On The Mother

CHAPTER 51

Forward to Perfection

I

Throughout 1960 and after, although the Mother had to curtail her outer activities, she was nevertheless in continuous and intimate touch with the many-sided life of the Ashram community. She kept up a ceaseless stream of correspondence with some of the sadhaks, she made perceptive comments on Sri Aurobindo's Thoughts and Aphorisms which she was rendering into French, and she gave timely and pointed counsel admonition or instruction as the occasion called for. Here is a letter written on 10 August 1960, relating to the Centre of Education and its academic programme:

It is not so much the details of organisation as the attitude that must change

It seems that unless the teachers themselves get above the usual intellectual level, it will be difficult for them to fulfill their duty and accomplish their task.¹

The following letter of the same year was provoked by a particular situation, but it had also a wider application in human affairs:

As usual, it is only a misunderstanding, and also as usual, the ego of each one, by its reaction, magnifies the thing and aggravates it. But it is easy to arrange, and, with the goodwill of all, 1 am sure that all will be well.

I consider that we are at an excellent occasion for collective and individual Sadhana and that is why I engage myself in it and take special interest in it.

We do not work for the success of X's play, or of Y's dance, or Z's scenario.

We want to render in physical terms, as perfectly as possible, the inspiration sent by the Lord for the accomplishment of His work upon earth.

And for that each individual soul is a helper and a collaborator, but each human ego is a limitation and an obstacle.²

The reason, the intellect, was the helper, but now it is a bar; the ego was a helper once, but the ego is now a bar.³ We needs must exceed the intellect, transcend the ego, if we are truly to serve the Divine.⁴

II

The Mother's message for the next year, 1961, was neither an exhortation nor an admonition, but an announcement, almost a promise:

Page 688

This wonderful world of delight

waiting at our gates for our call,

to come down upon earth....

World-existence could be viewed, as Hamlet once did, as weary, stale, flat and unprofitable; but also, in Sri Aurobindo's words, as "the ecstatic dance of Shiva which multiplies the body of the God numberlessly to the view".5 On 25 April 1956, the Mother had said: "Yes, the justification of earthly existence is that one is on earth to realise the Divine." Were it not for this earthly life would be a monstrous thing indeed! But most people are incredulous. They cannot believe that there is this other world of pure Delight, that there is any world other than the world of the dualities - the world of double, double, toil and trouble - in which they are caught. "Mostly," says the Mother, "when they are told that there is a divine Joy and a divine Plenitude which far surpasses all they can imagine in ordinary life, they don't believe it."⁶ And yet, it is all very simple: turn to the Divine and ask, ask with total trust, and it will be given; knock, and the gates of delight will open! It is the people themselves who purblindly or perversely love their own lacerations.

Again, on 23 January 1957, while explaining Sri Aurobindo's apophthegm - "Delight is the secret. Learn of pure delight and thou shalt learn of God" - the Mother went into a rhapsody:

...this delight is everywhere.... One moves in the midst of things and it is as though they were all singing to you their delight. There comes a time when it becomes very familiar in the life around you... it is a little more difficult to feel it in human beings, because there are all their mental and vital formations... even in animals one feels it.... But in plants, in flowers, it is so wonderful! They speak all their joy, they express it... it is a communion with the raison d'être of the universe.

And when this comes it fills all the cells of the body.... All that is like a canticle of joyous vibrations, but very, very quiet, without violence, without passion....

...A marvellous harmony. And it is all Delight....⁷

In another talk, the Mother described the very nature of the soul as "divine Delight, constant, unvarying, unconditioned, ecstatic", and hence the sole way to the delight of existence was to come out of the prison-house of egoistic separativity and falsity and lose oneself in the Divine - the psychic river returning to the Ocean divine. The New Year message for 1 thus only chimed with the earlier illuminations, affirmations and revelations about this "wonderful world of delight" that only needed an inner awakening to recognise and claim it as one's own.

On another occasion, when Surendra Nath Jauhar told the Mother in a fit of gloom, "I am very much disappointed, dejected, discouraged,

Page 689

demoralised, depressed, disheartened, pessimistic, unnerved, sad, worried and frustrated," she answered at once: "But in my Dictionary there are no such words... there are only words like happy, hopeful, cheerful, bright, buoyant, sparkling, merry, exultant and so on!" And on yet another occasion, when a sadhika, Lalita, poured out her trivial irritations before the Mother, she but smiled and spoke soothingly, showing how easy it was to escape from one's petty frustrations into the marvellous infinitudes of the Divine. In effect, what she said was:

Go to the sea beach, lie on the sand, look at the vast expanse of water in front of you and let your consciousness become as wide as the ocean

Go to your terrace at night and gaze at the stars. Think of the infinity of space in which the stars are moving, each star a world by itself, and there are millions and millions of them, only a few of which we have seen with our telescopes. Imagine the marvels that are in time and space, which is only a tiny part of the manifestation of the Divine. He is so much more than all this. He whom we are here to realise, and with whom we have to unite in consciousness. You must have noticed the Milky Way in the sky. How many stars are there that we have seen? And how many years it has taken for their light to reach us? How many millions of them are there which most probably we shall never see, even with our latest inventions? Just think of all this and you will soon feel the absurdity of your small troubles.⁸

This wonderful world would flood us with its delight of existence, if only we could open our eyes and see!

III

In this period of the Mother's life - in her early eighties - her movements were confined to the main Ashram building, generally the first and second floors. Her day began early, at about four or even earlier. After taking "some lime-water with lithine" and a pill or two of "Cachou - a French make, black in colour, something like the Japanese Simsim" she came down from her second floor rooms to the first floor by 6.10 a.m., and exchanging smiles and greetings with various inmates all along the way, she walked up to the Balcony and gave darshan to the rapt concourse of disciples and devotees standing in the street. Returning from the Balcony, generally at 6.30 or not much later, she saw the sadhaks waiting for her in Pavitra's laboratory, and possibly there were some other sadhaks waiting with short reports to give or instructions to receive. Perhaps a brief consultation with a doctor, and then she was in her room ready for her breakfast. And so the day's work had begun!⁹

Page 690

During the rest of the day, there was invariably a full schedule of engagements, superficially the same but essentially different from day to day. The Ashram's properties were miscellaneous and far-flung, there were negotiations in progress, or there were new constitutions, alterations, or additions to the old buildings. Divine economy didn't always conform to the principles of classical economy, and Amrita, Counouma and others were often baffled at first, or surprised, by her decisions, but also profoundly satisfied in the end. Nolini, the ageless Secretary, needed no speech to understand the Mother's intentions, and he too spoke sparsely; he was unobtrusively in and out, he was he Mother's executive emanation. The heads of departments - the sadhaks in charge of the divers services - Pavitra, the Director and Kireet, the Registrar of the Centre of Education, Udar with his finger on the pulse of many things, Navajata with his global plans for Sri Aurobindo Society, Prapatti with his expanding "Navajyoti" organisation in the service of the Mother, Madhav Pandit, so poised with his canalised spirituality and intellectual energy, Ambalal Purani with his missionary zeal and flair for public relations spanning the continents, Narayan Prasad in charge of the granary and the garnerer of choice anecdotes on the Mother's ministry, Nirodbaran, Sethna, Kishor Gandhi, all seasoned apostles and beloved children of the Mother, Champaklal, Pranab, Vasudha, Kamala, all constant and dedicated in their ministrations to the Mother, senior sadhak like Sahana Devi, Duraiswami, Rishabhchand, Prithwisingh, Chandradip, Sundaram, Jayantilal, Indra Sen, Pujalal, Mrityunjoy, and yesterday's school-children who were today's sadhaks like Paru, Tara and other "flaming pioneers" - they all had their periodic darshans, interviews, and the needed replenishments of the spirit. There were the visitors - some "very important" ones, and self-important too - who came and went, the triple-steel walls of their egos blindly resisting the Mother's Grace, the tenor of their lives suffering little or no change, - and there were grand exceptions too! Yet even the most adamantine, the most resistant to change, even the emissaries of Erebus, felt a subtle flicker of light for the nonce, a seed was perhaps lodged in the soil of the darkness to burst one day into sudden life.

When the children or sadhaks came to offer pranam on their birthdays, it became the custom for the Mother to give them a bouquet of flowers, and also special canards with her autograph and blessings. The children were the most open to the Mother's influence, and the sadhaks also looked forward to their birthdays with eager anticipation of the joy of meeting the Mother even if only for a few brief seconds, receiving the touch of her hand on their heads, and her gaze of compassion and her smile of love. Like the sun's diurnal round, ever changing yet ever the same, the Mother's daily routine of divine ministry was also a continuum of the scattering of light, life and joy to minds unseasonably clouded, to hearts in their seasons of drought, and to souls in their winters of cold discomfort.

Page 691

IV

In March 1961, the Department Of physical Education had formed a separate -group for its instructor and group captains, and 24 April, this Captains Group appeared in in its new uniform - olive green shirt and shorts - with the other groups when the salute of the J.S.A.S.A. was given to the Mother and to the Samadhi.¹⁰ That evening, after the usual Darshan day March Past in the Playground, they offered a special prayer to the Mother:

Sweet Mother,

We aspire to work all together towards the goal that Thou hast proposed to us.

Grant us the rectitude, the courage, the perseverance and the goodwill necessary to accomplish this sublime task

Kindle in us the flame which will burn out all resistance and make us fit to be Thy faithful servants.

And this was the Mother's reply:

My children,

We are united towards the same goal and for the same accomplishment - for a work unique and new, that the divine Grace has given us to accomplish. I hope that more and more you will understand the exceptional importance of this work....

The divine force is with you - feel its presence more and more and be careful never to betray it.

Feel, wish, act, that you may be new beings for the realisation of a new world and for this my blessings shall always be with you.¹¹

The Mother's message on the forty-first anniversary of her final coming was in the words of Sri Aurobindo himself:

An inner (soul) relation means that one feels the Mother's presence, is turned to her at all times, is aware of her force moving, guiding, helping, is full of love for her and always feels a great nearness whether one is physically near her or not. This relation takes up the mind, vital and inner physical till one feels one's mind close to the Mother's mind, one's vital in harmony with hers, one's very physical consciousness full of her.¹²

A sense of nearness to the Mother - of being within the protecting and purifying orbit of her influence, of belonging to the Mother, and being committed to her far aims and immediate concerns - was to be attained. Sri Aurobindo's main point is that what really matters is an inner relation, not the physical nearness to the Mother; and this can be established whether one is physically near her or not. To be able to see the Mother with ones physical eyes is indeed much, but always the aim should be to transcend

Page 692

the physical and learn to see with the inner consciousness and establish thereby a total nearness. It is essentially a spiritual relation that needs to be established, and this is possible even when one is not physically near the Mother.

But what is this inner relation? The great truth of the matter is that the Mother is really omnipresent. The presence is there whether one is aware of it or not.. The Light is there whether one sees it or not. It is the sort of experience that cannot be cabined by limitations of space or time. Faith is nevertheless the starting-point. With this faith in the Mother's omnipresence, we can look for it everywhere and at all times. Once we know that the Mother is with us, how can the eyes be turned away? We can have eyes only for the Mother, we see her with full imaginative attention, and as we do so, we become aware of her force moving, guiding and helping us. What if the Mother is not as easily - or as often - physically accessible to us? The Mother being no mere physical presence and personality but a power and an active force, potent and unresting, she is there with us always guiding and helping us. Not a passive or static relation, this, but a dynamic and creative one. The Mother is indeed the Mother, the Guru who gently leads us on, the guardian in whose protective embrace we are safe as a child in its mother's arms.

Such being the nature of the intimate relation between the Mother and ourselves, how can our hearts fail to fill with love for her, how can we put a ceiling upon this love? In its turn, this love gives us the gift of a new insight, a kind of sixth sense - or spiritual antennae - to be conscious of the Mother, of her force, of her love, whether we are physically near her or not.

There is also another side to this relationship. Even before we see the Mother, she has seen us, and has helped us to see her. She has chosen us, even before we have chosen her. If our relation to her is a flame of aspiration, her relation to us is an embrace of love and protection. "This relation," says Sri Aurobindo, "takes up the mind, vital and inner Physical." In other words, the Mother's force acts upon these segments of our being. and purifies and transforms them. By exposing oneself to the transforming radiations of the Mother's Light, one slowly experiences a change in one's whole life, one's varied play of consciousness, "till one feels one's mind close to the Mother's mind, one's vital in harmony with hers, one's physical consciousness full of her". The fueling of separativity, disharmony, physical density - which is the normal condition of one's life - gives place to a feeling of kinship and harmony with the Mother, and of freedom and lightness that is the result of such kinship and harmony. The Mother's answering response to our aspiration is a hammer of Love that tempers and reshapes the mind, the vital pulls and even the human body so that they may become fit instruments for the Mother's play of manifestation. Such an inner relation certainly transcends

Page 693

the mere physical nearness, and it is continuous and creative, and facilitates the desired integral change and transformation of the mental, vital and physical consciousness. We have only to look up to the Mother in total trust and love, and she will unfailingly respond with her Grace supreme.

V

It was in 1961 that the little gold-blazoned book - The Mother on Sri Aurobindo - was published. The frontispiece was a colour reproduction of a notable painting by the Mother. There is an interesting story behind it:

During the early 1920s Sri Aurobindo's brother, Barin, was doing some oil painting under the Mother's guidance. As is the common practice of artists, a small board was kept for depositing the surplus paint left on the palette after each session. A random mixture of colours covered most of the surface of this board. One day when Barin had finished his work the Mother asked for the palette and, with the remaining paint, gave a few deft brush strokes to the centre of the board covered with old palette-scrapings. Thus the painting was completed.

Evidently, something had struck the Mother in the swirl of colours on the board. The suggestion of a face may have been already visible in the midst of it. In the finished painting, a face resembling Sri Aurobindo's emerges from the chaos of colours which appropriately represents "the Inconscient", according to the Mother's title. The Mother herself confirmed that the face is Sri Aurobindo's. It is likely, as is reported in one version of the story, that Sri Aurobindo was present at the time of this incident and she took the opportunity to paint a quick portrait of him. The Mother liked the painting enough to have it printed along with the title she gave it.¹³

The painting also reminds one of her profound experience of 5 November 1958:

At the very bottom of the inconscience most hard and rigid and narrow and stifling I struck upon an almighty spring....

The Emerging Godhead is the Golden Purusha, Sri Aurobindo himself. The prefatory declaration to the book is also challenging:

What Sri Aurobindo represents in the world's history is not a teaching, not even a revelation; it is a decisive action direct from the Supreme.

The teaching of course is there, in overwhelming elaboration and packed opulence of divination, in the stupendous prose sequences of the Arya period.

Page 694

The "revelation" is blazed forth in the iridescent splendour of Savitri. But the coming of Sri Aurobindo has meant something more: the release of a certain force, the beginnings of a certain action - action by human beings in the terrestrial context, but action receiving its authority and initiation from the Supreme. In other words, Sri Aurobindo came to get a movement going - a movement in evolution, yet a movement so radical that it was really a revolution - and get us all involved in this movement from division to union, from corruption to incorruption, from the human to the divine.

The rest of the book consists of the Mother's statements at different times about Sri Aurobindo, climaxing with:

Without him, I exist not;

Without me, he is unmanifest.

To grasp the import of this affirmation, one could lose oneself in a mystic trance and meditate on the meaning of these mantric lines from Savitri:

There he beheld in their mighty union's poise

The figure of the deathless Two-in-One,

A single being in two bodies clasped,

A diarchy of two united souls,

Seated absorbed in deep creative joy;

Their trance of bliss sustained the mobile world.¹⁴

Towards the end of 1961, the Union Ministry of Education sent a Commission consisting of R.R. Diwakar, N.K. Siddhanta and Muriel Wasi to visit the Centre of Education and make an evaluation of its work and special character. The members were in the Ashram from 11 to 13 October, met the pupils and teachers, visited the Ashram departments and had an interview with the Mother. What they saw was unlike the situation in the general run of educational institutions in the country, and the audacious experiments and the astonishing results both surprised the visitors and won their approbation. One outcome of the Commission's visit was the decision of the Government of India to treat the Centre of Education as a pace-setter in the educational landscape of the country, and flowing from this was the order of the Union Public Service Commission dated 14 August 1962 that students of the Centre of Education who complete their Higher Course are to be treated on a par with the holders of the B.A. or B.Sc. degree of the Indian Universities.

Page 695

VI

Another New Year, 1962; and once again the Mother's message was in everyone s hands:

We thirst for perfection. Not this human perfection which is a perfection of the ego and bars the way to the divine perfection.

But that one perfection which has the power to manifest upon earth the Eternal Truth.¹⁵

On being asked about its significance, the Mother said briefly: "That means perhaps a very simple thing, namely, it is better to let things be done than to talk about them."

But there is something more in it too: the contrast juxtaposed by the Mother is between human perfection and the other perfection that will manifest the Eternal Truth. In The Synthesis of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo contrasts "a human perfection of our being" with "a divine perfection of the human being". While the possibility of human self-development is admitted by all, there is difference of opinion about the goal and the direction and the means. One may aim at mundane perfection, which could be a fusion of faultless outward social behaviour and inner poise of character and capacity. Or one may aim at self-perfection, not for mundane success, but for the soul's salvation after death: here the movement towards self-perfection would be largely a process of religio-ethical change, even a turning away of the human soul from Here to the Beyond. But the other, the integral, perfection aims at "a liberation and a perfection of his [man's] divine nature". As to how this aim of integral or divine perfection is to be achieved, Sri Aurobindo says:

These three elements, a union with the supreme Divine, unity with the universal Self, and a supramental life action from this transcendent origin and through this universality, but still with the individual as the soul-channel and natural instrument, constitute the essence of the Integral divine perfection of the human being.¹⁶

The basic condition for this to happen would be for man to break out of his ego into the larger freedom of union with the universal Divine:

He must cease to be the mental, vital, physical ego; for that is always the creation, instrument and subject of mental, vital, physical Nature... While the identification lasts, there is a self-imprisonment in this habitual round and narrow action.... The liberation from an externalised ego sense is the first step towards the soul's freedom and mastery.¹⁷

The Mother too has made the distinction between the lower (mundane or human) perfection and the higher (spiritual) perfection, but still higher is the integral or divine perfection. Since this is an evolving and progressive universe,

Page 696

our aspiration also must be, not for a static, but a progressive perfection, and since even in the Supermind there are distinct planes of realisation - a whole hierarchy of planes - there will always be room for this progressive divine or supramental perfection:

...the moment there is progress, there is ascension, and there is a perfection which develops according to a law of its own, which is gradually unveiled to the consciousness... and works in the truth instead of working in ignorance... instead of not knowing where we are going, well, we shall know the way and follow it consciously.¹⁸

This is what the Mother meant by saying that it would be better "to let things be done than to talk about them". The ego is a talkative boastful imp that tries to isolate itself from the cosmic mainstream and build its own petty autonomous state, but this invariably gives rise to falsity, antagonism and disharmony. But once the ego steps down from its self-raised pedestal and unites with the universal, there will be no further clouding of its vision, no further confusion of its movements. The supramental manifestation has created a favourable climate for the radical self-diminution - self-annulment - of the ego, and all that is now needed is to permit the supramental Light and Force and Consciousness to act upon our human instruments: "it is better to let things be done than to talk about them".

Almost six months later, as if returning to the theme of the New Year message though in a new context, the Mother gave the following words of exhortation on 16 June to the competitors participating in sports and athletics:

Replace the ambition to be first by the will to do the best possible.

Replace the desire for success by the yearning for progress.

Replace the eagerness for fame by the aspiration for perfection.

Physical Education is meant to bring into the body, consciousness and control, discipline and mastery, all things necessary for a higher and better life. Keep all that in mind, practise sincerely and you will become a good athlete; this is the first step on the way to be a true man.¹⁹

The emphasis throughout is on the substitution of egoistic criteria (rank, personal success, fame etc.) by spiritual criteria like right aspiration, the drive towards constant self-improvement, the straining after perfection. Physical well-being is commended, not as an end in itself, but as the base, the foundation, of "a higher and better life", as the indispensable ādhār or receptacle for the supramental Light, Force and Consciousness. The Superconscient which has created the miracle of this phenomenal world is in the physical too (though only in the drowse of involution), and man's dynamic and integral well-being can very well be the means of both coaxing the descent of the higher Force and facilitating the emergence of the veiled Superconscience.

Page 697

And out of this double action will ensue the efflorescence of the Divine upon the earth:

Earth's bodies shall be conscious of a soul;

Mortality's bond-slaves shall unloose their bonds,

Mere men into spiritual beings grow

And see awake the dumb divinity.²⁰

Page 698