The Story of a Soul

Undated?

In the room just beyond the one next to mine, an American lady kept opening and shutting the sliding doors with a loud noise. It was awfully irritating. I would wake up with a start, and dig my fingers in my ears, as if waiting for a thunder clap. It disturbed my sleep, my reading, or anything else I was doing. I was always on edge, expecting this explosion—I was not used to any kind of noise. These alarming bangs got on my overwrought nerves.

I endured it for a long time, but eventually I reported my problem to the Mother. Her answer came:

You did quite well in informing me of your difficulty—you must always tell me everything, knowing that I can understand you.

I heard, indeed, that Golconde is a rather noisy place, and that is why I had thought of removing you to another house. But I have not seen myself this new house of which I was thinking, and I sent Dyuman to see it. He tells me that he does not think it is a suitable house for you. Therefore I am trying to lessen the noise in Golconde, and you can, perhaps, remain there for some time more, until I can make the proper arrangement for you.

Hoping that things will become better.

I was stunned, for I had never given the slightest thought to this subject, never mentioned to her about any house. However I left the matter entirely to her.

In this context, I should add what the Mother told me from the occult point of view. She said that she would go into a trance and observe the difficulties of which I had spoken. On several occasions she applied this method: she got a direct inner perception of the situation and abolished the obstacles.

Now gradually the noise became less and less. Moreover I requested the lady to place swabs of cotton wool between the two sliding doors. Whatever the disturbance she unintentionally caused, I liked her—she was a nice person. And if Lee Russell had not made that noise, the Mother might not have thought of giving me an independent flat in "HUTA HOUSE" named by the Mother. So perhaps she became an instrument in the accomplishment of the Mother's plan.

Many apparently insignificant occurrences have significant effects in the end. For instance, Dyuman told me many years later that at first the Mother had thought of giving me work in her own kitchen and letting me cook her own food. So she asked him whether I knew how to cook. He replied that from my face he had some doubt of my ever having handled the job.

When he told me this I was much amused and laughed merrily. The Mother must have evoked this reply from Dyuman and cleared the path to my future, from the practical point of view, so that my life assumed a new purpose and a new meaning.

If I had worked in the Mother's kitchen, perhaps The Story of a Soul would never have been written; the paintings of Savitri, guided by the Mother, would not have come into being, under the title of Meditations on Savitri. There would perhaps have been no tape-recording of the Mother's recitations of selected passages from the whole of Savitri, which correspond with the paintings. Further, the Mother's reading of Savitri in unbroken sequence, with accompanying comments, tape-recorded by me, would never have been made and appeared along with my paintings as About Savitri. Neither would there have been the paintings of Sri Aurobindo's poems, and other visionary paintings. The book White Roses (which on 15th February 1982 won a National Award for "excellence in printing and designing of books") might never have been written by the Mother, and many other books which are the very essence of truth and containing the Mother's teaching, of great spiritual value to the whole of humanity, as well as so many other treasures given by the Mother, might never have come into existence. There would have been no slides of Meditations on Savitri, nor the video-cassettes of it which have now been released by Michel Klostermann of Germany.

The mystery of the Mother's working is profound and incalculable.

Sri Aurobindo has written in Savitri:

All was the working of an ancient plan,
A way prepared by an unerring Guide. ||99.14||

These lines from Shelley flash to my mind:

Mother of this unfathomable world,
Favour my solemn song.
I have loved Thee ever, and Thee only;
I have watched Thy shadow,
And the darkness of Thy steps
And my heart ever gazes
On the depth of Thy deep mysteries.