The Mother

13: The Yoga of the Body Cells

Sometimes one life is charged with earth’s destiny.¹

– Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo’s passing was a terrible jolt to the Mother, later compared by her to ‘a sledgehammer blow’ and ‘an annihilation’. During thirty years she had leaned on him for support with an absolute confidence in his presence, his knowledge and his powers. United with him in her consciousness, which was the same in both of them, she had felt that her body too was upheld by his physical presence, a relationship so intimately interwoven and strong that physical distance was of no importance. Any important spiritual event he experienced, she participated in; any spiritual realization he acquired, she shared. There was the division of tasks, without which the work could not be done, but there was at its base the unity transcendent, supramental and as embodied individuals.

‘[In] all those thirty years of life, not for a second did I have any sense of responsibility,’ she would later say, ‘in spite of all the work I was doing, all the organizing and everything. He had supposedly passed the responsibility on to me, you see, but he was standing behind – he was actually doing everything. I was active, but with absolutely no responsibility. I never felt responsible for a single minute – he took the full responsibility.’ ²

True, the supramental force gathered in his cells, the Mind of Light, had entered into her – which means that Sri Aurobindo had entered into her, for on that level the part equals the whole. After his passing, she would say that Sri Aurobindo remained, in an occult way, ever-present with her, ‘… the Sri Aurobindo whom I know and with whom I lived physically for thirty years, and who has not left me, not for a moment – for he is still with me, day and night, thinking through my brain, writing through my pen, speaking through my mouth and acting through my organizing power.’ ³ Yet the physical, material presence was not there any more. And therefore the Mother too had to perform a yogic master act.

‘When he went out of his body and entered into mine (the most material part of him, the part involved with external things) and I understood that I had the entire responsibility for all the work and for the sadhana – well, then I locked a part of me away, a deep psychic part that was living, beyond all responsibility, in the ecstasy of the realization: [in] the Supreme. I took it and locked it away, I sealed it off and said: “You’re not moving until the rest is ready.”’ ⁴ To enable her body to remain upon earth, she locked the part of her soul away which was most intimately connected with Sri Aurobindo in their common Divinity. ‘Otherwise I would have followed him.’ That door will be opened only ten years later, in circumstances to be related further on.

All activities in the Ashram were suspended for twelve days, after which the Mother would make her decision known as to whether the Ashram would continue to exist or be dissolved. ‘Those of you who were not here at that period can have no idea of the gloom that settled over the Ashram community, the shock that friends and well-wishers all over the world received,’ said M.P. Pandit.⁵ And Nirodbaran writes: ‘After Sri Aurobindo’s passing, it was feared in some quarters that the Ashram would collapse, at least decline.’ ⁶ In Memorable Contacts with the Mother, the same author writes: ‘There were some old sadhaks who left the Ashram after Sri Aurobindo’s passing.’ And: ‘The most important matter after Sri Aurobindo’s departure concerned the Mother’s connection with the Ashram. It was necessary to testify that the Mother had been all along in charge of the Ashram and that she still had the executive power. A document was drawn up and, in front of a notaire [notary public] of the town, it was signed by a few members of the Ashram chosen by the Mother. I was one of the signatories.’ ⁷

The Mother would later say that everything had been seen, decided and settled after three days. All the same, the Ashram remained suspended for nine more days. Then the Mother took up the outer work along with the inner one. There could no longer be a division of tasks – she had to bear the whole burden in the physical world. ‘Sometimes one life is charged with earth’s destiny.’ ⁸

The Ashram School and its Education

Life must be faced as a whole, with all the ugliness, falsehood and cruelty it still contains, but care must be taken to discover in ourselves the source of all goodness, all beauty, all light and all truth, in order to bring this source consciously into contact with the world in order to transform it.⁹

– The Mother

During the 1920s and 1930s, the Mother’s educational activity was limited to instructing a few individuals in French and offering general counsel in other courses of study. At that time, children were as a rule not permitted to live in the Ashram. In the early 1940s a number of families were admitted to the Ashram and instruction was initiated for the children. On 2 December 1943 the Mother formally opened a school for about twenty children. She herself was one of the teachers. The number of pupils gradually increased during the next seven years.

‘On 24 April 1951, the Mother presided over a convention where it was resolved to establish an “international university centre.” On 6 January 1952, she inaugurated the Sri Aurobindo International University Centre. The name was changed in 1959 to Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education.

‘At present [ca. 1978], the Centre of Education has about 150 full or part-time teachers and 500 students, ranging from nursery to advanced levels. The curriculum includes the humanities, languages, fine arts, sciences, engineering, technology and vocational training. Facilities include libraries, laboratories, workshops, and a theatre and studios for drama, dancing, music, painting, etc.’ ¹⁰

These few plain facts give us an idea of the extraordinary, allround educational work the Mother did with the Ashram children, and through them for humankind (for humankind’s representatives were there to make possible her work on it as a whole). It should be stressed at once that the aim of the education at the Ashram never consisted in moulding Ashramites. The Mother often told the students that they belonged to ‘the same family,’ to ‘the family of the aspiration, of the spiritual tendency,’ ¹¹ and that they made up a representative selection, ‘a cream’ of humanity, even if they were not aware of this themselves.

Nonetheless, neither she nor Sri Aurobindo has ever alleged that the souls, which incarnated with the aim of helping to prepare the New World, were exclusively to be found on a single spot in the world: the Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry. The Ashram, as we have seen, played a primary role in initiating the conditions of the material transformation, in igniting them in the body of humanity. But the supramental transformation is the business of humanity as a whole, of which some privileged or pioneering elements found their way to the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education. Of these elements some became Ashramites, many more went out to live the worldly life. On a certain occasion the Mother even said to the teachers: ‘If out of 150 students there are seven who are outstanding personalities, it’s very good.’ ¹² They are the hungry ones and have to be fed, she said.

The years from 1950 to 1958 were no doubt the most ‘visible’ years of the Mother. From early morning to late at night she was seeing the disciples and pouring her force and her blessings over them, visiting and guiding the departments (for the Ashram, with its thousand and more members and its five hundred students, had become a fairly big affair), working with the secretaries on the official transactions and the correspondence, and from the afternoon onwards being present with the youth at the tennis ground, playground and sports ground, guiding and encouraging them – and participating herself in a game of tennis, which she would play up to her eightieth year.

The system of education developed in the Ashram, if it can be called a system, was mainly the Mother’s. Sri Aurobindo has written relatively little on the subject, most of it in his early years, basing himself on the difference between his own education in England and his experience as a lecturer and professor at Baroda.⁹¹ The principal aim of his writings on education was to activate the interest and innate intelligence in the Indian student, and turn him away from the imitative and deadening habit of learning by rote and of cramming, then as now practised in so many Indian schools and educational institutions – although India nowadays has some eminent institutes and colleges where the creative intelligence is allowed to come into full flower. His most important contribution on this topic of education and its aims was, however, the series of articles requested from him by the Mother for publication in the Bulletin of Physical Education and dictated in the last months of his life.

In educating the Ashram children, the Mother drew from her lifelong practical experience and still more from her spiritual knowledge and intuition. The basis of this education was her knowledge of the different aspects of the human being – the material, vital, mental, psychic and spiritual parts. This knowledge, gained from age-long yogic and mystical experience, is in itself new and revolutionary compared to the way the human being is chiefly seen in the West: as a material body mysteriously functioning in tandem with an intangible mind, and which has in addition, for the religious-minded, a soul about which it is difficult to say anything except that it is supposed to be eternal.

‘If we have a school here, it is in order that it be different from the millions of schools in the world,’ the Mother said. ‘It is to give the children a chance to distinguish between ordinary life and the divine life, the life of truth – to see things in a different way. It is useless to want to repeat here the ordinary life. The teacher’s mission is to open the eyes of the children to something which they will not find anywhere else.’ ¹³ And she said also: ‘We are not here to do easy things.’ ¹⁴

Let us briefly consider the Ashram education in the order of its five aspects as given above.

First, there was the education of the physical. ‘The perfection of the body, as great a perfection as we can bring about by the means at our disposal, must be the ultimate aim of physical culture,’ wrote Sri Aurobindo in the articles published in the Bulletin of Physical Education. ‘Perfection is the true aim of all culture, the spiritual and psychic, the mental, the vital, and it must be the aim of our physical culture also. If our seeking is for a total perfection of the being, the physical part of it cannot be left aside; for the body is the material basis, the body is the instrument we have to use … A total perfection is the ultimate aim which we set before us, for our ideal is the Divine Life which we wish to create here, the life of the Spirit fulfilled on earth, life accomplishing its own spiritual transformation even here on earth in the conditions of the material universe. That cannot be unless the body too undergoes a transformation, unless its action and functioning attain to a supreme capacity and the perfection which is possible to it or which can be made possible.’ ¹⁵

As the Mother said: ‘Physical culture means putting consciousness into the cells of the body. One may or may not know that, but it is a fact. When we concentrate to make our muscles move according to our will, when we attempt to make our limbs more supple, to give them an agility, or a force, or a resistance, or a plasticity which they do not naturally possess, we infuse into the cells of the body a consciousness which was not there before, thus turning it into an increasingly homogeneous and receptive instrument, which progresses in and by its activities.’ ¹⁶

The Mother made enormous efforts to give the youth of the Ashram, as well as the adult Ashramites, the possibility to keep their body in good condition and to develop it. Little by little the Department of Physical Education acquired a gymnasium, a playground (where also films were shown and the Mother gave her evening classes), a tennis ground, and last but not least a splendid sports ground.

Nirodbaran, himself formerly a keen tennis player, writes about the tennis ground, which is still there by the blue waters of the Bay of Bengal: ‘[The Mother] often talked about her project [of building a tennis ground] to Sri Aurobindo. One day we heard that the entire wasteland along the northeastern seaside was taken [by the Mother] on a long lease from the Government, and that a part of it would be made into tennis courts and the rest into a playground. One cannot imagine now what this place was before. It was one of the filthiest spots of Pondicherry, full of thistles and wild undergrowth, an open place for committing nuisance as well as a pasture for pigs! The stink and the loathsome sight made the place a Stygian sore and a black spot on the colonial Government. The Mother changed this savage wasteland into a heavenly playground … If for nothing else, for this transformation at least Pondicherry should be eternally grateful to the Mother. But who remembers the past?’ ¹⁷ Like the tennis ground, every place and building in the Department of Physical Education, and every place and building in the Ashram as a whole, has been established against considerable odds.

We know that the Sri Aurobindo Ashram was the only ashram where men and women lived together on equal terms. It was also the only ashram where children formed an integral part of its life – and where physical education formed an integral part of life. South India can be blisteringly hot. Then how does one dress for the physical exercises? For the boys there was no problem, but what about the girls? We turn to Nirodbaran again: ‘The [girls’] exercises were [at first] done in cumbersome pyjamas which checked free movement. One evening when I went to visit the Playground, I found the gate closed. The gatekeeper told me that the Mother did not want anyone except the group-members to enter the Playground. When it was thrown open we found, to our surprise, that the girls were doing exercises in shorts!’ ¹⁸

What was the reaction to this ‘drastic step,’ Nirodbaran asks? He answers the question himself: ‘Some, particularly old people, were shocked to see their daughters scantily dressed [that means in shorts, shirt and kitty-cap] and doing exercises jointly with boys; a few conservative guardians were planning to take their wards away from such a modernized Ashram. I, personally, admired, on the one hand, the revolutionary step taken by the Mother far in advance of the time in Eastern countries, in anticipation of the modern movement in dress; on the other hand, my cautious mind, or as Sri Aurobindo would say my coward mind, could not but feel the risk involved in this forward venture.’ ¹⁹ Narayan Prasad, in his Life in Sri Aurobindo Ashram, puts it this way: ‘When youthful girls of aristocratic families took to sports in shorts and shirts, throwing shyness and reserve aside, it was for all a happy wonder.’ ²⁰

The disciple the Mother put in charge of physical education in the Ashram was Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya, commonly known as Dada (elder brother in Bengali). Pranab had joined the Ashram in 1945 together with his four brothers. He had come from Calcutta, where for years he had undergone a thorough physical training. A month after his arrival he started doing some training in his own house. Some of the young members who had recently joined the Ashram asked Pranab to teach them physical exercises. When Pranab proposed to the Mother to start regular playground activities, she agreed. ‘Thus started physical education in the Ashram, with fourteen youngsters.’ ²¹ Most of them would themselves become instructors – or ‘captains’ as they are called in the Ashram. Pranab would grow very close to the Mother, who has drawn some remarkable portraits of him.

The second focus of the Ashram education was the vital. ‘Of all the aspects of education, the education of the vital is perhaps the most important, the most indispensable,’ wrote the Mother.²² And she explained: ‘The vital being in us is the seat of impulses and desires, of enthusiasm and violence, of dynamic energy and desperate depressions, of passions and revolts. It can set everything in motion, it can build and realize – but it can also destroy and spoil everything. Thus it may be the most difficult part to discipline in the human being. It is a work that takes much time and much patience, and that requires a perfect sincerity, for without sincerity you will deceive yourself from the very outset and all endeavour for progress will be in vain. With the collaboration of the vital no realization seems impossible, no transformation impracticable. But the difficulty lies in securing this constant collaboration. The vital is a good worker, but most often it seeks its own satisfaction.’ ²³

The vital is the domain of the life forces, which may be of a higher or a lower order, and sometimes of a very low order. As every level of the human personality – and therefore of a complete education – opens us to the invisible worlds represented by that level, we are accessible to all kinds of forces and beings, mostly without realizing it. Indeed, most of our life is driven by those forces and beings. And humans being what they still are, the forces which dominate the life of humanity on earth are of the lowest, nastiest vital kind. It is therefore an important part of the educational effort to open ourselves and the ones we try to educate to the higher vital impulses.

As the Mother said: ‘This vital is a curious being. It’s a being of passion, of enthusiasm, and naturally of desire. It is, however, quite capable of getting enthusiastic over something beautiful, for example, of admiring, sensing what is greater and nobler than itself. And if really something utterly beautiful occurs in the being, if an impulse of exceptional value manifests itself, then it may grow enthusiastic and it is capable of giving itself with total dedication – with a generosity that is not found, for instance, in the mental or in the physical domain.’ ²⁴

To master the lower vital impulses and activate and enrich the higher ones, three faculties have to be cultivated. The first one is the will; the second, the capacity for attention and concentration; the third, the refinement of the senses through harmony, beauty and art in all its forms.

There is no trait of the character, no occult power or yogic realization which, according to the Mother, cannot be acquired or mastered by a constant, unflinching application of the will. This is one of the themes running through her Entretiens, her answers to questions from the Ashram youngsters. As she said in March 1951: ‘In the first place, to become conscious of anything whatsoever, you must will it. And when I say “will it,” I don’t mean saying one day: “Oh, I would like this or that very much,” and to forget about it completely a couple of days later. To will something is a constant, sustained, concentrated aspiration, an almost exclusive occupation of the consciousness.’ ²⁵

Attention is, as it were, the basis of all sense perception, it is our conscious presence to the visible and invisible worlds. ‘Whatsoever you may want to do in life,’ the Mother said to the young people around her, ‘one thing is absolutely indispensable and at the basis of everything: the capacity of concentrating the attention. If you are able to gather together the rays of attention and consciousness on one point and can maintain this concentration with a persistent will, nothing can resist it – whatever it may be, from the most material physical development to the highest spiritual one. But this discipline must be followed in a constant and, it may be said, imperturbable way. Not that you should always be concentrated on the same thing, that’s not what I mean: I mean learning to concentrate. Materially, for studies, sports, all physical or mental development, it is absolutely indispensable. And the value of an individual is proportionate to the value of his attention.’ ²⁶

To be surrounded by harmony and beauty, to live in it constantly and cultivate these forms of expression, is the principal condition for the refinement of the vital. ‘In the physical world, of all things it is beauty that expresses best the Divine,’ wrote the Mother to a young disciple who learned painting. ‘The physical world is the world of form and the perfection of form is beauty. Beauty interprets, expresses, manifests the Eternal. Its role is to put all manifested nature in contact with the Eternal through the perfection of form, through harmony and a sense of the ideal which uplifts and leads towards something higher.’ ²⁷ And she wrote also: ‘True art means the expression of beauty in the material world. In a world wholly converted, that is to say, expressing integrally the divine reality, art must serve as the revealer and teacher of this divine beauty in life.’ ²⁸

We know what an important element beauty and art had been in her own life. It is therefore not surprising that she did everything possible to create an expression of the divine Presence through beauty around her, and to develop the sense of it in the pupils and students of the school. To borrow a phrase from Savitri: ‘beauty was her footstep.’ Sri Aurobindo had stimulated the receptivity and development of the yogic perception through poetry, which was, he said, ‘his department.’ The Mother, on her side, stimulated the growth of the same qualities through the visual arts – and music, classical Indian and Western dancing, theatre, exhibitions of all kinds, embroidery, marbling, the building of well-proportioned bodies, and the creation of a harmonious and beautiful environment. If she had possessed the means, there would surely have been many more buildings like Golconde.

The third focus of education was the mind. ‘The true role of the mind is the formation and organization of action. The mind has a formative and organizing power, and it is that which puts the different elements of inspiration in order for action, for organizing action. And if it would only confine itself to that role, receiving inspirations – whether from above or from the mystic centre of the soul – and simply formulating the plan of action – in broad outline or in minute detail, for the smallest things of life or the great terrestrial organizations – it would amply fulfil its function. It is not an instrument of knowledge. But it can use knowledge for action, to organize action. It is an instrument of organization and formation, very powerful and very capable when it is well developed.’ ²⁹

The development of the mind and the acquisition of knowledge is, of course, what is generally seen as the aim of study. In the curriculum of the Ashram school all the usual academic subjects were found – mathematics and science (for which Pavitra built a well-equipped laboratory) as well as what are called the ‘humanities’: modern languages and Sanskrit, history, geography, sociology, psychology, philosophy, etc. The Mother made it clear, however, that everything is one, which means that all these kinds of knowledge are intimately related to the spiritual realities which are their foundation and without which they could not be manifest. ‘[The students] are taught history or spiritual things, they are taught science or spiritual things. That is what is idiotic. In history the Spirit is there; in science the Spirit is there: the Truth is everywhere. What is needed is not to teach all that in a false way, but to teach it in a truthful way.’ ³⁰

The fourth focus of education was the psychic being. ‘The soul is something of the Divine that descends into the evolution as a Divine Principle within it to support the evolution of the individual out of the Ignorance into the Light,’ wrote Sri Aurobindo. ‘It develops in the course of the evolution a psychic individual or soul individuality which grows from life to life, using the evolving mind, vital and body as its instruments. It is the soul that is immortal while the rest disintegrates; it passes from life to life carrying its experiences in essence and the continuity of the evolution of the individual.’ ³¹ As the Mother said: ‘The psychic is the representative of the Divine in the human being. That is it, you see – the Divine is not something remote and inaccessible. The Divine is in you but you are not fully conscious of it. It acts now as an influence rather than a Presence. It should be a conscious Presence.’ ³²

Taking this into consideration, becoming conscious of the psychic being – Sri Aurobindo’s ‘psychic individual or soul individuality’ in the text quoted above – was the cardinal aim of the education as worked out by the Mother in the Ashram school. Becoming a consciously incarnated soul (one is always an unconsciously incarnated one) is the meaning of human evolution, collectively and individually; it is also a realizable possibility at the point where humanity has arrived now. As humanity is inevitably to be followed by a higher species, the supramental being, the very first condition for this to happen is that the pioneering individuals first reach the maximum stage of evolution possible at present by realizing their psychic being.⁹² This is what the yoga in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram was about; as the Ashram School was founded on the same basis, it was also the purpose of education in the Ashram.

The logical consequence of the presence of the psychic being in humans and the many lives every human has gone through before attaining the stage of a higher awareness – a threshold which most Ashram children, because of their being chosen, were supposed to have reached – was that every individual is special for reasons of his or her own past experiences. Every individual has reached a particular level or degree of development. This belief was fundamental to the education which the Ashram school would provide. And its logical consequence was that a common curriculum of education, which would be the same for all students, was absolutely excluded. Education had to be individualized. Each child had to be treated as different, unique, and its progress through the various grades of education offered in the school had to be tailored to its uniqueness.

This explains why the system of libre progrès or ‘free progress’ was practised in the Ashram school, and it explains the large number of teachers who were and still are required for a school like this. When a teacher asked: ‘Mother, would you please define in a few words what you mean essentially by “free progress”? the Mother answered: ‘A progress guided by the soul and not subjected to habits, conventions or preconceived ideas.’ ³³ Even if for practical, organizational reasons forms or grades were established, they were still held to be a kind of framework within which the students could evolve individually rather than a system to which they had to conform.

This framework provided the students with a large degree of freedom – which never turned into lack of discipline, as discipline and the team spirit were inculcated by the activities of physical education. It is a fact that the Mother even said explicitly that the children did not have to study if they did not feel like it, but that they should be warned of the consequences. As it is a fact that she saw the parents, who were generally not educated in the same spirit, more as hindrances than as helpers in the development of their children. ‘There is one thing which is the main difficulty,’ she said, ‘it is the parents. When the children live with their parents [as many Ashram children did] I consider that it is hopeless. Because the parents want their child to be educated as they were themselves, and they want them to get good jobs, to earn money – all things that are contrary to our aspiration.’ ³⁴ It should be added that the students who went out into the world generally did very well and were often regarded as brilliant.

A point worth underlining is that the students were encouraged to be fearless and brave in all circumstances. The reason for this is quite simply that anybody trying to realize his or her soul, or to advance spiritually, will be inevitably attacked by the hostile forces using visible and invisible means. If ordinary life is a battle, spiritual life is a hundred times more so, and one has to be a hero to persevere in one’s effort. Of this heroic struggle Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are the best examples; their fight with the hostile forces can be read on every page of their lives. This is why in the students’ notebooks the following prayer, written by the Mother, was printed: ‘Make of us the hero warriors we aspire to become. May we fight successfully the great battle of the future that is to be born against the past that seeks to endure, so that the new things may manifest and we may be ready to receive them.’ ³⁵

The fifth focus of the Ashram education was the spiritual aspect. The spiritual potential is innate in the human being. To many these higher layers of existence are still hidden, yet for some they are accessible. As most of the Ashram children were inwardly called or destined to be educated under the Mother’s aegis, one may suppose that for them the higher reaches of consciousness were at least potentially accessible. ‘You are here at this moment, that is to say upon earth, because you have chosen it at one time – you do not remember it any more, but I know it. That is why you are here. Well, you must rise to the height of the task. You must strive, you must conquer all weaknesses and limitations. Above all you must tell your ego: “Your hour is past.” We want a race without ego, that has in place of the ego the Divine Consciousness which will allow the race to develop itself and the supramental being to take birth.’ ³⁶

The Ashram school was intended to provide a complete education in the light and with the help of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. A message of the Mother makes this clear: ‘We are not here to do (only a little better) what the others do. We are here to do what the others cannot do because they do not have the idea that it can be done. We are here to open the future to children who belong to the Future. Anything else is not worth the trouble and not worthy of Sri Aurobindo’s help.’ ³⁷

To the question of a student: ‘Why are we here in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram?’ she replied: ‘There is an ascending evolution in nature which goes from the stone to the plant, from the plant to the animal, from the animal to man. Because man is, for the moment, the last rung at the summit of the ascending evolution, he considers himself as the final stage in this ascension and believes there can be nothing on earth superior to him. In that he is mistaken. In his physical nature he is yet almost wholly an animal, a thinking and speaking animal, but still an animal in his material habits and instincts. Undoubtedly, nature cannot be satisfied with such an imperfect result; she endeavours to bring out a being who will be to man what man is to the animal, a being who will remain a man in its external form, and yet whose consciousness will rise far above the mind and its slavery to ignorance …

‘You have the immense privilege of having come quite young to the Ashram, that is to say, still plastic and capable of being moulded according to this new ideal and thus become the representatives of the new race. Here, in the Ashram, you are in the most favourable conditions with regard to the environment, the influence, the teaching and the example, to awaken in you this supramental consciousness and to grow according to its law.’ ³⁸

Who would teach these ‘children of the Future’? The Mother herself taught them, but it goes without saying that she could not do everything. ‘To lead a child on to the paths of the Future, to be his “teacher,” one must first understand that his psychic being carries within itself its own aspirations and intentions which he shall live tomorrow, thus enriching the already long experience he has acquired upon earth; one must understand that any teaching is but a progressive revelation of hidden faculties powerful enough to give a concrete shape to a new experience. One must help the student to become, as much as possible, what he can and wants to be – for if his soul has more or less chosen his life’s destiny, yet what he shall make out of it is in no way determined. The child is not only a mind to be trained, but a consciousness that must be helped to grow and widen itself.’ ³⁹

‘Nothing can be taught to the mind which is not already concealed as potential knowledge in the unfolding soul of the creature,’ wrote Sri Aurobindo in The Synthesis of Yoga. ‘So also all perfection of which the outer man is capable, is only a realizing of the eternal perfection of the Spirit within him. We know the Divine and become the Divine, because we are That already in our secret nature. All teaching is a revealing, all becoming is an unfolding. Self-attainment is the secret; self-knowledge and an increasing consciousness are the means and the process.’ ⁴⁰ According to Sri Aurobindo, ‘the first principle of true teaching is that nothing can be taught. The teacher is not an instructor or taskmaster, he is a helper and a guide. His business is to suggest and not to impose … He does not impart knowledge to him [i.e. to the child], he shows him how to acquire knowledge for himself … The second principle is that the mind has to be consulted in its own growth. The idea of hammering the child into the shape desired by the parent or teacher is a barbarous and ignorant superstition … Everyone has in him something divine, something his own, a chance of perfection and strength in however small a sphere which God offers to him to take or refuse. The task is to find it, develop it and use it … The third principle of education is to work from the near to the far, from that which is to that which shall be … If anything has to be brought in from outside, it must be offered, not forced on the mind. A free and natural growth is the condition of genuine development.’ ⁴¹

These principles were formulated by Sri Aurobindo long before there was an Ashram School or even an Ashram, and were intended as general guidelines. To be a teacher in the Ashram required a lot more: it required not only that the teacher tried to live according to the principles he had to teach, but that he had realized them, at least partially, and that he was able to identify with the souls whom he was teaching – in other words, it required that he be a yogi or she a yogini. ‘You must have lived what you want to teach,’ wrote the Mother. ‘To speak of the new consciousness, let it penetrate you and reveal to you its secrets. For only then can you speak of it with any competence.’ ⁴² In fact, the Ashram School was a school where the teachers were also students. As the Mother wrote: ‘The school should be an opportunity for progress for the teacher as well as for the student. Each one should have the freedom to develop freely. A method is never so well applied as when one has discovered it oneself. Otherwise it is as boring for the teacher as it is for the student.’ ⁴³ And she said that teaching was ‘a priesthood.’

She impressed on the teachers: ‘You must not confuse a religious teaching with a spiritual one. Religious teaching belongs to the past and halts progress. Spiritual teaching is the teaching of the future – it illumines the consciousness and prepares it for the future realization. Spiritual teaching is above religions and strives towards global Truth. It teaches us to enter into direct relations with the Divine.’ ⁴⁴ She strongly resisted all traces of dogmatism and said on a certain occasion, when somebody quoted Sri Aurobindo to corroborate a point: ‘Sri Aurobindo did say that, but he also said many other things which complete his advice and abolish all possibility of dogmatism. Sri Aurobindo himself has often repeated that if one affirms one thing, one should be able to affirm its opposite, otherwise one cannot understand the Truth.’ ⁴⁵

Let us close this section with one of those unforgettable sayings of hers:

‘To be young is to live in the future.

‘To be young is to be always ready to give up what we are in order to become what we must be.

‘To be young is never to accept that something is irreparable.’ ⁴⁶

Transformation of the Body Cells

>In our body’s cells there sits a hidden Power

That sees the unseen and plans eternity …⁴⁷

– Sri Aurobindo

If all this gives us a glimpse of the Mother’s multifarious outer activities, what was she busy with inwardly? Now that she had accepted to take on alone the avataric yoga, her effort to bring down the Supramental and the transformation of Matter, what precisely was her work? The Mother spoke a lot at the time, generally in public, but very little about her personal endeavour. What she spoke about in public was usually based on her vast previous experience; her present, ongoing experiences were seldom mentioned or asked about.

All the same, if one reads attentively the Questions and Answers and other talks of these years one finds some clues of crucial importance. It was her way to set about what she had accepted to do, or what she was inspired to do, with supernal Power and without delay, if possible. ‘The Mother is always in a concentrated consciousness in her inner being,’ ⁴⁸ wrote Sri Aurobindo. And in his correspondence with Nirodbaran we read: ‘Mother’s pressure for a change is always strong – even when she doesn’t put it as a force it is there by the very nature of the Divine Energy in her.’ ⁴⁹

As early as 6 January 1951, the Mother gave an important talk which is indicative of the yogic problem she must have started tackling immediately after Sri Aurobindo’s passing. When commenting on a text of hers which had previously appeared in the Bulletin, she dealt with the different levels of an integral transformation, which, as we know, is the aim of the Integral Yoga. She read the following paragraph from that text: ‘In the integral transformation both the outer nature and the inner consciousness are transformed. The character, the habits, etc., are completely changed, as well as the thoughts and the mental outlook on things.’ And she commented: ‘Yes, but there is something which remains unchanged unless you take care of it and persist in your effort. What is it? The body consciousness.’ ⁵⁰ What is the body consciousness? ‘… The physical consciousness as a whole. But in this physical consciousness as a whole there is the physical mind – a mind that is occupied with all the ordinary things and responds to everything around you. There is also the vital consciousness, which is the awareness of sensations, impulses, enthusiasms and desires. Finally, there is the physical consciousness itself, the material consciousness, the body consciousness, and this is the [consciousness] which so far has never been entirely transformed. The global, overall consciousness of the body has been transformed; one can throw off the bondage of thought, of habits that one no longer considers inevitable. That can change – it has been changed. But what remains to be changed is the consciousness of the cells.’ ⁵¹

These words are so precious because they date from less than a month after Sri Aurobindo’s passing, from about a fortnight after life in the Ashram had become active again. What the Mother is saying here is that, at that point in time, the whole of the Integral Yoga had been accomplished except the most outward part: the transformation of ‘the body consciousness.’ One also notices how the Mother is searching for a verbal definition of the part that remains to be transformed. From the quoted paragraph we can deduce: physical consciousness = material consciousness = consciousness of the cells.

Part of the searching and groping is due to the fact that the Mother was talking in French. This talk, not included in the published volumes of Questions and Answers, was actually one of the very first Entretiens, not yet electronically recorded, but noted down stenographically. The French word physique may refer to matter as well as to the body.⁹³ One has to pay attention to this double meaning in future disclosures by the Mother about her Yoga from 1951 onwards.

Second, the word ‘body’ itself should be subjected to examination. The body is generally considered to be the material, outer part of the human person. In occultism and spirituality, however, a distinction is made between the body as a whole, its organs, and its cells. The body as a whole has its own consciousness; this is known in practice, if not in theory, to all athletes, for it lies at the basis of their training. Each organ too has its individual consciousness; it is the lack of equilibrium, of harmony between the consciousness of the organs that causes illness, physical distress and deterioration. And the cells of which the organs, and therefore the body, are composed also have their consciousness, though as yet very little developed and individualized.

The cells constitute the matter of which our body is made, but they contain evidently a vital element also, for they are alive, and, what is less known, a mental element. This consciousness of the body cells is the most elementary consciousness in the human being and therefore the ultimate step in the transformation of the body. As matter is directly related to the Inconscient via the Subconscient, the consciousness of the cells is by far the most difficult to transform, to divinize. It is most probably because of this difficulty, never attempted to solve before, that Sri Aurobindo had to perform the unprecedented yogic act of descending fully consciously into death.

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had realized the mastery of the body and its parts many years ago. It is one of the elementary stages in most paths of yoga and a precondition for further progress. Yet, as long as the mastery of the cells has not been achieved, the mastery of the body and its parts can only be partial, never complete. This, of course, is why even the greatest yogis have become ill and died – as it is the reason why all humans have to die. It should, however, not be forgotten that the aim of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s yoga was a divinization of Matter, which means that the cells, and the body, and the human being should be rendered immortal – for being divine means being immortal. Which means that the low, dark, elementary consciousness of the cells must be transformed into the supramental, divine Consciousness. Indirectly, this again throws some light on the passing of Sri Aurobindo. Directly, it was the problem left to the Mother to resolve: the cells had to be supramentalized in order to form a supramental body and thus to conquer Death.

We can now continue reading the Mother’s talk of 6 January 1951. ‘There is a consciousness in the cells: it is what we call the “body consciousness” ⁹⁴ and it is wholly bound up with the body. This consciousness has much difficulty in changing, because it is under the influence of the collective suggestion which is absolutely opposed to the transformation. So one has to struggle with this collective suggestion – not only with the collective suggestion of the present, but with the collective suggestion which belongs to the Earth-consciousness as a whole, the terrestrial human consciousness which goes back to the earliest formation of the human being. This has to be overcome before the cells can be spontaneously aware of the Truth, of the Eternity of matter.’ ⁵² The Mother formulates here in essence her task ahead. As she was undertaking something that had never been tried before and was searching out a way in ‘a virgin forest,’ she had to discover the means and methods – which is what we will venture to describe in the rest of this book.

‘For this transformation to succeed, all human beings – even all living beings as well as their material environment – must be transformed. Otherwise things will remain as they are: an individual experience cannot change terrestrial life. This is the essential difference between the old idea of transformation – that is, the becoming conscious of the psychic being and the inner life – and transformation as we conceive it and speak of. Not only an individual or a group of individuals, or even all individuals, but life – the overall consciousness of this more or less developed life – has to be transformed. Without such a transformation we shall continue having the same misery, the same calamities and the same atrocities in the world. A few individuals will escape from it by their psychic development, but the general mass will remain in the same state of misery.’ ⁵³

There is a saying that a dog’s tail cannot be straightened, meaning that a person’s character or human nature cannot be changed. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother disagreed, for otherwise transformation would make no sense. ‘We know by experience,’ the Mother went on in the same talk, ‘that if we go down into the Subconscient, lower than the physical [i.e. material] consciousness, and even lower still into the Inconscient, we can find in ourselves the origin of all atavism, of what comes from our early education and the environment in which we have lived. And this gives a kind of special characteristic to the individual, to his outer nature, and it is generally believed that we are born like that and will stay like that. But by going down into the Subconscient, into the Inconscient, one can trace the origin of this formation and undo what has been done, change the movements and reactions of the ordinary nature by a conscious and deliberate action and thus really transform one’s character.’ ⁵⁴

And the Mother stated: ‘This is not a common achievement, but it has been done. So one may assert not only that it can be done, but that it has been done. It is the first step towards the integral transformation, but after that there remains the transformation of the cells which I mentioned earlier.’ She clarified: ‘The Inconscient is not individualized, and when you go down into the Inconscient in yourself, it is the Inconscient of Matter. One cannot say that each individual has his own Inconscient, for that would already be a beginning of individualization. And when you go down into the Inconscient, it is perhaps not the universal but at least the terrestrial Inconscient.’ ⁵⁵

‘It has been done’ – by whom? By whom else but Sri Aurobindo and herself? Which emphasizes the importance of the lines from Savitri quoted in the previous chapter: ‘Into the abysmal secrecy he came / Where darkness peers from her mattress, grey and nude / And stood on the last locked subconscient’s floor / Where Being slept unconscious of its thoughts / And built the world not knowing what it built.’

‘First of all, it is the Subconscient that has to become conscious,’ the Mother said. ‘Indeed, the main difficulty of the integral transformation is that things are constantly rising up from the Subconscient.’ The Subconscient is a place of horrors. It is in pure hell that she will have to fight most of her battles and conquer most of the difficulties in the years to come.

On 26 February 1951 the Mother talked to her Playground audience about the ‘gnostic,’ i.e. the supramental state of consciousness. ‘There is a state of consciousness, which may be called “gnostic,” in which one is able to see simultaneously all the theories, all the systems of belief, all the ideas men have expressed in their highest consciousness – the most contradictory notions, like the Buddhist theory, the Vedantic, the Christian, all the philosophical theories, all the expressions of the human mind when it has managed to get hold of a small fragment of the Truth. In that state not only do you put each thing in its place, but everything appears to you marvellously true and quite indispensable to be able to understand anything at all about anything whatsoever … In that state there are no contradictions: it is a totality – a totality in which one has the full knowledge of all the truths ever expressed (which do not suffice to express the total Truth), in which one knows the proper place of all things, why and in what the universe is formed.

‘But I hasten to tell you: it is not by a personal effort that one arrives at this state. It is not because one tries to obtain it that it is obtained. One becomes that, spontaneously [in the course of the Integral Yoga]. It is, as it were, the crown of an absolute mental sincerity, when one no longer has any partiality, any preference, any attachment to an idea, when one does not even try any longer to know the truth. One is simply open in the Light.’

And she concluded: ‘I am telling you this tonight because what has been done, what has been realized by one can be realized by others. It is enough that one body has been able to realize this, one human body, to have the assurance that it can be done [by other human bodies]. You may consider it still very far off, but you may say: “Yes, the gnostic life is certain, because it has begun to be realized.”’ ⁵⁶ The key word here is of course ‘body.’ The only body the Mother could be talking about here, was hers. Two and a half months after Sri Aurobindo’s departure she had realized the supramental Unity-Consciousness in her body – which, in the light of what we have learned above, can only mean in the cells of her body.

At the beginning of 1954, the Mother had a most amazing experience which she announced on 14 January: ‘For the last few days when I wake up in the morning I have the strange sensation of entering a body that is not mine – my body is strong and healthy, full of energy and life, supple and harmonious, and this [her material body, then seventy-six years old] fulfils none of these qualities; the contact with it becomes painful; there is great difficulty in adapting myself to it and it takes a long time before I can overcome this uneasiness.’ ⁵⁷ She had then already the feeling of having another body – something we will hear more about.

It is true that 1954 appears to have been a peak year in her yoga of the cells. For example, on 24 February she said: ‘If one wants to transform one’s body, one has to put it into perfect harmony with the inner consciousness. This is to be done “in every cell,” in the most insignificant activity, in every activity of the organs.’ And on 21 April: ‘It will take a certain number of years before we can speak knowledgeably about how this is going to happen [the transformation of the body]; all that I can tell you at present is that it has begun.’ ⁵⁸

On 5 May of the same year the Mother talks about the mastery over material circumstances and says that their effect depends on one’s consciousness. Then she adds: ‘The power one has [the Mother talks about her own experience] – already fully and formidably realized in the mind – to act upon circumstances to the extent of changing them totally as to their effect upon one, that power can descend into Matter, into the [physical] substance itself, which means into the cells of the body, and give the same mastery to the body in relation with the things surrounding it. This is not a belief, it is a certitude resulting from experience. The experience is not absolute, but it is there. This opens new horizons. It is the path … it is one step on the path leading to [physical] transformation.’ ⁵⁹

19 May: ‘The body, left to itself without this kind of constant action of the mind upon it, acts like this: as soon as something [in it] gets disturbed [e.g. because of injury or illness], it has immediately an aspiration, a call, an effort to find help. And this is very powerful – if nothing comes in between, it is very powerful. It is as though the cells themselves erupted spontaneously in an aspiration, a call. In the body there are invaluable and unknown treasures. In all cells there is an intensity of life, of aspiration, of the will to progress of which usually one is not even aware.’ ⁶⁰

3 November: ‘Each part of the being has its own aspiration, which is of the nature of the aspiring part. There is even a physical aspiration. The cells of the body understand what the transformation will be, and, with all their strength, with all the consciousness they contain, they aspire for this transformation. The very cells of the body – not the [body’s] central will, thought or emotion – the cells of the body open up in this way to receive the Force.’ ⁶¹

Also in 1954, in the April and August issues of the Bulletin, the Mother published Some Experiences of the Body Consciousness and New Experiences of the Body Consciousness. As most of these notes appeared familiar in her and Sri Aurobindo’s writings, they were not accorded the importance they deserved, in spite of the Mother drawing special attention to them. Yes, these were experiences one had read or heard about before, but now they were the experiences of the body consciousness, of formerly dumb, routinely, slavishly functioning cells of the body. This made an immense difference. Here are some extracts:

• ‘It is entirely certain that under the influence of the supramental light, the transformation of the body consciousness will take place first; then will follow a progress in the mastery and control of all the movements and functions of all the organs of the body; afterwards this mastery will change little by little into a sort of radical modification of the movement and then of the constitution of the organs themselves. All that is certain, although the perception of it is not yet precise enough. But what will finally take place – when the various organs have been replaced by centres of concentration of different forces, qualities and natures, each of which will act according to its own special mode – all this is still merely a conception and the body does not comprehend it very well, because it is still far from realization and the body can truly comprehend only that which it is on the point of being able to do.’

• ‘The supramental body will be unsexed, since the need for animal procreation will no longer exist. The human form will retain only its symbolic beauty, and one can foresee even now the disappearance of certain ungainly protuberances, such as the genital organs of man and the mammary glands of woman.’

• ‘It is only in its external form, its most superficial appearance – which is as illusive to the latest discoveries of the science of today as to the experience of the spirituality of the past – that the body is not divine.’ ⁶²

We might summarize as follows: After Sri Aurobindo’s departure, the Mother immediately took up the Work of the Integral Yoga from the point which Sri Aurobindo had reached – which was much farther than is commonly supposed. This immediate continuation was made possible by the transfer of the Mind of Light into her cells. She applied to this sadhana of physical transformation all her power and concentration although what she was doing remained practically unnoticed by the people around her. It is no exaggeration to say, in view of the toughness of the task, that she advanced with lightning speed.

By the end of 1954 she had touched all the bases of her future development. She had taken up the labour in the subconscious – the ‘horrible, obscure chore,’ as she will call it – without which Matter could not be transformed, as the Subconscient is Matter’s foundation. She had become fully aware of the role of the body cells, of their potentialities as well as of their resistance, deeply ingrained as the result of the human and general evolution. The consciousness of the cells had to be divinized. To this transformation, or yoga, applied the fundamentals of the Integral Yoga: aspiration, surrender, sincerity, equanimity – in the cells, by the cells.

She had had a first glimpse of supramental matter, ‘a multicoloured kaleidoscope in which innumerable luminous particles in constant motion are sovereignly reorganized by an invisible and all-powerful Hand.’ It is this matter that is the stuff of our universe, and of all universes, because everything is That in the glory of its Light. To us, however, this basic matter is coated with a film, as it were: the film of our own consciousness, which is ignorant, dark and fragmentary out of evolutionary necessity.

And already she had had her first experience of a new body, ‘a body that is not mine.’

Pondicherry Merges with India

On 15 August 1954 the French comptoir of Pondichéry became a Union Territory of India. On that day the Mother read aloud her application for dual citizenship. ‘I want to mark this day by the expression of a long cherished wish, that of becoming an Indian citizen. From the first time I came to India – in 1914 – I felt that India is my true country, the country of my soul and spirit. I had decided to realize this wish as soon as India would be free. But I had to wait still longer because of my heavy responsibilities for the Ashram here in Pondicherry. Now the time has come when I can declare myself.

‘But in accordance with Sri Aurobindo’s ideal, my purpose is to show that truth lies in union rather than in division. To reject one nationality in order to obtain another is not an ideal solution. So I hope that I shall be allowed to adopt a double nationality, that is to say, to remain French while I become Indian.

‘I am French by early education, I am Indian by choice and predilection. In my consciousness there is no antagonism between the two, on the contrary, they combine very well and complete one another. I know also that I can be of service to both equally, for my only aim in life is to give a concrete form to Sri Aurobindo’s great teaching, and in his teaching he reveals that all the nations are essentially one and meant to express the Divine Unity upon earth through an organized and harmonious diversity.’ ⁶³

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have done so much for Pondicherry, visibly and still more invisibly. It is no exaggeration to say that, without them, at present it would be hard to find it on the map. ‘A day will come, I hope, when we shall be able to tell freely and truly all that Sri Aurobindo’s Presence [and hers] has meant for the town of Pondicherry.’ ⁶⁴ It has never been told. But the results are there for all to see: Pondicherry is one of the most attractive towns of its size in India, and it is internationally known because of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, which attracts a continuous stream of Indian and foreign visitors. Pondicherry has something special which is hard to define. But we remember what the Mother said about Sri Aurobindo’s aura, which was perceptible to her, in 1920, more than ten nautical miles out on the sea. And about herself she said: ‘Here, in Pondicherry, you cannot breathe without breathing my consciousness. It saturates the atmosphere almost materially, in the subtle physical, and extends to the Lake, ten kilometres from here.’ ⁶⁵

In his last years, Sri Aurobindo had some exceptional meetings in his room. One was with Sir C.R. Reddy who came to offer him, on behalf of Andhra University, the National Prize for the Humanities. Another meeting was with the Maharaja of Bhavanagar, the then Governor of Madras. Still another was with K.M. Munshi, a former student of his at Baroda.⁹⁵ But the first post-war meeting, in September 1947, soon after the Indian Independence, was with Maurice Schumann. This French politician and philosopher, then thirty-five, had been the official spokesman for the Free French Forces in London throughout the Second World War. He was deputed by the French government to be the leader of a cultural mission to propose the setting up at Pondicherry of an institute for the research and study of Indian and European culture, with Sri Aurobindo at its head. Nothing came of the institute, but Schumann’s visit had an annoying consequence: Jawaharlal Nehru, the Indian prime minister, was angered because the French politician had gone first to meet Sri Aurobindo before coming to see him.⁶⁶

Another, little known event that would make Nehru suspicious of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram – and that may have contributed to the Mother not being awarded dual nationality – was his meeting with Dilip K. Roy. On 13 December 1952, Nehru had already written a memorandum to the secretary general and the foreign secretary, M.E.A. (Ministry of External Affairs), ‘On Exemptions to Aurobindo Ashram’: ‘1. I have considered this matter carefully and am of opinion that the concession asked for by the authorities of Sri Aurobindo’s Ashram in Pondicherry should not be granted. We should advise accordingly the Ministries concerned here … 2. In view of our difficult relations with the French Establishments in India, any such concession is undesirable, more especially because this means Indian currency going into Pondicherry. [Pondicherry did not yet belong to the Indian Union.] 3. The attitude of the Ashram has hardly ever been favourable to India and sometimes it has been definitely hostile.⁹⁶ Sri Aurobindo was undoubtedly a great man and we should welcome any proper memorial to him, more especially a new educational centre. But Sri Aurobindo is no more and it is not quite clear how the Ashram is going to run in future. Such accounts as we had are not favourable and we have even heard that there are internal conflicts there. Most of the property stands personally in the name of Madame Alphonse,⁹⁷ otherwise known as the ‘Mother.’ So does the jewellery. It would be extraordinary for us to give this concession to a private individual. 4. So far as the University centre is concerned, a number of prominent men in India have commended it, but I have failed to find out under whose auspices it will run and who will be responsible for it. To take some steps to support a University of this type, about which we know nothing, except that it is a memorial to Sri Aurobindo, is obviously not desirable.’ ⁶⁷ Etc.

There is another memorandum by Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘State of Affairs at the Aurobindo Ashram,’ written on 22 December 1952, nine days later, and also addressed to the general secretary, M.E.A. ‘I had a visit from Shri Dilip Kumar Roy of Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry. He was much concerned at the state of the Ashram, which according to him consists of eight hundred persons now. He complained about the “Mother”. He said that while the Ashramites were almost all in favour of merger of Pondicherry with India, the Mother was very French in her outlook. 2. He also complained of the way the Mother controlled everything autocratically and dealt with all the moneys of the Ashram as if they were her private property. She gave no account of these public funds. She takes nobody in her confidence. There is no trust or committee to deal with the moneys or other matters of the Ashram. 3. Then he referred to the University. He said there is no University, but it has been declared that this has been started and money is being collected. Why is this money collected? He expressed his gratification at the fact that we refused to allow a concession to the Mother to sell her jewellery without payment of customs dues. 4. Shri Dilip Kumar Roy wanted us to bring some pressure on the Mother or on the French Government in regard to the Ashram and in regard to the so-called University.’ ⁶⁸ Etc.

These two memoranda throw a harsh light on the calumnies and the antagonism the Mother, and with her the Ashram and the Work, was subjected to – in this case by a disciple of twenty-four years standing to whom Sri Aurobindo had written: ‘I have cherished you like a friend and a son.’ Dilip K. Roy would leave the Ashram, around the time of his meeting with Nehru, to found his own ashram in Pune together with Indira Devi, the woman who had become the centre of his life and whom Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had saved from a certain death.⁹⁸ The Mother kept his apartment in the Ashram available for him till 1970.

Pandit Nehru came for a first visit to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram on 16 January 1955. ‘The Ashram accorded him a cordial welcome. The Ashram boys and girls, beginning with the youths and ending with the infant section, formed a guard of honour lining his route from the street through the inside courtyard up to the Meditation Hall. He was received by the Secretary and others at the gate. He regarded the boys with intent eyes as he passed to pay homage to the Samadhi [i.e. Sri Aurobindo’s tomb]. As he was going up to the Mother, the youngest child at the end of the guard offered him a bouquet of roses and greeted him with “Jai Hind.” Then he was alone with the Mother upstairs for about twenty minutes.’ ⁶⁹ In the evening he was the honoured guest at a function in the playground, the Ashram band striking up Bande Mataram, children giving a recitation in twelve different languages and the youths performing Swedish rhythmic ball drill.

Everything goes to show that this meeting with the Mother and the personal experience of life at the Ashram resulted in a turnabout of Nehru’s opinion. Besides, by then the Mother’s pronouncements concerning India were printed in many publications and were there for all to read. It would be difficult to find elsewhere a more ‘pro-Indian’ stance, a deeper insight into the being of India and a more positive expectation, not to say prophecy, about India’s role among the nations and the brightness of its spiritual and material future.

‘During Nehru’s second visit to Pondicherry, on 29 September 1955, his coming to the Ashram was no part of the official programme. Towards the end of the official functions he inquired where the Mother could be met at the time. “At the Playground,” he was told. Then he cut short the rest of the programme and drove out without security escort to see the Mother. Indira Gandhi had preceded him and was with the Mother. She was visibly touched by the Mother’s affectionate way of welcome.’ ⁷⁰ (In the years to come, the Mother would have a close relationship with Indira Gandhi.) Lal Bahadur Shastri, who would succeed Nehru as prime minister, and Kamaraj Nadar, a prominent Tamil politician, were also present. During the third visit of Nehru to the Union Territory, on 13 June 1963, ‘his call on the Mother topped his programme. Then he visited the Centre of Education and in the evening saw the students in games and sports.’ ⁷¹ In those years one would have been hard pressed to find another institution which could come up to the physical education standards in the Ashram.

Sri Aurobindo had said of Nehru: ‘He bears on himself the stamp of a very fine character, a nature of the highest sattwic kind, full of rectitude and a high sense of honour, a man of the finest Brahmin type with what is best in European education added. That is the impression he gives. I must say that the Mother was struck by his photograph when she first saw it in the papers, singling it out from the mass of ordinary eminent people.’ ⁷² And when Nehru died, in 1964, the Mother said of him: ‘Nehru leaves his body, but his soul is one with the soul of India that lives for eternity.’ ⁷³

The Entretiens

The Mother resumed teaching French to some youngsters as soon as the twelve days, during which all Ashram activities were suspended after Sri Aurobindo’s passing, had come to an end. These French classes started with simple conversation, recitation and dictation, but gradually expanded into what is now known as the Questions and Answers sessions, of which six volumes have been published. (The seventh volume contains some talks from 1929, 1930 and 1931.) The usual procedure was that the Mother read a passage from Sri Aurobindo or herself and started commenting on it. Questions from her audience popped up frequently, for they were free to ask anything they wanted – as long as their questions were in the French language, for these were after all French classes. At first the classes were intended for a group of six girls whom the Mother met regularly ‘in the small children’s courtyard of the Guest House, under the veranda, around the ping-pong table.’ Soon more students joined the group, and when some adults showed interest too, they were allowed to sit in a half circle around the youngsters.

The range of these particular French classes, afterwards called Entretiens – a word difficult to translate into English, but meaning something like ‘instructive conversations’ – is astounding. They could be considered to constitute the Mother’s teaching. It is true, of course, that her teachings were fundamentally the same as Sri Aurobindo’s, and many of her talks were explanations of or comments upon passages from his writings. But it is also true that she had a different background from Sri Aurobindo, and, as she was often drawing from her own experience, that these talks had a flavour which was her very own. Besides, they were held in French of the highest quality. Sri Aurobindo was, from his Cambridge days onwards, generally recognized as a master of English. The Mother’s mastery of her mother tongue is rarely appreciated, in the first place because few English-speaking people read French and also because most of her published texts are records of the spoken language. Her talks, however, are remarkable for the clarity and conciseness of her formulations, and for the fact that she was able to express subjects bordering on the inexpressible in the simplest possible language.

Although in the course of their ‘academic’ curriculum the students studied all branches of modern science, the teachings of the Mother in her evening classes, based on her occult and spiritual experience, did not always match with what the textbooks said. One example is something she has repeated on many occasions: that this universe is the seventh manifested by the Godhead. ‘The traditions say that a universe is created, that it is then withdrawn in a pralaya [dissolution], that then a new one comes about, and so on. According to them, we should be the seventh universe, and as we are the seventh universe, we are the one which will not return in a pralaya but progress everlastingly without regressing again. Besides, it is because of this that there is in the human being this need of permanence and an uninterrupted progress. It is because the time has come.’ ⁷⁴

Another example of the Mother’s scientific unorthodoxy is her also often repeated statement that the Earth occupies a unique place in the universe. ‘The formation of the Earth as we know it, this infinitesimal point in the immense universe, was made precisely in order to concentrate the effort of the transformation upon one point. It is, as it were, a symbolic point created in the universe, so that, while working directly upon one point, the effect radiates into the entire universe … From the astronomical point of view the Earth is nothing, it is a very small accident. From the spiritual point of view it is a symbolic, expressly willed formation. And as I have already said: it is only on the Earth that the Presence is found, the direct contact with the supreme Origin, the presence of the divine Consciousness hidden in all things. The other worlds have been organized more or less “hierarchically,” if one may put it this way, but the Earth has a special formation due to the direct intervention, without any intermediary, of the supreme Consciousness in the Inconscient.’

When somebody in the audience then asked: ‘Are the solar fragments made of the same matter as the Earth?’ the Mother replied: ‘I have taken care to tell you that this radiation [constituting the earth] was a symbolic creation, and that all action on this special point irradiates into the whole universe. Remember this, and don’t start saying that the formation of the Earth comes from an element projected by the sun, or that the scatterings of a nebula must have given birth to the sun and all its satellites, and so on.’ ⁷⁵ The Mother also said that materially embodied beings which have the psychic being – what we call humans – exist only on the Earth. As we know, the psychic being is much more than a ‘divine spark.’ Everything contains a divine spark, without which it could not exist. ‘The divine spark is at the centre of each atom,’ said the Mother.⁷⁶ ‘The psychic being is organized around the divine spark. The divine spark is one, universal, the same everywhere and in everything, one and infinite, of the same kind in all. One cannot say that it is a being. It is the being, if you like, but not a being … The psychic being, on the contrary, is an individual, personal being with its own experience, its own development, its own growth, its own organization. Only, this organization is the result of the action of a central divine spark.’ ⁷⁷ In other words, the psychic being is the fine flower of the earthly evolution which one day, as the result of the supramental transformation, will lead to the concrete, material manifestation of the psychic being in all its divinity.

Putting the Earth once again at the heart of the universe may, at first sight, seem bizarre. It should therefore be recalled that the Mother and Sri Aurobindo were spiritual realists, expressing their experience of spiritual facts; they did not want a return to medievalism, but the realization of the next step in evolution. Science is young and still very much reductionist, materialistic in its perspective. But however materialistic its standard models are at present, the human being knows intuitively that there are realities other than the material one, because it contains these other realities in itself. Science has already come very far from its first, naive materialistic paradigms. How many more paradigm shifts will be needed before it is able to include the other levels of reality? When discussing these kind of problems, the Mother expressed her respect for the inherent honesty of the scientific method and the industrious efforts of its practitioners. But, and this is altogether another matter, Science has also formed its own kind of Church with its creed, its dogmas, its priests and its propaganda: the Church of Scientism. This is what is doomed to perish because of the wonder of it all – not because of ‘the fire in the equations,’ but of the Fire at the heart of this and all universes, as well as at the heart of the tiniest elementary particle.