On The Mother

CHAPTER 34

Manifold Ministry

I

When the Mother found that the Ashram School was growing sinews of strength and its Department of Physical Education was serving school-children and sadhaks alike, she blessed the formation of the Sports Association of Sri Aurobindo Ashram (Jeunesse Sportive de l'Ashram de Sri Aurobindo), and she launched on 21 February 1949 its organ, Bulletin of Physical Education, a bi-lingual (English-French) quarterly journal. It was to contain articles by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, reports of the Ashram and School activities during the quarter, and a wide range of photographs. In the Aurobindonian world-view, the physical was in intimate relationship with the vital, mental, psychic and spiritual, and there could never be any doubt regarding the ultimate unity of matter and spirit. It was not surprising therefore that the Bulletin took all knowledge and experience for its province. After some years, the name of the journal was changed to Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, and was also to appear in a Hindi edition. By popular use, however, the journal is known only as Bulletin, and is immediately recognisable with its red cover and the Mother's Flag (which is also the Ashram's) at the centre: a full-blown stylised lotus in gold, with concentric circles of 4 and 12 petals respectively, and centred in a square background of silvery blue:

This blue is the blue of the spirit and the gold is the colour of the Supreme Mother. The red of the cover surrounding the flag signifies the illumined physical consciousness.¹

The Bulletin was the Mother's own paper, and over a period of twenty-five years she helped to make it stamp itself indelibly on the awakening consciousness of humanity.

Once she had taken the decision towards the close of 1948 to launch the Bulletin, she went about it with her customary thoroughness. She asked Sri Aurobindo for a Message, which he dictated on 30 December. This gave him an opportunity to define the role of sports generally and also to answer some of the doubts obstreperously floating in the Ashram atmosphere. Sri Aurobindo recalled how, at the height of the Hellenic civilisation, "all sides of human activity were equally developed and the gymnasium, chariot-racing and other sports and athletics had the same importance on the physical side as on the mental side the Arts and poetry and the drama". The situation in independent India asked for the promotion of a like harmonious growth of faculties in the citizens and future citizens. The institution of the Olympiad helped the nations to key their physical culture

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to the highest levels of expectancy. Physical education would mean health, strength and fitness of the body, but even more to the point would be the growth of discipline and morale and sound and strong character, and the development of the habit of team-work and the flair for leadership, the two chiming in concert as in splendid orchestration. The main thrust of physical education would of course be the awakening of the body consciousness and the growth of the sporting spirit:

That includes good humour and tolerance and consideration for all, a right attitude and friendliness to competitors and rivals, self-control and scrupulous observance of the laws of the game, fair play and avoidance of the use of foul means, an equal acceptance of victory or defeat without bad humour, resentment or ill-will towards successful competitors, loyal acceptance of the decisions of the appointed judge, umpire or referee. These qualities have their value for life in general and not only for sport, but the help that sport can give to their development is direct and invaluable.... More important still is the custom of discipline, obedience, order, habit of team-work....²

Regarding "Correct Judgment", the Mother remarked on a later occasion that in sports competitions, equity in giving decisions was most important, and only that umpire or referee who was "above all likes and dislikes, all desires and preferences" could look at things with perfect impartiality.³

On a total view, the scheme of physical education in force in the Ashram is to offer opportunities to children and sadhaks alike to discipline and perfect their bodies under expert guidance and on proper lines. In Yoga, there is always the danger of wrong-headed differentiation between what was spiritual and what was not. The Mother therefore thought it necessary to give this simple piece of advice:

From the point of view of a spiritual life, it is not what you do that matters most, but the way in which it is done and the consciousness you put into it. Remember always the Divine and all you do will be an expression of the Divine Presence.⁴

II

Sri Aurobindo's "Message" was only the starting-point, for the subsequent issues of the Bulletin carried a series of remarkable essays by him on '"Perfection of the Body", "The Divine Body", "Supermind and the Life Divine", "Supermind and Humanity", "Supermind in the Evolution", "Mind of Light" and "Supermind and Mind of Light" which cumulatively constituted the ripest testament of his spiritual vision. Starting with the ideal of the perfect body, Sri Aurobindo explores its fullest ramifications

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so as to seize and comprehend the full circle of his integral and supramental Yoga. The utmost possible total perfection was indeed the aim of the Yoga, the establishment of the Life Divine on this earth; and the two ends of existence, the spiritual summit and the material base, had to be purposefully linked so as to interpenetrate the intermediate regions of the soul, mind and life as well:

The soul with the basis of its life established in Matter ascends to the heights of the Spirit but does not cast away its base, it joins the heights and the depths together.⁵

This must mean a general heightening of efficiency or integral perfection of the whole, as well as individual perfection of the several parts:

A supreme perfection, a total perfection is possible only by a transformation of our lower or human nature, a transformation of the mind into a thing of light, our life into a thing of power, an instrument of right action, right use for all its forces.... There must be equally a transforming change of the body by a conversion of its action, its functioning, its capacities as an instrument beyond the limitations by which it is clogged and hampered even in its greatest present human attainment.⁶

Sri Aurobindo's argument in the entire series of articles embraced almost the whole of Yoga, glancing incidentally at a new power of consciousness, the Mind of Light, to which no reference had been made in The Life Divine or The Synthesis of Yoga, and the whole demonstration resounded like a diapason of the inevitability of the Supramental Manifestation on the earth.

On 7 July 1949,. the Mother had told Sri Aurobindo: "I am writing the practical side of your writings."⁷ But of course, with the Mother, the boundary that divided the practical from the profound was very thin indeed. Even as she wouldn't see the spiritual and the material as mutually exclusive, so too theory and practice were, for her, only the two sides of the same arc of realisation. There was thus in her writings and messages - as published from time to time in the Bulletin - a crystalline simplicity, a clarity and directness, and a native power that mostly retain their effective strength even when translated from the original French into English. She wrote, or she spoke, even as she breathed, or walked or attended to her multiple chores; the normal mental activity was generally withdrawn, and only the consciousness Divine was the originator of her actions, speech and writing.

Writing on 2 February 1949 on "Youth" the Mother said:

Youth does not depend on the small number of years one has lived, but on the capacity to grow and progress....

One can also teach the body that there is almost no limit to its growth in

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capacities or its progress.... This is one of the many experiments which we want to attempt in order to break these collective suggestions and show the world that human potentialities exceed all imagination.⁸

The collective suggestion is that, as the years pass, the body must weaken, decay and race towards decrepitude and death. But there is nothing inevitable about it all. Modern man has learnt to ride the bicycle, fly the aeroplane and achieve incredible feats of endurance and accommodation - even to the extent of the demands imposed by space-travel in conditions devoid of the force of gravity. There is thus no reason why man should not be able through the arduous discipline of the body to put off senility and even keep death at bay. As if to reinforce Sri Aurobindo's vision of the ultimate stage of the physical development in which the human body is "suffused with a light and beauty and bliss from the Beyond",⁹ the Mother said in the course of her article "Energy Inexhaustible":

One of the most powerful aids that yogic discipline can provide to the sportsman is to teach him how to renew his energies by drawing them from the inexhaustible source of universal energy. ...

...there is a source of energy which, once discovered, is never exhausted, whatever the outer circumstances and physical conditions of life may be. It is the energy that can be described as spiritual, and is received no longer from below, from the inconscient depths, but from above.... It is there, all around us, permeating everything; and to enter into contact with it and to receive it, it is enough to aspire sincerely for it, to open oneself to it in faith and trust, to widen one's consciousness and identify it with the universal Consciousness.¹⁰

It should be clear, then, that as viewed by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother alike, physical education was not an end in itself, but a possible means preparing the beneficiary for the ardours and adventures and realisations of Integral Yoga.

The importance of physical culture in the total scheme of self-perfection being thus established, the sadhaks - excepting for the few who kept aloof for personal reasons - felt attracted and joined the Playground activities. It now came to be realised that the School and its children were far more than a mere vestibule of the Ashram; they were really part of the heart of the community, and held the key to its future. At the time of the Darshan on 24 April 1949, all the members of the Playground sporting programmes in their group uniforms filed past Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and it was truly a heart-warming and inspiring sight:

The sun-eyed children of a marvellous dawn, ...

Faces that wore the Immortal's glory still,

Voices that communed still with the thoughts of God,

Bodies made beautiful by the Spirit's light, ...

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Their tread one day shall change the suffering earth

And justify the light on Nature's face.¹¹

III

The coming of the children and the opening of the School meant no doubt the usual academic grind (but 'without tears' as far as possible), and also the intensive regimen of sports, and the organisation of recitations, theatricals and the like, all of course with a spiritual orientation. The Mother took a great deal of interest in dramatic coaching, and often discussed her plans with Sri Aurobindo. She chose the play or the theme, assigned the roles to the various participants, and personally supervised the progress of their acting. "I have been told," writes Nirodbaran, "what minute care she took to correct the movements, articulations of each actor, and how she did not spare anyone.... Thanks to her assiduous personal training and attention, our novices learnt the art of acting with beauty and refinement."¹² Champaklal too has recorded a conversation between Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on 24 May 1949 about one of her theatre projects:

When Mother came for Sri Aurobindo's food tonight she brought yesterday's file and started reading the sheets to him when he was taking food....

When Mother finished reading Sri Aurobindo nodded his head and said: Ah, ah.

Mother asked: How did you find it?

Sri Aurobindo: Very good.

Mother: Can it be played?

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, I suppose it can be played....

Mother: Sahana will sing from the back stage. B's voice is very beautiful, has volume, it is sweet; she understands.... A, who read the Rose of God, has fine expression, eyes are rounded as required. V knows French well, but her part is brief. Men will be dressed in pants and ladies will be in saris because the modern dress is very ugly.¹³

This has obvious reference to the Mother's play Towards the Future (Vers I'Avenir) which she had just completed working at high pressure, and was planning to produce it on 1 December. Now that she had read it to Sri Aurobindo and secured his approbation, she could go ahead with the finalisation of the cast, the choice of costumes, training of the actors and the background music. After its successful production, the play was published as supplement - in French as well as in English - along with photographs of some of the scenes, in the next issue of the Bulletin.

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IV

Towards the Future¹⁴ is a one-act play in prose "that can be staged in any country, with small changes in the details of the presentation which local custom may require". The characters are only five: She; the Poet; the Clairvoyant Musician; the Painter; the Schoolmate. The last two are brought in only to help the action to move. Thus the play is really about the first three, an idealistic-futuristic variation of the classical 'triangle'. "She" may also be in some respects, an autobiographical projection of the Mother herself, the Mirra Morisset of forty years earlier.

Although undivided, the one-act piece falls naturally into five distinct scenes. As the curtain rises, She is sitting on a sofa in her room with her Schoolmate, who has just come to see her friend after many years. In the interval, She has married the Poet. The Schoolmate is rather surprised at this development, for in their days of nonage She had often castigated the whole institution of marriage. What was marriage but "a co-operative venture in consumption and production"? And She had expressed a proper disgust too for human animality, and announced triumphantly: "Let us not be mammals." And yet....

That was true enough. She answers: "I have always enjoyed making fun of current ideas and social conventions"; but she hadn't condemned true "love that comes from a deep affinity and is marked by an identity of views and aspirations". Also She had dreamt of "a great love that would be shared, free from all animal activity, something that could physically represent the great love which is at the origin of the worlds". Rather like the climactic vision in Dante:

O Light eternal who only in thyself abidest, only thyself

dost understand, and to thyself, self-understood and

self-understanding, turnest love and smiling! ...

To the high fantasy here power failed; but already my desire

and will were rolled - even as a wheel that moveth

equally - by the Love that moves the sun and the other

stars.¹⁵

She had married the Poet, hoping to translate that dream into reality, but her expectations hadn't been fulfilled. They had achieved comradeship, but that great love had eluded them; perhaps, for such love to materialise, "human nature would have to change so much"! Mutual respect had kept the marriage going somehow, but She couldn't avoid a poignant sense of separative isolation. As a cure, She was desperately trying to lose herself entirely in that marvellous cause, "to relieve suffering humanity, to awaken it to its capacities and its true goal and ultimate transformation". The Schoolmate can see that it is no ordinary Light that is ruling her friend's life and is the inspiration behind it.

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The purpose of the 'first scene' is to open up the theme: the failure of a marriage that had begun with the highest hopes. We have been introduced to one of the partners, and heard her point of view. Now, in the 'second scene', her husband the Poet returns from his walk. The Schoolmate has already left. The Poet looks refreshed but is in an introspective mood. He tells her that, thanks to the bracing air outside, he has been able to visualise the end of his poem in progress:

I end with a song of triumph, a hymn of victory in praise of the evolved man who has discovered, together with the consciousness of his origin, the knowledge of all that he is capable of doing and the power to realise it. I describe him advancing in the happy splendour of union towards the conquest of earthly immortality.

Would it not be better for poetry, painting, music to dwell on beauty, victory and joy, rather than grovel in ugliness and defeat? But, then, when will the frightening budget of discontents end? When will mankind rise beyond the current reign of falsehood and suffering?

She advises him to set to work because work "is the best cure for sadness" and She will in the meantime go out for a while to meet her friend and share with her the new teaching that is the inspiration of their lives. Women too should ponder over the serious problems of life, and not just waste their time talking of 'frills and furs' and other futilities. Most women, under the surface of their seeming frivolousness, hide "a heavy heart" and "an unfulfilled life":

Even in the strongest of women, there is a deep need for affection and protection, for an all-powerful strength that leans over her and enfolds her in comforting sweetness. This is what she seeks in love, and when she has the good fortune to find it, it gives her confidence in life and opens up for her the door to every hope. Without that, life for her is like a barren desert that burns and shrivels up the heart.

The Poet agrees with her, and promises to make it the theme of his next book.

In the 'third scene', the Poet is alone and muses about the general sweetness of her nature:

When I look at her, it is like seeing a light: her intelligence and kindness shine so brightly around her, spreading to all who are near her, whom she guides towards nobler horizons. I admire her, I feel a deep respect for her.... But all that is not love. Love! What a dream! Will it ever become a reality?

Even as he is musing thus, he hears a melody sung by a marvellous voice, wafted from the adjoining house. As the melody dies away, there is a knock and his friend the Painter comes in. He has lately made the

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acquaintance of an accomplished young musician, who is a newcomer to the place and is the neighbour of the Poet and admirer of his work. The Poet acknowledges that he has heard her voice and how it stirred all the fibres of his being. The Painter suggests that the Poet should use his influence and try to arrange for her to give concerts, since she is all alone in her life and needs some support to sustain herself. The Poet agrees, and the Painter goes out to bring the young lady from the next house. Left to himself, the Poet wonders whether the already experienced affinity between himself and the Clairvoyant Musician can further his fulfilment in life.

Presently the Painter returns with the Clairvoyant, and at once the Poet tells her how he has admired her beautiful voice in the service of her art. While taking leave of them, the Painter refers to his dealer who only wants "to make me paint absurdities because, he says, it is the current taste". This is probably a reference to the painter mentioned by the Mother in her talk of 9 April 1951 at the Ashram Playground:

I knew a painter, a disciple of Gustave Moreau; he was truly a very fine artist, he knew his work quite well, and then... he was starving.... One day, a friend intending to help him, sent a picture-dealer to see him... he showed him all the best work that he had done. The art-dealer made a face, looked around, turned over things and began rummaging in all the corners; and suddenly he found [a piece of canvas used for daubing the scrapings of leftover colours from palettes after a day's work].... The merchant suddenly falls upon that and exclaims, "Here you are! my friend, you are a genius, this is a miracle, it is this you should show! Look at this richness of tones, this variety of forms, and what an imagination!"

And although the painter pleaded that it was but palette scrapings, the art-dealer said, "Silly fool, this is not to be told!" He not only undertook to sell it, but offered to take as many of such as he would supply. And so, in order to be able to live at all, the painter made a compromise and did something "which gave the imagination free play, where the forms were not too precise, the colours were all mixed and brilliant...." And, in course of time, he made a name for himself with these 'horrors'!¹⁶

In the Mother's play, however, the Poet asks the Painter to resist the art-dealer's pressures, and fight "this degeneracy of modern taste, this lapse into falsehood which seems to have seeped into the consciousness of all our contemporaries, in every field of human creativity". The traffic in the ugly, the false, the hopeless, the heartless and the fantastic, that is the new wave, that is modernism!

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V

In the 'fourth' and longest scene, the Poet and the Clairvoyant Musician are left alone. The Poet tells her that he will introduce her to a famous orchestra director who can help her to a career in music, and he also confides to her what an inspiration her music has been to his own work during the last six months. The Clairvoyant herself feels quite at ease, for the atmosphere of the room is so reassuring and soothing. With many to choose from, she had chosen an apartment close to the Poet's house, as if by a sort of intuition. It is a case of affinity between them, an inspiration for him, a protection for her! She is now overtaken by the need to sleep and stretches herself on the sofa. The Poet tells her she needn't bother about conventions and customs; such fetters have no meaning! The Poet passes his hand over her forehead several times till the persistent pain in her head ceases, and she goes to sleep with a look of joy and comfort. The Poet sits by her side, and gazes at her face. But although asleep, the Clairvoyant's inner eye is open, and she sees an aura of violet light around the Poet and begins talking in her sleep:

It is a living and luminous amethyst. It is all around me too, it is giving me strength. It is a protection, a sure protection.... Nothing harmful can come near me now. (Enraptured) How beautiful is the violet light around you!

The violet colour symbolises Divine Compassion (Karuna or Grace), as also "the radiance of Krishna's protection".¹⁷ No wonder the Clairvoyant, now psychically awakened, feels comforted and protected.

The Poet too is profoundly moved, for he is now flooded with a peace and happiness he hadn't known before. But he is also disturbed, for if he is to feel responsible for the Clairvoyant's safety and yield to this new-found felicity of mutual trust and love, how about his obligations to his own wife? How is he to tell her that his whole being is concentrated upon another? But hypocrisy too is to be ruled out! By now the Clairvoyant is awake, and feels quite refreshed and happy. She talks of the aura she had seen around his head - "a nourishment and a protection". The Poet explains to her that the aura is really a reflection of a man's true nature:

We are made up of different states....

.. .what is more subtle in us forms a kind of sheath round our bodies and we call this subtle sheath the aura.

... the aura is the exact reflection of what is within us, of our feelings and our thoughts.

With her clairvoyance, she had seen this aura, but all do not possess this gift of vision. The Poet tells her that, while most people today are totally engrossed in material satisfactions, all is not lost, for there are "guardians of the supreme knowledge" who know the Truth, whose aim is to "awaken

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man to the consciousness of what he truly is and what he can do". The Clairvoyant feels greatly thrilled, and hopes they can see one another often: "I wish we never had to part again.... While I was asleep I felt that you were everything for me and that I belong to you for ever."

Yes indeed, the Poet answers: "Just now while you were asleep, I felt a calm and a quiet happiness which I had never experienced before." Then, thoughtfully, he adds: "Yes, this is the true love, which is a force; it is the union that enables new possibilities to be realised." There is here a hesitation in his speech, and noticing this, the Clairvoyant asks what could possibly be the impediment, and just then She suddenly enters, having heard what they said from behind a screen.

The 'fifth' and final scene: the Clairvoyant sees that the Poet is married, and this comes almost as a shattering blow to her. But the heroine - She - tells them not to be upset. Yes, She had overheard the end of their conversation; and She is eager to help them. Love is the only legitimate bond of union, and "the absence of love is enough to invalidate any union". A union without love, like hers with the Poet, based only on esteem and mutual concession, may have been tolerable enough, but now that the Clairvoyant has awakened true love in the Poet, the earlier association will have to be annulled.

The Poet is relieved, yet unhappy; what will now happen to his wife? No doubt She lives always on the summit of her consciousness "in a pure and serene light", but can She stand by herself, all alone? But She is unruffled and magnanimous, She joins their hands together and offers them her good wishes. She will now join those - "who possess the eternal wisdom" - who have already been guiding her from a distance. But these two - the Poet and the Clairvoyant - should cherish the blessing of love and not allow their union "to serve as an excuse for the satisfaction of animal appetites or sensual desires". As for herself, She fully knows her mind:

I now know for certain that only one love can satisfy my being: it is the love for the Divine, the divine love, for that alone never fails. Perhaps one day I shall find the favourable conditions and the necessary help for the achievement of the supreme realisation, the transformation and divinisation of the physical being which will change the world into a blessed place full of harmony and light, peace and beauty.¹⁸

VI

It may seem strange that, although the Clairvoyant Musician has been their neighbour for six months, she doesn't seem to know that the Poet is married already; also, while he has heard her music so often, he hasn't

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even once seen the Clairvoyant. But, then, the play should not be judged as a realistic exercise, for Towards the Future belongs more properly to the realm of ideas. The theme is, not so much the break-up of a marriage because of the intrusion of the Third, but the cracking of the cosmic egg and the preordained leap into the future. A marriage sustained by mutual respect and adjustment could be viewed as a happy marriage by worldly-wise people; and so indeed it is, till the Clairvoyant Musician arrives. Then the Poet and the Clairvoyant awaken to the true love, and on her part She seeks the Love Divine. In a message given to the daughter of a sadhak on the occasion of her marriage, the Mother has said that the union of physical existences and material interests, the sharing of defeats and victories, is the very basis of marriage; yet that is not enough. Being united in feelings, having the same tastes and pleasures, vibrating in a common response to the same things, all this is good and necessary; but this is not enough either. To be one in sentiments and affections, to be jointly proof against all shocks of life, to be able to experience happiness together under all circumstances, all this is very necessary; yet this too is not enough. As with the physical, the emotional and the sentimental spheres of life, to accomplish the union of minds, thoughts and intellectual preoccupations, that is splendid, yet even this is not the seal and sanction of integral success in marriage. What, then, is the ultimate secret of success?

Beyond all that, in the depths, at the centre, at the summit of the being, there is a Supreme Truth of being, an Eternal Light, independent of all circumstances of birth, country, environment, education; That is the origin, cause and master of our spiritual development; it is That which gives a permanent direction to our lives; it is That which determines our destinies; it is in the consciousness of That that you must unite. To be one in aspiration and ascension, to move forward at the same pace on the same spiritual path, that is the secret of a lasting union.¹⁹

The limitations of human love in its many forms and the quality of divine love as the culmination and crystallisation of human love were to come up again for discussion in a conversation of 19 September 1956. How is one to give up - or outgrow - the lower forms of love in favour of the Love Divine? The Mother answered:

.. .the best way when love comes, in whatever form it may be, is to try and pierce through its outer appearance and find the divine principle which is behind and which gives it existence. Naturally, it is mil of snares and difficulties, but it is more effective. That is to say, instead of ceasing to love because one loves wrongly, one must cease to love wrongly and want to love well.

Instead of drying up the veins of love, it would be wiser to purify them:

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...one must learn how to love better: to love with devotion, with self-giving, self-abnegation, and to struggle, not against love itself, but against its distorted forms.... Not to want to possess, dominate.... Simply to be happy to love, nothing more.²⁰

And from the purer forms of human love, it should be a natural movement towards divine love, whether it be manifested in a personal being (an avatar, for example) or whether it is unmanifested and impersonal. In a later conversation, the Mother described the quintessence of this divine love, how difficult it is to realise, and yet how needful:

This Divine Love which animates all things, penetrates all, upbears all and leads all towards progress and an ascent to the Divine, is not felt, not perceived by the human consciousness, and that even to the extent the human being does perceive it, he finds it difficult to bear not only to contain it, but be able to tolerate it... for its power in its purity, its intensity in its purity, are of too strong a kind to be endured by human nature....

...a human being, unless he raises himself to the divine heights, is incapable of receiving, appreciating and knowing what divine Love is.²¹

But the ascent of aspiration can always occasion the descent of Grace, and love with its first human beginnings can flower and fructify as the Love Divine.

Towards the Future is a radiant manifesto for the future, when the current distortions of love will give place to love undefiled and divinely oriented; when even the human lover will be able to affirm like Savitri:

My love is not a hunger of the heart,

My love is not a craving of the flesh;

It came to me from God, to God returns.

Even in all that life and man have marred,

A whisper of divinity still is heard,

A breath is felt from the eternal spheres.²²

VII

It was towards the close of 1949 that the Mother saw again her son, André, whom she had left as a boy of eighteen in France when she sailed for Japan in 1916. In the intervening period which saw two World Wars, hardly twenty letters had passed between mother and son. Having married in the meantime, he had two daughters, Janine and Francoise (much later to be given the Ashram name Pournaprema'). On 12 August 1949, the Mother informed Sri Aurobindo that Francoise was to be married on that day.²³ André's own visit to India was decided on in the summer of 1949 and took place in November. On the way, he spoke at a meeting in Calcutta for about fifteen minutes on his boyhood memories,

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and how the Mother used to say even in those distant days that she had come to the world with a special mission.²⁴ When it was known that André was to visit the Ashram on 21 November, the Mother told Sri Aurobindo:

André is coming today.... They want to arrange things in such a way that he can meet me as soon as he comes from Madras without waiting....

It is many years since we last met. Perhaps if we met on the road without being introduced to each other I would not know him, and he too would not recognise me.... He reads your books and understands them too. He had sent his wife's photo; she resembles me. André had also written to me that she very much resembles me.²⁵

When André arrived in the evening, Pavitra told him that the Mother was expecting him in the room in Golconde where he was to stay for some time. It was quite dark when he reached Golconde, and he hastily climbed two storeys and then, "in the dim light of the corridor, I saw a white shape with her back against the door in a very familiar attitude". Though they had not met ever so long, the reunion was that of a mother and a son: "We were at once in full understanding and I had the strong impression of being still a small boy seeking safety in his mother's lap."²⁶

Introducing Champaklal the next day to André, the Mother said that, having come very young, he learnt many things from her and was attending with "devotion and joy" to "everything with regard to Sri Aurobindo",²⁷ As for the Ashram, what struck André was "the perfect harmony of the whole"; all details fitted together, and all work was done "with an evident pleasure and not as a necessary duty"; and such harmony in the right functioning and perfect dovetailing of the details would be impossible "without the Mother's presence in all of them". André had Darshan of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on 24 November, and he felt that no words could describe "the overwhelming impression of benevolence, knowledge and strength" which radiated from the Master and the Mother:

It is not at all surprising that so many people undertake long journeys in order to have the privilege of paying their tribute of devotion. What they get in return is a glimpse of a higher and truer life which responds to the most innate aspiration of human nature.²⁸

VIII

For the Mother herself, the meeting with her son André was but a brief encounter, although he had been and would ever be - as anyone she had seen even once would be - in her deeper consciousness. A load of work was awaiting her always, and there was no respite for her.

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The economy of the Ashram was a ticklish thing, and needed constant attention. On 15 December 1949, she is reported to have informed Sri Aurobindo that the bonus alone to be paid to the Ashram workers came to Rs 20,000, which meant there would be no balance left; perhaps she should sell some of her jewellery!²⁹ And the ceaseless pressure on her time, and the endless calls on her love: for example, somebody would come at midnight to read Prayers and Meditations with her, another for lessons in arithmetic, a third for a smile and a flower, and so "the wheel went round and round with hardly a stop".³⁰ And how variegated the meetings, from the sublime to the ridiculous. Once a boy came for Darshan, and after seeing the Mother felt that there was another Mother within the visible Mother. Hadn't he seen far more than what most - including many seasoned sadhaks - manage to see? On the other hand, sometimes a self-important person would seek an interview, and tell her pompously: "Oh! I have worked a lot in my life, now I want to rest, will you give me a place in the Ashram?" And the Mother would smilingly say: "Not here... this is a place for working even harder than before."³¹ And as if to set an example, the Mother never spared herself, but used her day's twenty-four hours to the best purpose.

At midnight on 31 December 1949, in the round-the-clock rhythm of her matchless ministry, the Mother played the organ and sent out streams of music to flood the Ashram and the world with joy and hope incommensurable. Later, she distributed the message for 1950:

Don't speak. Act.

Don't announce. Realise.

There was a terrific sense of urgency in this rather unconventional message that was really an exhortation teaming with an admonition. Perhaps she knew it would be a year of difficulty and uncertainty, and it asked for foresight, resoluteness and unflinching action. The Mother also contributed a piece "Foresight" to the 21 February issue of Bulletin:

By yogic discipline one can not only foresee destiny but modify it and change it almost totally. ...

...be always at the summit of your consciousness and the best will always happen to you.... If this ideal condition turns out to be unrealisable, the individual can at least, when he is confronted by a danger or a critical situation, call upon his highest destiny by aspiration, prayer and trustful surrender to the divine will.³²

The Mother's was no coward median goal, she was for the summit itself:

We are not aiming at success - our aim is perfection.

We are not seeking fame or reputation; we want to prepare ourselves for a Divine manifestation.³³

Again, in the August issue of the Bulletin, the Mother pleaded for "an

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integral transformation, the transformation of the body and all its activities", and to this end there was the need for the true consciousness which "is at the centre, at the heart of reality and has the direct vision of the origin of all movements". The same issue of the Bulletin carried her note "What a child should always remember" and "An Ideal Child". In the Mother's view an ' 'Ideal Child'' is always good-tempered; in games, he never gives way; he is patient and honest, enduring and persevering, courageous and cheerful, modest and fair and obedient. An ideal child, in short, is a SPORTSMAN.

With children young or old (for some "mentally remain children always"), a story or tale well-told, even if it were an oft-told tale has a more lasting effect than a heap of theoretical expositions. With the Mother action always followed thought, and so she published a book containing a bunch of tales and parables for the use of the Ashram children, and children everywhere and of all ages. This book called Tales of All Times was not actually her own writing but a selection and adaptation from F.G. Gould's Youth's Noble Path which she had done during her stay in Japan over thirty years back.

IX

Tales of All Times, first appeared in French as Belles Histoires in 1946, and in English in 1951.³⁴ In a brief prefatory note written in February 1950, the Mother said that the stories were intended to help children "discover themselves and follow a path of right and beauty". The stories are garnered from the whole world, the accumulated memories of the human race. Fable, fiction, history, myth, legend - India, Japan, Arabia, Persia, Jerusalem, Italy, Guyana - Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Islamic, Jewish, Christian, Zoroastrian all agreeably mingle in this humanistic pot pourri; and the result is an utterly wholesome meal for children, young and old alike.

The Mother's concern is obvious enough: How are the children of the Ashram School (and children generally) to be helped to hold in check (and to throw out altogether) their wrong impulses and perverse propensities, and also, how are they to be coaxed into bringing to the fore and maximising the good in themselves? By means of this double action, curative and creative, children should be enabled to "follow the path of right and beauty''; and the truthful - the path of rectitude - is also the path beautiful, and must lead on to the total good and happiness of one and all. But how is the experience and distilled wisdom of the race to be mobilised on the issue of the collective well-being of the future? How are children to be taught to fight ignorance, tamas and ugliness? This was the large aim of this little book, and the Mother's telling of the tales, born of her intense

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love for her children, is simple and direct, earnest and persuasive.

The cardinal exhortation is Know thyself, for if you can know yourself, you are unlikely to go wrong in your inner or outer movements, and your life cannot turn awry, sour or ugly. The tales are grouped with an easy naturalness and effectiveness under eleven heads, each extolling or exemplifying a distinct moral quality; and these eleven together make a symphony of virtue, a hymn of human excellence.

We had seen in an earlier chapter how, in one of the pieces in Words of Long Ago, the Mother had offered a parable, "The Virtues". To the Hall of Intelligence in the Palace of Truth come one after another the several Virtues - Sincerity, her faithful guards Humility and Courage, the veiled woman Prudence, the quiescent Charity, and her escort made up of Kindness, Patience, Gentleness, Deference "and others". And Gratitude too, the last to appear, uninvited and unrecognised! Tales of All Times may be read, partly as an illustration, partly as an extension, of the earlier essay. Some of the Virtues recur: Sincerity, Courage, Prudence, Patience; among others. Charity and Gratitude are missing; and there appear these homelier but necessary Virtues also - Self-control, Cheerfulness, Self-reliance, Perseverance, The Simple Life, Right Judgment, Order, Building and Destroying.* Inner and outer life are both covered, and the aim is individual felicity coupled with social harmony and well-being.

X

First, self-control - the key one might say, to the inner countries of self-knowledge, self-respect, self-reliance. Self-control is not so much a negative virtue, in other words keeping an evil force under check, but a meeting and mastering, a transformation of a destructive into a creative force. Unlike the ferocity of the tiger, the wildness of the horse is amenable to control and proper direction by means of the little metallic bit of the bridle. Likewise the random impulses and untamed passions of man can also be tamed and transformed into engines of constructive effort. A verse from the Koran alchemises Hussain's sudden anger into generosity of understanding. Like Stavrogin in Dostoevsky's novel, the insulted boy restrains himself with a marvellous exercise of self-control, and wins the greater reward of his antagonist's gratitude and friendship. But self-control needn't mean brazen self-abasement either. And so the Mother concludes with the Buddha's advice to the complacent Brahmacharin that the man of wisdom should be unaffected by flattery and blame alike, but base his conduct on the Right Law and live in Peace.³⁵

*Several hitherto unpublished stories have been added as an Appendix to "Tales of All Times" in the Collected Works of the Mother, vol.2, 1985.

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Self-control, certainly, but the self-control of the brave, not the weakness of the coward. And courage has its gradations, altitudes, intensities. There is the almost universal or rudimentary courage of self-interest, there is the courage of gallantry in rushing to another's help, and there is the moral courage of standing up to arbitrary power, as Vibhishana reprimands Ravana for the evil done to Sita. There are times that ask for cool orderly courage, as when a ship is about to sink, but at other times what is needed may very well be intrepid or reckless courage, or even a stoic courage expressed in tuneful numbers like the ailing Abu Sayed's noble exhortation:

Despair not in your grief, for a joyous hour will come and take it all away;...

Therefore be patient when troubles come, for Time is the father of wonders;

And from the peace of God hope for many blessings to come.³⁶

Still greater, however, is the courage to hew new pathways of human conduct, as a Moses, a Siddhartha, a Jesus, or a Muhammad did.

Cheerfulness of course is a child's native virtue, for children wear a daily beauty and buoyancy in their lives. But cheerfulness equally becomes the elderly, and especially in times of defeat or difficulty. The Mother recalls the story of the Amir of Khorasan who found sweet uses in his hours of adversity and could smile still - and even laugh at himself. Indeed, cheerfulness costs nothing, but is of immeasurable value in the commerce of the world:

...liveliness, serenity, good humour are never out of place.... With them the mother makes the home happy for her children; the nurse hastens the recovery of her patient; the master lightens the task of his servants; the workman inspires the goodwill of his comrades; the traveler helps his companions on their hard journey; the citizen fosters hope in the hearts of his countrymen.³⁷

As with courage, there is a whole hierarchy of ascending intensities with self-reliance as well. Earning one's own living with the sweat of one's brow is commendable, but beyonding one's immediate need and rushing to another's help in a time of need is even better. Gushtasp of Persia, for example, spurns the privileges of his princely birth, fights his way in life, and succeeds his father as King. And it is during his reign that Prophet Zoroaster proclaims his new faith. The virtue of self-reliance should exceed private need and embrace the environment, the community, the race. The feats of magic and miraculism are but trifles that distract our attention, but the real miracles are those encompassed by man's own endeavour:

Personal effort brings about still greater marvels: it covers the soil with rich

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harvests, tames wild beasts, tunnels through mountains, erects dykes and bridges, builds cities, launches ships on the ocean and flying machines in the air; in short it gives more well-being and security to all.³⁸

'Two men I honour, and no third," said Carlyle: the man whose physical labour yields the needed goods and services, and the man whose intellectual and spiritual labour yields value beyond measure for human progress. And self-reliance is the start and main sustenance of either success-story.

Patience and Perseverance come next. Kafka said that the deadly sins were but two, impatience and intemperance; nay, there was only one primary sin, impatience, for Eve herself fell because of her impatience. And the antidote to impatience is patience. As for perseverance, it is "an active patience, a patience that marches on". Columbus the explorer, Palissy the potter - they couldn't have "arrived" where they did without the double virtue of patience and perseverance. In illustration, the Mother tells the life of Pratap Chandra Rai whose untiring efforts were to result in the publication of the first English translation of the Mahabharata; and there was likewise M. V. Ramanujachari who brought out the Tamil Mahabharata. To undertake some great and worthwhile task is verily to compel the answering response of Grace to see the task through to a successful end. "In this wide world," says the Mother, "there is no lack of noble work to be accomplished, nor is there any lack of good people to undertake it." But without perseverance there can be no safe arrival at the desired goal.

Prudence and Right Judgment are important ancillary virtues. Courage without prudence or self-reliance without right judgment can easily precipitate disaster. Didn't King Dasaratha, relying too much on his śabdabhedi or his unerring skill for shooting by the sound, once kill an innocent hermit's son fetching water from a brook for his thirsting aged and blind parents? The curse provoked by the event was to unroll itself in the fullness of time as the tragedy of Rama's banishment on the day fixed for his coronation, the abduction of Sita, and all the tribulations that followed. As in the Japanese picture of the three monkeys, it is no more than prudence to look for no evil, nor to listen to it, nor yet to speak it. But right judgment is equally necessary, and one must learn to take the right measure of things in the total context of time, place and circumstance. All that glitters is not gold, and the lion's skin worn by the donkey doesn't transform it into the King of the Jungle. On the other hand, one must equally refrain from condemning the young swan as the ugly duckling! There is a soul of good in things apparently evil, and there is a hidden divinity that shapes our ends. Even a criminal has a soul that may be suddenly awakened, and always it is a question of faith and trust invoking the right answering response.

The Mother gave at all times a high place to sincerity, which is indeed the presiding Virtue in the Hall of Intelligence. Her robe is transparent

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"like clear water", and the crystal in her hand reflects things and phenomena without the slightest distortion. To be able to see the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth - to develop the uncanniness to differentiate between truth and hearsay, truth and superstition, wishful thinking - and to summon the requisite courage, straightforwardness and utter sincerity to reveal, when necessary, the whole body of the living truth: this is to be brave, upright and wise. Mere cleverness, sophistry, hypocrisy, diplomacy and glittering 'word-fact' traffic with varieties of falsehood or adulteration of truth, and they must all prove self-defeating in the long run. It is said that King Solomon had devisee a throne that was an unfailing lie-detector, instantly exposing the liar. But honesty shouldn't need the sophistications of Solomon's Throne for ensuring the reign of Truth, for it is a spiritual, not a mechanical, Power that ordains the provenance and pre-eminence of Truth. One is often afraid of speaking the truth because one fails to remember that always, always irrespective of anybody else who may also be present, one is ever in the presence of the Divine. Where that ultimate sovereignty is present, all other persons and potentates must lose their power, and falsehood and hypocrisy lose their occupation. At the behest of Ravana the Rakshasa Lord of Falsehood, a thousand phantom Ramas and Lakshmanas appear on the battlefield to confuse the Vanara hosts led by Hanuman, but the real Rama's mighty arrow attacks the phantoms and dissolves them into air. Even so, says the Mother, "Every straight word from a sincere man is like an arrow that can destroy much falsehood and hypocrisy."³⁹

The soul of sincerity is to be wholly truthful in thought, word and deed - and keep away from self-deceit, falsehood and hypocrisy. Generosity itself has a qualitative, not a quantitative, measure; the mythic squirrel's pebble for the building of the causeway to Lanka was more beloved of Rama than huge hillocks brought by the mightiest veterans. Krishna preferred the homely but sincere hospitality of Vidura to the lavish insincerities of Duryodhana. Since sincerity and utter truthfulness are a basic virtue and a rare blessing, it would be wise to cultivate them - or prayerfully invoke them - even as a child, and they must be a life-long adherence and a consecration as well.

XI

The remaining strings of stories centre round the concepts of Order, Building and Destroying and the Simple Life. Ours is a world of ceaseless flux and change, of destruction and fresh creation, yet also of orderliness, of rhythm, and of significant forms. Order is heaven's eldest law, which Wordsworth called Duty the "stern daughter of the Voice of God":

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Flowers laugh before thee on their beds

And fragrance in thy footing treads;

Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;

And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong.

There is the rhythm of Becoming, and there is the poise of Being. There are the organic filaments of decay and death that phoenix-like spring up as new creation. The cycle of the seasons, the rhythm of dawn, noon, night and dawn again, of birth, growth, death and birth again, the wide-ranging notes in the musical scale, the singular vicissitudes of the terrestrial play of Becoming, all are enacted in the invisible theatre of immaculate Being. Beneath the disorder and the cacophony, there is the triumph of order and the music of Existence. Life, life, life! - which is part of the rhythm of the phenomenal world - matches and masters the counterpointed hiss of Death, death, death! The Mother tells the legendary story of the new-born babe, Tiruvalluvar, who is abandoned by his parents in a grove, but he thrives all the same, being amply nourished by honey-drops from the Ilupay flowers above. It was this same Tiruvalluvar who later composed the Kural, a Tamil classic, and also rid hapless Kaveripakkam of a demon who was the scourge of the countryside. Like Tiruvalluvar, it is man's privilege and the burden of his destiny to be destroyer and preserver both, the destroyer of the agents of evil and the upholder of the imperatives of Dharma.

It is significant that the Mother should have devoted a whole chapter in praise of the Simple Life. She notes that "in all countries many people are beginning to understand that a simple life is more desirable than a life of extravagance, vanity and show," and ardently pleads for a higher quality - rather than a higher standard - of life. The prophet Muhammad, St. Francis, St. Banarasi Das who made a strong impression on Akbar, the poet Virgil, were living examples of simplicity and austerity. The advance of science and technology has in practice meant the galloping pace of consumerism, the proliferation of the expensive inessentials and the subjugation of mind and soul to the blandishments of the paradise of the electronic gods. Thoreau, Tolstoy and Gandhi were also among the prophets of the simple life, and asked for the elimination of all surplusage. But although wealth by itself is no evil, for wealth too comes from the Divine and could be made a servant of the Divine, there is much indeed to be said in favour of the simple life. After all, the luxury of one too often involves the misery of another or of many, and hence the ideal of poor communities and countries could only be plain living and honest thinking for all, rather than criminal self-indulgence and conspicuous spending and waste by a few made possible by marginal existence and terrible misery for the vast majority. And of course gluttony and intoxicants are body-wasters

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and soul-killers, for whereas the fabled demons of old caused hurt only to the body, excessive self-indulgence can lead to the mind's enfeeblement and the crash of character.

These tales of all times are thus truly a kaleidoscopic feast of reason and flow of instruction. The stories glide into one another, explication fuses with exhortation, the several virtues balance and reinforce, the filiations between the worlds within and without are firmly forged, and as the lessons draw to a close, the reader or listener knows that the course is rounding itself purposefully. As if to underline the essential instruction, the Mother concludes the book with a rapid unconventional summary. There are things to wrestle with in life, things to bring under control, and things to promote and sustain. For the children of every land, and for good men and women, there is a whole budget of programmes of rehabilitation and reconstruction. To tame floods and forests, to drain marshlands and reclaim wastelands, to build roads, bridges and ships, to fight hunger, squalor and disease, to give ceaseless fight to evil in its numberless forms: all this is but part of the epic struggle ahead. Equally it should be part of the practical religion of man to cherish and promote life and art in their divers forms:

And what are the things that man should cherish and defend? All those that give him life and make him better, stronger and more joyful.

So, let him watch over every child that comes into the world, for its life is precious.

Let him protect the friendly trees and grow plants and flowers for his food and delight....

Let him build dwellings that are strong, clean and spacious.

Let him preserve with care the holy temples, statues, pictures, vases, embroidery as well as beautiful songs and poems, and all that increases his happiness with its beauty.

But above all, children of India and other lands, let men cherish the heart that loves, the mind that thinks honest thoughts and the hand that accomplishes loyal deeds.⁴⁰

This brief peroration is of a piece with the general tone of the little collection of tales packed with divination and charged with urgency. The words of the Mother articulate the call to awaken the slumbering soul within, and to "follow a path of right and beauty". All life is a journey and a struggle, an itinerary of ups and downs, a prospective of perils and possibilities; and the struggle and mastery within have to precede the outer Kurukshetra with its trying vicissitudes. But this only means that all life should be viewed as the theatre of Yoga, the occasion for right aspiration, integral and intense effort, and splendorous realisation.

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