On The Mother

PART TWO

MOTHER

In her deep and great love for her children she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of the Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life.*

*Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, SABCL Vol. 25, pp. 24-25.

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CHAPTER 16

Founding the Ashram

I

It is difficult if not impossible, even for those who were the privileged participants in the divine drama, to explain what precisely happened on the evening of 24 November 1926, henceforth to be known as the Siddhi Day, the Day of Realisation, Some sweet tension, like a spring being wound up, was building up for days, even for weeks - in fact, from the time of Sri Aurobindo's birthday, 15 August, three months earlier. During the evening discussion on that day, Sri Aurobindo had made a reference to the possibility of opening up "a direct connection with the world of the Gods", On 6 November, he had said that he was "trying to bring it [the world of the Gods] down into the physical". As the days passed, Jaya Devi and other sadhaks had felt that all Pondicherry was "fragrant with incense", that a great delight seemed to be at play. And on Mahashtami day, when she was granted a special permission, Jaya Devi performed a private worship in Sri Aurobindo's room. That day, she saw Sri Aurobindo looking like a radiant and golden Shiva and Mirra like Durga, verily the Divine

With all this background, it would have been merely banal if something of seminal significance had not happened sooner or later. But what exactly did happen? The reports of the sadhaks - Purani, Rajangam, Champaklal, Jaya Devi and others - are unanimous that, when Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had withdrawn after meditation, pranam and blessings, Datta spoke some words as if visioning something in a trance or a sudden apocalyptic flash. They had all seen that there was a new lustre, a luminous glory, on Sri Aurobindo - but what had brought about that change? Like a prophetess in a temple of old speaking in an inspired moment of sudden seeing and ecstasy, Datta found the appropriate words and spoke them. But the hearers too were in a dazed condition, and although they had heard the words - perhaps repeated as in an incantation - they could not recapture them later, and each remembered somewhat differently. In 1921, Sri Aurobindo had told Purani that, although the Divine Consciousness had descended, it had not yet penetrated the physical being;¹ it was precisely this that took place on 24 November 1926. In Sri Aurobindo's words:

It was the descent of Krishna into the physical.

Krishna is not the supramental Light. The descent of Krishna would mean the descent of the Overmind Godhead preparing, though not itself actually bringing, the descent of Supermind and Ananda. Krishna is the

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Anandamaya; he supports the evolution through the Overmind leading it towards his Ananda.²

Equally significant was the fact that now the way stood open for the evocation and establishment of the Supramental Consciousness itself on the earth. To realise this possibility, it became necessary for Sri Aurobindo to withdraw into seclusion.

II

But Sri Aurobindo's retirement was not to mean a diminution of activity it meant the very reverse in fact. The community of sadhaks now placed under the Mother's care was to grow into a "spiritual collectivity" which Sri Aurobindo decided to put under a protective spiritual Name. It is said that he considered for three days³ - perhaps consulting the Mother before taking the final decision of naming the collective establishment "Sri Aurobindo Ashram", notwithstanding the ideas of austerity, asceticism and rejection popularly associated with an 'ashram'. But Sri Aurobindo thought of an ashram in the old Vedic sense: "The House of the Teacher where the students and disciples gather to draw inspiration from him, to learn how to find God."⁴ It was to be at once the House of the Spirit and the House of manifold but enlightened human activity. As he wrote to the Maharani of Baroda in 1930, "My aim is to create a centre of spiritual life which shall serve as a means of bringing down the higher consciousness and making it a power not merely for 'salvation' but for a divine life upon earth. It is with this object that I have withdrawn from public life and founded this Ashram .... "⁵

The founding of the Ashram was also a fulfilling moment in Mirra's life of high aspiration and sustained yogic effort. As she acknowledged in the course of a conversation in May 1956:

At the beginning of my present earthly existence I came into contact with many people who said that they had a great inner aspiration, an urge towards something deeper and truer, but that they were tied down. subjected, slaves to that brutal necessity of earning their living ... they felt imprisoned in a material necessity narrow and deadening.

I was very young at that time, and I always used to tell myself that if ever I could do it, I would try to create a little world - oh! quite a small one, but still ... a small world where people would be able to live without having to be preoccupied with food and lodging and clothing and the impetrative necessities of life, so as to see whether all the energies freed by this certainty of a secure material living would turn spontaneously towards the divine life and the inner realisation.

Well, towards the middle of my life ... the means was given to me and I could realise this, that is, create such conditions of life.⁶

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If the birth of the Ashram meant the realisation of one of Mirra's persistent early dreams, it also signified the materialisation of Sri Aurobindo's own hopes as expressed in his letters of 1920. In his letter to Barin, Sri Aurobindo had spoken of a Deva Sangha, and even one hundred dedicated members would, he thought, be able to form the necessary nucleus for future large-scale practical work in the field of social transformation. Writing to Motilal Roy on 2 September, Sri Aurobindo had wanted to establish "our communal system on a firm spiritual, secondly on a firm economical foundation". The Ashram that took shape under the Mother's fostering care, benefiting at once from her genius for organisation and her infinite reserves of the Spirit, was perhaps Sri Aurobindo's old Bhavani Mandir doubled with his later concept of Deva Sangha, as also her own "typic society", a self-poised self-sufficient community turning spontaneously to the divine life and inner realisation". When the time came, the atmosphere was propitious, the instruments ready, and the twin-horses - spirit-power and economic-power - were properly yoked to the great endeavour.

This needs a little explanation and recapitulation. In his Baroda days over twenty years earlier, Sri Aurobindo had thought of establishing a Bhavani Mandir for training a band of yogins to engage in national service. That didn't come about, but something remotely resembling it was organised by his brother, Barindra, in the Manicktolla Gardens at Calcutta in 1907-08. Being mixed up with revolutionary activity, the enterprise was vitiated from the beginning, and after the Muzzaferpore bomb incident, the Manicktolla group was rounded up and rendered innocuous. Barin and some of his co-workers were sent to the Andamans after the Alipur trial (1908-09), and Sri Aurobindo himself, about a year after his acquittal, retired to Pondicherry in April 1910. After 1926, under much better auspices and under the spiritual and general direction of the Mother, the earlier Bhavani Mandir - Deva Sangha idea began to take a viable shape as Sri Aurobindo Ashram. In Sanat K. Banerji's words:

The Ashram in Pondicherry is that temple of the living Bhawani, where her devotees, the men and Women who aspire to a new life on earth, offer Her worship, serve Her through their works, prepare themselves for receiving the new Light according to the best of their ability, so that the Light may spread and usher in a new world to take the place of the old.⁷

There was also a definite 'policy' decision. Two courses had been open to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother: first, to wait till their own Yoga of supramental transformation was complete, and then take the people forward too; and second, with whatever gains of Yoga had already accrued to them (and they were momentous enough), to get a group together, and carry whole collectivity forward. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother opted for the latter course.

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Many years later, when the question was directly put to him "Why did you retire?", Sri Aurobindo answered that, if he had to do what the Mother was doing, he could hardly have found time for his own work of hastening the manifestation of the supramental consciousness. It was practically a division of labour, and the Mother herself explained that in 1926,

Sri Aurobindo had announced to the few people who were there that he was entrusting to me the work of helping and guiding them, that I would remain in contact with him, naturally, and that through me he would do the work.⁸

That the Mother's part in the collaborative adventure of running the Ashram was all-important may be seen from Sri Aurobindo's own ready admission on 10 December 1938:

All my realisations - Nirvana and others - would have remained theoretical, as it were, so far as the outer world was concerned. It is the Mother who showed the way to a practical form. Without her, no organised manifestation would have been possible.⁹

III

While the disciples could see that Sri Aurobindo's Siddhi on 24 November 1926 had a key importance to the Sadhana - individual and collective - and meant a decisive victory on the path generating a new fervour and ananda in the atmosphere, few of the inmates were quite prepared for what immediately followed. On the 27th morning, Jaya Devi went as usual with the tulasi garlands and returned disappointed, for she had been told that Sri Aurobindo would not come out for darshan. Having shown the previous evening for one immaculate interim the very rupa and charged splendour of the Delight of Existence, Sri Aurobindo had effected a sudden and determined withdrawal. No more daily darshan and pranam, no more J luminous discourses and scintillating Evening Talks! The Mother was accessible of course, and she was all-radiant purity and sovereign compassion .. And yet - was it the same thing as receiving benedictions from the Master himself? When somebody ventured to complain, Sri Aurobindo wrote to say that the sadhaks would henceforth receive his light and force from the Mother, and they should be guided by her in their sadhana. Even on the 24th evening, some recollected, Sri Aurobindo had blessed the disciples as it were through the Mother - the Mother being the intermediary, the interceder, the paraclete.

There were intermittent grumblings all the same. One line of argument was that, ranted that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were divine collaborators,

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still they were two persons weren't they? How, then, could the Mother entirely obliterate the Master, and put herself alone in the forefront? Sri Aurobindo was to make a pointed reference to this heresy in a letter to a disciple written in 1934:

The opposition between the Mother's consciousness and my consciousness was an invention of the old days ... and emerged in a time when the Mother was not fully recognised or accepted by some of those who were here at the beginning. Even after they had recognised her they persisted in this meaningless opposition and did great harm to themselves and others. The Mother's consciousness and mine are the same, the one Divine Consciousness in two, because that is necessary for the play. Nothing can be done without her knowledge and force, without her consciousness - if anybody really feels her consciousness, he should know that I am there behind it and if he feels me it is the same with hers. ¹⁰

It was true they first met only in 1914, and her second coming was in 1920, barely six years before the Siddhi. While they had been doing Yoga before they met or knew about each other, their respective lines of sadhana had followed the same course. And when they met, there resulted the fusion of their lines of sadhana, a mutual strengthening and consolidation which presently came to be known as Sri Aurobindo's Yoga. But it was the Mother's Yoga as much as Sri Aurobindo's, and he was always forthright in acknowledging his debt to the Mother's contribution. As he once said:

Before the Mother came all [the sadhaks] were living in the mind with only some mental realisations and experiences. The vital and everything else were unregenerated and the psychic behind the veil. I am not aware that anyone of them at that time entered the Cosmic Consciousness. At that time I was still seeking my way for the transformation and the passage to the Supramental. .. and acted very much on a principle of laissez faire with few Sadhaks who were there."¹¹

It was the Mother's coming and her eventual assumption of full responsibility that effected such a sea-change in the atmosphere.

IV

In the months following the Siddhi Day, there were two more or less parallel lines of development. On the one hand, there was a sudden efflorescence in the vital, and realisation after realisation seemed to come unbidden as it were. It was the "brilliant" period of the Ashram spread over five or six months, when the sadhana was largely confined to the vital. "Then everything was joy, peace, ananda," Sri Aurobindo recalled later. "And if We had stopped there, we could have started a big religion or a vast organisation.

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But the real work would have been left unattempted and unachieved. "¹² It was a period of "spectacular spiritual events", says K.D. Sethna. "All who were .present have testified that miracles were the order of the day .... Those which were common occurrences 10 those six* months were the most strikingly miraculous and, if they had continued, a new religion would have been established."¹³Another sadhak, Narayan Prasad who first visited the Ashram in February 1932, writes:

Between the end of 1926 and the middle of 1927, the Mother was trying to bring down the Overmind gods into our beings. But the ādhāras were not ready to bear them; on the contrary, there were violent reactions though some had very good experiences. There was a sadhak whose consciousness was so open that he could know what the Mother and the Master were talking about. One sadhak would get up while meditating and touch the centre of obstruction in someone else's body. There were others who thought that the Supermind had descended into them. One or two got mentally unbalanced because of inability to stand the pressure.¹⁴

Obviously it seems to have been a time of rich realisations and even richer possibilities; but also of delusions and wrong movements, resulting in the unleashing of adverse forces in the yet unvanquished lower nature. Like men a little intoxicated, and unable to stand it! Sri Aurobindo and the Mother accordingly decided that the Overmind-power was too upsetting in the immediate context, and would prove insufficient in the long run. Better resolutely opt for patience, first for the hard discipline of Yoga in the lower planes, and for the ultimate supramental descent and transformation. Recapitulating that time of sudden glory, the Mother too was to remark many years later in the course of a conversation:

Suddenly, immediately, things took a certain shape: a very brilliant creation was worked out in extraordinary detail, with marvellous experiences, contacts with divine beings, and all kinds of manifestations which are considered miraculous. Experiences followed one upon another, and, well, things were unfolding altogether brilliantly and ... I must say, in an extremely interesting way. ¹⁵†

At the crest as it were of these rising stairs of "bril1iant" experiences, the Mother herself came to possess the key to the creation of a fascinating new world, a world of the Gods. She related to Sri Aurobindo what had been happening:

*Sethna has advised the original "ten" be replaced by "six".

†One of the sadhaks had in a trance seen Anilbaran Roy as a white swan rising. and Anilbaran Roy himself saw a vision of Mother India seated on a lion "as we see in Jagaddhatri figure ... a crown on her head, a sceptre In her fight hand and a book In her left hand. which seemed to me to be the Vedas¹⁶

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Perhaps I showed a little enthusiasm in my account ... then Sri Aurobindo looked at me ... and said: "Yes, this is an Overmind creation. It is very interesting, very well done. You will perform miracles which will make you famous throughout the world, you will be able to turn all events on earth '-topsy-turvy, indeed .... It will be a great success .... And it is not success that we want; we want to establish the Supermind on earth. One must know how to renounce immediate success in order to create the new world, the supramental world in its integrality.''¹⁷

With her inner consciousness, the Mother at once saw that Sri Aurobindo was right. She returned to her room, concentrated for a few hours and willed the Great Renunciation; and so the new creation that was almost on brink of precipitation receded and dissolved and ceased to be.

With the sadhaks, on the other hand, the effects of the overmental descent were less predictable. Recalling the time, in a letter written on 18 October 1934, Sri Aurobindo called it "the brightest period in the history of the Ashram" when, using the power of the Overmind, the Mother was able to bring out the Divine Personalities and Powers into her body and physical being for several months:

In those days when the Mother was either receiving the Sadhaks for meditation or otherwise working and concentrating· all night and day without sleep and with very irregular food, there was no ill-health and no fatigue in her and things were proceeding with a lightning swiftness .... Afterwards, because the lower vital and the physical of the Sadhaks could not follow, the Mother had to push the Divine Personalities and Powers, through which she was doing the action, behind the veil and come down into the physical human level and act according to its conditions and that means difficulty, struggle, illness, ignorance and inertia.¹⁸

At any rate, that was the end of the early "brilliant" period in the Ashram's life. Of course the Sadhana would go on, but less spectacularly though not less intensively. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother thus decided to concentrate on bringing the psychic being to the fore and diminishing the drag of the Physical, the Subconscient and the Inconscient.

The whole adventure was a warning as well as a fresh opportunity for a properly motivated and directed sadhana. If the aim was integral change and supramental transformation, it was necessary to avoid the usual traps and dangers of the traditional Yogas. In a condition of trance or samadhi the body may be laid asleep, individuality may be transcended, and the feeling of separativity may be suspended; only the soul is awake, and feels ineffably one with omnipresent Reality. Likewise, in an elected moment of mental illumination, it is possible to infer the One without a second, having eliminated all false approximations and appearances. So too, at a time of the heart's ecstasy of devotion and surrender to the Lord, all the world

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may appear bathed in the glory of beauty and love. But when one strays lower - to the physical plane where pain and pleasure fight their own incendiary battles, or to the still lower subconscient region of nightmarish h horrors and fancies and the inconscient cellular mini-universes Where a Walpurgis-Night is perpetually being enacted - when the consciousness makes the exploratory descent towards these nether circles and pouches of perfidy, where the world's regiments of confusion and chaos are forever drawn up in battle array, how shall the human system or ādhāra, brittleas it is, bear the impact and the invasion of the Light and the Force from the power-charged world of the Gods? It was necessary, therefore, to lay the foundations properly through sadhana in the psychic being which is the hidden centre of the physical complex. Thus the physical nature itself could be made the conscious habitation of the spiritual, and even the supramental in course of time. Indeed, there could be no short-cut to the goal of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga of integral transformation.

V

The second line of development after the Siddhi Day was, not so much at the Yoga level, but at the personal. Even in 1920, there was some flutter of unease when Mirra was persuaded to shift to Sri Aurobindo's house on the night of the cyclone. Presently she was not only accepted but came also to be regarded as a rare aspirant, a quiet and efficient organiser, and a spiritual adept in her own right. But her status after 24 November 1926 as the spiritual head of the Ashram, the 'Mother', while this too was no sudden transformation but the logical end of a perceptible developing movement and although this received general approbation, caused some eyebrows to be raised. There was no question about her managerial ability, her unfailing friendliness and her personal spiritual eminence. And yet.. the Mother of the Ashram? ... with complete authority to direct its affairs and ordain the destinies of the inmates? After all, some of the sadhaks­ so they felt - had been doing quite well in their sadhana under the old dispensation. Why, then, this drastic change? Was it sanctified by Indian tradition? Would it work after all?

The new dispensation meant: first, an unquestioning acceptance of her as the Mother; second, a total surrender to her of one's whole life; and third, a ready and happy submission to the discipline laid down by her for the smooth and efficient functioning of the Ashram. All these posed problems and difficulties for several of the sadhaks, especially some of the old-timers who had been used to a larger uninhibited 'freedom'. While some were openly critical of the new order, some merely found themselves unequal to the demands made upon them by the changed situation. Of. course, people like Nolini, Amrita, Champaklal and Pavitra had already accepted unquestioningly whatever Sri Aurobindo proposed or approved.

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But it was otherwise with rebellious spirits like Sri Aurobindo's younger brother, Barin. He became more and more ill at ease, he grew increasingly restive, and on 25 December 1929 he left the Ashram - and Pondicherry - for good. But even Barin, while he felt he couldn't "remain caged" under the Ashram's "rigorous discipline", was willing to acknowledge the Mother's "subtle vision", her intellect, her capacity for rightly oriented action, and her rare inner faculty for maintaining discipline and harmony. In later years Barin was more forthright still, and writing in Khulnā-Vāsi on 21 February 1940, he said as much in contrition as in adoration:

To-day is the Mother's birthday. On this blessed day this is a tribute at her Feet from her erring child. Whatever my deviations into wrong paths, however grave my errors, my labyrinthine movements will at length lead me into the Temple of the Mother's Consciousness, for where else except in the Mother's lap can her son find the end of his journey?¹⁹

To return to the late nineteen-twenties: the number of inmates in the Ashram increased from 25 in 1926 to 30 by the end of 1927, and shot up to 80 next year. By August 1929, as the Mother later wrote, there were "seventeen houses inhabited by eighty-five or ninety people (the number varies as people come and go)". ²⁰ The Ashram Services had to be reorganised on a departmental footing, reasonable economies had to be imposed, work had to be assigned to the individual sadhaks, and departmental headships had to be instituted. There was room for rivalry, friction, misunderstanding, sulking, even insubordination. But more than all this, there was the question of the spiritual Motherhood itself, and its authority over the day-to-day functioning of the Ashram. There was rumbling discontent, and some wrote directly to Sri Aurobindo lodging protests or seeking clarifications.

It was in reply to one such letter that Sri Aurobindo wrote the sharply­worded lucidly explanatory letter of 23 October 1929. First, Sri Aurobindo points out, "the relation which exists between the Mother ... 10 and all who accept her is a psychic and spiritual motherhood. It is a far greater relation than that of the physical mother to her child; it gives all that human motherhood can give, but in a much higher way, and it contains in itself infinitely more." Second, the idea of 'spiritual motherhood' is not foreign to the West or to the Orient; it is "an idea known and understood everywhere". Third, the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo had no use for fanaticism, for "Truth cannot be shut up in a single book, Bible or Veda or Koran, or in a single religion." Fourth, people who thought that the Truth brought by Sri Aurobindo was too high for them were free to leave the Ashram and live in their own brand of half-truth or ignorance. Fifth, "I am here to establish the divine life and the divine consciousness in those who of themselves feel the call to come to me and cleave to it and in no others. "²¹

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VI

Writing to another sadhak, Sri Aurobindo observed that the central aim of the Yoga, the Sadhana, should be to grow "into a divine life in the Mother's consciousness". On the contrary, "To insist upon one's own mind and its ideas, to allow oneself to be governed by one's own vital feelings and reactions should not be the rule of life here." The Mother's being a greater or above-mind Consciousness, "at the very least a Yogic consciousness", it would be wrong to judge it by mental categories. As for understanding her and her actions one must first "become conscious with the true consciousness"; and for that "faith and surrender and fidelity and openness are conditions of some importance."²²

Sri Aurobindo also found that in some disciples the vital being seemed to have maintained a commercial attitude towards the Ashram, treating it as a sort of communal hotel or mess, and the Mother as the dignified hotel-keeper or mess-manager: "One gives some kind of commodity which he calls devotion or surrender and in return the Mother is under obligation to supply satisfaction for all demands and desires spiritual, mental, vital and physical...." In his letter of 11 April 1930, Sri Aurobindo repudiated this absurd notion, and affirmed that the only basis of stay for the sadhak of the Ashram should be spiritual:

One belongs to the Divine and all one has belongs to the Divine; in giving one gives not what is one's own but what already belongs to the Divine... The Mother is in sole charge and arranges things as best they can be arranged within the means at her disposal and the capacities of her instruments. She is under no obligation to act according to the mental standards or vital desires and claims of the Sadhaks; she is not obliged to use a democratic equality in her dealings with them. She is free to deal with each according to what she sees to be his true need or what is best for him in his spiritual progress.

Casual visitors might think of her as but a woman, although an extraordinarily accomplished one; for people who had opted to do Sri Aurobindo's Yoga, however, she was "the one who represents or embodies the Divine Truth", the focus of the sadhaks' aspiration and activity. The loving acceptance of her authority was thus "the plain common sense of the matter". If that was to be questioned, there could then be no sadhana and no sadhaks; "Each can go his own way and there is Ashram and no Yoga."²³

As for those who were not ready to be members of the Ashram or bear its discipline and were "still admitted to some place in the Yoga"

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Sri Aurobindo put them in a different category. They were free to remain apart, meeting their own expenses; for them there was no discipline on the material plane, except that they should conform to the rules of the place. And the Mother too had no material responsibility towards them.

VII

A constant source of misunderstanding was the relative time the Mother was able to give to the disciples, and the kind of work she assigned to them. Some she met rarely, some more frequently. She gave a smile to some at the time of darshan or pranam, she seemed to gaze with an intent concentration at others. As the sadhaks moved in a file, they had opportunities for observing all these externals, or comparing notes later on. Did the Mother's not smiling to one mean any particular displeasure? Did her giving long interviews to another signify a sort of divine favouritism? Again, some sadhaks were assigned what appeared to be mere menial work, while some others were elevated to headships of departments! Some were assigned duties that brought them to the Mother's notice constantly, while others were able to see her only rarely and briefly. Many of course accepted all this as part of the sadhana, but some few started grousing, and letters of remonstrance flew to Sri Aurobindo or the Mother or both. It was all symptomatic of the Divine struggle with the adverse forces that invariably made entry through the chinks in the psychological armour of the sadhaks. To infect faith with doubt, aspiration with tamasic negation, service to the Divine with rajasic impatience; to inject feelings of egoistic self-importance, jealousy, defeatism; to create the itch for questioning the very foundations of the Yoga and the Ashram - these were the stock-in­trade of the hostile forces. The sadhaks couldn't apparently help the plight they were in, and accordingly the Master (in consultation with the Mother) answered the letters with a mixture of persuasion and firmness, a show of both logic and Grace, and occasionally leavened with wit and humour as well

In a letter of 7 October 1931, Sri Aurobindo laid down the broad, discriminations necessary to follow the Yoga without misunderstandings, self-deceptions or self-flagellations. The organisation of the Ashram at Pondicherry, with the living Presence of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother generating the central Force for success in the pursuit of the sadhana, was but one aspect of the Truth. On the other hand, being a spiritual Force, the influence of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother was by no means confined to the Ashram, for "the psychic contact can exist at a distance". But to what extent it was felt, or became operative, would depend on the sincerity and intensity of the aspiration which must unfailingly call forth a proportionate response. Within everyone there is the psychic being albeit veiled and

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caged as it were, but its coming forward or release is easier in the chared atmosphere of the Ashram. A glance, a touch, a smile of the Mother, a few minutes' intense meditation in the Ashram courtyard, a sharing of theair, the silence, the peace, even a partaking of the food in the Ashram dining hall, can effect the decisive change. It is possible that the outside world with its adverse currents and cross-currents may later compel a set-back, and snap or render tenuous the psychic contact with the Mother:

It is therefore that the necessity exists and is often felt of a return to the place of the central influence in order to fortify or recover the contact or to restore or give a fresh forward impulse to the development.

Aside from this desirable periodic return to the Ashram to recharge one's. depleted psychic strength, some few - many are called, only a few are chosen! - may want, and be permitted, to join the Ashram permanently to participate at close quarters in the Aurobindonian Yoga of self-perfection and ultimate supramental transformation, and for them "the stay here in the atmosphere, the nearness are indispensable". ²⁴

In another letter of about the same time (1 August 1931), Sri Aurobindo contrasted the so-called 'love' of everyday existence with the true integral love for the Mother, for the. Divine. Physical love and vital love are all flawed at the source and in their movements, being made up of egoistic desire, and the building-up of tension, and the aftermath of satiety. On the other hand, with its source in the psychic, true love can effect an integral change in the whole motivation and action:

The true love for the Divine is self-giving, free of demand, full of submission and surrender; it makes no claim, imposes no condition, strikes no bargain, indulges in no violences of jealousy or pride or anger - for these things are not in its composition. In return the Divine Mother also gives herself, but freely - and this represents itself in an inner giving ­ her presence in 'your mind, your vital, your physical consciousness, her power re-creating you in the divine nature, taking up all the movements of your being and directing them towards perfection and fulfilment, her love enveloping you and carrying you in its arms Godwards.²⁵

The aberrations of jealousy, pride, anger, mean calculation, immature impatience will all be burnt away in the fire of integral self-giving to Divine and the answering response of Grace. Once the aspiration and surrender have evoked the descent of Grace, the very elements ­ the recalcitrant body, the 'turbulent vital and the knot of vipers that is the mind - these very elements that earlier barred the way to progress in the sadhana will now undergo an alchemic change and transformation and merge in the psychic flame. It may be added that love for the Divine, while it starts as psychic love, can presently infuse body, vital and mind also with its fire- pure quality, and this transformation will be facilitated when all action, all

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endeavour, all artistic or creative work is pursued, not for the sake of egoistic satisfaction, nor even in a spirit of niskāma karma(desireless service), but as the body's, heart's, mind's, soul's offering to the Divine. Hence the special importance of Karmayoga in the Ashram: accepting any assignment whatever from the Mother, and doing one's best and offering it as the expression of one's love and devotion. The instruments of body, vital, mind are not denied; they are not diminished or maimed; only, they are invaded and purified and transfigured by the descending light of the Spirit so as to become fit vehicles for rendering service to the Divine.

VIII

As regards the selection of the sadhaks, the work assigned to them and the system of arrangements for the smooth running of the Ashram, the principle governing these had little in common with the normal criteria of the outside world. "The moment one enters the life of the Ashram and takes up the yoga," the Mother wrote to a sadhak in January 1929, "he ceases to belong to any creed or caste or race; he is one of Sri Aurobindo's disciples and nothing else. "²⁶Many years later, Sri Aurobindo told Surendra Mohan Ghose that the Mother's choice of sadhaks was not exclusively governed by their spiritual advancement or intellectual brilliance: "She selects different types .... shi wants to observe how the Divine works in different types. "²⁷The Ashram was, after all, a laboratory for a spiritual and supramental Yoga, and in it humanity had to be represented in all its diversity. From the very beginning, the Ashram community had a cosmopolitan cast, and this only came to be emphasised more and more with the passage of time, for thus alone could the Ashram microcosm serve as the matrix of the future humanity.

Since 1926 when Sri Aurobindo retired and gave me full charge of it (at that time there were only two rented houses and a handful of disciples) all has grown up and developed like the growth of a forest, and each service was created not by any artificial planning but by a living and dynamic need. This is the secret of constant growth and endless progress. ²⁸

And Sri Aurobindo too had written much the same thing in the course of a letter to a disciple in 1939:

There has never been, at any time, a mental plan, a fixed programme or an organisation decided beforehand.

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The whole thing has taken birth, grown and developed as a living being by a movement of consciousness (Chit-Tapas) constantly maintained, increased and fortified. As the conscious Force descends in matter and radiates, it seeks for fit instruments to express and manifest it. It goes without saying that the more the instrument is open, receptive and plastic, the better are the results. ²⁹

The Ashram, organised not for the renunciation of the world nor for a life of meditative retirement, but for advancing the work of future-building on yogic consciousness and yoga-shakti, had to place the accent on Karma yoga which would both help the Ashram to thrive as a self-poised, self-sustained human aggregate and also advance the sadhaks' spiritual training. A few excerpts from Sri Aurobindo's letters to his disciples will make this clear:

The work here is not intended for showing one's capacity or having position or as a means of physical nearness to the Mother, but as a field and an opportunity for the Karmayoga part of the integral yoga, for learning to work in the true yogic way, dedication through service, practical selflessness, obedience, scrupulousness, discipline, setting the Divine and the Divine's work first and oneself last, harmony, patience, forbearance, etc.³⁰The work in the Ashram ... was meant as a service to the Divine and as a field for the inner opening to the Divine, surrender to the Divine alone, rejection of ego and all the ordinary vital movements and the training in a psychic elevation, selflessness, obedience, renunciation of all mental, vital or other self-assertion of the limited personality.³¹

Work is not only for work's sake, but as a field of Sadhana, for getting rid of the lower personality and its reactions and acquiring a full surrender to the Divine.³²

IX

Again, even as the selection of the sadhaks was governed by considerations other than the sheerly logical, not easily analysable by the mere intellect, the allocation of work to the inmates could also sometimes baffle the surface understanding. Why should a poet be asked to look after furniture? Why should an affluent businessman be asked to wash plates in the dining hall? Why should a trained physician be put in charge of nuts and screws? Why should a serious student of philosophy be asked to dust books in the library? Why should one trained for the legal profession be made to move food-carriers in a push-cart and distribute them to the different houses? On the other hand, the work - of whatever kind - attracted no wages as such. And although, as the Ashram grew and the work proliferated, there arose the necessity to have heads of the various departments that was only for

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convenience and despatch, and not to create masters and subordinates; all the work was still an offering to the Mother, to the Divine, and not to the departmental head. But even the grumblers had in the end to acknowledge that the work assigned, although apparently unsuitable and even uncongenial at first, had somehow grown into the sadhaks' life. Of course, things did not always work with complete precision and coordination, and this was because all the sadhaks were not equally, or at all times, ready and efficient channels of the Force and the Consciousness at work in the Ashram. In such cases, Sri Aurobindo or the Mother had to intervene, generally from behind, and set right the distortion. And sometimes the Mother made a trial of divers arrangements before deciding upon the best course.

This, then, was the difficult psychological hurdle that the sadhak had to cross silencing the insidious promptings of his 'reason' and 'common sense' : that, firstly, the work assigned to him was really the Divine's work, and must be done in the right attitude of consecration; and, secondly, that the work being the Mother's, the Divine's, if the application or dedication was truly sincere and free from all egoistic distortion, the Mother herself would give the strength and the expertise to the sadhak to see the work through. The first part was affirmed and clarified in several of Sri Aurobindo's letters:

Remind yourself always it is Mother's work you are doing and if you do it as well as you can remembering her, the Mother's Grace will be with you.³³Work should be done for the Mother and not for oneself, - that is how one encourages the growth of the psychic being and overcomes the ego. The test is to do the work given by the Mother without abhimāna or insistence or personal choice or prestige, - not getting hurt by anything that touches the pride, amour-propre or personal preference.

It is a high and great ideal that is put before the Sadhak through work it is not possible to realise it suddenly, but to grow steadily into it is possible .... ³⁴

As regards the second part, it was axiomatic that when one did the Divine's work, the Divine must lend a helping hand. This too was reiterated in Sri Aurobindo's letters:

If the mind and the vital get the habit of opening to the Mother's Force, they are then supported by the Force, and may even be fully filled with it - the Force does the work and the body feels no strain or fatigue before or after. ³⁵

The intellectual and poet, K.D. Sethna, was first asked to take charge of Ashram's stock of furniture. This brought him daily in contact with the Mother to take her signature on the requisition slips. "There was no other job, I suppose," he reminisced, "open at that time which could bring me in

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touch with her so much," and he added the revealing comment:

But I realised that the Mother, when she gives any work, gives two things also with it: first, the Ananda of the thing because without that joy you couldn't carry on at all, and, secondly, the capacity - to some extent at least!³⁶

More pointedly, the Mother once told Champaklal, and this was more than a month before the founding of the Ashram:

Do you think that you are working? No, your Mother is working.

Then, two days later:

You know, only one Purusha is working in the whole world.³⁷

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