Champaklal Speaks

Spiritual Games

In those early days of the Ashram, every evening the Mother came from Meditation House to Library House, which she entered through her former room (then mine and now my aunt Motiben's). After freshening up there, she went to Datta's room. Then she came to the Stores (later named Prosperity) where, on the first of each month, she distributed articles for the daily use sanctioned to the Ashramites. In this hall, a small group of sadhaks and sadhikas whom she had permitted would be waiting for her. First she would examine the day's accounts kept by Purushottam (in charge of the Stores); then there would be talks and readings and sometimes what appeared to us light-hearted games. After these sessions she would go downstairs for the Soup ceremony for which the sadhaks and sadhikas assembled in the present Reception hall.¹

“According to Amal (K.D. Sethna), who was allowed to join them in 1928, the Stores, group gradually came to consist of 24 disciples. “The Mother answered all sorts of questions and gave many talks which appeared as the 3rd Series of Words of the Mother. At times there would be readings from the works of Sri Aurobindo.... At other times she invented games to test or develop our faculty of intuition. She would arrange some flowers to make up a sentence according to the significances allotted by her to them. We had to guess what she had in mind. It so happened that everyone of us had on at least one occasion the correct sentence implanted into our heads by her!... There were other games too.... Whenever we succeeded in scoring a hit... [a] slab of French chocolate was the usual gift.... All the time (here would be joking among us or with the Mother.” (Light and Laughter by K.D. Sethna 1974, pp. 65-67).

Through the Soup, says Amal, Mother gave to all participants, “her own luminous subtle-physical substance and energy—a most concrete transference of spirituality into physical stuff.” The Mother had to stop the games and the soup, along with several other activities in October 1931. (See also Mrityunjoy's and Sahana's articles in Breath of Grace edited by M.P. Pandit.)

One was the Flower Game. Mother would bring some flowers and keep them on a stool in front of her. We would sit in a circle around her, each in the place she had allotted. From the significances that she had given to those flowers each of us had to make a sentence and bring our chits to her the next day. We read out our sentences and gave the chits to the Mother. Then she read the sentence she herself had composed. Thereafter, depending on how close our sentences had come to hers she would award prizes to the first three. I remember I was once given the first prize: my sentence had fallen short by just one word and that because I did not know the word. The Mother was very pleased. In the flower-sentences below I have underlined the significances of the flowers put before us each evening.²

Among the other games, there was one in which each had to write what he wanted. We wrote on a piece of paper and gave it to Mother. I have those chits even now. Except the paper of Amal on which he has written his name, you will find that the Mother herself has noted the name on each chit. There were also other questions—once it was “What is Yoga?”, another day on “Realisation”, then “Experience” and so on.