences according to his nature, opening and aspiration and surrender. In an integral yoga, multiple ways are opened to multiple personalities to know the Integral Truth. I shall describe here some aspects of the Master's personality as it appeared to external man. For to know him or judge him fully is impossible for anyone, unless one is able to reach his level which was supramental and far above it. The common man is interested to know how a spiritual person acts, talks and how he deals with others. Even here we cannot judge him according to our standards, for the ways of the divine person are mysterious.

Sri Aurobindo lived a secluded life, confined to his room. But this did not mean that he did not speak to anyone or was always silent and grave. On the other hand, he used to meet persons, sadhakas and outsiders both in the morning and evening for about an hour. In the mornings, between 9 and 10 a.m. he used to see visitors and sadhakas also. I was going to him now and then in the morning to narrate my experiences and clear some doubts. At that time, I used to feel the aroma of lotuses in his presence. In those days there were no flowers kept on his table and much less lotuses. When I told some friends about this, they said that it was my psychic sense and nothing more. They could not explain the phenomenon. But I read in some books on Rajayoga later on that great yogis emitted this lotus fragrance from their divine bodies.

When explaining things Sri Aurobindo used to raise his palm and the lines in his palm which were prominent could be seen well. I was curious to know about the significance of these lines according to Western palmistry. I could see well separated the life line and the head line and the heart line which were all deep and well-marked in a royal palm as it were. Apart from these, the line of fate was well marked and could be seen rising from the wrist and going straight up the centre of the palm to the mount of Saturn. This line indicated success, fame and brilliance in the path chosen by the Master. The heart line was deep, clear and well coloured. The line of head not too widely separated and one end of it commencing on the mount of Jupiter or with its main branch from the mount of Jupiter is one of the most brilliant marks of all according to Cheiro. A deep cut and fine head line could be seen which indicates a brilliant mind. Sri Aurobindo had artistic fine philosophic fingers with a firm thumb and bright shining nails. An elementary study of the lines mentioned above characterises the person possessing these as having a balanced head and heart and great will power, noble affection for others and being a man of destiny. If a great palmist had taken the palm impression of this mighty person he might have given more interesting details. I have mentioned what everybody could see easily when Sri Aurobindo raised his palm when talking to people.

Sri Aurobindo was pacing to and fro fast in his room and verandah for six to eight hours a day, meditating on persons, things and events and on himself. When doing so it appeared as if he was in a high state of consciousness and gave the impression of a Shiva or Mahakali with dishevelled hair moving about willing great things.

When the Master sat on his chair for conversation he was sometimes very silent and serene and other times quite jovial and laughing and cutting jokes and mixing with one and all. Often his gaze was upward as if he was stationed high above and came down to the level of ordinary persons when talking to them. He was always alert and never in the so-called samadhi state with closed eyes at the meditation time. Clad in a dhoti in all seasons of the year, he was equal to heat and cold. With regard to food, he was never punctilious about taste or richness or delicacies of food. Whatever was given he tasted with equal rasa . . .

- T. Kodandarama Rao

(Breath of Grace, edited by M. P. Pandit, published by Dipti Publications, 2002, pp. 43-46)

How and Why I Came to Pondicherry

While I was at the Navsari Ashram, I was in correspondence with my school teacher, Sri Rambhai who was living in Pondicherry. After the establishment of the Ashram in Pondicherry in November 1926, I wrote for permission to join it. The Mother asked for my photograph and it was sent to her. I was accepted as one of the sadhakas and left Navsari for Pondicherry in the last week of December 1927.

When I alighted at Pondicherry station, my schoolteacher Sri Rambhai, who had come to receive me, told me that Sri Aurobindo had retired into complete seclusion and the Ashram was being run by the Mother. This was news to me. I was both surprised and pained. But Sri Rambhai added that I was to meet the Mother at 11 a.m. the next day in the library-room of the Ashram and that she had got a room cleaned and furnished for me. During the very first night of my stay in that room, I had a wonderful experience. I dreamt as if a wonderful golden sun was shining in front of me and I became a small flame with my gaze fixed on it. I spent the whole night in indescribable bliss. The next day was the 31st of December and, when I met the Mother on that day, I saw shining over her the same sun which I had seen in my dream the previous night. Spontaneously I bowed down to her and obtained her blessings.

I got my first opportunity to see Sri Aurobindo on February 21, 1928. It was a great experience and I felt that the decision I had made while at school to accept Sri Aurobindo as my guru was perfectly right. I, therefore, surrendered myself heart and soul to him and felt reassured that he would save me from all my sins in the same way as Sri Krishna had promised Arjuna. When I had my second darshan of Sri Aurobindo in the August of 1928, he was satisfied with my yearnings for sadhana and progress in it and conveyed his satisfaction and had sent compliments to me through the Mother. After that day my spiritual bond with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother continually grew stronger and my gurus helped me in my sadhana with all their spiritual powers.

In 1929 Barindrakumar, the younger brother of Sri Aurobindo, left the Ashram without informing the Mother or taking her permission. Next morning the Mother sent a note asking me to shift to that room vacated by Barindrakumar. This room was situated [behind] Sri Aurobindo's room, on the first floor of the office of the building department of the Ashram where I was working. A road was running between the Master's residence and my room.

In this way, the Master's grace granted me the boon of physical nearness, when I was striving to understand the real meaning of the word "yoga", and the significance of the retirement of the Master. One day during meditation, the Master made me understand that the meaning of the word "yoga" is to unite, to establish inner relation. "It is for teaching the sadhakas the way to establish the inner relation that I have withdrawn, so that I can help them in a better way."

In 1931, I felt the longing to withdraw from the outer world, to hark to the music of the inner Self, who was calling me. I informed the Mother of my feeling, Sri Aurobindo replied immediately: "You can withdraw if you are feeling so. The Mother will make all necessary arrangements for you." When one accepts a guru, and the guru takes him to his heart; when their relation is deep and intimate enough, the disciple approaches and identifies himself with the Master; the Master receives him with all love and makes him sit in his great heart and he takes his seat in the heart of the disciple. They remain no more separate entities, but begin to live in union.

It was for this reason that I was granted the physical nearness. It was the Master who had suggested me to retire, so that he can teach me how to establish intimacy and union. In this way, he started sadhana within me and gave me hundreds of experiences and wrote hundreds of letters to explain them. During meditation, when I rushed to him, entered his heart, united and identified with him . . . he would . . . tell me . . . "I am with you." I can see his majestic form standing there to respond to the call of his devotee, defying all rules and breaking all bondages . . . .

Here is the graceful bounty of the Divine Master . . . .

"A mutual debt binds man to the Supreme:
His nature we must put on as He puts ours;
We are sons of God and must be even as he:
His human portion, we must grow divine.
Our life is a paradox with God for key."

Savitri

- Govindbhai Patel

(My Pilgrimage of the Spirit by Govindbhai Patel, published by Gift Publication, Ahmedabad, 1974, 1977 2nd ed., pp. 5-7)

That Touch I Could Never Forget — A Remembrance from Childhood

I am Ardhendu. I live in Aspiration and I am in Auroville since 1970, when I was just ten years old. I would like to start with a quotation from Sri Aurobindo which is about Mother: "The one whom we adore as the Mother is the divine conscious force that dominates all existence."

This is actually my mantra or . . . everything. I begin the day with this prayer and end the day with it. It's a continuous process. And in the middle of the day also, anytime when I feel that I need to take the name of the Mother, I use this — the same thing, these few lines of Sri Aurobindo about the Mother — and it gives me so much of strength, joy and happiness that I really cannot express it. It is just wonderful.

I had come to Pondicherry, from West Bengal, at the beginning of 1970 and visited the Mother with my family, — that is, with my parents, and my sister and brother. I have a sister who is working now and others are no more, excepting my aunty. Parents have passed away. It was on my mother's birthday that we visited together. People waited in a long queue and were called in one by one. I just saw the Mother and felt, "Okay, this is the Mother. Okay." At that time I did not have much feeling. We just did pranam like this, our Indian way, and came out. That was my first visit. Of course on darshan days we saw Mother at the balcony. But the occasion to see her individually again came on my birthday on 7th November 1970. I got the permission card from Nolini Kanta Gupta, the secretary, and joined the queue. I was carrying a bouquet of flowers and was sitting down with twelve or thirteen devotees who had their birthday on the same day. I was just ten years of age and watched as everyone went, one by one, to the Mother for darshan and pranam. When I saw that everyone had gone and being left out I felt, "What happened? Won't the Mother call me?" Then the last call came. There was a loud cry: 'Ardhendu!' I was trembling and felt, "Who is this?" and got up. That was also my first meeting with Champaklal. With his long beard and huge body he was standing at the entrance and said, "Come, come, come." Then I did not even know one word in English; I knew only Bengali. So when he said, "Come, come," I asked, "What?" He showed his hand towards the Mother and asked me to go. As I entered, I turned left and saw her sitting on her armchair, dressed in blue. I did not know what to do. I was alone in the room with Champaklal. I slowly took a step, turned and looked at her. It was totally different from what I saw the previous time when I visited with my parents. I was just looking at her because I did not know what to say, because I did not know English, French, Tamil or any other language but Bengali. I just told, of course in Bengali, "O You!" (tumi in Bengali). Her feet were not visible. So without hesitating I dropped my head on her lap. I knew that because I was the last person, nobody was going to ask me to get up and go. I decided to stay, even for the whole day. With her right hand she touched my head. Oh! That touch I could never forget. Her hand was so soft, the softest I ever felt. Even today, I freshly remember and have the same feeling her touch gave me. Wherever I am, whatever I am doing, I just have to remember it and I get the feeling. I almost slept or went into a sleep state. It lasted for seven or eight minutes. I had a small box of toffees. Then slowly another 'Ardhendu', Mother called. I was trying to touch her feet, but I could not because they were drawn inside. Then I said, "Yes." "You, open your box." It was repeated in Hindi and English. I could not understand. Then Champaklal told in Bengali. Then I realised and opened and held it for her like this (the speaker shows his hand). She just touched it. I am still holding it. Again there was a shout from Champaklal, "Mother, take a toffee from it." Mother looked at me and at Champaklal and put her three fingers in the box. She did not pick up the one at the surface but took one from the bottom and she nodded like this and said something in French or English which I don't remember now. Then she smiled again. Again with my box I put my head on her lap. Like this I was there for another two to three minutes. Then Champaklal, again speaking in Bengali, told me, "Ardhendu, this is the time now." There was nothing I could say so slowly I asked her, "Please?" and again I kept my head on her lap. Three times I did that. That was a wonderful thing I had with Mother. I cannot forget that. Never. Even in my next birth, I would be able to remember it. It was wonderful, her hand so soft and her smile. I have never seen a smile like that. This is how I met the Mother.

- Ardhendu

(Darshan – Remembering Sweet Mother and Sri Aurobindo, published by Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Educational Research, Auroville, 2006, pp. 199-201)

A Solid Peace

The Mother has said, "We have all been together before." And I feel convinced that it was She who called me here. For it was on the most auspicious day of 21st February in 1946, that I touched the sacred soil of India.

My father, when he was in India during the war, had time to read books on spirituality: books of Vivekananda, Ramakrishna. He came across The Life Divine of Sri Aurobindo. Later, in 1943 he had the Darshan of Sri Aurobindo on 15th August and was so impressed that he decided to settle in the Ashram after the war was over.

So, when my mother asked me if I wanted to go to India, I jumped at the idea. It was arranged for me to travel with Norman Dowsett's family and we came by ship to Bombay, where my father received me.

It was on the train from Bombay to Madras that my father showed me the photos of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and said: "We are going to the place where these two great persons live."

On arrival we were given an appointment to meet the Mother. After breakfast, Udar took us and the Dowsett family to Pavitra's room. My father told me to say: "Bonjour, Douce Mère," with folded hands and to touch Her feet.

As we were waiting, a dog called Goldie suddenly entered the room and as quickly went out. At that very moment, the Mother swept into the room like a gust of strong wind, saying, "Good Morning, everybody" and shook each one's hand in a true English way. She asked us if we had a pleasant journey, a nice breakfast and whether we were comfortable where we were staying. I was so much taken by surprise by all that happened that I forgot to say or do what I was supposed to. I was only eleven.

I would like to tell you my impressions of the Darshan of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. We had a three-day holiday from the school: the day before the Darshan, the Darshan day and the day after, when the Mother would distribute the garlands received on the Darshan day. Our line on the Darshan day started in the Meditation Hall.

When we entered the Darshan Room, I felt something like a solid peace, as in a dense forest. Even on the steps of the staircase, one could feel it. As one came nearer, one could see Sri Aurobindo sitting majestic but impassive, and the Mother sitting next to Him seemed so regal and radiant. But when She was in trance, Sri Aurobindo looked gracious and smiling, one felt always an atmosphere of peace and light so tangible and yet inexpressible.

The Darshan days were quite different from other days. One felt serenity in the atmosphere and came away with a feeling of warmth and sweetness that lasted for quite some time.

The Mother said that Darshan is a culmination and a fulfilment of a great deal of work done. One had to prepare oneself to receive Their blessings. It is the inner preparation that makes Darshan so special.

- Richard Pearson

(Remembering the Mother with Gratitude, published by Sri Aurobindo Centre for Advanced Studies, 2003, pp. 78-79)

Like the Sun Casting Its Rays upon All Things Alike

By the time I arrived at the Ashram in 1967 the Mother had already withdrawn since several years to Her high room. As all the time thousands wished to visit Her, newcomers to the Ashram — especially if they were a nobody like me — were allowed but a very short time with Her on our birthdays. In those times I had still the mental idea that a real guru had to be Indian, so I was studying only Sri Aurobindo's books and thought of Her as some wise old lady, whose main point was that She had lived close to Him for so many years. So when my birthday came I went to see Her without expecting anything much, out of mere curiosity.

Of what I saw when Her door finally opened to me, I could never say but only give the vaguest of hints: a body was there wrapped in golden silk or seemed to be in a certain light, and yet it was so magical, as if . . . transparent, glowing from within, like a window to infinite, endless wide open dimensions . . . My first impression was of infinite, multidimensional spaces opening in front of me, and I felt as if I had lived my whole life in a matchbox . . . Eyes were there which looked into my utmost depths like I was utterly naked within, which saw all I ever was and every event of my life, saw even the most shameful and terrible things I ever did but without any judgment or condemnation at all, like the sun casting its rays upon all things on earth big or small alike, be they dirty slums, battlefields or mountain peaks.

A mouth and a warm smile were there, and suddenly I became aware of a rising tide, wave after wave of Her infinite Love engulfing me, and I felt then that I would be forever safe in Her . . .

But at the same time I felt so ashamed of being myself, still existing and being nothing. Like never before, I became aware of all my shallowness, of being so terribly unworthy of Her Love, and something in me cried out then, "Mother, see all the darkness in my heart, all the violence and lust in my heart, how I am deeply crippled in my spirit and inwardly blind; You know how I did hurt even some who loved me. Please forgive me for having defiled Your spaces with my presence, for Who You were, I knew not . . ."

But She just kept smiling and smiling to me with infinite love for a time which seemed to have no end.

I put my head on Her feet, and received a red rose from Her hand, kept looking at Her in immense wonder, but then She seemed to recede from my vision until I could see Her no more — I found myself outside Her door and could not understand how it had happened. Champaklal was speaking to me, I could hear each word he was saying yet somehow all together they made no sense at all . . . . Only the next day when it was explained again I understood that when they had told me that my allotted time with Her was over and that I should leave I could not emerge from my trance, and even remained unaware that they were shaking my shoulder. Eventually they had to carry me, lifting by my legs and my back, away from Her . . .

Of what I saw when Her door finally opened to me, I could never say but only give the vaguest of hints . . .

On my next birthday I wanted to bring Her a rose, as it was the custom, and asked Richard for one. (Richard was a Bengali — She often gave Westerners Indian names and to Indians Western names, like in my case). Richard gave me the most magnificent rose from his garden, a red rose with pinkish hues, but by the time I thought of asking him for something to cut away its thorns he had already left. I tried to break them off by hand but they were very strong and I was unable to. So, in the end I cut a long strip of green raw silk from my little temple, — which was just a small low table with Their photos and an incense holder on it, — and carefully wrapped it all over the stem of the rose. Then I made two very strong knots, one on top and one at the bottom to ensure that it would not get undone and no thorn would prick Her hand. When I presented it to Her and She saw what I had done She laughed and laughed and She laughed some more and it seemed to me that She appreciated it very much, although it was such a little thing. Then She brought the rose very, very close to Her eyes, and began to open the knots. This took Her quite a while, and it turned out to be the longest time I ever spent in front of Her. After She finished opening both knots She put the rose in a flower pot next to Her and then She rolled up that strip of green raw silk and put it in my hand . . .

- Vijay

(Darshan – Remembering Sweet Mother and Sri Aurobindo, published by Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Educational Research, Auroville, 2006, pp. 194-96)

It Is Still the Same

In January 1972, I with some of my friends from our Hatha Yoga class was going by taxi from Bombay [Mumbai] to Pune. I heard them discussing about their trip to Pondicherry in February. Since I had heard from friends and family about the Mother of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, I was curious. I asked them if I could also join them. So, on 19th February, 18 of us from Bombay came to Pondicherry. On 21st February, being Mother's Birthday, She gave 'balcony darshan'. That was my first glimpse of Her and I must confess: I was not much impressed.

As one of our group members knew most of the Ashram Trustees, we managed to get Her darshan though Mother had stopped giving darshans. So, on 24th or 25th or 26th (I don't remember exactly) the 18 of us went up to Her room, in a queue. There I saw an old lady sitting on a chair, bent [ . . .] When my turn came and I stood in front of Her, I was transfixed by the expression. It was compassion personified; no other details. We had been advised by our friends that after kneeling and placing our head beside Her we should look into Her eyes as long as possible. This I did; the expression changed: She opened Her eyes, and the face looked like Mahakali's. It was frightening and I had the urge to run away from the room. But then I remembered the advice and kept gazing into Her eyes. They turned into a vast ocean. Then a small thing like a periscope appeared at the edge, moving towards the centre. In the middle, it sank and became one with the ocean like a drop of water merging. At that time I felt I was no more, nothing left of I, 'Me' or 'Mine', just a minute part of that vast ocean. After some time, — I do not know how long, — the face again became gentle and compassionate. The darshan was over. When I was leaving the room, I became conscious of a small voice repeating like a record "I need you, I need you" in English which is not my mother tongue.

When I went down to my friends, I found them with tears in their eyes. When I asked them they pointed to my face which was also wet.

I was completely captivated. It was like 'I came, I saw and I was conquered'. After 30 years it is still the same. I am in Auroville, not in Pondy — not that it matters. I am still Her willing slave.

- Nergez

(Darshan – Remembering Sweet Mother and Sri Aurobindo, published by Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Educational Research, Auroville, 2006, pp. 181-82)

A Personification of Compassion

Q: What was your earliest recollection of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo? What were you told about the Mother in early childhood and when did you realise she was someone special, not like everyone else?

When we used to go for the balcony darshans when I was still very small I would say, "Big Mama is coming, Big Mama is coming." I was brought up essentially with no religion. I was very close to nature and animals. When I thought of God I saw Sri Aurobindo's image. Also, I did not think of the Mother as a human being. It wasn't planned out for me that she would appear as a Goddess, but that's how it was in actuality. The Mother told my mother that I was a very old soul. When we would go up to see Mother on Darshan days she was like a mother to all of us. She taught us children so much. We would sit down before her and she would pat us on the head. We would go to the Mother and have lunch with her. The queues were long waiting to see Sri Aurobindo. We would see him four times a year. I saw him up to the age of thirteen at which time he left his body in 1950. He was for me the personification of Compassion. There was always so much light around him. I always saw this light around him and a loving, compassionate smile on his face.

- Gauri Pinto

(The Golden Path – Interviews with Disciples of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother from the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and Auroville by Anie Nunnally, published by East West Cultural Center, California, 2004, p. 51)

An Embodiment of Love

Wherever I could find literature on Sri Aurobindo or translations of his books I read them avidly. At this time I came to know that one disciple of Sri Aurobindo called Purani had translated all the books of Sri Aurobindo in Gujarati. Mangatrai who was with me knew Gujarati and he ordered a full set from Anand where the books were said to be available. The books arrived soon and we helped ourselves. For this purpose I also learnt Gujarati.

All these days I had the faith that the Guru would call me when things were ready. So I had not made any attempt to go to Pondicherry. But somehow Mangatrai had — it turned out — written to Purani (without my knowledge) asking whether our party could come for Sri Aurobindo's Darshan. It appears the letter arrived rather late but permission had been accorded and a telegram and letter from Purani were received by Mangatrai.

Accordingly we arrived in Pondicherry in time for the Darshan of August 15, 1934.

*

On arrival we were met at the station by Krishnalal and Vishnu on behalf of Purani. We were a group of five or six. And though all of us had not got the necessary permission, we were permitted here for the Darshan.

We stayed for a week. The Darshan itself was a great event. When I stood before the Mother I saw her looking at me, an embodiment of Love. I was lost in her. I was often seeing a Light in the Ashram compound. Twice or thrice I even wondered if I was imagining things and satisfied myself that it was not so. I was told later on by one or two inmates that the Mother said: Among this group Ganapatram has got yogic possibilities. Someone even came to ask me if I was Ganapatram.

While here I developed the conviction that my place was here and that I could not live elsewhere. When I sent word to the Mother to this effect the Mother replied that I could do so.

But I had to go back for a while to fulfil some of our political commitments. Back in Punjab I was there for hardly four months and left the place in January 1935 without informing my colleagues.

I sent a telegram from Madras informing of my arrival. But when I came here the next morning I found that the wire had not yet reached. Understandably Purani was annoyed at my unscheduled arrival. But within a few minutes of his report to the Mother early in the morning word was sent to me that the Mother had graciously arranged for my stay in Dupleix House. A little later I was given work in the Library — of cleaning things — a work which I did for full fourteen years. My day used to start at 4 a.m. and I am happy to record that some of the best spiritual experiences I have had were during these early hours.

We used to meet the Mother a number of times during those days. Shortly after my joining here, it so happened that the Mother suspended meeting people due to some eye trouble. Myself and Mangatrai (who joined me shortly after I came) felt this absence of physical sight of the Mother very acutely. And when we couldn't bear it any further after two or three days we went to Nolini and requested him to inform the Mother of our condition. The moment she came to know of this she called us both — even in that state. I said something, I do not remember it exactly. But I certainly remember and still hear her words ringing in my ears. She said: The Divine does not show itself in an imperfect condition. That is why I do not meet.

- Ganapatram

(Breath of Grace, edited by M. P. Pandit, published by Dipti Publications, 2002, pp. 20-22)

Sri Aurobindo (Poem)

(Translated by Dilip Kumar Roy from Nishikanto's original poem in Bengali)

The earth is holy ground since thou art born
And walk'st her clay.
At thy angel tread a new-lit sun at morn
Wakes every day.

All pathways at thy footfall break to flowers
Of harmony
And the winds repeat thy hallowed name for hours
In ecstasy.

The evening-star met in thy eyes of flame
Her love's own fire,
And greeting thee the silent moon became
Transformed to a lyre.

Rainbows descend below, thy robes to dye,
O ageless Gleam!
A-heave with hue and vision the poets cry:
"Comes true, our Dream!"

- Nishikanto

(Poems on Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1951, p. 42)

Meeting Sri Aurobindo

VISITORS to Savitri Bhavan quite often ask me whether I met Sri Aurobindo. As I came to Auroville in 1970 at the age of 28, I have to tell them that I was never blessed with his physical Darshan. Nevertheless, I count the day on which I first came to know about him as the turning-point in my life. It was a Sunday afternoon in April 1969. I think the date was April 23rd, but have never been able to verify it.

The spring of 1969 was the nadir of my life. All the things I had placed my hopes in seemed to have failed. I seemed to be caught in a long dark tunnel, with no gleam of light in front, no way out to be seen or felt. Seeking for guidance, I had turned to the Chinese Book of Changes, the I Ching, a great oracle which had given light in the past. The message I received was "It is advisable to meet a great man." This advice only deepened my sense of despair. I felt that I had searched everywhere, and had come to the conclusion that there were no more great men left in the world. In this state of mind, I went to visit someone I knew only slightly — and met Sri Aurobindo!

When I reached my friend's flat I was surprised to find it packed with young people. They were all sitting on the floor, while on the only sofa, at one end of the room, sat two men who seemed much older than any of us. One of them was giving a talk, in clear and understandable English, but with a strong German accent. As he spoke, I had a remarkable experience. As he touched on various topics which interested me a lot, or which had interested me earlier, I had the feeling that all these topics corresponded to rooms inside my head — rooms which had been closed, shut off from each other, but which, as he spoke, suddenly opened up and interconnected . . . and showed a clear way ahead, a way to go on living.

Since I had come into the middle of the talk, I did not know who or what was being spoken about. At the end, as people stood up and began to move away, I rushed up to the man who had been speaking and said "Who was that? Who were you talking about?" — "Sri Aurobindo." I was amazed. For at least 10 years I had been on the look-out, searching for answers. Over the previous three years that search had become intense, a real quest. I thought I had heard of everyone, read everything. How was it possible that in all that time I had never even heard the name of this man who held the key?

Later on, as I began to read Sri Aurobindo's books and learn more about him, I realised that in fact I had heard his name before, and that on several occasions I had been touched by his influence without recognising it. I had even been given opportunities to meet him earlier — but had not been ready. It had been necessary to go down into that blackness, in order to become ready to meet the Great Man who could save me. In fact what the I Ching means by 'a great man' is a realised soul, or more: a vibhuti or an avatar.

So what was the key that I was looking for? Since my teens, in fact since the spring of 1956, when I first began to grow aware of the larger world around my home, my family and school at the time of the Hungarian Uprising, I had felt distinctly that the world could be better, should be better, and that there must be a way to help it become better for everyone, that in fact finding and living that way would be the only worthwhile thing to do with one's life. I had been searching and experimenting, and — as I said before — felt that I had come to a dead end, with no way out, nothing worth living for.

The key that was given on that momentous Sunday afternoon — and how obvious it seemed, once it had been shown! — was that although our present state of consciousness is very evidently unable to cope with all the problems that are confronting it, higher states of consciousness are possible: evolution is not finished, it is on-going; future evolutionary developments will be developments of consciousness; and even now there already exist psychological self-disciplines that can be practised to arrive at higher states of consciousness that are not yet normal to humanity, that are closer to that future consciousness that will command the wisdom and power to fulfil all our dreams and aspirations of a nobler, truer, happier, richer life on earth for all beings. Sri Aurobindo is the Great Man who has shown us this possibility, given us this key to a more meaningful and worthwhile life.

The two men who brought that message to myself and my friends were Dick Batstone, who at that time was looking after the Sri Aurobindo Centre in Bell Street, near to Regent's Park, and the speaker with the German accent, Jobst Muehling. Over the next six months Jobst became a friend and mentor to that motley group of young people. He was in London trying to find a publisher for a very comprehensive compilation he had prepared, drawing on all the then available published writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, entitled "The Psychology of Integral Yoga". So far as I know, that book has never been published. But over the weeks and months after that first occasion, Jobst used to come to that same basement flat in Earls Court and read passages from it to 15 or 20 young people assembled there. It very often happened that quite a number of them fell asleep in the course of the evening. Jobst said it didn't matter, subconsciously they would be absorbing the vibrations. But I did not fall asleep — I was soaking up the precious words like a sponge. To this day I feel the benefits of that early initiation into Sri Aurobindo's unique revelation of the planes and parts of our being, and our connection with the unfolding universe.

Outwardly there was no change in my life at first. I continued my work at the Library Association, near Russell Square and the British Museum. This entailed about an hour's journey back and forth on the Underground, during which I read one or another of the books lent to me by Jobst. I remember too reading A Practical Guide to Integral Yoga in my lunch hour. There was a quiet lounge upstairs at the Association, which always seemed to be deserted at lunchtime. There I gazed at the small photo of the Mother printed at the front of the book, and tried to open myself to her. One evening on my homeward journey, I was reading The Bases of Yoga. And suddenly, one of Sri Aurobindo's letters seemed to reveal to me the very reason why I had taken birth this time. It was another overwhelming experience, on a deeper level from that first meeting. Instead of going home as usual, I went to Jobst's place and told him what I had understood. "In that case," he said "Take The Synthesis of Yoga and make it your bible."

At that time there was no bookshop in London where one could buy Sri Aurobindo's books. Instead we sent an order to Carlo Schuller in Zurich. When he sent the book, he also sent a photo of the Mother, and some information about Auroville — a project we knew nothing about at the time but which was to become my home from 1970 onwards.

Of course, in my youthful enthusiasm, I was quite over-optimistic about what I might be able to achieve by following Sri Aurobindo. Now, almost 40 years later, I look back, amazed at how much time has passed since that moment of meeting, and how very little, really, I have been able to change in myself in all that time. But the journey from there to here, under his protection and guidance, has been so rich and meaningful, has brought such hope, even the certitude of a better future, of a certain Victory: although the length of the journey is unsure, the Goal is assured. On this path, no effort is wasted . . .

All gratitude to Sri Aurobindo!

When you have once set out on this path, you will find that no step is lost; every least movement will be a gain; you will find there no obstacle that can baulk you of your advance.

— Sri Aurobindo (Essays on the Gita, CWSA, Vol. 19, p. 95)

- Shraddhavan

Darshan (Poem)

The far voices of the earth die:
And in the vast lone hush of Being, Thou
Foldest Thy love around my cry . . .
The worlds dissolve to darkness now,
And in the gaps of emptiness we fly
Beyond the farthest star-hill's brow . . .

Aeons of memoried night unroll
Their cycles of chained karmic griefs and mirths
Across the winging of my soul;
Thou bearest me past myriad births,
Fire-wheels of death and destiny's control,
To silent fashionings of new earths . . .

A white day dawns upon the deep,
The frozen rocks of Space divide and free
The warm gold mystery they keep.
O power-winged Love, Thou bearest me
O'er storm-black gulfs and endless mires of sleep,
To sunlit heavens of purity.

21.2.1948

- Thémis

(Poems on Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1951, p. 50)

My Supreme Discovery

SOME of the greatest and most important discoveries have been made through sheer accident, for example Columbus's discovery of America and Newton's discovery of the Law of Gravitation. The Supreme Discovery of my life has also been the result of a mere chance.

It so happened that in December 1939, my esteemed and valued friend, Dr. Indra Sen and myself decided to undertake Bharat Yatra, not so much to see the different provinces and places but mainly to make a study of the diverse cultures of our peoples. Our combination was rather curious — Dr. Indra Sen, a man of great learning and erudition (he was then the Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at the Hindu College, Delhi) and I, a businessman with a flair for politics.

When my wife came to know of our conspiracy, she insisted on our taking our son Anil, who was then only nine and also a servant to look after Anil.

So we made all the necessary arrangements and purchased zonal tickets which with the route map printed in colour looked more like passports describing in detail and with great beauty the whole route — Delhi, Mathura, Agra, Aligarh, Kanpur, Lucknow, Allahabad, Benaras, Patna, Calcutta, Puri, Bhubaneshwar, Vishakapattnam, Bezwada, Madras, Bangalore, Mysore, Hyderabad, Sholapur, Poona, Bombay, Surat, Baroda, Ahmedabad, Ajmer, Jaipur and back to Delhi. Believe it or not, the ticket cost Rs. 36/8 as.

The journey was naturally eventful. Though our train was not a 'Pilgrim Special', yet we did not have to spend even an anna on our lodging anywhere. We had so planned our schedule that we spent the day in seeing and visiting places and the night on the train. Out of the train, we always took shelter and lodged under some thick and big tree near the railway station. The servant looked after the luggage and cooked the food, and after taking our meals, we would go to the town, city, village, temple or historical places, as the case may be returning to our 'Lodge' late in the evening with sufficient time to have our dinner and board the train for our next destination. Sometimes we managed to cook even in the compartment. That was possible in those days when people were not so crazy for travelling and there used to be enough space in the trains even to use them as play-grounds.

Needless to say that economy was an overriding factor with us. Apart from the above-mentioned measures, we avoided the use of any transport as far as possible, as in those days legs used to be certainly stronger, more mobile and quicker than they are today. Also, we never spent anything on coolies because the heavier load was carried by the servant and the rest by Dr. Indra Sen and me. Anil was responsible for carrying the basket. And can you imagine the result of all that? We did not even have any exact idea of it at that time. But after the conclusion of this over-a-month-long tour of almost the whole subcontinent, when we made the final account, the total expense, including the cost of both the zonal railway tickets, worked out to be a 'fantastic' figure! — Rs. 75/12 as. per head all told.

About ten days after the commencement of our journey, we reached Madras. . . .

The journey down and across the South was both pleasing and revealing. . . .

When we reached Rameshwaram on the Eastern Coast, we came to know that only a few miles down was the station from where people embarked for Ceylon which was only 40 miles beyond the sea. It was obviously too big a temptation to resist. . . .

On our way back from Ceylon, somebody told us that on the off side railway line lay Pondicherry — French India where there was an Ashram of an Indian Yogi. The lure of visiting yet another foreign territory and the Ashram in that far-fetched corner of our subcontinent proved too strong. Moreover, I thought that by visiting Pondicherry I could tell my friends back home that I was 'Foreign-Returned' having been to two foreign lands including a part of the fascinating country called France. Thus we took a train for Pondicherry where we hoped to spend just an evening and the night.

My first surprise after passing through the streets of Pondicherry was that it was anything but a foreign or French territory. Almost in every way and every inch, it was like any other town of the Madras State — same people, of same stature and complexion, wearing the same dresses and speaking the same Tamil language. Surprise was again my immediate reaction on first seeing the Ashram building. It appeared as one of the many buildings that dotted the area. We saw no such distinctive feature in the design and architecture of the building that could even faintly suggest that it was an Ashram. When we got inside the building we saw a number of people, all in simple and neat dresses, and some even in pants and coats, but no saints or sannyasins, no monks or mahants, no shaven heads or jata-dharis, no bare-bodied bhaktas or saffron-robed sadhus, no tilak-dharis or kanphatas. Neither did we spot any temple, moortis or granths.

However, our enquiries solicited for us the information that the Yogi, the Master of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, had his abode on the first floor of the building. To be precise, I heard to my great amazement and dismay that Sri Aurobindo had never stirred out of his room for the past 14 years. However, I was disappointed to know that not only we, but in fact virtually nobody could see Sri Aurobindo and that only four times in a year, on Darshan Days, people could see him. And seeing meant just having a fleeting glimpse from a distance — no talks, discussions or conversations.

All this sounded so intriguing to me! But that was not the end of it. I was further told that there was also the Mother in the Ashram, a French lady. A French lady and Mother of the Ashram founded by an Indian Yogi! It only further accentuated the atmosphere of surprise and suspense — though these peculiar revelations had naturally heightened my curiosity and keenness to unravel this mystery which was deepening and becoming more and more fascinating with every new bit of information.

What then was to be done! What for had we gone there? We could not see the sage, we could not interview the Mother, there was no kirtan or katha, no preaching or prayers, no shiksha or sermons, no bhajans or artis, no discourses or discussions, no havans or yajnas, no asanas or pranayam, no mantras or meetings! Then what sort of an ashram was this? It was so bewildering! At last someone told us that meditation was held in the evening which we could join.

As directed, we reached the Meditation Hall at about 7 p.m. A few scores of men and women were already seated there with their eyes closed, lips virtually sealed and heads bowed. All the lights had been put out and in the total darkness there was just a glimmer of light. It was so quiet and calm! The atmosphere of meditation was infectious and I felt a strong prompting to join it and close my eyes. But I wanted to see what was to happen, hence I kept watching intently.

Now there was a complete hush. But lo! my eyes suddenly beheld something which looked so utterly superb but so dream-like. A slender lady, draped in light and wearing a gold mukut on her forehead was lightly stepping down on the heavily carpeted curved staircase. In her gait there was majesty, in her face a glowing grace and her eyes flashed gleams that pierced the darkness below and around. My gaze was fixed on that fairy-like figure whose calm and beautiful face was radiating light and making the whole atmosphere so supernatural that she looked every inch an angel descending from Heaven.

She now stopped and stood at the bend of the staircase, her wide open eyes surveying the scene from one end of the hall to the other. In a few moments, she went into a trance which made her look even more rapturous. While she stood there statue-like, I felt as if she was suddenly soaring above. Though her eyelids were now locked in embrace, yet I almost saw them passing sweet messages and exchanging glances with something or somebody that was not perceptible. All her limbs seemed blended in harmony and her entire figure was wrapped in ecstasy. The halo of serenity and divinity around her was like a circular rainbow in the multi-colours of which my eyes perceived visionary images and indications.

And now suddenly a smile dawned on her lips and with the speed of lightning it stole across her cheeks, eyes, the whole face. The smile blossomed into a flower and then the petals of blessings and grace showered down on the entranced devotees, who, in deep gratitude, uplifted their eyes, only to behold that she suddenly turned to return to her abode. Her departure was as blissful and mysterious as her advent and my racing gaze in a few moments lost the heavenly track on which trod that divine figure.

As the congregation dispersed, we learnt that she was the Mother — the French lady.

That night as I lay asleep, I underwent strange but sweet experiences. A train of dreams ran on the rails of my mind. That majestic personification of grace and beauty, of love and life appeared on the screen of my mind like a continuously running film. I woke up so light in body as if I had lost some part of it and yet the loss seemed so sweet and exhilarating. There were some peculiar sensations brewing within my heart which I could not fathom. Something had happened though I knew not what it was.

When we left the town, the morning after that fateful and momentous evening, I could clearly see that my destiny had been decided and the die had been cast. I knew that I was leaving only to return and return again and again. As the train steamed out homewards, I felt as if I had found my real home. I was sad to leave but also happy — happy over my luck because the fleeting glance of a few moments had brought to me privileges which the toil of a whole life often fails to achieve.

This was, then, the Supreme Discovery of my life, the miracle of Pondicherry where I lost my heart and won the soul and the real life.

- Surendranath Jauhar

(My Mother by Surendranath Jauhar published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Delhi Branch, 1982, pp. 1–7)

The Radiant Smile

I MET Her at the age of ten. At ten in 1971, my grandfather Shri Kalidasa Desai, invited me to accompany him on a journey. A journey to Pondicherry for a Darshana. At ten, I was studying in the St. Francis of Assisi Convent School in Navsari. My bench mate and friend was a mischievous boy called Hateem. I used to boast to him what a pet I was for my grandfather, Bapa, who came from Africa. Bapa was the centre of my universe at that time. He had become devoted to Sri Ambelal Mehta who had joined the Ashram in the early days. Ambelal whom he called Bhai used to send him blessings and messages right from those days of 1940's. My grandfather who had lost his wife in a second childbirth was totally anchored in the Mother since his darshan visits to the Ashram. I agreed to join him on the trip because we were going to fly from Mumbai to Chennai. I remember all the feelings so vividly. We reached Pondicherry, met Bhai who lived with two young Ashramites Hrishi and Deepak. He rushed us to the Samadhi. I remember how tired and sleepy I was on the last leg but as soon as we reached the Samadhi in the atmosphere of incense and flowers all on a sudden I was awakened refreshed.

One lucent corner windowing hidden things Forced the world's blind immensity to sight.

I looked up at a window and saw a lady smiling down at me; and all was wondrous. From that moment on memory records show only a gradual widening of that Smile and a growing awareness of a wonder that made everything joyous, marvellous. . . .

On April 24, 1972 we saw the Mother — a crowd silently praying as one, at the Balcony Darshana. Then it drizzled a little but it was felt as a shower of magic. Everyday we asked Her to grant us an audience with Her by putting our little prayers in the message box. But there was no call. But on the Darshan day I wrote to Her with my ugly, clumsy handwriting. On 25th as we waited near the Samadhi the call came. I, my papa and my grandpa had been granted to see Her. . .

The darkness failed and slipped like a falling cloak From the reclining body of a god.

I felt shy and hesitant as we climbed the stairs. Space, time as a continuum of consciousness became concentrated on one point — how I must bow to Her. I watched all the people bow to Her and being blessed. I saw my father bow to Her and then the awesome moment came when my turn came. I suddenly was so overwhelmed by the radiant Smile that I bent to touch Her feet and found myself completely embraced with my face on Her lap. How to measure that time encapsulating all the yearning and prayer answered in one signal moment when I felt Her touch and I realised in my overflowing heart that I had met my Mother. Finally, all that followed, being blessed, given gifts by Champaklal-ji, coming down to the Samadhi, going to Auroville directly afterwards, was flowing in that utter feeling of Mother's love.

- Beena Nayak

(Darshan – Remembering Sweet Mother and Sri Aurobindo, published by Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Educational Research, Auroville, 2006, pp. 174–75)

A Visit with Sri Aurobindo

After the interview with Jung in Switzerland, and while studying Indology at the Sorbonne, it became more and more imperative to me to visit Sri Aurobindo. When, during that final summer session at the Academy of International Law at The Hague, in Holland, I discovered that I could obtain passage to India and then across the Pacific for very little more than returning to America via the Atlantic, the decision was made.

Correspondence with the āśram in Pondicherry began. I discovered Sri Aurobindo now appeared in public only four times a year. The next scheduled darśan (literally, "face-seeing", but with the connotation of "blessing") was to be November 24th. I was granted permission to attend.

First by a Dutch ship, the Oranje, I went through the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean to Colombo, Ceylon, then by boat-train to India. In 1950, Pondicherry, on the Southeastern tip of India, was still a French colony.

I discovered other Americans had come: a woman physical education teacher from New York City, studying Hathayoga, and two men from Stanford. There were many more visitors from Europe as well as from India proper. The visitors, including myself, were housed at Golconda, a delightful guest house built by a Japanese disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright. My room had an air of simplicity and peace that is hard to describe. The large louvred windows overlooked a garden; along the length of the windows was a raised platform upon which sat a cool water jug. The bed was complete with mosquito netting; and the floor was of dark stone and cool to the feet during the return monsoon weather. Outside hibiscus bloomed; and in the pool in the courtyard, lotus made bright splashes of colour while goldfish darted around and under their leaves.

A great number of the permanent residents were from Pakistan [East Bengal, as it was then called] and had followed Sri Aurobindo to Pondicherry upon the division of India, a division of which Sri Aurobindo did not approve. (He believed India should form one whole nation.) Some residents lived at Golconda, some in the main building with dining room two blocks away, and other married residents had separate small homes of their own.

In the month or so before darśans, I found there was time to explore the countryside and small Indian villages by bicycle, to investigate the French restaurants in town, and to swim in the ocean two blocks from the guest house. There were events at the āśram each day, but one attended or not, without obligation. Mornings, breakfast was served at the main dining hall: usually a banana, homemade grain bread, and cocoa or milk. At noon, if it was ordered in advance, a girl in a sari brought around the shiny, brass, hitched-together dishes with vegetable curries and other dishes. On the lower floor, on a breezeway, there was a place to eat lunch at Golconda. A young Hindu, Vishnu Patel, whose family all lived in Pondicherry, soon introduced us to Indian sweets and to a kind of vegetable-flour doughnut, dipped in a hot sauce, for which I am still often hungry. In Vishnu's company, those of us from the United States and Europe were led to the bazaar, a dhobi who would wash and iron our clothes, and to the best place to buy sandals to wear in this heat.

Each morning, after breakfast, there was a meeting with Mirra Alfassa, called The Mother. There was a flower ceremony, in which visitors both offered and received flowers from her — each flower with its own esoteric meaning for spiritual development. In a small marble-floored room opening onto the central court, there was also a morning group meditation period with the Mother.

Day by day, more people arrived at the āśram at Pondicherry. There were now exhibitions and sports competitions among the younger members of the colony, a fact which highly displeased some of the older Indian visitors. Others were disturbed because there was no "set routine". One visiting professor of philosophy from Bombay finally explained to me that Sri Aurobindo's āśram was a revolutionary departure from the old style āśram. He suggested that before leaving India, I should also visit Ramdas, called "The Laughing Sage" of India at his āśram on the Mangalore Coast. This I did for a week, later, and it gave me greater insight into just how unusual the establishment in Pondicherry was, by older standards. Although I also found Ramdas a charming man, the entire atmosphere differed. There, women and men were expected to sit in separate sections; all food was Indian; and there were none of the modern conveniences one took for granted at Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

In Pondicherry, I was soon told, of course, that Margaret Wilson, the daughter of President Wilson of the United States had spent her last years here at the āśram and had died there. I also discovered that in 1947, the entire colony had been besieged by communists who had sought a French protectorate where communism was still legal. One āśram-ite had been killed.

At night, Pondicherry became a place out of some romantic novel with ships arriving at a free port, loaded with what one suspected were gold bars to be smuggled into India proper. Huge fires on the beach flamed into the night, as white-turbanned figures moved here and there. All of this, of course, was at the village pier, and few regular āśram-ites ventured out at night except to affairs in the central āśram hall. But those of us from America had to take in all the sights, while we were there.

Afternoons as a rule, I did research in the āśram library, taking notes on books, most of which are now available in America. Evenings, a group of us sometimes took in an outdoor movie in the village. On one such occasion, things became entirely too exciting. The movies were shown in a large tent, with a meagre number of benches for Americans and Europeans; most of the villagers sat crosslegged on the sand. Suddenly, on this particular occasion, there was a scurry. A snake had been seen. From then onward, throughout the movie, my feet were under my body on top of the bench. On another occasion in the bazaar, a Hindu snake charmer, angry because I had refused to pay for his show, held a live cobra by the tail, writhing almost in my face. When he accidentally lost hold of the snake and several Hindu men had it slither near their feet, I discovered that Indian men could be extremely volatile and most amusingly fluid of language.

At last, it was the morning of November 24th. At Golconda, rumours flew. Although thousands had now arrived for this darśan, it was said that Sri Aurobindo was ill and might find it impossible to appear. Then, at the last minute, we were told he was well enough. A long line led from the main building, around the block: people of every colour, every style of dress, government officials and high-ranking professors, young and old, from dozens of countries, wanted to see the philosopher-sage. Each of us finally climbed the stairs to the floor where, at the end of a long narrow room, Sri Aurobindo in white, and the Mother in a gold sari, sat side by side upon a slightly raised platform.

As a Westerner, the idea of merely passing by these two with nothing being said, had struck me as a bit ridiculous. I was still unfamiliar with the Hindu idea that such a silent meeting could afford an intensely spiritual impetus. I watched as I came up in line, and I noted that the procedure was to stand quietly before the two of them for a few silent moments, then to move on at a gesture from Sri Aurobindo. What happened next was completely unexpected.

As I stepped into a radius of about four feet, there was the sensation of moving into some kind of a force field. Intuitively, I knew it was the force of Love, but not what ordinary humans usually mean by the term. These two were "geared straight up"; they were not paying attention to me as ordinary parents might have done; yet, this unattachment seemed just the thing that healed. Suddenly, I loved them both, as spiritual "parents".

Then, all thought ceased, I was perfectly aware of where I was; it was not "hypnotism" as one Stanford friend later suggested. It was simply that during those few minutes, my mind became utterly still. It seemed that I stood there a very long, an uncounted time, for there was no time. Only many years later did I describe this experience as my having experienced the Timeless in Time. When there at the darśan, there was not the least doubt in my mind that I had met two people who had experienced what they claimed. They were Gnostic Beings. They had realised this new consciousness which Sri Aurobindo called the Supramental. Later, this same experience made me understand what Heidegger meant by "standing presence".

- Rhoda P. LeCocq

(The Radical Thinkers – Heidegger and Sri Aurobindo by Rhoda P. LeCocq, published by the Author, 1969, reprinted 1972, pp. 196–99)

What Sri Aurobindo Means to Me

It was since 1925, when I joined Karnatak College, Dharwar, as a young matriculate that I moved close to Sri Aurobindo's thought. I had read an account of his life and work, in Kannada by then. But it was D. R. Bendre, a secondary teacher in Dharwar and our great poet, who had all the Arya volumes at home. He used to celebrate 15th August as Sri Aurobindo's birthday even then. And he used to collect a few students like me and read to us from The Life Divine and The Future Poetry. He himself went for Sri Aurobindo's darshan as late as 1944. But he used to see Sri Aurobindo in dream practically every night and Sri Aurobindo explained to him on a blackboard, chalk in hand, problems that confronted him in his attempt to formulate a numerological account of metaphysics.

We could not read any of Sri Aurobindo's writings, for Bendre was unwilling to lend the Arya volumes for our reading. I went to Oxford in 1936 for studying English language and literature. And I returned home in 1938, an inveterate Marxist bent on drastic social change and on the liquidation of India's poverty. The dreamer in me was at loggerheads with this new-formed Marxist. It was about this time that Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine was published in book form. I read it avidly and I was thrilled to plunge into a philosophy that reconciled the highest and deepest evolution that I could think of for the individual and my ardent and comprehensive social aspirations. I almost felt that, if I had Sri Aurobindo's genius and experience, I would have written that book myself.

It was not long after this that D. R. Bendre went for Sri Aurobindo's darshan to Pondicherry. And he returned to narrate to us such glowing accounts of Sri Aurobindo and the Divine Mother, the Asram as a new social achievement and the flower-symbolism so familiar to āśramites there that we all agreed that Bendre was a changed man. I felt that I had to go to Pondicherry if only I wanted to find out what had really happened to my dear friend.

But this was not to be for quite a few years.

…

But something significant happened.… I had collected all of Sri Aurobindo's available writings. Now or never! I said to myself. I decided to spend some time every morning in meditation and in reading Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

…

My study and meditation … bore fruit. Sri Aurobindo figured so prominently in my public lectures that some of my pupils in college wrote to the Asram and secured autographed portraits of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother to be presented to me. I was deeply moved when they brought them to my office in the college. I told them that I would go to the home where they were received and take them there. The father of the student was a learned shastri and what was my surprise when, as I went to receive the photograph on a Sunday morning, I was made to sit before a sacrificial fire in the presence of a distinguished gathering and the photographs of my Master and the Mother were handed over to me to the chanting of Vedic hymns!

I wrote to the Mother and I was in raptures when I received her blessings. I sent an article for the Pathamandir Annual, as suggested by Nolini-da. The Asram atmosphere was gradually growing around me.

I was transferred to the college at Kolhapur in June 1949. I was now much nearer Pondicherry. I planned to be in Pondicherry for the darshan on 24th April 1950. And I succeeded, in spite of a number of domestic and official handicaps. 5 p.m. was the time for the last train by which I could have left. I received my passport by post at 2 p.m. on that day.

I reached Pondicherry in the evening, sleepless and tired. But the late Shri Shankar Gauda, our dear friend, said that Mother would give flowers to everyone at night. He added that, these days, she used to come very late, 11 p.m. or midnight. We all sat near the Service Tree, waiting for the Mother after dinner.

I was very tired and, like a rebellious child, I protested in my own mind, saying that it was unfair on the part of the Mother to make tired persons like ourselves wait indefinitely, however busy she might be. And then I was deeply excited to hear at about 10 p.m. that the Mother was coming down immediately, contrary to her routine. We assembled in the meditation hall and the praṇām-and-flower ceremony began. Each one filed past, bowing down to the Mother and receiving the flower. I was one of the very last to go. As I bowed down and stood with outstretched palms, the Mother went on playing with the flower in her own hand instead of giving it to me. And she did this, probably for more than a minute. When she did give the flower to me, there was a peculiar smile — a smile of 'knowing' — playing on her lips. She had found out the culprit who was responsible for disturbing her routine this night!

The next day was 24th April and long queues had been forming hours in advance of darshan time. I had joined the queue at one point and was moving slowly but steadily towards the great event — the darshan of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

Our line entered the room from which we could see Sri Aurobindo and the Mother seated near the threshold of Sri Aurobindo's room. There were three or four persons ahead of me. The person who went before me persisted in standing before Sri Aurobindo and the Mother even after they had seen him. Sri Aurobindo, therefore, bent a little towards the left to have a look at me and then the person in front of me moved on. For a moment I stood before them. Sri Aurobindo threw at me a searching glance which penetrated my heart through my eyes and shook the very roots of my being. He then looked at the Mother who saw me in return, her pupils moving like little fish in the depths of her eyes. I at once realised that I was recognised for what and who I was. This glance of recognition made all the helplessness in my heart surge up and I bowed down to them and stretched my hands in vain to touch their feet.

I should also record the fact that, when the Mother gave balcony darshan, I saw her face as that of Sri Aurobindo.

As I came out of the darshan room, fundamental issues had risen within me. Should I join the Asram? How was I to fashion my life in the coming years? It was clear to me then that my life had to run its course outside the Asram, not inside. But I would have to go there periodically to replenish myself at these great fountains of inspiration. The supernatural path was open before me and here were the masters that would guide me by the hand.

The Asram satisfied another part of my being. It was a commune — a brotherhood and sisterhood founded on love and spontaneous service. It was a blueprint for a new human society.

- V. K. Gokak

(Sri Aurobindo – Seer and Poet by Vinayak Krishna Gokak, published by Abhinav Publications, N. Delhi, 1973, pp. 10–13)

Compassion and Force

In 1959, Prem, my husband was posted in Madras and we started coming to the Ashram. We just came like visitors but having met some very senior people, Prem was very keen to come and settle down. But we just kept visiting and it took about nine years to finally come to the Ashram. When I came — to tell you very frankly — I had no such experience, as some people have had, of seeing and hearing the Mother in a vision. I came with an open mind, without negative feelings, and the Mother started working on me.

The first time when I went to see Her with Prem it was at the Interview Room. And people used to go to Her in the afternoon. I still remember the dress She was wearing, and what I told Her. I said: "Mother, I don't know anything about You but I want to know; please open me to Your force and explain what You are"; — which She started doing right there. Then we went back to Calcutta and started reading books about the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. We came for the inauguration of Auroville in February 1968 and in May we returned finally. Obviously it seemed I came because Prem came but really it was not so. As Prem told me much later, the Mother was using different forces with me and him. For example (we used to go together to the Mother), She would look at me in a very compassionate way and at Prem with a powerful look giving all the force necessary for his work. I could feel that there was something happening to me and it was due to that I decided to stay in the Ashram.

- Santosh Malik

(Darshan – Remembering Sweet Mother and Sri Aurobindo, published by Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Educational Research, Auroville, 2006, p. 34)

A Column of Light

My contact with the Mother started in 1953, when I came here as a student of the Post Graduate Course in Ecology in the Botany department of Annamalai University. My professor Dr. T.C.N. Singh had brought us here, so that he could place the entire team who were working on "The Effect of Music on Plants" before the Mother. She used to encourage that experiment. The first time I saw Her in 1953 was in the Playground where activities were going on. We stood in a line and I bowed down at Her Feet. She straightaway gave me the Hymn to Durga, which was the first book I received from Her. I thought it was over with that. All the students who were with me left and I too was going out but just stood at the entrance to the Playground and looked to my right — by then She had moved from Her seat near the map to the classroom where She was taking the classes. As I stared, I saw a column of light and I was stuck to the place. Tears were rolling down my eyes; I could not move. I do not know how much time elapsed till somebody came and prompted me, "Come on, all the people have left." So, that was my first contact with the Divine Mother. It started like that and never left me afterwards.

- Dayanand

(Darshan – Remembering Sweet Mother and Sri Aurobindo, published by Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Educational Research, Auroville, 2006, p. 114)

A Moment So Divine

"And nothing happens in the cosmic play
But at its time and in its foreseen place."
— Savitri (p. 389)

Well then, there I was at last, with all my dreams come true, actually on my way to Sri Aurobindo-Darshan, to Priya-milan, to Divine-milan! Carried by the swift-winged, joy-conditioned chariot of the Divine Mother's infinite Grace, I reached Pondicherry two days ahead of time to be blessed on the happy and most auspicious occasion of the golden-hued Lord's 76th birthday on the 15th August 1948 — the day when the Lord of the worlds seated along with the Divine Mother (it is only by the Mother's force the Divine gives!) would shower His gracious boons and His Divine gifts freely on all who having heard His Call were driven helplessly towards His lotus-feet, either overpowered by the sweet wine of His Life Divine, or charmed by the sweet glimpses of His infinite Grace, or else maddened by the sweet fragrance of His lotus-name!

Sri Aurobindo's Darshan days brought a new magic to the ever enchanting, ever smiling atmosphere of the Ashram; each Darshan Day brought a new sweetness, a new joy, a new light and a new song to the Truth-hungry hearts of His disciples and devotees; hardly one Darshan was over when one would eagerly begin to look forward to the next; hardly one cloud-burst of His Grace was over when the disciples, like the Chataka birds, would eagerly, longingly begin to wait for the next one.

Just one Darshan of Sri Aurobindo was enough to hypnotise a soul into being His willing slave forever, and I had twelve!

The sweet and sacred memory of His most precious last twelve Darshans which I was extremely fortunate to have and of the blessed days and the loving ways He made me His devoted slave forever will ever remain engraved in my heart.

On this gracious day of His most auspicious birthday at about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, with my heart full of love and worship and reverence, I too, joined the long queue of the seekers of Soma wine — His privileged devotees and chosen disciples of calm and open faces — carrying beautiful garlands of fresh, sweet-smelling roses and jasmines and red and white lotus flowers, moving slowly, meditatively to see the one for whom my thirsty heart had come so far. Full of sweet suspense and sweet expectations I reached the top landing of the staircase leading to His chambers, from where one could have a full direct view of His divinely beautiful and sweet and compassionate face. Between Him and me there still lingered about a dozen persons (but who could blame them for their helplessness to move faster from His sweet nearness!). Impatient as my heart was, I bent my head a little to the right and quickly stole my first glance of Him. Ah, sweet beyond words! But He surprised my heart completely and arrested me then and there with His laughing, Heaven-pure eyes which most unexpectedly I found waiting for mine. Having been caught red-handed while stealing a glance of the Lord and happy to be so caught and surprised, I at once pleaded guilty, and then in that fraction of a moment His love-full eyes said "Ah, there you are, come, I was expecting you!" Having been punished so sweetly and so divinely for stealing a glance and crushed completely under the weight of His sweet mercy and kindness and bound forever by the sweet cords of His Love and Light, I moved on towards the Supreme moment of my felicity, prepared for me from all eternity and who knows through what chequered voyages and across what dark millenniums, which brought me face to face with Sri Aurobindo — the most cherished Idol of my heart, the most exalted Lord of all creation! His magnetic and tranquil eyes, His calm, radiant and flame-pure face drenched in Divine beauty and adorned with a pure white lustrous beard and His glorious luminous body spreading out Peace, Joy and Light was a marvel of human and Divine to behold. Within the short moment that one was allowed to quench one's thirst for His Darshan, I drank with my eyes as much of the honey from His lotus-face as I could, but still thirsty, when I prayed for some more, He, the All-Lover, the All-Beautiful, the Golden Purusha, held me fast with His blissful gaze and tenderly, rapturously branded my heart with His Divine Seal making impossible forever my escape! Henceforth, none but Sri Aurobindo could have a claim upon me. Even I myself had no claim upon myself. Sri Aurobindo had made me totally His and forever. His immortal seal on my heart neither Death, nor Fate, nor Time could ever erase! Like a most loving father He had taken me in His boundless heart and given me more than what I was ignorantly seeking for. Like Sri Krishna to poor Sudama for a mere handful of rice, Sri Aurobindo had given me the most precious treasure of His Love and Grace and refuge in His boundless heart for the mere offering of a handful of my heart. It was not easy to move away from His sweet and sacred nearness but a captive and a slave of His Will, I was compelled to move when His love-full eyes tenderly led me to seek the Divine Mother's lotus-feet who was seated next to Him on His right like Parvati with Shiva or Lakshmi with Vishnu, and left me there until our eyes met again exactly a hundred days after.

In the earth's entire history was there indeed ever a moment so divine and so wonderful and so gracious when a man could see God from so close upon earth and himself aspire to become God? Such indeed were the blessings of even a moment's Darshan of Sri Aurobindo and the Divine Mother. The Divine Mother who was there only because Sri Aurobindo was there; otherwise who ever heard of the Divine Mother's Incarnation upon earth in a human body before!

Always, always sweet is the remembrance of Sri Aurobindo's eternally fresh lotus-face, His glorious luminous body and His unforgettable Darshan days!

Always, always sweet is the remembrance of Sri Aurobindo's loving nearness, His loving gaze, His glorious life and His loving Divine Ways!

- G. N. Goyle

(The God-Touch by G. N. Goyle, published by Editions Auropress, 1978, pp. 69–73)

A True Rishi

By the Grace of Sri Aurobindo I had my first Darshan of him in 1920 when I was a college student. I heard that he was a great patriot, quite out of the ordinary, one who renounced his all for our country, who saw our country actually as Bharat Mata, a Goddess, and who elevated patriotism to the height of Religion and Spirituality, and kindled the fire of spirit in the nation by his courage, and by his eloquent speeches and writings. I heard also that he was a poet, a scholar, and a Maha Yogi. I was very eager to have Darshan of the great personality, and so I went to Pondicherry. Sri Aurobindo kindly granted me an interview.

Before seeing me he stood for a few minutes facing the sea and gazing into the beyond. He stood erect, motionless like a statue. Then he came near and sat in a chair. I made my pranam and sat opposite to him.

My first impression of Sri Aurobindo was that he was a true Rishi. His God-like face radiated profound peace, and serenity. His intent and faraway look indicated to me that he was not of the earth. He was lean, but he was a picture of health and immense, dynamic calm strength. His complexion was dark, but his personality was radiant.

Sri Aurobindo made kind inquiries regarding my studies and interests. Politics inevitably came up for discussion. It was a very informal talk, but extremely stimulating and useful to me.

I had Darshan of Sri Aurobindo every evening for a week afterwards. We used to talk mainly about literature, fine arts, philosophy and politics. In English literature he advised me to begin with Thackeray's Pendennis and other novels. He remarked: "Thackeray is more subtle and psychological than any novelist of his time or before him." Other authors recommended by him were George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte [and her] Sisters, Stevenson . . . . Among poets he asked me to start with Tennyson, Matthew Arnold (especially his essay on translating Homer), Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and then take up the earlier poets.

Those meetings and many others afterwards were etched in my memory. While taking leave of him I requested his permission to come to see him again, and he kindly granted my request. After leaving Pondicherry I began to read the works of Sri Aurobindo with avidity. In them I found solutions of important problems concerning the nature of man, of the world and of God. The mental pleasure and spiritual satisfaction that I got from reading his works, I had never got from any other thinker or writer. It was not only admiration for the constant incandescence of his intellect; his philosophy of life and living appealed to something deeper, some inmost chord in my being, and moved me to my depths.

So in the beginning of 1926 I decided, "Sri Aurobindo is my Guru". But I asked myself, "Will he accept me as his disciple?" With trepidation I proceeded to Pondicherry and sought an interview with the Master, which he readily granted. I wondered at the great change in his physical appearance since I had seen him last. His complexion was fair, and his body had filled out. Spiritual fire shone through his eyes. I remembered the epithet in the Mahaabhaarata describing the eyes of the Tapaswins as 'durniriikssya', unseeable. (Later I saw it was not always so. Usually it was a soft and gentle light like the stars.) I told him the purpose of my visit. When he consented to accept me as his disciple, I felt myself blessed.

My brother V. Chandrasekharam and I lived in the house next door to 9 Rue de la Marine, the Master's residence. There were about a dozen disciples then living in a few houses close by. It was like Gurukul. There used to be informal sittings in the evenings when we used to talk on all kinds of subjects. It was often like table-talk. Sometimes serious subjects also were discussed. At other times the talk was in a lighter vein on men and matters, on politics at home and abroad, etc., but it was all off the cuff.

Sri Aurobindo's voice was soft and gentle, almost feminine. His words flowed like the cool waters of a perennial spring. Thoughts came to him incessantly. It appeared as if he was in communication with higher levels of inspiration and direct knowledge. His experience in the sphere of Sadhana as well as in other spheres was vast and profound. But he made us feel quite at ease in his august presence. I never saw him solemn or serious. The Master would talk in a relaxed and jovial mood. He had a fine and subtle sense of humour. Even lighthearted jokes and jests used to be there in plenty. His repartee was good humoured and enjoyable. On occasions he would chuckle happily.

We therefore looked forward to the evening sittings with great pleasure. As days passed, it appeared to us, towards November 1926 that Sri Aurobindo was getting more and more indrawn. Evidently he had reached a crucial stage in his Sadhana and was on the verge of achieving a great objective. Finally towards the last week of November the evening sittings came to an end. The evening talks were an intellectual feast. I found them as scintillating and stimulating, as illuminating and edifying as the talks of Socrates and Plato, and in modern times of Goethe and Whitehead. All his original thoughts were precious to me and I used to record most of them faithfully the next day. On many days I could reproduce more than a hundred lines. This I believed then, and looking back now I believe still more, that it was all due to the Grace of Sri Aurobindo. […] There is no continuity in the notes, for the talks were on all kinds of subjects, and they cover different periods of time, but looming above it all in the background is Sri Aurobindo's personality and the pervading presence of his unique vision.

— V. Chidanandam

(Breath of Grace edited by M. P. Pandit, published by Dipti Publications, 2002, pp. 2–5)

My World: The Mother

I arrived by the early morning train by 6 a.m. The Mother was to see me the same evening at about 5 p.m. in the Library room. I was informed and taken there by my father. I still remember the scene vividly. The Mother was clad all in white — sari, blouse and crown. She was sitting on a high chair. When she saw me she was all smiles and a spontaneous recognition arose in my heart that she was my adhisstthaatri. I told the Mother that I did not want to go back. She replied that she would ask Sri Aurobindo.

On the 24th was the Darshan. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were seated on the sofa. As I approached them after my father, Sri Aurobindo smiled. He looked simply wonderful — I cannot describe what he looked like. When I made pranam holding his feet he bent down and blessed me. (I must add that each time I did pranam this way he used to bend down to bless me. I add this because I learnt recently that was not Sri Aurobindo's custom with all.)

The day after the Darshan Premanand, the Librarian, came and told me: Mother has sent word that Sri Aurobindo is pleased with you and you can start learning French. Naturally I was overjoyed and started my French lessons with Premanand that very day.

Because of my age I was at first not allowed to participate in the soup function in the evening. But at the instance of my father I was allowed from the Darshan day, 24th November. I was given work with Amrita. My job was to note the meter readings in all the houses in a notebook which I was to present to the Mother on the first of every month. In those days the Mother used to sit in the Pranam hall downstairs every first morning and pay the wages to Ashram servants. Amrita used to hand over the monies to her and the workers would come in a line and receive their salary directly from her. I would go with my book at the end.

After fifteen days of my starting French lessons she spoke to me in French but I was unable to follow! However I came to know that after I had started conversing in French she had expressed appreciation of my accent. It would even appear that Sri Aurobindo hearing me talk to the Mother in French had remarked that my pronunciation was good. I mention this by way of recording my gratitude to them for the minute interest they took in my upbringing.

It was in 1932 on my birthday (22nd of May) that there was a memorable interview with the Mother.

Mother: What are your ambitions?

I: I do not know anything.

Mother: You have ambition to be a big yogi?

Suddenly I remembered that I did have some such desire though at the moment it was not active in my mind. So I corrected myself and said: Yes Mother.

She then explained to me what it meant to be a big yogi, to have a large number of disciples around oneself. How one had to have a divine consciousness and a realisation of the Divine for that purpose. As I was listening I realised that I had none of those things and I burst out: I don't want to be a yogi. I want to be your child.

The Mother was pleased and said Très bien (very good) and blessed me.

Then I mentioned to Mother my ambition to be a big writer.

She heard and went on to describe what qualities are necessary to be a writer and how one must have wide knowledge of so many things before one could become a writer. I saw that I had none of those qualifications then.

As I look back I am moved by the considerate way in which Mother helped me to see myself as I was and to give up vain ambitions on my own. I myself was helped to realise the true state of things.

In keeping with the spirit of Sri Aurobindo's injunction to speak and act as one would in the presence of the Mother, I started reporting to Mother in my notebook …

— Shanti Doshi

(Breath of Grace, edited by M. P. Pandit, published by Dipti Publications, 2002, pp. 208–09)

As I Remember

I came to Pondicherry on the 19th of July in 1923.

I was in contact with Sri Aurobindo through Barin [Sri Aurobindo's younger brother]. Previously on seeing a photograph of mine Sri Aurobindo had written to Barin giving, first, the Mother's (she was called Mira then) reading and then his own comment. The Mother's reading was: An extremely interesting head; highly psychical personality; the danger for this type is in the body which may be consumed by the intensity of the psychic flame.

Sri Aurobindo's comment: Calmness, peace, descending into the body will make it immune from all danger. They are indispensable in this case.

He had added in the letter that he would call me as soon as it was possible. A telegram arrived and I left for Pondicherry. I was 22.

On arrival at the station, I was told by the person who had come to receive me what an unlucky man I was. For Sri Aurobindo had not been well for the previous two or three days and there were no sittings for meditation. However, on reaching the house where Sri Aurobindo was living, I met Amrita who was rushing upstairs with ten daily newspapers. I told him to carry my message to Sri Aurobindo. He nodded but told me, "It won't be possible." Hardly a minute had passed before he returned to say that Sri Aurobindo himself asked whether Kanai had come. Amrita had been asked to send me upstairs. As I went up I was very nervous. I saw him in the present Prosperity verandah on his throne-chair, a majestic personality with his beard. He looked and nodded. I forgot to bow down to him and sat by his side on one of the few chairs that were spread.

Sri Aurobindo: Have you anything to tell me?

I: Yes. (I answered and kept silent for a minute.)

He repeated the question very sweetly. Still I couldn't talk. Then he looked at the time-piece and said that he had to go by eleven o'clock.

Then I asked:

I: Can I practise this Yoga?

Sri Aurobindo: Yes. Your being has come from a very high plane.

I: My nervous being is very weak.

Sri Aurobindo: That doesn't matter. My nervous being also was weak, and Mira's nervous being too was weak; but we have become strong now. I think after sometime you too will be all right.

I turned to go.

He cleared his throat and I looked back.

Sri Aurobindo: You have come for a few days. Come at 4.30 for meditation.

I turned to go. Again he cleared his throat and as I turned, he said to me to come in the morning after Amrita brought him the papers and sit by his side.

I came back at 4.30 in the evening. It was the first time that I saw the Mother. She looked at me for a second. She was very beautiful, looked much younger than her age. There were two cats on her shoulders; I looked round and saw there were two or three more about her. One of the cats from her shoulder jumped on Sri Aurobindo's throne-chair. Mother called it back.

The Mother had come with a plate containing incense sticks, match box etc. After the Mother left Sri Aurobindo opened the conversation asking me:

Sri Aurobindo: How is Motilal Roy?

I: I have not heard anything about him for a long time.

The meditation started at 5 and continued till 5.30. I observed that Sri Aurobindo had kept his eyes open. The others around meditated with eyes closed. There were hardly 13 or 14 of them.

Thereafter Sri Aurobindo went in for fifteen minutes for coffee.

The next morning I went up after Amrita came down and sat by the side of Sri Aurobindo who remarked that one or two persons might come but that should not disturb me. I was told to remain till 10.30. During the meditation I had a very good experience.

Sri Aurobindo: Anything to say?

I told him that I had a grand experience of peace etc.

Sri Aurobindo: It is your higher mind getting supramentalised.

After two or three days I told him that I was feeling a being, a mighty being behind me. If that being looked at me all difficulties vanished. Sri Aurobindo heard and nodded.

*

Some days thereafter, I told him that I had to leave as I had come prepared only for a few days.

Sri Aurobindo: Once you have taken up my yoga, I won't leave you so easily.

I understood that he did not wish me to go. I had with me fifty rupees intended for the return fare. I asked whether I could give [the money] to him. He nodded and asked: "But you require some pocket money."

I replied that my friends would give.

Sri Aurobindo: Are you sure?

He repeated this question twice. On my replying in the affirmative he said it was all right.

— Kanailal Ganguly

(Breath of Grace, edited by M. P. Pandit, published by Dipti Publications, 2002, pp. 34–36)

It Was She

The few minutes of waiting, seated on the top steps of the steep stairway, elapsed in an absolute void. All thoughts had departed in an instant, the images also, — it was not so much a silence, as a sort of stupefaction.

At a certain moment, a brahmin with a long white beard, dressed in an immaculate dhoti, the torso bare, signed to us to come in.

I went in after Maggi, and to my vision there appeared unexpectedly, — facing the door through which we had entered, seated on an armchair, looking at us without smiling, — a being impossible to describe.

I did what my companion had done, kneeled before Her. My eyes met Hers, and instantly I was captured by the intensity that emanated from Her eyes.

I cannot say how long I remained thus, how many minutes elapsed under that severe penetrating look, searching in the most hidden corners of my being to see what was in there, to examine the most secret intentions, the truth of my being: who I was, why I was in Pondicherry, what I was in this life and in my previous births, and what my future would be . . . .

It seemed to me, at a certain moment, that the severity of expression changed, became gentler, but I cannot be certain.

I was held under that look, transfixed like a bird caught in the glare of headlights. I dared not move.

Unexpectedly, the face was illumined by a smile.

Oh God, what a smile! It had the intensity of a thousand suns, it was sweetness and love bestowed on a human being, on me.

. . .

She gave me a rose and dismissed me.

While coming down the stairs, returning home . . . I felt that my eyes were moist.

It was She, I had recognised Her, I had found Her again, She had emerged once more from the depths of the consciousness to show Herself to me, Her disciple of all times.

I returned home without a word, with that red rose in my hands, my heart in tumult and profound echoes that, like the waves that perturb a lake, followed one another to a shore I did not know, and which I could not see.

I sat down on a sofa, and then the tears ran freely.

There were hours of silent tears, quiet, full of peace, with a vision that embraced the past, the present and the future, tears that dissolved the last reserves, broke down the ultimate resistances. I knew who I had been, the value of the acts I had committed, the why of so many things that till then had remained in the domain of uncertainty, what it was that awaited me, and what it was that the Mother wanted of me.

I was ready for everything, to undertake everything, to submit myself to the total annulment of what in the West is termed personality, which basically is nothing but a fierce ego, avid and stupid.

In that moment there surged in me the imperious command never to leave the Ashram.

This did not surprise me because in that place of my being where truth has its seat, the decision had already been taken. My surface being was not conscious of it yet, but everything was consummated.

I no longer belonged to myself, no longer belonged to the world in which I had lived. I belonged to nothing and none that was not the Shakti, the Mother.

— Nata

(Translated from the original Italian, Su Questo Stesso Terreno, published by Edizione Mediterranee, Rome, 1979, pp. 104–06)

SRI AUROBINDO’S DARSHAN

On the 20th the Mother called me to what was then the Meditation Hall on the first floor. I was happy not only because it would give me a chance of meeting Her, but also because I believed I would receive a new cotton sari (like the other sadhikas) to wear on the “darshan” day. I was always wearing the silk and georgette saris which I had brought with me, and feeling a bit odd among the Ashramites.

The Mother was smiling when I reached upstairs and went and stood at the place where that beautiful chair is now placed. There was somebody with Her, I do not remember who, unless it was Datta (Miss Dorothy Hodgson).

…opened the bundle this person was holding and, taking out a string of pearls, she slipped it over my head, and pulled the adjustment at the back till the necklace was of the right length. Then, taking some clothes from Her attendant’s hands, She gave them to me with Her charming smile, saying softly: “You must wear these when you come for ‘darshan’ tomorrow.” I was very much astonished (and also a bit disappointed) because I had not been given an Ashram sari to wear. I asked: “But why these, Mother?” The Mother looked into my eyes for a few seconds and said with Her sweet smile, “Because it is my wish.” What could I say after that? If She wanted me to be dressed differently I must accept Her wish with gratitude.I fell at Her feet and kissed them with love.

The silk sari along with the other articles had been part of what I had offered to the Mother with great joy. If it was Her wish that I should wear at least one full set from the articles that had made up my offering, nothing was left for me to say.

On the “darshan” day I went upstairs with Kekoo, who seemed quite calm and confident, whereas I was a bit shaky inside. At that time there were not many photographs of Sri Aurobindo, and the one or two I had seen were not very impressive. I thought of Sri Aurobindo to be somewhat superior to the sadhaks, but nothing more. Imagine my surprise when I saw Him sitting to the Mother’s left, on the long sofa (in the same hall), on which is now placed His single photo.

“Surprise” is hardly an appropriate word. I should say I was wonderstruck. For that was exactly what I felt. “If God can take a human form, it is surely this,” I said to myself. I felt so lowly and unworthy before Him that I did not even touch His feet. I made my “pranam” at a little distance. “Surely he is the supreme Divine, a true Avatar,” I said again to myself. He looked so majestic and marvellous, yet so compassionate, I simply stared in bewilderment. The Mother understood my embarrassed state and kept smiling sweetly. I felt like weeping but I controlled myself.

I went home, but a part of me remained with Them. I did not feel like doing anything except lying down quietly and living the experience once again from within. But I had to attend to my usual work at home.

A day or two later Mother sent for me. I was very happy. She opened the staircase door of the Meditation Hall Herself, and led me to the small room at the other end, which became the “darshan” room later. She seated Herself on the same sofa as the one which now holds Their large joint photo. At that time, this sofa was placed against the wall between the window and the door leading to Nirod’s present office-room upstairs. I made my “pranam” to Her and offered the bundle I had brought with me. The Mother opened it and said “Oh! You don’t want to keep these clothes?” “No, Mother,” I said. “They were already offered to you, but as it was Your wish that I should wear them on the ‘darshan’ day, I did so.”

She closed the bundle and put it aside; then taking my hand in Hers She said in a soft voice, “Sri Aurobindo was pleased with you. He told me all sorts of things I could teach you and make of you.”

At the mention of Sri Aurobindo’s name I started to feel what I had felt when I had stood in front of Him. Tears threatened to come out of my eyes. I bowed at the Mother’s sacred feet, saying: “A worthless creature like me!”

She blessed me for a long time and when I rose She took me to the door to see me off. I could not speak a word. I was so overwhelmed by Her love and kindness.

— Lalita