On The Mother

CHAPTER 11

A Passage to Japan

I

The scene shifts from war-torn France to comparatively peaceful Japan. During their year of stay in beleaguered France, Mirra and Richard had their separate roles to play although they also kept in touch with Sri Aurobindo at Pondicherry. Mirra had especially her sadhana to do for ailing and tortured earth, and she made quite a few explorations into the Unknown, and spiritual conquests as well, and these were duly recorded in her prayers and meditations.

Richard had now to visit Japan on an assignment, but even as in 1910 and 1914, he had combined politics and electioneering with a serious spiritual quest when he visited Pondicherry, now also he hoped and planned to continue his inquiries. The Orient had always fascinated the Richards: India certainly, but also China and Japan. Was Richard interested in observing Zen Buddhism at close quarters? Was he intrigued by the 'still-sitting' movement? For Mirra too, this was an invitation to new horizons. And so they boarded the Kamo Maru at London on 14 March and arrived in Yokohama on 18 May 1916.

Shortly before leaving for Japan, Mirra had arranged for some funds to be placed at the disposal of Saurin Bose for an 'Aryan Stores' to be started in Pondicherry. Saurin, a cousin of Mrinalini, Sri Aurobindo's wife, was at the time living with him along with Nolini and others. The object of the Aryan Stores was to give Saurin and his friends a taste for honest and efficient business, and also to provide a modest income for Sri Aurobindo's household. The Aryan Stores was duly opened in September 1916, and Sri Aurobindo was present at the time and wished it godspeed.¹

II

There is a gap of four months in Mirra's spiritual diary, as now published, but the entry "Tokio, June 7, 1916" begins thus on a note of new fulfilment:

Long months have gone by in which nothing could be said, for it was a period of transition, of passing from one equilibrium to another, vaster and more complete. The outer circumstances were manifold and new, as if the being needed to accumulate many perceptions and observations in order to give a more extensive and complex base to its experience ....

Suddenly on the fifth of June the veil was rent, and there was light in my consciousness.²

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On one side, the general unsettled conditions in Europe, and on the other the manifold and novel external circumstances in Japan - the rattle and movement of the intervening long and perilous passage, the excitement and exhilaration of the first kaleidoscopic Japanese experiences - they added up to make the period of transition, and it was understandable that some little time was needed before Mina could get back her customary poise or "equilibrium". On the other hand, even before she reached Japan, even while she was still in France, she had seen - not imagined, but seen, not in photographs, but as visions - the distinctive beauty of the Japanese landscapes. As she explained in the course of a conversation in 1951:

... those landscapes of Japan; well, almost all- the most beautiful, the most striking ones - I had seen in vision in France; and yet I had not seen any pictures or photographs of Japan, I knew nothing of Japan. And I had seen these landscapes without human beings, nothing but the landscape, quite pure, like that, and it had seemed to me they were visions of a world other than the physical; they seemed to me too beautiful for the physical world, too perfectly beautiful. Particularly I used to see very often those stairs rising straight up into the sky; in my vision there was the impression of climbing straight up, straight up, and as though one could go on climbing, climbing, climbing ... the first time I saw this in Nature down there, I understood that I had already seen it in France before having known anything about Japan.³

The beauty of the landscapes, the orderliness of the people, their correctly polite manners and the general atmosphere of friendliness quickly made the Richards feel at home in Tokyo. The relapse into "old habits and methods" had been happily avoided, and Mina was now "accustomed to find harmony in the in tensest action" as earlier she had found it in "passive surrender". With the establishment of this harmony, on 5 June "there was light again in all the parts of the being, and the consciousness of what had happened became complete". The time of "a passivity that was receptive and harmonious" being left behind, she would now like her whole being to be used "for action" so that she could the more integrally manifest the Divine.

III

In a letter of Sri Aurobindo dated 26 June 1916⁴, addressed to the Richards, he speaks of difficulties in the course of sadhana which are common to all; spiritual progress is, after all, a zigzag operation attended with recoils alternating with new advances on a firmer basis. Any marked spiritual progress exposes itself to attack by adverse forces, "for the

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complete victory of a single one of us would mean a general downfall among them". The remedy is to come. "into a more and more universal communion with the Highest". Let set-backs come If they must, yet one falls but to rise again, fortified with fresh spiritual gains. The basic "requirements of the sadhana are "an absolute equality of the mind and heart and a clear purity and calm strength in all the members of the being" so that one can steadily perceive the One behind the bewildering multiplicity of the phenomenal world. No doubt the shift from the passive to the active mode is not easy, but without it the Yoga is incomplete:

When the Unity has been well founded, the static half of our work is done, but the active half remains. It is then that in the One we must see the Master and His Power, - Krishna and Kali as I name them using the terms of our Indian religions; the Power occupying the whole of myself and my nature which becomes Kali and ceases to be anything else, the Master using, directing, enjoying the Power to his ends, not mine, with that which I call myself only as a centre of his universal existence and responding to its workings as a soul to the Soul, taking upon itself his image until there is nothing left but Krishna and Kali. This is the stage I have reached in spite of all set-backs and recoils, imperfectly indeed in the secureness and intensity of the state, but well enough in the general type.⁵

This is a remarkable analysis, as also a memorable description of the status­dynamis attained by himself. From cosmic consciousness or the consciousness of Unity (which, although it may lead to personal felicity, will really be "an escape instead of a victory"), the next stage will be to see the Unity as a creative duality of Two-in-One: Pure Existence and Power of ,Consciousness, Purusha and Prakriti, Krishna and Kali. The true Yogi turns himself into a pure engine of Power; to be used for His purposes by Krishna. What, then, happens to the individual self? In itself it is nothing; but the more the Yogi becomes a power-house of the Supreme and a centre of the universal Existence, the more his ego will race towards Zero:

When that has been done, then we may hope to found securely the play in us of his divine Knowledge governing the action of his divine Power. The rest is the full opening up of the different planes of his world-play and the subjection of Matter and the body and the material world to the law of the higher heavens of the Truth:⁶

The main object of the Power which moves him, of course, is to "possess securely the Light and the Force of the supramental being"; but progress in that direction is sometimes delayed by the gheraoing "old habits of intellectual thought and mental will" that "crowd round the mind and pour in their suggestions whenever it tries to remain open only to the supramental Light and the higher Command, so that the Knowledge and the Will reach the mind in a confused, distorted and often misleading form.

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It is, however, only a question of time," Sri Aurobindo concluded, "the siege will diminish in force and be finally dispelled."

To recapitulate the argument: from an absolute equality of the mind and heart and a clear purity and calm strength in all the members of the being to the settled perception of the One behind the manifold, and also to the rapture of such unitive experience; then, from that position to the active self, from Krishna to Kali, the total elimination of the ego and the total sovereignty of Krishna and Kali, divine Knowledge coupled with divine Power; and then, the opening up of the higher planes of consciousness up to and including the supramental, and the subjection of mind, life and matter to these powers; finally, the possession of the supramental Light and Force, and through it the supramentalisation of earth-existence - this was the master-plan for the terrestrial transformation, and the determined sadhak was destined to fare forward and storm the gates of Victory. Such was the assurance Mirra received, - Mirra the great collaborator in Sri Aurobindo's work, Mirra the Shakti, the Kali, the Mother-to-be of his integral supramental Yoga and of his great Yogashram at Pondicherry.

IV

The Richards spent about four years in Japan, mainly in Tokyo (1916-17) and Kyoto (1917-20). They made friends with Japanese intellectuals as also with the leaders of certain New Life movements (the 'still-sitting' movement in Kyoto, for example). They met Rabindranath Tagore too, during his triumphant tour of Japan, and he was impressed by them both. Mirra's mystic aura and intense sincerity and spiritual poise coupled with her capacity to deal expertly with outer things struck him at once. He even invited her to take charge of the cultural activity he was engaged in organising.

For Mirra, these years in Japan were an opportunity to learn the ways of perfection in elegance, and orderliness and propriety in personal and communal life. With her own composite and integral culture fusing the finest in the East and the West, the old and the new, she could be in rapport with the genuine anywhere; and with her occult vision, she could always enter into the behind-the-surface truth of things. Outwardly she learnt to live the Japanese way of life, wore the kimono, mastered their art of flower-arrangement, and for the nonce embodied the mind and heart of the Japanese culture. But Mirra was not the person to be altogether swept off her feet by the outer manifestations alone, and while she could be generous, she certainly would not close her eyes to the deeper insufficiencies of the Japanese way of life.

However. the Japanese landscape, the unfailing beauty of Nature, the

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contrived luxuriance of park and garden, made an immediate conquest of Mirra, and after about a year's experience of the country. she could rhapsodise thus on 1 April 1917:

Thou hast shown to my mute and expectant soul all the splendour of fairy landscapes: trees at festival and lonely paths that seem to scale the sky ....

Once more, everywhere I see cherry trees; Thou hast put a magical power in these flowers: they seem to speak of Thy sole Presence; they bring with them the smile of the Divine.

My body is at rest and my soul blossoms in light: what kind of a charm hast Thou put into these trees in flower?

O Japan. it is thy festive adorning, expression of thy goodwill. it is thy purest offering, the pledge of thy fidelity; it is thy way of saying that thou dost mirror the sky. ⁷

And. in the course of a contribution to the Modern Review of Calcutta. Mirra set down some of her impressions:

The country is so wonderful, picturesque, many-sided, unexpected. charming, wild or sweet; it is in its appearance so much a synthesis of all the other countries. of the world. from the tropical to the arctic. that no artistic eye can remain indifferent to it.

She found Japan a nation of tremendous vitality, and everywhere and in everyone she found that vitality and energy:

With their perfect love for nature and beauty, this accumulated strength is, perhaps, the most distinctive and widely spread characteristic of the Japanese.⁸

V

Many years later, on 12 April 1951, she reminisced aloud before the children and sadhaks of Sri Aurobindo Ashram on her four years in Japan. "I had everything to learn in Japan," she said. "For four years, from an artistic point of view, I lived from wonder to wonder."⁹ What immediately struck her was the fact that Japanese art, like Japanese life, was extremely mentalised. "It expresses in detail quite precise mental formations." The Japanese people - not the artists and the connoisseurs alone, but the common people also, the working men and the peasants, and even school­ children - had a spontaneous feeling for beauty in the physical. Their eyes intuitively sought beauty in nature or art, their nerves felt soothed at the sight of beautiful views, their minds felt reassured perceiving beautiful forms. They liked to eat or sip a cup of tea admiring the landscape also at the same time. Besides, they had an uncanny sense of place and marvellous

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sense of colour: each season its own site, its own colour! Red leaves in autumn; maple trees so arranged near a temple on a hill that the entire place seemed a splash of red; and stone stairways, as if labouring towards the sky, bathed in the most magnificent colours. Likewise, spring had its special sites, and so had the other seasons. Thus of a garden quite close to Tokyo:

... a garden with very tiny rivulets, and along the rivulets, irises - irises of all possible colours - and it is arranged according to colour, organised in such a way that on entering one is dazzled, there is a blaze of colour from all these flowers standing upright. ... At another time, just at the beginning of spring ... there are the first cherry-trees. These cherry-trees never give fruit, they are grown only for the flowers. They range from white to ... a rather vivid pink .... There are entire mountains covered with these cherry-trees, and on the little rivulets bridges have been built which too are all red: you see these bridges of red lacquer among all these pink flowers and, below, a great river flowing and a mountain which seems to scale the sky .... For each season there are flowers and for each flower there are gardens.¹⁰

Nature's largesse was doubtless there, but equally in evidence was artful human contrivance, the result of mental activity in the miniature. The daintiness, the doll-like clarity and cleanliness, the surface perfection, the infallible artistic sense, the neat exquisite finish:

True art is a whole and an ensemble; it is one and of one piece with life .... A Japanese house is a wonderful artistic whole; always the right thing is there in the right place, nothing wrongly set, nothing too much, nothing too little. Everything is just as it needed to be, and the house itself blends marvellously with the surrounding nature ....

... the strict sense of beauty and art is a natural possession of the Japanese, they did not allow it to degenerate into something of lesser significance and smaller purpose. ¹¹

This was spoken in 1929 to a small group of sadhaks, and shows how the Japanese experience had left an indelible impression upon her.

But that was not all, for the Japanese carried their gardening art to the point where they made trees and houses grow into an artifice of harmony, and they tried to bend nature to their own whims and fantasies:

When they have a garden or a park, they plant trees, and they plant them just at the place where when the tree has grown it will create a landscape, will fit into a landscape. And as they want the tree to have a particular shape, they trim it, cut it, they manage to give it all the shapes they want. You have trees with fantastic forms .... Then you come to a place and you see a house which seems to be altogether a part of the landscape .... ¹²

And even in an apparently crowded city like Tokyo, most private houses

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had gardens - "there are always one or two trees which are quite lovely". Going for a walk quite at random, as Mirra often did, it was most likely one would stumble into "a kind of paradise", unexpectedly un-urban; and yet, if on another day one wanted to return to the same place, one would find it difficult - for the ways were labyrinthine - and it was as though "it had disappeared" .

Mirra herself had a fairly large garden in Tokyo, and she grew many vegetables. And as she went for a walk every morning, or watered the plants, she would look for the vegetables to be taken for eating during the day. Some of the vegetables used almost to whisper to her, "Take me, take take me me!", while others apparently cried, "No, no, no, no, no." She had had similar experiences in the south of France where too she had a garden of peas, radishes and carrots. Some of the vegetables had been happy to be taken, while others had grumbled - either because they were sour or because they were unripe - "No, no, no, don't touch me, don't touch me!" Such was her extraordinary closeness of understanding with the plant world, as with all creation. It was in Japan, even more than in France, that Mirra's sensibilities were fully awakened, and she could grasp the language of flora and fauna alike, even as she could look deep into the hearts of human beings. ¹³

As with their life, so also the literature of the Japanese was full of fairy­lore, and Mirra found that everything in Japan, from beginning to end, gave her "the impression of impermanence, of the unexpected, the exceptional".¹⁴ After a year's stay in Japan and observation of the people at close quarters, Mirra saw that whereas the Westernised Japanese - the politicians, the money-makers, the men-about-town - were no different from their Western counterparts, the authentic Japanese were those who had retained the old Samurai tradition, and such were truly unique; and so she wrote in the Modern Review:

They know how to remain silent; and though they are possessed of the most acute sensitiveness, they are, among the people I have met, those who express it the least. A friend here can give his life with the greatest simplicity to save yours, though he never told you before he loved you in such a profound and unselfish way ....

... The true Japanese ... are perhaps the least selfish .... For here religion is not a rite or a cult, it is a daily life of abnegation, obedience, self­sacrifice. ¹⁵

In the traditional Japanese homes, the children were taught that life was a duty and not an opportunity for pleasure-seeking, with the result that there was "a very remarkable self-constraint" in the life of the whole country.

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VI

But, then. there was also another side to the shield. While there was a soap-bubble elegance and brilliance everywhere, it was often wedded, alas, to a soap-bubble fragility as well. There were no firm axes of reference, there was no solid ground to stand on:

I ought to say, to complete my picture, that the four years I was there I found a dearth of spirituality as entire as could be.¹⁶

The Japanese sense of morality was "wonderful", their Samurai code Was compellingly and comprehensively strict, their minutiae of social behaviour were precise and exacting, but they could go no deeper:

... not once do you have the feeling that you are in contact with something other than a marvellously organised mental-physical domain. And what energy they have! their whole vital being is turned into energy. They have an extraordinary endurance but no direct aspiration: one must obey the rule, one is obliged.

Again, Mirra found in Japan "an atmosphere of tension and effort, of mental and nervous strain, not of spiritual peace" of the kind she had felt in India. She found no doubt "exterior calm, rest and silence ... but not that blissful sense of the infinite which comes from a living nearness to the Unique".¹⁷And to illustrate how disturbed the average Japanese feels when inducted into the mystical tremendum of spiritual sublimities, she has told the story of a young man she used to know:

He was in the countryside with us and I had put him in touch with his psychic being; he had the experience, a revelation, the contact, the dazzling inner contact. And the next morning, he was no longer there, he had taken flight!

When she met him in town after the holidays and asked him why he had left so suddenly, he answered as if to disarm her:

Oh! you understand, I discovered my soul and saw that my soul was more powerful than my faith in the country and the Mikado; I would have had to obey my soul and I would no longer have been a faithful subject of my emperor. I had to go away.¹⁸

There is the classic compromise that one should render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. But the spiritual world admits of no such compromises!

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VII

For several months after her arrival in Japan, Mirra was absorbing new impressions, sifting the permanent from the transient, but few new recordings in her spiritual diary have come down to us. Then, from 28 November 1916, the entries are found with a regularity reminiscent of 1914. On that day, she first re-reads some of her earlier musings and meditations - "awkward attempts at expression" - and feels that she remains at heart a child of the Divine. Really, she has had no new experiences, no strikingly new ideas; only the old ideas and experiences return, but perhaps with a new freshness. How is she to view this drying up of the the unexpected, this reign of monotony? The words are at last wrung from her:

Poverty, poverty! Thou hast placed me in an arid and bare desert and yet this desert is sweet to me as everything that comes from Thee, O Lord. In this dull and wan greyness, in this dim ashen light, I taste the savour of the infinite spaces: the pure breeze of the open seas, the powerful breath of the free heights constantly fill my heart and penetrate my life; all barriers have fallen, within and around me, and I feel like a bird opening its wings for an unrestrained flight... awaiting, in order to soar upwards, the coming of something it expects without knowing what it is. As it no longer has any chains to check its flight, it no longer dreams of flying away. Conscious of its freedom, it does not enjoy it. ... ¹⁹

From 4 December, the entries follow almost day after day. "O Lord, I have once again begun to come to Thee daily," Mirra writes, "freeing myself for a few brief moments from an activity of which I know the complete relativity, even while I am engaged in it." She has returned to action and the ordinary consciousness, but the ladder is not withdrawn; she is free to make the ascent back to "the immutable Silence and the eternal Consciousness". What seems a descent into the obscurity and the ignorance was a necessity without which the being would not "grow wider and richer". The next day, she loses herself - mind, consciousness, all - in the depths of a divine ecstasy of immutable identification. How little we really know when we think that, to look for the Divine, we should turn towards the far inaccessible heavens! Rather let us turn towards the earth, and see if God is not before us. Mirra presently records such a resplendent experience:

It was a Japanese street brilliantly illuminated by gay lanterns picturesquely adorned with vivid colours. And as gradually what was conscious moved on down the street, the Divine appeared, visible in everyone and everything. One of the lightly-built houses became transparent, revealing a woman seated on a tatami [smooth, thick straw mat] in a sumptuous violet kimono

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embroidered with gold and bright colours. The woman was beautiful and must have been between thirty-five and forty. She was playing a golden samisen [guitar-like instrument]. At her feet lay a little child. And in the woman too the Divine was visible.²⁰

The vision of the Divine in a Japanese street is paralleled by Sri Aurobindo's Narayana Darshan in 1908 in the Alipur Jail during the early weeks of his ash ram vas within its precincts. Recalling that experience he said later at Uttarpara:

I looked at the jail that secluded me from men and it was no longer by its high walls that I was imprisoned; no, it was Vasudeva who surrounded me .... I looked at the bars of my cell, the very grating that did duty for a door and again I saw Vasudeva. It was Narayana who was guarding and standing sentry over me. Or I lay on the coarse blankets ... and felt the arms of Sri Krishna around me, the arms of my Friend and Lover .... I looked at the prisoners in the jail, the thieves, the murderers, the swindlers, and as I looked at them I saw Vasudeva, it was Narayana whom I found in these darkened souls and misused bodies.²¹

As it was for Sri Aurobindo in the Alipur Jail, it was for Mirra in a Japanese street eight years after; and then and ever after, for thly from the indwelling God who is also the Lord of the manifestation and the supreme Reality.

VIII

On 7 December, Mirra experiences a mood of perfect immobility and tranquillity. Outwardly she seems commonplace - but inwardly? She has beyonded the dualities and dichotomies; she has no more questionings, no more tainted layers of personality. She has reached a condition of total joy in total poise:

It is an immobility moving in the domain of external life, yet without belonging to it or seeking to escape from it. I hope for nothing, expect nothing, desire nothing, aspire for nothing and, above all, I am nothing; and yet happiness, a calm, unmixed happiness ... has come to dwell in the house of this body. ²²

The next day (8 December), Mirra has a serious dialogue vital being, and next the mind, respond to the call. But the mind observes that while there seems to be no limit to the range of movement of man's vital or his mind, his field of physical action alone is so constricted and petty. We may wonder why great ambitions, great ideas, the more they are sought to be

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translated into physical realities, the more are they apt to become mockeries and absurdities:

Whether he be the founder of a religion or a political reformer, he who acts becomes a petty little stone in the general edifice, a grain of sand in the immense dune of human activities.

If that's the case, where is the point in wasting one's energies in action, in some "lamentable adventure" unworthy of an instrument of the Divine? Why act at all, if all action is foredoomed to pettiness and puerility? "Fear nothing," comes the solemn assurance:

The vital being will not be allowed to set itself in motion, it will not be asked of thee to contribute all the effort of thy organising faculties, except when the action proposed is vast and complete enough to fully and usefully employ all the qualities of the being. What exactly this action will be, thou wilt know when it comes to thee .... I also warn both thee and the vital being that the time for the small, quiet, uniform and peaceful life will be over. There will be effort, danger, the unforeseen, insecurity, but also intensity. Thou wert made for this role.²³

The vital being is all alert for the fray, but the mind has its doubts still regarding its own competence for the great and supreme task that is to come. But once again the soothing answer comes from Above:

It is to prepare thee for this that I am working at the moment; this is why thou art undergoing a discipline of plasticity and enrichment. Do not worry about anything: power comes with the need .... I have appointed thee from all eternity to be my exceptional representative upon the earth, not only invisibly, in a hidden way, but also openly before the eyes of all men. And what thou weft created to be, thou wilt be.²⁴

IX

"Thou wert made for this role .... I have appointed thee from all eternity to be my exceptional representative upon the earth .... " The accents are unmistakable, and carry plenary authority. Mirra, the universal, revealed in the particular, Mirra who is Eternity descended into Time, Mirra the matrix of the unfolding future, Mirra has been tempered in all parts of her being for carrying out the great task in the evolutionary process which the Divine has assigned to her. At one moment she effects a purposeful dispersal of her energy at several points of action, at another she concentrates at a focal point; and it occurs to her that even an apparent imperfection or failure may be the means of initiating and ultimately

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accomplishing the needed terrestrial action. Mirra is of the Divine, she is the Divine; and she is also visibly a human being, with a sense O imperfection and her moments of distress. Can the Divine tolerate such imperfection, or be susceptible to suffering? For a satisfying answer We should turn to Sri Aurobindo's letter of 7 March 1935 to Nirodbaran:

The Divine does not need to suffer or struggle for himself; if he takes on these things it is in order to bear the world-burden and help the world and men; and if the sufferings and struggles are to be of any help, they must be real. A sham or falsehood cannot help. They must be as real as the struggles and sufferings of men themselves - the Divine bears them and at the same time shows the way out of them. Otherwise his assumption of human nature has no meaning and no utility and no value ....

... The manifestation of the Divinity in the Avatar is of help to man because it helps him to discover his own divinity, find the way to realise it. ²⁵

Even as a little match strikes fire, and sets other sticks on fire, so too the descended Divine, although seemingly human, emblazons the Divine and brings out the Divine in others.

X

On 12 December 1916, Mirra finds that though her mind experiences the Divine in everything, in the vastest and the noblest as also in the least, the most futile things and activities, it cannot help wondering, why the latter prevail over the former. But when it turns to the Divine for answer there comes always a comforting smile but no "precise answer", and so everything for it is "a constantly renewed cause for wonder"; a situation where the Indian mind would ask: Is it all divine māyā? Is it predestination?

Then, on 20 December, Mirra meditates on Shakyamuni, the Buddha, in the evening, and there follows a conversation. She has the feeling that she is both actor and Witness (like the two Vedic birds sitting on one tree), and she is still overtaken by a sense of her imperfection. In answer to her prayer, Shakyamuni tells her that he sees in her heart a diamond bathed in a golden light but, "The outermost covering is of a deep lustreless blue, a real mantle of darkness.²⁶ Why is she afraid of revealing her secret splendour? He exhorts her to "learn to radiate" and not "fear the storm". What if she were misunderstood? The generality of men would never 'understand' the Divine! The Shakyamuni too had hesitated in his time to come out with the whole arc of his 'supreme discovery', but had made the plunge after all:

Listen, I too hesitated for days, for I could foresee both my preaching and

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its results: the imperfection of expression and the still greater imperfection of understanding. And yet I turned to the earth and men and brought them my message. Turn to the earth and men - isn't this the command thou always hearest in thy heart? in thy heart, for it is that which carries a blessed message for those who are athirst for compassion.²⁷

He too in his time had reached up to the last rung of the ladder, almost plunged into the yawning Nihil - the ineffable Nirvana - stretching yonder ... yet he had finally turned back to bear the burden of terrestrial nature and "tread the dolorous way". She cannot do otherwise, and her . .diamond heart can withstand the harsh realities of the world:

It is unassailable in its perfect constitution and the soft radiance that flashes from it can change many things in the hearts of men. Thou doubtest thy power and fearest thy ignorance? It is precisely this that wraps up thy strength in that dark mantle of starless night. .. now the mystery of the manifestation seems to thee more terrible and unfathomable than that of the Eternal Cause .... And also to thy eyes I have shown thy heart so that thou canst thus see what the supreme Truth had willed for it, so that thou mayst discover in it the law of thy being.

Mirra had always heard in her heart the command to "turn to the earth and men". And in Sri Aurobindo's great epic, when Savitri is in the ultimate realm of Everlasting Day, the Un knowable offers her the quadruple boons of Peace, Oneness, Power and Bliss; but she answers every time that she will receive the boons only "for earth and men". ²⁸Again, in later years, on 11 May 1967, when one of her disciples, Surendra Nath Jauhar, complained that his work for the Divine was misunderstood by people, and even by some of the members of his own family, the Mother said:

... unless people are true yogis, out of the ego, completely surrendered to the Supreme, they can't understand. How could they? They see [all with] the exterior eyes and knowledge; they see exterior things and appearances. They don't see the inside.²⁹

Even so, in 1916, Shakyamuni's exhortation to Mirra was that, just as he had revealed his "precious secret" in spite of the imperfections in the means of expression so far developed by man and the greater imperfections in his faculties of understanding, she too should resolutely "turn to the earth and men" and not expect people to understand or appreciate her work.

While, in Mirra's waking hours, the problems of the earth and men often daunt and half-frighten her and make her doubt her ability to set it all aright, or even to make serious efforts towards that goal, in her hours of sleep and dreaming, and more especially in her moments of deep meditation, she is able to invoke the Divine Presence - or the presence of a

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Divine plenipotentiary like the Buddha - that alternately admonishes, inspires and reassures her. Mirra is firmly told that she cannot escape her destined role of consoler and redeemer of Man, her evolutionary role of assisting in the preordained process of terrestrial transformation.

The meditation of the next day refers again to the Buddha's message, but the rusts of the old diffidence will not be wholly wiped out. She hasa feeling of puzzlement too: love, love is the supreme truth, - "the first and highest manifestation" of the Divine's eternal Truth, - and Mirra has reached a stage when all seems bathed in love, and the old dichotomies seem irrelevant. But if there is nothing that isn't love, there's nothing that "may specially be called love" either! It only means that the rich hidden reservoir of universal love is yet to be canalised effectively and made to flow towards a thousand needed destinations "absolutely independent of circumstances and persons". Some residue of ignorance and some doubts and hesitations still remain, but Mirra hopes that Mitra, "who so perfectly symbolises" the Lord's truth of Love, will not fail to hear her prayer.

Three days later, without her mind being aware of It, a rising flood of universal Love began to pour into her heart which

overflowed under the pressure of the powers of love ... and the whole being began to love ... nothing and everything at the same time, what it knows and does not know, what it sees and has never seen; and gradually this potential love became effective love, ready to pour itself out upon all and everything, in beneficent waves, in an effective effulgence .... This was a beginning, a very weak beginning. ³⁰

And, in the silence of the evening, she hears a voice speaking to her in clear terms. Mirra has renounced everything - even wisdom and consciousness - for the sake of Love. Hers is the role of the spring "which always lets its waters flow abundantly for all, but towards which no waters can ever run back". A sublime felicity always "accompanies this inexhaustible expansion of love; for love is sufficient unto itself and needs no reciprocity". And the voice concludes:

Be this love in all things and everywhere, ever more widely, ever more intensely, and the whole world will become at the same time thy work and thy wealth, thy field of action and thy conquest. Fight with persistence to break down the last limits .... Fight in order to conquer and triumph; fight to overcome everything that was till today, to make the new Light spring forth, the new Example the world needs. Fight stubbornly against all obstacles, inner or outer. It is the pearl of great price which is offered for thy Realisation.³¹

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XI

More clearly, then, Mirra is made to become conscious of her special destiny, her unique burden of responsibility, a burden that is also an existential delight. In herself she is "small, weak and ordinary", yet the Grace of the Lord is hers, and invests her with joy.³² "Torment not thyself at all" says the Lord to her, "be confident like a child: art thou not myself crystallised for my work?" Mirra has only to love the Divine "in all things, everywhere and in all beings"³³. She will become the finished beautiful crystal, in her the Mother of Sorrows will be turned into the Mother of Light and the Madonna of Love, and be ready for the work of realising on the earth the Life Divine.

On the other hand, as Sri Aurobindo had warned her in his letter of 26 June, the unpredictable intervention of relapses and 'dark nights' can never be ruled out. And so on 30 December, Mirra has a poignant meditation: "Why, O Lord," she cries, "does my heart seem to me to be so cold and dry?" Her soul is alive within and one with the Universal and the outer being too is conscious; her mind knows and never forgets the one Reality, and the purified vital has acquired equality, calm and joy. Only the heart's action is inadequate, not on a par with the rest. Is it because the heart, being weak, is too easily tired? Is it because, being bruised, it is ineffective? The heart has all along been receiving and clasping the manifold gifts of Nature; but how about the return movement? It wants tries to pour out the true wine of life to all human beings; but it still loves in its human way, even if with "strength, constancy and purity", while the Divine wants it to love in a boundless unfolding of His sovereign power. And so Mirra asks, "Who will open these closed flood-gates ?"³⁴

With the birth of the New Year (1917), there is again a change of mood. Mirra is conscious of the generous gifts showered on her by the Divine. These boons - mental, psychical and even material - mean an invasion of Abundance, even as earlier she had been overwhelmed by Poverty - but, then, one is not more welcome than the other! She nowsees, on a consideration of the role of Love in the play of universal forces, that it is the great, the supreme, unifying Force.

As for action, between selfish and unselfish action, between action for personal advancement and action offered as a sacrifice to the Lord, there lay the wasteland of half measures and compromises, and selfish action was always self-stultifying action in the long run. Only that action which had as its motive "the radiating of Thy Grace" had any chance of easy accomplishment. Also, the law of action needn't exclude the play of beauty and the radiance of joy, for the Supreme is not only Truth, but Beauty and Ananda as well.

On 14 January, a prayer rises in Mirra's heart: "May all who are unhappy become happy, may the wicked become good, may the sick

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become healthy!" - which is rather like a child's demand to its father "with the certitude that it will be granted". Aspiration for beauty and joy - and love too, the source of all - and she wants this love, not for herself alone but for everybody. Hence her prayer of 23 January: '

Grant that this love, this beauty and joy which flood all my being that is hardly strong enough to bear their intensity, may also flood the conscious_ ness of all those I have seen, all those I have thought of and all those also whom I have never thought of or seen ....

O my sweet Lord, fill their hearts with joy, love and beauty.³⁵

But, then, if all is indeed the Divine, who is the giver, who is the receiver? Doesn't the Lord immanent everywhere both give and receive Himself "being sovereignly active and receptive, at once in all things, in eve being"?³⁶

Like Truth, like Love, which are laws of universal Nature, Beauty is another universal law:

In the world of forms a violation of Beauty is as great a fault as a violation of Truth in the world of ideas. For Beauty is the worship Nature offers to the supreme Master of the universe; Beauty is the divine language in forms.

And yet true Beauty - like any expression of the Divine - is difficult to discover; without "impersonality and renunciation of egoism" one may miss the soul of Beauty. In the unlikeliest places Beauty may lie imprisoned, and it needs the eye of understanding and the heart of compassion to release the Beauty in the Beast.

XII

On 27 March 1917, Mirra participates during her meditation in a sublime dialogue with the Divine. The Aspirant and the Divine stand face to face, the mists suddenly disperse, the sky clears, the Sun shines gloriously, and the Word of prophecy wafts its music across the expectant air. The Voice tells her that there is "the living form" and there are "the three inanimate images". The living form can penetrate the other three "in the calm of silence", and "unite them in order to transform them into a living and acting vesture". It seems that by "the three inanimate images" are meant the body, vital and mind that have to fuse electrically into a habitation for the soul.

The Voice tells her that it is not enough to be surrendered to the Lord and adhere to His gifts alone, she should awaken all that is latent in her. Illumination too is necessary for "in the limpid mirror of the mind will be reflected what thou shouldst know". This done, Mirra asks, "What dost Thou want to say to me that I must understand?" And then the Voice:

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Thy silence is not yet deep enough; something stirs within thy mind ....

The fire of the soul must be seen through the veils of the manifestation; but these veils must be clear and distinct like words traced upon a luminous screen. And all this should be preserved in the purity of thy heart, as the sown meadow is shrouded and protected under the snow.

Now that thou hast sown the seeds in the field and traced the signs on the screen, thou mayst return to thy calm silence, thou mayst go back to thy retreat to renew thy strength in a deeper and truer consciousness. Thou canst forget thy own person and find again the charm of the universal.

Taking "the veils of manifestation" to refer to "the three inanimate images" mentioned above, we might infer that the triple cages of body, vital and mind have to be surpassed in order for one to be sharer in the bliss of the Universal. Thereupon the Voice pronounces these benedictions om Mirra:

Thou wilt smile yet at thy destiny which speaks to thee.

Thy heart will use the returning strength.

Thou shalt be the woodcutter who ties the bundle of firewood.

Thou shalt be the great swan with outspread wings which purifies the sight with its pearly whiteness and warms all hearts with its white down.

Thou wilt lead them all to their supreme destiny. ³⁷

These fivefold functions seem to be an astonishing anticipation of those of Mahakali, Mahasaraswati, Mahalakshmi, Maheshwari and, as Sri Aurobindo describes it, "that mysterious and powerful ecstasy and Ananda ... that alone can heal the gulf between the highest heights of the supramental spirit and the lowest abysses of Matter". Then follow cautions and warnings and admonitions and revelations, all flaming forth in the language of prophecy:

Thou hast seen the hearth and seen the child. One attracted the other: both were happy; one because it burned, the other because it was warm.

Thou seest it in thy heart, this triumphant hearth; thou alone canst carry it without its being destructive. If others touched it, they would be consumed. Do not let them come too near it. The child should know that it must not touch the dazzling flame which attracts it so much. From far it warms it and illumines its heart; too close, it would reduce it to ashes.

One alone may dwell fearlessly within this heart; for he is the ray that has indeed kindled it. He is the salamander ever reborn in the fire.

Another is above, unafraid of being burnt: he is the immaculate phoenix, the bird come from the sky who knows how to return to it.

The first is the Power of realisation.

The other is the Light.

And the third the sovereign Consciousness. ³⁸

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The whole meditation has a mystic cast, made up of symbols and insights that seem to aim at conveying by flashes (not describing) the whole dialectic of aspiration, divine response and the resultant integration and transformation. By an amazing coincidence there is a close parallelism between the imagery of this meditation and that of Sri Aurobindo's poem "The Bird of Fire", written sixteen years later. "The Bird of Fire" is "the living vehicle of the gold fire of the Divine Light and the white fire of the Divine Tapas and the crimson fire of the Divine Love - and everything else of the Divine Consciousness".³⁹ We may perhaps equate these three aspects with Mirra's categories of Light, Power of Realisation and Sovereign Consciousness.

XIII

Three days later, on 30 March, Mirra presents forcefully the case for "taking no thought for oneself". To hanker after things is to court misery and enact folly. All the riches of the universe are within our reach provided we can break out of the cages of our "egoistic limits". In a universe ruled by a regal Benevolence, where is the room for bridges and barricades and human contrivances? The entry for 31 March is a paean of gratitude on behalf of the earth:

... an atom of Thy joy is sufficient to efface so much darkness, so many sorrows ....

At these blessed hours all earth sings a hymn of gladness, the grasses shudder with pleasure, the air is vibrant with light, the trees lift towards heaven their most ardent prayer, the chant of the birds becomes a canticle, the waves of the sea billow with love, the smile of children tells of the infinite and the souls of men appear in their eyes.⁴⁰

Serenity and happiness are hers, hers are the hours of rest before the reveille, hers the rich apparel of goodwill that friendly Japan and the courteous Japanese have offered her. In a mood of self-absorbed concentration - a mood that has now become second nature to her - Mirra comprehends Infinity in a grain of sand, and gathers Eternity in the thimble of the moment. Thus, for example, she records on 7 April:

A deep concentration seized on me, and I perceived that I was identifying myself with a single cherry-blossom, then through it with all cherry­blossoms, and, as I descended deeper in the consciousness, following a stream of bluish force, I became suddenly the cherry-tree itself, stretching towards the sky like so many arms its innumerable branches laden with their sacrifice of flowers ....

... What difference is there between the human body and the body of a

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tree? In truth, there is none: the consciousness which animates them is identically the same.⁴²

This readiness to identify herself with a cherry-blossom, or a cherry-tree, the sharing of its pulse-beats and the mingling in its flowing sap, all this is but symptomatic of Mirra's expansion of consciousness defying all change, exceeding all limits, careering up to the Silence, and returning at will too from it - for Consciousness is a ladder! On 28 April, Mirra has a vision of the divine Master again, and she receives gifts of Grace from the Eternal Mother:

Lo! here are flowers and benedictions! here is the smile of divine Love! It is without preferences and without repulsions. It streams out towards all in a generous flow and never takes back its marvellous gifts!⁴³

And thus, in Mirra's vision, the Eternal Mother, "her arms outstretched in a gesture of ecstasy... pours upon the world the unceasing dew of Her purest love".

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