On The Mother

CHAPTER 6

The Meeting

I

On 3 March 1914, Mirra wrote: "As the day of departure draws near, I enter into a kind of self-communion."¹ A "thousand little nothings" had surrounded her all those years, and she had grown among them, basking in their companionship and friendship; and now that she was shortly to go On a voyage and would not be able to write "at this table in this calm room all charged with Thy Presence", she wondered whether those trifles around her would receive from other occupants of the house the same care and solicitude, the same loving kindness, she had given them so long. Even material things are not just to be taken for granted! Much later, she was to admonish her disciples against insensitiveness towards material things:

Not to take care of material things which one uses is a sign of inconscience and ignorance.

You have no right to use any material object whatsoever if you do not take care of it.

You must take care of it not because you are attached to it, but because it manifests something of the Divine Consciousness.²

Nolini Kanta Gupta too has testified how she

taught us to use our things with care .... She uses things not merely with care but with love and affection. For, to her, material things are not simply inanimate objects, not mere lifeless implements. They are endowed with a life of their own, even a consciousness of their own, and each thing has its Own individuality and character.³

There is a hint of all this in the prayer of 3 March 1914. For Mirra, material things are created by divine Love from the dark inconscience of chaos, and hence deserving of gentle and affectionate handling.

The next day Mirra will be leaving her quiet and sanctified room, parting from her circle of friends and fellow-seekers, leaving Paris itself for a few days in Geneva, before departing for India. As for the future, she faces it with equanimity, "My only wish is that this may be for us the beginning of a new inner period .... " In the pages of the past what's writ is writ and beyond recall; the pages of the future are blank but rich with promise. Four years earlier, Paul Richard had returned from a visit to India and told her of his meetings with Sri Aurobindo Ghose at Pondicherry. But between Sri Aurobindo and her there had already been established occult links of deep understanding regarding their future mission on the earth. Paul Richard had decided that he would himself

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contest one of the seats from French India for the Senate and Chamber of Deputies in Paris. Mirra was to accompany him, and they decided that irrespective of the result of the ensuing election, they would stay on m Pondicherry for about two years. In fact, they had to sell about one-fourth of Mina's modest private fortune to enable them to make the journey and to provide for a two-year stay.⁴ Richard's political and humanitarian mission and Mirra's pilgrimage of the Spirit were to coalesce in their momentous passage to India, with results that perhaps even they could not have anticipated. But a Divinity does shape our ends, however little we may be aware of this; and in 1920, Mirra recalled in the course of a contribution to a Chandernagore paper:

In the year 1910 my husband came alone to Pondicherry where, under very interesting and peculiar circumstances, he made the acquaintance of Sri Aurobindo. Since then we both strongly wished to return to India - the country which I had always cherished as my true mother-country. And in 1914 this joy was granted to us.⁵

II

The separation from friends and colleagues proves a distressing experience. Such suffering, if it isn't to be courted, cannot be avoided either. When people are used to meeting on the physical plane, separation affects one deeply at first. But there are profounder levels of consciousness where suffering may be transcended:

We must not run away from suffering, we must not love and cultivate it either, we must learn how to go deep down into it sufficiently to turn it into a lever powerful enough for us to force, open the doors of the eternal consciousness and enter the serenity of Thy Oneness.

... And precisely because of that, is not the suffering that separation brings one of the most effective means of transcending this outer consciousness, of replacing this superficial attachment by the integral realisation of Thy eternal Oneness?⁶

Reconciled thus to the event, the Richards leave Geneva; and, the next day, at Marseilles they board the Japanese boat Kaga Maru. There seems to have been some commotion on the way, but as if by miraculous intervention in answer to her prayer, calm is restored, and all is well:

Violence was answered by calm, brutality by the strength of sweetness; and where an irreparable disaster would have occurred, Thy power was glorified.⁷

There is now a sense of unutterable relief, a consciousness of His Presence and Protection;

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and Mirra's prayer rises to Him, now as always, invoking universal well-being. What Mirra herself would most like to do is "to have the power to heal life, to relieve suffering, to generate peace and calm confidence, to efface anguish and replace it by the sense of the one true happiness, the happiness that is founded in Thee and never fades".⁸ Finding herself a member of a community of crew and passengers on the boat, Mirra's heart goes out to them all in a gesture of protective embrace:

O Lord, it seemed to me that I adopted all the inhabitants of this ship, and enveloped them in an equallove.⁹

On 9 March she records that the boat seems "a marvellous abode of peace, a temple sailing in Thy honour over the waves of the subconscient passivity which we have to conquer and awaken to the consciousness of Thy divine Presence". The next day, a great realisation is vouchsafed to her and she recapitulates this in a supremely evocative and beautiful meditation:

In the silence of the night Thy Peace reigned over all things, in the silence of my heart Thy Peace reigns always; and when these two silences were united, Thy Peace was so powerful that no disturbance of any kind could resist it. Then I thought of all those who were watching over the boat to safeguard and protect our course, and in gratefulness I wanted to make Thy Peace spring up and live in their hearts; then I thought of all those who, confident and free from care, slept the sleep of inconscience, and with solicitude for their miseries, pity for their latent suffering which would arise in them when they awoke, I wanted that a little of Thy Peace might live in their hearts and awaken in them the life of the spirit, the light that dispels ignorance. Then I thought of all the inhabitants of this vast sea, both visible and invisible, and I willed that Thy Peace might spread over them. Then I thought of those we had left far behind and whose affection goes with us, and with a great tenderness I wanted Thy conscious and lasting Peace for them, the plenitude of Thy Peace as far as they could receive it. Then I thought of all those towards whom we are going, who are troubled by childish preoccupations and fight in ignorance and egoism for petty rivalries of interest; and ardently, in a great aspiration, I asked for them the full light of Thy Peace. Then I thought of all those we know, all those we do not know, all the life in the making, all that has changed its form, all that is not yet in form, and for all these, even as for all that I cannot think about, for all that is present to my memory and for all that I forget, in a deep contemplation and mute adoration I implored Thy Peace. ¹⁰

Peace ... Peace ... Peace ... : the 'flame-Word rune' is repeated like a caress, like an incantation, like a benediction. "Piecemeal peace is poor peace," says the poet Hopkins, and hence only universal everlasting Peace can comprehend and solve the gigantic problem of earth's evil and imperfection

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and pain. Mirra's aspiration and meditation decree by an act of will the Peace that is one day to arrive and prevail over the forces of division and disorder. The Divine's "clairvoyant collaboratrix", she will not be ,daunted by "outer circumstances", however unpromising, however depressing; she will rather direct her efforts towards their inner reality. It will be her aim through such cultivation of the inner countries to find "supreme Peace, perfect serenity, true contentment".¹¹

III

The pure and silent nights on the sea continue, the feeling of felicity is retained, an air of nameless puissance is what she feeds on, and a suggestion of termless power seems to envelop her and give a new glow to her every movement. With utter freedom she travels in the occult regions of the world-stair, and is fascinated by all their richness, complexity and variety, their knotted contrasts and their transcendent unity. Securely stationed in what may be called the perfectly awakened Divine Consciousness, Mirra has access to "infinite grades of consciousness, going right down to complete darkness, the veritable inconscience".¹² It is like Aswapathy's exploration of the world-stair described in Savitri:

In this drop from consciousness to consciousness

Each leaned on the occult Inconscient's power,

The fountain of its needed Ignorance,

Archmason of the limits by which it lives.

In this soar from consciousness to consciousness

Each lifted tops to That from which it came,

Origin of all that it had ever been

And home of all that it could still become.¹³

When one is identified with the Divine, one is omniscient for the nonce, one can be "conscious in everything and everywhere", and one's surge of love can "penetrate all things, embrace all life, illumine and regenerate all thought, purify all feeling, awaken in every being the consciousness of Thy marvellous Presence".¹⁴ On the other hand, Mirra feels that the difficulties of physical unease are greatly overestimated, and what tires one most is anticipation, the anxiety, the exaggerated fear. "The body is a marvellous tool," she writes on 17 March, "it is our mind that does not know how to use it and, instead of fostering its suppleness, its plasticity, it brings a certain fixity into it which comes from preconceived ideas and unfavourable suggestions." Nor should one worry about "future circumstances or the turn events take"¹⁵; with serenity and confidence and faith, all can be faced and mastered. And so like a silent canticle, like a mute adoration, like a steady flame, her aspiration rises towards Him and coaxes His divine Love to come down and illuminate her heart:

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Thou art the wonderful magician, he who transfigures all things, from ugliness brings forth beauty, from darkness light, from the mud clear water, from ignorance knowledge and from egoism goodness.¹⁶

Mirra would gladly submit to this wonder-worker and learn to wield the subtle instruments of such a divine transformation. The marvels of modern science and technology are nowhere compared to the "supreme science" which is nothing less than "to unite with Thee, to trust in Thee, to live in Thee, to be Thyself; and then nothing is any longer impossible to a man who manifests Thy omnipotence"¹⁷ Such perfect identification with the Divine is, however, by no means easy, for human actions at present are usually flawed, being infected with disorder and darkness. Mirra knows that "the ideal state is that in which, constantly conscious with Thy Consciousness, one knows at every moment, spontaneously, without any reflection being necessary, exactly what should be done to best express Thy law".¹⁸ Mirra has doubtless sessions of such sublime realisation and the power ensuing from them, - but how is one to make the condition perfect and permanent? "This is one of the things," she writes on 24 March, "I expect from the journey to India."

IV

Mirra had been preparing herself for years - conditioning her mind and sensibility, attuning her soul, integrally shaping herself - in anticipation of this voyage to India. Sri Aurobindo himself had described the Richards as "rare examples of European Yogins", and he had been in spiritual as well as material correspondence with Mirra since 1910.¹⁹ She had already read and pondered over the Gita and the Dhammapada, the Yoga and the Bhakti Sutras, and had felt increasingly drawn to India. The myths and legends of India were known to her, and she was held in fascination by several of them. Forty years later, she was to recall a story of India that had made a tremendous impression upon her ever since her girlhood. This was about a very poor woman in a miserable hut who had received a mango as a gift. She ate half of it, and put the rest aside, hoping to eat it next day. Now a mendicant came and asked for alms and shelter. The hapless old woman said: "I have no fire to warm you, I have no blanket to cover you, and I have half a mango left, that is all I have, if you want it; I have eaten half of it." Actually, the mendicant was Shiva in disguise, and the old woman "was filled with an inner glory, for she had made a perfect gift of herself and all she had".²⁰ This was the perfect and complete offering, ­ and a land where such myths were current was crowned in Mirra's eyes with unfading spiritual glory.

While thus Mirra's indrawn self was revelling in the splendours of the blissful Infinite, she could still hardly detach herself completely from her

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immediate surroundings. In the course of the voyage, among the passengers she found two Englishmen, who were Protestant clergymen of different sects. Sunday came, and while both wanted a Christian religious ceremony, they couldn't agree as to who should conduct it. One of them, perhaps the Anglican, withdrew at last, and the Presbyterian was left in possession of the field. The ceremony took place in the lounge of the ship, and quite a number gathered there. As the Mother recapitulated the event later:

And that day, all the men had put on their jackets - it was hot, I think we were in the Red Sea - they put on their jackets, stiff collars, leather shoes; neckties well set, hats on their heads, and they went with a book under their arm, almost in a procession from the deck to the lounge. The ladies wore their hats, some carried even a parasol, and they too had their book under the arm, a prayer-book.

They all heard the sermon given by the clergyman, and when it was over, they were at once back at the bar drinking or at the table playing cards, and the preacher and the sermon were alike quite forgotten. "They had done their duty, it was over, there was nothing more to be said about it."

But the Richards had kept themselves aloof from the religious ceremony. Having made a note of this, the Presbyterian approached Mirra afterwards, and an interesting conversation took place between them. Why hadn't Madame attended the sermon? "I am sorry," she answered, "but I don't believe in religion." What, was she a materialist? "No, not at all." Why, then, had she avoided the ceremony? Pressed for an answer, Mirra couldn't avoid plain-speaking:

I don't feel that you are sincere, neither you nor your flock. You all went there to fulfil a social duty and a social custom, but not at all because you really wanted to enter into communion with God.

The ideal of truly entering into communion with God took the clergyman's breath away. Oh! that was not possible! And, indeed, it could never have occurred to him to attempt any such fantastic thing. In the subsequent discussion, Mirra entered a pointed caveat against the half-baked Western missionary (like the Presbyterian himself) trying to take religion to the Orient:

Listen, even before your religion was born - not even two thousand years ago - the Chinese had a very high philosophy and knew a path leading them to the Divine; and when they think of Westerners, they think of them as barbarians. And so you are going there to convert those who know more about it than you? What are you going to teach them? To be insincere, to perform hollow ceremonies instead of following a profound philosophy and a detachment from life which lead them to a more spiritual consciousness?

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The clergyman was of course confused and even scandalised by this frontal attack, and unable to argue, and unwilling to acquiesce, he beat a hasty retreat.²¹

V

But such encounters - however depressing in the immediate context _ didn't deflect Mina from her deeper aims, nor ruffle her inner equanimity. If she could hardly make a dent in the Presbyterian clergyman's self­ protective armour of Philistinism, Mirra was rather more successful, perhaps, with some of the other fellow-travellers. For example, she recorded on 25 March:

Silent and unseen as always, but all-powerful, Thy action has made itself felt and, in these souls that seemed to be so closed, a perception of Thy divine light is awakened ....

O Lord, an ardent thanksgiving mounts from me towards Thee expressing the gratitude of this sorrowing humanity which Thou illuminest, transformest and glorifiest .... ²²

With this sense of fulfilment and deep thankfulness, on 27 March the Richards disembarked at Colombo. That day they remained in Ceylon, spending part of their time with a noted Buddhist monk named Dharmapal.²³ Crossing the straits at Talaimannar and reaching Dhanushkodi, the Richards boarded the Boat Mail (as it used to be called) on 28 March.

Mirra had known throughout the long voyage the Lord's divine solicitude and protection, she had seen the writ of His law everywhere, and of course she had tried wholly to identify herself with His law and to embody it effortlessly and spontaneously. It is not surprising that Mirra was in a condition of serene acceptance and luminous understanding:

From the time we started and every day more and more, in ail things we can see Thy divine intervention, everywhere Thy law is expressed .... ²⁴

On 29 March, after a change at Villupuram, the train speeded towards Pondicherry. And long before she actually met Sri Aurobindo she may well have felt his aura, just as she was to experience it six years later when her boat was nearing Pondicherry.²⁵ And once there what possibilities lay hidden, what vast horizons stretched ahead of her! In the full conscious­ ness of His sovereign Presence, she turned towards the future with an undimmed vision and with unwavering faith. A passage by Sri Aurobindo about Savitri may be apt here:

Apparelled in her flickering-coloured robe,

She seemed burning towards the eternal realms

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A bright moved torch of incense and of flame

That from the sky-roofed temple-soil of earth

A pilgrim hand lifts in an invisible shrine.²⁶

VI

Since 1910 Sri Aurobindo had completely surrendered himself to Yoga. He bad "already realised in full two of the four great realisations on which his Yoga and his spiritual philosophy are founded".²⁷ In Pondicherry he had received a "programme" for his own Yoga which he described as Sapta­Chatushtaya.²⁸ But self-realisation was not the only aim: "A distinct and central object of his Yoga was a change of life and existence." And by the time Mirra joined him in 1914, four years of "silent Yoga" had enabled him to evolve a new instrument of spiritual discipline - Puma Yoga or Integral Yoga - comprehending and harmonising the two extreme categories of experience, Matter and Spirit, and the three classical paths, Knowledge (1nana), Works (Karma) and Devotion (Bhakti). He had also been working towards the Yoga of the Future, Supramental Yoga. He had with him at Pondicherry a few young men, fellow-exiles from British India, all living in rather straitened circumstances. In October 1913, Sri Aurobindo moved from the small Mission Street residence to a far more spacious house - No. 41(now 33), Rue François Martin. Describing the house as it looked at the time Sri Aurobindo moved into it, Amrita writes:

In the interior of the house, at one end of the verandah there was a wide staircase leading to the first floor ... the house was big but it looked desolate.

The upper storey held spacious rooms and a spacious verandah .... On the west, at the corner there was a wide room, adjoining which was another room and then the open terrace .... The big room, the front room and the terrace - the three together being considered the best part of the house ­ were set apart for Sri Aurobindo.²⁹

In December 1913, attempts were made to make the place more habitable. The weeds were pulled out, electric lights were installed, some &ticks of furniture were inducted; and "the house put on almost a gay appearance because of these much-needed changes" ³⁰

It was .rumoured, continues Amrita, that' 'two Europeans had accepted Aurobindo as Guru ... two persons from the topmost cultural circle of France were coming to Sri Aurobindo for practising yoga". There was understandable excitement among the young disciples as also the revolutionaries (Subramania Bharati, V.V.S. Aiyar, Srinivasachariar, and others) who too had found political asylum in Pondicherry.

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VII

On 29 March 1914, the very day they arrived in Pondicherry from France Mirra and Paul Richard met Sri Aurobindo in the afternoon at 3.30. They were received at the top of the stairs that led up to the upstairs verandah. The moment Mirra had so ardently looked forward to had arrived at last, and there was a blaze of instantaneous recognition. Sri Aurobindo was clearly the Master of her occult life, the "Krishna" she had met so often in her dream-experiences. Their first meeting and the current of feelings that may have gone through them are echoed in these lines of Savitri:

Here first she met on the uncertain earth

The one for whom her heart had come so far.

Attracted as in heaven star by star,

They wondered at each other and rejoiced

And wove affinity in a silent gaze.

A moment passed that was eternity's ray,

An hour began, the matrix of new Time.³¹

There was hardly any conversation between them; indeed, there was no need. In K.D. Sethna's words:

Before meeting Sri Aurobindo she used to find for her various spiritual experiences and realisations a poise for life-work by giving them a mould with the enlightened mind. All kinds of powerful ideas she had for world­upliftment - ideas artistic, social, religious. At the sight of Sri Aurobindo she aspired to a total cessation of all mental moulds. She did not speak a word nor did he: she just sat at his feet and closed her eyes, keeping her mind open to him. After a while there came, from above, an infinite silence that settled in her mind. Everything was gone, all those fine and great ideas vanished and there was only a vacant imperturbable waiting for what was beyond mind.³²

There is also the report by Nolini Kanta Gupta about the Mother:

The first time Sri Aurobindo happened to describe her qualities, he said he had never seen anywhere a self-surrender so absolute and unreserved. He had added a comment that perhaps it was only women who were capable of giving themselves so entirely and with such sovereign ease. This implies a complete obliteration of the past, erasing it with its virtues and faults .... When she came here, she gave herself up to the Lord, Sri Aurobindo, with the candid simplicity of a child, after erasing from herself all her past, all her spiritual attainments, all the riches of her consciousness. Like a new­ born babe, she felt she possessed nothing, she was to learn everything right from the start, as if she had known or heard about nothing.³³

Her own recollection of the meeting, sixteen years after, was significant:

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When I first met Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry, I was in deep concentration, seeing things in the Supermind, things that were to be but which were somehow not manifesting. I told Sri Aurobindo what I had seen and asked him if they would manifest. He simply said, "Yes." And immediately I saw that the Supramental had touched the earth and was beginning to be realised! This was the first time I had witnessed the power to make real what is true.³⁴

It is probable that it was at one of the early meetings that Mirra asked her question about Samadhi', to which she was to refer forty years later:

When I came here, one of my first questions to Sri Aurobindo was: "What do you think of samadhi, that state of trance one does not remember? One enters into a condition which seems blissful, but when one comes out of it, one does not know at all what has happened." Then he looked at me, saw what I meant and told me, "It is unconsciousness." I asked him for an explanation .... He told me, "Yes, you enter into what is called samadhi when you go out of your conscious being and enter a part of your being which is completely unconscious, or rather a domain where you have no corresponding consciousness... a region where you are no longer conscious ... that is why, naturally, you remember nothing .... " So this reassured me and I said, "Well, this has never happened to me." He replied, "Nor to me"³⁵

VIII

It may be presumed, then, that when Sri Aurobindo and Mirra met on 29 March 1914, what passed between them was rather more of a wordless communion than any formal or detailed conversation. Writing with the available hindsight, K.D. Sethna comments on it as follows:

The meeting of the two represents the coming together of the necessary creative powers by whom a new age would be born. And it is to be noted that both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had been pursuing the inner life on essentially identical lines which would unite Spirit and Matter. So their joining of forces was the most natural thing. And it was not only a doubling of strengths but also a linking of complementaries. Sri Aurobindo's main movement of consciousness may be said to have been an immense Knowledge-Power from above the mind, though whatever was necessary for an integral spirituality was also there in one form or another. The Mother's chief movement may be said to have been an intense Love-Power from behind the heart, even if all else needed for an all-round Yoga was present as a ready accessory. When she and Sri Aurobindo met, they completed each other, brought fully into play the spiritual energies in both and started the work of total earth-transformation from high above and deep within.³⁶

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If Sri Aurobindo was an embodiment of the East-West synthesis and contained within himself "the multi-dimensional spiritual consciousness of India", Mirra was the finest flower of European culture with deep spiritual filiations with India and the East as also with Africa, and she incarnated "a practical genius of a rare order, with powers of wide yet precise organisation". Little wonder that they completed, when they met at last as if by divine dispensation, "the entire circle of the higher human activities" and were "supremely fitted to bring the East and the West together and, blending them, lead to a common all-consummating goal".³⁷ But all this marvellous possibility was only for the yet hidden future. In the immediate context, however, the one supreme gain was the mere fact of the coming together of two rare spiritual powers and personalities, each feeling vastly strengthened by the other. The Richards returned to their hotel in a condition of calm fulfilment and with a hope of exciting new possibilities. Mirra could withdraw into herself, assess the new turn in her life, and re dedicate herself to the Divine. Her deep-felt feelings found memorable expression in her diary-entry for 30 March 1914:

Gradually the horizon becomes distinct, the path grows clear, and we move towards a greater and greater certitude.

It matters little that there are thousands of beings plunged in the densest ignorance, He whom we saw yesterday is on earth; his presence is enough to prove that a day will come when darkness shall be transformed into light, and Thy reign shall be indeed established upon earth.

O Lord, Divine Builder of this marvel, my heart overflows with joy and gratitude when I think of it, and my hope has no bounds.

My adoration is beyond all words, my reverence is silent.³⁸

She had found in Sri Aurobindo a being who had "attained the perfect consciousness" and become integrally one of "Thy servitors", and it had seemed to her that she was "still far, very far from what I yearn to realise". But she was happy that a new Dawn in her life had arrived, and would now take her to the beckoning Noon. She recorded on 1 April:

A great joy, a deep peace reign in me, and yet all my inner constructions have vanished like a vain dream and I find myself now, before Thy immensity, without a frame or system, like a being not yet individualised. All the past in its external form seems ridiculously arbitrary to me, and yet I know it was useful in its own time.

But now all is changed: a new stage has begun.³⁹

The stress is on the new - the new bearings - the new orientations - the new alignment of forces in the service of the Divine. The old is not altogether annulled or annihilated; like organic filaments, they are but to be melted and moulded into the new instruments. The day has ended, the day has begun. In my beginning is my end; in my end is my beginning!

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Thus Mirra in her meditation on the morning of 2 April:

Every day, when I want to write, I am interrupted, as though the new period opening now before us were a period of expansion rather than of concentration.

And on the next day:

It seems to me that I am being born to a new life and all the methods, the habits of the past can no longer be of any use. It seems to me that what I thought were results is nothing more than a preparation .... It is as though I were stripped of my entire past, of its errors as well as its conquests, as though all that has vanished and made room for a new-born child whose whole existence is yet to be lived ....

An immense gratitude rises from my heart, it seems to m that I have at last reached the threshold I sought so much.⁴⁰

These diary-entries only corroborate Nolini's and Sethna's remarks quoted earlier: Mirra's absolute and unreserved surrender really meant "a complete obliteration of the past", ,and instead "an infinite silence settled in her mind".

IX

While such were Mirra's profoundest feelings, which amounted to a firm conviction of a climactic change in her life's direction, Richard was involved in the electioneering excitement. Early in April, Sri Aurobindo sent Richard's electoral declaration to Motilal Roy of Chandernagore asking for his support. Richard, said Sri Aurobindo, was a friend and a Yogin, and a believer in the resurrection of the Asiatic races, and his success in the election would be a very good thing. Sri Aurobindo added:

If Richard were to become deputy for French India, that would practically mean the same thing as myself being deputy for French India,⁴¹

This time, among Richard's opponents was Paul Bluysen on whose behalf he had campaigned four years earlier! With his clear vision, Sri Aurobindo knew also that "humanly speaking" there was no chance of Richard succeeding, for he had entered the field too late. His principal merit was that, if successful, he would be replacing "the old parochial and rotten politics of French India" by a "politics of principle."⁴²

In a subsequent letter, also to Motilal Roy, Sri Aurobindo referred to Richard's disabilities: "He has neither agent, nor committee, nor the backing of a single influential man." On the other hand, he had the sympathy and good wishes of the Hindus and Mahomedans of Pondicherry and Karikal. Even so it was patent that Richard was fighting against odds.

On 5 May Sri Aurobindo wrote to Motilal again. The election, as

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expected, went against Richard. Richard's votes in Pondicherry and Karikal were got rid of "by the simple process of reading Paul Bluysen wherever Paul Richard was printed"!⁴³ Sri Aurobindo described the many corrupt practices that had led to that debacle, but added that, notwithstanding the rebuff, Richard had decided to stay on for two years and work for the people:

He is trying to start an Association of the young men of Pondicherry and Karikal as a sort of training ground from which men can be chosen for the Vedantic Yoga.⁴⁴

Thus, within a matter of five weeks, the political decks had been cleared, and the way was opened for collaboration between Sri Aurobindo and Mirra and Paul Richard on the basis of "Vedantic Yoga".

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