On The Mother

CHAPTER 35

Mysterious Sacrifice

I

During 1949, Sri Aurobindo had busied himself, along with other activities, with the revision of his book. The Ideal of Human Unity, and dictated a postscript chapter bringing the discussion to the post-1945 era of Big Power rivalry and the cold war. This addition appeared as "The Ideal of Human Unity" in The Advent of February 1950. The War had no doubt ended in total victory for the Allies, but the new 'cold war' attitudes persisted and cast ominous shadows ahead:

The actual danger presents itself rather as a clash between two opposing ideologies, one led by Russia and Red China and trying to impose the Communistic extreme... and on the other side a combination of peoples, partly capitalist, partly moderate socialist who still cling with some attachment to the idea of liberty.... In Asia a more perilous situation has arisen, standing sharply across the way to any possibility of a continental unity of the peoples of this part of the world, in the emergence of Communist China. This creates a gigantic bloc which could easily englobe the whole of Northern Asia in a combination between two enormous Communist Powers, Russia and China, and would overshadow with a threat of absorption South-Western Asia and Tibet and might be pushed to overrun all up to the whole frontier of India, menacing her security and that of Western Asia with the possibility of an invasion and an overrunning and subjection by penetration or even by overwhelming military force to an unwanted ideology, political and social institutions and dominance of this militant mass of Communism whose push might easily prove irresistible.¹

Almost all the developing trends of the last thirty years are forecast in this seminal passage: the West-East confrontation, the cold war with its global ramifications, the rise of Red China and the massive peril to the rest of Asia, the danger to India in particular via Tibet and the whole Himalayan frontier, the danger to the democratic way of life and the basic human freedoms. At a time when India was officially applauding Red China and fraternising with her it is astonishing that Sri Aurobindo - although living in seclusion and denied all access to the sources of relevant information except the newspaper and radio reports - should have nevertheless so accurately inferred the probable configuration of things to come.

Again, when Sri Aurobindo was asked to send a message on the occasion of his birth anniversary celebrations in New York on 15 August 1949, he pleaded for a transcendence of the East-West differentiation:

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There is a common hope, a common destiny, both spiritual and material, for which both [East and West] are needed as co-workers. It is no longer towards division and difference that we should turn our minds, but on unity, union, even oneness necessary for the pursuit and realisation of a common ideal, the destined goal, the fulfilment towards which Nature in her beginning obscurely set out and must in an increasing light of knowledge replacing her first ignorance constantly persevere.²

There is no doubt an increasing divergence between the tendencies of the East and the West, the former laying more emphasis on the truth of the Spirit, the latter on the world of phenomena. This divergence should be healed, and both the East and the West march together towards the new horizons of a spiritual evolution of human and earth nature so that a "divine life" on the earth may emerge ultimately out of the present. The Mother, in a succinct message, exhorted men and women all over the world to stop thinking that some were of the West and some of the East; all were essentially children of the Divine, and were meant to manifest the unity of this origin upon the earth.³

Again, when on 25 June 1950, communist North Korea crossed the 38th parallel and invaded South Korea, K.D. Sethna the editor of Mother India (then coming out as a fortnightly from Bombay), asked for Sri Aurobindo's guidelines for his editorial comment on the subject. Sri Aurobindo replied on 28 June in categorical terms:

There is nothing to hesitate about there, the whole affair is as plain as a pike-staff. It is the first move in the Communist plan of campaign to dominate and take possession first of these Northern parts and then of South East Asia as a preliminary to their manoeuvres with regard to the rest of the continent - in passing, Tibet as a gate opening to India. If they succeed, there is no reason why domination of the whole world should not follow by steps....⁴

Sri Aurobindo expected President Truman to intervene effectively and save the situation, and indeed that is what he did, and North Korean forces were driven to vacate the aggression. When, years later, President Kennedy was shown by Sudhir Ghose a typed copy of Sri Aurobindo's letter of 28 June 1950 (widely publicised in India in August 1950), the President is reported to have remarked:

Surely, there is a typing mistake here. The date must have been 1960, not 1950! You mean to say that a man devoted to meditation and contemplation, sitting in one comer of India, said this about the intentions of China as early as 1950?

Sudhir Ghose had to tell Kennedy that the date was correct, and it was merely an instance of infallible yogic vision. Just as Sri Aurobindo had

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given a firm advice in 1942 that India should accept Cripps' offer, so again, in 1950, he was merely telling the truth about the future as he saw it in its unfolding possibilities.

II

Don't speak. Act.

Don't announce. Realise.

This was the Mother's exhortation in her New Year message for 1950, and the stress was thus on quiet action, on firm realisation. She had to be available for darshan, meditation, pranam, consultation and interviews; she had to be in the Playground in the evenings; she had to keep the complicated wheels of the Ashram machinery moving without the slightest hitch. Early in 1950, the Mother once told Sri Aurobindo with a touch of exasperation that there was only one place left where she could spend time alone: and "that was the bathroom".⁵ From 15 March, the Mother did not stand while seeing people, as she used to before, but sat in a chair. The demands on her attention were so many that she needed to have eyes on her back as she informed Champaklal on 11 May. On 7 June, after seeing several people at different times in the early morning, she told him:

You cannot imagine even, how sick I become, it is suffocating. People are so much deep in tamas, unconscious; they do not know.

Even so, a fortnight later, she had to stand for over two hours for Pranam by people who came upstairs, and when she returned to Sri Aurobindo she said just one word, but with full expression: KILLING,⁶ and he felt deeply concerned. If such were the Mother's trials of endurance and exasperation in the course of her manifold ministry, the predicament for Sri Aurobindo was grimmer still, and this too necessarily affected the Mother.

In April 1950, for the first time in about thirty years, the Mother permitted fresh photos of Sri Aurobindo to be taken. The French artist, Henri Cartier-Bresson, not only photographed Sri Aurobindo and the Mother at Darshan time on 24 April, but took also numerous other photographs of the Master, the Mother and the Ashram. Was there, after all, a purpose in Sri Aurobindo and the Mother relaxing the earlier rule prohibiting new photographs of themselves?

While outwardly the life of the Ashram was apparently going on as usual, if anything only with an accession of enthusiasm and dedication and a widening spread of interests, behind the scenes there was being enacted from mid-1950 onwards a mysterious struggle on the issue of victory or defeat - at least of a postponement of victory - for the cause represented by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. People who met Sri Aurobindo daily and were in constant attendance like Champaklal and Nirodbaran could

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see that he was becoming more and more withdrawn, as if pondering issues of cosmic amplitude and importance. The daily talks with Sri Aurobindo covering all the triple worlds were a thing of the past. There was now an impressive reign of taciturnity, excepting when he was dictating verse or prose. The sounding cataracts of humour, wit, repartee - where had they gone? "However much we tried to draw him out from his impregnable sanctum of silence," says Nirod, "we were answered by a monosyllabic 'Yes' or 'No' or at most a faint smile."⁷

True enough, Sri Aurobindo had developed an ailment of late - prostatic enlargement - with its inevitable consequences. But once its presence had been detected, it was soon brought under reasonable control, though more through yogic force and will power than through any sustained medical treatment. At the same time, although conversation was reduced to the absolute minimum, when it came to Savitri, Sri Aurobindo still deployed for brief spells the whole vigour and splendour of his inspiration. Nor had correspondence ceased altogether. Besides, as we saw, the Korean crisis brought out his sharp reaction and powers of divination. Nevertheless, during the last months of 1950, an awesome reticence was the law of his life, for, as he told Dr. Satyendra once, it was a serious time.⁸

It was on 9 July 1950 that K.M. Munshi, once Sri Aurobindo's pupil at Baroda and now a Cabinet Minister at the Centre, had private darshan of the Master. After the passage of forty years, a very different Sri Aurobindo confronted his former pupil and sprayed on him his immaculate peace:

I saw before me a being completely transformed, radiant, blissful, enveloped in an atmosphere of godlike calm. He spoke in a low, clear voice which stirred the depths of my being.⁹

But a month later, at the time of the 15 August Darshan, one of the sadhaks, more open than many,

saw Sri Aurobindo drawing into himself dark fumes that were rising from the subconscious parts of the people as they were coming to him for "darshan" in a procession. He was gathering up the lower elements of earth-nature within this area of representative humanity and then drawing them into himself.¹⁰

What was the meaning of that vision? Was the battle raging even when the Darshan was in progress? Was Sri Aurobindo enacting the drama of his sonnet:

I made an assignation with the Night;

In the abyss was fixed our rendezvous:

In my breast carrying God's deathless light

I came her dark and dangerous heart to woo. ...

And yet I know my footprints' track shall be

A pathway towards Immortality.¹¹

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III

After the Darshan on 15 August, as the days crawled on, there was a gradual worsening of the condition of Sri Aurobindo's health, and he too - and the Mother as well - seemed to accept this development with an inexplicable resignation. The only silver lining was Sri Aurobindo's continued interest in Savitri, especially the two cantos of Book VI, "The Book of Fate", and in the revision of The Future Poetry then in the press. One day in October, Sri Aurobindo seemed to take up Savitri in rather real earnest with the intention of finishing it "soon". While he dictated the fines, Nirod took them down:

We took up the same two Cantos that had proved so intractable. The work progressed slowly; words, ideas, images seemed to be repeated; the verses themselves appeared to flow with reluctance.¹²

The two cantos were finished at last, and Sri Aurobindo spoke with a calm sense of satisfaction, "Ah, it is finished?" He asked next, "What is left now?" On being told that two other books ("The Book of Death" and "Epilogue") remained unrevised, Sri Aurobindo said with a casual air almost, "Oh, that? We shall see about it later on." But there was to be no "later on", for by 10 November 1950, Sri Aurobindo had more or less folded up his literary work.

Barely a week passed, and from 17 November there was a further worsening of Sri Aurobindo's condition. Medical experts were called in, but the disease couldn't be brought under control. Darshan day (24 November) came, but the Event had to be hurried through. Nevertheless, for the thousands of devotees who filed past, "The Mother and Sri Aurobindo were love and compassion incarnate; light, joy, peace, sweetness and strength emanated .from them as from the sun and moon."¹³

The days following were a period of suppressed anxiety to the people around Sri Aurobindo. The wide circle of sadhaks, school-children and visitors could also scent that something was amiss, but the general rhythm of Ashram life seemed to go on undisturbed. On the other hand, Dr. Sanyal was summoned from Calcutta, and when he arrived on 30 November, he found Sri Aurobindo "seemingly unconcerned, with eyes closed, like a statue of massive peace". Whatever the physical suffering, Sri Aurobindo was "above it". But, then, the Mother could see with the clarity of her occult vision something quite different at about this time. "Each time I enter his room", she confided, "I see him pulling down the Supramental Light."¹⁴/font

The School anniversary celebrations on the first and second December kept the Mother busy, but deep within her, there was infinite concern. On 3 December, she did not attend the Playground and a pall descended on the Ashram. In the evening, in Sri Aurobindo's room she declared, "He is

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losing interest in himself.... It all depends on him."* But the next day, as Nirodbaran notes, "he emerged from the depth", and got up and sat in his chair. Then he was asked entreatingly by Champaklal whether he was not using his spiritual force to cure himself, he said "No!" When the question was repeated he gave the same answer. "Why not?" they persisted, "How is the disease going to be cured otherwise?" But his reply was brief: "Can't explain; you won't understand." The minutes wore on, and at midnight when the Mother came to Sri Aurobindo's room, "the two looked at each other in a steady gaze.... Sri Aurobindo's look seemed to bear a touch of unusual softness." The Mother retired for a while, came back at 1 a.m., and retired again saying, "Call me when the time comes." It was already 5 December.

Sri Aurobindo was now in an apparent trance of deep peace. Then, suddenly from that indrawn state, "about ten minutes before the grand end" he asked Nirod for a drink and sipped a little. The end came at 1.26 a.m., "in the presence of the Mother who stood near his feet with an intense penetrating gaze, an incarnation of divine strength, poise and calm".¹⁵ When she was asked many years later, on 20 December 1972, about that fateful hour of Sri Aurobindo's passing, she answered thus:

He had gathered in his body a great amount of supramental force and as soon as he left.. .all this supramental force which was in him passed from his body into mine. And I felt the friction of the passage.... It was an extraordinary experience. For a long time, a long time like that (Mother indicates the passing of the Force into her body). I was standing beside his bed, that continued.

Almost a sensation - it was a material sensation.¹⁶

IV

The Mother could feel this transference with the clarity of a material experience, and when it was over, she withdrew from the room.

Those now left behind sat near Sri Aurobindo's body sunk in silent grief, till Sanyal reminded Nirod and the rest that the body should be prepared for public view. It was soon covered in spotless white silk and placed on a cot, which was also covered in pure silk, in the room Sri Aurobindo had occupied for over twenty-five years. A picture of the Buddha copied from the Ajanta fresco adorned the eastern wall, and the

*In November 1953, the Mother told Nirod, "I did not believe till the last moment that Sri Aurobindo was going to leave his body." On the same day, she had told Sethna that Sri Aurobindo would soon read Sethna's drafts for his editorials in Mother India and had let him leave for Bombay that night, because Sri Aurobindo's "departure had not been decided yet". (Contacts: 57-58).

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whole room was strewn with flowers. Presently the Mother entrusted to Udar Pinto the arrangements relating to the body's final resting-place beside the protective "Service" tree in the Ashram compound. Udar remembers her instructions clearly: "I want to keep him in the centre of the Ashram. There are those three tanks in the courtyard. Keep the western tank as it is; the other two you can join into one. Go deep down, go down ten feet. Put Sri Aurobindo's casket at the bottom."¹⁷ Preparations accordingly started in the morning with the sadhaks themselves doing the whole work.

Before dawn, Sri Aurobindo's body had been laid in state, and first the sadhaks had their last Darshan of their beloved Master between five and six, and afterwards the local people and others who had come from outside filed past silently in an unending stream and paid their profound respects with tear-filled eyes to the almost mythical Person, the man-God who had made Pondicherry his home and Cave of Tapasya and Power-House of the New Consciousness.

The news of Sri Aurobindo's passing had been broadcast early in the morning by the All India Radio, and a stunned world tried its best to come to terms with the "greatest tragedy to humanity at this critical juncture in its history", as S. Duraiswami Aiyar described the event. How were the tens of thousands of Sri Aurobindo's disciples all over the world to understand his inexplicable withdrawal from his body - that marvellous body of the Golden Purusha? "I also saw," writes Nirod, "to my utter wonder and delight, that the entire body was suffused with a golden crimson hue, so fresh, so magnificent".¹⁸ Had Sri Aurobindo made a deliberate assignation with Death to be able to penetrate to its ultimate centre of Inconscience, so that the imprisoned splendour of Superconscient Light could be released once and for all? Sri Aurobindo had already made Rishi Narad say in Book VI, canto 2, of Savitri:

He who has found his identity with God

Pays with the body's death his soul's vast light. ...

Hard is the world-redeemer's heavy task; ...

He must pass to the other shore of falsehood's sea,

He must enter the world's dark to bring there light.

The heart of evil must be bared to his eyes,

He must learn its cosmic dark Necessity,

Its right and its dire roots in Nature's soil. ...

He must enter the eternity of Night

And know God's darkness as he knows his Sun.

For this he must go down into the pit,

For this he must invade the dolorous Vasts.

Imperishable and wise and infinite,

He still must travel Hell the world to save.

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Into the eternal Light he shall emerge

On borders of the meeting of all worlds; ...

Then shall be ended here the Law of Pain.

Earth shall be made a home of Heaven's light, ...

This mortal life shall house Eternity's bliss,

The body's self taste immortality.

Then shall the world-redeemer's task be done.¹⁹

Was it an anticipation? Was it a resolved feat of adamantine predestination? Was this Winter's withdrawal of life to be followed in course of time by the promised efflorescence of a new burst of Spring or the decreed Supramental Life?

Although the Mother may have intended at first that Sri Aurobindo's body should be interred on the 5th evening, she found it "charged with such a concentration of supramental light" that the process of decomposition seemed to have been miraculously annulled, and it was therefore decided to keep the body lying in state as long as it retained its lustre and remained intact. The golden crimson hue that Nirod noticed raised his spirits and he felt an inexplicable joy. The Mother pointing to it remarked, "If this Supramental Light remains we shall keep the body in a glass case."²⁰ A glass case was actually ordered through Udar.

By evening on the 5th, over 60,000 had queued past the sublime Master their eyes dimmed and their visible grief merging in the spontaneous and solemn silence. Many felt that Sri Aurobindo was still alive, only sleeping with a deep aura of peace; many thought that the body had grown a new tejas that they had missed at the previous Darshan on 24 November; and many, carrying their flawed personalities and the humid inner climate of their souls, felt for the nonce cleansed and purified by the still radiant Presence of the Master.

V

For three more days - 6th, 7th, and 8th - Sri Aurobindo's body retained its challenging freshness and glow, and this without any attempt to interfere with the ordinary processes of Nature through artificial chemical means. Twice or thrice a day in her snowlike robe and with a scarf covering her head, the Mother visited Sri Aurobindo's room, sometimes accompanied by Nolini, Amrita, Pavitra and others, and silently communed with Sri Aurobindo. "Her face calm and grave, yet softened with a maternal sweetness, she looked", says Nirodbaran, "like Maheshwari of transcendent glory."²¹

The processionary homage went on hour after hour, day after day. Everybody could see the freshness and the glow on Sri Aurobindo's face,

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but when Dr. Sanyal asked the question where was the "Supramental Light" the Mother had spoken of, the Mother placed her hand on his head, and now he could see too: "There He was - with a luminous mantle of bluish golden hue around him." Rushing to Pondicherry from Bombay, K.D. Sethna found the recumbent body "spiritually imperial", and "the atmosphere of the room was vibrant with a sacred power to cleanse and illumine". An unending mass of humanity streamed past and had their last (or perhaps, their only) darshan of Sri Aurobindo on the 6th; and on the 7th, the Mother articulated this prayer out of the compulsion of her divine predicament, a prayer to the Lord that was also a benediction to the bereaved:

Lord, this morning Thou hast given me the assurance that Thou wouldst stay with us until Thy work is achieved, not only as a consciousness which guides and illumines but also as a dynamic Presence in action. In unmistakable terms Thou hast promised that all of Thyself would remain here and not leave the earth atmosphere until earth is transformed. Grant that we may be worthy of this marvellous Presence and that henceforth everything in us be concentrated on the one will to be more and more perfectly consecrated to the fulfilment of Thy sublime Work.²²

At 8 a.m. on the 7th, fifty-four hours after Sri Aurobindo left it, the body was still radiant and intact, and was so certified by the Chief Medical Officer of French India. People who had come from far away were permitted to have darshan on the 7th and 8th, and the vigil and the filing past continued in all the solemnity of sadness and adoration and love abounding.

What was the mystery of that sustained lustre and freshness, defying the known laws of science and the weight of human experience? Was it to be the prelude to a tremendous revival and resurrection? But on the 8th Sri Aurobindo firmly told the Mother at the occult level that he had left his body purposely, and would not take it back; he would, however, manifest again in "the first supramental body built in the supramental way".²³ But early in the afternoon of the 9th, after over one hundred hours of supramental sustenance, the body showed, "here and there"²⁴ , the first signs of discoloration, and the Mother decided to inter the body in the evening.

Designed by Udar, the casket was manufactured in the Ashram Harpagon Workshop by expert carpenters supervised by Panu Sarkar, Udar's able assistant. It had large brass rings to hold the ropes with which it would be lowered into the deep vault, and on the lid was fixed Sri Aurobindo's symbol cast in pure gold. The inside was lined with silver sheets and Swedish satin between which was kept a layer of felt. The casket was so heavy that it took ten people to lift it even when it was empty. It was now carried up to Sri Aurobindo's room. The Indian Consul-General in

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French India, Mr. Tandon, an ardent devotee who had kept himself at the Mother's beck and call throughout in order to help cross every bureaucratic hurdle, too was present. The Mother herself and Sri Aurobindo's personal attendants placed the body over a couple of large velvet cushions inside the casket and it was covered with a chadder specially embroidered in gold thread; and Champaklal, it is reported, covered Sri Aurobindo's face with a white cloth chosen by the Mother. Then Udar used a rubber seal between the lid and the box in order to make it airtight and he, Pavitra and Purani screwed the lid down.²⁵ Then Nolini, followed by the others in the room, offered pranam to the Mother, signifying their complete surrender to her, since she and Sri Aurobindo had a single divine consciousness, the Mother's presence really included all of Sri Aurobindo's as well. Several among the close attendants broke down and the Mother had to admonish and console them as only the Divine could.

At 5 p.m., the Mother having decided on who was to carry it for which part of the way, the casket was carried downstairs to the courtyard, and lowered to the bottom of the water-proof vault. Udar, who had climbed down into it, arranged it so the head was towards the east. A concrete slab was cast on the spot and with it the bottom tier was sealed. A second tier, as ordered by the Mother, was then made and similarly sealed after filling it with clean river-sand. Over it, first Champaklal, then Moni, Nolini and the others placed potfuls of earth. There was nothing credal or sectarian about the ceremony; not a whisper could be heard - there were no audible hymns or prayers - and there were no rites indicative of adhesion to any particular religion. The enveloping silence, however, partook of the mystical sublime, and the deathless scene the sun setting, the "Service" tree with wide-ranging interwoven multiple branches seeming to cover the courtyard with protective peace and benign compassion was ineluctably symbolic of the epic ending of a great life and glorious ministry, an end that was also a mighty new beginning:

His death is a beginning of greater life, ...²⁶

It was significant that Sri Aurobindo's body should have been interred at the centre of the Ashram complex, and beside the "Service" tree. Was it all part of "God's secret plan" that the Mother had asked Dyuman and Manubhai, the Ashram gardener, to bring a sapling of Peltaphorum pterocarpum (Copper Pod) from the French colonial garden to replace the mango tree that had died sometime back? Was it again part of that divine foresight that she had named the flower of this tree "Service"? On Tuesday, 4 January 1930 the sapling was placed in a six foot deep pit that Dyuman, Ambu and Manubhai had themselves dug and filled with compost. The tree flourished in the coming years, and its branches spread out in all directions, often obstructing the movement of persons in the Ashram courtyard. A proposal was made to the Mother that the tree or

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at least some of its branches should be cut down, but she would not hear of it. In fact the Mother used to pay special attention to facilitate the full and unimpeded growth of its hundred arms and pervasive personality. She asked Sammer, the Czech architect of "Golconde", to design artistic pillars and railings to support the sagging branches.²⁷ Known always and loved as the Service tree, it was now - in the winter of 1950 - to serve with its golden flowers as the golden canopy for Sri Aurobindo's Samadhi and give harbourage to an unceasing flow of disciples and devotees at all hours of the day. Rightly has the Service tree inspired many an Ashram poet to spontaneous rhythmic utterance. Thus Pujalal, whom the Mother had called "My poet":

Calm thou standest here close by

The Master's deep material trance;

Thine is a silent prayer's cry

That mates with God's all-gracious glance. ...

The Golden God thou serves! here

Thou hast the Mother's golden grace;

All gold thou shalt be. Soul sincere!

And shower gold on earth apace.²⁸

And thus, William Jones, a devotee poet, in "Sylvan Samadhi":

Fraternal tree, this metaphor is best:

My immobility became a tomb

Of massive grey-veined marble; incense bloom

Of rose and jasmin dreamed upon its breast;

A gold embrace of boughs a golden vigil kept;

Close by a sacred body's sleep, my thinking slept.²⁹

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