On The Mother

CHAPTER 4

Agenda for the Future

I

Mirra met Paul Richard while they were fellow-seekers in the Cosmic Movement, in 1907. They were married on May 5,1911 and went to live at 9, Rue du Val de Grâce. As Mirra Richard, her outer existence had apparently entered a new phase, but deep in her being there reigned a calm that nothing could ruffle. In her daily life she still radiated the same sweetness and light as before, and those who came within its charmed sphere of influence thought it had surely a mystic origin. For, she had brought into her human form —

The calm delight that weds one soul to all,

The key to the flaming doors of ecstasy. ¹

Friends and fellow-seekers continued to meet in her apartment, everything there wore a beauty and poise, and the very air was vibrant with a rare expectancy and hope incommensurable.

Richard was a man widely read in the philosophical and religious literature of the West and the East. In March 1910 he departed for India on an electioneering mission on behalf of Paul Bluysen, one of the candidates from French India to the Chamber of Deputies in Paris. Hoping that during his stay there he would meet some realised yogis or saints, he thought of finding out, if possible, the inner significance of the Jewish emblem known as the Star of David or the Seal of Solomon. This was also the mystic symbol of Théon's Cosmic Movement and appeared on the front page of its organ, Revue Cosmique. Théon's symbol was a sort of Yogachakra - a "six-pointed star containing a lotus in its centre" which evoked "among other things the union of the active and passive principles and doubtless also the Wisdom of Chaldea, of Egypt and of Hindu India". The lotus within the square formed by the intersecting triangles was drawn free-hand and with shading. It is believed that it was the Mother who gave Richard some questions related to this symbol and "the symbolic character of the lotus", which were to be solved by some spiritual person in India. But when this belief was brought to the Mother's notice she clearly denied it, stating, "I never gave him any questions to be solved." However, it is true that as a member of Théon's group and one who was for some time connected with editing the journal, the Mother was already familiar with the symbol we know as Sri Aurobindo's.²

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II

Paul Richard arrived in Pondicherry in mid-April 1910. He was of course busy with politics - for that was the ostensible reason for his coming - but be also kept in the forefront his inner quest, and in fact he was more at home with intellectuals and students of spiritual philosophy than with politicians and electioneering strategists. Soon after his arrival, Richard made inquiries: was there any great spiritual adept at Pondicherry? People shook their heads at first, for in those days Pondicherry was little more than "a dead city .... It was like a backwater of the sea, a stagnant pool by the shore"; it was even akin to a "cemetery ... infested by ghosts and Goblins".³ An adept, a realised saint, a yogi - at Pondicherry? Knowing people raised their eyebrows, but at last one of Richard's friends suddenly remembered. Quite recently, a yogi from North India - a yogi doubled with a fiery patriot - had taken political asylum there, and perhaps he would serve M. Richard's purpose! Accordingly, Zir Naidu agreed to fix up an appointment, and thus it was that Paul Richard met Sri Aurobindo, who had as yet no home of his own and was staying as a guest in Calve Shankar Chetty's house. He was in near total seclusion too, and few strangers were permitted to see him. Richard was one of the rare exceptions, and this game of Destiny was fraught with consequences which nobody could foresee at the time.

Their talks ranged over a wide spectrum, from French-Indian politics to the probable future of mankind, and Sri Aurobindo learnt about Mirra, of her small group of seekers who met weekly in her room, of her occult and spiritual experiences, and of her dedicated ministry in the service of the Future. It was believed, we have said, that Mirra had given Richard several questions to be solved, including the significance of the symbol of the Cosmic Movement. What is especially significant is that the same symbol, with certain geometric modifications and the lotus drawn in outline diagrammatically, was to become Sri Aurobindo's own symbol of mystic knowledge and yogic action. The Mother's explanation of this symbol is:

The descending triangle represents Sat-Chit-Ananda.

The ascending triangle represents the aspiring answer from matter under the form of life, light and love.

The junction of both - the central square - is the perfect manifestation having at its centre the Avatar of the Supreme - the lotus.

The water - inside the square - represents the Multiplicity, the Creation.4

We may also conceive the lotus as standing for the opening of the human Consciousness to the Divine: the bud of aspiration receives the warmth of the rays of the Sun, and there is the splendour of efflorescence petal by petal, the pointed aspiration from below being met by the answering response from above. Indeed, all the mystique and marvel of Yoga

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Sadhana and Siddhi are embodied in the lotus symbol.

That Sri Aurobindo had made an overwhelming impression on Richard may be inferred from subsequent happenings. Wherever he went, he spoke in superlative terms of the Indian Yogi. Writing of "The Sons of Heaven", Richard said that they were of all religions, and indeed they transcended religions:

The religions are the paths below, but they are on the summit; on the summit where all the paths join, where all religions are accomplished, where Heaven becomes one with the earth.

Richard had traversed the earth looking for these "Sons of Heaven", and found them too, especially one "greater than all, a solitary, the Chosen of the future".⁵ An even less veiled reference to Sri Aurobindo occurred in the course of a speech he made to a Japanese audience:

The hour is coming of great things, of great events, and also of great men, the divine men of Asia. All my life I have sought for them across the world, for all my life I have felt they must exist somewhere in the world, that this world would die if they did not live. For they are its light, its heat, its life. It is in Asia that I found the greatest among them - the leader, the hero of tomorrow. He is a Hindu. His name is Aurobindo Ghose.6

There are no qualifications here, and many years later, when Dilip Kumar Roy met him in France and opened up a conversation on Sri Aurobindo, Richard spoke again with the same conviction and vigour of phrasing, and with a more detailed particularity:

I have not met his peer in the whole world. To me he is the Lord Shiva incarnate.... If Aurobindo came out of his seclusion today he would overtop all others as a king of kings. But he has chosen to decline his country's invitation to resume his leadership - a renunciation I look upon as the most convincing proof of his spiritual royalty ....

Sri Aurobindo would have risen to the top in any walk of life - as a philosopher, poet, statesman or leader of thought. But he spurned these lures - why? Only because his vocation was to be an instrument of God missioned to fulfil a human destiny which no other master-builder could have achieved.7

To the question "What exactly is Sri Aurobindo's ideal?", Richard gave the answer:

It is that Man must not rest content with his humanity, however brilliant or many-splendored. He has to win through to a new vision and follow it up to reach a peak his predecessors never dared to assault. Nietzsche had indeed heard the call- the call to transcend humanity .... But the mistake he made, as Aurobindo has pointed out, is that one who is going to fulfil humanity is

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not the superman of power but the Superman of Love who expresses his love through power. Love is necessary because when it is absent Man becomes not a god but a titan. But power is also necessary because without its support he can't help but fail to translate his ideal of Love into a real f1ower-fulfillment in the wilderness of life. This is the Call Aurobindo has heard - a call that once heard can be unheard no more. But you cannot hear such a fateful Call till you are chosen by the One on high who leads us on. It is He who has coronated Aurobindo as His Messiah. So march on he must, for harking to His Call has transformed him into what he is today - a herald of the Power that never came down to earth, though it was destined.8

III

Sri Aurobindo too, on his side, was impressed by Richard's background and personality, and his genuine sympathy for India and admiration for Indian culture. In the months that followed, he maintained a correspondence both with Richard and Mirra. Sri Aurobindo told the young men then living with him at the time about this "French lady from Paris who was a great initiate" and "was desirous of establishing personal contact with him at Pondicherry".⁹ Again, writing to Motilal Roy in April 1914, Sri Aurobindo said:

Richard is not only a personal friend of mine and a brother in the Yoga, but he wishes like myself, and in his own way works for a general renovation of the world by which the present European civilisatio!1 shall be replaced by a spiritual civilisation .... He and Madame Richard are rare examples of European Yogins who have not been led away by Theosophical and other aberrations. I have been in material and spiritual correspondence with them for the last four years.¹⁰

In the same letter Sri Aurobindo described Richard as "practically an Indian in belief, in personal culture, in sympathies and aspirations, one of the Nivedita type". In a later letter, Sri Aurobindo authorised Motilal Roy to make it known that "Richard is a Hindu in faith, a Hindu in heart and a man whose whole life is devoted to the ideal of lifting up humanity and specially Asia and India and supporting the oppressed against the strong, the cause of the future which is our cause against all that hampers and resists it."¹¹

The 1910 meeting between Sri Aurobindo and Richard had considerable significance in the context of future happenings which are part of the theme of the present biography. Principally, it paved the way for Richard's second visit to Pondicherry four years later in 1914, this time accompanied by Mirra. The contacts at the occult level between Sri Aurobindo and

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Mirra had first acquired a more formal basis as a result of the correspondence between them during 1910-14, and were now to lead at last to the destined meeting on the physical plane.

IV

Between 1911 and 1913, Mirra was associated with several related groups of seekers in Paris, including the Bahaist.¹² For some years already, Mirra's residence had served as the meeting place for some of the most ardent Truth-seekers and would-be Future-builders of the time. The effect of the meetings and discussions cannot be measured either by the smallness of the group that assembled ("small group of about twelve people") or even by the kind of consensus reached by them. The surviving few essays (now included in Words of Long Ago), most of which were really Mirra's keynote causeries, give us no doubt some idea of the tone of the meetings and the scope of the explorations, but their real impact must have been much wider and deeper. Like energy rays from a centre, thought-radiations too travel with unbelievable speed. A sensitive visitor's impressions, a book or pamphlet conveyed to inaccessible outposts, a fateful exchange of letters could be the means of encompassing a global diffusion of seminal ideas. A series of chance encounters, a series of closed-door discussions, a series of idealistic enunciations - such was the appearance. But the reality was quite different, and went much deeper.

A new dimension to these group meetings was added in the later months of 1910, when Paul Richard returned after meeting Sri Aurobindo at Pondicherry. What he told her about Sri Aurobindo - about the great range of his spiritual experiences and realisations, and his dynamic future­ oriented world-view - intensified Mirra's aspirations and made her re­ double her efforts to formulate an integral view and work towards an integral realisation of man's place and role in the universe.

One of the results of this development was the activisation of the group which now met regularly every week, usually on Wednesday evenings in Mirra's house on Rue du Val de Grâce. The attendance was about twelve, and the large aim of the members was to know themselves, to become master of themselves and seek new pathways to the future. Even more consciously than before, the seekers wished to give their discussions a purposive edge to think out means of bridging the gulf between aspiration and realisation, to achieve an integration of inner and outer life, and to set the individual securely in the wider social frame and engineer the movement of both towards a new future. As the Mother recapitulated in 1953, this was how the meetings were conducted:

A subject was given; an answer was to be prepared for the following week.

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Each one brought along his little work. Generally, I too used to prepare a short paper and, at the end, I read it out.¹³

The subject set for the first meeting was: What is the aim to be achieved, the work to be done? What are the means of achievement? Mirra's own answer was read out on 7 May 1912, and most of it was published in 1940 as Foreword to Words of the Mother. Mirra's vision peered steadily into the future of man's destiny, and also projected the role of man in hastening that destiny:

The general aim to be attained is the advent of a progressing universal harmony.

The means for attaining this aim, in regard to the earth, is the realisation of human unity through the awakening in all and the manifestation by all of the inner Divinity which is One.

In other words, - to create unity by founding the Kingdom of God which is within us all,¹⁴

The original draft had amplified the objectives by adding: "To become the perfect representatives on earth of the first manifestation of the Unthinkable in his three modes, his seven attributes and twelve qualities." In 1953, she explained what she meant by the three modes, the seven attributes and the twelve qualities.¹⁵ The three modes are life, light and love, which correspond to Sachchidananda. The seven attributes refer to the seven creations mentioned in occult traditions, wherein the present, the seventh, is the "creation of Equilibrium" and is the last one, i.e. there will now be a perpetual progress and no pralaya taking the world back into the Origin. As to the twelve qualities, they are the means by which the world "must realise a perfect equilibrium of all its elements". It is worth noting that life, light and love, the three modes, form the ascending triangle in Sri Aurobindo's symbol, and the twelve outer petals in the Mother's symbol represent her twelve essential qualities.

V

At the time Mirra made her draft of a master plan for humanity's progress, she had not met Sri Aurobindo, but Paul Richard had and he may have given her some idea of the Indian seer's thinking on the subject. Possibly this influenced the phrasing here and there, but basically the 1912 document only set down Mirra's own dreams and visions of the future.

A great change - a supreme transformation - is to be effected, both on !he individual and the social (or collective) planes, and these are to be integrated into a harmonious and creative whole. In Sri Aurobindo's

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poem, The Rishi, (written in 1907 and revised in 1911), the Arctic seer exhorts the King:

Seek Him upon the earth. For thee He set

In the huge press

Of many worlds to build a mighty state

For man's success,

Who seeks his goal. Perfect thy human might,

Perfect the race.

For thou art He, O King. Only the night

Is on thy soul

By thy own will. Remove it and recover

The serene whole

Thou art indeed, then raise up man the lover

To God the goal.¹⁶

The individual acts upon the aggregate, and the aggregate upon the individual, and it is the inner or veiled Divinity that should flower in both, and engender the desired transformation. While the individual's inner development will be proportionate to the measure of his progressive union with the Divine, this should not mean an escape from life into the Transcendent, a divorce from the social aggregate and the general environment. Perfect thy human might, Perfect the race.

If, then, the goal be a "progressing universal harmony", the means for achieving it on earth is the realisation of human unity through awakening and manifesting "the inner Divinity which is One" in individual and collectivity alike. More specifically, the task before us is fourfold: firstly, for each individual to realise in himself the one Divine Presence; secondly, individualising "the states of being that were never till now conscious in man and, by that, to put the earth in connection with one or more of the fountains of universal force that are still sealed to it"; thirdly, "to speak again to the world the eternal word under a new form adapted to its present mentality"; and, fourthly, "collectively, to establish an ideal society in a propitious spot for the flowering of the new race, the race of the Sons of God". The "states of being" and "fountains of universal force", so far foreign to the earth or human consciousness, are what Sri Aurobindo saw in general, when he was an undertrial prisoner in the Alipur Jail in 1908 as the overhead or above-mind states or powers which he was later to name as Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, and Intuition, leading on to Overmind and Supermind. Making a reference to her 1912 statement in a conversation on 11 November 1953, the Mother said:

There are superposed states of consciousness, and there are new regions which have never yet been manifested on earth, and which Sri Aurobindo

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called supramental .. One must get identified with them, then bring them into the outer consciousness, and manifest them in action.17

As regards giving to the world again "the eternal word under a new form" , 't was to be "the synthesis of all human knowledge". The Word, Logos, the source of all knowledge is the same, it is eternal; but age after age there is need for a new reading, a new formulation, of the eternal Word in the collective experience and intelligible idiom of the present time. When Richard saw Sri Aurobindo in 1910 and they shared ~heir experiences, speculations and their hope for the future, there was doubtless some talk of the possibility of working towards a vast conspectus of knowledge. Reminiscing in January 1939, Sri Aurobindo said about the origin of the Arya in 1914:

Richard came and said: "Let us have a synthesis of knowledge." I said: "All right. Let us synthesise."¹⁸

Mirra's 1912 reference to the establishment of "an ideal society in a propitious spot" was a piece of pure divination. She had certainly no idea then that an Ashram was going to take root and flourish at Pondicherry. As she remarked in 1953 in response to a question, "Where did you decide to found the Ashram?"

I never decided anything at all! I had simply said that it had to be done. I did not have the least idea, except that I had a great desire to come to India. But still, I did not even know if it corresponded to something. I had decided nothing at all. Simply, I had seen that state, what had to be done.19

Nevertheless, with our hindsight we may surmise that some foreshadow of the Ashram that was to come into existence in 1926 was caught by her practically fourteen years earlier! She would herself have preferred, it seems, to locate the Ashram among the mountains, but Sri Aurobindo liked the sea; and so it was Pondicherry that came to be the "propitious spot" .²⁰

In the second part of Mirra's manifesto, there is perhaps a slight shift in emphasis: from the human to the terrestrial. There is to be a "terrestrial transformation and harmonisation" comprising both individual and social change, with the two movements favourably reacting upon each other; and to initiate this integral process of change and transformation, a group ­ "hierarchised, if possible" - should come into existence. The members of the group should first perfect themselves; second, by the force of their words and the greater power of their own lives, they should attract others to this way of life; and so finally "found a typic society or reorganise those that already exist". We thus return to the early Aurobindonian exhortation: Perfect thy human might, Perfect the race.

So many seminal ideas are prodigally scattered in the 1912 statement that all Sri Aurobindo's writings and the entire story of Mirra's life and of

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her manifestation and ministry may have to be cited to bring out its full implications. The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother - the Ashram to be and its vast and intricate network of activities - Auroville, the City of Dawn, to be founded fifty-six years after: all can be seen in the manifesto, even if only as the tiny seed that contains the proliferations of the massive banyan tree.

Begin with the individual, even one individual; and ultimately alchemise the race, the earth itself! The individual has to awaken to the divine light within, he has to seek and find his soul; only then will he be in rapport with the soul of humanity, the soul of the world, which are also of the divine substance and essence. In his external action, the individual has to find his right place in the "hierarchy", not the hierarchy of money, status or power, but the true spiritual hierarchy. Ordinarily, the term "hierarchy" raises considerations of superiority and inferiority, but for Mirra it was only "the organisation of functions and the manifestation in action of the particular nature of each person".²¹ There is doubtless a perfect harmony and a total hierarchy beyond Space and Time, and this is to be one day realised on the earth:

Perhaps this will be one of the results of the supramental transformation: the world will be ready for a perfect, spontaneous, essentially true hierarchical manifestation - and without any kind of coercion - where everyone will become aware of his own perfection.22

It is thus the spiritual, not the ordinary, hierarchy that Mirra had in mind when she spoke of the formation, if possible, of a hierarchised group. Even as there are numberless aspects of the Divine, there are also as many roads to the Divine; one may follow one road or another, seize and manifest one aspect or another. Such contact or identification, however partial, could still be perfect in its own right. But one may also make an integral approach to the Divine, become integrally united with the Divine, and integrally manifest the Divine: and that alone will be a complete or total union:

And this capacity for contact is perhaps what constitutes the true hierarchy of beings ....

... the point at which you are identified with the Divine is perfect in itself, that is to say, your identification is perfect in itself, at this point, but the number of points at which you are identified differs immensely ... ,

... And so he who is able to identify himself in his totality with the Divine is necessarily, from the point of view of the universal realisation, on a much higher level of the hierarchy than one who could realise Him only at a single point.

And that is the true meaning of the spiritual hierarchy .... ²³

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VI

Mirra's manifesto for the future, a matter of hardly three pages, and originally given in two instalments, although rather too analytical in appearance and even repetitive in part, is nevertheless a remarkably comprehensive enunciation of the ends and means before modern man "who needs must choose between the abyss of imminent destruction and the steep and narrow golden path of endless possibility. Early in her life, certain dreams and visions had come to her with a persistent frequency, certain avenues had seemed to open up, whose materialisation or fulfilment was to be promoted during the wide expanse of her later life. She had already come across several people with a high aspiration and a keen urge to move towards new horizons, but the tiresome struggle for existence was wearing them down. Although very young at the time, Mirra had wanted to create a little sheltered world where such sincere aspirants would be freed from the exhausting preoccupations of earning and spending, but assured of the material necessities of life - food, clothing, shelter - so that they could turn towards the higher life. And in her middle age she was actually to be in a position to organise such a community life for a large group of spiritual aspirants. Thus, in the wider background 'of the inspiring epic of her divine ministry and manifestation, this 1912 manifesto has a key place, like the corner-stone of a magnificent edifice.

VII

After her elected group had accepted Mirra's manifesto as their own - as mankind's own - credo of ends and means, the subsequent weekly meetings from 14 May to 2 July 1912 were to concentrate on some of the minutiae of the programme. Questions of a more or less precise and practical nature were posed, and detailed answers to them were formulated. The members read out the answers they had prepared in the course of the week, and Mirra's own formulations concluded the proceedings. All these eight essays by Mirra are included in Words of Long Ago.

The answer to the first question - What is my place in the universal Work? - was almost a corollary to Mirra's concept of spiritual hierarchy. Everyone has a role uniquely his own, which he alone can play to perfection when he is in tune with the Infinite within himself. No doubt most people, forgetting this, are apt to run on false trails, injure them­ selves and feel frustrated. But then it is not all that easy to know what exactly is one's true vocation. In this world, work cannot be avoided, work indeed is essential; but what is the particular work we shall seek to do - in what spirit shall we do it? Conventional thinking brands some kinds of work as inferior, and others as respectable or superior; and different

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grades of emoluments are attached to these several kinds of work. Not unnaturally, then, men seek less strenuous, less degrading, but more lucrative, more respectable, kinds of work. Hence the mad scramble and suicidal competition and rat race in the present-day world. There are the fierce pulls of the ego, of the family, and of the ruling fashions of society and the market-place. In this distracting situation, what we can do is to follow with honesty and goodwill a provisional occupation that will engage our talents and energies, hoping that sooner or later the mist will clear and we will discover - or stumble upon - our true vocation. And the decisive turn comes when, not the feeding of the ravenous ego, but love of the earth and men, is the real motive force behind our actions. Self-knowledge and self-control are necessary, and even more needed is the capacity for self­ effacement:

We should never tell ourselves, openly or indirectly, "I want to be great, what vocation can I find for myself in order to become great?"

On the contrary, we should tell ourselves, "There must certainly be something I can do better than anyone else, since each one of us is a special mode of manifestation of the divine power which, in its essence, is one in all. However humble and modest it may be, this is precisely the thing to which I should devote myself, and in order to find it, I shall observe and analyse my tastes, tendencies and preferences, and I shall do it without pride or excessive humility, whatever others may think I shall do it just as I breathe, just as the flower smells sweet, quite simply, quite naturally, because I cannot do otherwise. "²⁴

The second question - What is the greatest obstacle in ourselves to our consecration to impersonal work? - goes to the heart of the matter. The question is relevant because, while the uniqueness of the individual is a fact of our everyday life, it is nevertheless fatal to clothe it with the lurid robes of arrogance and conceit. The paradox of the human situation is that the soul within, which is of the Divine essence, being lodged in the physical or material body, partakes of its density, obscurity and intractability. Because of this imperfection of matter, we cherish the illusion of egoistic separativity, think always in terms of attracting things to ourselves and putting ourselves in opposition to the rest of the world. Also, our imprisonment in the density of matter forces a heavy conservatism upon us that bars the way to a radical change and transformation of ourselves. The existence of variety needn't mean actual division and fragmentation. As in Indra's net of pearls, each pearl reflects all the rest, so too different individuals needn't mean so many jarring notes but should fuse into a symphony:

If we consider ourselves as cells of an immense living organism, we shall immediately understand that a cell, which is dependent for its own life on the life of the whole and can separate itself from it only at the risk of destruction, does in fact have its own special part to play in the whole.

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But this role is precisely what is most profoundly spontaneous in our being ... the more fully we give ourselves to an impersonal action, the more this role will gain in strength and clarity within us ... since it is our special way of manifesting the Divine Essence, which is one in everything and in all.²⁵

The third question - What is the psychological difficulty which I can best study by experience? - provokes Mirra to undertake a most penetrating analysis of everyday human psychology, followed by a radical solution. It is true different people have their respective vicious moles of nature that condition their everyday behaviour. Perhaps the most common difficulty, however, is "excessive sensitiveness". This arises, partly because of our tendency to personalise everything, seeing everything only in close relation to ourselves, and discovering all sorts of reasons for grovelling in the grooves of sadness and frustration; and partly because of a kind of ready sensibility that dwells all too promiscuously on the spectacle of human suffering, weakening ourselves in the process. We witness, often enough, people succumbing to the desire for cheap martyrdom. "Service" and "sacrifice", like Siamese twins, figure in populist pronouncements. Is such sentimental suffering necessary? Is it wise? Sympathetic martyrdoms, like sympathetic strikes, lead us nowhere. What actually happens is that, "consciously or not, instead of sacrificing yourself for the good of others, you sacrifice yourself for the pleasure of it, which is perfectly absurd and of no benefit to anyone". ²⁶ Such morbid or infantile sensitiveness is a "supra­nervous" phenomenon, and does not even square always with genuine sincerity of feeling. It does not of course mean that one should be just insensitive, crude or callous, but a spendthrift extravagance of sensibility does no good to the man who suffers or the object that inspires the suffering. The right attitude, then, should be to rise above suffering in all circumstances:

Indeed, the expression of a true psychic life in the being is peace, a joyful serenity.

Any suffering is therefore a precious indication to us of our weak point, of the point which demands a greater spiritual effort from us ....

...the only way to come to the help of men is to oppose to their suffering an immutable and smiling serenity which will be the highest human expression of Impersonal Love.27

VIII

The next three topics - What improvement can we bring to our meetings? How can one become master of one's thought? The Power of Words - are

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strictly functional. While work is basic to human life, a great deal of it has to be done through groups or organisations, and thought and word are the sinews of work and they play their own part in making groups and organisations function usefully, smoothly and effectively. An excessive formalism or rigidity is the enemy of all organisations, which should really learn to function with the freedom and force of Nature's secret processes; and if the individual links are strong, the chain - the group or the organisation - will also be cumulatively strong. When the members meet, they should create "a contemplative atmosphere" of calm inwardness; "an atmosphere of spirituality is sometimes a far greater help than an exchange of words". And whether it be an individual or a group, real strength comes only from an identification with the Divine:

If we enlighten and illumine our intellectual faculties, our group will manifest the light. If we allow impersonal love to permeate our whole being, our group will radiate love ....

In short, let us become the living cells of the organism we want to bring forth .... ²⁸

As for mastery of thought, we should cultivate self-scrutiny, discrimination and thought-control till we are able to "seek in ourselves the idea which seems to be the highest, the noblest, the purest and most disinterested and, until the day we find a more beautiful idea to replace it, to make it the pivot around which a mental synthesis will be built up". ²⁹ From time to time it would be prudent to give rest to the mind, and let it wait in patience for the dawn of new thought. Above all, we should know "how to rely with childlike trust on the Great Supreme Force, the Divine Force that is One in all beings and things". Right discipline is certainly needed to achieve mastery of thought; but equally necessary is the attitude of unqualified surrender to the Divine, so that we may be moulded like pliant clay at the hands of the Supreme.

With the mastery of thought, mastery of word will come too, but first there is the caveat entered against the senseless waste of words - a very pertinent warning! Words by themselves are as valueless as uncharged batteries. The charging is done by the power of the personality that utters the words. There is a primordial identity between thought and spoken word, and often words get loaded connotatively over a period of time through long association. There are also words of mantric potency - AUM, for example, or the Chinese TAO - that at once evoke feelings of peace, serenity and timelessness. And occasionally the charged word - say, a mantric benediction - can become "endowed with the power of transmitting true gifts, for example, the gift of healing" . ³⁰

What is the most useful idea to spread and what is the best example to set? Quite obviously, the idea that should gain currency is that man carries within him the seeds of perfect power, wisdom and knowledge; and these

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are also at the heart or centre of all beings, since the world, the universe, is quintessentially of the same divine substance. And whoever will "live integrally this thought of the One God in all" sets the best example. More particularly, people should know that Man has yet to evolve from his current obscurities to what he is potentially:

True progressive evolution, an evolution which can lead man to his rightful happiness, does not lie in any external means, material improvement or social change. Only a deep and inner process of individual self-perfection can make for real progress and completely transform the present state of things, and change suffering and misery into a serene and lasting contentment.31

As Rainer Maria Rilke remarks:

Nowhere, beloved, can world exist but within.

Life passes in transformation. And ever diminishing

Vanishes what's outside.32

Light beckons to light, and the divine light lit at the heart of living creatures and at the core even of matter and all material things is the same, "whence follow as a result the essential unity of all and their solidarity and fraternity". If the battle is won for the individual, it will then be possible to bring together a sufficient number of spiritually emancipated and illumined men and women, and thereby create conditions for the flowering of a new race of supermen or "Sons of God".

IX

The last of the questions - Which minds are nearest to me and what is my ideal work among them? - has a practical cast, but with spiritual implications. If inner illumination, integral transformation, is the main aim of individual life, this is to be sought, not as a self-sufficient end, but as a means to a further end - the transformation of the environment through radiation from these illumined centres of realisation. It is not man as he is, this bundle of ego-stuff and of ironies of circumstance, this wailing heir to desire, death and incapacity, but man as he might be - man who has recovered the veiled divinity within - who will then contact other men who have been likewise emancipated, and strive to achieve a perfect and integral understanding with them. Since there are four principal avenues of consciousness - physical, vital, mental, psychic - we may try to establish contact with other people (friends, the family, the neighbourhood) at one or more levels, but the psychic contact, which is the most important, is established through "converging spiritual aspirations". In such a world of

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spiritually liberated men and women, the medium of understanding will be the spirit's wideness and universality:

When we become one with the inner Godhead, we become one in depth with all, and it is through Her and by Her that we must come into contact with all beings. Then, free from all attraction and repulsion, all likes and dislikes, we are close to what is close to Her and far from what is far Her.

Thus we learn that in the midst of others we should become always and more and more a divine example of integral activity both intellectual and spiritual, an opportunity which is offered to them to understand and enter upon the path of divine life.³³

This, then, is the conclusion of the matter: there shall be no running away from - no betrayal of - earth-life, even with all its present limitations. Karma is not to be avoided, either when we are engaged in inner development, or when the development is complete. Even the Buddha must become the 'Bodhisattva', give up his hard-won 'Arhatship', and return to the fellowship of other human beings, not only those who a Bodhisattvas like him, but also those who are yet blindly chained to the revolving wheel of terrestrial life.

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