My Savitri work with the Mother

October 1962

In October 1962 when the Mother and I resumed our Savitri work on the second floor in her music-cum-interview room, she asked me to sit on a beautiful bottle-green velvet cushion. I refused and sat on a carpet near her feet.

The Mother gave me a separate wall-cupboard near her high-backed chair to keep stationery, a volume of Savitri and many other necessary things in connection with our Savitri work.

The Mother made me understand the Savitri paintings through her numerous sketches. She also explained to me all about various colours.

I sketched the pictures on boards and sent them to her for her approval. Then finally I did the paintings.

The Mother told me several times:

Child, you are not doing the painting. I am only using your hands. Substantially the whole creation is mine.

During our Savitri work, the Mother often warned me against people and asked me not to mix with them, not to be social. She advised me:

Child, I am not social, and I don't want you to be social.

I said:

But Mother, if I ignore people—even my own people—would not they feel hurt or offended?

The Mother simply cut me short:

Have you come for me or for them?

From that day onwards I tried my best to obey her. Many people including my own misunderstood me, but I could not help it.

Time flew on rapid wings. Our work progressed considerably well.

The Mother took my consciousness to other spheres and let me see many extraordinary things in detail. She also made me feel their vibrations and meet numerous strange beings of different types. Without her direct instructions, guidance and constant help nothing could have been achieved.

While teaching me occultism during our Savitri work, the Mother disclosed to me the mysteries of the higher luminous worlds, as well as the horrible nether worlds. In fact she took my consciousness to those worlds in order to give me experiences and make me understand the hidden truth of things, so that I could express them through Savitri paintings.

Interested people thought that the paintings of Savitri were mere pictures—some even mocked and criticised. Some passed random and gauche remarks out of sheer jealousy and disdain. They believed the paintings to be my personal possessions and affairs, because I had done them. But really speaking, the paintings of the whole of Savitri and other paintings are the Mother's own creation, based not only on her series of visions but also on her own guiding sketches: they are a reflection of her own Yoga.

When I sent certain sketches on boards, she wrote:

I am sending you back the boards and along with them, my two sketches retouched with full explanation at the back Because, obviously I had not made myself understood. I am sure that now it will be all right and with these explanations you need not send me the drawings and can straight off start the painting.

Her explanations were as follows:

For picture seven of Canto 4 of Book One, the Mother wrote:

Proportion of the earth to the total picture to be kept exact; the earth is a globe and must appear round like a ball, not flat.

The colour is blue—darker below, paler at the top where it receives the Light from above.

It must look like made of a translucid substance (as blue glass for instance) and through the transparent substance, at the centre of the globe—not at all at its surface—one can see two eyes and a mouth only, nothing more, nothing else.

For picture eight, she wrote:

Same explanations as in the first one. Note that here the place of the earth in the whole picture is not the same as in the first one. It is further up towards the Light.

Here there is only one eye and half of the mouth to express that the Consciousness is turned towards the Light. And it is still inside the globe not at its surface.

For picture nine, the Mother told me,

The crossed hands mean Creation.

For picture twelve, she wrote on 21st January 1963, when I sent sketches.

It is good, you can proceed with the paintings.

In the last picture, I have taken away the stripe as it is not probable that the Supramental Being will use these very human devices.

Except for this small detail, all is excellent.

For picture thirteen, she wrote:

I have removed the trident and the snake as they are not needed. We want a more Universal Deity.

See that the end of the way is lost, invisible in the pinkish white Light emanated by the Sun of Bliss.

When I sent her the sketches as usual, she wrote:

In the second and the third pictures, the head of the Transcendent and of God must be exclusively of gold Light, only gold Light, no other colour, and the features scarcely visible.

For these, what could evoke a human appearance must be avoided carefully, it would look ridiculous i f a human face was given to God.

In the second picture the mask on the Transcendent 's face is uniformly pale grey and in the holes for the eyes there is only white Light.

The face is covered with mask slightly greyish, only eyes are seen of bright gold.

For picture fifteen, I sent the sketch to her, along with a note saying,

Mother, in my last sketch, I have become a little overwise because I have drawn a library, which was not in your sketch, near the wise man's couch. I do not really know whether I am supposed to paint that part.

The Mother answered,

The library is quite good and must remain, it is a very good idea. The corner of the wise men is excellent, and must be kept as it is. I am sending back the drawings for painting.

The Mother was very much amused with the painting of the wise men. On her sketch itself she wrote:

One wise man, lifting a preaching hand, another wise man on a couch half asleep.

For picture nineteen, she wrote, when I sent her the sketches,

The sketches are quite all right. When you paint the eyes, see that the eyes of the Lord are as big as those of Nature, but without details, otherwise everything is good

Many a time I forgot the whole world—even my existence—when I was painting at night, with everything hushed around me.

In the morning also my time was occupied by various activities.

Still the Mother and I had to go a long way in the paintings. We had wished to finish the whole of Savitri. And of course, we were going fast in the work, which was not child's play or a joke. The whole thing was based purely on occult and subtle things.

Whenever I was doing painting, I used to see the same thing in my dreams and visions. Also, when I finished the paintings late at night, I found them living. Here I remember that once I was painting a python (Picture 48 of Book One, Canto 4). When I finished it, I felt that it might jump on me. So without cleaning the brushes and palette, I left the painting on the easel, shut the door of my studio and soon jumped into my bed. I was so scared!

What I saw and felt during my painting was not always very comfortable and pleasant!

For the last painting, number forty nine, the Mother there and then gave the meaning: "Godhead."

The painting for the jacket of Volume III of Meditations on Savitri I could not finish, and the Mother asked me to keep it as it was.

When the Mother and I were doing the paintings of Book One, Canto 4, there were two or three paintings which looked like modern art. She said jokingly to Mona L. Pinto:

You see, now Huta and I are doing modern painting!