On The Mother

CHAPTER 25

Ashram Calendar

I

After Sri Aurobindo's complete withdrawal in November 1926, the opportunities for the sadhaks to see or communicate with him were very severely curtailed. This was a terrible deprivation for them, all the more so because they had so long basked unfettered in the old unrestricted sunshine. The sadhaks who came later, not having known the earlier freedom of personal interviews with the Master and the open Evening Talks with him, had perhaps less reason to complain; and, besides, some of them - Sethna, Nirod and Dilip, for example - had the privilege of regular correspondence with Sri Aurobindo, not only on matters pertaining to Yoga, but also on art, literature and poetic composition, and even on matters political and medical. This privilege, however, was not taken advantage of by all the sadhaks, many of whom were mainly engaged in Karmayoga, doing works as an offering to the Mother.

The Mother was always easily accessible, except during her illness of October 1931. Nevertheless, to meet in some measure the understandable desire of the sadhaks to see Sri Aurobindo and offer pranam to him, the three Darshan days of 21 February, 15 August and 24 November were set apart, when the sadhaks and a select number of visitors were permitted to have darshan of the two together - the Mother seated to the right of Sri Aurobindo - and offer pranam to them. Since 1926 the number had grown year by year, but intelligent and tactful management made it possible for the Darshan to be completed in the course of the forenoon, or at least before 2 p.m.¹ The sadhaks and the permitted visitors first assembled in the Meditation Hall, and went up in a file carrying the garlands to be offered. A list giving the order in which they were to go up for darshan was put up on the notice board downstairs, and a copy was kept with Sri Aurobindo so that he could take note of the newcomers. Everyone was given a minute or two for making his pranam. Thus each was in the Darshan Room all alone with the visible divine Pair for a blissful interim, and then moved off, giving place to the next.² However, from 1939 (whence 24 April became the fourth Darshan day) several changes in this procedure were unavoidable. "Putting up the list of names and indicating the time was stopped for good ... as a check on unauthorised intrusion, cards were issued over the signature of the Secretary." Later still, the work of issuing passes was transferred to a Bureau Central. The Darshan time was fixed "almost at 2 p.m .... To get an opportunity to touch the feet of the Master became a thing of the past ... we had to form a queue and have Darshan while filing past. ³

Page 358

Darshan, of course, was much more than a concession to mere human curiosity, and Pranam no mere concession to the vitalistic desire for touch or for demonstrative love and devotion. Sri Aurobindo himself conceded a place for such "physical means" of approaching the Guru, the visible Divine, and "receiving the Light and materialising the psychic contact". But they would defeat their purpose and might even have a baneful effect if they were not done in the right spirit, or were tainted by "indifference and inertia, or revolt or hostility, or some gross desire". The best state to be in for Darshan was to be recueilli, that is to say, to be "drawn back, quiet and collected in oneself', ready to receive whatever is vouchsafed.⁴

II

For the sadhaks and disciples, the Darshan days came to acquire the character of milestones on the great journey to the Supramental Light and Force. There was hope and high expectancy in the air, the small room on the first floor of the Meditation House where the Darshan was to take place came to be decorated with loving care, and for the Ashram they were festive days as also days of fulfilment. "Each Darshan in our life," wrote Sahana Devi, "was an experience, nearly a supra-realisation." From Darshan to Darshan the heart yearned once again for the mystic face, the magic touch, and when another Darshan day dawned over the Ashram, there was a new elation and joy:

It brought to us the golden opportunity to reach out to the unattainable. He [Sri Aurobindo] instilled into us something that no one else could. Thus as the Darshan day approached our minds too, leaned to a self-gathering, with a view to receiving rightly .... ⁵

And here is Narayan Prasad's remembrance of these regular occasions of benediction and grace:

To each the Master gave a penetrating and gracious look and then blessed him .... In those days the Master's Grace would rain over us like Amitabha Buddha's. As through glass windows the things in a room are visible, so the Master's yogic eye would penetrate our being and read our possibilities. Newcomers would return with a new energy to fight the battle of life.⁶

The Sri Aurobindo-Mother-sadhak relationships in the Ashram acquired a focus and a clarification at the time of the Darshans. Although the sadhak could see the Mother daily, when he saw her on a Darshan day sitting by side of Sri Aurobindo, it was an enriching and revealing moment for him. On one such occasion, in August 1934, Nirodbaran "felt a great dryness", instead of the expected Ananda, Force or Light. On the next Darshan, in November, Nirod thought that it was Shiva he was seeing, and felt Ananda too,

Page 359

and "these happy impressions and recollections were with me vividly for 2 or 3 days. Then I found that all that consciousness has evaporated - and I have passed these days most passively, without any strong aspiration. But I marked that there was no depression."⁷ On yet another occasion, while Nirod found Sri Aurobindo "grave and austere", he found the Mother smiling seraphically.⁸ But a more vivid index to Nirod's opening and reception is his poem:

A moment's touch - what founts of joy arise

Running through dull grains of my life's dead sands

Like a cool stream where once never was shade! ...

The finite for this one moment brief drinks

The Infinite.⁹

Kapali Sastry's notes are brief but suggestive. Thus, after the Darshan on the Mother's birthday in 1936: "Sri Aurobindo gave recognition-smile. The Mother was gracious, putting a seal on his blessings." Again, on the same day next year:

The Mother looked long into me with a very benign smile and blessed me longer while my right cheek rested on her lap. Sri Aurobindo, majestic as usual, but not serious .... ¹⁰

Darshan was always a seminal moment, an act of divine insurance, a moment in time and out of time when something that was truly timeless was sought and won. About the sort of instantaneous effect the Darshan could produce there is this testimony by a visitor:

One look of Sri Aurobindo at a man's heart, and it is conquered. There is a lustre in his eyes that infuses itself into the soul of man and sets it aflame. The flame goes on growing in intensity. He puts into the heart of man the flower-seed of Divine love that is sure to grow .... ¹¹

Such, then, were the gains of the Darshan for the sadhaks, disciples and visitors who filed past Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and received the touch of their palms as the concrete symbol, as the electric currency, of their benedictions. It was certainly worth waiting for weeks, months and (with some) even for years; - but when would they be vouchsafed that grace again?

III

From Sri Aurobindo's or the Mother's point of view also, each Darshan had an importance of its own as a carefully controlled spiritual experiment. Every time Sri Aurobindo and the Mother tried to bring down a force or power of consciousness, a Ray of Light, a tremor of the Delight of

Page 360

Existence, and they would watch how the sadhaks and the others received it: whether there was a ready opening, or only the usual tamasic or rajasic resistance. For example, Sri Aurobindo wrote as follows about the Darshan on his sixty-fifth birthday, 15 August 1936:

The last Darshan was good on the whole. I am not now trying to bring anything sensational down on these days, but I am watching the progress in the action of the Force and Consciousness that are already there, the infiltration of a greater Light and Power from above, and there was a very satisfactory crossing of a difficult border which promises well for the near future. A thing has been done which had long failed to accomplish itself and which is of great importance ... it forms part of an arranged whole which is explicable only when it is complete. But it gives a sort of strong practical assurance that the thing will be done.¹²

In a Yoga that was verily a struggle and a march, the Darshan struck Sri Aurobindo as the crossing of a difficult border presaging ultimate victory. And wasn't the descent of the Supramental on 29 February 1956 the most decisive crossing into the Next Future, altering the whole character of the divine communion, introducing a fundamental change in the Sri Aurobindo­Mother-disciple relationships? As the Mother explained in her talk of 15 August 1956, - the day she had distributed the flower symbolising the supramental manifestation,

In the days when Sri Aurobindo used to give Darshan, before he gave it there was always a concentration of certain forces or of a certain realisation which he wanted to give to people. And so each Darshan marked a stage forward; each time something was added. But that was at a time when the number of visitors was very limited. It was organised in another way, and it was part of the necessary preparation.

But this special concentration, now, occurs at other times, not particularly on Darshan days. And it occurs much more often, on other kinds of occasions, in other circumstances. The movement is much accelerated, the march forward, the stages succeed each other much more rapidly. And perhaps it is more difficult to follow; or in any case, if one doesn't take care to keep up, one is more quickly out-distanced than before; one gets the feeling of being late or of being abandoned. Things change quickly.¹³

IV

In the late thirties, as if to make up for the loss of the long sessions of meditation, pranam and interviews in the morning and the games, talks and the soup ceremony in the evenings of the early years, a new experience was opened to the sadhaks in the form of a daily balcony darshan.

Page 361

This unique form of spiritual concordat between the Mother and her children began as an individual grace that very soon grew into a universalist charter.Mridu was a devoted Bengali sadhika, who was not only permitted to cook for Sri Aurobindo but even to have a daily glimpse of him when she took up her dish at noon.¹⁴Early in 1938, she was given a room in a building in Rue Saint Gilles opposite the north-facing balcony adjoining Pavitra's room in the Ashram main building. It was then that she is said to have declared that she would not have her breakfast until she had a darshan of the Mother. The Mother agreed to come to that balcony, so as to be seen by Mridu from her window across the street. *

The usual time of the Mother's coming was 6 to 6.15 a.m. and soon some sadhaks and visitors too began to gather for this early morning grace. It became an experience of immeasurable importance equivalent to a sacramental beginning for the day's run of activities. "Every custom, even ritual," wrote Naresh Bahadur in the late fifties, "grows stale by repetition. But the Balcony Darshan is an ever-new, ever-revealing phenomenon. For all is perennial freshness at Spirit level. "¹⁵ The silent crowd would be expectant - and suddenly the Mother would appear on the balcony:

The brief perpetual sign recurred above ....

Dawn built her aura of magnificent hues

And buried its seed of grandeur in the hours.

An instant's visitor the godhead shone:

On life's thin border awhile the Vision stood

And bent over earth's pondering forehead curve.¹⁶

On 12 October 1959, the Mother wrote to a young disciple:

Every morning at the balcony, after establishing a conscious contact with each of those who are present, I identify myself with the Supreme Lord and dissolve myself completely in Him. Then my body, completely passive, is nothing but a channel through which the Lord passes His forces freely and pours upon all His Light, His Consciousness and His Joy, according to each one's receptivity. ¹⁷

Consequently, this daily darshan too used to affect variously different individuals, and even the same individual on different days. Some have glimpsed in the Mother one or another of their favourite Powers and Personalities of Mahashakti, and some have seen an aura around her day after day. On the question of the Mother's aura in general, Sri Aurobindo had written in November 1933:

*This darshan came to an end when the Mother fell somewhat seriously ill on 16 March 1962. Curiously, Mridu passed away in September 1962. Her house came to be known as Prasad House due to her practice of distributing the "prasad" that came back in the dish she used to take to Sri Aurobindo.

Page 362

The Mother and Sri Aurobindo, Darshan Day, 24 April 1950

What people see around the Mother is first her aura ... and, secondly, the forces of Light that pour out from her when she concentrates, as she always does on the roof for instance .... People do not see it usually because it is a subtle physical and not a gross material phenomenon. ¹⁸

The sadhaks and disciples who had developed this subtle sight - and those that had the higher psychic sensitivity - were able to see the aura, and even after the Mother's withdrawal from the balcony, some of the devotees are known to have stayed on for a while longer with an abstracted and self­absorbed air, perhaps seeing the Mother still, and the aura around her. While these were special experiences of a few, it may be said of the others that even their most prosaic reactions had a touch of the exceptional, and for the vast majority the Mother as she appeared at the balcony was rather like

A rose of dawn, her smile lights every gaze ­

Her love is like a nakedness of noon:

No flame but breathes in her the Spirit's calm

And pours the omnipresence of a sun.¹⁹

Once, when someone wanted to know why the Mother seemed to "appear different at different times", Sri Aurobindo had written: "It is rather, I think, dependent on the personality that manifests in front - as she has many personalities and the body is plastic enough to express something of each when it comes forward. "²⁰ The Mother herself once admitted that "at each Darshan I have the feeling that I am a different person ... someone I have known very intimately, with whom I have lived perhaps, but not me... that is to say, the body says: 'It is not me.' " And then, referring to the Terrace darshan* of 24 November 1967, she added:

When I went to the balcony, it was someone ... (and this happens to me from time to time, but more and more often) someone who looks from a sort of plane of eternity with a great benevolence mixed in (something like benevolence, I do not know how to express it), but with an absolute calmness, almost indifference, and the two are together, looking like that (Mother describes waves far down below), as if it was seen from very far away, from very high up, from very ... how to say it? seen with a rather eternal vision. It was that which my body was feeling when I came out to for the balcony. The body was saying: "I must aspire, there must be an aspiration so that the Force may descend upon all these people" , and That,

*On 21 February 1963, at 6:15 in the evening, the Mother gave darshan from "the Terrace (a covered east-facing veranda on the second floor of Meditation House), "the first for about nine months, since the 18th March last year"²¹ according to another report she had last came out on the 20th March. It must also be noted that henceforth she would come out on the Terrace only on the four Darshan days and always at around the same time until the last one on 15th August 1973.

Page 363

it was like this (sweeping gesture from above) .... And all this the body feels as though something were making use of it.²²