On The Mother

CHAPTER 58

Matrimandir

I

In her message for 1970, the Mother asked:

The world is preparing for a big change. Will you help?

The first part was an announcement, but the second part was not quite an exhortation-like, for example, "Remain young..." (1968) or "No words - acts" (1969) - but rather an invitation, almost an intimate pleading. "Are you ready?" the Mother had queried in 1964; now it was more pressing, more urgent: Will you help? A role was reserved for the sadhaks, and for humanity at large. In the developing world drama, in the unfolding cosmic drama, people were suddenly — peremptorily, irresistibly - invited to the stage. We were not to be mere interested spectators; we were actors with a stake in the play.

"The world is preparing for a big change." Clearly no single nation was meant. The governments were not the world; Presidents and Prime Ministers were not the world. Marvels of speed and wonders of transport, heart transplants and space satellites - men had gone to the moon and returned - these no doubt deserved praise, but did not by themselves add up to the big change that the Mother had in mind. She was thinking not of a change in the externals of life - in our pace of living measured by computer consoles, space stations, transplant shops, LSD sanatoria, sex euphoria - but of a radical change in the very quality of our existence. It was yet to come, and the Mother's assurance was that the world was preparing for it. She was, in fact, invoking the Divine, for it was the Divine immanent in the world that was preparing for the "big change". The breath of the Lord was abroad upon the waters of our being, - there was a stir and exhilaration in the air and the new, the superman consciousness that had been abroad for a year was seeking more and more centres for its vigorous functioning. Will mankind let slip that moment of divine opportunity?

In the Hour of God - in the hour of the big change - His breath might come with a terrific force, and also as Divine Grace. He was Rudra, he was Shiva too! And what was the response expected of mankind? As a message for 24 April 1969, the Mother had recalled Sri Aurobindo's words:

The best possible way is to allow the Divine Grace to work in you, never to oppose it, never to be ungrateful and turn against it - but to follow it always to the goal of Light and Peace and unity and Ananda.

The proffered hand was not to be rejected, the working of Grace was not lo be hindered; far better would it be to meet it with trust and gratitude, join hands with it, and march towards the Goal.

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But what was the big change as distinct from the many varieties of political, economic and social changes that so easily caught the headlines? In her message on the preceding Siddhi Day (24 November 1968), the Mother had gone back half a century and chosen Sri Aurobindo's words of long ago:

The changes we see in the world today are intellectual, moral, physical in their ideal and intention: the spiritual revolution waits for its hour and throws up meanwhile its waves here and there. Until it comes the sense of the others cannot be understood and till then all interpretations of present happening and forecast of man's future are vain things. For its nature, power, event are that which will determine the next cycle of our humanity.¹

Certainly, the world over there had been changed; yet who would be bold Or foolish enough to claim that those changes - whether in the structure of governments, or in social, economic and political life - had basically altered the human condition. Fear still stalked abroad, man was still wolf to man. Hence the necessity for the spiritual revolution, without which all changes could affect only the surface of life, and might even leave the world worse off than before by accentuating inequalities and iniquities to a degree unimaginable before. In 1917, Sri Aurobindo had said in the passage cited above that the spiritual revolution awaited its hour. But by 1970, things had moved forward: the supramental manifestation of 1956, followed by the descent of the superman consciousness in 1969 "working energetically to prepare the earth for the new creation".² And yet, while a power may be working energetically and even irresistibly, to cooperate with that power would mean hastening the day of realisation. Hence the urgency of the Mother's appeal: Will you help?

The descent of the new Consciousness on 1 January 1969 was, after all, as the Mother herself had made clear, not confined to the Ashram or Auroville alone, but was global in its diffusion. Did it not mean, as Edith B. Schnapper had pointed out, that the new force was universally available?

Wherever the ground has been prepared and mind and heart are open to receive it its touch can be felt and the work of transformation begin.

...some of us are called to do the work of the Divine at the fountain head, the Ashram, so as to consolidate the descent, to strengthen and broaden its foundation and, by surrender, to implement and individualise the descending force for an ultimate complete transformation of life.

Others of us are called upon to prepare the soil elsewhere; to protect and nourish the first tender shoots of the new awareness, to be open to the touch of the Shakti from above and yet, at the same time, find means of closing ourselves to the constant inrush of forces inimical to the spiritual life.³

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Even so, in auspicious centres near and far away, the world was preparing for the big change; and wherever such centres sprang up, it was the destined role of select human beings to meet the descent of the spirit with a corresponding leap of aspiration.

II

All the while, like the unperceived underground river, the Mother's personal sadhana of the body was pursuing its own invisible course, and only a little of what she experienced and realised has come to light through the records of her periodic conversations with her disciples, notably Satprem. On 31 January 1970, the Mother remarked that so-called difficulties and sufferings were but the result of some lingering Falsehood, and hence the solution was to abolish all preference and desire, "even the preference for not suffering"; and to accept the way of self-giving in the spirit of "What Thou willest". Suffering was the result of the eruption of the ego, which was in fact the resistance to Truth; and when there was complete adhesion to Truth, suffering must cease.

What was true of individuals would apply to collectivities as well - a State, or a Country! Instead of nations being ruled by individual functionaries with their inflated egos, there would emerge a divine authority; and this very possibility was creating "all the unnameable chaos in which men live now - because of the resistance". In short, whatever still had the illusion of separate existence must dissolve and become part of the "Great Universal Rhythm".⁴ Six weeks later, on 14 March, the Mother recalled the time of Sri Aurobindo's accident in 1938 when he broke his thigh, as also his illness in 1950, and added how her body then seemed to feel its inevitable identity with the earth; in other words, the inevitability of decay and decomposition. But now, after twenty years, her experience was different: her body was able to feel the Divine Presence. There was also the sustained pressure of the new Consciousness in ruthlessly clearing away the cobwebs of old mental formations and in turning the heavy and the obscure and the ugly into lightness and luminosity and beauty:

This is the conquest that is being done, this tremendous change: that physical life must be governed by the higher consciousness and not by the mental world. It is a change over of authority.... It is difficult. It is hard. It is painful. Naturally there is breakage, but... that is the real change, it is that which will enable the new Consciousness to express itself. And the body is learning, learning its lesson - all bodies, all bodies.

Of course the battle was being fought still, but the Mother could see how, since his departure, Sri Aurobindo had been helping her in the subtle physical to change the physical structure. Many details had still to be

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worked out, but the main breakthrough had come about at last: it was established that the physical was capable of receiving the higher Light, the Truth, the true Consciousness and manifesting it.⁵ Three months after, on 27 June, the Mother revealed that for several days past there had been moments when her body would scream in pain and then, "just a little change, which is almost inexpressible" and it became bliss: "like a kind of gymnastic, a struggle of the consciousness" between the two extremes The suffering and the bliss seemed to alternate, the former sustained by "the mass of the general human consciousness", and the latter by the Peace superlative and immutable; and sometimes the two states - suffering and bliss - were almost simultaneous.⁶

III

On 1 July, the Mother had an experience which was "almost a material vision", she saw it with her eyes open: the psychic being of a sadhika who had come to her loomed about twenty centimetres taller than her physical being and was unsexed as well. It made the Mother understand that it was the psychic being which would materialise itself one day and become the supramental being:

The psychic being materialises itself... and that gives continuity to evolution... there is nothing arbitrary, there is a kind of divine logic behind....⁷

If the mind and the vital could be sent out of the body, the psychic alone would survive; and if the psychic could materialise itself, it would mean the abolition of 'death' - of "whatever is not capable of transforming itself in the image of the psychic and becoming an integral part of the psychic".

Talking about the superman consciousness on 5 August, the Mother observed that it had been with them for over one and a half years. Its nature was not to stand pretence or self-deception, but it was "an excellent mentor for the body", teaching and disciplining it all the time. The disciple intervened to say that of late the Mother, instead of acting upon others directly, was letting a Force do it. The Mother admitted that, as a matter of fact, she was leaving much of her activity to this new Consciousness, but even so she had the concrete feeling that she was moving within the disciples - she was as it were acting from within, reinforcing the work of the Force. She had also the feeling that her body had shed what was 'personal' and was now seraphically possessed of a vast impersonality:

At times I no longer have the feeling of the limits of my body... it is almost as though it had become fluid. And there should no longer be any personal action. But precisely, inside... it is a force, a consciousness which is spread over everything. I do not feel any limit, I feel it is a thing spread out, even physically....

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For quite some time now, at least since the New Year (1970) began, she had been working on the disciples, not as a person, but as the new Consciousness:

The process is no longer the old one... but as it is, it has not become a habit, a spontaneous habit... And that makes life a little difficult... particularly when I am seeing people. I see a huge number of people (forty, fifty people everyday) and each one brings something which necessitates that this Consciousness that works out all this has to adapt itself to the things coming from outside.... And I see, many people fall ill (or think they are ill or seem to get ill or are really so), but it becomes concrete in the body through their way of being, which is the old way.... One must maintain, through a sort of conscious concentration, a condition, a way of being which is not natural according to the old nature, but which is evidently the new way of being....

It is difficult.

You understand, all the impossibilities, all the "that cannot be, that cannot be done", all that has been swept away; but it is swept away in principle, and it is busy trying to become a fact, a concrete fact.

This is quite recent, that is, after the beginning of this year. And then, there is all the old habit - one might say, ninety years of habit. But the body knows, it knows that it is only a habit.⁸

IV

While the Mother was thus fighting the bitter-sweet battle of change and transformation, she was also keeping in close touch with the Ashram departments, as well as the developments in Auroville. The Centre of Education with its over 600 pupils and 150 teachers was quite the heart of the Ashram, and the Mother was always ready to find time to discuss its problems. Her answers to a monitress on the problems of management of the children and of their holidays appeared in the February 1970 issue of the Bulletin,, and precisely helpful in the given situations, the answers had a general application also. As regards the purpose of education at the Centre, the Mother thought that the main thrust should be on transformation:

What we want to teach is... a new idea of life and a realisation of consciousness. This realisation is new to all, and the only true way to teach others is to live according to this new consciousness oneself and to allow oneself to be transformed by it. There is no better lesson than that of an example... someone who sincerely aspires to act in accordance with the Supreme Truth creates a kind of contagion for the people around him....

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And, of course, each one was unique, and had his own way of changing. It would therefore be unwise to attempt regimentation in a matter so personal as the individual's dynamic of self-transformation.⁹

Because of the publicity Auroville had received, and the claims made on its behalf by popular speakers at different centres in India and abroad, a certain amount of speculation was rife about the exact aims and possibilities of the City of Dawn. Naturally enough, sadhaks and others wrote to the Mother for clarification, and she always went to the heart of the matter in replies whether long or short. There was the question, for example, relating to the place of religion - or religions - in Auroville. She had written earlier, as we saw, that, "if one has not gone beyond that" old habits like religion, family life, etc., would continue in Auroville also. In May 1970, when the question came up again, the Mother was more explicit:

We call "religion" any concept of the world or the universe which is presented as the exclusive Truth in which one must have an absolute faith, generally because this Truth is declared to be the result of a revelation. ...

Man's right is to pursue the Truth freely and to approach it freely in his own way. But each one ought to know that his discovery is good for him alone and it is not to be imposed upon others.¹⁰

What, then, was to be the place of religion in Auroville? "We want Truth," people say glibly; but "for most men", as the Mother remarked, "it is what they want, that they label truth." But the Aurovilians "must want the Truth whatever it may be".¹¹ She said in her birthday message on 21 February:

Truth is a difficult and strenuous conquest. One must be a real warrior to make this conquest, a warrior who fears nothing, neither enemies nor death, for with or against everybody, with or without a body, the struggle continues and will end by Victory.¹²

Auroville was for such warriors, such knight-errants of Truth; and it was "for those who want to live a life essentially divine but who renounce all religions whether they be ancient, modern, new or future". Taking dogmas second-hand and swearing by them; getting lost either in rituals that have lost their meaning, or in hair-splitting intellectual debates - these were self-defeating, and led one nowhere. "It is only in experience," the Mother said, "that there can be knowledge of the Truth." But, certainly, in Auroville, people would be free to make an objective study of religions, for that would be a help in the understanding of the growth and evolution of man:

Religions make up part of the history of mankind and it is in this guise that they will be studied at Auroville - not as beliefs to which one ought or

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ought not to adhere, but as part of a process in the development of human consciousness which should lead man towards his superior realisation.

There could even be a programme of research through experience of the Supreme Truth or of the Divine, not only through the traditional mystic means, but more particularly through life itself in the spirit of Karma Yoga.¹³The Divine was in no distant inaccessible sphere but here, here. Writing on 3 July, the Mother declared:

The Divine is not far. He is in ourselves, deep inside and above the feelings and the thoughts. With the Divine is peace and certitude and even the solution of all difficulties.

Hand over your problems to the Divine and He will pull you out of all difficulties.¹⁴

She affirmed again on 7 November 1970:

The Divine is present among us. When we remember Him always He gives us the strength to face all circumstances with perfect peace and equanimity. Become aware of the Presence and your difficulties will disappear.¹⁵

V

At Auroville, things were on the move; there were dreams, plans and promising starts. Models were finally selected for the proposed Matrimandir and Bharat Nivas, foundation stones were laid for Last School, Sanskrit School and Auropress, and the first issue of Auroville Gazette came out in December 1970. For the settlement Aspiration, the Mother sent the message: "A sincere will to know and to progress"; and she prescribed that Tamil, French, simplified Sanskrit and English were the languages to be learnt there. Not less important than the school was Auromodele, the prototype of Auroville:

The purpose of life in Auromodele is to learn to live in Auroville, to make all the experiments necessary....

We want to find a way for the community to live for the Divine.

Each individual has his own way but the group community should find a way to suit everyone.¹⁶

The Mother was fully aware that she was here setting an almost impossibly difficult standard of sincerity and courage and Truth for the Aurovilians. "What is needed to administer Auroville," she wrote on 15 July 1970, "is a consciousness free from all conventions and conscious of the supramental Truth," and she still awaited "someone like that".¹⁷On another occasion, she asked an Aurovilian:

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Is it to satisfy personal needs that you have come to Auroville?

That was really not necessary. The ordinary world is there for that.

One comes to Auroville to realise a divine life which wants to manifest on earth.¹⁸

Goodness, sincerity and discipline are indispensable qualities for those who want to be Aurovilians.¹⁹

She felt that there should be no compromise with the sublime Auroville ideal, and only the best would be able to race forward to the horizons of the Next Future. "Reject - the pull of old habits," she said; "Develop - sincerity, that is, an integral adhesion to the Divine's way."

As a corollary to the founding of the planetary city, Auroville, there was also the move for the establishment there of a Centre of Integral Culture suggestively named the Mandala. Entering upon an Age whose postulates were to be the unity of spirit and matter in the universe and in man, and the destined role of man to manifest and fulfil the Divine here on the earth, it was necessary to see the artist, the scientist and the technician creatively merging in a new image of the Integral Man. In all its thinking, feeling and action, then, the Aurovilian thrust was to be: "Onward to the Greater Dawn!"

VI

As 15 August 1972 - Sri Aurobindo's birth centenary - drew near, in the Ashram and outside there was the feeling that the occasion should be celebrated on a national and even global scale in an appropriate manner. The launching of "Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library" in thirty large volumes was an important memorial. Ardent aspiration and unflinching faith on the one hand, and the Mother's Grace and godspeed on the other, were the sole golden credit at the beginning. But from 1969 onwards this stupendous enterprise went into action, and the early volumes in the superb deluxe edition were adjudged First in Book Production at the Madras National Book Fair in December 1970.

It was also in 1970 that the movement "Sri Aurobindo's Action" was launched under the aegis of the Mother to give a helping hand in the resurgence of India. The aim of the movement was to promote "the practical application of Sri Aurobindo's words in the daily life of the people and the nation", not in the realm of spirituality alone, but also in economics, education, social life, culture, commerce and industry. And an initial target-date for the implementation, at least in part, of the programme of India's resurgence was 15 August 1972, Sri Aurobindo's birth centenary. The Mother as President of "Sri Aurobindo's Action" name Udar Pinto as its Secretary, and she also sent this message of godspeed on 29 July 1970:

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To speak well is good. To act well is better. Never let your actions be below your words.²⁰

The movement had its own monthly organ, Sri Aurobindo's Action, subtitled "The Journal of India's Resurgence", and was presently to spread out its activities in several directions.

The Mother's own role in the Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary celebrations was of a crucial - and also of an etheric nature. She alone knew the cosmic implications of the event. She both exhorted and encouraged, and set a marvellous example herself. Her counsel was made available at every stage to everybody. Her directions and instructions were unhurried but precise. When the Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library and other publication programmes were taken up, she watched their progress with interest. All activities whether big or small - whether it was approval of the plans for the construction of buildings in the Ashram or Auroville, the handing over of the Relics of Sri Aurobindo for enshrinement at some Centre, the delegation of a sadhak to a conference or seminar, or the sending of a message of benediction to a centenary programme - she always brought a divine understanding and a divine compassion into her work. No doubt thousands were engaged in the centenary celebrations, but equally it was her Grace that was to sustain and bring them safely through every trial and difficulty.

VII

Blessed are those who take a leap towards the Future.

This was the Mother's New Year message for 1971. It was followed on 2 January with a message to the Auroville Office, - "1971: A Sweet Year!" A subsequent message to the Department of Physical Education offered something of a comment and an explanation:

We are at one of these "Hours of God", when the old bases get shaken, and there is a great confusion; but it is a wonderful opportunity for those who want to leap forward, the possibility of progress is exceptional.²¹

Cumulatively this was a message of great cheer, and struck an altogether exhilarating note. And yet, as the Mother commented on 11 January, for the past almost six weeks she had undergone a physical trial "for the sake of the growth of consciousness". Her physical sight and hearing had been practically disrupted and one of her legs paralysed. Though there was "a great diminution of capacities", she testified on the l6th, actually

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it was not an innocent paralysis! for at least... three weeks, a constant pain, night and day, twenty-four hours out of twenty-four, without fluctuation, none: it was as though I was being torn asunder....

.. .Even at the time when, externally, I was suffering... it did not occupy me.... All the while there was the feeling of this... this Truth which has to be understood and manifested. .....

There was a whole period when I was absolutely inaccessible because I was suffering continuously - one is worthless then.... One might say that it was but a cry all the while.... It lasted... several weeks.... And it is only for the last two or three days that it looks as if it is being put back in order....

...There is something in the physical world as it is which is not... not yet open to the divine Vibration. And it is this something which does all, all, all the evil.... The Divine Consciousness is not felt....

...it was not merely the difficulty of one body or one person: I believe something has been done to prepare Matter to receive as it must....²²

It was thus at the very bottom of the Pit of Misery that the Mother struck the spring of sweetness abounding, and gave it magnanimously to the children of the earth. She had said during a Playground conversation in January 1955, as already related in an earlier chapter, that the Mother's Power as Ananda had come down nearly ten years earlier into the earth-atmosphere, but had been unrecognised and unwelcomed because of the density of the human consciousness. No doubt the Ashram and the earth itself had been surcharged with something akin to divine joy for a fortnight or more, but there was no receptivity on earth's part. The Power hadn't withdrawn itself, but had remained in the background because of the unpropitious climate prevailing at the time.

But latterly, the Mother's Power of Ananda had been asserting itself here and there and had been recognised too. Thus, for example, the Annual Sri Aurobindo Conference at Sedona (Arizona, USA) in 1970 was reported to have been a blissful experience for the participants::

The mood is becoming more and more concentrated, more open, more loving, a Force is beginning to make itself felt.... A tremendous Love Force is pouring down into the room.

...here and there all over the planet, quietly, carefully, with an infinite wisdom, the Force is coming down. The "sun-eyed children of a marvellous Dawn" are awakening from their two billion year sleep of parturition. ²³

But the year 1971 was to be a Sweet Year, the year of "ananda", the year when the Mother Divine as Ananda - Anandamayi - would make herself manifest. As Nolini Kanta Gupta wrote:

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It must be this goddess that has made herself more material now, she has infused herself into the very substance of matter, therefore the earth tastes sweet today - for those who have a taste.²⁴

As for the promiscuously misused word 'love', the Mother had written on 6 September 1969:

There is only one love, the Divine Love, eternal, universal, equal for everyone and everything.

It is man (the human being) who calls all kinds of feelings "love": all the desires, attractions, vital exchanges, sexual relations, attachments, even friendships, and many other things besides.

But all that is not even the shadow of love nor even its deformation.

These are all mental and vital, sentimental or sexual activities, and nothing more.²⁵

By 'love' the Mother meant, not this, not these distortions and debasements and irrelevances, but the Sacred Flame, the secret Fount, the divine harmony at the heart of existence.

VIII

In the Sweet Year of 1971, the year of man's hoped for "leap towards the Future", and as if divinely insuring that Future, the foundation stone of Matrimandir was laid at Auroville by Nolini Kanta Gupta. It was the Mother's ninety-third birthday, and her message for the day was: "A life consecrated to union with the Divine is the only life worth living." In 1970, the Mother had said that "Auroville aspires for union",²⁶ and in August she had made another significant statement about Auroville:

The Matrimandir wants to be the symbol of the Divine's answer to man's aspiration for perfection.

Union with the Divine manifesting in a progressive human unity.

Yet another had come in November 1970:

The Matrimandir will be the soul of Auroville.

The sooner the soul is there, the better it will be for everybody and especially for the Aurovilians.²⁷

Auroville was to be a prominent part of the world's future - the living and transformed Next Future - and Matrimandir was to be the soul of Auroville. In the place of the agelong tragic divorce between body and soul, earth and heaven, there must now occur a meeting, a union and a transfiguration fulfilling the prophecy in Savitri:

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A divine harmony shall be earth's law,

Beauty and joy remould her way to live:

Even the body shall remember God, ...

The supermind shall claim the world for Light

And thrill with love of God the enamoured heart

And place Light's crown on Nature's lifted head

And found Light's reign on her unshaking base.²⁸

The Matrimandir foundation ceremony was a poem of consecration and all present were touched at the deeper levels of the spirit. "It was the hour before the Gods awake." As the Mother's children proceeded towards the chosen spot, it was still dark except for the light burning on the top of Ganesa's temple at the entrance of Auroville, and for the stars 'shining bright as diamonds'. As one of the eye-witnesses, Anu, recalls the event:

There were twelve red pillars which formed a circle.... The pillar in front of us was less than half a foot. But then gradually... [they] rose in height till the last two were about ten feet high. In the circle lay dry wood and hay.... Bob put his torch to the dry wood and at once the flames shot up... creation too must have started in the same way - thousands of sparks coming out of the original fire. Along with the flames rose music composed by Sunil Bhattacharyajee. I could hear new footsteps in this music, thousands of feet marching joyously towards a new adventure. We heard the Mother's voice: "Let the Matrimandir be the living Symbol of Auroville's aspiration for the Divine."

...as I looked at the flames I felt as if Rishis from the invisible world had stood around this new sacrificial fire and chanted mantras.

Over us the moon had become pale and in the east were waves of light. As the flames died down the music too ended. The chief architect Mr. Anger came to Nolini and escorted him to the site. As I turned I saw that a similar fire was burning near the banyan tree and the lotus-shaped jar [Kumbha] where the foundation of Auroville was laid. Mr. Anger brought us to the site which was a deeply-dug-up square. Nolini, Navajata, Mr. Anger and Auroville's first citizen Aurofilio, a child of about 5, went down the square. We saw another deeper square inside this square. This was the place for laying the foundation-stone....

...According to the Mother's instructions at six-thirty Nolini and Aurofilio laid the foundation-stone in its place. The stone was black and Sri Aurobindo's symbol was engraved on it....

The presence of the three fires can be explained, according to Nolini, in two ways: in the Vedic times they represented Heaven, Self and Earth; in our times they may be taken to represent the mind, the vital being and the body.²⁹

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IX

Thus was the divine seed cast on Auroville's sacred soil on the Mother's birthday. As conveyed to Mr. Anger, Matrimandir was ultimately to dominate the prospect as a golden globe suspended in space, the light filtering from top to bottom, - an architectural lyric, a materialised meditation, a brazier of Aspiration from below being met by the downpour of Grace from Above. When Matrimandir took final shape, it was expected to suggest symbolistically the emergence of "the golden sphere of consciousness out of the earth crater", the whole epic climb of life in its dynamic versatility being reflected in the dance of the movement on the golden discs exposed to the sun's rays. But Matrimandir was to be no architectural marvel merely, something to gaze at and admire and indite poems about; it was to be verily a theatre of inner psychological exploration, self-discovery and self-realisation. Following one of the four pathways, the pilgrim would pass above the crater and make for the sun-world, reach the central dodecagon, and go beyond it to a large meditation chamber illumined by a descending ray of sunlight. This would be the transforming chamber, the spiritual cyclotron; the Mind of Night hot-linked with the Mind of Light: one complete spectrum from the inconscient to the superconscient: the way up also being the way down, the whole mysterium tremendum of the cosmic dance-drama. The pilgrim, when he had charged and changed himself enough, enough for the time being, could now go out to the Garden of Unity, the Banyan Tree and the mythic Lotus or Lotus-shaped 'solid mandala'.

Matrimandir, - Auroville's Power-house of the Spirit, - was planned to be taken up in twelve stages spread over three or more years, and when completed, it would be a symbol-dream in architecture, a marvel of beauty and harmony, the ensouled image of a mighty aspiration and its theatre of progressive realisation. The whole complex of Matrimandir and its environs - even when one merely looked at the plans and at the model - might seem a three-dimensional translation of the nectarean insights of Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga and above all Savitri:

O Sun-Word, thou shall raise the earth-soul to Light

And bring down God into the lives of men;

Earth shall be my work-chamber and my house,

My garden of life to plant a seed divine.

Was it Savitri on whom the divine command was laid, - or was the "blissful cry" addressed rather to the Savitri in the Mother?

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When all thy work in human time is done

The mind of earth shall be a home of light,

The life of earth a tree growing towards heaven,

The body of earth a tabernacle of God.³⁰

After the laying of the foundation stone of Matrimandir, for many months the work was hard and obscure. Aurovilians, Ashramites, local villagers started digging, digging, digging with crow-bars, picks and shovels... it was like wrestling with the infinitudes of the Inconscient, such packed density, such fierce resistance, such a desert of defiance. But there was the certainty of waters gushing forth one day, and life sprouting, and gardens growing....

X

And the Mother was digging, digging, digging too, and her lone struggles had cosmic reverberations. She had suffered intensely for several weeks, but by mid-January 1971 the pain was "quite bearable" and her body had "resumed a little of its normal life", and on 11 January, she had made some comments which were later jotted down from memory by a disciple. While her physical sight and hearing had been thrown into the background, this had only made room "for identification by consciousness". Every seeming loss was actually proving to be a new gain: "What I need to hear, I hear, even if it is the slightest sound... it is something tough that is in the process of changing!... I have changed very much, even as regards character, as regards understanding, as regards the vision of things.... There has been wholly a regrouping."³¹

On 3 March, Satprem told the Mother that her look had changed much, and that for more than a year, "and more and more", it was rather like that of Sri Aurobindo, - a change from "a diamond look" to that of "the infinite". After all, theirs was the same consciousness! But it was, she said, her "way of seeing" that had changed. When she met people it was the condition in which they were, particularly their receptivity, that interested her, not what they thought or said. And among those rare ones who came to her with a thirst for light, the majority were children. "Men are... crusted over," she remarked, they care only for comforts, "there is no soul, no aspiration, nothing", "I am the only one to be young!"³²

On 1 May, she told the disciple that since the morning her consciousness had been registering the "strikes, quarrels, disorders" in the world-atmosphere:

All the people who want to re-establish order pull backward into all the old ideas - that is why they never succeed. That is finished, finished for good. We go upward. Only they who rise can act..

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The only direction was towards the Divine, and this direction was upward, downward, inward, outward - it was everywhere! On 22 May, referring to the great opportunity to make extraordinary progress she remarked that she herself was content to make herself physically very small, and leave the rest to the Supreme Lord. She wished her atmosphere to be but an "altogether limpid transmitter": even the wish to know what the manifesting Will was, would be to belong to ordinary humanity! She had a positive feeling of the imminence of victory for the very reason things were so bad. Pessimism was the demon's weapon, and one mustn't succumb to it.

It was in the early months of 1971 that the Mother told Udar that she was sensing and sighting a huge black cloud approaching India. As events were to prove, this was the exodus of millions from East Pakistan following Yahya Khan's fierce military action in March. Towards the end of the year came the Indo-Pakistan war followed by the emergence of free Bangladesh. But even before these developments, the Mother had had certain forebodings and in June, when she was asked for a message for the whole of India, had given a mantra for the developing crisis:

Supreme Lord, Eternal Truth

Let us obey Thee alone

and live according to

Truth;³³

Two other messages of the year were to underline the importance of this mantra. Thus on 14 August:

When men will be disgusted with the falsehood in which they live, then the world will be ready for the reign of the Truth.³⁴

And this on 25 December:

The time has come for the rule of falsehood to end.

In the Truth alone is salvation.³⁵

Long before the Bangladesh crisis, the Mother had seen all around "a terrible onrush of Falsehood". By 9 June it was as though everyone everywhere was lying, "even the most unexpected people". It was an excruciating experience for her:

A little twist to the right, a little to the left, a little twist... nothing, nothing, nothing is straight.

What was one to do with such "mad fury of disagreeable things"? Not merely disagreeable, but "truly, truly wicked and bad and destructive". But her body had asked itself "Where is your falsehood?" and looked within and found the old attitude wherein one does not expect to be all the time with the Divine but behaves as if a separate being and this seemed to be the cause of the adverse attack:

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It reached such a point that I was not able to swallow when I was eating - until everything, everything got the understanding: I exist only through the Divine and I cannot subsist but through the Divine... and I cannot be myself but by being the Divine. After that, things were better.

And the body has understood... that this sense of being a separate individuality is altogether useless... it is not at all indispensable for its existence.... It exists through another power... the divine Will......

All the rest is falsehood - falsehood, falsehood, and falsehood that must disappear. There is only one reality, there is only one life, there is only one consciousness (Mother brings down her fist): the Divine.³⁶

Speaking again on 17 July, the Mother said wryly that, if the Supreme Consciousness acted egoistically like men for a single minute, well, the world would be dissolved! How ridiculous the world was when seen with the gift of divine vision! Oh the fatuity of men! and their frightful self-deceptions! "There is only one safety: to cling to the Divine."

A few days later, the Mother confirmed that she was beginning to know uncannily what was going to happen: the older sense of distinction between herself and people, their words, the attendant circumstances - all gone! There was the unitary ambience of knowledge which facilitated instantaneous and spontaneous understanding of everything. It was egoistic separativity that caused the artificial barriers, distortions and complications. With her, a change had come about: there was an all-seeing force, or Consciousness-Force behind her - almost like "a smile - a smile... a smile that knows everything".³⁷

Five weeks later, on 28 August, Mother described the same thing in a different way. The best thing for her body would be "to nestle in the Divine. Not to try to understand, not to try to know - but to try to be... and to nestle." This was beyond the processes of thinking and conceptualising and analysing and sorting things out. They led one nowhere. Smile! Nestle in the Divine. This was beyond knowing and doing; this was being!

At the same time, 'life' as it seemed to be to the ordinary consciousness was frightful and wonderful: "A wonder of Light, of Consciousness, of Power - wonderful!" It was a Sweet Year, after all; but one had to persevere, and one needed faith, and the right perception:

Only Thou - that is all.

...the creation has that as its goal, that wonderful delight... of feeling itself to be Thee.

On 1 September, the Mother said that her body was being trained to live always only through the Divine and on the Divine; and she could see that from that to a relapse into the ordinary (or human) consciousness was verily a canter towards death. The real problem was to create a physical mould strong and plastic enough: "To be able to bear and transmit... presenting no obstruction to the Power that wants to manifest itself. "

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The disciple told the Mother that, lately, exposure to her presence actually seemed to make his body - all the parts of the body - pray. It was for the disciple an extraordinary, an indescribable, experience.

That the Mother, for all her absorption in the sadhana of the body and her endeavours to ensure the progressive manifestation of the New Consciousness in the earth-atmosphere, had always an uncanny practical sense could be illustrated by the way she had dealt with the crisis in the Mother's School at New Delhi in April 1971. A teachers' strike had Suddenly paralysed the School, and ugly misrepresentation was in the air Surendra Nath Jauhar rushed to Pondicherry to consult the Mother, and there was an interview in the forenoon of 20 April. The Mother was in full possession of the facts, and suggested that first the School should be closed down; there would then be pressure from the Government and the public to reopen the School; and when thus the conditions were propitious the School could be opened again with good will on all sides. "Surendra Nath," she said, "I advise you to close down the School. Nothing useful can be done if it is not established on the basis of a collective good will in all sincerity." And this was how the crisis ultimately resolved itself and the Mother's School has since continued on its dedicated career of building up the coming generation.

XI

On Vijayadasami (29 September), the Mother conveyed the message of "a strong Pressure":

Victory, it is Harmony; Victory it is the Divine; and for the body. Victory is good health. Each and every ailment, each and every illness is a falsehoodod

But since there was physical suffering, how was it to be mastered? "I might say," she said on 16 October, "the cells of the body must learn to seek their support only in the Divine, until the moment when they are able to feel that they are the expression of the Divine."

The Mother was about this time in quest of a consciousness that was at one and the same time individual and total: now it was either this or that - and therefore she was after the principle or power that united them. For her, that was the next step. The key to the plasticity of Matter too had to be found. But how long would it take? She did not know. While with the ordinary human consciousness, the ego was the point of reference to the rest, like the spider and its web, with the annihilation of the ego, the ego-point didn't exist anymore, and things existed by themselves without suffering any distortion. Thus the Mother's consciousness was now in things; it did not draw things to itself.³⁸

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On 18 December, the Mother recalled Sri Aurobindo's saying that it was the physical mind that must receive ,the Supramental and manifest it, and added it was just this physical or body-mind, that now remained in her, since it was being converted or developed under the supramental Influence so that the Supramental could manifest itself permanently upon earth. She also felt that she had become "another person", for only the outer form remained what it was. As for her seeing and hearing, it was not a physical decline, for she understood and heard people clearly "only when they think clearly what they say. And I see only that which is... which expresses the inner life", but otherwise it was hazy or veiled. As for the body, would it change too - and to what extent? Would the transformation of the body follow "quite naturally" the transformation of the physical mind? Returning to the theme on 22 December, the Mother explained:

[The Supramental] must enter and settle itself in the physical mind. It is the work which is being done in me for months now: the mind has been withdrawn and the physical mind has taken its place... I have noticed that this physical mind, the mind that is in the body, became wide, it had a global view of things and its entire way of seeing was absolutely different.... I am passing through extraordinary hours.

She had the feeling every moment as though she was confronted with the alternative: Do you want life? Do you want death? And a day or two earlier her body had suddenly declared: "I want life, I want nothing else." So then the sadhana that was being done was to try to induce the certitude of transformation into the subconscient. And it was a constant struggle!

In the last week of December, the Mother explained how, whether one dwelt upon the inconveniences of one's own body or upon the likes and dislikes of others, either way it was misery; it was only if one lived in the Divine Presence and let the Divine do everything, only then it was peace, and time had no more duration.³⁹ Of the four categories of human beings — those who lived for themselves, those who were capable of loving others besides themselves, those who served humanity, and those who gave themselves wholly to the Divine - the Mother commended the last, for they alone could find "the certitude of total fulfilment and a constantly luminous peace".⁴⁰

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