On The Mother

CHAPTER 14

Second Coming

I

It will be seen from what has been set forth in the earlier chapters that, on the one hand, Mirra was reaching the end of the Japanese interlude, having arrived at a new poise of purposive purity and serenity and puissance; and, on the other hand, Sri Aurobindo was approaching the end of the great Arya phase of his career, "tying up his bundle ... teeming with the catch of the Infinite", awaiting the right time to open it and call into existence his Deva Sangha. He had a few ardent young men with him, Nolini, Amrita, Moni, Bejoy Nag. But the Deva Sangha, the Ashram, was yet to be born. The Arya itself was magisterially drawing towards its preordained end. The major sequences had been concluded, and one or two were well on their way to a rounded close. Sri Aurobindo's Yoga had won phenomenal victories during the decade then ending, and the uplifting message of the Life Divine had been broadcast through the pages of the Arya. The Yoga was now poised for a new leap, for a new and decisive of phase action and manifold realisation. Everything was ready: the room, the lamp, the oil, the wick - and it only needed somebody divinely . appointed for the task to arrive upon the scene, strike the match, light the lamp and throw open the illumined chamber for the reception and initiation of the first of the new race, those that Mirra had described in 1912 as "the race of the sons of God" or the elect of Sri Aurobindo's Deva Sangha. That 'somebody' who came to Sri Aurobindo's aid was of course Mirra, the Mother. As Sri Aurobindo wrote in 1935, "the Sadhana and the work were waiting for the Mother's coming".¹ Anilbaran Roy has recorded . Sri Aurobindo telling a group of disciples in 1926:

When I came to Pondicherry, a programme was dictated to me from within for my sadhana. I followed it and progressed for myself but could not do much by way of helping others. Then came the Mother and with her help I found the necessary method.²

There is a divinity indeed that shapes our ends, and answering its veiled dictates, Mirra and Paul Richard as also Dorothy Hodgson finally decided to leave Japan for Pondicherry in the early months of 1920. For Mirra, the four years in Japan had on the whole been a period of quietude and sadhana, a time for perfection in minutiae, a season for the cultivation of the integral as well as the miniature; in a word, the Japanese interim had proved a sanctuary and phoenix-hour for the whole tapasya of a Mahasaraswati:

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The science and craft and technique of things are Mahasarawati's province. Always she holds in her nature and can give to those whom she has chosen the intimate and precise knowledge, the subtlety and patience, the accuracy of intuitive mind and conscious hand and discerning eye of the perfect worker. This Power is the strong, the tireless, the careful and efficient builder, organiser, administrator, technician, artisan and classifier of the worlds. When she takes up the transformation and new-building of: the nature, her action is laborious and minute and often seems to our impatience slow and interminable, but it is persistent, integral and flaw. less .... Nothing short of a perfect perfection satisfies her and she is ready to face an eternity of toil if that is needed for the fullness of her creation.³

While in solitary confinement in the Alipur Jail in 1908, Sri Aurobindo had composed a poem of supreme defiance doubled with an appeal that was not to be resisted:

With wind and the weather beating round me

Up to the hill and the moorland I go.

Who will come with me? Who will climb with me?

Wade through the brook and tramp through the snow? ...

I sport with solitude here in my regions,

Of misadventure have made me a friend.

Who would live largely? Who would live freely?

Here to the wind-swept uplands ascend.⁴

That call must haunt those who had heard it once, and Mirra of course had come to Pondicherry in 1914 even without that particular call, and instantaneously recognised in Sri Aurobindo "the Lord of my being and my God"; and now, after an absence of five years in France and Japan, she was coming back to Pondicherry. She was leaving behind in Japan her good friends - the Kobayashis, the Okhawas, and others - and Japan meant the kindliest memories. But the boat was carrying her towards the shores of India, and she was sublimely content. And on 24 April 1920, the boat approached the shores of Pondicherry. As she was to recall her experience thirty years later:

I was on the boat, at sea, not expecting anything (I was of course busy with the inner life, but I was living physically on the boat), when all of a sudden, abruptly, about two nautical miles from Pondicherry, the quality, I may even say the physical quality of the atmosphere, of the air, changed so much that I knew we were entering the aura of Sri Aurobindo. It was a physical experience. ⁵

Again, returning to the subject two days later:

.. .in the experience I was speaking about, what gave it all its value was that

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I was not expecting it at all, not at all. I knew very well, I had been for a very long time and continuously in "spiritual" contact, if I may say so, with the atmosphere of Sri Aurobindo, but I had never thought of the possibility of a modification in the physical air and I was not expecting it in the least, and it was this that gave the whole value to the experience, which came like that, quite suddenly, just as when one enters a place with another temperature or another altitude.⁶

And, perhaps on her part, expectant Bhaaratvarsha, our India, felt something like the promise of the Divine Mother, in Sri Aurobindo's epic, King Aswapathy, the father of Savitri:

One shall descend and break the iron Law,

Change Nature's doom by the lone Spirit's power. ...

And in her body as on his homing tree

Immortal Love shall beat his glorious wings ....

She shall bear Wisdom in her voiceless bosom,

Strength shall be with her like a conqueror's sword

And from her eyes the Eternal's bliss shall gaze.

A seed shall be sown in Death's tremendous hour,

A branch of heaven transplant to human soil;

Nature shall overleap her mortal step;

Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will.⁷

II

Having landed in Pondicherry on 24 April 1920, the Richards and Miss Hodgson, as arranged beforehand, first stayed at Magry's Grand Hotel ,d'Europe at 12 (now 28), Rue Suffren; then, finding it inconvenient, moved to Subbu's Hotel at 12 (now 15), Rue St. Louis, and, finally, to a rented house known as the Bayoud House at 4 (now 5), Rue Saint Martin, opposite the Sri Aurobindo Library. As in 1914, Sri Aurobindo had his residence at 41 (now 33), Rue Francois Martin.

Presently the 1914-15 rhythm of relationships was renewed. The Arya , continued to appear month after month, and while the more important sequences (The Life Divine and its compeers) had been concluded already, The Future Poetry appeared till August 1920 and A Defence of Indian Culture throughout the year and overflowed into the next year. "The work of the Arya has fallen into arrears," Sri Aurobindo wrote to Motilal Roy in May 1920, "and I have to spend just now the greater part of my energy in catching up, and the rest of my time, in the evening, is taken up by the daily visit of the Richards."⁸ There were at the time four or five young men (notably Nolini and Amrita) living with Sri Aurobindo, and there were the Richards and Dorothy at the Bayoud House. Not quite ten in all in the

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embryonic Deva Sangha! While Mirra and Paul visited Sri Aurobindo in the evenings and held talks day after day, Sri Aurobindo with his young men called on the Richards every Sunday evening and dined with them. The menu was decided upon by Mirra, and she personally supervised the cooking or prepared the dishes herself. Reminiscing about those days Nolini Kanta Gupta writes:

After dinner, we used to go up on the terrace overlooking the sea front. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother stood aside for a talk and we stood by ourselves. Sometimes we would request Sri Aurobindo for some automatic writing after dinner. The writings that came through his hand in those days were frightfully interesting. I remember somebody came and began to give an analysis of the character of each one of us.⁹

But, when it came to Mirra's turn, she said firmly: "No, nothing about me, please." And the hand abruptly stopped writing.

III

The months immediately following Mirra's return to Pondicherry were also the period when Sri Aurobindo, pressed on all sides by the "currents of the work and the world", was trying to collect himself for some new spring of action. As he wrote to Motilal Roy in May 1920:

There is now the beginning of a pressure from many sides inviting my spiritual attention to the future karma and this means the need of a greater outflowing of energy than when I had nothing to do but support a concentrated nucleus of the Shakti.¹⁰

In his letter of 2 September 1920, Sri Aurobindo spelt out a little more clearly what he intended to do:

Our first business is to establish our communal system on a firm spiritual, secondly on a firm economical foundation, and to spread it wide, but the complete social change can only come as a result of the other two. It must come first in spirit, afterwards in form. If a man enters into the commune by spiritual unity, if he gives to it his life and labour and considers all he has as belonging to all, the first necessity is secured. The next thing is to make the movement economically self-sufficient .... Thee two things are, the one a constant, the other an immediate necessity.¹¹

Sri Aurobindo didn't think in terms of a deliberate break with Hindu society, but of a revolutionary change from within; he had come, not to destroy, but to fulfil Sanatana Dharma - only, it should be really sanatana, eternal, and not the tinsel or the surface accretions pretending to be the genuine article.

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Ever since the time, early in 1910, when he harboured and helped Sri Aurobindo at Chandernagore, Motilal Roy had maintained a close relationship with his Guru at Pondicherry, receiving initiation and instruction in Yoga. During this period, Motilal not only sent periodical financial help to Sri Aurobindo, he was also the link between Sri Aurobindo and his friends and admirers in Bengal. During those difficult years, Motilal paid occasional visits to Pondicherry, and with Sri Aurobindo's approval started the Prabartak Sangha at Chandernagore. The watchwords of the Sangha were "Commune, Culture, Commerce", and besides, the Sangha published Prabartak in Bengali and later the English Weekly, the Standard Bearer. Sri Aurobindo had hoped that the Prabartak Sangha would grow into a centre of spiritual and economic awakening in Bengal, translating something of his vision of the Future into contemporary reality. But with the passage of time, Sri Aurobindo couldn't be blind to the fact that, although Motilal Roy had apparently cast himself for the practical or karma-aspect, while Sri Aurobindo was to stand for the knowledge or jnana-aspect, actually it was Motilal's egoistic vital pulls and pressures that had taken hold of the movement and were trying to give it a flamboyant but unspiritual turn, and so Sri Aurobindo felt compelled to terminate his connection with the Chandernagore centre. But as yet, in 1920, things had not come to that stage. Motilal still loved and venerated Sri Aurobindo, and the latter still trusted Motilal and hoped he would benefit by timely counsel and make good. In fact Motilal was on a visit to Pondicherry in August 1920, and had key discussions with the Master about the Prabartak Sangha and the Standard Bearer.

IV

Once, in a moment of startling divination, Mirra actually saw India free. She was to refer to it more than once in after-years, but the only time she dwelt on its date at length was in a Playground talk of 1953:¹²

I do not remember exactly when it happened; it must have been some time in the year 1920 probably (perhaps earlier, perhaps in 1914-1915, but I don't think so, it was some time in the year 1920). One day - every day I used to meditate with Sri Aurobindo: he used to sit on one side of a table and I on the other, on the veranda - and one day in this way, in meditation... I reached a place or a state of consciousness from which I told Sri Aurobindo just casually and quite simply: "India is free." It was in 1920.

But how, queried Sri Aurobindo, and Mirra' s answer was that there would be no fight, no battle, no violence, no revolution: "The English themselves will leave, for the condition of the world will be such that they won't be

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able to do anything else except go away." And, she further added,

It was done. I spoke in the future when he asked me the question, but there where I had seen I said, India is free, it was a fact. Now, India was not free at that time: it was 1920. Yet it was there, it had been done .... That is to say, from the external point of view I saw it twenty-seven years in advance. But it had been done.

Could she see Pakistan as well? "No, for the freedom could have come about without Pakistan." In 1956,¹³ she further clarified that she had not seen the precise details of the British withdrawal. "There must have been a possibility of its being otherwise, for, when Sri Aurobindo told them to do a certain thing, sent them his message, he knew very well that it was possible to avoid what happened later. ... Consequently, the division was not decreed. It is beyond question a human deformation."

In this connection, it is interesting to recollect that Sri Aurobindo, - who had prophesied India's independence as early as 1910,¹⁴ - had given a similar assurance to Ambalal Purani in 1918, though without any reference to the circumstances in which the independence would come. When, in the course of their talk, Purani insisted,

" ... I must do something for the freedom of India. I have been unable to sleep soundly for the last two years and a half .... "

Sri Aurobindo remained silent for two or three minutes. It was a long pause. Then he said: "Suppose an assurance is given to you that India will be free?"

"Who can give such an assurance?" ...

Again he remained silent for three or four minutes. Then he looked at me and added: "Suppose I give you the assurance?"

I paused for a moment ... and said: "If you give the assurance, I can accept it."

"Then I give you the assurance that India will be free," he said in a serious tone.¹⁵

If Mirra's vision of a free India - as a thing decreed and accomplished already there where these things are first settled - was to offer effective corroboration to Sri Aurobindo's own conviction on the subject and help him to concentrate exclusively on his Yoga, her second coming to Pondicherry and close association with him were to lead to momentous results in their work of "divine man-making" and earth-transformation.

*The Mother also mentioned this vision in 1947 (MIAug61:5), in 1953 (MDan79:9), in 1954 (MlMar54:2) and in 1956 (MO 8:30-2). In 1947, 1954 and 1956 she placed it in 1914 or 1915; and twice in 1953 in 1920. But only once (quoted on p. 205) did she closely scrutinise the date and arrived at 1920. Significantly, the topic she was discussing was predestination.

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V

After Mirra's second coming, the restoration of the 1914-15 rhythm of creative collaboration was rather more apparent than real. During the War and after, the differences between Mirra and Richard with regard to the direction, pace and means of their movements, which were endemic all the time, surfaced disagreeably during their last year 10 Japan, and began to acquire clearer definition after the return to Pondicherry. For Mirra, the return meant the climactic decision of her life: she was in Pondicherry for good, and Sri Aurobindo was the Lord of her being and her God. But Paul wasn't ready for the same act of ātmasamarpana or unquestioning self-surrender to the supramental avatar, the living God. More and more, his approaches were vitalistic and mental; and although he continued to swear by the resurgence of Asia, and the inevitability of the explosion of the New Life, there was also an emphasis on mere mental constructions, on attempts at a laborious synthesis of science, philosophy and religion, rather than on the outleap of spirituality informing and transforming the entire existential stairway from Matter to Mind.

But between Mirra and Sri Aurobindo, a plenary new understanding had welled up, and their very conversations now acquired a new quality: it was as if they could converse without speaking, or only with the minimum of pointer-words or seer-phrases. As she was to explain, about thirty years after:

When I used to speak with Sri Aurobindo, we never had the need to go through intermediary ideas; he said one thing and I saw the far off result; we used to talk always like that, and if a person had happened to be present at our conversations he would have said, "What are they talking about!" But for us ... it was as clear as a continuous sentence. You could call that a mental miracle - it was not a miracle, it was simply that Sri Aurobindo had the vision of the totality of mental phenomena and hence we had no need to waste a good deal of time in going through all the gradations.¹⁶

For the time being, the Richards and Sri Aurobindo still met in the evenings and talked, the Arya still made its monthly appearance, - but something was going on behind the facade of Appearance. And one day Mirra saw a vision. As Sri Aurobindo narrated it to his attendants on 7 January 1939:

I myself had suggestion after suggestion that it [this Yoga] wouldn't succeed. But I always remember the vision the Mother had. It was like this: The Mother, Richard and I were going somewhere. We saw Richard going down to a place from which rising was impossible. Then we found ourselves sitting in a carriage the driver of which was taking it up and down a hill a number of times. At last he stopped on the highest peak. Its significance was quite clear to us.¹⁷

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Read in the context in which Sri Aurobindo recalled this incident, it seems that what was happening to Paul Richard was a sustained attack by hostile forces, thrusting suggestion after suggestion that the whole adventure of Integral Yoga was perhaps going to misfire, and that he had better leave the arena while the going was good. As Sri Aurobindo put it:

This yoga is like a path cut through a jungle and once the path is made, it will be easy for those who come afterwards. But before that it is a long-drawn-out battle. The more you gain in your strength the more becomes the resistance of the hostile forces.¹⁸

The Chariot of Yoga in which Mirra and Sri Aurobindo were seated was taken up and down a good deal till the driver brought it to a stop at the highest peak. But, then, they hadn't yielded to the sly suggestions of failure put forward by the adverse forces; they hadn't succumbed to doubt; on the contrary, they had persevered in fair and foul weather alike. As for Paul Richard, the inevitable happened at last: unable to accept the proffered felicity in the sanctified circle around Sri Aurobindo, unable to detach Mirra from her firm anchorage in Faith, he left Pondicherry around November 1920.

On 20 May 1940, during the high tide of Hitler's fortunes in France, Sri Aurobindo said to his disciples that the Asuric Being with whom Hitler was in contact, the 'Lord of the Nations', was the same with whom Paul Richard too had established a communion much earlier, and under whose influence he had written the book, The Lord of the Nations:

... the plans and methods he has written of in the book are the same as those carried out now [by Hitler] .... He [Richard] said there that the present civilisation was to be destroyed, but really it is the destruction of the whole human civilisation that is aimed at, and already in Germany Hitler has done it .... ¹⁹

Again, in her talk to the children on 8 March 1951, the Mother said that it was occultism's 'Lord of Falsehood' who proclaimed himself the 'Lord of the Nations', and guided Hitler in his seemingly uncanny decisions.²⁰ On 10 June 1953, the Mother returned to this subject and referred to this Being and his spiritually destructive work. This particular Asura "wherever there is something going wrong", there he - or his representative - is active. Coming back to the question on 16 June 1954, the Mother said the first original emanations from the Supreme - Consciousness (Light), Bliss (Ananda, Love), Truth, Life - lost their contact with their Origin, and thereby became flawed and perverted as Unconsciousness, Suffering, Falsehood and Death. The redemption of the perverted and lost was the purpose of the intricate struggle going on in the world. Already there has been a large return to Consciousness, and a similar reassertion of Ananda, the joy of existence, the reign of Love. But the other two Asuras, although

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they too knew that their rule must also end one day, were resisting the conversion. Of these two, while Death is at present suffered as a necessary evil, Falsehood has grown vast new attractions:

He has taken up a very, very important position in the world, because people who don't know things call him "Lord of the Nations" ....

That Lord of Falsehood has truly a lot of influence. This is what catches you with a contagion as strong as that of contagious diseases.²¹

From all these references and cross-references, it is plain that Richard had been an instrument - or shall we say emanation? - of a Being fair in form but with an anti-divine motivation.

VI

As for Mirra, she had chosen, and had been chosen. Miss Hodgson was with her as before, and she was accepted too, and acquired from Sri Aurobindo the spiritual name of' 'Datta'²² (meaning 'Entirely Self-given'²³). When Mrinalini Chattopadhyaya (sister of the well-known Sarojini Naidu) visited Pondicherry in mid-1920 to see Sri Aurobindo, she also initiated Mirra into wearing the sari; and even as the kimono in Japan had fitted her as if to the culture born, now the Indian sari too seemed to suit her to perfection. Many years after, she was to wear the salwar and kameez, and with impeccable grace and easy naturalness.

The small group around Sri Aurobindo received an accession during the year with the arrival of his younger brother, Barindra (Barin), who had been released from the Andamans after the Amnesty. From Bengal, Barin had first written to Sri Aurobindo asking him for initiation into Yoga, and had been accepted but it would be Sri Aurobindo's own special way of Yoga, the Integral Yoga. Towards the end of his letter (written in Bengali, apparently in April 1920), Sri Aurobindo had given a clear outline of his Yoga, and a hint of his hope for the immediate future:

I do not wish to make emotional excitement, feeling and mental enthusiasm the base any longer. I want to make a vast and strong equality the foundation of my yoga; in all the activities of the being, which will be based on that equality, I want a complete, firm and unshakable ocean of power; over that an of power I want the radiation of the sun of Knowledge and in that luminous vastness an established ecstasy of infinite love and bliss and oneness. I do not want tens of thousands of disciples. It will be enough if I can get as instruments of God one hundred complete men free from petty egoism.²⁴

On reading the letter, Barin's soul was on fire, and the long and dreary years of tribulation in the Andamans were as nought. Sri Aurobindo, his

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brother and Guru, now exercised the same magnetic pull as of old, and Barin resolutely packed his bag and arrived in Pondicherry.

Then, suddenly, Nature took a hand in bringing all of them together under one roof. October-December is usually the season of cyclones and violent rains in Pondicherry, and thus on 24 November 1920, there raged tempestuous weather with pouring rain. Under those conditions seepage and leakage were common, and by evening it was known that the roof of a godown in Rue d'Orleans had come down. On making inquiries, Sri Aurobindo came to know that Bayoud House where Mirra and Datta were staying was also in a very precarious condition. He immediately sent word that they shouldn't expose themselves to any further risk, but move into his own place in Rue François Martin at once. The removal began late in the evening and was nearly complete by midnight. Mirra and Datta occupied a room on the first floor of what was later to be called the Guest House. "That is how," says Nolini reminiscentially, "the Mother came in our midst and stayed on for good .... You can see now how that last spell of stormy weather came as a benediction. Nature did in fact become a collaborator of the Divine Purpose."²⁵

VII

Mirra's change of residence on Sri Aurobindo's insistence from Bayoud House, to his own place on the night of the cyclone was, seen in retrospect, a preordained event, a seed-event for many significant future developments. But at the time it happened, it caused, understandably enough, a certain amount of uneasiness (if not resentment) among some of the young men living with Sri Aurobindo. They had been living in far from affluent circumstances, enacting a kind of spiritual bohemianism or even bolshevism, relying mainly on Sri Aurobindo's love to see them through their difficulties and perplexities. At one time they were compelled to share the same bath-towel, and good food was an exception rather than the rule. With his seasoned equality, samata, it was all the same to Sri Aurobindo whether the curry was salted or not, or even whether there was any curry at all. He could therefore brush aside their grouses with the admonition:

You should have no preference for food of a particular taste. There is no truth in such preferences and demands. You have a body, and you have to keep it in good condition. Lower quality or kind of food would be harmful to the health of the body, therefore you should take good food. But good food means food necessary for the body - not what the tongue likes.²⁶

But as for the young men themselves, taste and appetite weren't to be quite so easily transcended. Nevertheless, with their sunny disposition and profound faith in Sri Aurobindo, they had been carrying on gallantly for years.

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But this sudden 'invasion' by two European ladies - however unavoidable under the circumstances - was a jolt to the kind of unconventional camp-life they had been living so far. They were excited, they were also puzzled. What would the ladies think? There were hundreds of books - in English, Bengali, Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, French - but there were no book-shelves in the house; and bamboo-strips had to serve the purpose. For the most part, mats had to do duty for furniture; and there was but a single servant to do the shopping-- among other things, daily three or four annas worth of fish! Cooking was done on a cooperative basis: Nolini did the rice, Moni the pulses (dal), and Bejoy the curry and the vegetables. There was a Pariah cook, perhaps, for part of the time, and what he prepared was not to their taste. And in such a situation, to have to feed two European ladies too! It was not surprising that uneasiness crept in in the wake of their coming. As Purani comments:

This [the Mother's joining the rest] had created a sense of dissatisfaction in the minds of most of the inmates. Man is so much governed by his social, religious and cultural conventions that he finds it difficult to throw them out. Besides, men imbued with strong nationalism would find it difficult to accept one who apparently is a foreigner as an inmate of the house.²⁷

While with some it was only a temporary uneasiness in the presence of the apparently exotic, with some others it was perhaps a half-admitted irrational suspicion about all that was foreign. But such misgivings were no more than the shadowy mists that prowl around for a little while, till they disappear with the rise of the Sun of all-revealing knowledge. Mirra's crystaline goodness of heart and unfailing understanding of men and affairs, Datta's amiable sweetness and kindness of disposition, their total self-consecration to Sri Aurobindo, and the striking sea-change their presence and unobtrusive ministry effected in the very atmosphere of the place, all dispelled the earlier annoyance and the uneasiness, and only trust and love and sunniness prevailed.

Mirra had merely to take a quick look around, and the fantastic chaos of the non-arrangements pleaded for instant attention. Unobtrusively she took the matter in hand, and day by day order began evolving out of the old chaos and insufficiency. It was a job for Mahasaraswati in close alliance with Mahalakshmi, and Mirra seemed to be equal to the task. Ambalal Purani, who had come earlier in 1918, visited again in 1921, and the changes he witnessed took his breath away. First the sight of Mirra standing near the staircase: "Such unearthly beauty I had never seen"; then, the transfiguration of the place itself:

The house had undergone a great change. There was a clean garden in the open courtyard, every room had simple and decent furniture, - a mat, a chair and a small table. There was an air of tidiness and order. This was, no

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doubt, the effect of the Mother's presence.²⁸

And Purani found an astonishing change in Sri Aurobindo's body:

During the interval of two years his body had undergone a transformation which could only be described as miraculous. In 1918 the colour of the body was like that of an ordinary Bengali - rather dark - though there was a lustre on the face and the gaze was penetrating. On going upstairs to see him (in the same house), I found his cheeks wore an apple-pink colour and the whole body glowed with a soft creamy white light....

Afterwards in the course of talk he explained to me that when the Higher Consciousness, after descending to the mental level, comes down to the vital and even below the vital, then a transformation takes place in the nervous and even in the physical being.²⁹

Likewise, T. V. Kapali Sastry too, who had first seen Sri Aurobindo in 1917, found a great change when he had darshan again in 1923: " ... he found Sri Aurobindo completely changed in his physical appearance; he had then a golden hue on his body which had become fair in complexion, whereas it was brownish-dark when he had seen him last. "³⁰

VIII

On an evening in Christmas week 1920, a new visitor, T. Kodandarama Rao, happening to see Mirra, found her at the very first sight a "serene, sweet and beautiful divine personality"; and after a stay of a few days in 1921, he concluded that she was verily "a personification of 'Grace' ", and whenever he approached her, he felt "purity, peace and sublimity".³¹ It was also in 1921 that Champaklal, then a boy of eighteen, first made an adventurous journey to Pondicherry from remote Gujarat, and having made pranam to Sri Aurobindo felt that he had "nothing more to do" in his life. He didn't see Mirra at that time, but catching a glimpse of him through the opened Venetian blinds, she recognised in him a born servitor and "told Sri Aurobindo then itself: This boy will help me in my work; he will be very useful." When Champaklal came for good early in 1923, he saw first one and then the other. He felt that Sri Aurobindo was incarnate Shiva, Mirra was the Mother Divine! He experienced "an extraordinary closeness to her and saw and felt in her an embodiment of Beauty".³²

These first months - the first year or two after Mirra's joining the establishment in Rue Francois Martin - saw some other important developments as well. The Arya was discontinued in January 1921, since its historic role had been completed. With the recent or new arrivals, there were about a dozen in all living together, and for a time the group concentrated on spiritual stocktaking, and on efficient management and

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consolidation, Motilal Roy and his wife, who had come from Chandernagore as mentioned earlier in this chapter), were not very happy with the changes they saw in Sri Aurobindo's house. Besides, the Prabartak Sangha wanted them back at Chandernagore, while Motilal himself was undecided whether to go or remain with Sri Aurobindo. On receipt of a peremptory telegram from Chandernagore, Motilal and his wife left Pondicherry in August 1921 and the attempt to close the rift didn't succeed. Not long after, Sri Aurobindo dissociated himself from Motilal and his Prabartak Sangha, and decided that he would henceforth try to build only on the surest foundations.

It was also around 1921 that the practice of collective meditation began. The inmates used to assemble in the evening at about four in the upstairs veranda, and Sri Aurobindo and Mirra would be with them. There was no formula, no macadamised process; but in the ambience generated by their presence, each of the others present stumbled on his or her own method, and all melted in communion in the elected silence of the hour.

IX

It was towards the end of 1921 that black magic invaded the precincts of 41, Rue Francois Martin to throw into temporary confusion its peaceful life. For some misconduct of his, Vathal, the Pariah cook, had been scolded by Datta, and then, on account of his insulting behaviour, he had to be dismissed. This bred in him an acute resentment and a desire for revenge, and he got into touch with a Muslim fakir well versed in black magic. Suddenly mysterious stones began to strike at Sri Aurobindo's house, and as he later described the episode to Dilip Kumar Roy:

The phenomenon began at the fall of dusk and continued at first for half an hour, but daily it increased in frequency, violence and the size of the stones, and the duration of the attack increased also ... and now it was no longer at the kitchen only but thrown in other places as well.... At first we took it for a human-made affair and sent for the police ... and when one of the stables in the verandah got a stone whizzing unaccountably between his legs, the police abandoned the case in a panic .... And so it went on till the missiles became murderous .... At last the semi-idiot boy servant who was the centre of the attack and was sheltered in Bejoy's room under his protection, began to be severely hit and was bleeding from a wound by stones materialising inside the closed room.³³

The whole thing was utterly fantastic, for the stones were coming even into the closed room; there was an uncanniness about it all. Mirra now went into meditation to find out who was hurling the stones. As she narrated later:

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I saw three little entities of the vital, those small entities which have no strength and just enough consciousness confined to one action ... but these entities are at the service of people who practise magic .... They replied "We are compelled, we are compelled .... It is not our fault, we have been ordered to do it .... "³⁴

Mirra's occult knowledge told her, however, that the whole process depended on "a nexus between the boy servant and the house", and so he was sent away to another house. The stone-throwing ceased at once, and peace reigned once again in Sri Aurobindo's place.

Subsequently, Vathal's wife seems to have come to Sri Aurobindo and thrown herself at his feet and craved for his mercy. The adverse forces unleashed by the fakir and turned back from their intended destination were after Vathal now, and he was desperately sick. Sri Aurobindo however, took pity on the woman, and forgave the culprit with the words "For this he need not die. "³⁵

X

In the course of 1921 Sri Aurobindo's link with the Prabartak Sangha at Chandernagore had become uncertain and tenuous. Long-distance control, as with the Sangha, hadn't proved feasible, and the men on the spot with their egoisms and vitalistic pulls could always give a comic or vicious twist to the initiating inspiration from Pondicherry. But the issue as to how the truths of The Life Divine and The Synthesis of Yoga were to be realised in practice remained open still. The Integral Yoga was no mere exercise of the imagination, but had to be given a practical orientation and realised in foolproof organisational units. For Sri Aurobindo, it was a moment pregnant with possibilities. What next? and how soon? An air of expectancy reigned, waiting for the answers.

When Purani, at the end of his visit to Sri Aurobindo in 1921, put the overwhelming question to Sri Aurobindo, "What are you waiting for?", the answer came in measured accents:

It is true that the Divine Consciousness has descended but it has not yet descended into the physical being. So long as that work is not done the work cannot be said to be accomplished. ³⁶

Even this buoyed up Purani as he records:

I felt a great elation when I boarded the train: for, here was a guide who had already attained the Divine Consciousness, was conscious about it, and yet whose detachment and discrimination were so perfect, whose sincerity was so profound, that he knew what has yet to be attained and could go on unobtrusively doing his hard work for mankind.³⁷

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Indeed, Sri Aurobindo was giving serious thought at this time to the question of translating theory and hope into practice and achievement. But a base was needed with the requisite purity, strength and potentiality for growth. Having watched the transformation wrought by Mirra in the household, Sri Aurobindo asked her on I January 1922 to take full charge of its management. With the gradual increase in the number of inmates, it presently became necessary to find additional accommodation, and accordingly the fine house in Rue de la Marine - later known as the Library House - was rented, and Sri Aurobindo, Mirra, Datta and a few others moved into it in September 1922. The house in Rue François Martin was also retained, and henceforth came to be called the Guest House, for it was used to house visitors apart from the inmates.

And yet the main question - the question of questions - remained: How were the insights of the Arya sequences, how were Sri Aurobindo's and Mirra's visions of the future, to be realised in practice? A beginning had first to be made, and then the movement could spread out: but exactly how? when? Sri Aurobindo had spoken of a Deva Sangha in his letter of 1920 to his brother Barin: but how was it to be organised, how were the .members to be 'called'? While Pondicherry would be the headquarters of the movement (at least for the time being), should there be other centres too affiliated to the central seat of inspiration? Sri Aurobindo sent Barin to Bengal to explore the possibilities, to collect funds, and to create a favourable atmosphere; and in his letter of 18 November 1922, he set forth his objectives clearly:

I have been till now and shall be for some time longer withdrawn in the practice of a Yoga destined to be a basis not for withdrawal from life, but for the transformation of human life .... But the time is approaching ... when I shall have to take up a large external work proceeding from the spiritual basis of this Yoga.

It is, therefore, necessary to establish a number of centres small and few at first but enlarging and increasing in number as I go on, for training in the Sadhana, one under my direct supervision, others in immediate connection with me ... but for the present these centres will be not for external work but for spiritual training and Tapasya.

The first, which will be transferred to British India when I go there, already exists at Pondicherry .... The second I am founding through you in Bengal. I hope to establish another in Gujarat during the ensuing year.³⁸

XI

In the meantime, Mahatma Gandhi's non-cooperation movement, launched ostensibly on the twin issues of the Punjab massacre and the Khilafat

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injustice, had, after the initial excitement and enthusiasm, floundered in futility. Some leaders like C.R. Das were anxious to retrieve the position and to "give a more flexible and practically effective turn to the non-cooperation movement"³⁹ and they also wanted to enlist Sri Aurobindo's services to encompass the desired transformation of the political scene in India. But Sri Aurobindo had entirely other ideas, as may be seen from his letter of 18 November 1922 to C.R.Das, sent through Barin:

I think you know my present idea and the attitude towards life and work to which it has brought me. I have become confirmed in a perception which I had always, less clearly and dynamically then, but which has now become more and more evident to me, that the true basis of work and life is the spiritual, - that is to say, a new consciousness to be developed only by Yoga. I see more and more manifestly that man can never get out of the futile circle the race is always treading until he has raised himself on to the new foundation. I believe also that it is the mission of India to make this great victory for the world. But what precisely was the nature of the dynamic power of this greater consciousness? What was the condition of its effective truth? How could it be brought down, mobilised, organised, turned upon life? How could our present instruments, intellect, mind, life, body be made true and perfect channels for this great transformation? This was the problem I have been trying to work out in my own experience and I have now a sure basis, a wide knowledge and some mastery of the secret. Not yet its fulness and complete imperative presence ....

But still I have gone far enough to be able to undertake one work on a larger scale than before - the training of others to receive this Sadhana and prepare themselves as I have done .... ⁴⁰

It must be clear from the above that during 1922 Sri Aurobindo's mind was working in the direction of consolidating at Pondicherry and extending to a few carefully selected centres his own brand of Yoga as the necessary preparation for large-scale practical work. It was the Bhavani Mandir scheme* again, a scheme as old as 19O5, but now adjusted, in the light of the intervening experiences and victories in Yoga, to the imperatives of the new situation in India and the world, and the predicament of humanity in general all over the globe .

*See Sri Aurobindo's Bande Mataram Centenary Edition, pp.61ff. See also the chapter on "Bhavani Mandir" in my Sri Aurobindo: A Biography and a History, 1985. pp.169ff.

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