The high-lights of our last talk were my recollections of the Divine Levity which went on in the "Prosperity" Store-room and of the Divine Gravity which held sway at the Soup Distribution downstairs. But perhaps these terms I have chosen are too trenchant in their distinction. Many serious things were done upstairs and at least once a very funny thing happened during the Soup Distribution.

The Mother was in deep trance. We tried to imitate her by shutting our eyes tight. Now, a big rat decided to join the Meditation, (laughter) But it had a rather original way of meditating. It ran to and fro amongst us — I'm sure with its eyes shut like ours, because otherwise one cannot explain what it ultimately did: it rushed right into Dara's dhoti! (laughter)

You can imagine poor Dara. He was in a terrible fix. Perhaps the word "fix" is not quite the mot juste, for he was extremely mobile, (laughter) He jumped up on one side of his seat and jumped down on the other, he thrust out one leg, pulled in the other, and fumbled with both hands to catch the fellow within the folds of his dhoti, (laughter) At last the rat ran out, but there was such a commotion that the Mother opened her eyes and looked for an explanation. Then Pavitra, in what he believed was a voice suitable to the solemnity of the Soup Distribution, said in a low rumble: "It is a Bandicoot!" (laughter)

The Mother was amazed at first and then amused. I was in such a state I had to exert supreme self-control in order not to explode into a most unspiritual Ananda. Well, I managed to bottle myself up for some time, until my turn came to go to the Mother. I went to her, knelt at her feet and, still holding myself tight, gave her my cup. She looked at me and smiled with a twinkle in her eyes. I just burst into laughter. I couldn't act the concentrated Yogi any longer. And she was quite a sport: she opened her eyes wide, smiled very broadly, filled my cup, took a sip from it as usual and, with a slight knowing push, gave it back to me.

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Nothing on the serious side to the same degree happened upstairs to counterbalance the general light-heartedness. Only a tiger leaping into our midst would have created a match to that incursion of the Bandicoot. However, something quite startling did happen once. You know we used to sit in a sort of semi-circle before the Mother. Suddenly she declared: "A fat black hostile being is sitting just in front of me." We all looked at one another (laughter) and wondered who she could have meant. I happend to be right in front of her. (laughter) Well, I may be more or less blackish, perhaps some hostility too may have lurked, but surely I wasn't fat at all in those days, (laughter) So the suspicion slided off me, and then we could see from the Mother's eyes that she was looking at something that was invisible to us. After a while she packed the blighter off. "He is gone," she said. We asked her: "Why didn't you finish him? Why did you just let him go?" She explained a very important point. These hostile forces take all kinds of forms. And it's no use destroying one form, because the forces themselves cannot be destroyed. They will take another form and come to harass you. But they do serve a purpose: they put their probing fingers on defect after defect in us, spot after spot which is receptive to them, so that every shortcoming of ours may spark up in our consciousness and we may be able to deal with all our weaknesses efficiently. They will go pricking us and poking us until we achieve absolute perfection. Then their existence will be nullified by becoming absolutely useless.

Thus, nothing like a tiger-leap occurred upstairs, but the Mother sometimes sprang a number of tiger-surprises on us, tearing our fixed notions to bits, destroying our conventional ideas. I may recall to you some of these mind-shaking revelations.

One concerned the very physical plane. The Mother had a friend named Alexandra David-Neel. Madame David-Neel also knew Sri Aurobindo a little. She was a student of Buddhism, especially the Tibetan variety about which she has written a very fascinating book. She died recently at the age of 101 or so in Paris. Our Prithwin interviewed her once, before she passed away. The Mother had a high opinion of her. She said she was very sincere and intense and was capable of considerable meditation. Now, the Mother told us, this lady once started walking while meditating. It was in the open. She walked and walked for a long time with closed eyes. When at last she opened them she found herself in a strange place and turned to go home. She walked back without

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shutting her eyes. At a certain distance she saw that there was a stream running right across. How had she gone over the stream? There had been nobody to help her take a boat. Evidently she had walked upon the water! This seems incredible, but as the Mother believed it we had no right to doubt. The Mother said Madame David-Neel would not fool anybody nor would she deceive herself. So the miracle of walking upon the water can occur even in our twentieth century! We have heard of Jesus walking on the Lake of Galilee. But to go across a fairly wide and deep stream in our own day by sheer power of consciousness spiritually poised above earthly matters was really an eye-opener. No wonder the Mother's story has stuck in my mind.

Another startler was when the Mother brought her original manuscript of Prayers and Meditations. The printed book had already come out, but we had never seen the handwritten version, the personal diary. With the shut volume in her lap, she asked us: "Name your favourite sentence." All found out the words that had appealed to them most. Quite coolly the Mother picked up a pair of scissors and started cutting out from the manuscript the parts we had selected. Then she pasted them on pieces of paper, wrote our names on top, put the current date which was June 21, 1932, signed her name "Mira" and handed the pieces to us. So precious a document she could just cut up and give away like that!

I remember the sentence I selected as the master Mantra of my life in the Ashram. It was an entry made in Pondicherry on September 25, 1914. It ran: "O divine, adorable Mère, avec ton aide qu'y a-t-il d'impossible?" The bit the Mother cut out from her volume contained the next sentence also: "L'heure des réalisations est proche et tu nous a assuré ton concours pour accomplir inté-gralement la Suprême Volonté." The English translation of the two sentences reads: "O divine and adorable Mother, with Thy help what is there that is impossible? The hour of realisation is near and Thou hast assured us of Thy aid that we may perform integrally the supreme Will."

I may add that there is one more sentence in this Prayer before the grand conclusion, which is:

The Lord has willed and Thou dost execute:

A new light shall break upon the earth,

A new world shall be born.

The things that were promised shall be fulfilled.

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These words look forward to the Supramental Manifestation for which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were working. As you know, the Manifestation at last took place on February 29, 1956. On April 24 of that year the Mother declared for the first time publicly that the long-awaited event had come to pass. She distributed in the Meditation Hall the above phrases as the Message of the day. When she went upstairs, she called for the copies of all those of us who were near her there, and altered the future tense to the present and gave the first line a different as well as a personal turn. In its earlier form the passage had appeared as one of the epigraphs of Mother India ever since the fortnightly had grown a monthly: henceforth it appeared in the new form:

Lord, Thou hast willed and I execute:

A new light breaks upon the earth,

A new world is born.

The things that were promised are fulfilled.

It was indeed very gratifying to me on a back-look that I should have selected a sentence from that particular Prayer — and perhaps the selection was symbolic of some small vague connection I was to have with the Day of the Supramental Manifestation. But I shall come to this point a little later.

Let me continue with some of the unforgettable things of the Prosperity meetings. A few statements by the Mother bearing on the Yogic life have always kept ringing in my ears. One was a call for inner freedom, a casting away of- all bondage of the past, a spiritual rebirth. She said: "If we want to counteract, annul or outgrow our past, we cannot do it by mere repentance or similar things, we must forget that the untransformed past has ever been and enter into an enlightened state of consciousness which breaks loose from all moorings. To be reborn means to enter, first of all, into our psychic consciousness where we are one with the Divine and eternally free from the reactions of Karma. Without becoming aware of the psychic, it is not possible to do so; but once we are securely conscious of the true soul in us all bondage ceases. Then incessantly life begins afresh, then the past no longer cleaves to us." After this, the Mother went on to an astounding pronouncement based on a realisation of hers. She told us: "To give you an idea of the final height of spiritual rebirth, I may say that there can

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be a constant experience of the whole universe disappearing at every instant and being at every instant newly created!"

We think of the universe as necessarily a continuity through time. The Mother shatters this impression. According to her, there is no necessity compelling the universe to be what it has been. Every point of time is a point of absolute freedom for the Divine's Will. The Divine may make the universe more or less as it was before, but He does it freely. And the Divine can introduce certain elements at each second which are unforeseeable by us. And that is why history is so full of somersaults. People expect one thing and something else happens. Against all calculations the course of events suddenly takes a new turn. We are inclined to believe that hidden antecedents are responsible. But we never really find them, however much we may try to draw up a logical scheme. The unexpected is, in my view, the touch of the Divine re-creating the universe at a particular minute just a wee bit different.

Well, if we have faith in this re-creation minute by minute, we can also feel we are not completely bound by what we call the chain of Karma. We are often upset over the hold of our past. Like a millstone round our neck the past seems to hang. But nothing really binds us down in an absolute sense. Of course, our power of re-creating ourselves in our lives is limited. But self-conscious beings, beings who can stand back and watch their own nature, inner and outer, with however small a detachment, beings who not only know but know that they know — such beings have at least a speck of true freedom, and from that speck they can alter their lives at any instant. This certainty I got when the Mother came out with that secret of secrets about the universe.

You will perhaps say: "It is all very well to know this. Actually we are hemmed in all the time by our feeling of incapacity: it is most difficult to alter our lives." Even for such a feeling the Mother has a consoling word. In the Store-room she once talked about the flower which symbolises in her vision "Successful Future". Apropos of this flower she said that the successful future means the supramental change of the world, when the Divine will stand manifest — unveiled in its total perfection. Then she told us: "I do not mean to say that the whole world will at once feel its presence or be transformed; but I do mean that a part of humanity will know and participate in its descent — say, this little world of ours here. From there the transfiguring grace will most effectively

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radiate. And fortunately for the aspirants, that successful future will materialise for them in spite of all the obstacles set in its way by unregenerate human nature!" Aren't these words wonderfully reassuring? To know that the work of the Supermind does not depend on us altogether but that the golden future will somehow come and pick us up and envelop us, provided we are willing to be so treated — this is indeed supreme Grace. And no power except the Supermind can be so gracious. It alone can transform us in spite of ourselves! But I think we should properly understand this sweeping of us into the Light. It means that at least one part of us wants the Light. Ordinarily, the other parts that don't want it and won't co-operate present to us a problem we have ourselves to deal with. We have to fight with these parts and often the fight looks pretty fruitless. The Supermind can overlook them and, through the one pure point of aspiration and surrender, set up a blaze that can act upon all the rest and do what seems impossible.

The Supermind — there you have a subject of perpetual fascination for my intellect. So you can imagine my pleasure when the Mother made a most surprising disclosure. When we usually talk of Supermind and Overmind, we do draw a marked distinction between them, but we do not go beyond saying that the latter is only the delegate of the former and therefore an inferior power by comparison and not capable of achieving the ultimate victory of the Divine. All the same, compared to our mind, it is a mighty splendour and we couple it with the Supermind while we mental creatures stand dwarfed below. The Mother shook us up by saying that the gap we feel between our mind and Overmind is less than the gap existing between Overmind and Supermind. Her words put things quite topsyturvy. But if we think clearly they should strike us as quite natural. After all, the Overmind is only the divine aspect of the mind. The Supermind is the Divine self-experienced in its creative movement — directly, immediately. The Overmind is the Divine projecting itself into the highest mental formulation of its nature. The Divine there is self-aware at one remove. Because of this the Overmind is, according to Sri Aurobindo, the top of the Lower Hemisphere: the Higher Hemisphere starts beyond it. Yet we are always impressed by its proximity to the Supermind and forget the radical, the colossal difference between the two. The Mother threw this difference into memorable relief. And the astounding reversal she made is very picturesquely reflected in some lines of Sri Aurobindo's Savitri. Nobody seems to have

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noticed them, but they can serve as the packed seed of a whole revelatory philosophy, a whole new vision of reality. Sri Aurobindo writes in the third Canto of the first Book:

As if a torch held by a power of God,

The radiant world of the everlasting Truth

Glimmered like a faint star bordering the night

Above the golden Overmind's shimmering ridge.

There is a night between the Overmind and the Supramental Truth-world, and so vast, so deep is it that the Supermind appears above the Overmind as no more than a tiny star at the furthest end of the darkness.

These lines and the Mother's words account also for the fact that the knowledge of the Supermind was lost and the Overmind stood as the ultimate Dynamic Divine for all spiritual seekers. And here the actual glories of the Overmind are themselves responsible too. What Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have said must not lead us to look down on the Overmind. It is the plane of the Great Gods who are aspects of a single Godhead representative of the Supramental Divinity. Both the Mother and Sri Aurobindo have here declared that there has not been any Yogi who, having gone into the Overmind plane, had not been caught in its giant grandeurs and believed he had reached the limit. Sri Aurobindo, of course, as soon as he came to that part of his sadhana when the prospect of the overhead planes was opened up, knew intuitively the essential character of the Supermind. He could not but know it, since he had come from the Supramental Truth as its Avatar to establish it on earth. But he has said that in the course of his sadhana he passed through a stage when the Overmind did not seem radically different from the Supermind. It is because of this that the word "Overmind" does not occur in the Arya. He felt that the Overmind was just a lower or subordinate status of the Supermind, a level where a divine multiplicity was much in evidence: that was all. And he says that he saw it like that because he was looking at it from the mind-plane, where the sadhana was then going on for a mental transformation. When you are on the mind-plane, you are so submerged in the Overmind's illuminations that you think here is a continuation of the highest "radiant world". But when Sri Aurobindo came down to the vital plane and still more when he descended to the physical consciousness for the

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transformative sadhana there, then it became sharply evident that the Overmind was not merely a sub-Supermind. Standing in the world of marked division, the plane where the One is broken up most strikingly, he could recognise as if from a terrible effect the root cause that had remained hidden. The root cause leading to the total division was the Overmind where the One and the Many are not in an integral balance but the One withdraws into the background or sinks into a basis and multiplicity has full play. The unity is never lost, yet it permits the multiplicity to work out every possible line to the extreme. The line of increasing division until the unity is lost gets worked out, after a few planes below the Overmind — then we have what Sri Aurobindo terms Ignorance and — at the lowest reach of the scale — Inconscience. And I guess that when the lustres of the Overmind were focussed by Sri Aurobindo on the formations of Matter, the products of the Inconscience, their rays broke instead of victoriously penetrating. Such breaking must prove that the Overmind is not the true Omnipotence.

Now we can go back to where we stopped: the Day of the Supramental Manifestation, with which, I said, I had a small vague connection symbolised by my choice of that particular Prayer of the Mother's.

I believe the Supramental Manifestation was actually expected in 1938. In that year I left Pondicherry at the end of February for a short spell in Bombay. I had some work to do there, and the Mother had told me, as perhaps many of you know from some reminiscences of mine published in the past, that Sri Aurobindo and she were expecting very great things that year, and so I shouldn't stay in Bombay too long. I said: "Mother, I'll come back the very moment you want me here. Will you please inform me? Do send a telegram at once." She agreed. But no telegram came. I waited for nearly five months and then asked why. Sri Aurobindo replied: "A general descent of the kind you speak of is not in view at the moment."

Now again in 19561 had to go to Bombay at the end of February. As 1956 was a leap year, it was actually on February 29 that I left Pondicherry. I was to catch the morning train to Madras. So I met the Mother pretty early in the day. She said: "I don't want you to stay away long. Can you come back by the 29th of March?" Evidently she was expecting "great things" once more — the Supramental Manifestation, though she did not specify anything — and she was expecting it within a month's time, perhaps on the

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29th of March itself, the date on which, 42 years earlier, she had first come to Pondicherry. I replied, "Mother, I shall surely be back by then." Then I left.

That very day, in the evening, the stupendous thing happened! If I had known, I would never have gone. But I had a strange experience the same night. I need not recount it in detail, for I have told it elsewhere. At Madras I had caught the night-train to Bombay. I was alone in my compartment and I soon fell asleep. Almost at once I had a dream. I saw a huge crowd in an open place — something like the Ashram Playground — and I was on the fringe of the crowd. The Mother was sitting somewhere inside the open place and everybody was going in to do Pranam to her. I also wanted to do it, but somehow I couldn't get the slipper off my left foot — the lame one, as you know. I was shaking the foot and trying to fling away the blessed slipper. In the final jerk of that action I woke up. When my eyes opened, I saw the Mother standing in front of me in the compartment. I am a very sceptical fellow as a rule; so I thought I was imagining things. I shut my eyes; I opened them again, and there she still was. I shut my eyes once more and opened them. She was yet standing. This was too much. So I shut my eyes now for a long time. When I opened them, she was gone. Perhaps I should have kept looking and not allowed the sceptic in me to have play. I might have had a deeper experience. But the benefit now was that the sceptic got completely routed. An indelible wonder filled me. And the memory of that strange calm translucent figure has stayed for ever with me.

I wrote of the experience to the Mother, but received no reply. Only on my return to the Ashram she explained what had occurred. It sounds too self-glorifying to talk of it, but it was a very glorious thing to hear from her. She said: "There were only five people who knew about the Supramental Manifestation — two in the Ashram and three outside." I blurted out: "Then what's the idea of staying in the Ashram?" (laughter) She said: "I don't mean that anybody actually knew the Supermind had manifested, but something extraordinary happened to some people. Among those three who were outside, I count you." Puzzled, I asked: "How's that?" She answered: "Didn't you write to me that on February 29 at night you had seen me in the railway compartment?" I said: "Yes, but what did happen?" She replied: "Do you remember I promised in 1938 to inform you. I came now to fulfil my promise." I was absolutely overwhelmed. My God! what Grace the Divine

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could give to a poor fool! I fell at the Mother's feet in deepest gratitude.

AH this is an old story and here it is rather by the way. After knowing of the Great Event I started revolving in my mind how it was that the Mother had been expecting the Manifestation on or about March 29 and it had come on the 29th of February. What could be the reason? The first reason I found was a most humbly egoistic one. I said: "The Supermind came on the day I left Pondicherry. I must have been the biggest obstacle in its way. (laughter) As soon as I was removed, it found its passage free and there it was!" Then I reflected: "Well, it's pretty humble to think yourself such a big obstacle but pretty egoistic to believe the Supermind could depend on so insignificant a chap being there or not." I further thought: "Perhaps it did not come at the expected time because India was the field of the Manifestation. India is famous for unpunctuality. (laughter) So the Supermind must have been most Indianly divine to come like that and not keep its appointment with the Mother." But I realised there was an opposite side: not only was the Supermind most Indianly divine but also most divinely Indian, and that is why it came a month earlier than a month later, (laughter) Even this explanation did not satisfy me: it struck me as more imaginative than realistic. Then I thought: "We know now that two or three times in January, 1956, Sri Aurobindo came to the Mother and told her that the Supramental Manifestation was in the offing, but he didn't tell her the date. On the morning of the day I left the Ashram the idea of the Manifestation was very strongly in her consciousness: hence she was so particular that — as the saying goes — I shouldn't miss the bus. Her consciousness must automatically have given a push to the Supermind and it rushed out."

This explanation, however, is not the end. I found another in the Mother's talks. She has said: "It was absolutely unexpected on that day. But all my greatest experiences have come like that. I am in my usual consciousness and they come all of a sudden, as if to show their reality in the fullest contrast and vividness. One obtains the best value of a realisation when it is first experienced thus. If one is informed beforehand, the mind begins to play a part."

Still the question persists: "Why on February 29 exactly and on no other day?" Why not on February 28? My sister-in-law Mina who is sitting over there would have been delighted if it

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could have come on February 28, which was her birthday. Or else why not on March 1 ? It could have given the Mother a splendid surprise on any day round about.

Then I remembered what the Mother had said at the Playground on the evening of December 31, 1954: "I foresee that the coming year will be a difficult year. There will be much inner struggle and much outer struggle too.... The difficulties may last perhaps more than the twelve months of the year, may extend to fourteen months.... They will be for all, for the world, for India, for the Ashram and individuals also, more or less equally. It is, I may say, the last hope of the hostile forces — to prevail against the Present Realisation."

Now think of the period the Mother has mentioned for the difficulties: fourteen months. Count twelve months of the year 1955 and then add two. Where do we land? From the evening of December 31, 1954, the fourteen months would come to a close exactly on February 29, 1956, in the evening!

Here is a prophecy that came true with the utmost precision. So we get a new "slant" on the Supramental Manifestation's character. It was not prodigiously unpunctual but observed the very day to which the Mother had pointed in her talk. So the Supermind may be seen to have shown the quality of being not Indian in any divine way but extraordinarily English: the Englishman is known for his punctuality, (laughter) And would you believe that the Manifestation clearly carried a touch of the Englishman? The Mother, when she went into a trance in the Playground on the evening of February 29, found herself standing before a huge and massive golden door separating the world from the Divine and, lifting a mighty golden hammer with both her hands, she struck one single blow on the door and shattered it to pieces. But she did this on hearing four words. She has said: "As I looked at the door, I knew and willed, in a single movement, that 'the time has come'." Later she commented: "It is interesting to note that the words — 'the time has come' — which express what I simultaneously knew and willed... were heard by me in English and not in French. It was as if Sri Aurobindo had spoken them." The fact that the Mother did not hear "Le moment est venu" but "The time has come" was, as I have put it, the Englishman's touch, and Sri Aurobindo was the Englishman! (laughter) He had not only a greater mastery over the English language than any born Englishman but also something of the sang-froid raised

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to the spiritual plane: the Englishman's typical composure, coolness, in danger or agitating circumstances, was transformed in him into a superb, an infinite equanimity, a Himalayan poise, we may say. So, in the Aurobindonian Englishness, I found a precise link between something said before and something which happened afterwards.

Now, talking of Supermind and of Sri Aurobindo in connection with it, I may touch on a statement which has become a part of our historical knowledge of the supramental progression upon the earth. You will find it in the pamphlet I published on February 29, 1960, where all that had been said up to that year by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother about the Supermind's advent was collected. There the Mother is reported to have declared in 1953: "Even in 1938 I used to see the Supermind descending into Sri Aurobindo. What he could not do at that time was to fix it down." Later I used this statement in an article of mine. Last year — 1970 — it was quoted to the Mother from my article in relation to a brochure on Auroville which was being prepared. The Mother called it nonsense, romance, fiction, imagination and demanded who had ever said such a thing. The person who had taken the matter for the brochure to the Mother did not know the identity of the criminal, (laughter) Subsequently, he found I had been the source. So my name was mentioned. The Mother again spoke out her mind spiritedly, branding the statement humbug and what not, and asking how I could have got hold of such an idea and published so absurd a thing. The situation looked quite serious. Pretty soon after this outburst my birthday came: November 25, if you care to know. It seemed really an occasion for me to shiver in my shoes, (laughter) The Mother would surely tick me off. In advance I ascertained where precisely I had first found the declaration.

I went up to her, trying to look as innocent as I could, (laughter) She also smiled very angelically — and quite without pretending, for the Divine's Grace can flow in spite of all our foolishnesses. Then the conversation started. I'll repeat it here but can't vouch that every phrase is exactly reproduced.

"How old are you today?"

"Sixty-six years complete."

The Mother laughed. I suppose from her chronological height — or, better still, her height of eternity — this age was just a joke. I added, "Mother, I want to hang on till I see your Victory."

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She looked a bit surprised at the tall order, but again laughed and said, "Bien".

Then she started the main topic.

"I want to tell you something. Somewhere in Mother India — I don't know in what issue — you have said that the Supermind had been descending into Sri Aurobindo's body in 1938 but could not be fixed down. Where did you get this information? It is just a piece of romance, it is utter nonsense."

I at once said: "Mother, I am very sorry."

With immediate response she said: "Oh, it doesn't matter."

I proceeded to explain: "I did not invent that statement. You are yourself supposed to have made it. And it first appeared in an article by my Associate Editor Soli Albless in 1954. The article was read out to you before it was published."

The Mother shrugged her shoulders and said: "I don't know what he meant. It has not come out correct. I'll explain the true thing to you. Clearly, Sri Aurobindo did not have the supramental body, and neither do I have it. But that does not mean that the Supermind was not in his body. The two things are quite different. One can have the Supermind in the body without the body being supramentalised. It is not true that the Supermind descended into Sri Aurobindo's body only in 1938 or that it was not fixed there but merely coming and going."

"I understand the position now, Mother."

"You see, when he left his body, he gave his whole supramental force to me. It came to me most concretely."

Then she touched the skin and flesh of her left arm to convey the sense of the concreteness, as if even flesh and skin had felt that supramental force. She added: "His force passed from his body into mine. Its passage was like a wind blowing upon and into my body." I thanked her for her enlightening explanation.

Here the important part of the interview ended. What followed is purely personal. I said:

"Now, Mother, I want to tell you something. Will you please open me up for good? Put your hand on the middle of my chest so that my heart may be always open to you."

She put her hand where I had wanted and pressed her fingers on the spot.

"Oh, it is going very fast!"

"Yes, Mother, it's like that because I am very impatient now." She laughed and blessed me.

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I came down a wiser and a happier man. Later, I linked up in my mind some of her words now with what I had been told by her several years before: "As soon as Sri Aurobindo withdrew from his body, what he had called the Mind of Light got realised in me." And subsequently, on June 29, 1953, she had sent me through Nolini an explanation: "The Supermind had descended long ago — very long ago — in the mind and even in the vital: it was working in the physical also but indirectly through these intermediaries. The question now was about the direct action of the Supermind in the physical. Sri Aurobindo said it could be possible only if the physical mind received the supramental light: the physical mind was the instrument for direct action upon the most material. This physical mind receiving the supramental light Sri Aurobindo called the Mind of Light." In view of all this I hazarded the guess that 1938 — the year when the Mother had expected something very great — had seen not exactly what had been expected but a great enough event: the come-and-go, rather than the permanent fixing down, of the Mind of Light.

These are extremely high matters and guesses are risky. Nearer home for us is the experience I prayed for at the close of my interview: not the come-and-go of the psychic opening but the permanent establishment of it. Even its glorious occurrence unbroken for days or weeks or months is not sufficient: it must be there at all times.

Here I may recall a friend of mine, a Bengali whose name was Sarat. He was a fierce-looking skeleton of a fellow. He had been a revolutionary and even in the Ashram he kept something of that fire and I dubbed him "the domesticated fanatic". He was not only thin but also seemed sickly. So every day, when I met him, I would ask him: "Hello, Sarat, how are you?" His answer, accompanied by a knitting of his brows, used to be: "Somehow I am feeling quite all right." (laughter) He was a private student of mine for a while, wanting to learn English better. His greatest difficulty was to pronounce a word like "above". He could never combine the b and v. He would say either "avove" or "abobe". Anyway, he had some aspiration to what was above, but not much of a psychic opening. I watched him every day at Pranam and he was quite stiff face to face with the Mother. Once, however, I saw a sort of unstiffening and softening. So I caught him afterwards and said: "Sarat, what has happened?" He exclaimed: "Oh, it's all finished — my part of the Yoga is finished — I have made my

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surrender. Now it's for the Mother to act — her job remains — I have nothing more to do." (laughter) I remonstrated: "Look here, I know there was a psychic opening in you. I could see it and that's why I am asking you what happened. But don't imagine the opening is permanent just because you had such a glow of it once. You have to go on keeping it, concentrate on its remaining with you, pray for its staying always, work for its recurrence, make yourself ready to have it for a longer and longer time." He didn't look convinced. The Mother evidently had given him a chance to do the needful, but I am afraid he failed to take it. After a somewhat serious illness here he left the Ashram for good.

The point I tried to drive home to Sarat is very important. The psychic being is the golden key of sadhana. Yet we must not jump to the conclusion that the mind is of no importance. If it is utterly negligible, why has Sri Aurobindo written such a large number of books, including the enormous Life Divine which is a veritable mind-cracker? I believe that it is necessary not only to attempt doing Yoga but also to attempt understanding Yoga. And the understanding can come best if you read what Sri Aurobindo has written on Yoga. Without the understanding you could be very much upset and develop a habit of being melancholy. For you may have a series of brilliant experiences and then all of a sudden find yourself completely shut. You may feel dull as ditch-water and blank as a wall. It may seem as though the time has come to pack your trunk and bid good-bye. But if you have read Sri Aurobindo, you would know that after a fine spiritual period there is generally a lull, a period of quiescence in which assimilation takes place, the experiences are absorbed by the ordinary consciousness. While this is happening, your outer self may have that desolating dullness and that unbearable blankness. No doubt, you feel as stupid as an ass while the assimilation goes on (laughter) — but you mustn't start kicking! You must keep quiet and let this period pass. Occasionally it can last rather long.

Quietness is still more the right thing in longer periods of apparent non-progress — when some obstruction in the being holds one up. Sri Aurobindo has said even about himself that his Yoga used to come to a dead stop for nearly half a year at a time! And I have a friend in the Ashram, a sincere sadhak with an intense turn inward and upward, who had a super-stationary period lasting for six years! Poor dear didn't know what to do, but he understood that everything had not come to an end. So he quietly spent those

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six years reading the plays of Bernard Shaw, (laughter) That tided him over the prolonged crisis of nothing happening. Then again the Yogic movement started, and I am sure it's going on famously.

In sadhana the place of the mind is not only at the feet of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother: it is also between the pages of their books. The only thing to take care about is that you should not grow intellectually over-active. Otherwise you start analysing yourself all the time and that is hardly conducive to the Super-mind's coming or even to less spectacular progress. There's one chap in the Ashram I know who has never sat in judgment on his own sadhana or indulged in nagging self-analysis. And he has been perhaps one of the happiest here. Though not an intellectual, he is quite bright and intelligent, yet he has never, never worried to find out whether he was progressing or not. Most of you know him. Apart from his service to the Mother, he is now best known as a teacher of Hathayogic Asanas, but formerly he was most notable as one of the two closest friends of Amal, the other having been Premanand, the first librarian the Ashram had. Yes, I mean Ambu — our energetic, outspoken, humbug-proof, loyal-natured Ambu. In the old days he had a somewhat foppish air, but there was no effeminacy in him and, though he looked a little weak, he had a lot of courage. And I may say from repeated experience that he has a rare capacity of giving unstinted service. He has been of immense help to me, he has nursed me through illnesses and permitted me to be as incompetent as I liked, (laughter) Thanks to him, I was able even to keep a stove and use it — I mean he managed it and I enjoyed its benefits. I am not very good at house-keeping and, though my incompetence may not match that of Dilip Kumar Roy who once told me that if he had to dust his own furniture every day he would prefer to commit suicide. (laughter) I have been pretty much of a dud in domestic science. I used always to think in the old days that Ambu had the qualities of an ideal wife, (laughter) Good job he was not born a woman, because husbands are not often ideal, and a husband having such a wife would never have let her go to become a Yogini. Ambu has become a Yogi — but what distinguishes him is that he has kept all bothering about Yoga out of his life: he has let the Mother do the bothering, (laughter) He has cared only to serve her. When you keep thinking of her instead of your own progress you find the secret of happiness. As a result, I don't believe Ambu was ever really depressed. I have seen him sickly-faced at times, I have

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seen him a little sad too on occasion, but never depressed. And that is an excellent way of living. For, with depression there comes a lot of Yogic upset. Unfortunately there are such a number of people here who are depressed that I would say a sort of spiritual caste-system has sprung up with a large section which can be called the Depressed Class, (laughter) We also know that depressions are always followed by inner havocs — storms in sadhana, psychological counterparts of the cyclones that time and again sweep over Pondicherry. And you may have read in the newspapers how these cyclones develop: we are told they develop because of some depression in the Bay of Bengal! (laughter)

Time is running out and I have still a few things to say. Let me touch on how the Mother can help us not only out of depressions but also out of severe illnesses. Perhaps you know of the heart-trouble I had in 1948, when I was in Bombay. At that period I was bent on getting to the bottom of Einstein's theory of relativity. Day after day I went to the libraries, climbed up ladders to reach dusty volumes on high shelves, spent hours over difficult expositions and came home tired out. The theory of relativity, when first put forth, is supposed to have been understood by only four people in the world. I came to understand something of it many years later. Perhaps I can give you a very short summary and put you among the wise. Newton said that all physical bodies attract one another, but he did not know why. Einstein came along and said: "They attract one another because they are all relatives." That is the theory of relativity, (laughter) Well, while I was on the way to finding this out, I started getting a strange feeling in the heart-region. But I kept on, and one day I had a collapse. I managed to creep home. Then I could hardly move: I just dropped into my bed. There was such a sinking feeling in the chest that I thought I was about to die. I told my wife Sehra: "What can be done now? There is nothing to do. The end seems to have come. I shall go as Yogically as I can. Don't be sorry about anything." As you can see, I was too hasty a prophet. I could hold on till the doctor came. All the time I was inwardly appealing to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and I felt myself drawing blue and golden lights from them to my heart. Their presence was all about me. Some household remedies were also tried. Then the doctor arrived. He gave me an injection of morphia, which would relax me and send me to sleep. Relaxed I did grow, as if loosened from earth-bonds, but instead of falling asleep I grew

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doubly awake — or, rather, deeply awake. For I had an amazing new sense of everything. The whole universe seemed to be a divine being. All objects were as if individualised forms of divinity. The chairs and tables of my room appeared to be gods and goddesses. I felt like getting up and kneeling at their feet.

The doctor had forbidden me to get up or even to lift my head from the pillow. The heart must have complete rest. I did keep to my bed, with the various booklets, in which Savitri was then being issued, lying beside me. I read them till nightfall, marking with a pencil, as I always do, whatever struck me most. Then sleep came over me — but in that sleep there was an outburst of poetry. Lines kept racing before my shut eyes and I just had to awake, sit up and scribble them in the darkness on the front and back pages of the booklets, wherever there would be a blank. I would sink back into sleep and emerge from it again and again to record fresh lines. Almost throughout the night this went on. But it didn't tire me in the least.

From that night onwards, the days were filled with poems. The inspiration came in such an exciting fashion that my heart, instead of resting, thundered away — and half the time I was sitting in bed or leaning on one elbow. Every morning the doctor would call, examine my heart and smile in satisfaction, saying that as I was being such a good boy and following his instructions I would soon get well! (laughter)

I kept the Mother posted about my condition and sent her and Sri Aurobindo all that I wrote. I informed them of my disobeying the doctor most shamelessly, reported his grave warnings against any exertion, and recounted how the poetry filled me with new strength and their help kept me improving. I asked them whether I was doing the right thing. The Mother wrote back: "My dear child, I quite agree with you that there is a power other and much more powerful than that of the doctors and the medicines and I am glad to see that you put your trust in it. Surely it will lead you throughout all difficulties and in spite of all catastrophic warnings. Keep your faith intact and all will be all right."

I have told the story at full length in the "personal preface" I wrote for the three-months' collection of the poems when, on Sri Aurobindo's recommendation, they were brought out as a book in 1949. Undoubtedly the heart-trouble seemed worthwhile having for the inner experience of the Mother's help and the outer expression in those eighty-nine poems.

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May I continue to speak for a little while more? I'll turn to another aspect of life. Once it got into my head that I would play cards here with some people. Udar at that time was in Pondicherry but not yet in the Ashram. He was a very close friend and he too played cards in that circle we had formed. What we played were gambling games, with a little money at stake. Once I lost a certain amount. And then I thought I would invoke the Mother and recover all my losses, (laughter) I began to imagine gold, gold, gold coming from the place of every player at the table and gathering in my corner. I actually won back everything. When I next saw the Mother I spoke to her of my achievement. She said, in effect: "Do you think my force is behind gambling? Do you believe you could invoke it to make money by such card-games? Don't you understand the delusion of it? The forces behind gambling are very low ones, which sometimes give you abnormal luck but just to have the pleasure of pulling you down and making you fall flat. That is their game and you people fall into their hands, thinking some wonderful thing is going on." I replied: "Well, Mother, I have been fond of horse-racing too and I realise the truth of what you have said." Then she told me of an incident in her own life.

She said she had gambled only once. It was on board a ship. The person with whom she was travelling played cards hour after hour and kept losing all the time. So his friends turned to her, laughing: "Madame, why don't you take his chair and bring him some luck?" The Mother answered: "I warn you that if I play I will take away all your money." They guffawed. Our Mother took the seat — and she did take away all their money! She told me: "I could see all their cards as if they had been transparent." (laughter) So, knowing all their hands, she played hers. Naturally they lost. It was a good lesson to them. They had to beg her to stop playing.

The Mother can do many unexpected things. And her force can work in ways that surprise us. Apropos of gambling I may tell you another story. It concerns my sister Minnie's husband. Nari, my brother-in-law, was very fond of racing, just as I myself was. He had never thought of coming here. My sister had been a constant visitor ever since her girlhood. Although he saw her faith, he was not quite convinced. Now the year was 1952 in Bombay. February 26 happened to be his eldest son Ferdauz's fifth birthday. Ferdauz had told his mamma that he would like

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as his birthday gift a visit to the Mother about whom he had been hearing every day when his mamma used to read out the Mother's sayings to the whole family. Minnie told her son's wish to Nari. He said in his own mind, "If I have sufficient money, we shall make the trip to Pondicherry." There was no prospect of having the required funds at that time. Nari felt pretty desperate as he wanted to fulfil the boy's wish. Ten days before the birthday he had a dream. He saw a very beautiful European lady, about 35 years old, dressed in a violet gown. I was standing next to her and I introduced her to Nari saying: "This is the Mother". He said to himself, "How can this be the Mother? I have seen the Mother's photos and she looks different." The lady, reading his thought, answered: "Yes, I am the Mother. I appear as beautiful as you see me to those who have faith in me." Two days after the dream, there was a race-meeting. Nari frantically sought inspiration to select a horse which would bring him the money needed for the Pondi-trip. When he glanced through the names of all the runners on the race-card, the only name that struck him was "Masked Lady"; for the appearance of the Mother in the dream could only be interpreted by him as a mask in view of the photos. The horse was a rank outsider, paying 11 to 1. It galloped home first and brought Nari nearly Rs.2500. With that money he came to the Ashram with his whole family — a birthday-gift to his son. (laughter) People can be touched in incalculable ways. One may add that violet, the colour of the gown in the dream, symbolises the Divine's Grace.

I am afraid I have been digressing into rather light talk. I must close on a serious note, shouldn't I? — as suits a man of my age and my supposed wisdom, (laughter) I shall go back to the meetings in the "Prosperity" Store-room. On one occasion the Mother asked us: "What is Yoga?" That's a good subject to end with; for, after all, we must know what we are trying to do. Several of us gave the Mother our definitions. I have recovered a copy of them from the limbo of some old notes of mine. But I don't remember quite exactly who was the author of which definition. I can give you my own conjectures and perhaps you can form surmises of your own. I'll read the definitions to you. It is interesting to note how various individuals respond to the spiritual Call and envisage the Integral Life. Some of the definitions incline to be philosophical in their terms, others bring out more feelingly the Ideal, while still others try to catch the actual working of Yoga in general, and

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the remainder hint the inner psychic movement in a purely personal mode.

Here is the first definition: "Divinising life."

Who could have framed it? It sounds like Nolini to my ears. He is in the habit of being either short and sweet or else short and severe, and in each case gets rid of a question or a questioner as quickly as possible, (laughter) But he puts a lot of stuff into his few words and gives plenty of food for thought. Not much demonstrativeness, but a good deal of concentrated self-dedication.

The next definition runs: "Faith in the Divine and aspiration for the Highest."

This has for me the ring of Amrita. It has a spontaneous putting of oneself in the Mother's care, believing in her implicitly and trying one's best to live up to her expectations.

Then we have a long definition: "A series of experiences which the individual soul feels from the time of the contact with the Divine up to the union with the Divine."

Quite a dictionary-definition — a satisfying one from the intellectual standpoint but a little lacking in the human sense of things and in personal particularity. I seem to hear a man named Satyen. I am not sure any of you have heard of him, for Satyen left the Ashram not long after the contact with the Divine but very long before the union. Perhaps the series of experiences proved a process too long-drawn-out?

The next is: "The process by which we transcend the ego and put on the Divine Consciousness, and by which we transform the the lower nature into the Divine Nature."

This too is a bit of a mouthful, but it has more particularity. The ego seems to have been a troublesome thing and the lower nature a rather demanding proposition. Transcendence and transformation are prominently felt as needs. A sort of talkativeness about one's problems also comes through — and I have the impression of our great Dara, with his portly presence and his lively interest in the ego's doings and the lower nature's problems, as well as his constant commentary on what used to go on in himself.

Now we have: "Birth of the supreme harmony in matter from the union of the above with the below."

Possibly the pronouncement is of the person named Purushottam who was in charge of the "Prosperity" and much occupied with material objects. He was also constantly concerned with movements from below — not low movements but a thrust as of

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the Divine concealed in matter. That impulsion used to make him jerk his legs again and again during meditation, (laughter) But the above also was not outside his feeling. Of course, his name itself — colloquially speaking — means the chap who is above all, the topmost fellow — and its bearer seemed interested in other people's tops too. Once during a collective meditation with the Mother he moved about in an inspired way and pulled out a fistful of hair from a sadhak's head, (laughter) Don't laugh; for, though it looks as if the sadhak must have taken good care not to expose himself again to Purushottam's inspiration, such a thought could never have crossed his mind then. Let me tell you that those were very serious sessions and the Mother was drawing down the beings of the Gods into people, and the sadhaks felt great exaltation and had remarkable experiences. With what Purushottam did, that sadhak had an unforgettable spiritual experience. The Mother confirmed its genuineness and indicated the extraordinary meaning of what had happened to him. Hers had been the general guiding force, even if the particular form given to it may have shown Purushottam's originality.

Then there is the definition: "To be entirely cleansed of falsehood so that there may be purity to know the Divine Will and respond to the Call at every moment."

Some worker wishing to be totally consecrated and made ready as an instrument of the Divine is voiceful in these words. But who could it be? In those days there were five prominent workers in different ways. There was Chandulal, there was Champaklal, there was Dyuman, there was Doraiswamy and there was the Englishwoman Datta, originally Dorothy Hodgeson. Doraiswamy mostly worked outside the Ashram for the Ashram, and he had to deal with a lawyer's world which is notoriously in need of being cleansed of falsehood. And he was also known to be constantly invoking the Divine inwardly to guide him and help him in his complicated cases. Our sentence is phrased in a manner quite consistent with such a habit and it has the lawyer's language — well-knit and logical. So he could be its author. The statement is perhaps too long for Champaklal or Dyuman and is not quite in character with Datta's more direct and less ample movement. It is quite possible for Chandulal in its general bearing, but accurate expression of a complex thought was not precisely Chandulal's strong point.

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As regards the next definition, I am positive about its authorship. It goes: "To return home."

The statement has a beautiful brevity. It was Pavitra (Philippe Barbier St.-Hilaire) who framed these words. They have the French flavour — the simple blended with the suggestive, a felici-tousness of phrase bringing out a delicate depth of feeling, and it is the feeling of the inmost heart, into which Pavitra, when he meditated, was in the habit of penetrating. From his face one could gather that he had found there his happy repose.

Not much longer is the definition that follows: "To do as Mother directs us to do."

This could be any worker speaking. It could be Champaklal or Dyuman, the ever-ready obedient servants of the Mother, full of the zest of putting her Will into action. But perhaps there is here a certain leaning towards outer guidance, a waiting for the spoken command, the explicit directive. I sense a kind of English trait. Was it Datta defining Yoga thus? She was a very close attendant on the Mother for years.

Next we read: "To live in Mother and to know Mother's Will." Here is the same aspiration, with just the colour of a greater tendency to go inward into a devoted awareness of the personal Divine. A more Indian trait is evident. Maybe Champaklal, maybe Dyuman.

Then: "Not to hinder the Mother in making the best possible out of you."

It could have come very well from an Iranian lady named Tajdar, who unfortunately went away after several years of service to the Ashram life. When I knew her, she was always eager to put all of herself at the Mother's disposal.

The next one is: "To be in complete union with the Mother."

A good summing-up of our ideal, but a little on the general side, showing a bent towards mental expression. Perhaps it came from a girl who had the most mental turn in those days among the sadhikas: Chinmayi. She had a great striving in her to be one with the Mother, but obstacles in her being, which others would not have made much of in themselves, she felt terribly. In a certain sense this was due to an intense sincerity which felt extreme dissatisfaction at the slightest shortcoming, a dissatisfaction which could be very upsetting. She passed away many years ago.

Now only two definitions are left. One of them is: "To live for Mother as if nobody and nothing else existed."

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Here is the echo of the strong movement of self-giving which once characterised Lalita. At one time it seemed as if she were an inseparable part of the Mother.

Now the very last: "To feel a warmth and a glow in my heart in my relation with Mother."

This somewhat emotional-sounding expression comes — strange to say — from somebody who would be expected to use more brainy language. Instead of "a warmth and a glow in my heart", one would imagine him saying, "a heat and a light in my head." But actually he had lost his head over Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and that surely was the heart's doing — but for a long time he didn't know what had happened and felt a kindling and unkindling of the heart's love for the Divine — and was all agog to stop the latter and keep always the flame he knew in the Mother's presence. Poor chap, he is still trying to tend the sacred fire. We'll wish him a steady progress and as few stumbles as possible. (laughter)

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