On The Mother

CHAPTER 59

IMMORTAL SUNLIGHT

I

As 1972, the year of Sri Aurobindo's birth centenary approached, the Mother came to be more and more involved with the centenary programmes and celebrations, as also with the importance of the centenary in the context of the sadhana of integral transformation. While her body was apparently in a 'helpless' condition, while her faculties of seeing and hearing were seemingly impaired, while her physical movements were unavoidably confined to her rooms on the second floor of the Ashram, never had her consciousness been more acute or more wide-ranging, never had the Mother's spiritual puissance and energy of effective action been more commanding and irresistible. On 15 August 1971, Sri Aurobindo's 99th birthday, the Mother distributed as the message for the day a sentence from the Master himself:

A veil behind the heart, a lid over the mind divide us from the Divine. Love and devotion rend the veil, in the quietude of the mind the lid thins and vanishes.¹

And her own message for the occasion was broadcast by the All India Radio, Pondicherry:

Today is the first day of Sri Aurobindo's centenary year. Though he has left his body he is still with us, alive and active.

Sri Aurobindo belongs to the future; he is the messenger of the future. He still shows us the way to follow in order to hasten the realisation of a glorious future fashioned by the Divine Will.

All those who want to collaborate for the progress of humanity and for India's luminous destiny must unite in a clairvoyant aspiration and in an illumined work.²

In other messages the Mother affirmed that Sri Aurobindo had given "not a hope but a certitude of the splendour" towards which the world was moving; that the centenary year gave people an opportunity truly to understand his message and put it into practice; and that he had given his life so that "we may be born into the Divine Consciousness".³Further, when the Mother's advice was sought by sadhaks as to how best they should exemplify the reality of the Ashram, she said: "Live it. Live this reality. All the rest - talking, etc. - is of no use." And, if they were to "live it", the sadhaks should commune with the psychic being deep within, the incarnate Divine, through "an intense aspiration, a perfect concentration, a constant dedication".⁴

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As regards the problem of transformation, the Mother reiterated her convictions and insights in conversation after conversation, letter after letter, as if she had to race against time and not it a second's opportunity was to be lost. Thus on 18 November:

We are at a moment of transition in the history of the earth but this moment is long compared to human life. Matter is changing in order to prepare itself for the new manifestation, but the human body is not plastic enough and offers resistance; this is why the number of incomprehensible disorders and even diseases is increasing and becoming a problem for medical science.

The remedy lies in union with the divine forces that are at work and a receptivity full of trust and peace which makes tithe task easier.⁵

Thus, on 3 December, on the obstreperousness of the ego:

Each one has his ego and all the egos are at odds with one another It is only when one gets rid of the ego that one becomes a free being.

To be free, one must belong only to the Diwvine.⁶

Then, two days later, this was wrung from her heart:

Supreme Lord, Infinite Wisdom,

At this perilous hour when egoisms are at odds and asserting themselves, the only safety lies in taking refuge in Thee!

Grant that nothing in us may be an obstacle to the fulfilment of Thy Will.

Grant that we may become conscious and effective collaborators in the fulfilment of Thy Will.⁷

Thus, on 25 December:

Everyone should repeatedly be told: abolish your ego and peace will reign in you.

The Divine help always responds to a sincere aspiration.⁸

Alas, man's 'wisdom', nurtured by his ego, is but ignorance; true knowledge is with the Divine alone! Instead of shutting oneself within the prison-house of the ego, one should open wide the windows of the consciousness on the vistas of the Infinite. For this, two conditions are necessary: (1) ardent aspiration; (2) progressive dissolution off the ego. Better still, the ego might be transformed and turned into "an instrument of the Divine".

There were letters too about "the Divine Presence". If one felt lonely even in the midst of people, it was the sign that the time had come to establish contact with the Divine Presence:

The psychic being is the individual sheath off the Divine Presence. It is found deep within oneself, beyond all thoughts.

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There comes a moment when life becomes intolerable without the Divine Presence. Therefore, give yourself entirely to the Divine and you will emerge into the Light.

In silence lies the greatest receptivity. And in an immobile silence the vastest action is done.

Let us learn to be silent so that the Lord may make use of us.⁹

Finally, on practical problems too the Mother had to intervene off and on, and restore equality, equanimity and a clear sense of purpose. When people disagreed violently, she told them plainly: "Come to agreement. That is the only way to do good work."

Again:

For all to agree, each one must rise to the summit of his consciousness: it is on the heights that harmony is created.¹⁰

And once again:

When we have to work collectively, it is always better to insist, in our thoughts, feelings and actions, on the points of agreement rather than on the points of divergence.

We must give importance to the things that unite and ignore, as much as possible, those that separate. ...¹¹

In the course of the Sweet Year, there were a few promising outer events like the inauguration of Auropress on 24 April and the opening of Last School by Andre on 6 October, both in Auroville, and the inauguration by Nolini on 14 December of Knowledge to house the Higher Courses in the Centre of Education. On the latter occasion, the Mother sent a message:

We are here to do better than elsewhere and to prepare ourselves for a supramental future.... I appeal to the sincere goodwill of all so that our ideal may be realised.¹²

II

15 August 1972 was not only the 100th anniversary of Sri Aurobindo's birth, but also the silver jubilee of Indian independence. The synchronisation was far from fortuitous; it was the decree of the Supreme.

In her message for the New Year, the Mother said with a grand simplicity: "Let us all try to be worthy of Sri Aurobindo's centenary." And in another message she said:

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This year is consecrated to Sri Aurobindo.

To understand his teaching better and try to put it into practice, is certainly the best way of showing our gratitude to him for all the light, knowledge and force which he has so generously brought to the earth.

May his teaching enlighten and guide us, and what we cannot do today, we shall do tomorrow.

Let us take the right attitude in all sincerity, and it will truly be a BONNE ANNEE.¹³

In quick succession she gave two more messages on the 1st and 2nd January respectively:

Without the Divine we are limited, incompetent and helpless beings; with the Divine, if we give ourselves entirely to Him, all is possible and our progress is limitless.

A special help has come upon the earth for Sri Aurobindo's centenary year; let us take advantage of it to overcome the ego and emerge into the light.

When Sri Aurobindo left his body he said that he would not abandon us. And, in truth, during these twenty-one years, he has always been with us....

In this year of his centenary, his help will be stronger still. It is up to us to be more open and to know how to take advantage of it. The future is for those who have the soul of a hero. The stronger and more sincere our faith, the more powerful and effective will be the help received.¹⁴

And on 15 August, there was a nectarean shower:

Man is the creation of yesterday.

Sri Aurobindo came to announce the creation of tomorrow: the coming of the Supramental being.

Sri Aurobindo came on earth from the Supreme to announce the manifestation of a new race and the new world, the Supramental.

Let us prepare for it in all sincerity and eagerness.

One more step towards Eternity.

The best homage that we can render to Sri Aurobindo on his centenary is to have a thirst for progress and to open all our being to the Divine Influence of which he is the Messenger upon the earth.

Sri Aurobindo's message is an immortal sunlight radiating over the future.¹⁵

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The last was the Darshan message and perhaps the crystallised essence of the whole series of inspired messages for the centenary year.

The Mother had said many years earlier that what Sri Aurobindo represented in the world's history was not a teaching, not even a revelation, but a decisive action direct from the Supreme.¹⁶ Sri Aurobindo was more than the "teaching" and the "revelation"; for he was a Force as well, and his life was the unleashing of a great Power of consciousness - verily "an immortal sunlight radiating over the future" In other words, he had come to get a movement going, the movement of evolution from man to Superman, from nature to Supernature, from our flawed present to the Next Future, the future that would see established here upon earth the Life Divine. This Force, this "decisive action direct from the Supreme", was really the evolutionary push towards new horizons, the tearing of the mental lid to reach the higher godheads of consciousness, - something of a breakthrough comparable to, but of infinitely more momentous consequence than, the recent breakthrough in atomic physics, molecular biology and space technology. Sri Aurobindo's living message was this "immortal sunlight" decreeing the dawns and noons of the Future.

III

On 21 February 1972, the Mother's 94th birthday, early in the morning the first anniversary of the foundation of Matrimandir was celebrated. The work of excavation was over, and the stage was set for the construction of the four pillars. Each of those present put a stone in the concrete mixer, and Nolini read the Mother's message:

Let Auroville be the symbol of a progressive Unity.

And the best way to realise this is a unity of aspiration towards the Divine Perfection in work and in feeling, in a consecration of the entire life.¹⁷

A stone with the Mother's signature and the symbol ॐ AUM was placed at the base of one of the pillars.¹⁸ The work was to proceed briskly, and the raising of the four pillars completed by November. With the increase in the momentum of building activity the number of Aurovilians too rose to about three hundred.

From the beginning Auroville was visualised by the Mother as a city with a soul, and Matrimandir was to be the soul. And it was in building Matrimandir that the Aurovilians were to find the soul of their city. After the foundation on 21 February 1971, there was the difficult work of excavation (as Ruud Lohman, one of the Aurovilians, puts it) "of a vast crater 10 metres deep, or the reaching into the collective inconscient, or both;" and then the raising of "the four cement-concrete pillars back up

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to zero-level to the point where [the digging began] one and a half year ago":

Matter and Spirit embrace, heaven and earth unite and the great Mother bears the Golden Child of the Supramental Age. Nowhere have we felt so much how simple acts such as carrying the red earth out of the excavation or erecting scaffoldings and concrete forms are charged with a many-sided meaning, as if each single contribution to Matrimandir is an act with a body and a soul - a soul of divine significance and earthly transmutation. Surrounded by twelve petals, four pillars will carry a huge sphere. It is the earth bursting open and giving birth to a new age, crystallised in the crystal at the center of the sphere. It is the sphere of Golden Light descending into the crater, into the earth, enlightening the abyss. It is the cosmic Egg from the tales of old, the beginning of a new creation.¹⁹

The Mother's spirit moved indeed among these builders, and their efforts were to produce great results and signalise a New Age.

IV

While the world-wide Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary celebrations and the milestones of progress in Auroville caught the imagination of the people, all the while - day and night - the Mother's inner struggle for integral transformation was going on, and she had hardly any respite. On 9 February, commenting on the passage of Sri Aurobindo that she had chosen as the message for her coming birthday - "The complete unification of the whole being around the psychic centre is the essential condition to realise a perfect sincerity." - she confessed to have had for some moments "the experience of un-unified consciousness", the like of which she hadn't had for sixty-five years, ever since the psychic being had become the Master of her life. Why had that normally human but horribly "un-unified" consciousness erupted, unless it be to make her understand the tragic plight of others! She had responded with "What Thou wiliest!" addressed to the Supreme Being who was everywhere, and the nightmare had ended. On the 21st, her birthday, the Mother had a strong feeling the whole day that "it was the birthday of everyone", and that something new was manifested in the world which could be embodied by all who were ready and receptive.²⁰

Soon after her birthday, the Mother went through a time of suffering ("a great difficulty"), and presently she felt herself "enveloped like a baby being carried in the arms of the Divine", and she was wholly in the Divine Presence - and the pain left, although she didn't ask for it to go. On 8 March she told the disciple:

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It is becoming terrible, terrible. It is like a Pressure - a frightful Pressure - to bring about the desired progress. I felt it in myself for my body. But my body is not afraid, it says.... "Very well, if I am to end, it is the end."...

The body knows that this is the way for the supramental body to be formed: it must be wholly under the influence of the Divine - no compromise, no approximation, no "it will come", not so: it is like this (Mother brings down her fist), a formidable Will.²¹

Then, on 24 March, the Mother gave news of a striking development: that morning at about four, she had seen, for the first time, her own body, but a body altogether changed - not, perhaps, a supramental body, but at least a body in transition. It was sexless - neither woman nor man - and very white and very slim and pretty: "Truly a harmonious form." Continuing her revelation the next day, the Mother said that it was possibly a formation in the subtle physical, but there were shoulders, arms, legs, an outline of the human figure in fact, young and slim and harmonious. The being had transcended the needs and capacity for ordinary food and the possibility of sexual reproduction but, as the broad shoulders showed, what had become practically indispensable was breathing, for the being probably absorbed the energies directly from the atmosphere. "Probably," the Mother added, "there will be intermediary beings that will not last very long, like the intermediary beings that were between the chimpanzee and man." The figure she saw could be the prototype of the new supramental being, but, then, was her present body going to change in the manner required, and fuse with the luminous body? Something should happen that had not happened till then! Or would the body succumb to the old process of undoing and remaking itself? "I do not know.... Evidently life can be much prolonged, there are examples but... I do not know. I do not know." Or perhaps it will be a concretisation or materialisation of the other body that she had seen the night before? "But how?... One knows nothing! Strange how one knows nothing."²²

Transformation: Humanity had waited for this for centuries, but now that the moment had come, the problem seemed to be immense. Although her body had its difficulties, it was not that she was old, she said on 2 April: "I am younger than most of you," and she declared with complete self-knowledge:

If you believe that I am here because I am bound - it is not true. I am not bound, I am here because my body has been given for the first attempt at transformation... it is not very pleasant, but I do it willingly because of the results; everybody will be able to benefit from it.

All that she wanted by way of support from her children was "a sincere Yes". No longer mere words and vague promises, "I need the sincere adhesion of your hearts." It was the hour to be heroic. It was out of an egoless race that the supramental being would take his birth.

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Ten days later, wondering how human nature could continue to resist the Divine's will, the Mother remarked, "The depth of human stupidity is incredible." Resisting the new Force the human subconscient would cry out, "Oh! Not yet, not yet - not so soon!" And when this brought on catastrophes it would perversely blame the Force! And the general subconscient, retaining the memory of earlier pralayas, almost hoped that the present manifestation too would merely dissolve, but not undergo a transformation. The Mind too, for all its conceit, was ignorant: even when it asked for the divine life it had no faith, in fact it was afraid of it and clung to the old life. The Mother pictured the transforming Force as a child sitting on the head of this Mind to silence it. Nevertheless as the Mother said on 6 May, there certainly was a Force abroad turning things upside down, pressing upon Matter

to compel it to turn towards the Divine inwardly - not an outward escape (gesture upward), but inwardly to turn to the Divine. And so the apparent result is as though catastrophes were inevitable.... It is as though the two extremes were becoming more extreme, as though what is good was becoming better and what is bad becoming worse... and, at the same time, extraordinary miracles - extraordinary! People are saved who are about to die, things that were inextricable all of a sudden get sorted out.

Values were changing, and the vision of the world was changing. And there was an escalation of consequences: "A little error becomes categorical in its consequences, and a little sincerity, a little true aspiration becomes miraculous in its results." The new Force that was abroad, as the instrument of the Divine, had power over Matter, being stronger than Matter. It could cause or prevent material accidents:

All our common sense, all our logic, all our practical sense is dashed to the ground! useless!... It is truly a new world.²³

Almost four months later, on 30 August, the Mother reported that she could see that it was the consciousness that was directing, and not the thought. But unless the consciousness was open to the Divine, things might still go wrong. Generally speaking, however, thought was something that had a whirling motion, while consciousness opened upward. For the Mother, in all things, the attitude of surrender to the Supreme ("What Thou wiliest!") had become the only course. Her old motivations and spring-boards of action had now crumbled down, and the Divine was her sole refuge. While her body seemed to be enfeebled ("I can no more see clearly nor speak clearly"), it felt no decline! If the Lord willed, her body could take up again its burden of activities, for she still had at times a feeling of "a mighty strength". However, the apparent inactivity of her body seemed to be the Divine's Will. At this point the disciple interposed:

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But you know this is surely a willed state because... in your immobility you are like a tremendous generating centre.

"Yes, that I know," answered the Mother.²⁴

Nearly two months after, on 25 October, the Mother again referred to the battle within between the subconscient with its accumulated contradictions and defeatisms and the true Divine-centred consciousness where all was peaceful. It was not so much the subconscient load of one person, herself, but the stored-up subconscient of the earth itself, and only the Divine could wage the war to the point of victory. For the Mother, to live in the peace - the Beatitude - of the divine Consciousness was "luminous calm"; to be jerked out of it was "hell". And then she must call the Divine again and nestle within his arms.²⁵

On 8 November, the Mother revealed that she had had a few seconds of the supramental consciousness. It seemed to signify "an utmost activity in complete peace... like the harmonisation of contraries". Tremendous and total activity and perfect peace at once!

On 20 December, the disciple asked the Mother "at what point of transformation" Sri Aurobindo had arrived when he left his body. What was the difference between Sri Aurobindo's condition then (in 1950) and the Mother's now (in 1972)? All that she could say was that Sri Aurobindo had gathered in his body "a great amount of supramental force and as soon as he left", that force passed from his body into hers. She could not be more specific in mental categories, but certainly Sri Aurobindo's power for action was now greater than when he was in his body. "Besides, it is for that that he left, because it was necessary to act in that way." And his action since then had become "very concrete", almost material.

Towards the end of the year, on 26 November, the Mother declared in the course of a message:

Before dying falsehood rises in full swing. ...

It is only the Truth that can save us; truth in words, truth in action, truth in will, truth in feelings. It is a choice between serving the Truth or being destroyed.²⁶

Truth - or the Abyss! Again, on 30 December, on being asked about the coming year (1973), the Mother said, "Things had taken an extreme form." On one side there was "an uplift of the atmosphere towards a splendour... almost inconceivable", on the other side, "the feeling that at any moment one may... one may die - not 'die' but the body may be dissolved". In that predicament, the body had but one prayer, and always the same prayer:

Make me worthy of knowing Thee,

Make me worthy of serving Thee,

Make me worthy of being Thee.

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And she concluded: "I feel in myself a growing force... but it is of a new quality ... in silence and in contemplation. Nothing is impossible (Mother opens her hands upward)."

But for the disciple himself, entering into relation with the Divine was a simple matter: he had only to place himself at the Mother's feet!²⁷

As one follows the music of these periodic conversations of the Mother with the disciple, one feels curtained in - one participates in the sweet murmur of the recapitulations and reiterations, and in the beauty of the consecrations - and one knows that the Mother is the visible Divine. She isn't really compelled to be "ill". But what is this divine drama spread out before us, and that involves us in its action? Maya - or Lila? "As Thou wiliest, as Thou wiliest" says the Mother; it may also be, "As the Mother wills, as the Mother wills!" - who can say?

V

Aside from observing as Witness Spirit or directing from the true Consciousness the excruciating - and exhilarating - battle of the cells for victory over the habit of thousands of years, the Mother's almost microscopic concern for the affairs of the Ashram, the Centre of Education and Auroville, as also the far-flung Sri Aurobindo birth centenary celebrations, took up most of her time. A National Committee (which included many ardent Aurobindonians), with Dr. Karan Singh as convener, had been set up by the Government of India, and this committee organised a programme of lectures, seminars, exhibitions and commemorative publications. The house which was widely believed to have been Sri Aurobindo's birthplace in Calcutta ²⁸ was secured and became "Sri Aurobindo Bhavan", the house in which Sri Aurobindo stayed longest while in Baroda during 1893-1906 was taken over for establishing a permanent memorial, and a "Sri Aurobindo Bhavan" came up at Bhubaneshwar as well. Liberal grants were also made for the construction at Auroville of Bharat Nivas, After School I and II, Mandala, and the Pavilion of Consciousness.

During 1971, the political situation in the Indian subcontinent had been distressing in the extreme. Yahya Khan's ruthless 'police action' in East Pakistan had led to a most sanguinary civil war there, resulting in the coming of millions of refugees to India, the intolerable burden on the Indian economy, the unleashing of the Indo-Pakistan war of December 1971, the quick and resounding victory to Indian arms, and the emergence of independent Bangladesh. Even in the early weeks of the civil war in East Pakistan, the Mother had sent a private message to the Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, that it was imperative that Bangladesh should be given official recognition. It was at about this time that Satprem wrote an essay entitled "Sri Aurobindo and Bangladesh", and copies in English and Hindi

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were widely distributed. Was the eruption in East Bengal no more than a local affair? The author declared that the whole world was a single body with a single destiny, and within that single destiny each part, each nation, had its special role. India's role was that of "the spiritual heart of the terrestrial body just as, for example, the role of France is to express clarity of intellect, or that of Germany to express skill". The Partition of India was verily a falsehood and "the symbol of the earth's division". Hadn't Sri Aurobindo said on 15 August 1947 that "the partition must and will go"? In 1965, when Pakistan first started aggressive action, India vigorously counter-attacked and was poised for a decisive victory. On 16th September, the Mother had declared categorically:

It is for the sake and the triumph of Truth that India is fighting and must fight until India and Pakistan have once more become One because that is the truth of their being.²⁹

But the armistice came, and the understanding at Tashkent was to prove a mirage and only prepare for the events of 1971. During the months of Bangladesh's travail in 1971, the opportunity was afforded again to intervene effectively, and India was not to flinch from the effort. Encouraged by the Mother during a conversation in May, Satprem wrote an article "Sri Aurobindo and Bangladesh" for publication. It declared:

For the battle of India is the battle of the world. This is where the world's tragic destiny is brewing, or its last-minute burst of hope into a new world of Truth and Light, for it is said that the deepest darkness lies nearest the most luminous light.

The last Asura must die at the feet of the Eternal Mother.

It was at this time of heightening tension heading towards yet another Hour of God that the Mother sent through Udar Pinto this power-charged passage from Savitri to give India's Prime Minister the vision and the resolve and the strength of purpose and the energy of action to act .in the right way, and meet and master the crisis:

My light shall be in thee, my strength thy force.

Let not the impatient Titan drive thy heart,

Ask not the imperfect fruit, the partial prize.

Only one boon, to greaten thy spirit, demand;

Only one joy, to raise thy kind, desire.

Above blind fate and the antagonist powers

Moveless there stands a high unchanging Will;

To its omnipotence leave thy work's result.

All things shall change in God's transfiguring hour.³⁰

By the beginning of 1972, Bangladesh had been liberated from the clutches of Yahya Khan, and the "Two nations theory" that was supposed

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to have justified the Partition of India had died of its own sickened appetite. Soon afterwards there was the Simla Agreement between India and Pakistan, and people wondered whether a master-stroke of statesmanship) on the part of the rulers of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan wouldn't annul the rages and ravages of the previous twenty-five years. The year of Sri Aurobindo's birth centenary was truly the Phoenix Hour for the Indian subcontinent, for that season of travail and apprehension and uncertainty could have been turned into the hour of rebirth and rehabilitation, with India, Pakistan and Bangladesh forming a confederation or a subcontinental economic community. And if such a consummation could be wrought even now, or in the near future, it would mean redeeming the old undivided past and winning a future for remoulding our common destinies. It would also mean the fulfilment of Sri Aurobindo's prophecy - uttered on the grave occasion of Gandhiji's martyrdom - that Mother India would yet "gather around her her sons," now numbering 800 millions, "and weld them into a single national strength in the life of a great and united people".³¹

VI

The synchronisation, then, of Sri Aurobindo's birth centenary and the silver jubilee of the coming of independence to the Indian subcontinent was no chance occurrence, but was in the nature of a fresh affirmation of the deeper identity between spiritual realities and surface vicissitudes. At exhibition, seminar, conference, shibir, lecture - always the challenge was to take one's fill of the current occasion and thereby to expose oneself to the power, the spiritual force, the creative Agni (Fire-Will) of the 'Sri Aurobindo' manifestation. The far-flung yearlong schedule of the birth centenary celebrations was packed with excitement and significance, and happily elicited the enthusiastic cooperation of a very large number of people from different levels of life. It was somewhat like the construction of the bridge between Bharat and Sri Lanka, for even the squirrel's contribution was relevant in its own way and was hence readily acceptable to the Divine.

Wherever people gathered to celebrate Sri Aurobindo's birth centenary, the Mother was a beneficent Presence, and the Light from Pondicherry seemed to show to the sensitive few the way out of the thickening gloom in human affairs.

At the intellectual level, the climax of the schedule of centenary celebrations was the international seminar on Human Unity held at New Delhi from 5 to 7 December 1972, with a final session devoted to the Auroville Experiment in Human Unity. Distinguished participants were drawn from all over the world, and Professor Oliver Lacombe posed these alternative future possibilities: "Must we wish tomorrow's man to be more

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perfectly human or more than human? In other words, must we look for the fulfilment of man or, beyond man, for the superman?"

It was thought that science and technology, closely allied to global humanism, could yet solve our problems and establish a world government on reasonably firm foundations. But the clear trend of recent history seemed to indicate that it was the technological thrust itself, - with its increasing exteriorisation of human interests and human activity, the insatiable greed for things, the craze for growthmanship, the heady pace of living, the mounting recklessness, the cumulative despair, - that made it more and more difficult to save civilisation from its imminent jump into the Abyss. Everything today - the breakdown in family life, communal life, international relations - seems to point to the possible end of civilisation but, in truth, thanks to the double action of supreme human effort and the answering response of Grace - it is actually the ushering in of the Next Future, and the new race of Superman. Sri Aurobindo had declared in 1928:

The supramental change is a thing decreed and inevitable in the evolution of the earth-consciousness; for its upward ascent is not ended and mind is not its last summit.³²

And the Mother's own experiences had convinced her that the break-through in consciousness would liberate not the mind alone, but the very cells of the body, releasing sun-realms of knowledge, power and love, bringing about an interiorisation - and integralisation - of experience so that there could emerge infallible global understanding and concord. If in our inner life the rift between man and god, matter and spirit, could be healed, then inevitably the healing of the rift between man and nature, man and collective man, would follow as a matter of course.

VII

In an earlier chapter a reference was made to Meditations on Savitri, a collaborative work of interpretation by the Mother and Huta. The first volume was published in 1962, and the other three in 1963, 1965 and 1966 successively covering the five cantos of Book I. Presently the Mother decided to "explain Savitri in its true sense". For the Mother, Savitri was "the supreme revelation of Sri Aurobindo's vision", and only the Mother could bring out the occult universes of meaning in the poem. The work of elucidation and interpretation started on 18 January 1968, and continued for years.³³ The Mother would just read a passage, and after a little meditation, she would give her comments which were tape-recorded. On 29 March 1972, the first volume appeared with the title About Savitri, with several illustrative paintings by Huta done under the Mother's inspiration

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and guidance. It covers only the opening canto, "The Symbol Dawn". But, then, as Sri Aurobindo himself had remarked, it is "a key beginning and announcement", and holds much of the symbolism and esoteric meaning of the poem:

...the physical night and physical dawn are, as the title of the canto clearly suggests, a symbol, although what may be called a real symbol of an inner reality and the main purpose is to describe by suggestion the thing symbolised; here it is a relapse into Inconscience broken by a slow and difficult return of consciousness followed by a brief but splendid and prophetic outbreak of spiritual light leaving behind it the "day" of ordinary human consciousness in which the prophecy has to be worked out.³⁴

The Mother too had the spiritual experience on which "The Symbol Dawn" is structured. As she speaks drawing upon the vast reserves of her spiritual knowledge, passage after passage sheds its obscurity and ambiguity, and the native meaning stands revealed. "Sri Aurobindo," says the Mother, "is giving all the process of rebuilding the Consciousness in the Unconscious." There was first the fall of the Consciousness into the Unconscious: this may be called the "involution" or "immergence". What next?

And now He describes how a message sent from the Supreme to repair the harm done wakens up again the Consciousness - as by a kind of imperative influence - to begin to climb up, back to the Supreme Consciousness.

This ascent is the evolution....

He is speaking of the starting-point of this evolution.³⁵

And, always, choosing the simple but apt words, the Mother unravels the "significant myth" - the Savitri story - in all its cosmic implications. And some of her elucidations throw light on aspects of her own ministry in the Ashram. Thus, explaining a passage containing the line "Only a little the God-light can stay," the Mother recalls the aftermath of the supramental manifestation.

The atmosphere of the earth is too contrary to the magnificence of the Supreme Consciousness and veils it almost constantly....

It was like that when in 1956 the Supramental Power came down upon earth. It was coming in torrents of Light, wonderful Light and Force and Power, and from the earth b-i-g w-a-v-e-s of deep blue Inconscience came and swallowed It up. All the Force that was coming down was swallowed up and it is again from inside the Inconscient that It had to work Itself through. That is why things take so much time here.³⁶

Again, on the lines which describe how hard it is "to persuade earth-nature's change," the Mother says: "This is the exact description of the condition of the earth in general."³⁷

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People are grounded in tamas and will not be easily persuaded to change, but "all can be done if the God-touch is there!" And it is Savitri who has the "God-touch" in all her words and actions. Is her "foreknowledge" about Satyavan a desirable thing?

Too great to impart the peril and the pain,

In her torn depths she kept the grief to come.

The Mother's comment is that one cannot bear the weight of "foreknowledge" unless one has the strength of a God:

It is a Supreme Grace for man that the future is not revealed to him; because most men would not have the courage to live their life, if they knew what it would be.³⁸

But Savitri, because she is endowed with the all-embracing Divine Consciousness, is equal to the demands of her grim "foreknowledge". She knows that "this was the day when Satyavan must die", and is prepared to face the event. His death "becomes the symbol of the misery of the earth's creation, of its fate and, through Savitri, of its liberation".³⁹ Satyavan is the "soul of the world", and by facing the Doom, overpowering and transforming it, Savitri rescues the "soul" and restores the light of life and warmth of happiness to the earth.

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