On The Mother

CHAPTER 17

Coming of the Disciples

I

It was mentioned earlier that the number of inmates in the Ashram increased from about 25 in 1926 to about 80 two years later. Prominent among the earlier sadhaks were Nolini, Amrita, Datta, Rajangam, Purani, Champaklal, Kanai, Barindra, Pujala1, Pavitra, Chandrasekharam and Anilbaran Roy. Not long after the Siddhi Day, there came - some for the first time, some for good - ardent spirits such as Dyuman, Janet and Vaun , McPheeters, Daulat and K. D. Sethna, Chandulal Shah and his sister Vasudha, Sahana Devi and Dilip Kumar Roy, J. A. Chadwick, Miss Maitland, Rishabhchand, and a host of others, most of whom were to make the Ashram their permanent home.

With regard to many of those who thus made a beeline for Pondicherry, the way the first call came, the early hesitations, the decisive turn and the first visit, the impact of the first darshan and pranam, the quick flowering of consciousness in the Ashram atmosphere, the adverse forces on the sly and the constant need for vigilance, the mounting of the offensive against the ego, the vicissitudes of the struggle, the sudden forced-marches and the unexpected set-backs, the whole adventure of the sadhana in fact, all this would make absorbing and enlightening case-histories. But we do not have all the facts, and we are not likely to be told; there are hints and guesses, of course, and these help us to body forth to some extent the nature of the call, the quest, the issue, the struggle and the victory.

For example, the noted Sanskrit scholar, T. V. Kapali Sastry, who saw Sri Aurobindo first in 1917, was to return again and again, and become an inmate in due course. When Sastriar met Sri Aurobindo in 1923, the basis of their future relationship was established, and the disciple made a note of the guidelines received from the Master:

Faith in the Supramental Truth;

Faith in yourself, in your capacity to achieve;

Faith in me (the Guru whose special help you would receive)

Peace, Power and Light are the threefold aim of the sadhana.¹

These and the other guidelines were a mini-handbook of the Integral Yoga, and Sastriar pursued with diligence the difficult sadhana while simultaneously following his profession of teaching. In 1927 he wanted to have an idea of the Mother's true nature and the gamut of her Powers and Personalities. In answer to his question Sri Aurobindo had him sent the manuscript copy of The Mother which he had just written. The rhapsodic description of the Mother's fourfold powers - Maheshwari, Mahakali,

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Mahalakshmi, Mahasaraswati - so profoundly moved the disciple that he had to turn the piece into Mātr Upanisad m inspired Sanskrit verse. And in his hymn Matr-mahimā, Sastriar sang thus in praise of the Mother:

SHE-

Who from the King of All Creation

takes and forms countless portions

and knows the process,

whose Thought is wakeful

in the mobile and the immobile,

who is the Primal Force, Shakti

holding the three worlds in her gaze,

She here as a separate Soul shines.

Mother Mira.²

Sastriar knew that 1927-28, his forty-second year, was the time predicted for a great change in his life, and some of his diary-jottings of this period are most revealing:

5.2.1928: Good dream: psychic. I was casting off the coverings; Mother was aside above to take me up ....

16.2.1928: Strong feeling of the Mother's influence ....

19.2.1928: Darshan of the Mother at the Library.

20.2.1928: Good experience at the feet of the Mother at the Library. Later, tendency to tears.

21.2.1928: The Mother's Day.

Between 10 and 11 a.m.: Pranam to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Tears before and after.

23.2.1928: Calm, waiting for heart's intuition.

Glimpse of the heart's poise ....

13.6.1928: The Mother was very smiling; gave her feet; meditated. All took nearly 30 minutes. Quite delightful, inspiring ....

27.12.1928: The great opening to the most external material nature between 4.30 and 6 a.m. and the śrutidarśana (like that of the Vedic sages) ....

1.1.1929: With the Mother, at Her feet. ...

4.1.1929: Throughout night, with the Mother in dream. She comes to some newly built house of mine .... Throughout, joy mingled with reverential awe.

5.1.1929: The Mother interviewed; meditated; then she said: "Sri Aurobindo says you may prepare to come." Then she said, "Yes, you may come for

February and March also .... "

6.1.1929: Offered parting Pranam in the verandah near the staircase and a rose. The Mother was full of smiles and nodded blessing on my taking leave of her

for the present ....

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3.5.1929: Mother said "Good", when I offered to do the quiet work of supervising the lime-mortar preparation which allows meditation.

4.5.1929: First day of work in the evenings. The Mother saw.

Mother gave me the work of preparing the daily wages of workmen, muster roll call etc .... ³

Having thus found his true home at last, Sastriar resigned on 31 May his job as Sanskrit teacher at the Muthialpet High School, Madras, and henceforth the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother was all in all for him. Something of what was now happening to Sastriar may be inferred from this entry for 14 June 1929:

There was some strong sense of a liberated being or rather myself a silent being with an over-being which was universal watching and guiding me to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. ⁴

Summing up the nature of the spiritual relationship between the Mother and Sastriar, his own disciple M. P. Pandit writes:

He saw and recognised in Her a conscious embodiment of the whole Divine, a living Murti in whom are present all the Four Personalities of the Adya-Shakti spoken of by Sri Aurobindo as presiding over the course of the Earth's Evolution .... In Her he adored his Ista Devata, Sri Lalita Tripura Sundari, and surrendered his entire Sadhana to Her. ...

Pandit also refers to a fellow-disciple of Sastriar who couldn't accept the divinity of the Mother and was told by Sastriar: "You will realise one day. To me She is a Flame of White Light." Years later this person had an extraordinary experience at Padivedu among the mountains in the South:

Astride over two steep hills there stood in Her glory the towering Figure of the Mother clad in Her characteristic attire! He was overcome. There was a descent of deep Peace. Winging from Beyond reverberated in his ears the words: "To me She is a Flame of White Light."⁵¹

Padivedu was revered as the centre of manifestation of Devi Renuka, and now the Mother seemed to be identified with her, a pure white radiance of Peace!

II

Sastriar had a special spiritual relationship with his teacher, Vasistha Ganapati Muni, known also as "Nayana" (a Telegu word meaning "father"), author of the modern Sanskrit classic Uma Sahasram and a rare adept of Sri Vidya. Sastriar had also sat at the feet of Nayana's own Guru, Sri Ramana Maharishi of Tiruvannamalai. After Sastriar's contacts with

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Sri Aurobindo had thrown open to him new vistas of spiritual experience, it was natural enough that Ganapati Muni also should visit the Ashram sooner or later. When Sri Aurobindo received a copy of Uma Sahasram from Duraiswami Aiyar, the splendour of its diction and the authenticity of its vision made an immediate impression on the Master, and presently the Mother informed Aiyar: "If Ganapati Sastri is inclined to come for the August 15th Darshan he is welcome." When this was communicated to Nayana and he consulted the Maharishi, the latter remarked that it must be Daiva Sankalpam (Divine Will). Accordingly Nayana arrived in Pondicherry on 14 August 1928, and had darshan of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother the next day. Although he was not enthusiastic at first, the Darshan itself proved a marvellous experience to Nayana, and coming out he exclaimed "O divya murtulu!", an untranslatable phrase of course, but conveying with a singular brevity, beauty and finality his sudden apprehension of the twin-presences at once auspicious and glorious - "O, divine personalities!" The next day, Nayana saw the Mother for thirty minutes, and as they meditated together he felt as if invaded by spiritual currents from all directions. According to K.S. Venkataraman the Mother later told Duraiswami Aiyar: "He [Nayana] is the one man who immediately entered into my spiritual Consciousness and stuck to it to the end."⁶

In his second interview with the Mother on 19 August, which lasted over forty-five minutes, Ganapati Muni recognised in the Mother the goddess Sakambari, an exalted manifestation of the Supreme Shakti and himself as Ganapati who "was at her service to be utilised as her instrument for Divine Work". While Nayana was expatiating on Sakambari, the Mother went into a trance, and Nayana, who was closely observant, perceived "bright light emerging through her toe and there was a halo of light round her and the emerging current from all parts of her body was distinctly visible to the naked eye and for the time the entire room was surcharged with electricity". ⁷

Vasistha Ganapati Muni stayed on for about a fortnight. Overwhelmingly impressed though he was, he didn't become a regular disciple of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. He was one of the great 'outsiders' who nevertheless bore witness to the manifest generosity and golden benevolence of the Mother, and this intrepid and inspired Laureate of Uma the Goddess Supreme died at Kharagpur in 1936, still at the height of his powers. But the Guru-Sishya alchemic chain-relationship ensured a spiritual continuity, and the Ganapati Muni-Kapali Sastry-Madhav Pandit heritage was to flow into and enrich the silent tarn of spirituality at Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

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III

One of the elect among the post-1926 arrivals was the young Englishman, J.A.Chadwick, who quickly tired of India's Groves of Academe, and strayed into and found a haven in Sri Aurobindo Ashram. His training in Cambridge had been in mathematical philosophy, but he now sought the Truth that beyonded all formal and conceptual knowledge. Under the spiritual name of "Arjavananda" (the joy of straightforwardness), given to him by Sri Aurobindo he made quick progress in the sadhana, and became one of the brightest stars in the Ashram's poetic firmament. On one occasion, there was a confrontation with a visiting English journalist, and sparks flew, there was some crackle on one side, and the Light presently asserted itself:

Question: I know, Mr. Chadwick, that your Master has attracted a number of men and women of merit and mark. But that is just the reason why we expect them to do something.

Answer: But we are doing something .... Supposing I said: each of us here has come to grips with his ego?

Question: And when he wins?

Answer: The Kingdom of Heaven begins - for him, at all events.⁸

The visitor grumbles that, after all, the West is dynamic, and has achieved something, and is poised for more and more progress, whereas the Orient with its chronic quietism can only be a global drag. But Arjava asks whether Western civilisation isn't "falling on the downward", and whether it is really wise to rush about "doing something convincing when you are far from convinced yourselves about the rightness of your vision or the correctness of your method". And he concludes: "Yes, I do claim one has to win the right vision first before one can find a clue to the right action."

One astonishing outcome of Arjava's exposure to the Ashram atmosphere was the opening up of the hardly suspected springs of his poetic inspiration, and in less than ten years he composed - for as he lisped in numbers, they came as if effortlessly and unceasingly - a mass of lyric verse to make up a volume of nearly 400 pages. While Sri Krishnaprem found in the lyrics a "delicate dream-like beauty", what is equally to the point is their capacity to act 'open sesame' to the symbol-worlds of the Spirit. Poetry such as Arjava's is a demonstration of what Yoga can do, and what the Integral Yoga certainly did, to help a sadhak to find his authentic voice as a poet of spiritual sensibility. Thus, for example, "The Feet of the Divine Mother":

Be Her light footfall a token

Of a Stillness fraught with Grace;

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Keep the truthward prayer unspoken

Her sandals trace.

Not solely Heaven descended

But earth upflowers to God

Eachwhere Her heaven-attended

Silence trod.⁹

And the following addressed "To Mother" is more direct still, and movingly articulate:

On this dark spirit-main

Rise as a fun-orbed moon,

Transform the murk of pain

To a fleckless silver boon ....

Out from a planet's gloom

All aspects can to Thee, ­

Life in our stirless tomb,

Light on our darkened sea.¹⁰

It was a flaming spirit, Arjava's; and a "burning blade" still, he died at the age of forty, but he had certainly "arrived" in the vicinity of that goal which one of his greatest poems "Moksha" characterises as

Truth's abidingness

Self-Blissful and Alone.

IV

Dilip Kumar Roy first visited Pondicherry in 1924, but at that time Sri Aurobindo told him that his was mental seeking as yet, and Dilip should wait a little longer. Four years later the call was more insistent, and in November 1928 Dilip rushed to Pondicherry again; this time, as the Mother said, there had been "a sudden psychic opening". His interview with the Mother was most rewarding, and he recorded:

She was exceedingly kind to me and listened to me with great sympathy. I. was charmed by her personality at once effulgent and soothing. Her being was haloed with beauty, but it was not an earthly beauty. ¹¹

The Ashram community, writes Dilip, numbered no more than about eighty at this time, but there was variety, and there were men and women of talent and distinction. "Our Ashram courtyard," he recalls, "basked in a delectable silence. "¹²It was, however, galling to him that he couldn't see Sri Aurobindo except on the three Darshan days and although he was one of the few permitted to write as often as he liked to Sri Aurobindo or the Mother, that didn't quite mollify him.

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The Mother of course was all graciousness and generous understanding, and there was the bracing companionship of sadhaks like Arjava and Amal Kiran. Ordinarily, Dilip was absorbed in music or writing, but from time to time he fell to brooding, and he had his moods. Besides, the pronounced Karmayoga aspect of the Ashram's life didn't exactly appeal to Dilip with his addiction to the old Vaishnava tradition of Bhakti. Accordingly, he was occasionally subject to fits of doubt, restiveness and even rebellion. In March 1930, for example, when Mahatma Gandhi started his March to Dandi to launch his Salt Satyagraha, Dilip felt that Ashram life was a poor thing, and that he should escape its enervation and jump into the political fray. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo were genuinely concerned, for quite obviously this was the result of an insidious attack by an adverse Force that was on the prowl in the Ashram, like the Serpent in prelapsarian Eden. Sri Aurobindo accordingly wrote to Dilip in a tone of urgency and deep seriousness:

It is certainly the force hostile to Yoga and the divine realisation upon earth that is acting upon you at the present moment. It is the force ... which is here in the Ashram and has been going about from one to another. With some .. it has succeeded; others have cast it away from them .... Some are still struggling ....

That it is the same hostile force would be shown ... by the fact that the suggestions it makes to the minds of the victims are always the same. Its one master sign is always this impulse to get away from the Ashram, away from myself and the Mother, out of this atmosphere, and at once. For the force does not want to give time for reflection, for resistance, for the saving Power to be felt and act. Its other signs are doubt; tamasic depression; an exaggerated sense of impurity and unfitness; the idea that the Mother is remote, does not care for one ....

All that is needed is for your psychic being to come forward and open to the direct and real constant inner contact of myself and the Mother. ... You will then not feel the Mother remote or have any further doubt about the realisation; for the mind thinks and the vital craves but the soul feels and knows the Divine.¹³

The balloon of Dilip's cheerless discontents came down with a crash, and there were no more grouses for a time.

But two years later, the worm of unease stirred disagreeably again, and questioned the propriety of Sri Aurobindo's "staying thus in deep purdah". Apparently, the ready accessibility of the Mother wasn't enough! Dilip's was of course a cry from the Slough of Despond, and he asked his Guru to terminate the "sterile relationship". Sri Aurobindo wasn't offended, yet he declined to let Dilip go:

I had thought that the love and affection the Mother and I bear you had been made evident by us...

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Do not believe all you hear .... I have cherished you like a friend and a, son and have poured on you my force to develop your powers - to make an equal development in the Yoga. We claim the right to keep you as our own here with us.¹⁴

But what strange ideas again! - that I was born with a Supramental temperament and that I know nothing of hard realities! Good God! My whole life has been a struggle with hard realities - from hardships, starvation in England and constant dangers and fierce difficulties to the far greater difficulties constantly cropping up here in Pondicherry, external and internal. My life has been a battle; the fact that I wage it now from a room upstairs and by spiritual means as well as others that are external makes no difference to its character. ¹⁵

The urgency, the persuasive tone of sweet reasonableness, the transparent love and concern of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the striking description of the whole character of the Yoga as a battle and a struggle to be sustained till the final victory, the infectious friendliness and good humour and open-heartedness, all helped to reconcile Dilip to the actualities. He was happy to share his epistolary treasures with selected fellow-sadhaks, and he had his escape into the delectable realms of music and poesy. And he affirmed that there was no place in the world like the Ashram, and there were no Gurus like Sri Aurobindo and the Mother!

V

Like Dilip, Vasudha, Sahana Devi also - whose music used to send Rabindranath Tagore into the seventh heaven of rapture - arrived in Pondicherry in November 1928. At that time the women inmates - the sadhikas - numbered hardly a dozen. What immediately struck Vasudha, Sahana Devi when she came to the Ashram on the morning of 22 November was that the sadhaks moved about with a self-poised silent air of rare distinction. Evidently, as she thought, "This sadhana did not mean sitting down to meditate or following any set method for them but whatever they did, physical work or literary pursuits, individually or collectively, was all done in a spirit of sadhana. ¹⁶ As for the Ashram complex, it was of a piece with the inmates, variety wedded to a deeper unity of aspiration and effort, the revolving wheel of work contained by a silence immaculate and spontaneous:

No sooner than one crossed the portals one seemed to step into a silence so

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solid that a single word uttered loudly seemed a jarring discordant noise to one's own ears. It did not take one long to realise that the rhythms of life were quite other than the ordinary ....¹⁷

She was taken to her room in the Ladies' House, and Nolini and Amrita informed her that she could meet the Mother at 9.30. In her room "all arrangements were perfect even to a pitcher of drinking water and a glass". The meeting with the Mother was to take place in the first floor of the the Meditation House. This was Vasudha, Sahana Devi's day of destiny, and the sight of the Mother was a mystic moment when Time was transcended:

The Mother was seated on a couch with her feet tucked in and holding on one end of the sari covering her head. At the very first glance although .. hers was a human material body yet it became quite clear to me that hers was rather an incarnated divine form. I gazed at her spell-bound and remained standing with joined hands. As she bestowed her heavenly smile and looked at me I bent to place my head on her feet. The touch of her hand on my head seemed to melt the whole of my being in an inner ecstasy. As she removed her hand, I sat near her feet .... I saw the Mother looking deeply into me, into the remotest recesses of my being. She then asked me if I had anything to say. She listened attentively to all I had to tell her ­ about myself and my life. When I had finished she drew me into her arms and kissed my forehead .... Then she raised my face tilting it with her hand, gazing into my eyes with an expression of compassionate consolation. Thus she accepted me. My eyes became full with tears of joy. ¹⁸

Here the whole drama - half-human, half-divine - comprising the call, the seeking, the finding, the melting appeal and the splendour of the acceptance: the pranam, the touch of the Mother's hand, the cleansing tears, the golden smile: the whole drama of yogic initiation is completed with the naturalness of the strayed child finding its way back to the mother and , being seized by her in her protective and redemptive embrace.

Then came the Darshan of 24 November. Vasudha, Sahana found Sri Aurobindo "seated, on a sofa leaning back, still and majestic like the Himalayas, a perfect image of a glorious sublimity", and the Mother, as she blessed Sahana, "poured into me the nectar of her incomparable smile". In the weeks and .months that followed, Vasudha, Sahana Devi's talent for music, already pure and richly seasoned, grew new dimensions of intensity and spiritual fervour under the Mother's fostering care, and once a month or at times once in two months, along with Dilip, Vasudha, Sahana would give recitals in the Meditation Hall. "It was all a sort of votive offering to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo through music. ¹⁹ When she had presently, at Dilip's request, to provide notations to some of the pieces in his Geetashri, they seemed to come from some mysterious overhead source; Vasudha, Sahana no doubt did the actual writing, but some higher Force was doing the work! In thisconnection Sri Aurobindo wrote reassuringly to her:

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The Ananda of creation is not the pleasure of the ego in having personally done well .... The Ananda comes from the inrush of a greater power, the thrill of being possessed and used by it.

And about her singing he once commented:

You sing your best only when you forget yourself and let it come out from within without thinking of the need of excellence or the impression it may make.²⁰

Next Vasudha, Sahana wished to make a votive offering of her dance. She was no dancer, - "but why should the Mother not see the little I could do?" After a dance-recital of Tagore's "In the steps of the Dance", the Mother herself gave Vasudha, Sahana the idea of a dance on Radha, along the lines of her own Radha's Prayer. And so with the march of the years Vasudha, Sahana Devi made unfaltering progress in the sadhana, never halting, never taking things for granted, but ever with her eyes on the Vision yonder, ready and eager always to fare forward towards the Goal.

VI

Almost a year earlier, K. D. Sethna had come from Bombay. A brilliant Philosophy graduate, he had done desultory Yoga, and was researching on "The Philosophy of Art" for his M.A. In the meantime, having bought a new pair of shoes wrapped in an old newspaper, he returned home and saw an article on "The Ashram of Aurobindo Ghose" in that paper. His mind was suddenly made up: Pondicherry would be his place of sadhana - what he had bought must have served as the shoes of a pilgrim! He arrived in December 1927 and was received by Purani who had been the link in the correspondence between the Ashram and this newcomer. On entering the room of Purani (who was staying then in the Guest House, in the room once occupied by Sri Aurobindo), Sethna happened to look through the north-facing window and caught a glimpse of the Mother walking on the roof-terrace of the Meditation House, and he said to himself, "She is very beautiful!" A meeting with her was arranged, and he told her that, having seen everything of life, he now wanted nothing except God. The Mother was amused and said sweetly:

Oh, at 23 you have seen all of life? Don't be in such a hurry, you must take your time. Stay here, look about, see how things are, see if they suit you and then take a decision.

Although a bit disappointed, he agreed - but the Mother's eyes! what eyes! what radiance!-

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When I was talking with her I felt as if from her face and eyes some silver radiance were coming out... I could not make out how this was happening ­ nor could I doubt that this was happening. Apart from this impression of light, there was another - something out of the ancient Egypt....²¹

He stayed on for the Darshan of 21 February 1928, - and forgot about his M.A. dissertation. The Darshan strengthened his desire to do the Integral Yoga, and the Mother accepted him. There was of course no question of an interview with Sri Aurobindo, and like others in the same predicament, he too had to communicate through letters. "I went on writing to Sri Aurobindo," he acknowledges, "and all types of questions I used to put to him ... bombarding him with queries. Most of my questions were either philosophical or literary - because, though I had my own share of common difficulties, the real difficulty at the beginning was my , Westernised intellect."²² Sri Aurobindo replied promptly and sometimes at length, and these letters were an amalgam of information, instruction, elucidation and initiation, and they were to grow into gorgeous epistolary treasures and significantly enrich the Aurobindonian canon. From an early part of his stay, Sethna sported the spiritual name of "Amal Kiran" (Amal for short), which Sri Aurobindo had given him. The word meant "The Clear Ray", and fitted his ardent and flame-bright nature.

It was Amal's particular destiny to correspond at length with Sri Aurobindo on the great 'work in progress', the epic Savitri, and as good as coax the poem to come out into the open. After a good deal of astute strategy and clever tactics on Amal's part, his efforts were rewarded on 25 October 1936 - "one of the most important days, if not the most important, of my life here" -- for, in a letter written on that day, Sri Aurobindo gave 16 line from the exordium (Book One, canto I) beginning with the memorable

It was the hour before the Gods awake.

as an example of possible "overhead" poetry.²³ But Savitri was to be a carefully guarded secret for another ten years, and even in the Ashram itself very few knew anything authentic about it. There was some random speculation, of course, but that was about all till from the middle forties onwards the poem started appearing, first in fascicles, then in two volumes; and finally in 1954 the entire work came out in a single volume with Sri Aurobindo's letters to Amal on the poem printed at the end.

VII

Not long after Sethna, Vasudha came with her elder brother, Chandulal Shah, who was an engineer. Being only fourteen, she had been refused permission in November 1927, but by a happy quirk of circumstance, she

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was allowed to come in February 1928, although she hadn't applied this time. They reached Pondicherry on the afternoon of 19 February, and at first the girl wondered how she was going to spend the next fifteen days in the Ashram with (as she imagined) "people meditating with closed eyes and grim faces and nobody smiling, nobody laughing and talking". Could she not leave for Bombay (where she was schooling) Immediately after the

twenty- first?

In the evening of the 19th, she went in her brother's company, each carrying a rose garland, to see the Mother:

I remember I first saw Mother in the Prosperity Room standing somewhere in the middle of the hall. I naturally did just what my brother did... He gave one garland to Mother and did Pranam .... The garlands had been kept for a long time in a dish and the petals of some roses had fallen in it, so I collected them and put them all in Mother's hands and did Pranam again. She gave me a sweet smile. And I forgot all about my going away.

As she said forty-seven years later in the course of a talk to the students of the Centre of Education: "I don't know how the fifteen days passed a then fifteen years and many more years, but I am still here. "²⁴¹

A day or two after the Darshan, when Chandulal met the Mother, she told him simply: "Your little sister is very nice, Sri Aurobindo also was pleased." Then she added: "If she likes to stay here I shall keep her." Chandulal spoke about this to Vasudha, and she said at once: "Yes, I want to stay here, I don't want to marry." Charmed by the Mother's beautiful face, Vasudha had felt "very much enchanted" by the divine smile: where was the room for hesitation, then?

Academic laurels, the lure of marriage and motherhood and social life, the pull of the homestead, kith and kin - all were nothing, less than nothing. To be with the Mother Divine was everything! It was with such one-pointed, unwavering and almost unselfconscious consecrations that the Mother built the marvellous House of the Divine that is Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

It was now Vasudha's destiny to educate herself (for at first she had but small English and no French), to render whatever service was asked of her by the Mother, and by these and other means to advance in the Integral Yoga. If she was absurdly young, she was also unusually eager to serve the Mother. In the early stages she did odd jobs like making mats for the vases, embroidering the Mother's saris, and washing, mending and ironing her clothes. "I never asked for any work," she says remembering those distant days, "and never refused any."²⁵ Later, Vasudha had to attend to the Mother's personal work, always - as if by gravitational pull- getting closer and closer to her, and a time was to come when Vasudha would be like a part of the Mother. Also, in the thirties, Vasudha too started writing letters, to the Mother almost every day, and to Sri Aurobindo from time to time.

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The singular nature of this child-mother and disciple-Guru relationship - its life-sparks, illuminations, ministrations of love - can be illustrated by a few extracts. Thus, on the 1st of February 1934, the Mother wishes Vasudha "A happy, calm, an invariable peace, a luminous silence." Next day Vasudha writes:

Mother, I shall capture You in my heart. I don't need to think of peace and happiness. When You dwell in our hearts, these things are sure to be there.

The Mother answers immediately: "You will not have to go far to seize me, for I am already in your heart and as soon as your eyes are opened you will see me there .... "²⁶ Barely a few years have elapsed since her arrival in February 1928, and already Vasudha is mistress of herself and of the resources of language. She has progressed far in her sadhana indeed!

It is not, however, roses, roses, all the way. There are unpredictable its moments of depression, there are the attacks by the ubiquitous adverse forces, and life even in the Ashram, life even in the immediacy of the Mother, becomes inexplicably difficult, and Vasudha pours out her anxieties, uncertainties and agonies at the Mother's feet. And the Mother at once rushes to rescue and reassure her child:

Poor little one, I very gladly take you on my lap and cradle you to my heart to soothe this heavy sorrow which has no cause and to quell this great revolt which has no reason. Let me take you in my arms, bathe you in my love and wipe away even the memory of this unfortunate incident.²⁷

Evidently the cure is not complete, for Vasudha writes a few days later to Sri Aurobindo complaining of unease and restlessness, and of an inability to retain the Mother's presence all the time. In his reply Sri Aurobindo tells her that the disturbing fancies and forces are not really the emanations of her own mind but merely "foreign matter thrown on it from outside". She should train her mind to throw back these alien things, and if she keeps herself "inwardly confident and open", the Mother's and his own help will do what is needed to be done. Vasudha is by now "Little Smile" to the Mother, and is the recipient of unending Grace from both her and Sri Aurobindo. Perhaps, difficulties come to Vasudha (as to many other sadhaks) only to provoke the Grace to act in due measure. So long as life is not wholly supramentalised, it is too much to hope that an inner poise can be continually maintained. There is a rhythm in these things - the alternations of elation and moodiness, faith and doubt, self-confidence and enervating defeatism. When Vasudha asks what is it in her that is closed to the Mother - is it the heart? the mind? or something else? - and how she is to effect the opening, the answer readily comes:

My dear little smile,

I know of one way: to give oneself - a complete consecration to the Divine.

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The more one gives oneself, the more one opens; the more one opens, the more one receives; and in the intimacy of this self-giving one can become conscious of the inner Presence and the joy it brings. ²⁸

On 3 August 1936, when Vasudha sounds an SOS, a note of urgency and despair ("I find that I have lost everything: All that was good in me, all is lost."), the Mother tells her "dear little child" hat the possible reason for the bleak feeling was the "clouding of the consciousness" brought about bythe influx of visitors for the 15th August Darshan. "You must not let.this upset you too much, but simply aspire with calm and perseverance for the light to reappear. ²⁹

And so, these perilous hair-pin bends notwithstanding, Vasudha is set on her march towards the supramental summits, her aspiration constantly burnished anew, and her will to ultimate victory sustained by the sovereign Grace of the Mother.

VIII

Another who joined the Ashram when still very young was the nine-year old Romen Palit, who came with his father, Rajani Kanta, in November 1929. Although children were not then allowed into the Ashram, Romen was permitted to go for Darshan of the 24th, and even at that age he "felt a great vastness, a height in Sri Aurobindo ... as great as the Himalayas".³⁰ Romen very much wished to stay on, but when his father broached the subject with the Mother and also wrote to Sri Aurobindo, it was suggested that Romen could return later after learning some English first, so that it would be easy for him to talk to the Mother. Coming back in July 1930, Romen stayed on, looked after by somebody or other, and always under the Mother's enveloping care. Presently, he garnered knowledge from books, and friends and teachers, and tried to cultivate poetry as well as music and painting. Then, in 1934, something happened:

When I was fourteen, I had a definite and exceptional experience of the psychic being coming to forefront in spite of all my unsteady nature, my moods and my constant depressions. This experience became the basis of existence and has been the support and aid in all my trials and tribulations. This was the Mother's extended arm in my consciousness to rouse what was the most true, the most permanent in me. This altered all my life, my vision, and my valuation of things, persons, actions in general and my relation with the Mother in particular.³¹

But of course things are not settled quite so easily, for the hostile forces are always about, ready with their insinuations and sly intimations. Romen was thus only too apt to veer between "depression and happiness, discipline and erratic tamas".

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The Mother, however, was ever watchful, and her benevolent protective cover was strong and not easily to be pierced. Thus in spite of the zig-zag swaying between the poles, there was some decisive progress in the sadhana as also in poetry, music and painting. Once when Romen was playing to her, the Mother went into a deep concentration with a smile on her lips. Then, coming out of it, she said:

Do you know, child, what I saw? On the bank of a river, there was a platform and seated there, you were playing some instrument. So you see you are not a musician in this birth alone.³²

As for his poems, many of them received Sri Aurobindo's commendation. And yet, Romen continued to be subject to moods of discontent and icy depression. The Mother had at last to tell him that he was free to "go out the and see the ordinary life", but she warned him also of the possible consequence.

It was as the Mother had expected; the hunger for the outside world wouldn't be easily satiated, for the more it was fed, the more did it wax ravenous. But Romen had, after all, to make his own unfettered choice, and if in the process he injured himself a little, that couldn't be helped. The Mother was the Mother, at once divine in the plenitude of her prescience and human in her anxious and loving concern for her child. Must Romen play the purblind forward child and, while still unprepared, sully himself in the mire-sunk ways of the world? Would he not be her true child, her child of Light? ... But that was to happen too, in the fullness of time. He would then be a minstrel of Light, and limn the features of the apocalypse:

What deep, white unimaginable fire broods

Within her frail body's golden citadel!

What puissance sleeps in her sky-tranquil eyes!

What secrecy of God's apocalypse

Is hidden behind her lustrous limbs of peace!

What stupendous love's flame-red magnificence

Blazes within the monument of her soul!

And thus on "The Mother Bearing the Human Cross":

A night-heavy cross of human doom is Hers

Whose ancient weight no divinity could bear,

A poignant load no might or will could reverse; ...

Her mind is alone, inscrutable, sublime

On the grand vastnesses of His trance-wide seeing.

A poise and Power and Bliss of His infinite Light,

Her transcendent ray shall change this dying Night³³

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IX

Among those who first came in 1929 was also Mrityunjoy, who had already been doing Sri Aurobindo's yoga. It happened to be the transitory period in the history of the Ashram when some of Sri Aurobindo's older disciples had left, and there were sadhaks in the Ashram who, while they had "accepted" the Mother, had some mental reservations still.

In those days the Mother saw newcomers on the very day they arrived, and at ten in the morning Mrityunjoy had a satisfying interview with her in the darshan room in the Meditation House. But that afternoon he was told by a young sadhak that, while reading the Arya, meditation, painting, music and poetry were all right, the main accent in the Ashram was on work:

But if you really want to know what the Mother is, you must work. Only then will you physically feel Her shakti. Otherwise you will miss the chance however much you read and meditate.³⁴

At once Mrityunjoy decided to ask for some physical work in spite of his poor health. That evening the Mother assigned him some light work in the library, which he began from the next day. He was soon to discover the difference between the attitude of some of the "intellectuals" in the Ashram and the new batch of devoted workers, and opened more and more to the Mother's force until one day the Mother saw "a star at the centre of my heart emanating four rays, which had something to do with the four powers of the Mother". The next day when the same thing was repeated, the Mother sent Nolini to warn Mrityunjoy to "be careful in my daily movements so as not to disturb something that was growing in me".

He could not at first understand the meaning behind the Mother's warning and continued joining in the walks and gossip of some of the "senior" sadhaks, and also, on the sly, taking tea with them, reading Sri Aurobindo's letters and participating in the loose talk about other sadhaks. Caught in that atmosphere, Mrityunjoy's consciousness, after the initial lift, suffered a fall. Within a week he "began to feel dull when I approached the Mother" and realised that something had gone wrong. This was underlined when he sought the Mother one morning and made pranam:

I found it quite different from my arrival day's Pranam at Her feet. Now Her look penetrated my eyes as if She read through them my secret thoughts, feelings and actions, of which I had not yet become aware.³⁵

He realised that the Mother's giving of a flower after Pranam was her way of answering the needs, questions and aspirations taken by the sadhak to her. If one looked for the meaning with true sincerity, it verily stared one in the face, for each flower carried its own particular message.

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Now Mrityunjoy secured the work of spreading the narrow mats and arranging the diminutive Japanese-style tables in the dining room, then in the Ashram compound itself. Even so, his attitude of egoistic separativity remained, and this necessarily affected the progress of his sadhana. Soon he was shifted to another department, but there too he had to learn his lessons the hard way. The Mother pointed out to him that it was only by setting an example that one could succeed as a leader of fellow-workers, "otherwise they would have no true feeling and respect for me". It was with such interesting vicissitudes that Mrityunjoy learnt the secret of Karmayoga - work as an offering, work as worship and ananda, work as surest sadhana.

The Yoga of Works, however, called for infinite understanding and an ... infinite patience. To feel superior, to wax censorious, to lose one's temper with one's associates or subordinates - these only betrayed one's own weakness, one's own flawed nature. As the Mother once admonished Mrityunjoy:

Whatever be the situation and whosoever the person, lack of harmony means lack of consciousness, and the one who is stronger yields. I do not mlean stronger physically, but stronger in consciousness. And by one's affection and love ... one yields to get back peace and harmony.³⁶

Mrityunjoy was not slow to learn the needed lesson, and the result was an accession of peace within, a better record of outer work, and a quicker pace of progress in the sadhana of Integral Yoga.

X

Like Vasudha and Romen, Shanti Doshi also was caught by the frenzy divine while still very young. He was only thirteen when he came to Pondicherry on 17 November 1930. His father had come two years earlier, but alone; and came again in 1930 - this time with Shanti. Having arrived in Pondicherry, Shanti saw the Mother the same evening:

The Mother was clad all in white - sari, blouse and crown. She was sitting on a high chair. When she saw me she was all smiles and a spontaneous recognition arose in my heart that she was my adhisthātrī. I told the Mother that I did not want to go back.³⁷

Then came 24 November:

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were seated on the sofa. As I approached them after my father, Sri Aurobindo smiled. He looked simply wonderful .... When I made pranam holding his feet, he bent down and blessed.

Being allowed to remain, Shanti started learning French, and was

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asked to take the meter readings in the several Ashram houses, and do other odds and ends of work. On 22 May 1932, his birthday, the Mother asked him what he wanted to become; he said he didn't know. Would he like t become big Yogi? Not quite understanding the implications of: the question, Shanti answered, Yes, Mother. But when she explained the that a big Yogi should have a "divine consciousness" and would be surrounded by a swarm of disciples, Shanti was properly alarmed and blurted out at once: "I don't want to be a Yogi, I want to be your child." The Mother then said, "Très bien!". ³⁸p

The boy grew up in the Ashram atmosphere, and put out the petals of his growing consciousness one by one, responding to the central radiance. He reported to the Mother daily, and received her or Sri Aurobindo's comments, directions, explanations, benedictions, admonitions. The singular nature of that mother-child relationship may be illustrated by a few extracts from their correspondence during the thirties:

Shanti: This evening I have seized you strongly and I shall never let you go. I will never leave you, never, never, never.

Mother: Very good, I am very happy you will not leave me. Come for Pranam a little more in silence and quietude, and you will see that you feel the force and love.³⁹

S: Will You explain why the joy and love in me get attacked by obscurity? I am not aware of having done anything, and it is not possible for the happiness and love to withdraw for no reason.

M: No, nothing withdraws; it is the physical being which is unable, by nature, to hold the joy and love for very long, unless it is completely governed by the psychic.⁴⁰

S: I have just heard that you are not well. What is it, my dear mama? Give, me your illness, I shall accept it with joy.

M: You are very nice, my dear child, but what you propose does not appear to me very practical.. .. ⁴¹

S: May I know, Mother, how many centuries ago You descended upon earth?

M: I have never left the earth since it was formed.⁴²

S: What You mean by "vital soul" is the vital being, I think. .

M: The vital soul is what the ancients called the "anima", that which animates, which gives life to the body. It is also sometimes called the etheric being.⁴³

S: Which path must I take then? And what is the right and true way of making the effort?

*"Very Good'"

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M: ....make your brain work by studying regularly and systematically; then during the hours when you are not studying, your brain, having worked enough, will be able to rest and it will be possible for you to concentrate in the depths of your heart and fid there the psychic source; with it you will become conscious both of gratitude and true happmess.⁴⁴

S: A fire is burning in me; it is tremendous ....

M: ....if you don't have fever, this fire business is a wrong imagination that should be rejected. There is a sacred fire that burns in the heart and envelops the whole being: it is Agni, who illumines and purifies all. I kindle that fire in you each time that you ask me for some progress; but it destroys nothing except falsehood and obscurity.⁴⁵

S: Today You gave me a flower meaning "Psychic flame", but I really didn't understand what you mean to tell me.

M: Agni is the will for progress, the flame of purification that burns up all obstacles and difficulties. By giving you the flower, I am encouraging you to let it burn in you.⁴⁶

Thus, in the course of two or three years (1933-36), a few hundred communications are exchanged covering almost the entire spectrum of the double - the mother-child human and the Guru-neophyte spiritual ­ relationship. Questioned as to whether her inner actions were of divine origin, the Mother said: "I may assure you that my action, whether inner or external, is always of divine origin." If Shanti felt any uneasiness, it was but the result of "want of plasticity and receptivity" in his mental, vital and physical. When Shanti asked whether there were many persons in the Ashram who didn't believe that she was the Divine incarnate, she answered with all-sufficient brevity and subdued humour: "I have made no enquiry into the subject. "^{47 2}On the other hand, when he writes to her offering all his imperfections, desires and difficulties, asking her to accept them, she answers at once: "My dear child, I accept your offering and use it to light in you the flame of progress."⁴⁸ The best of arrangements for progress in the Yoga!

XI

There was, then, Nirodbaran. Having completed his medical education in Edinburgh, he "arrived all on a sudden at Pondicherry" in the first week of January 1930, without having informed the Mother about his visit. While still in Europe he and his niece had met Dilip Kumar Roy, and "came to know from him something about the Mother, Sri Aurobindo and the Ashram". It was Dilip who took Nirod to the Mother.

I was dazzled by the sight. Was it a 'visionary gleam' or a reality? Nothing like it had I seen before ....

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She bathed me in the cascade of her smile and heart-melting look.⁴⁹²

His plan, he told her then, was to return to Bengal and practise in his home town, Chittagong. "It was an impromptu answer, for I had not made up my mind at all." For, as he later confessed,

I cared very little for God and had no faith. I started the sadhana without having any idea about it, as Stendhal's Fabrice joined the army in utter ignorance of what war was like.

He returned with his niece for the February Darshan and they stayed on for a few weeks, taking part in all the functions and observing the discipline of the Ashram, but he "was not at all ready for a spiritual life" and was still more or less a materialist. For three years he knocked about in search of a secure job and a very definite change came over him: "Though materially I had to face hardships, spiritually I seemed to have rediscovered my soul." And so in 1933 he returned to the Ashram a few days before the February Darshan. But when he asked to be allowed to stay permanently in the Ashram, he was told to wait till August. Nirod in the meantime did odd jobs (including work in a timber godown), and he wrote numerous letters. While they were addressed to the Mother, the replies usually came from Sri Aurobindo. "Should one write about everything?" Nirod once asked naively, and the reply was:

Only those who feel the need, write their experiences or condition daily to the Mother. Even so, they need not write the same things daily, but only what they feel the necessity to write.^50/font

Nirod wrote: "Do I profit, Mother, by simply looking at you or your photograph?" "Yes, very many do," was the truthful answer. In late March, he once complained of "a peculiar experience". Usually after pranam he used to "gaze at Sri Aurobindo's portrait for about fifteen minutes" in the Reception Room, then go to the nearby Reading Room, and "pass a few minutes over the newspapers". For the past few days, when he got up after these few minutes he had been getting so dizzy that he had to "at once sit down". Was this, he asked, connected with his sadhana? "After fifteen minutes' concentration," explained the Master, "to plunge into newspapers may not unnaturally lead to such a result."⁵²Could he take literary activity as part of his sadhana? The answer was categorical:

Any activity can be taken as part of the sadhana if it is offered to the Divine or done with the consciousness or faith that it is done by the Divine Power. ⁵

The six months till August passed quickly enough, and Nirod stayed on,

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and the bud of his psychic self blossomed in the steady warmth Grace of the Master and the Mother:

My intellectual preparation glided insensibly into creative activity. I wanted to be a poet. I had started writing in Bengali, then in English .... Sri Aurobindo said that in the Ashram atmosphere a creative force was in action.... Every day he not only sent me inspiration but corrected my poems, gave concrete suggestions, explained the meaning of the poems which I composed .... ⁵³

But the plaint, on the disciple's as well as the Guru's part, was that the progress in the sadhana was less pronounced than progress in poetic composition. Once Sri Aurobindo wrote: "The poet is born. What about the Yogi?" Of course there was some progress in the Yoga too, but with with his incorrigible scepticism he could never be too sure about it, and so he wrote on 4 August 1933:

Mother did not put her hand on my head during pranam. I hope it was not due to any wrong movement in me?

"No," ran the answer; "It was merely because Mother was in trance."⁵⁴ Then twenty days after, this stalely agonising question: "How to get rid of sexual thoughts?" elicited the answer: "To think too much of sex even for suppressing it, makes it worse. You have to open more to positive experience." But how does one open to positive experience? Prompt came the reply: "By remaining quiet and aspiring for it - knowing that it is waiting above. Also think more of the Mother and less of your vital impulses."⁵⁵

Nirod was also harassed by the visitations of defeatist thoughts - about the sadhaks who were defecting to the other side - and about the proliferation of the disease of depression. What was the explanation? The answer was the same that Sri Aurobindo gave to Dilip, though now couched in different words:

It is a formation of a hostile character that is wandering about the Ashram and taking hold of one after another telling them that they are not fit and won't be able to do the Yoga and had better die or better go away or at least better be desperate. The only sensible thing is to kick these suggestions out of you without any ceremony and tell them that you have come here to succeed and not to fail. ⁵⁶

On a subsequent occasion, in April 1937 , Nirod wrote that he felt "a kick, a shock, a heartquake" whenever somebody left the Ashram. But why bother? If 30-40 had left, 130-140 had come; and the Ashram "survives and grows"! ⁵⁷ Nor was the fact of a few defections an argument in favour of postponing the whole supramental adventure altogether. On the contrary, the recent apparently heightened activity of the adverse forces was itself an

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XII

indication of the progress of the Yoga pursued in the Ashram:

... wherever Yoga or Yajna is done, there the hostile forces gather together to stop it by any means. It is known that there is a lower nature and a higher spiritual nature - it is known that they pull different ways and the lower is strongest at first and the higher afterwards. ⁵⁸

The hostile forces exploit the lower nature and try to retard or destroy the Yoga. Didn't the Upanishad describe the Yogic path as sharp as the razor's edge? But with faith and sincerity and reliance on the Divine, one could always fight one's way through all difficulties and obstructions. Sri Aurobindo had referred to this recurrent problem in Yoga:

To have weaknesses of the lower nature is one thing - to call in the hostile forces is quite another. Whoever does the latter .. .is going towards the opposite camp - for the marks of the hostile Force are contempt of the Divine, revolt and hatred against the Mother, disbelief in the Yoga, assertion of ego against the Divine Being, preference of falsehood to Truth, seeking after false gods and rejection of the Eternal. ⁵⁹

The difficulties - the ups and downs - the attacks from the outside, notwithstanding all these, like his own "Lonely Tramp" of Heaven, Nirod too persevered on the steep and narrow path of Integral Yoga, and he could sincerely affirm:

My feet shall never rest nor tire

Until, my destined journey done,

I stand, led by the inscrutable fire,

Before the seat of the lonely One.⁶⁰

XII

Among others, there was Satyendra Thakore from Gujarat. He had seen Sri Aurobindo, along with other leaders, in a procession at the time of the Surat Congress of December 1907. Later, as a college student, he read some of Sri Aurobindo's smaller books, and later still, came in possession of a nearly complete set of the Arya rya volumes. After experimenting with Yoga for a few years, and gaining some valuable experiences, he arrived in Pondicherry at last in November 1934 and had darshan of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on the twenty-fourth. Satyendra felt "a surge of emotion" even from a distance, as if he had known Sri Aurobindo for ages. The interview with the Mother was fruitful. It was agreed that he should join the Ashram. On a subsequent occasion she told him that she saw "exceptional possibilities" in him, and in fact he had a singular experience within a few years of his final coming:

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A vast golden light with white masses in it descended and touched the crown of my head, then receded. At that moment of contact I became aware of its quality of peace, joy and freedom - each particle dancing with joy. ⁶¹

He was with the Master and the Mother, and he had a sense of security and peace. The rest was an and a in works, ananda in aspiration, ananda in surrender.

A sadhak's life, however, cannot be un clouded joy all the time. In such moments of doubt, or gloom, or anguished self-questioning, an appeal to the Mother means the answering spray of Grace. In 1937, Satyendra receives this Charter from the Mother:

I want you to ask freely what you need.⁶²

And when he feels it is "almost indecent" to go on "taking and taking", she says:

From your mother you can always take, it is quite natural, especially when things are given to you full-heartedly - and am I not your mother who loves you?⁶³

When he asks her how he can ever hope to rise to the heights of realisation when his human nature drags him mercilessly down, she says simply:

Let me carry you in my arms and the climbing will become easy.⁶⁴

Again:"Dear child, I am always with you and my love and blessings never you." When he wonders by what divine Mystery she makes grow in . increasing love and adoration for her, she replies:

The only mystery, the only spell is my love - my love which is spread over my children and calls down upon them the Divine's Grace to help and to protect.⁶⁵

Within a year he is convinced that there is no one in the whole world as as lovable as his "dear Mama" and receives in immediate response:

Love, love, love to my very dear child; all the joy, all the light, all the peace of the divine love and also my loving blessings.⁶⁶

Where could one find an arbour of security as restful and as beneficent and as perfectly secure as the Mother's love?

XIII

Rishabhchand was one of the tens of thousands of young men who suspended their college studies in response to Mahatma Gandhi's call for

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non-cooperation in the early nineteen-twenties. Subsequently he established his own firm, "The Indian Silk House", at Calcutta and prospered as businessman. But the lure of Yoga becoming irresistible, he shook himself free from the cares of his family and his firm, and made for Pondicherry in 1931. He was accepted by the Mother, and became a familiar figure in the Ashram. He was put in charge of the furniture department, and proved an efficient head. He also gave readings from Sri Aurobindo's poems, and The Life Divine and The Synthesis of Yoga. He wrote authoritatively on the Yoga of the other and on the life of Sri Aurobindo. In his essay on "The Brazier of Love", Rishabhchand wondered why the Chandi (or Devi Mahatmyam), while it invokes the. Divine Mother in her different aspects of Consciousness, Intelligence, Power, Peace, Beauty, Forgiveness, Kindness, etc., doesn't refer to the cardinal aspect of Love:

Love is the first, highest and completest expression of the divine Truth in the world and the supreme Force that can lead the world back to the Divine. It includes all the other aspects and principles and is the eternal fount of the most ineffable ecstasy and sweetness that flow out of the union of the human with the Divine. And it is this love that is literally incarnate in the Mother - in her presence, in her carriage, in her words, in her gestures and in all her ways and dealings with men; so much so that the word Mother has come to mean Love; and to be near her is to feel that we are in the physical presence of divine Love itself.. ..⁶⁷

The feeling of utter consecration to the Mother blotted out all else from Rishabhchand's horizon of consciousness, and for forty years he was to live and move in the Ashram as the very embodiment of the phenomenon of surrender to the Divine.

XIV

Ganapatram, hailing from the Punjab, was already deep in spiritual sadhana when he first arrived for the Darshan on 15 August 1934, which he found "a great event". The Mother was "an embodiment of Love" , and he was "lost in her". He often saw a Light in the Ashram compound. He returned to the Punjab for a while to wind up his things, and on his final coming in January 1935, he was given the work "of cleaning things" in the library - a work which he did for fourteen years:

My day used to start at 4 a.m. and I am happy to record that some of the best spiritual experiences I have had were during these early hours.⁶⁸

Laurence Marshall Pinto⁶⁹ came to Pondicherry in the same year. But it was only on 15 August 1937 that he and his wife Mona, an Englishwoman

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whom he had married early that year, had their first darshan of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. "I have seen majesty at last!" was his all­ennobling feeling on seeing Sri Aurobindo, and presently he turned to the Mother:

I saw there so much sweetness and love that I just ran up to Her and put my head into Her lap. Mona did the same ....

Then ... I took up courage to put my head in His lap and felt His love and sweetness that went with His majesty. Then I put my head between Them and both blessed me together. Such a marvellous experience.⁷⁰

"They decided to take up Yoga and have remained in the Ashram ever since, offering their unstinted services to the Divine. In April 1938, Sri Aurobindo gave Laurence the name "Udar" and wrote beside the name its meaning: "Noble, generous, upright and sincere." Soon Udar became a popular and dynamic figure in the Ashram, an engineer and organiser and actor and sadhak rolled into one, while Mona was specially chosen by the Mother to take charge of Golconde, a large modern dormitory for sadhaks built soon after their coming, a difficult task which she executes to this day with meticulous perfection.

There were others too, more and more of them with the steady march of the years: some were Karmayogis whose task it was to set the complicated wheels of the Ashram moving, at once infallibly and noiselessly. Others were darlings of the Muses, and cultivated poetry, philosophy, painting, music, history. Still others were priests and priestesses of adoration of the Lord and the Mother. But of course, wherever they may have started - Karma, Jnana, Bhakti - they covered the other two sectors too, and practised, even if unconsciously, the Integral Yoga. A certain inner poise, a light in their eyes, an unobtrusive but unambiguous ananda suffusing their whole personality, - these were the marks that characterised the generality of the inmates of the Ashram. They were so many sun-flowers turned always towards the central dual power of Light and Love: Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. And the sadhaks were also the limbs, sinews and blood-corpuscles of the living Body of Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

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