My Savitri work with the Mother

19 September 1960

On 19th September my parents and other family members left for their various destinations. I felt desolate and full of despair despite the Mother's words regarding my relationship with them. But I observed that she worked to break the attachment completely. Yet unfortunately it took me a pretty long time to become absolutely detached.

In spite of the unbearable heat I went to Vasudha's Embroidery Department at 2 p.m. to make on a special tambour-frame the Mother's golden-silk dress using the golden beads I had brought from London. There was also a plan in my mind to make a golden rose which would be stitched on the dress, and a small bead-bag the Mother might carry when she went for her outing in a car.

Apart from this work I attended in the morning for a short time the English literature and poetry class taken by Norman Dowsett. The most touching and amusing thing he told us in the class was: "Savitri is so absorbing that one day during the recess I started reading it and forgot all about the classes I was supposed to take, till the school closed."

The Mother asked me to work in The World Union Organisation. I began my work. It was raining heavily when I attended the first meeting. The Mother gave me leaves of Sweet Marjoram, "New Birth", and said with certitude:

Today is the new Birth of the World Union. Distribute these leaves to people present there.

I handed the leaves to the organisers with the Mother's message.

I worked for some time in the office of World Union according to the Mother's wish. During the work she encouraged me. But I never felt easy with my work, because it was not my real work. I was given numerous clippings from newspapers and psalms from the Bible—in extremely small print. I had to type forty to fifty pages, whose sense I could hardly understand. The idea of the organisers was to adopt the theory of Vinoba Bhave to go from place to place and preach. I thought his method was not in tune with Sri Aurobindo's Consciousness. My soul disagreed. I informed the Mother. Yet she insisted that I should continue my work. Then I went to her and gave concrete reasons why I wanted to leave the work. I showed her the Bible and told her:

Mother, first unity is to be formed in one's being, then among co¬workers: after that in the Ashram and in the town, gradually in India and finally in the world.

The Mother understood my point and set me free with these words:

Child, you are free. You have a glimpse of the Eternal Truth in your heart and this Truth must unite with the Supreme Truth.

One of the organisers came to persuade me to resume the work. I politely refused, and that was the end. However, the following message given to World Union by the Mother appealed to me very much:

The World is a unity—it has always been, and it is always so, even now it is so—it is not that it has not got the unity and the unity has to be brought in from outside and imposed upon it.

Only the world is not conscious of its unity. It has to be made conscious.

We consider now is the time most propitious for the endeavour.

For a new Force or Consciousness or Light—whatever you call the new element—has manifested into the world and the world now has the capacity to become conscious of its own unity.

Some quotations from Sri Aurobindo make us understand his position towards life:

My truth is one that rejects ignorance and falsehood and moves to the knowledge, rejects darkness and moves to the light, rejects egoism and moves to the Divine Self, rejects imperfections and moves to perfections.

My truth is not only the truth of Bhakti or of psychic development but also of knowledge, purity, divine strength and calm and of the raising of all these things from their mental, emotional and vital forms to their supramental reality.

I don 't believe in advertisement except for books, etc. and in propaganda except for politics and patent medicines. But for serious work it is a poison. It means either a stunt or a boom and stunts or booms exhaust the thing they carry on their crest and leave it lifeless and broken high and dry on the shores of nowhere—or it means a movement. A movement in the case of a work like mine means the founding of a school or a sect or some other damned nonsense. It means that hundreds or thousands of useless people join in and corrupt the work or reduce it to a pompous farce from which the Truth that was coming down recedes into a secrecy and silence. It is what has happened to the 'religions 'and is the reason for their failure.

Not the blind round of the material existence alone and not a retreat from the difficulty of life in the world into the silence of the Ineffable, but the bringing down of the peace and light and power of a greater divine Truth and Consciousness to transform Life is the endeavour today of the greatest spiritual seekers in India. Here in the heart of such an endeavour pursued through many years with a single-hearted purpose, living constantly in that all-founding peace and feeling the near and greatening descent of that light and power, the way becomes increasingly clear. One sees the soul of India ready to enter into the fullness of her heritage and the hour of an unparalleled greatness approaching when from her soil shall go forth the call and the leading to the highest destinies of the race.

I am not here to convert anyone; I do not preach to the world to come to me and I call no one. I am here to establish the divine life and the divine consciousness in those who of themselves feel the call to come to me and cleave to it and in no others.