THEME/S
SOME EXPERIENCES FROM 1973
I left for Bombay from Pondicherry by plane on August 2, 1973 to have the cataract in my right eye removed. I had to remain there owing to unexpected circumstances right on to the night of November 18. On the morning of that day I had a phone-call from Pondicherry informing me of the Mother's passing away the previous evening. Along with my wife, her sister, my sister, my niece and her husband who were all in Bombay at the time, I flew homeward the same night.
Looking back at the stay in Bombay I cannot help seeing the Grace of the Mother in the series of dreams I had of her, such as had never happened to me in all the years I had known her. It was as if she showed herself close and intimate to one who was far away but needed her intensely—a presence of love and light giving repeated Darshan before the great leave-taking. The last dream was on the very night of November 17. I used to write a report of each dream and send it to Pondicherry. Perhaps these reports may prove of general interest and hold meanings for others no less than for myself. They are reproduced below as originally written. Some later comments follow them whenever these second thoughts seem to illuminate the earlier experiences.
1
Dream of 18-8-1973
I have got up from sleep, with a wonderful dream as a grand finale to the night's rest. Yesterday before going to bed I had the news that the Mother had appeared on her balcony at 6.15 p.m. on August 15 but had gone in because it had started raining. I felt there was something wrong with the information, for it was hardly like the Mother to be frightened by a bit of
* Mother India, November and December 1975
Page 110
rain. But I was elated by the fact that after all she had given Darshan. I went to sleep concentrating on her.
Round about 6.15 this morning I had my dream. I was in a horse-carriage going somewhere. I ended up in the midst of a crowd waiting to see the Mother. Each of us had a card with a number and two words. My card read: "47. Matter-of-fact. Independence." There was a sort of balcony from which Champaklal was calling out the numbers. I joined the queue and climbed up a staircase and reached the first floor. There was a room to the right. The Mother was sitting there, awaiting all of us.
On the way I had interrogated my own condition and found some faults or rather ambivalences in it but on the whole it seemed fairly receptive. I approached the Mother. She appeared a little lean in the face, the nose looked sharp-cut; otherwise she was as I had seen her in my first interview in December 1927—and, as on that occasion, a soft white radiance seemed to play all over her. I knelt down, she smiled, I put my head on her feet, she blessed me. When I lifted my head—with my hands clasped together and pressed to my heart—she was still smiling. I was filled with a sense of beauty and graciousness. It was the Mother I had always known—with no barriers between us, all the recent withdrawal and absence due to her ailing condition were wiped off.
I moved away and stood in a big adjoining room. Watching from there I saw a visitor-sadhak doing Pranam to the Mother. He kept his head at her feet even after she had blessed him. She did nothing for a while and then touched his head two or three times impatiently. She did not want such an artificial self-centred ceremony as this prolonged Pranam. But the chap hardly took notice of her disapproval. He got up in his own good time. The Mother started saying something. I don't remember all the words, but the last one got translated in my mind into the Gujarati term "Gandio!", meaning "Imbecile!". I was surprised, and looked with mingled shame and pity at the fellow.
He got up and with a dazed expression walked hurriedly away and disappeared. In contrast to this occurrence I came to know from my wife Sehra that she had done Pranam sixteen
Page 111
times, bowing at the Mother's feet first and then touching the head to the sides of her seat and so on, but the Mother had kept smiling and said, "It's all right." The two occurrences showed her different responses to false devotion and to true love.
I lingered for some time in the adjoining room talking with people. Then I woke up. My whole being was brimmed with a deep quiet joy. And the realisation came to me that utter humility is the only way to receive the Divine's personal physical presence on the earth. Not the mind but the heart has to be our answer to this supreme grace. And, while I became aware of this truth, I felt that by her appearance to me and by her blessing the Mother had not only compensated me for missing August 15 in Pondicherry but also rounded off a certain puzzling period and given the "green signal" to me, opening the way at last to my cataract-operation which had been suspended even though I had been in Bombay for it from the 2nd of the month.
Suddenly I remembered that a few days before starting for Bombay I had had a dream of the Mother which I had not told anybody because I had regarded it as just a projection of my own desire to get the cataract treated in an unorthodox way-without surgery. In this dream the Mother was seated in somewhat the same fashion as in my present one. I approached her and told her, "I am going to have my cataracts removed." She at once replied, "No, don't get them removed. Go to Togo". The closing part of the speech was a mystery except that the last two syllables were merely the first two in the reverse order: instead of "Go to" there was "To go". The opening part of her speech was surely a non-acceptance of my hurried desire for the operations. And yet the command to go pointed to my leaving Pondicherry for some other place. Perhaps my memory garbled what she had said and I had missed the word "Bombay".
I may add that in this dream the Mother was not quite normal. For, when my right hand touched her left foot she winced in pain. As the feet are symbolic of the most exterior part of the being—the gross-physical—I suppose the pain signified that some crucial work was going on in this part of the being— work which seemed to have been essentially over
Page 112
before my second dream. And during the crucial process her attitude to the question of getting my cataracts removed was clearly negative.
My hurry in the opposite direction was mistaken and has actually proved useless. The Mother's Grace has intervened to check it. A doctors' strike has gone on stopping what I had arranged to be done as soon as I would have arrived in Bombay.
Here I may record in parenthesis an interesting event. Our "astrologer-royal" of the Ashram—Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet— had told me that according to my horoscope the time was very inauspicious for the operation. She said she was not happy at my going in for it. The stars showed "isolation, detachment, separation", but in an unfavourable manner for a move like the operation. As a Yogi who steps out of the round of common cosmic forces I was supposed to ignore stars—whether ethereal or Hollywoodian. But perhaps Sri Aurobindo who, in spite of telling us that the stars' indications are not binding when one enters the Yogic life, had yet coincided the day of his passing away with the astrological indications of the time of his "death", as if deliberately to pay with his sacrifice the full penalty of material fate—perhaps Sri Aurobindo saw something worth attending to in the pointers of my horoscope. Anyway, the Mother's negative attitude in my pre-Bombay dream had come before Patrizia spoke to me. Somehow it had been decided by the Divine that my operation should not happen in the period which was horoscopically inauspicious.
The upshot of the delay was that the doctor who would have operated on me was put off the scene and another who proved to be an ideal surgeon came into the picture. As though to make the change-over doubly sure, fate whisked away the first doctor to a conference in Africa. It strikes me that, if the operation had occurred when I had ventured to have it, there would have been some loss of protection. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have evidently saved me from myself.
One question may puzzle people. If the Gurus so hold me in their hands, why did they not prevent me from starting in such hot haste to get the operation done? One may say that my folly was so great that they could not directly counter it. But I think this is only half the truth. My state of mind at the time was
Page 113
such that I just had to be—as my horoscope showed—isolated, detached, separated from my immediate circumstances. And Bombay was the best place to "go to", as the Mother's words had it. But, though badly needing to go, would I have gone if the urge to get rid of those awful impediments to my work— the cataracts—had been lacking? So to rush like a cataract to get the cataracts removed was the unavoidable mode by which the sorely needed isolation, detachment, separation could be achieved. The Grace of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother lay behind even my folly. The folly itself may be interpreted as a paradoxical action of their wisdom.
While writing this, it occurs to me that the name "Togo" itself might be a hyperingenious way of pointing to Bombay. For, impossible as it may sound, I knew when I was a boy an English child in Bombay who had been named "Togo" because he had been born in 1904, the year at whose near-end during the Russo-Japanese War Admiral Togo had started the masterly manoeuvers by which he had destroyed the whole Russian fleet off the coast of Manchuria. And I myself was also born in the same year in Bombay. Perhaps the month of my birth—November—was the one in which Togo's manoeuvers started.
I am now waiting, in gratitude and confidence, for events to take the turn which the Divine wishes. The Mother, according to her own sense of the right time, will see me through my cataract-problem and lead me, in every sense, from Darkness to Light.
In closing, I may confess that I have not yet properly gauged either the meaning of "Matter-of-fact" and "Independence" or the suggestion of "47". May be those two words tell me that I have to be realistic and not live under illusions, as well as that I should stand in my own inner strength and not be influenced by outward factors. What they tell me could be a manner of conveying what Sri Aurobindo deems essential for realising the Spirit in terms of Matter: a sublime common sense and a supreme poise.
As for "47", it may be taken in the context of the word "independence" as appropriate since India won her independence in the year 1947 on August 15 which was also a birthday of Sri Aurobindo. But there is another reference possible. There will
Page 114
start for me in the December of this year—on the 16th, to be exact—my own 47th year as a member of the Mother's Ashram.
Later Comment
After the Mother's passing away a sharp light falls on the number 47. The Mother took charge of the Ashram, at Sri Aurobindo's bidding, on November 24, 1926. The year 1973 completed, in November, 47 years of her creative role as the Ashram's Head—no less than its Heart. The number in my dream appears to mean that, on the physical plane, this completion was also the end.
In view of the termination of the Mother's physical presence amongst us, the words "Matter-of-fact" and "Independence" acquire, in the meanings I have tried to read in them, a special point. They beckon me to an undreamt-of stance of practicality and self-reliance in the outer half of the spiritual field.
2
Dream of 29-8-1973
Early this morning I had another dream of the Mother. I dreamt that some time in the late afternoon I went to see her. From an outer room I passed into an inner one. Before entering the latter, I picked up a tubular flashlight, its body tarnished and old-looking. But, as soon as I got in, the "torch" disappeared from my hand.
I found the Mother standing, in a long robe, as I have often seen her in the years immediately following 1954. When I approached her she smiled a little and gave me a bunch of flowers for myself and another bunch for Sehra. One flower was prominent in each bunch. It was positioned like a leader of the three or four others. The Mother, pointing to it, said, "Seventy times"—and, pointing to the rest, she added, "Forty times." Then she mentioned the significance of my leading flower and that of Sehra's. Mine was "Vital Protection". Sehra's was "Radha's Consciousness in the Vital".
Page 115
I asked the Mother whether the significance of these flowers were to be spoken out by us 70 times and those of the remainder 40 times. She answered, "Concentrate on them inwardly." I then bent down to her hand-level, kissed her left hand, and received the blessing from her right.
As I was taking my leave she called me back, "Aren't you going to wish me a happy birthday?" I looked somewhat puzzled. Either Vasudha or Kumud explained, "Mother couldn't celebrate her birthday on the 21st February. So she's doing it now." I walked back to the Mother. She opened her arms and we warmly embraced. Before the embrace ended, she kissed me on my right cheek. I first kissed in the air in response but soon brought my lips to her left cheek and kissed it.
Then I left her, saying to myself, "This is the most wonderful day of my life!"
When I woke up, I took the old tubular flashlight standing on the table next to my bed and with its dim glow read the time on my wrist-watch. It was 3.08 a.m.
Looking back, the first thing that struck me was the numerological aspect. Like the number 47 which had figured on my card in the dream of August 18, there were 70 and 40 in this dream. The same two numbers 4 and 7 were here, though in the opposite order. And their total, either way, was 11 which, again, totalled (1+1=)2. Even the time of waking was 3+8=11=2. And the date itself—the 29th—amounted to 11=2. Perhaps we can ignore the waking time and the date, but the recurrence of 4 and 7 is quite intriguing.
I noted that along with the 2 ultimately resulting from the addition of these figures there were 2 words—"Matter-of-fact" and "Independence"—in the earlier dream and again 2 words for me—"Vital Protection"—in the present case.
Curiously enough, the second dream came 11 days after the first which had come on the 18th—a time-length which once more adds up to 2. Finally, if we add the pair of dates—18 and 29— what do we get? Precisely the numerals which in different ways were given by both my dreams: 47. And, of course, 47 is 2.
What is the significance of this recurring 2? I can think only of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo side by side—joined and inseparable.
Page 116
I may observe that in the meeting with the Mother there was no sense of cataract, no dimness of vision: everything was clear and normal. The cataract-sense and the dim vision must have been there when I took hold of that old tarnished flashlight. But the complete disappearance and forgetting of it when I received flowers from the Mother showed the change in the state of sight. It was as if the Mother were giving me some power of seeing which I did not lately have. But what exactly was I called upon to see?
Perhaps I had to see the reason why the Mother's birthday was being observed in the month of August in my dream. The Mother may have been passing at that time through a period in which one could declare that a special birthday for her in some sense was occurring in the same month as Sri Aurobindo's birthday. The month being the same should suggest an extra-strong linking of them, so as to give a particular point to the side-by-sideness I have read in general in the number 2 produced by 47=11. The Mother's departure from her physically embodied state in 1973 joined her most literally with Sri Aurobindo, setting her close beside him on the subtle plane and marking the commencement of a new life one with his work from there, the birth of a new activity on her part as the Shakti of Sri Aurobindo.
3
Dream of 13-9-1973
At an early hour this morning I dreamed once more of the Mother. I don't remember many details, but her part is perfectly vivid in my mind. All the more is it vivid because on this occasion I had two Darshans of her.
I had to go into a room from an open space in order to see her. She was on a low seat as she used to be in the early days. The first time I went in, I knelt down to her at a little distance.
Page 117
So she leaned forward and stretched her hands and gave me some flowers. After coming out of the room I made a sketch of her as she had looked during that gesture. Before going in again, I found myself, on the way to the room, crossing the open space outside. I saw Pujalal walking a little ahead of me and speaking to somebody behind me on the right. What he said was centred on the word "Sacrifice". Our sacrifice of ourselves to the Mother: this was the sense of his speech. When I went once more into the room and knelt down—this time quite close—the Mother had a radiant face and a glorious smile. It was wonderful to see her thus.
Out of the two Darshans, the first was as if the Divine were going out of her way to help: the Divine reaching out to give her love. The second Darshan was as if the Supreme Bliss, Beauty and Grace were shining forth from their own far-off home, effortlessly like the light of a full moon.
When I woke up, with a deep happiness in my heart, I heard water flowing from the tap in the bathroom. The tap had been kept running in order to fill the bathtub for use the next morning. I went and turned the tap off. Then I came back, picked up my wrist-watch from the table next to my bed, switched the light on and read the time. It was two minutes past 4 a.m. My dream must have been at exactly 4. There we have again the number which had figured in both the earlier dreams—as part of 47 in the first and of 70 and 40 in the second. What is further interesting is that when I looked at the watch what I saw most clearly was just 4 and 12 on the dial. My eyes were focused on these numbers as if they had been the only ones there. On reflection, I realised that, when 12 and 4 were added up, the sum was 16=1+6=7. So not only was 4 there quite openly but also 7 as in the other dreams, though now in an indirect manner.
Within the dream itself the only number evident was 2, from the two Darshans; but 2, of course, is the key-number, communicated through the sum of 4 and 7, 70 and 40, each time 11 which equals 2. Now it seemed communicated straight away and in immediate connection with the Mother herself.
Page 118
In the preceding comment I have read the recurring 2, which is linked with the repeated 4 and 7, as an indication of the Mother's taking her stand alongside Sri Aurobindo after 47 years of spiritually mothering the Ashram (from November 24,1926 to November 17,1973). The present dream shows the Mother herself twice over—but in two distinct attitudes that are complementary to each other. And these attitudes remind us of our usual impression at the Darshans when she and Sri Aurobindo used to sit side by side. Though full of a transcendent beauty, she leaned towards us and put us at ease by her smiling all-giving grace. Sri Aurobindo, though near to us in the act of benediction, was like a Himalaya, a far height of all-transcending truth. In my dream the Mother was both herself and Sri Aurobindo. She re-enacted in her own person the old Darshans, suggesting in a sort of pre-view that in another manner she and Sri Aurobindo would again be together but also that to our subtle senses the Divine would still be accessible in a Motherly-cum-Aurobindonian power.
4
Dream of 15-9-1973
Another dream of the Mother, again at an early hour today. It was a long dream, but my memory does not go back beyond a certain point. At that point which serves as the beginning for me, the keynote of all the dreams—number 2—is at once struck.
For, I find myself in a kind of classroom with only one other student. We are two and the Mother is our teacher. The second student is Huta. She has an exercise-book, but I have only a big white envelope with a letter in it dealing with a worldly concern—a sort of business letter. The flap of the envelope has not yet been stuck.
The Mother dictates a sentence in French—a message from her. I start wondering from where to get hold of some material on which to take down the message. Then I decided to write, in a small hand, on the inside of the envelope flap. I can't recall
Page 119
the words in full but the ending sounds like "t'arrondir" which means, literally, "to make you round" and, figuratively, "to enlarge or extend you" or perhaps "to make you full and complete". When the dictation is done, the Mother wants to look at it. She turns the envelope around and reads what I have written. She finds it correct and is pleased.
She moves on to what has been written on Huta's exercise-book and, after reading it, puts her signature on the page. This seems to be her custom. Then she moves back to me. My envelope has changed into an exercise-book. She waits for a second—and decides to put her signature on my page, too. But it's not the full name. Just an abbreviation: M. I feel very moved by her generous act.
Now she leaves us. We follow. I may say that my eyes have no cataracts and my left leg is not lame at all. While following the Mother at a distance I feel extremely open to her in my heart. Aspiration and devotion are working there intensely. I ask myself: "Should I send that business letter at all? Why not forget about it and give myself wholly to the Mother?"
At last we reach the door of her apartment. Huta walks in as if that was a natural thing to do. I stand outside and wait. The Mother, who is standing beyond the threshold, smiles, steps half outside, catches my hand and pulls me in. I go in happily. At this time my companion student is a mixture of Huta and Vasudha. She sees that there is a big attached bathroom and exclaims: "How nice! We shall live here like two cooks!" The word "cooks" is surely odd but again the number 2 openly named is striking.
Huta-Vasudha then disappears and I am alone with the Mother. Now she and I form the number 2. I am very close to her. I have an arm half around her waist. The Mother's face is near mine. I move my head a little forward and lightly kiss her on the right cheek. She is slightly startled and makes a serious, semi-disapproving face. I say, "Sorry", and everything is all right. Then she starts speaking about my sister Minnie. She says: "I wish to bring Minnie near me. I know she has been full of love for me, but I have understood that this love was meant to be in her inner being and not come at all into her outer. The outer was meant to be different. But now I want her to stay
Page 120
near me." I remark: "Mother, whatever you do in this way is just what she wants. It will enrapture her."
Here the dream breaks off. I wake up. My impulse is to look at my wrist-watch. But I don't look, I lie quietly lest the memory of the dream should vanish. I trace back the events of the dream for a short while and then, when I am sure of them, I get up, take my wrist-watch to the next room, switch on the light and try to read the time. For a second I can't properly see. The light dazzles me. When I am able to look it is 3.29 a.m. A few minutes have surely elapsed from the time the dream ended. It must be two or three minutes. Most probably it is three. If that is so, the time was 3.26 a.m. The numbers would add up to 11=2.
P.S.—My first operation has come to be fixed for next Tuesday: 18.9.1973=38=11=2. Doctor Ursekar will do it. He is at present doing his own work as well as that of Doctor Maskati who was going to operate on me but is now gone abroad.
Doctor Ursekar=13 letters=4.
Tuesday=7 letters.
So 4+7=11=2.
5
Dream of 29-9-1973
Three more reports were sent to Pondicherry during the next fortnight—on September 20,25 and 29 respectively. The first one ran as follows:
At the hospital where my operation was to be done, I was to be put in ward 13, that is 1+3=4. I chuckled with anticipation. I was told my bed would be number 1, This surprised me, but a greater surprise was in store. On getting to the hospital in the afternoon of September 17, I found that my bed was part of a row of 5 beds—the very first row as we entered the room. Believe it or not, my bed, numbered 1, was not standing first but second. It was a if bed 2 from one side and bed 4 from the other. If 4 and 2 are put together and the actual labelled number, which was 1, is added to their sum, we get 7. So once more 4
Page 121
and 7, amounting to 11=2. Surely the Mother's numerology was having a field-day!
It was a huge ward, very clean, airy and bright. There were sixteen beds in all, widely spaced. Late in the evening, after a good vegetarian meal, I was taken downstairs for a final check. Various tests were done; the one that sticks most in my memory is the passing of a wire into the tiny hole at the inner corner of the right eye, the hole connecting the eye with the nose and throat. Water was injected into this hole until I could get it in the throat and gulp it. My upper eyelashes were all cut after this.
Early next morning I was sponged. Then I got tea, but no bread and butter, as patients who are to be operated upon do not get solid food. Later I was given an intravenous injection of Terramycin. At 8, I was taken in a wheelchair to the preparation room. There the eye was washed with drops and the surrounding areas cleaned with ether. Again in a wheelchair I was taken to the upper floor—the operation theatre. Stretched on the operation table I was given several injections—one in the facial nerve near the ear, another in the lower eyelid, a third in the upper eyelid, and a fourth behind the eyeball. Then an intramuscular injection of Pethidine (Morphine) in the right arm to make me dopey. While lying on the operation table I got repeatedly a slight cough, a thing forbidden. I tried a trick in which I had often succeeded. There is a Purusha (Self) at each spot of the body behind the Prakriti (Nature) working there. I now separated the Purusha in the throat from the Prakriti which was indulging in that local irritation. And this Purusha, standing back, refused sanction to what Prakriti was up to. Immediately the movement to clear the throat stopped and never came back till 36 hours later! I also called for the peace and protection of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
When the injection had taken effect, Dr. Ursekar started covering my left eye as well as the parts around the right, leaving only the prepared eye open. This took quite a time. He was sitting on a stool behind my head. My doctor nephew, Ferdauz, was to my left and near him a nurse. A bright light was switched on above my eye and the operation began. The doctor made a semicircular cut in the skin over the lens. Then he called for the
Page 122
Cryopen, the probe with freezing nitrogen within its tip. He inserted it under the skin flap and touched the lens. The lens froze and stuck to the Cryopen and came out with it. The operation was over. The doctor started putting sutures into the cut skin of the eyeball, as well into the upper eyelid. The previous bandage was removed and a new bandage was neatly put over the eyes. I tried to thank the doc and to say that the operation had been absolutely painless, but the Pethidine made my speech very difficult and I could hardly get the letter l right in the expression. Then I was shifted to a wheeled trolley and taken out of the operation room. I attempted to say something to my sister, my brother-in-law and my other nephew who were waiting outside. But the same effect in the speech was there.
We are supposed to keep the head completely still for twenty-four hours, otherwise the operation may be a failure. I consider this idea an utter myth. For the trolley on which I was laid was an old rattling one and, although sandbags had been put on both sides of my head, my head was jerked up and down and from left to right as I have never experienced before in my life. Halfway through, I kept my head a little high, suspended instead of right down.
Back to the ward, very dopey in the head but in possession of my mind, even if unable to articulate clearly. I inwardly thanked the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. After some time I fell into a doze. The doze lasted until about 3 p.m. Ferdauz had been tenderly looking after me all the time.
The rest of the family called at 4 p.m. when the visiting hours started. I chatted with them cheerfully. As I had been instructed to lie on my back all the time, my back was painful. At night when one of the hospital doctors came to see me I asked if I could turn a little. The answer was "Yes". This relieved the backache. Now I realise that all such instructions are more or less bunkum. One should try to take precautions but not overdo it. Of course one must not turn on the side of the operation.
I woke up in the morning lying on my left side. At seven the left eye was unbandaged, the right eye cleaned, the suture in the upper eyelid cut, the eye closed up again but the other one left free and open. I was no longer totally blind. The whole day passed well. In the afternoon my sister brought Sehra's
Page 123
registered envelope containing the special blessing-packet given by Champaklal from the Mother's room. It was a glorious little purse in gold-paper with a press-button. Inside were the photos of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. The instructions were that what was inside should be the first thing my right eye should fall upon when it would be able to see.
In the evening when the other relatives called, I was quite animated and my hands moved as usual in accompaniment to my talk. They found me a little too active and advised me not to move my head. Very obediently I agreed, affirming my agreement by nodding several times.
I slept well at night. In the morning I got permission to read and write a little. Hence this report. I'll close it with a snatch of conversation I heard when my sister and my brother-in-law had come in the afternoon of the operation-day. I asked Ferdauz at what time the operation had started. He at once said: "9.20." My brother-in-law remarked that it must have been at 9.30, but Ferdauz replied: "No, it was at 9.20." He said this without any preconception, quite spontaneously, confidently and matter-of-factly. I was struck by his statement. 9.20 comes to 11=2.
The report of September 25 is rather brief:
It was my wish that on the very next day after my eye would be opened—that is, on the seventh day after the operation— my left eye should be operated upon, even though the cataract there was still unripe. I persuaded the doctor to undertake the job. But two days before the date fixed, which was September 25, I developed conjunctivitis in the eye and a little cold and cough. This made it uncertain whether my wish could be carried out.
On September 24 it was found that the second operation was out of the question. I was running a temperature and the cough had become fairly nasty. What was worst of all was an extremely disagreeable feeling as of a lump of poison in the stomach. Occultly speaking, it was as though a small monster was sitting in it.
The same afternoon Ferdauz decided I should leave the hospital immediately. When a healthy patient falls ill in a
Page 124
hospital, the hospital itself becomes a risk, for having caught one infection he is exposed to the various other maladies flying about, as it were, in the hospital air. So I was taken home.
The day, however, was memorable for me because of what had happened in the morning. The right eye was at last opened completely. I had kept my golden press-button paper-purse ready. There was a sudden blaze of white light when the shield was off the eye and in that blaze I saw what was inside the purse: Photographs of 2 faces, the Mother's and Sri Aurobindo's, side by side. The strange history of the numerology that had presided over my doings in Bombay seemed to reach its completion and culmination.
What happened afterwards lent a poignant touch to my newly opened eye's first vision of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother side by side. The first sight it had of the Mother in actuality was when I flew back to Pondicherry on hearing that she had passed away.
A week before November 17 I had gone to the optician to have my new glasses made. On November 17, a Saturday, I was supposed to go and fetch them. But there were hitches and it seemed reasonable to wait till Monday. Somehow I felt I must go that very day. So I got the glasses in the late afternoon. The next morning I heard of the Mother's departure. If I had not obtained the glasses as I had done, I could not have seen her body clearly at the distance at which I had to stand when I reached Pondicherry and went to the Meditation Room. They were obtained exactly in time.
However, what I saw with them made my first view of her inside that press-button purse tragically significant. The cured eye was fated to see her as Sri Aurobindo had been seen by me at the end of 1950. The side-by-sideness which it first glimpsed in that purse presaged the sight of her after she had discarded her body and taken up her position in the subtle world with Sri Aurobindo who had discarded his body twenty-three years earlier. The sequence of number 2, which the glimpse completed and culminated, meant for the newly seeing eye a final look at
Page 125
the Mother in a state which joined her to the Master beyond the earth-plane.
Here is the report of September 29:
I move about in grey-tinted goggles, with flaps on both sides to shut out light. The right eye has been progressing excellently. But a big general setback came in the form of the strange infection I had brought from the hospital: the cold, the cough, the fever and that sense of a monstrous little presence in the stomach.
Various blood-tests were taken. They showed nothing. This meant a viral infection which would not respond to any antibiotic treatment. So all treatment was stopped and one had just to wait.
Much anxiety was caused all around. The third day at home was the worst. I sent a telegram to Sehra to carry the news to the Mother's room. On the fourth day there was a little improvement on the whole but the infection persisted. The monster within the stomach refused to budge. My resistance appeared to be in a poor state and I felt no certainty within me of any cure. On the fifth day the same helplessness and hopelessness continued. My body made no positive reaction. The mind kept detached, not caring whether the body lived or died, though vaguely somewhere in the being was an expectancy for some reaction at some time.
Late in the evening of the fifth day—counting September 24 itself as the first—something suddenly awoke in me. From behind the head of the right side and from behind the right side of the upper part of the body a mysterious power acted. It was as if a subtle arm were stretched forth with a clenched fist, asserting an irresistible decision. I felt a thrust of the mind and a drive of the life-force, supported by the secret soul. Just one moment of decision and I knew that the viral infection had been completely pushed out of the body. There was no process, no gradual betterment: everything was instantaneous. The disease was completely gone. The ogre sitting in the stomach was dislodged once for all. If this was not a miracle, I don't know that a miracle could be. At once I declared to Ferdauz that I was well.
Page 126
Nobody could believe me but they knew the old blighter had always been a strange chap.
I had a very pleasant sleep. When Ferdauz came the next morning to ask me how I was and whether the special blood-test for Rs. 100, which he had planned, was to be taken or not, I smiled and said: "Not at all. Everything is finished. Forget the special blood-test."
I said this not only because of what had happened the previous evening but also because of what had happened the same morning in the early hours—that is, on September 29, the date itself (2+9) an 11 and exactly 11 days after the operation.
I had a dream. I found myself living in the house where I had spent the first 10 years of my stay in the Ashram. I had lived in the upstairs corner room of what had then been known as the Guest House. It is the present Dortoire opposite Pranab's place. Sri Aurobindo had lived there for 9 years, and when I arrived in Pondicherry Purani had his quarters there. Now in my dream I was again a resident of that room. I came out of the house and was taken in a sort of truck to the corner diagonally opposite the Ashram on the south side where the main gate is. I stood on the footpath in the midst of a small group of people. Suddenly the Mother emerged on the top terrace of the house where she had been living. But the house was as I had seen it in 1927, when the Mother's present room had not yet been built on that terrace. She came walking in our direction. Her hair was done as in a picture of her when she was 18—wound in a top knot. The significance of this vision was that she had unexpectedly got up from her couch or chair of current withdrawal, throwing aside all apparent infirmities and illnesses and come up in full strength. There was an unbounded joy in the watchers as she kept moving forward. She came in my direction and seemed to look long at me. At one point she slightly slowed down and, in response to my gesture to her with folded hands, made a similar gesture. Her walk was a walk of supreme victory. My heart was near to bursting and the lips kept saying "Mother, Mother, Mother!" The same words were in everybody's mouth. This Darshan was the most moving experience in my whole life. Then the dream ended. I knew that the Mother had achieved something stupendous and that
Page 127
one of the side-effects of the achievement was my own inexplicable cure.
Only one thing remains to be added. When I first arrived in Pondicherry I was taken straight from the station to Purani's room by Pujalal who had come to receive me. As I have already mentioned, Purani's room was in the Guest House. The time was 7 o'clock. From the north window I looked towards the main Ashram block and lo! the Mother was on the top terrace of her house, walking in the morning sun, with her hair unbound. That was my first sight of her—a glorious unforgettable vision of divine beauty that made me instantly her disciple and her child.
That experience and the dream were as if fused now and what had begun then seemed consummated.
Here is not only a doubling—two experiences of essentially the same kind—but also the seeing of the Mother as quite different in look from what she was at the age of 95. The old body seemed to have been left and a perennially young Mother came forth—an anticipation of her abandonment of her aged frame on November 17 to become altogether her ever-youthful being of the subtle planes. Viewed in the light of the victorious air she bore in the dream, we may regard the event of November 17 as a triumph, no matter how like a death that is a defeat it may appear to our surface eyes. These surface eyes may be compared to the cataract-obscured eye, which I had before the operation. The cataract-free eye, in the very first dream after the operation, saw the true Mother, the verity behind appearances.
6
Dream of 17-11-1973
There were several dreams of the Mother between September 29 and November 17 but their impression was not strong and they have now faded from my memory. But the short one I
Page 128
had on the night of the day which was the Mother's last in her body has stuck in my mind ineffaceably.
There is no prelude to its main feature as far as I can make out, nor does there seem to be a sequel to it. The Mother was before me in a strange kind of light—neither clear brightness nor marked dimness. The atmosphere was most unusual. I stood facing her. She had a big bunch of reddish-pink roses in her two cupped hands. She gave them to me, saying, "Put them upon your head." That was all.
What did this mean? Reddish-pink is the colour of psychic love and indicates "Surrender". I believe I have to put my head under the power of the surrender which is the natural movement of the deep soul's loving self-gift to the Divine. Perhaps the Mother meant that she was herself giving me the capacity of a full self-giving of all my mind in psychic love to her? The sense of "full" is shown by the numerousness of the roses. The big bunch seemed to represent a blessing from her hands—a last gift to enable poor me to realise in life the message of the flower which, a long time ago, she had described as my typical flower and whose painting I had made and hung, as she had ordered, in Sri Aurobindo's old room which I had occupied for 10 years in the Guest House—the flower called "Krishna's Light in the Mind". Sri Aurobindo has said that Krishna's Light is also his own. Krishna's and Sri Aurobindo's Light—a whitish blue— surely needs for the preparation of its establishment in the mind the latter's complete psychicisation by devoted submission to the Mother. Even in that whitish blue the white, according to Sri Aurobindo, comes of a fusion of the blue light of Bliss (Ananda) with the Mother's white light of pure Consciousness-Force (Chit-Tapas) in which everything originates.
The next morning a trunk call came from Pondicherry to announce that the Mother had passed away at 7.25 the previous evening. Towards the beginning of November my wife and her sister had come to Bombay. My niece and her husband were already there. All of us, together with my sister, made ready to fly to Pondicherry by the first available plane. The husband of my wife's niece was connected with the airways and he tried his best to get us seats. But there was a semi-strike on—and most planes were either cancelled or considerably delayed. We
Page 129
could not fly during the whole day which we spent at the airport. The earliest booking we could obtain was on a night plane to Bangalore, from where we would have to hire a taxi and ride down to Pondicherry.
At the airport I developed severe tachycardia—the heart racing at about 120 beats per minute. I stood it for nearly two hours and then felt rather tired and uncomfortable. So I stretched myself on one of the sofas in the waiting hall. As the tachycardia wouldn't stop I was told that perhaps the flight was not advisable for me. But I was determined to go. By night-time the heart was on a little better behaviour. We emplaned, all our hearts seeming to be already in the Ashram where the Beloved's body awaited our last look at it, the shed vehicle of the Warrior Spirit that had come as the Avatar of the Supreme to save us with its love from our darkness and that could say like Sri Aurobindo:
Often, in the slow ages' long retreat
On Life's thin ridge through Time's enormous sea,
I have accepted death and borne defeat
To gain some vantage by my fall for Thee.
For Thou hast given the Inconscient the dark right
To oppose the shining passage of my soul
And levy at each step the tax of Night:
Doom, her august accountant, keeps her roll.
All around me now the Titan forces press;
This world is theirs, they hold its days in fee;
I am full of wounds and the fight merciless.
Is it not yet Thy hour of victory?
Even as Thou wilt! What still to Fate Thou owest,
O Ancient of the worlds, Thou knowest, Thou knowest.1
1 Collected Poems, SABCL, Vol. 5,
Page 130
SUPPLEMENT
Nearly 2 years have passed since the dream on the night of November 17,1973. Several dream-darshans have been experienced in the meantime, one or two of deep personal significance: but none had any notable connection with the old series except the one which I am reporting below.
Dream of 11-10-1975
I was at the window of a high storey in a tall building. On the opposite side across a broad street was a place where people had to go to have the Darshan of both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. One had to leap over the breadth of the street to reach there. I had the impression that it was a space I had leaped over several times in the past. But now I was hesitating.
Then Champaklal came along to the window and without a moment's thought took a leap. But he misjudged the distance and, instead of reaching safely the opposite house, he fell short of it and dropped vertically down, head first, towards a stone block in the street. To save his head from striking the block he thrust his arms forward so as to take his weight on them. But before he could reach the block some people rushed out and caught his legs in mid-air. When he got back on his feet he swayed a little uncertainly but without any fuss kept moving on to meet the Master and the Mother.
I was rather unnerved at the sight of what had happened, and so I did not jump. I thus missed the Darshan. In the next scene I was sitting with some others near Champaklal who had come back from the Darshan. He told us that, on his way in, he had been attacked by two fellows who had short knives in their hands but he too had a similar knife and he got past them though with a few scratches on his back. Then he asked me if I had gone for the Darshan. I said, "No." He was a little surprised.
I resolved to go up to where the Mother had retired after the Darshan. I climbed staircase after staircase from floor to floor. I had no lameness in my left leg and mounted rapidly. From far below, my natural mother was heard shouting in fear, "Don't climb so fast!" I emerged onto a balcony at a great height.
Page 131
Looking down on the street I saw two or three men running to the house in answer to mamma's alarm. I waved to them, telling them all was safe. Then I ran up another floor to reach the Mother.
Suddenly I saw the Mother herself coming swiftly down a small staircase. She was dressed in cream pajamas and a cream khameez. There seemed to be a soft yellow-white radiance about the dress. Her face was also calmly luminous and looked as if she were rapt in a trance with open eyes. She made a majestic all-silencing picture. Evidently she was coming down for my sake. As I looked at her, there was intense emotion in my heart and the words "Mother, Mother, Mother!", as during a dream-darshan of her over two years earlier, came out. I rushed to her, fell on my knees and gave my head to her to bless. She blessed it. Then I brought it down to her feet and touched with it first her left foot and then her right. It was a most fulfilling experience.
When I got up she started to move back upstairs. There were a few people on the upper landing. I remember only Udar. The Mother whispered something into his ear. Then I heard Champaklal saying, "She will see Bala." The Mother passed into a balcony which was at the back of the landing. As she disappeared there, I saw that her clothes were a pale shiny orange.
When I woke up from the dream my mind was filled with a vivid memory of the Mother's presence as she had come down that small staircase. Rather the frontal part of my mind was full of it, while at the back of it I found the image of a familiar face from my waking life.
I pulled my wrist-watch out from under my pillow to see the time. It was 4.50 a.m. Immediately my thought went on a numerological track. First I realised that the date was the 11th, the digits of which add up to 2. When I had looked at the watch-dial what I had noted was that, while the minute hand had been at the 50-minute mark, the hour-hand had stood at the 24-minute mark, just a little before the numeral 5, since the time—4.50—meant also 10 minutes to 5. Now, 50+24=74=11=2.
What does 2 signify in this dream's context? We must observe that the original Darshan was to be not only of the
Page 132
Mother but also of Sri Aurobindo—a side-by-sideness explicitly possible only with the Mother physically disembodied like Sri Aurobindo. The two of them were together in one and the same sense—a joint presence on a plane other than the earth, though about it one could always say in Shelley's words:
Thou whom, seen nowhere, I feel everywhere.
The leap which Champaklal instantly essayed showed the distance of that plane from our earthly stance. I failed to make it and consequently lost the chance of the full glory of the new side-by-sideness. But the Divine Grace forgives our fears and vacillations and grants whatever is still possible. That is why the Mother responded to the cry in the soul of her hesitant child, especially as a bold attempt was made to climb high in spite of some danger. The sign was given that the Mother, for all the gap between her present plane and ours, was always ready to answer a true call and would come forward on her own, descending towards us. Yet even in the descent she kept her consciousness aloof and above at the very time that her eyes were open to the needs of the world below. This was the impression created by the kind of trance she was in. The rapt open-eyed state beckoned us towards the subtle dimensions of her being while making a move of love and help in our direction.
The yellow-white radiance accompanying her rapid descent of the small staircase symbolised the spiritually mental form taken by the answer she gave to the soul yearning through a wide visionariness of the mind. When the dress changed to a pale shiny orange on the way to the Mother's own chamber where Sri Aurobindo must have been waiting, a glimpse was afforded of the nature of the work both of them are at present intensely doing; for orange or red-gold light is the light of the Supramental in the physical, and the whole effort of the Master and the Mother is to emanate into our outer material world the Supermind's Truth-luminosity which is theirs in this world's inner subtle-physical background where they have now joined their forces.
Page 133
Home
Disciples
Amal Kiran
Books
Share your feedback. Help us improve. Or ask a question.