On The Mother

CHAPTER 5

Approaches to the Divine

I

On the threshold of a vast inner change and development, - a revolution and transformation in terms of the Spirit, - Mirra now sought other means than group discussions, more highly sensitised and delicate means than essays in persuasion, to prepare for the imminent inner change, to accelerate the spiritual growth and development. These new engines of Mirra's sadhana - new only in the sense that they were now more frequently and fully brought into play - were prayer and meditation. With the spiritual seeker, prayer is no vulgar mendicancy for a material gift or advantage, say, success in an election or examination, business prosperity, or even mere release from physical distress or pain. Prayer has more fundamental aims, other resplendent potencies, and the true spiritual aspirant, conscious of these far aims, mobilises by the power of prayer these supernal forces. Prayer is indeed a kind of ineffable music played in three octaves - Adoration, Communion, Cooperation - and these waves of prayerful ecstasy comprehend, in Evelyn Underhill's words,

first all our personal access to, and contemplation of, the Supernatural Reality of God. Next, because of this possible access, all our chances of ourselves becoming supernatural personalities, useful to God. Last, and because of this, all our capacity for exerting supernatural action on other souls. For the state of adoration opens the soul's gates to the Supernal; and that Supernal, invading and controlling more and more of its will and love, enters into a loving communion with it which issues in an ever closer cooperation, limitless in its energising power. Hence prayer, in a soul which is completely patient of the supernatural, is literally without ceasing, because the whole of its action is supernaturalised.¹

When Coleridge writes ­

Like a youthful hermitress,

Beauteous in a wilderness,

Who, praying always, prays in sleep -

he but describes this condition of constant relationship with God through prayer. The problem that faces the spiritual aspirant is constantly to extend the area and depth of the prayer, to turn what begins as an occasional, intermittent, imperfect surge of the heart into a permanent, steady and all­ embracing quality of the soul that subtly influences and transforms all thoughts, feelings, joys and all the multitudinous motions of the body, heart and mind.

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There is, however, a singular interlinking between the individual who prays and the ineffable object of his prayer. "He who chooses the Infinite," says Sri Aurobindo, "has been chosen by the Infinite."² Dr. Inge quotes this relevant passage from the Revelations of Juliana of Norwich, the fourteenth-century English mystic:

But our Lord said to me, "I am the ground of thy beseechings: first, it is My will that thou have it; and then I make thee to wish for it; and then I make thee to beseech it, and thou beseechest it. How then should it be that thou shouldst not have thy beseeching?" ... For all things that our good Lord maketh us to beseech, Himself hath ordained them to us from [times] without beginning.³

We raise our hands in prayer, apparently of our own volition; yet "it is in truth this all-penetrating God who by His secret humble pressure stirs man to make this first movement of will and love".⁴ The spontaneity is real enough, yet not utterly or altogether so; we raise our hands in prayer, we offer these flowers to Him - but have our hands and these flowers an existence apart from Him? St. Teresa, developing a familiar simile beloved of mystics, says that our soul is like a garden, untilled and barren, overgrown with weeds; God plucks out the weeds, and the plants and flowers have to be watered by our prayer. And this prayer, this spiritual nourishment, is of four kinds: you may draw water from a deep well; you may use a water-wheel hung round with buckets; you may make a stream flow through the garden; or you may invoke the rains from Above. The sensible gardener will spurn none of these means, for all have their place; but the shower from Heaven is what makes all the others possible, and hence it is the most efficacious and nectarean of all.

Meditation, although its controlling principle is different, is closely affiliated to prayer; and being complementary in their aims and functions, they together contribute to the divinisation of man and the humanisation of God, twin processes culminating in the intimate fellowship of man and God. There is accordingly established a concordat between the devotee and the Divine, a perfectly attuned and resonantly fruitful camaraderie:

It is here, in this humble yet intimate, ardent yet little understood communion of the small human self with a present and infinite Companion - an 'immanent Ultimate' within the compass of man's heart, but beyond the span of his conceiving mind - that the transforming power exercised by prayer on human personality is most clearly seen.⁵

Prayer is thus not inaptly described as the premium that insures the possibility - certainty - of such a real meditative intimacy with the Infinite, such a life of unity with the Divine. We needn't, however, be too absurdly dogmatic regarding the causal relationship between 'prayer' and 'meditation'.

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What is important to remember is that they are both vitally related to in the Spirit.

II

Mirra had already reached an advanced stage of occult knowledge and inner development when she commenced the new spiritual adventure of regular meditation. and prayer, and their faithful transcription day. after day. This was an individual opening out to the Unknown, an intimate dialogue with the Divine. Every day she sat at dawn near the window of her room in No. 9, Rue du Val de Grâce, with a Kashmiri shawl wrapped closely about her. After a brief session of intense meditation, she set down on paper her ruminations, feelings, hopes, aspirations, anxieties, visions and experiences. Being a private and a spontaneous recordation, she kept this spiritual diary scrupulously under lock and key; it was, after all, a secret between the Divine and herself.

These diary-jottings, these articulate approaches to the Infinite, these pointer-readings of Mirra's mystical life began "several weeks" before the keynote entry on 2 November 1912, and were to continue for a few years with a more or less sustained regularity; then the entries were to become fewer and far between, and at last stop altogether in 1931. In all they were to fill five stout notebooks, but it was only afterwards that their contents were to be revealed even to Sri Aurobindo who advised the publication of a selection. This was how they appeared in 1932 in the original French as Prieres et Méditations de la Mère. By a supreme act of self-abnegation, the Mother was later to consign to the flames in a boiler in the Ashram the rest of the work, perhaps the greater part.

The selected work as published in French has been described by the French poet and mystic, Maurice Magre, as "the highest perfection in style of which French is capable", an opinion shared by many who are entitled to speak with authority about French writing. In 1941 English translations of 61 of the prayers were published under the title Prayers and Meditations. There are manuscripts in Sri Aurobindo's hand of several of them. For the rest, there are manuscripts written by a disciple and extensively revised by So Aurobindo. A fuller edition was published in 1948. Like the French, the English version is a classic in its own right. As Rishabhchand puts it:

These Prayers are no glistening gossamer of imaginative idealism nor an Imposing fabric of theological speculation, but undeniable facts of spiritual realisation, - truths seen, words heard, forms touched, at least as concretely as the objects of our senses, but all in a world or worlds of light, sealed to the sense-bound consciousness of man.⁶

The English renderings perhaps miss here and there the simple beauty, the

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radiant native force, the inevitable glow of phrasing, the compellingly insinuating rhythms of the French original. But the work of translation too has been very sensitively carried out, and it is the general feeling that much of the fervour, the mystic élan and the poetic flavour of the original has been retained in the English version as well. There is no doubt that the work, whether in French or in English, is a superb embodiment of the lyra mystica, and a spiritual testament for all time.

III

The last of the weekly 'essays', now included in Words of Long Ago, was read to the Idea group on 2 July 1912. Mirra seems to have begun writing down her prayers and meditations not long afterwards, at first not quite clear in her mind as to the exact purpose of the daily exercise. But by 2 November 1912, she was able to see things clearly:

It has taken me several weeks to learn that the reason for this written meditation, its justification, lies in the very fact of addressing it daily to Thee. In this way I shall put into material shape each day a little of the conversation I have so often with Thee.⁷

At its most rewarding, meditation becomes a sheer waiting on God, all distracting and disturbing thought-impulses and thought-currents being rejected or turned back, and the mind's interior realms cleansed and becalmed and sanctified. Expectantly waiting on God, a prayer might rise from the heart's sanctuary for an opening of the gateway to the Divine. All prayer is supplication, making a request, articulating a hope, all in the immediacy of God; approaching God, waiting on Him, storming one's way past the gateway to the Sanctuary - almost engaging in a secret conversation with God! The whole point of the meditation, of the prayer, is that the Divine can be approached, the Divine can be spoken to and the Divine can be experientially known. And when approached or appealed to, He too will speak to us, and meet us more than halfway. One prays, and one listens too - one meditates in expectancy - one constantly thinks of oneself and the Divine (the "I" and the "Thou"), till at last there is a bridging of the distance, there is a melting, a meeting, a fusion, an identity. The whole object of the meditation and prayer is to cleanse oneself, get near to the Divine, obliterate all diffidence and difference, and expose oneself to and commune with the Power and the Glory of His Divine Grâce.

The Prayers and Meditations frequently speaks of "I", signifying Mirra the writer, who is herself a portion of the Divine essence, and "Thou", or the Divine, the Master, the Supreme Lord. Mirra is potentially the Divine, she aspires to be one with Him inseparably, - and, in later years, she was to be known and loved and adored as the Mother, the Mother Divine. Now,

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in Prayers and Meditations, who is addressing whom? How are we to understand these communications from the Divine to the Divine? When this question was posed to Sri Aurobindo in 1936, he offered an explanation or interpretation. which will help us to get into the spirit of these extraordinary outpourings and recordations:

The Prayers are mostly written in an identification with the earth-conscious­ ness. It is the Mother in the lower nature addressing the Mother in the higher nature, the Mother herself carrying on the Sadhana of the earth­ consciousness for the transformation praying to herself above from whom the forces of transformation come. This continues till the identification of the earth-consciousness and the higher consciousness is effected .... It is the Divine who is always referred to as Divine Maitre and Seigneur. There is the Mother who is carrying on the sadhana and the Divine Mother, both being one but in different poises, and both turn to the Seigneur or Divine Master.⁸

That is of course an over-view, a master-key; but how any individual entry is to be understood would depend on the context, and also on the reader's own background of readiness to rise to the level of the particular "dialogue with the Divine".

The first of the diary-entries seems to offer a clue to the entire series of marvellous lyrics in prose. It is a key-beginning as it were, a cardinal announcement:

Although my whole being is in theory consecrated to Thee, O Sublime Master, who art the life, the light and the love in all things, I still find it hard to carry out this consecration in detail.. .. I shall make my confession to Thee as well as it may be; not because I think I can tell Thee any thing­ for Thou art Thyself everything .... Still by turning towards Thee, by immersing myself in Thy light at the moment when I consider these things, little by little I shall see them more like what they really are, - until the day when, having made myself one in identity with Thee, I shall no more have anything to say to Thee, for then I shall be Thou. This is the goal that I would reach; towards this victory all my efforts will tend more and more. I aspire for the day when I can no longer say "I", for I shall be Thou.⁹

Always the problem is to promote a progressive diminution and the ultimate annulment of the deceptive feeling of separativity that divides the "I" from the "Thou", for this really is the source of all error, uneasiness and pain. The cure for the error and the pang is to lose oneself in the Other, and experience "the universal unity determining an absolute interdependence of all actions": in other words, to live the integral unity and harmony of the One in the manifoldness of the phenomenal play.

In the entry of the next day (3 November), there is a reference to the Divine response to the human aspiration, for in spiritual life one of the

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basic laws is that Aspiration (or ascent) and Response (or descent) are equal and opposite, and result in a meeting, a synthesis, a creative leap forward. Mirra too experiences the descent of the Light and Love Divine; the union is consecrated; it only remains that the Divine should be installed as Master of the Works as well.

IV

The dynamic basis of the daily companionship being thus securely established, there surges henceforth with effortless ease and force a radiant fountain of aspiration, adoration, communion and spiritual action - an astonishing spurt of the spirit's inexhaustible riches. Similes garnered from the quarries of the awakened soul, crowds of marvellous apprehensions, chains of chastened and purified ratiocination, deep draughts from the vats of ecstasy, sparks from the anvil where Spirit acts on spirit to temper and transform - these are the alphabet of the daily prayers and meditations. They are a diary, a record, of Mirra's pleadings, strivings, fleeting visions, partial realisations, renewed visions, fresh realisations; and, as we follow the golden sequence of the Prayers and Meditations, we too cannot help partaking something of the widening and heightening, something too of the transcendent light and life of this other-existence which is as yet so inherently this-existence, however coiled and veiled within.

A fortnight later, on 19 November, there is an ambrosial affirmation:

I said yesterday to that young Englishman who is seeking for Thee with so sincere a desire, that I had definitively found Thee, that the Union was constant. Such is indeed the state of which I am conscious. All my thoughts go towards Thee, all my acts are consecrated to Thee; Thy Presence is for me an absolute, immutable, invariable fact, and Thy Peace dwells constantly in my heart.¹⁰

Yet, although there is "union", the realisation of utter "identity" is still to come. Mirra's thoughts and acts flow towards the Divine; His Presence and Peace fill her whole being. This is union, but still it is only a union reared on the I-Thou duality, which is indispensable at this stage. The further move has to be from the I-Thou union in duality to the I-Thou union in ineffable identity, and this too will come about in due course, for Mirra's faith is unflagging, and so she reaffirms it over and over again:

Everywhere and in everything around me Thou revealest Thyself and in me Thy Will and Consciousness express themselves always more and more clearly even to the point of my having almost entirely lost the gross illusion of "me" and "mine". If a few shadows, a few flaws can be seen in the great

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Light which manifests Thee, how shall they bear for long the marvellous brightness of Thy resplendent Love?

While the cosmic Consciousness and Will gather up "me" and "mine" into a unity that passeth understanding, the illusive shadows of ignorance and suffering flit restlessly now and then till they disappear in the sunrise of His Knowledge and the splendour of His Love. This Consciousness that fashions her being could be described as a great diamond ... in its cohesion, firmness, pure limpidity, transparency ... a brilliant and radiant flame in its ... ", but it is much more, for in its experience "nearly all sensation inner and outer" is exceeded, leaving only "Thou everywhere and always; nothing but Thou in the essence and in the manifestation."¹¹

Two days later, Mirra meditates on the interconnection between outer and inner life. Meditation, contemplation; outer effort, achievement ­ these are complementary activities, one stimulating the other. Through the forge of "works" to illumination; and through inner enlightenment to better and more purposeful work! But pride and complacency are to be kept away: "The work [of transformation] must be long and slow even for the best... none can escape the need of innumerable experiences of every kind and every instant" .¹²

When one is involved thus in a variety of experiences, inner and outer, one will come to know that, unless the intimate sense of the Divine prevails always, thinking may only invite the darkness of ignorance, and feeling and doing may precipitate disorder. On 3 December, Mirra records:

Last night I had the experience of the effectivity of confident surrender to Thy guidance ... the more passive the mind to Thy illumination, the clearer and the more adequate is its expression.

I listened to Thee as Thou spokest in me .... No more fear, no more uneasiness, no more anguish; nothing but a perfect Serenity, an absolute Confidence, a supreme unwavering Peace.¹³

The key to success and happiness is confident unquestioning surrender to the Divine. There is no need even to record the words of the Divine, or to desire a continuation of the dialogue. The best will be done, for His benevolence and puissance are without limits.

Again, two days later:

In Peace and Silence the Eternal manifests; allow nothing to disturb you and the Eternal will manifest; have perfect equality in face of all.... No haste, no inquietude, no tension, Thou, nothing but Thou, without any analysis or any objectivising, and Thou art there without a possible doubt, for all becomes a Holy Peace and a Sacred Silence.¹⁴

This sense of peace and silence and serene fulfillment persists for some more days, and the diary-entries are accordingly charged with a distinctive iridescence of fervour:

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Like a flame that bums in silence, like a perfume that rises straight upward without wavering, my love goes to Thee; and like the child who does not reason and has no care, I trust myself to Thee that Thy Will may be done, that Thy Light may manifest, Thy Peace radiate, Thy Love cover the world.¹⁵

Thy Light was manifested through my mouth yesterday and it met no resistance in me; the instrument was willing, supple, keen of edge.

It is Thou who art the doer in each thing and each being, and he who is near enough to Thee to see Thee in all actions without exception, will know how to transform each act into a benediction.¹⁶

I await, without haste, without inquietude, the tearing of another veil, the Union made more complete ... nothing exists save Thy Will....

Already there is heard from behind the veil the wordless symphony of gladness that reveals Thy sublime Presence.¹⁷

Aspiration, faith, surrender, union: expectancy, ardour, the uplifting realisation of the Divine omnipresence, the deeper listening to the wordless symphony - these are the rhythmic beats in the dynamics of the divine play.

V

There is a prolonged break of nearly two months, from 11 December 1912 to 5 February 1913. Mirra now transcribes the words, as heard by her, of the "melodious chant" addressed by the Divine to the Earth:

Poor sorrowful Earth, remember that I am present in thee and lose not hope; each effort, each grief, each joy and each pang, each call of thy heart, each aspiration of thy soul, each renewal of thy seasons, all, all without exception, what seems to thee sorrowful and what seems to thee joyous, what seems to thee ugly and what seems to thee beautiful, all infallibly lead thee towards me, who am endless Peace, shadow less Light, perfect Harmony, Certitude, Rest and Supreme Blessedness.¹⁸

Earth-nature must one day become supernature, and there is thus no cause, whatever the current discontents, for anything like despair. There­ fore, in a gratitude beyond measure and a ceaseless worship she prostrates before the Divine, and' 'that worship goes up from my heart and my mind towards Thee like the pure smoke of the incense of the perfumes of India" ¹⁹

It seems to her that it is wiser to await Him in trust and serenity than to seek Him with vitalistic ardour or unseemly impatience, for whenever

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there is a real need He will surely be there. In the ripening consciousness of Will and progressive identification with It lie true liberty and strength, also the possibility of total transformation. The efflorescence of Divine consciousness must come about with the simplicity and naturalness of a opening into a flower. Any sheerly vitalistic attempt to force the pace, down the power and achieve quick spectacular results will only prove a and a danger on the path of the work. But since faith and surrender the law of her own being, Mirra's apprehensions of Reality crowd upon bet readily and impart to her tongue a golden utterance, such as for example, on 11 May:

O Lord, Lord, a boundless joy fills my heart, songs of gladness surge through my head in marvellous waves, and in the full confidence of Thy certain triumph I find a sovereign Peace and an invincible Power. Thou fillest my being, Thou animatest it, Thou settest in motion its hidden springs, Thou illuminest its understanding, Thou intensifiest its life, Thou increasest tenfold its love; and I no longer know whether the universe is I or I the universe, whether Thou art in me or I in Thee; Thou alone art and all is Thou; and the streams of Thy infinite grace fill and overflow the world.²⁰

This process of identification between "I" and "Thou" - and the direction of the movement of consciousness - finds expression again in the entry for 23 July:

I do not know whether this chant goes from me to Thee or comes from Thee to me or whether Thou and I and the entire universe are this marvellous chant of which I have just become conscious .... ²¹

Thus as the days pass, as the meditative poise becomes more and more a natural and permanent condition of Mirra's life, there is experienced a rending of the veil of separativity, and an opening up of the reservoirs of unity, harmony and peace. But Mirra was never for an escape into the Transcendent as a cure for the density, obscurity and impurity of terrestrial life, for that would be merely refusing cowardlike to accomplish the mission - "the redemption and purification Matter":

To know that a part of our being is perfectly pure, to commune with this purity, to be identified with it, can be useful only if this knowledge is later used to hasten the transfiguration of the earth, to accomplish Thy sublime work.²²

Neither selective adhesion to the pockets of purity in the world of phenomena nor a decisive escape into the realm beyond the phenomenal can satisfy her. The work to be accomplished is the cleansing of the impurities here, the transfiguration of the phenomenal world itself. Mirra is the incarnate evolutionary earth-consciousness, and with the progress of

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her sadhana, there is no "I" and no "Thou"; and neither is there any difference between her personality and the personality of the whole earth. While she finds rich fulfilment in these forged identities, she is pained to see that other men "flee from these boons as though they fear them" - so abysmal is their ignorance! Yet it is not impossible to dispel the mist of avidya, and listen to the still music that comes "like a crystalline murmur that imparts a note of harmony to a discordant concert". ²³ Only, one needs patient perseverance, and one needs faith.

VI

Early in August 1913, Mirra hears an inner voice telling her that worrying about external circumstances or showing an obsessive concern for doing 'good' things, as distinct from 'bad', was most unwise:

Why strive and strain so to realise thy own conception of Truth? Be more supple, more trusting. The only duty is not to let oneself be troubled by anything. To torment oneself about doing the right thing causes as much harm as a bad will. Only in a calm as of deep waters can be found the possibility of True Service.²⁴

A few days later, she records: "All is to me beautiful, harmonious, silent, despite the outer turmoil. And in this silence it is Thou, O Lord, whom I see."²⁵ And, on 15 August:

In this even-fall, Thy Peace deepens and becomes more sweet and Thy: Voice more clear and distinct in the silence that fills my being.²⁶

And the next day:

O Love, Divine Love, Thou fillest my whole being and overflowest on every side. I am Thyself even as Thou art I, and I see Thee in each being, each thing, from the soft breath of the passing breeze to the glorious sun which gives us light and is a symbol of Thee.

O Thou whom I cannot understand, in the silence of the purest devotion I adore Thee.

There is, however, the recurrent uneasiness because of the body, its claims, and the need for its preservation. If only one could be relieved of all these "terrible and puerile" obsessions! The reassuring Truth, however, returns again and again:

Without Thee the dust constituting this body that strives to manifest Thee, would disperse amorphous and inconscient; without Thee this sensibility which makes possible a relation with all other centres of manifestation, would vanish into a dark inertia; without Thee this thought that animates

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and illumines the whole being, would be vague, vacant, unrealised; without Thee the sublime love which vivifies, coordinates, animates and gives .".warmth to all things would be a yet unawakened possibility.²⁷

All talk of body, senses, thoughts, emotions is meaningless - for unless the Divine informs them and wills their respective functional activities, "all is inert, brute or inconscient". But what a wonderful thing it is to "soar above the contingencies of material life" towards the Divine, yet with power "to return as Thy messengers to the earth to announce the glorious tidings of Thy approaching Advent?"

At other moments, it is rather the limitations of the earth, the purblindness and joylessness of men, that press themselves upon her consciousness, and then she gently moans the regret that Earth and Man still perversely grovel in self-structured infelicity:

Grant, a Lord, that I may be like a fire that illumines and gives warmth, like a spring of water that quenches thirst, like a tree that shelters and protects .... Men are so unhappy and ignorant and have so great a need of help.²⁸

They need to be helped, and they usually decline to be helped; hence the call for patience. But while the fret and fever of impatience is no solution, how difficult it is to be patient! As Hopkins confessed:

Patience, hard thing! ...

... Natural heart's ivy, Patience masks

Our ruins of wrecked past purpose. There she basks

Purple eyes and seas of liquid leaves all day.

Although Patience is hard, Mirra would need it when she strives - be the Ordeal long or short - to dissipate the darkness, to heal the wounds. Why, then, surrender to enervating impatience? She will not be cast down, she will not feel defeated; she will be resilient, she will be anchored in hope ad the certainty of victory.

VII

After a break of nearly two months, returning to her house in Rue du Val 'de Grâce, she records on 7 October 1913, two enriching experiences:

This return ... to the house which is consecrated to Thee, O Lord, has been the occasion of two experiences. The first is that in my outer being, my surface consciousness, I no longer have the least feeling of being in my own home and the owner of anything there .... I am a visitor here as elsewhere, as everywhere, Thy messenger and Thy servant upon earth, a stranger among men, and yet the very soul of their life, the love of their heart ....

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Secondly, the whole atmosphere of the house is charged with a religious solemnity; one immediately goes down into the depths .... It is as though for three months I had been loving with my head and that now I were beginning to love with my heart ....

A new door has opened in my being and an immensity has appeared before me ....

All is changed, all is new; the old wrappings have fallen off and the new­ born child half-opens its eyes to the shining dawn.²⁹

The whole piece is suffused with a double-meaning: the physical return to the house and the newly-lit inner Presence and transfiguration.

In her meditation of 22 November, it comes to her that a few minutes passed in silence before the Lord are worth centuries of felicity, for in such surrender could all shadows and impurities be dispelled or expelled, the ego dissolve and disappear in the constancy and serenity of faithful servitude to Him, and thirdly, one may emerge as a pure crystal, reflecting the many-faceted Divine.

All is thus changed, serenity has arrived and taken root, - yet whiffs of chance disturbance cannot be ruled out categorically. "It is only when we silence our active thought," writes Mirra, "that we see this multitude of little subconscious notations surging up from every side and often drowning us under their overwhelming flood." But how may this subtle serpent be rendered powerless, or even destroyed? When we have silenced the surface mind by an act of will, we find that thousands of these valueless nullities crawl out, as insects do when a rock is shifted. Through certain ascetic disciplines, perhaps, and the insulation from eternal influences, it is possible to keep the subconscient in check. But this is a precarious remedy, and a temporary one, for "it leaves the ascetic at the mercy of the first surprise attack". Buddhist self-introspection and a systematic analysis (Freudian or otherwise) of one's dreams may be a remedy too, but not an infallible one. Isn't there something more "rapidly effective"? But for this one must listen to the Guide hidden at the core of one's being, the Guide who has a mother's love and a teacher's patience.

On 28 November, in the "calm concentration which comes before day­ break", Mirra finds that an opening to a fuller consecration to His Will- a more complete self-giving to His Work - a more total forgetfulness of self, a greater illumination, a purer love, and a communion with the Divine ever deeper and more constant - such an integral action removes from us all egoism and mean pride, all covetousness and obscurity, and registers the serenity of a perfect surrender. Many years later, the Mother was to write to one of her disciples:

There are two ways of uniting with the Divine. One is to concentrate in the heart and go deep enough to find there His Presence; the other is to fling oneself in His arms, to nestle there as a child nestles in its mother's arms,

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with a complete surrender; and of the two the latter seems to me the easier.³⁰

VIII

The inertia of inconscience, the frustrations and defeats caused by the false trails of ignorance, the pulls of egoistic perversion, these continue to cloud earth-life and clog its evolutionary movement towards its appointed goal. Mirra is deeply pained by all this inertia, this defeat and frustration and perversion, and she makes this entry on 29 November 1913:

Why all this noise, all this movement, this vain and futile agitation; why this whirlwind carrying men away like a swarm of flies caught in a storm? How sad is the sight of all that wasted energy, all those useless efforts! When will they stop dancing like puppets on a string, pulled they know not by whom or what? When will they find time to sit quietly and go within, to recollect themselves and open that inner door which screens from them Thy priceless treasures, Thy infinite boons?³¹

'Waste' is verily the code-word of our criminal incompetence and folly. Nature's gifts are wasted, our own powers are wasted, beauty is wasted, and above all Grâce is wasted - for, like the 'base Indian', perverse man still throws away the Pearl richer than all his tribe'. On this November morning, from her window Mirra watches the shadows play, she sees the pp widen between the marvellous possibility and the stark reality, but she has also a clear idea as to how the gap can narrow and cease, the shadows fly, and the light and the delight of union repossess the present world of inconscience and division:

One single spark of Thy sublime light, one single drop of Thy divine love, can transform this suffering into an ocean of delight.

While the path of Knowledge has its sure rewards, for it can lead at least to a true conception of Reality if not to its actual experience, the path of love alone is pure and disinterested, and "opens all doors, penetrates every wall, clears every obstacle", and this Love is the "infallible healer, the supreme consoler; it is the victor, the sovereign teacher".³²

Towards the end of the year, Mirra articulates the hope that the "whole lot of bonds and attachments, illusions and weaknesses" of the past will be shaken off like falling dust; that the old errors will be repaired; that the old 19norances, obscurities and ego isms will be left behind; and that the year 1914 will see a flight "towards wider horizons and an intenser light, a more prefect compassion, a more disinterested love ... towards Thee".³³

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IX

As the fateful 1914 dawns over Paris, Mirra greets the New Year with a canticle of consecration:

To Thee, supreme Dispenser of all boons, to Thee who givest life its justification, by making it pure, beautiful and good, to Thee, Master of Our destinies and goal of all our aspirations, was consecrated the first minute of this new year. . ..

In Thee are life and light and joy.

In Thee is supreme Peace.³⁴

In her meditation of 5 January, she experiences the consciousness of personal insignificance ("I am a veritable zero in the world") while the state a day earlier was an unquestioning surrender:

I do not struggle; and like a child in its mother's arms, like a fervent disciple at the feet of his master, I trust myself to Thee and surrender to Thy guidance, sure of Thy victory.

And, as if she has a strong premonition of a danger enveloping the earth in the course of the year, Mirra identifies herself with the earth and its hapless inhabitants in her prayer of 7 January, interceding with and imploring the Lord:

Give them all, O Lord, Thy peace and light, open their blinded eyes and their darkened understanding; calm their futile worries and their vain anxieties ....

Oh! let all tears be wiped away, all suffering relieved, all anguish dispelled, and let calm serenity dwell in every heart and powerful certitude strengthen every mind. ³⁵

Three days later, she prays again that "the peace of Thy reign may spread throughout the earth". Again, on 1 February:

I turn towards Thee and salute Thee, O liberator of the worlds, and, identified with Thy divine love, I contemplate the earth and its creatures, this mass of substance put into forms perpetually destroyed and renewed, this swarming mass of aggregates which are dissolved as soon as constituted, of beings who imagine that they are conscient and permanent individualities and who are as ephemeral as a breath, always alike or almost the same, in their diversity, repeating indefinitely the same desires, the same tendencies, the same appetites, the same ignorant errors.³⁶

While this may be the general rule, the Divine Light incarnates in a being periodically, and that radiance fills the world. Such are the Messiahs, Saviours, Sanatanas, God-men and Mahapurushas who have leavened and

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brightened human life in the past. But in the altered circumstances of our something even more potent seems to be needed:

But how much greater a splendour than all that have gone before, how marvellous a glory and light would be needed to draw these beings out of the horrible aberration in which they are plunged by the life of cities and so-called civilisations! What a formidable and, at the same time, divinely sweet puissance would be needed to turn aside all these wills from the bitter struggle for their selfish, mean and foolish satisfactions, to snatch them from this vortex which hides death behind its treacherous glitter, and turn them towards Thy conquering harmony!³⁷

Civilisation and urbanisation have confirmed humanity in a monstrous aberration made up of treacherous delights and foolish satisfactions and criminal extravagances. When will true enlightenment turn men's minds away from such lunacy? If only Mirra could become "a burning brazier" that consumes all suffering and transforms it into joy!

And so on the 16th, Mirra records:

...I aspire to be conscious of only Thee, to be only Thyself. This incessant whirl of unreal personalities, this multiplicity, this complexity, this excessive inextricable confusion of conflicting thoughts, struggling tendencies, battling desires, seems to me more and more frightful. I must emerge from this raging sea, land on Thy serene and peaceful shore .... O Lord, ignorance must be vanquished, illusion dispelled, this sorrowful universe must come out of its hideous nightmare, end its terrible dream, and awaken at last to the consciousness of Thy sole Reality.³⁸

We must emerge out of this sea in fury! Yes; but exactly how? Oppose silence to noise, calm to agitation, serene joy to hopeless pain; begin with the individual, and the aggregates will look after themselves. And all reformation - the true reformation - must start within, because it is in oneself that there are all the obstacles, all the difficulties, all the darkness and ignorance. But all potentiality too is lodged within! In Sri Aurobindo's words,

The lotus of eternal knowledge and the eternal perfection is a bud closed and folded up within us. It opens swiftly or gradually, petal by petal, through successive realisations, once the mind of man begins to turn towards the Eternal, once his heart, no longer compressed and confined by attachment to finite appearances, becomes enamoured, in whatever degree, of the Infinite.³⁹

Hence, in order to "emerge from this raging sea" and land on the "serene and peaceful shore" of the sole Reality, one has to listen with the inward ear to be able to hear the great immutable silence that swallows up futile noise, vain agitation, useless dispersion of energies. All carry this

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constant silence - the Voice of the Eternal - within themselves, though they are not aware, or aware to an equal extent, of this incommensurable inner strength. And, besides,

this silence is itself progressive, and whatever be the perfection of the union we have realised, as long as we belong by our body to the world of relativity, this Union with Thee can always grow more perfect.⁴⁰

To be able to perfect the race, Mirra would first perfect herself, make visible the divine manifestation. Hence the poignantly repeated, oft repeated, word of aspiration:

If we had a truly living faith, if we had the absolute certitude of Thy omnipotence and Thy sole reality, Thy manifestation could at each moment become so evident that the whole universe would be transformed by it.⁴¹

On this world of illusion, this sombre nightmare, Thou hast bestowed Thy divine reality, and each atom of matter contains something of Thy Absolute.⁴²

I am like a timid bird not yet sure of its wings and hesitating to take its flight; let me soar to reach definitive identity with Thee.⁴³

O Lord, I would like to be so ardent a love that all loneliness may be filled up by it and all sorrows soothed ....

Grant my prayer: Transform me into a brazier of pure love and boundless compassion."⁴⁴

Mirra, then, in the early weeks of 1914, is not only acutely conscious of the weary weight of this unregenerate world, but also conscious of her own destiny to lighten the load of ignorance or inconscience, and if possible to annul it altogether. She shares with "the Man of Sorrows" the giant agony of the world, but she is also the Lord's "clairvoyant collaboratrix" who strives ceaselessly for the return of life, light and love. These twin movements of Mirra's life may be inferred from this memorable passage:

Many a time in the day and night it seems to me that I am, or rather my consciousness is, concentrated entirely in my heart which is no longer an organ, not even a feeling, but the divine Love, impersonal, eternal; and being this Love I feel myself living at the centre of each thing upon the entire earth, and at the same time I seem to stretch out immense, infinite arms and envelop with a boundless tenderness all beings, clasped, gathered, nestled on my breast that is vaster than the universe .... Words are poor and clumsy, O divine Master, and mental transcriptions are always childish .... ⁴⁵

Indeed, such Visions as these, such intimations and waking truths, must for ever defy the power of mere language. As Giles Fletcher said long ago -

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Impotent words, weak side, that strive in vain,

In vain, alas, to tell so heav'nly sight ....

This world of the dualities and relativities must go, - it is going; and as the mist disappear, a new effulgence - as yet unseizable and unwordable - will arrive, "and the earth, conscious of Thy new and eternal Presence, understand at last its true purpose, and live in the harmony and peace of Thy sovereign realisation".⁴⁶

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