The Mother : Contact
THEME/S
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To ensure the success of the Mother's workings on our behalf we were called upon to accept implicitly her advice, however difficult or unpractical it might look, and not wonder whether she had truly her finger on the pulse of changing day-to-day reality. A particular episode in this connection has got impressed indelibly on my mind.
A couple put before the mother a difficult life-situation. Her instructions were accepted without argument, but in the course of time various unexpected circumstances, seeming to show a path out of the impasse, arose and made them think of new possibilities. They wrote to the Mother about the fresh turn of events and asked a number of questions. When the Mother failed to answer for a few days I inquired the reason. She wrote back:
"I did not answer because their minds are terribly restless, they do not know how to make use of the force and they spoil my formations. But you need not tell them that — send them only blessings." (13-5-1955)
A formation, as I understand it, is a subtle mould created in the stuff of the inner world for a person and empowered to guide the outer process of events to a happy issue, a fortunate pattern, even out of an apparently unfavourable posture of things. Naturally, it is important not to come in the way of any such occult phenomenon.
The next day I wrote again to the Mother: "Please allow me to tell them what they should do not to spoil your formation. This seems to me very necessary. They are not at all unwilling to try their best to co-operate, but they don't know how and the position is indeed difficult. Please forgive their ignorance. Don't give them up. They need your help very badly. But of course they must not spoil your work and waste your Grace. At least in order to prevent them from doing so, I should like to tell them what to do. They will be
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very grateful to know whatever will enable them to co-operate with you when you have been so kind. Shall I tell them something like the following? —
"Have simple, unthinking, firm faith. Do just what you have been told by the Mother. Trust her vision and her work. Don't spoil the occult formations she makes for you. Don't bring in all kinds of fears. Don't start looking in diverse directions, muddling the situation by trying this, that and the other. Stop being so restless and snap out of all depression. Be natural, cheerful, and co-operate calmly, clearly, single- heartedly with the Mother's plan."
The Mother drew a line in the left margin against the last paragraph of my letter and wrote underneath: "Yes, you can write that, with my blessings." (15-5-1955)
About a month later I heard again from the couple. They reported a good chance to solve their problem. The closing words of the note were: "We have done our utmost on our side — but really the final touch would be the Mother's help. We find it very hard at present to live as we are. But it just can't be helped... All we can do is to put our faith in the Mother. Perhaps she'll make the new chance come true."
I asked the Mother whether there would be any message. I added: "If the new chance also does not come off, should I ask them plainly not to try for anything else but continue quietly and contentedly as you have advised? Some clear instruction or command seems necessary."
The Mother replied: "Amal, you must understand one thing. Before giving an answer to a question, I look at all the sides of the problem present and future, so when the answer is given it is final. It is no use coming back to the question any more. Blessings." (12-6-1955)
This sounded a little like giving up the parties involved, but that was not the Mother's way with her children. She tolerated their mistakes and looked essentially at their central turn towards her. All through the succeeding years her Grace kept pouring upon the man and his wife and their children. He appealed to her in all difficulties. I vividly remember one occasion nearly thirteen years later. He wrote to me: "Please tell Mother that I feel all the time as if life and energy were flowing away from me out of my hands and feet and I cannot stop it." The Mother's reply is both
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personal and general, focusing on a truth not always understood. She sent me the note:
"Why does he complain? The energy must be spent to be renewed. The human body is not a closed jar that gets emptied by spending. The human body is a channel that receives only when it spends.
"Let him eat well, sleep well, avoid wrong thinking and spend normally. He will soon be all right." (20-4-1968)
Spiritual action, with or without physical props, was always the Mother's advice in dealing with the ailments or defects of the body. Group captain Mona Sarkar had a small but long-standing and resistant handicap owing to an accident during a game. On the morning of 24 August 1960 the Mother gave him a little lecture in front of me as well as a few others gathered on the first floor of her apartment:
"That knee of yours is still troubling you? But you must keep in touch with athletics. Otherwise you will become incapable. Do you want to go about with a stick and, in your old age, get weak and tottering? Learn from Nolini's example. Look at what he is doing even at his age!
"The trouble is not the mere fact of the knee being bad. You have to put your full consciousness there and be obstinate at it. It is by constantly putting your consciousness, day after day, month after month, and by doing exercise, that you can cure the knee. Truly you have to be very obstinate and do consciously the movements which do not allow the dislocation to recur. Of course, you can't go on thinking of the knee all the time. You have to do so many things together. But it is not necessary to go on thinking. You have just to fix the consciousness at the place and it will take care automatically to ward off the forces of accident. This is the only way, and it is by persistently pursuing it that people have cured themselves."
The report of the talk was shown to the Mother and found by her to be accurate.
*
One of the most dazzling things the Mother told me was in reference to an experience of hers in her young days. It showed me how high she could reach even before she met
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Sri Aurobindo in 1914 and what destiny awaits homo sapiens.
According to the most popular version of modern evolutionary theory, homo sapiens appeared not only very late on the scene but also at the end of a lengthy series of blind genetic mutations sifted by an equally blind process of natural selection due to the demands of the ever-changing external environment.
The Mother said in effect: "I realised long ago that the human form carries a fundamental importance. I used to rise into high levels during my trances — till I seemed close to the very ultimate spiritual reality. It was certainly beyond Sat-chit-ananda. There I once saw the figure of a being like a man with uplifted arms as if calling down something from the Unknown and Unmanifest. So, you see, the human form goes back to the utmost origin."
This vision should fill us with an immense hope; but to fulfill our destiny on earth we have indeed "miles to go". The Supermind is what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have held out to us as the all-fulfilling power. To receive and embody it is the aim of their yoga for us, and they have laid it open to our aspiring reach. But we must beware of crying "Supermind" glibly. Even the most advanced amongst us have to be careful in their convictions or claims. Sometime in the 'fifties the Mother said to me: "I had a vision in which I saw you and X on the mental level. Both of you were arguing and acting together. It was a state in which the mind is ignorant. Usually I see X's head filled with light. However, we must remember that this light is a very different thing from the Supramental Consciousness. There is a big gulf between the two, no matter how brilliant the light may be from the great mental planes above the human but below the Supermind."
Of course the light proper to the mere mind itself is even less a thing to be proud of — though it may be very attractive. Along with it some soul-quality has to be at play if it is to be by its own strength a part of the spiritual life, Knowing my attachment to the mental personality in me. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother always tried to summon me be-
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yond it. The very name I have been given by them — "Amal Kiran", meaning "The Clear Ray" — is meant to point not only towards clarity but also towards radiancy — towards being on the mental plane the manifestation of a light above it, a sun of Truth from which a revealing ray acts in the mind. Another pointer to the state in which my mental personality should be — a rather difficult and tall order — is the flower which the Mother allotted to me. In the old days when I was asked by her to paint the flowers she used to give at the Pranam in the morning, a certain number of them were set apart for particular rooms. I had to paint them on small pieces of drawing-paper and have them hung on the wall of one room or another. Thus I was asked to paint the flower called "Falsehood" for the room in which the sadhaks read daily newspapers. For my own room the Mother told me to paint "Krishna's Light in the Mind". I was very happy with this choice of hers — especially as "Krishna's Light" is said by Sri Aurobindo to be also "Sri Aurobindo's Light".
Ever since this choice, cleverness for the sake of cleverness has ceased to be a pursuit, though I cannot pretend that I always succeed in being truly luminous. What at least I seek to achieve is some soul-quality infusing the mind's functioning. And, of course, for us the soul-quality lies in being open in our inmost self to the new yoga Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have made active amongst us. If one has turned away from them one cannot expect a legitimate place in the field of mental expression that the Ashram's magazines afford. Not that everything published must be directly Aurobindonian; but it should not emanate from a consciousness that has explicitly strayed away from the Master's and the Mother's light. I realised this issue in connection with my editorship of Mother India.
A man in Bombay who had been once a devotee had become sceptical and sarcastic. He was contributing a series of commentaries on an Upanishad to Mother India. The articles were appreciated very much. I had kept the man's personal attitude apart from my judgment of his writing. As long as the writing bore no trace of the attitude, I could afford to be impersonal. The Mother came to be told of his attitude and the several unpleasant things he had said. She knew also that his series was appearing in Mother India.
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She raised the topic with me one afternoon. I told her how much the articles had been admired and that they had no tinge of his critical approach to the Mother's workings. She very calmly heard me out. Then she expressed her wish that we should not seem to support the man by publishing his work. I inquired whether I could be allowed to run the series to its end and then forswear publishing anything else by the same hand. She paused for a minute and said: "It is best if we stop just now."
I could see that there was no personal feelings involved on her part. Actually, I had noticed in the past that complaints had been made to her about somebody or other's hostile remarks against her and the proposal had been made that she should take steps against that person. She had said:
"As the remarks are about me, I can't take any stand. If they were about Sri Aurobindo, I would certainly act." On the present occasion her decision must have had behind it some insight into occult forces which might harm either me or the readers or else the Ashram's general work. Obviously, through my backing of the article the hostile elements were drawing sustenance. Purely literary principles have little validity where the battle between the illumined future and the obstructive past is concerned. I put aside the impersonal editor in me and acted as the obedient disciple.
It was a test for me over and above its being a lesson to the writer of the commentaries. There cannot be a compromise in such matters. But, of course, as the Mother's talk with me indicated, everything has to be done without personal animosity. A wide and wise serenity has to be at play in all decisive moves.
I dare say the Mother's move was even for the benefit of the writer himself — a quiet criticism which was an act of Grace to stir his soul to come forward again. And I am told that before his premature death he did turn to the Mother once more.
While I am about the subject of Mother India in relation to the Mother's wishes, I may touch upon the hints she gave me of what Mother India should never stoop to. Once a coworker offered the suggestion that we should ask our readers
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their reactions and their expectations, so that we might increase our periodical's popularity and be more successful. No doubt, the co-worker had no insistence in his suggestion and was as willing as myself to accept the Mother's ruling in every respect. But somehow the Mother came down with a pretty heavy hand. She must have intuited a non-Aurobindonian force putting out its tentacles from behind the coworker's innocent inquiry. She wrote to me: "Let us become as vulgar as we can and success is sure to come." (16-1-1965)
We were a little taken aback and I pursued the topic by seeking her views on what changes the journal might undergo without falling below standard. She was again uncompromising: "No — I have no superficial views on the subject — and what I could say would not fit the 'new spirit' of the journal. Let me out of all this, it is better." (17-1-1965) One point, however, she clarified by adding the next day: "All that is done with the purpose of pleasing the public and obtaining success is vulgar and leads to falsehood. I enclose a deeper view of the subject. Blessings." The deeper view was expressed in a Message of hers that we should want to please neither ourselves nor others but only the Lord.
Some time later she told me that Mother India was playing very well the moderate role it adopted — not setting itself exclusively in the direction of the spiritual elite but allowing a certain wideness of appeal which would keep room for general writing of various kinds without letting the spiritual theme go into the background or stop holding the centre of the stage — yet she warned me against any further move towards making it broad-based and popular. I have tried my best to live up to her vision, never forgetting the core of spiritual truth which we must preserve in full blaze, and always keeping a continuity with what Sri Aurobindo meant when in reply to an Ashramite reader's criticism of the opinions voiced in the early semi-political editorials, he exclaimed: "Doesn't he know that Mother India is my paper?"
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Although the Mother often asked us to be sensitive to subtle realities and activities behind the visible happenings of the world and of the Ashram, she could pour ice-cold water when we indulged in spiritual fantasies. Thus on 10 May 1967 I informed her:
"The following is going round the Ashram as emanating from you. If it is authentic, may I publish it in Mother India?—
" '4th May 1967 (4-5-67): The Supramental will start working on earth, but the working may start even a little earlier.
" 'I observe this day as the Supramental Manifestation day thus: this is the day of India's New Year, Earth's New Year and the whole Universe's New Year and all these three strangely coincide on the same day which may change the face of the whole Universe.' "
The Mother's brief answer was: "It is all fancy !"
A short time afterwards — to be exact. On 15 July the same year — I sent her the letter: "There is a story current here that into the body of Auroson you have put the soul of Paul Richard! Apart from anything else, I believe Paul Richard is still alive.
Or have you put him to sleep in order to give his soul a better embodiment? The story strikes me as rather fantastic — but one never knows until one asks you. A less colourful report is that this time you have completely succeeded in putting a great soul into a baby at the very moment of birth."
The Mother wrote back: "When will you learn not to listen to all the rumours going about in this place?"
In her spiritual pronouncements the Mother could be very positive at times as when she said in February 1965: "Nothing can delay the inevitable realisation." But at other times she was ready to make whatever reservation appeared to her necessary. On 14 January of the same year I quoted to her some words which she had uttered and which I had wished to publish in Mother India: "The will of Sri Aurobindo is bound to be done... His work of transformation cannot but end in a supreme victory. And what he calls the Supramental world will be brought down on earth and realised by us here and now." After Amrita had read out the
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quotation to her she did not say "Yes" but wanted to know where it had come from. Amrita told me of her inquiry and I wrote to her:
"I had jotted down these words in my dairy but omitted to mention the source. On asking Kishor I have found the source: Words of The Mother, Third Series, pp. 54-55. The talks in that book date back to the time of the meetings you used to hold in the Prosperity Room before the Soup Distribution. They were recorded by me and, before publication by Kishor, approved by you.
"As a rule, when we print what has already been published, we do not ask your permission. I asked it because I wanted to remind you of the extremely encouraging and heart-cheering things you had said. But how is it that you have not let me repeat them? Any particular reason at the moment for keeping them out of sight?
"I do hope your words stilt hold true. If you have changed your mind — or supermind — my life seems hardly worth living."
The Mother's reply was reassuring, but as she appeared not to consider the occasion appropriate I did not republish the sweeping statement. Now, after nearly a decade and a half, seeing that the statement stands as permanent part of the Centenary Edition of her works, as indeed it should, I think that her reply must be made public. It was:
"My conviction is not changed, but the word 'now' must be understood in a Supramental way." (15-1-1965)
I believe she wanted us not to be too sanguine about the great realisation. We must abstain from seeing it as in the very near future, much more imagining the supramental world as already taking shape amongst us. A proper sense of the time needed for so radical a "divine event" is surely the Mother's intention. But, if her statement is to be tied in with the one a month earlier and with several others in the same vein, earlier or later, we have to put the concerned span of years — long though it may be by ordinary standards — still within the Mother's own life-time and regard that life-time as extendable by Yogic Force to cover the "now" understood "in the Supramental way". Then alone the categorical expression "Nothing can delay." becomes intelligible.
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Somehow the extension was not done. For reasons best known to her, the Mother let her life be cut short even before her own centenary which she had more than once appeared to take for granted. There is a mystery here, before which we have ultimately to stand silent. However, our silence must carry the certainty that whatever the Mother has chosen to do is in conformity with the demands of her work as an Avatar of the Supermind. To quote Sri Aurobindo, "the Divinity [that is the Avatar] acts according to... the consciousness of the Truth above and the Lila [Play] below and it acts according to the need of the Lila, not according to man's ideas of what it should or should not do. This is the first thing one must grasp, otherwise one can understand nothing about the manifestation of the Divine."1 Returning to the same theme elsewhere, Sri Aurobindo tells us that the Avatar's Divine Consciousness, bent as it is on only two things fundamentally — "the truth above and here below the Lila and the purpose of the incarnation or manifestation" — does "what is necessary" for them "in the way its greater than human consciousness sees to be the necessary and intended way".2
In this vision our groping hearts must find the rest they need to prepare them for a new life with the Mother.
1 On Yoga II. Tome One (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry 1958), p. 414.
2 Ibid., p. 427.
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