On The Mother

CHAPTER 21

A Choice of Games

I

In an earlier chapter, the short-lived but psychically very potent effort at communion known as the Soup ceremony was described: its distant filiations with the Japanese Tea Ceremony, the evocation of a unique spiritual atmosphere in the Reception Room where it was held in the evenings, the mystic phenomenon of sharing and exchange, the rewarding experiences of some of the participating sadhaks, the gradual decline in the degree of consecration and dedication, the effect on the Mother of the one­sided exchange and her decision at last to withdraw her own personal participation in the ceremony - it was a marvellous lyric suspended half-way through, like Coleridge's Kubla Khan.

That too was the period when the Mother instituted other means also of engaging the sadhaks' attention and awakening and stimulating their dormant consciousness in desired directions. Again, the time was evening, immediately before the Soup ceremony; the place was the Prosperity Room on the first floor of the Library House. Recalling those days, Amal Kiran, one of the participants. says: "If the Soup ceremony had an air of . Divine Gravity, the Prosperity Meeting may be considered to have had about it a breath of Divine Levity."¹

The Mother would arrive in the evening about an hour or so before the time for the Soup ceremony, and first devote a few minutes to business connected with the Prosperity Stores. In the meantime, the sadhaks - the chosen or permitted ones - would assemble and occupy the numbered seatsassigned to them (Sethna's, for example, was 15 and Duraiswami Aiyar's 24) and the total number seems to have stayed at twenty-four. The sadhaks sat roughly in a semicircle facing the Mother, and while there was no fixed rule for the proceedings, there was a controlled spirit of teasing gaiety doubled with a serious inner engagement. There were short meditations, there were questions and answers, there were sleight-of-hand games like balancing of a lemon on the head, there were experiments with chance like opening at random a book by Sri Aurobindo and reading the passage found, and there were intellectual games too with some relevance to the sadhana. But the principal advantage was that, for about an hour, the sadhaks were enabled to come within the immediate aura of the Mother's power and personality.

Understandably enough, the silent meditations are the least amenable to objective description or evaluation. An island-atmosphere of silence was created, and since there was no preconceived rule or routine - which particular mantra to invoke, which symbol-idea or object to concentrate

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upon, which movement of consciousness to generate - the meditation of sadhak had its own individual character depending On his or her at mood, and also on the impact of the Mother's vibrations. As for the group as a whole, the brief collective silence had an efficacy of its own especially since most of them preferred to close their eyes when meditating. The cumulative force of the collective meditation was, however, a felt thing, though not exactly quantifiable. Now on one occasion, unable to concentrate, Amal Kiran started looking round at the rapt faces with closed eyes, and at last he turned to the Mother:

I have never seen the Mother as I saw her then. She was no longer human. Her whole body appeared to have become magnified and there was a light pervading her and the face was of a Goddess. I can only say that it was the face of Maheshwari. Sri Aurobindo has written of this aspect of the Divine Shakti: "Imperial Maheshwari is seated in the wideness above the thinking mind and will and sublimates and greatens them into wisdom and largeness or floods with a splendour beyond them .... Tranquil is she and wonderful, great and calm for ever .... " This was the first time I realised that when the Mother wants she can put forth the Divine Presence and Power completely into the physical being and manifest it. .. here before me was indeed a superhuman being without any veils.²

It is necessary we should remember the fact of this Presence, however much it may have been often deliberately veiled to facilitate the give and take of the familiarity and the fun. The Mother was a human moth playing with the children, and at the same time she was the Mother Divine - now putting forth this or that one out of her different powers, and sometimes veiling all of them with her sweet motherly smile and solicitude

II

Of the games fashioned by the Mother, the most colourfully spiritual was the Flower Game. From the very beginning, flowers - in their variety no less than in their opulence - gave a distinct character to the Ashram. Commenting on the place of flowers in terrestrial existence, Nary Prasad writes:

To human beings beset with pain and sorrow flowers are the Creator's boon and blessing. It is by flowers that Heaven bestows its glory upon earth. They express the glory and greatness of the Divine with a million tongues ... the Creator never ceases to scatter His floral bounty in forests and gardens ³

In the Ashram, the offering of flowers to the Mother at the time of Pranam - and to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother at the time of the Darshans - was a

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symbolic act testifying to the spiritual kinship between the Divine and the devotees. In India, flowers have always been associated with offerings to the Gods and also used for decoration. The Mother too was uncannily susceptible to the influence of flowers and had a profound rapport with them. When she was in Tokyo and Kyoto, the artistic and psychic overtones of the Japanese flower arrangement - especially in association with the Tea Ceremony - had impinged on her deeper consciousness, and the resulting resonances became a part of her being. In Pondicherry, again, she established a deep sympathy with the world of flowers, registering instantaneous vibrations of colour, shape, smell and sensibility; and, even as Sri Aurobindo gave spiritually suggestive names to some of the sadhaks, the Mother gave new tell-tale names to the flowers. Just as Philippe Barbier de St.-Hilaire became "Pavitra", K. D. Sethna "Amal Kiran", Miss Hodgson "Datta", J. A. Chadwick "Arjava", Jenny Dobson "Chidanandini", Madame Yvonne Gaebele "Suvrata", Mehdi Begum "Chinmayi", Janet McPheeters "Shantimayi", and Miss Margaret Wilson "Nishtha", even so the flowers also - almost without exception - received , nāmakaranam at the Mother's hands. For example, Forget-me-not became Lasting Remembrance, a richer name. The Mother has said how, "spontaneously, without knowing anything", she gave the same meaning to flowers as in the Indian religious ceremonies, for "the vibration was there in the flowers itself ". Thus, while the lotus signified fullness and perfection to the Oriental mind, the Mother named it Divine Consciousness. The sacred tulasi, which is indispensable for worship in India, was named Devotion; pārijāta, the night jasmine became Aspiration; jasmine, Purity; the rose, Love [psychic love] for the Divine; pink rose, Surrender; white rose, Integral Surrender; the yellow champak, Supramentalised Psychological Perfection. Likewise other flowers acquired names such as Sincerity Devotion, Radha' s Consciousness, Transformation, Tapasya, Intuitive Mind, Successful Future, Divine Solicitude, Cheerfulness, Integral Opening, Patience, Service, Psychic Purity, Faithfulness, Realisation, Spiritual Power of Healing, Avatar: the Supreme Manifested on the Earth in a body, Victorious Love, Disinterested Work done for the Divine, Consecration, Mental Plasticity, Absolute Truth, Illumined Mind, and so on. Commenting on this half-esoteric flower-cult in the Ashram, Madhav P. Pandit writes:

For the Mother, flowers are not just items of decoration; they are not even merely symbols; they are living messengers linking the spiritual to the material worlds. When she gives a flower, she transmits a state of consciousness designated by that flower. Each flower is endowed with an occult capacity to receive, hold and conduct a particular force of consciousness.⁴

A French visitor, Lizelle Raymond, who was particularly sensitive and

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responsive to the Mother's ministry through flowers, writes perceptively:

Amongst all the offerings. made to the Divine, .the flower is the most subtle, and also the most mysterious; for, In Its simplicity, It carries the vibrations of the ākāśā, the ethereal element itself, - that is, all that is most abstract, pure and perfect. It is, above everything else, the all-powerful creative mantra.⁵

The offering of flowers to the Mother, the receiving of a flower or flowers from her, could mean much, could prove a decisive turning point in one's, spiritual life, for these flowers from the Mother were verily the Divine's symbolic emanations of beauty and goodness and truth. Also, when sadhaks offered flowers to her, their condition - fresh or faded - might reveal to her the psychological condition of the respective disciples; and when she gave a flower with her blessings, she also communicated a helpful state of consciousness as well.⁶ With their yogic names that insinuate their psychic power, with their potentiality for spiritual engineering, the flowers sanctified by the Mother's touch and blessings became emissaries of her Grace and agreeably mingled in the life-ways of the sadhaks, and made the Ashram something akin to a garden of the unfolding Divine manifestation and terrestrial transformation.

While the name given to a flower (say Aspiration, Devotion, or Fidelity) is important enough and no sadhak can look at that flower without recalling its spiritual significance, nevertheless it was when he actually received it from the Mother at the time of Pranam that it was charged with a power for direct action - either to initiate a process of rectification or to promote a needed movement of consciousness. When the question was put to Sri Aurobindo, "What is the significance of the Mother's giving us flowers at Pranam every day?" he wrote back: "It is meant to help the realisation of the thing the flower stands for." Answering the question whether flowers were "mere symbols and nothing more", Sri Aurobindo explained: "It is when the Mother puts her force into the flower that it becomes more than a symbol. It then can become very effective if there is receptivity in the one who receives."⁷ Again, the following exchange of letters took place in November 1933 between Nirodbaran and Sri Aurobindo:

Nirod: When we receive flowers from the Mother, are we to aspire for the things they symbolise, or are these things given with the flowers?

Sri Aurobindo: There is no fixed rule. Sometimes it is the one, sometimes the other. But even when the thing is given, it is given in power - it has to be realised. by the sadhak in consciousness, and for that aspiration is necessary. ⁸

The Mother herself consistently refused to imprison the dynamic yogic import of the flowers, and she rightly took the view that it was for her to

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decide in each particular case how exactly the blessings-flower should be charged with power and purpose. There is, for example, the white champak which in the early days of the Ashram she named Psychological Perfection. The champak has five distinct petals which were supposed to signify the psychological virtues of sincerity, faith (or faithfulness), aspiration, devotion and surrender. But years later, the Mother explained:

...to tell you my secrets, every time I give it to someone, they are not always the same psychological perfections. That depends on people's needs. Even to the same person I may give at different times different psychological perfections; ... it depends on the circumstances and needs.⁹

III

With this background concerning the Ashram flower-cult, it will be easier to appreciate the importance of the Flower Game instituted by the Mother in 1929. It was to be a relaxation with a serious purpose. The Mother would arrange some flowers (whose yogic names were known to them all), and leave it to the sadhaks to fill in the blanks and complete the sentence. Evening after evening there were flowers in their new permutations and combinations - and the finished sentence had always a relevance to the sadhana. Like a few swaras in music making a variety of ragas and kritis! The Mother had the clue, of course, and when a sadhak managed to stumble upon it and complete the sentence, he received a reward, which was a slab of chocolate, perhaps, or something else. For example, on 22 September 1929, there was an assortment of three flowers: Divine Solicitude, Disinterested Work, Transformation. The full sentence as conceived by the Mother was: "Divine solicitude is supporting you in the disinterested work through which you will attain transformation."¹⁰ Some resourceful linking-up of the key-words (the names of the flowers) was always possible, and the disciples had a go at the exercise and submitted their entries to the Mother. The one identical with - or closest to - the sentence the Mother had in mind won the prize. "It so happened," says Sethna, "that everyone of us had on at least one occasion the correct sentence implanted into our heads by her! What was thus demonstrated was not exactly our intuitiveness but her power to make us intuitive when wanted."¹¹ Amal's prize, when he came first, was a box of cough­pastilles named Fiama; and Champaklal came first too, once, his entry falling short of the correct answer by only one word. While some of the Mother's sentences were rather long, others were more compact, and all were pointed towards success in the sadhana:

Love the Victor will manifest when there will be established - through the five-fold psychological perfection, the love of the physical being for the

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Divine - and when, through loving consecration, there will be a complete faithfulness to the Divine. (24.9.1929)

Only to those who have a true humility will power be given. (10.10.1929) The power of Agni will keep the aspiration flaming in the physical being. Then can be founded and established in a vital opened to Radha's influence the true supramentalised friendship with the Divine. (12.10.1929)

Approach the Divine with loving gratitude and you will meet the Divine's Love. (14.10.1929)

Peace in the physical cells leads first to health and then to transformation.(22.10.1929)

In the sincerity of your effort towards silence lies the assurance of a purified mind (9.11.1929)

Turn your consciousness to the Supramental Light and let the Supramental influence permeate, through a pure mind, your sex centre. Then you will obtain mastery over the sex centre. (13.11.1929)

With aesthetic taste and vital purity build up vital harmony. This will make possible the manifestation of the supramental beauty in the physical. (14.11.1929)

Let an integral offering of your being be the form of your purified worship. (10.12.1929)

Let gold be turned to the service of the Divine; so it will get purified and take its true place in Krishna's play in the material. (26.4.1930)¹²

There was, indeed, no end to the varieties of affirmation and exhortation that the flowers could be made to articulate!

IV

Unlike the Flower Game, which had superficially a crossword puzzle look, the reading of a passage from one of Sri Aurobindo's classics, opened at random, seemed a very chancy thing. People have found clues to conduct or timely solace or guidance in a moment of crisis by a sudden sampling of the Bible, the Guru Granth Sahib, Shakespeare's Complete Works or even Robinson Crusoe. In the Prosperity Room, the books thus sampled were the Arya volumes containing The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga and other writings of Sri Aurobindo, as also books like Essays on the Gita already reissued in book form. These adventures in random sampling went on from 18 March to 2 May 1931. The procedure was that one of those present (including the Mother) would concentrate for a few minutes and open the selected volume with a paper-cutter or a finger, and read the passage thus alighted upon. It may very well be asked whether this was anything more than playing with chance. But the Mother herself, In after-years, was to give a wholly convincing answer. Anyone is free to seek this

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kind of occult guidance: either because one has a baffling inner problem and wants its solution, or because one seeks an escape out of one's imprisonment in ambiguities, or yet because, quite simply, one is anxious to get at the keys to the Book's Vaults of Knowledge. The Book is at hand, and it is opened, preferably with a paper-knife:

...while you are concentrated you insert it in the book and with the tip indicate something. Then, if you know how to concentrate, that is to say, if you really do it with an aspiration to have an answer, it always comes.

For, in books of this kind (Mother shows The Synthesis of Yoga), books of revelation, there is always an accumulation of forces - at least of higher mental forces, and most often of spiritual forces of the highest knowledge.... Now, you, when you are sincere and have an aspiration, you emanate a certain vibration, the vibration of your aspiration which goes and meets the corresponding force in the book, and it is a higher consciousness which gives you the answer.

Everything is contained potentially. Each element of a whole potentially contains what is in the whole .... Sri Aurobindo represented a totality of comprehension and knowledge and power; and everyone of his books is at once a symbol and a representation .... Therefore, if you concentrate on the book, you can, through the book, go back to the source.¹³

A sentence contains the potentiality of a Book, and the Book the :potentiality of the Power that was its creator. Thus, the apparently fortuitous link with a chance-directed passage becomes really a linking up with the Power and the glory of the creator-spirit behind the Book itself. As the Mother viewed it, then, it was not just a game of chance, or an ingenious amusement, or a sophisticated form of distraction:

You may do it just "like that", and then nothing at all happens to you, you have no reply and it is not interesting. But if you do it seriously, if seriously your aspiration tries to concentrate on this instrument - it is like a battery, isn't it, which contains energies ... well, naturally, the energy which is there - the union of the two forces, the force given out by you and that accumulated in the book - will guide your hand ... it will guide you exactly to the thing that expresses what you ought to know" ¹⁴

V

It was thus a potent spiritual exercise in which the Mother engaged the sadhaks in those distant evenings of 1931 for a continuous period of almost six weeks. A number of passages were spotted out by sadhaks like Nolini, Amrita, Pavitra, Dyuman, Chinmayi, Rajangam, Sethna, Purushottam, Datta and by the Mother herself. Every time, whatever the volume

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opened, a seminal passage was located - a passage that was like the centre of the Aurobindonian universe, with widening circles fanning out towards the Infinite. In inspired writing like Sri Aurobindo's, the centre was apparently everywhere, and the circumference was nowhere. For example, on 6 April 1931, the Mother herself lighted upon this passage from the Arya:

The knower of Brahman has not only the joy of light, but gains something immense as the result of his knowledge, brahmavid āpnoti.

What he gains is that highest, that which is supreme; he gains the highest being, the highest consciousness, the highest wideness and power of being, the highest delight; brahmavid āpnoti param. ¹⁵

This is from Sri Aurobindo's "Readings from the Taittiriya Upanishad", and the passage indicates what we may hope for from the knowledge of Brahman: nothing less than the highest in being, consciousness. wideness. power and delight. Four days later, the Mother chose, first a passage from Essays on the Gita ("Slay then desire; put away attachment to the possession and enjoyment of outward things ... "), and next, this from The Yoga and Its Objects: "For those who can make the full surrender from the beginning, there is no question; their path is utterly swift and easy." Slay desire, and make total surrender: doesn't this sum up the whole secret of Yoga?

On 4 April 1931, Amrita had found a passage in Essays on the Gita describing the role of the Avatar. Wasn't Amrita concentrating, when he was about to open the page, on what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother as the twin Avatars were doing to him and to the other sadhaks and the rest of humanity? Why were they bearing the burden of earth-nature and treading its dolorous way? The answer was provided by the passage Amrita lighted upon:

The Avatar comes to reveal the divine nature in man above this lower nature and to show what are the divine works, free, unegoistic. disinterested, impersonal, universal, full of the divine light, the divine power and the divine love. He comes as the divine personality which shall fill the consciousness of the human being and replace the limited egoistic personality, so that it shall be liberated out of ego into infinity and universality, out of birth into immortality. He comes as the divine power and love which calls men to itself, so that they may take refuge in that and no longer in the insufficiency of their human wills and the strife of their human fear wrath. and passion, and liberated from all this unquiet and suffering may live in the calm and bliss of the Divine.¹⁶

A laborious search may not have yielded an answer as concise, comprehensive and authoritative; it was Amrita's strength of aspiration that had summoned so definitive an answer.

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Likewise, when Amal Kiran came upon this passage in The Synthesis of Yoga on the Ego and the advantages accruing from its annulment, he was possibly concentrating on .the need to come to terms with his own far from passive ego, and seeking light from the Arya:

When the ego realises that its will is a tool, its wisdom ignorance and childishness, its power an infant's groping, its virtue a pretentious impurity and learns to trust itself to that which transcends itself, that is its salvation. The apparent freedom and self-assertion of the personal being to which it is so profoundly attached, conceals subjection to a thousand suggestions, impulsions, forces which it has made extraneous to itself. The self­abnegation of the ego is its self-fulfilment; its self-surrender to that which transcends it is its liberation and perfect freedom.¹⁷

Amal had got the perfect answer to his most pertinent question! As for Nolini, what should he choose but passages from the Kutsa-Angirasa hymns to the Mystic Fire as rendered into English by Sri Aurobindo:

This is the fire of our sacrifice! May we have strength to kindle it to its height, may it perfect our thoughts. In this all that we give must be thrown that it may become a food for the gods; this shall bring to us the godheads of the infinite consciousness who are our desire.

Let us gather fuel for it, let us prepare for it offerings, let us make ourselves conscious ....

God, thy faces are everywhere! thou besiegest us on every side with thy being. Bum away from us the sin! ...

As in a ship over the ocean, bear us over into thy felicity. Bum away from us the sin!¹⁸

Nolini must have concentrated and aspired as he opened the volume, for the progress not only of himself, but of the entire collectivity that was the Ashram. And, in response, the ancient Rishis gave the right words of aspiration and consecration, and in the charged atmosphere of the Prosperity Room, the words reverberated with a matchless potency.

VI

If the random sampling of Sri Aurobindo's writings under the pressure of concentration made the sadhak and the Divine sharers in the game, one making the call and the other responding appropriately, there were other games that had the shape of mini slip-tests for the sadhaks conducted by the Mother. Thus on one occasion the Mother asked the sadhaks in the Prosperity Room to answer the question "What is Yoga?" There were fourteen impromptu efforts at a definition, and happily these were preserved both by Champaklal and Amal.

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The latter didn't note down the names of the sadhaks against the respective definitions, and speaking about the event 40 years later,. he was driven to adroit guess-work. but quite a few are seen to be real hits, for they can be compared with the fuller record kept by Champaklal. Amal's general comment on the definition is shrewd and suggestive:

It is interesting to note how various individuals respond. to the spiritual call and envisage the integral Life. Some of the definitions incline to be philosophical in their terms, others bring out more feelingly the Ideal, while still others try to catch the actual working of Yoga in general, and the remainder hint the inner psychic movement in a purely personal mode.¹⁹

Here are ten of the fourteen definitions as noted by Champaklal:

To feel a warmth and a glow in the heart in my relation with You. (Amal)

Transformation of my consciousness in terms of the consciousness of the Mother. (Amrita)

To live in Mother and to know Mother's Will. (Champaklal)

To do as Mother directs us to do. (Chandulal)

A series of experiences which the individual soul feels from the time of its contact with the Divine up to the union with the Divine. (Dara)

Not to hinder Mother in making the best possible of us. (Duraiswami)

To be in complete union with You. (Dyuman)

To live only for Mother as if nobody and nothing else existed. (Lalita)

Divinising life. (Nolini)

To return home. (Pavitra)²⁰

Seven out of the fourteen definitions pointedly mention the Mother, and even in the others there is the clear sense or feeling for the Divine. According to Amal, the "five prominent workers" of the Mother at the time - though in different ways - were Dyuman, Chandulal, Champaklal, Duraiswarni and Datta, and it is obvious from the definitions of the first four that, for them, the Yoga meant only service of the Mother, being a plastic instrument in her hands, being in full rapport with her and feeling totally consecrated to her.

VII

Another exercise set by the Mother was "What do you want?", and this question also elicited a few revealing answers:

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An all surrendering love by which the whole vital being becomes purified and one-pointed. (Amal)

I pray constantly to Him to give me the realisation of the harmony between the inner and the outer that I may devote myself entirely and truly to the Mother. (Amrita)

Right attitude. (Champaklal)

Deep and complete Faith in all the parts (even in the physical cells). (Chandulal)

To be taken right into the Beyond in surrender. (Datta)

In the perfect peace the descent of the supramental light in the physical. (Dyuman)

Full conversion and consecration of the physical consciousness. Liberation from all sexual impulses and desires. (Pavitra)²¹

There is an obvious sincerity behind the words, a sincerity doubled with truthfulness.

Yet another theme was "Realisation", and among the fourteen entries noted by Champaklal are the following:

Let Agni lead you to Realisation. (Amal)

The Star of your Realisation is rising. (Dutta)

Prayer will lead you to Realisation. (Duraiswami)

Your Faith is the straightest way to Realisation. (Dyuman)

Keep burning in you the Flame that leads to Realisation. (Lalita)

Through Skill in Works you will reach Realisation. (Purushottam)

Pray for Realisation. (Rajangam)

Agni (Flame), Faith, Prayer, Karma Yoga (skill in works) - any of these will lead you to the Star of your Realisation!²²

On still another occasion, when the sadhaks were asked to record their most Valuable experience in the context of the Integral Yoga, Champaklal it he was constantly conscious of the Mother's Grace, that he felt a sense of unity with her, and that his only aspiration was that' 'the exterior being with all its energy should be entirely consecrated to the service of the Mother".²³. Just like Champaklal!!

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