Sri Aurobindo for All Ages

X: Coming of the Mother - “Arya” Review - World War I (1914-1920)

WITH the Mother's arrival, there was a mighty mingling of two vast streams of sadhana which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were pursuing individually. These now joined forever to mark the beginning of a new era of spiritual creation: 'An hour began, the matrix of new Time.' To help you understand this, a brief sketch giving the background of the Mother's life is perhaps necessary.

Like Sri Aurobindo's, the Mother's life was not lived on the surface for men to see and yet its outward events are of absorbing interest, for they do not follow a stereotyped pattern. But they can hardly be compressed and described in a few words, and here I can give you just an outline; I hope, however, it will serve as an inducement to you to know more about her.

Mirra Alfassa was born on February 21, 1878, in Paris, the second child of Maurice Alfassa, a Turkish banker from Adrianople and his Egyptian wife, Mathilde Ismaloun of Cairo. Both the families were of aristocratic descent. Their first child, Matteo, was born in 1876. A year later the Alfassas moved to Paris to settle there permanently, in due course becoming French nationals.

Mirra grew up in Paris where she spent the first part of her life. Even at the age of five, she had deep and unusual spiritual experiences and knew that she would not live an ordinary life but had a great mission to fulfil. In preparation for this mission, she consciously pursued a life of inner development at an age when other children spend their time playing.

Perhaps because of her preoccupation with the inner life she was late in learning to read and write but when she did begin the progress was rapid and her thirst for learning, understanding and knowing things was endless. Also, she had the keenest powers of observation. 'From my earliest childhood I have not stopped observing things,' she once said, and it was not only the objective world that she observed, sometimes identifying her consciousness with what she saw but also her own inner movements. Indeed from her very childhood she practised yoga, although she did not then give it that name.

Yet she was not indifferent to external pursuits. At the age of eight she started playing tennis, a game she continued to play until late in life. She always tried to play against the best players she could find. 'I never won,' she said, 'but I learnt much.'

Mirra had a natural disposition for occult experiences and by the time she was twelve she was practising occultism as a conscious discipline. She would go out of her body and enter strange worlds which were not always pleasant. But she was fearless. Talking about her experiences of this time she later said, 'But I must say I had no fear — I feared nothing. One goes out of one's body, one is tied by something resembling an almost imperceptible thread — if the thread is cut, it is all over.'

As the years passed Mirra became increasingly aware of the mission she was to fulfil on earth. In later years she was once asked when and how she became conscious of this mission and in reply she stated:

Tor the knowledge of the mission, it is difficult to say when it came to me. It is as though I was born with it, and following the growth of the mind and the brain, the precision and completeness of this consciousness grew also.

Between eleven and thirteen a series of psychic and spiritual experiences revealed to me not only the existence of God but man's possibility of uniting with Him, of realising Him integrally in consciousness and action, of manifesting Him upon earth in a life divine. This, along with a practical discipline for its fulfilment, was given to me during my body's sleep by several teachers, some of whom I met afterwards on the physical plane.

Later on, as the interior and exterior development proceeded the spiritual and psychic relation with one of these beings became more and more clear and frequent; and although I knew little of the Indian philosophies and religions at that time, I was led to call him Krishna, and henceforth I was aware that it was with him (whom I knew I should meet on earth one day) that the divine work was to be done.' And you already know that as soon as she first saw Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry she recognised him as the being she used to call Krishna.

In her sixteenth year Mirra joined a studio to learn drawing and painting, completing her training at the well-known Academie Julian. She became so accomplished a painter that her works were exhibited in the French Salon along with those of the great artists of the time — Renoir, Cezanne and others. She also developed a deep and abiding interest in music and played the organ with an inspired touch.

In October 1897 Mirra married Henri Morisset, a disciple of the painter Gustave Moreau. Their son, Andre, was born the following year in August. The next few years of her life were spent in a creative environment of highly gifted artists. It was an experience that enabled her to understand their ways of life and also gave her many insights into the creative process. She also read widely, knew thoroughly the museums, castles, and historical buildings of France and Italy and, generally, her culture acquired a breadth, refinement and diversity, altogether rare.

Through all these experiences her preoccupation with the inner life continued, but she never made the usual distinction between the spiritual and the mundane, separating the two into watertight compartments. All life is Yoga', Sri Aurobindo has said, and truly it was so with Mirra. She had by this time come across translations of some Indian scriptures and she was introduced to the Gita by a visiting Indian. It was a poor translation but Mirra was able intuitively to enter into its spirit. However, it was not on books or scriptures that she relied nor did she have a preceptor to guide her: she relied entirely on her own experiences which infallibly led her along the destined path.

During this period Mirra became the nucleus around whom a small group of spiritual seekers in Paris started meeting. The group was named Idea. Papers were read at the meetings and sometimes Mirra would discourse on her experiences. The members of this group were intensely interested in the future of humanity and in finding harmonious solutions to the immense problems that besieged it, but rejected the panaceas offered by the established religions. Indeed Mirra never had any belief in the conventional Gods of the religions, the One-God-on-high; it was the God within that she always sought. One of the members of her study group in Paris was Madame Alexandra David-Neel who became well known as a Tibetologist. In later years she used these words in speaking of the Mother of those early days:

'We spent marvellous evenings together with friends, believing in a great future. At times we went to the Bois de Boulogne gardens, and watched the grasshopper-like early aeroplanes take off.

‘I remember her elegance, her accomplishments, her intellect endowed with mystical tendencies.

In spite of her great love and sweetness, in spite even of her inherent ease of making herself forgotten after achieving some noble deed, she couldn't manage to hide very well the tremendous force she bore within herself.'

Around 1906 Mirra came in contact with Max Theon, a Polish exile who was a great adept in occultism. His wife Alma was also highly gifted spiritually. They lived in Tlemcen, a small town in Algeria on the border of the Sahara desert. This meeting with Theon strengthened Mirra's resolve to study occultism in greater depth and for the next two years she spent much of her time in Tlemcen. She went through a great many experiences there, a few of which she recounted in later years. These may be found among her writings. They reveal the existence of realms of consciousness, beings and forces which we ordinarily cannot even conceive of, and also how it is possible to bring such forces under control. However, the Mother always said that occult knowledge without spiritual discipline is a dangerous instrument, both for the one who uses it and for others, but so sure and strong were her own spiritual foundations that no harm could touch her during these years of study and experiment. I should also emphasise here that for the Mother occultism was a means of service to the Divine, never a mere play with invisible forces or a performance of so-called miracles.

By 1908 Mirra had settled down in Paris once again. In the same year her marriage with Henri Morisset was dissolved and she moved to a new apartment at 41, rue de Levis. It was the beginning of another period when she met many students and seekers, groups and individuals, who were in search of spiritual truth and helped them to face their problems of life and work. In 1910 she married Paul Richard, a brilliant intellectual who was deeply interested in both Western and Eastern spirituality. When Richard returned to Paris after his visit to India and she first heard of Sri Aurobindo from him, she felt irresistibly drawn to that country and felt that her destiny was linked with it.

Sometime during 1912 the Mother started keeping a kind of diary in which she wrote down her aspirations and experiences. From these diaries which continued over several years, a small selection was later translated into English, some of it by Sri Aurobindo himself, and published under the title Prayers and Meditations. As spiritual literature, it is an incomparable treasure but the Mother set such small store by her writings that the bulk of the diaries was destroyed by her.

In 1912 Mirra was closely associated with a group of seekers named Cosmique. It was a small group of about twelve persons who met once a week. A subject was given in advance and short papers on it were then read at the meeting. At the first gathering Mirra read out her paper. The subject was: What is the aim to be achieved, the work to be done, the means of achievement?

Here is the answer given by the Mother:

‘The general aim to be achieved is the advent of a progressive universal harmony.

'In regard to the earth, the means of achieving this aim is the realisation of human unity by the awakening in all and the manifestation by all of the inner Divinity, who is one.

‘In other words: to create unity by establishing the kingdom of God which is in all.

‘Hence, the most useful work to be done is:

1) For everyone individually the becoming aware in oneself of the divine Presence and one's identification with it.

2) The individualisation of states of being which have so far never been conscious in man and, consequently, the putting the earth into touch with one of several sources of universal force which are yet sealed to it.

3) To speak to the world, under a new form adapted to the present state of its mentality, the eternal word.

‘4) Collectively, to found the ideal society in a place suited to the flowering of the new race, that of "the Sons of God".'

Remember that the Mother had not yet met Sri Aurobindo nor had she read any of his writings. Yet this programme was almost on identical lines with the one being worked out by Sri Aurobindo at that time in Pondicherry.

With the year 1914 the opportunity came at last for Mirra to visit India. Paul Richard had decided to stand for a seat in the French Parliament from Pondicherry, which was a separate constituency. He had been in correspondence with Sri Aurobindo and doubtless the prospect of meeting him again was also an important consideration for Richard — certainly it was paramount with Mirra.

On March 6, 1914, Paul and Mirra Richard boarded the Japanese ship Kaga Maru. They left the boat at Colombo and, crossing over to the mainland, arrived by train at Pondicherry in the early hours of March 29. At 3.30 in the afternoon the Mother met Sri Aurobindo for the first time. Richard and Mirra came to his new residence at 41, rue Francois Martin. Sri Aurobindo was expecting them and received them at the top of the stairs. Mirra instantly recognised him as the 'Krishna' she had met so often in her visions.

On the next day, March 30, Mirra wrote in her diary: '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....'

Years later, Barin, Sri Aurobindo's younger brother, asked him: 'The Mother has written in her Prayers what she felt after she saw you. But what was your feeling when you saw the Mother?' Sri Aurobindo paused for a moment and told him: 'That was the first time I knew that perfect surrender down to the last physical cell was humanly possible; it was when the Mother came and bowed down that I saw that perfect surrender in action.'

The spiritual significance of this meeting between Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is immeasurable and will reveal itself progressively through developments and manifestations in time. Superficially, it represented a meeting of the East and West but Sri Aurobindo himself was an embodiment of the East-West synthesis and the Mother a living expression of the finest flower of European culture along with spiritual affiliations with the East. No, the significance runs deeper. Once we asked Sri Aurobindo, 'The Mother's coming must have greatly helped you in your work and in your sadhana, did it not?' He replied, 'Of course. All my realisations — Nirvana and others — would have remained theoretical as it were, so far as the outer world was concerned. It is the Mother who showed the way to a practical form. Without her, no organised manifestation would have been possible.' And this is echoed in the Mother's profound words: 'Without him I exist not, without me he is unmanifest. '

Richard and Mirra took up residence at 3, rue Dupleix, not far from Sri Aurobindo's house on rue Francois Martin. Mirra used to call on Sri Aurobindo daily in the afternoon between 4 and 4.30, bringing with her some sweets she had prepared for him. Later they would be joined by Richard who was busy with his election campaign. Once a week, on Sundays, Sri Aurobindo went across to the Richards in the evening for dinner. Nolini and the other young men would also come after their game of football. There was much to plan and discuss and sometimes the talks went on till late at night.

Sri Aurobindo gave his support to Richard in electioneering but knew that 'humanly speaking' he could hardly win. He had entered the field too late but, even otherwise, Pondicherry politics was so corrupt that an honest candidate had little chance of succeeding. So, not unexpectedly, the election went against Richard. In a letter to Motilal Roy at the time, Sri Aurobindo wrote that Richard's votes in some centres were got rid of 'by the simple process of reading Paul Bluysen (Richard's opponent) wherever Paul Richard was printed'! However, despite his defeat, Richard had succeeded in enlisting the support of many young men. And he decided to stay on in Pondicherry to work amongst them, and in order to give a positive shape to this work, he started a society called lid& Nouvelle (The New Idea) in which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were both actively involved. For the Mother it was indeed a continuation of the work she had been doing in Paris. The object of the society was, in Sri Aurobindo's words, 'to group in a common intellectual life and fraternity of sentiment those who accept the spiritual tendency and idea it represents and who aspire to realise it in their own individual and social action'. All sectarian and political questions were considered foreign to its idea and activities and the society had two rules only for its members: first, to devote some time every day for meditation and self-culture and, secondly, to use or create daily at least one opportunity of being helpful to others. The society had its headquarters at Pondicherry, with a reading room and a library, and had a branch at Karikal.

But Paul Richard's biggest contribution, by far, was to suggest and help in bringing out the Arya. Reminiscing about this, Sri Aurobindo recounted: 'Richard came and said, "Let us have a synthesis of knowledge." I said "All right. Let us synthesise."'

Even today, when Sri Aurobindo's writings are becoming more and more widely known throughout the world, not many know about the Arya and the stupendous achievement it represents. It was a monthly philosophical journal which came out uninterruptedly from August 1914 to January 1921 and it was in this review that Sri Aurobindo, within a period of six and a half years, published all his major works, with the exception of his epic poem Savitri. In June 1914, when the decision to bring out the journal was taken, Sri Aurobindo wrote to Motilal Roy: In this Review my new theory of the Veda will appear as also translation and explanation of the Upanishads, a series of essays giving my system of Yoga and a book of Vedantic philosophy (not Shankara's but Vedic Vedanta) giving the Upanishadic foundations of my theory of the ideal life towards which humanity must move. You will see so far as my share is concerned, it will be the intellectual side of my work for the world.'

The first issue of the Arya came out on August 15, 1914, Sri Aurobindo's forty-second birthday. On the cover page the names of Sri Aurobindo Ghose and Paul and Mirra Richard appeared as Editors. Simultaneously, a French publication called 'Revue de la Grande Synthese', consisting mainly of translations from the Arya was brought out. In explaining the object of the Arya Sri Aurobindo wrote that it will be, firstly, 'a systematic study of the highest problems of existence' and, secondly, 'the formation of a vast synthesis of knowledge, harmonising the diverse religious traditions of humanity, occidental as well as oriental.' He wrote further that 'its object is to feel out for the thought of the future, to help in shaping its foundations and to link it to the best and most vital thought of the past.' Sri Aurobindo also explained the significance of the word 'Arya'. 'The word in its original use,' he wrote, 'expressed not a difference of race, but a difference of culture. For the Aryan peoples are those who had accepted a particular type of self-culture, of inward and outward practice, of ideality and aspiration.... Intrinsically, in its most fundamental sense, Arya means an effort or an uprising and overcoming. The Aryan is he who strives and overcomes all outside him and within him that stands opposed to the human advance. Self-conquest is the first law of his nature.' The word was later corrupted by Hitler who made it a symbol of racial superiority and arrogance, the Aryan representing the blond Nordic race who would be masters of the world. It was as if Sri Aurobindo anticipated the danger of such corruption and therefore wished to record the true meaning of the word.

The first issue of the Arya set its tone and character. It contained the opening chapter of The Life Divine, which still occupies the pride of place among Sri Aurobindo's prose writings, as well as the first instalments of two other major sequences, The Secret of the Veda and The Synthesis of Yoga. Paul Richard also contributed with The Eternal Wisdom, a selection of the finest thoughts of the world's seers, saints and savants, and the Where fore of the Worlds in which he commenced a fundamental enquiry into the origin and evolution of the worlds. Mirra helped with the translations from the Arya for the French Revue, took care of the accounts, maintained in her own hand the subscribers' list (there were about 200 subscribers to begin with), saw the two reviews through the press.

In the meantime, the war was spreading in Europe affecting the lives of millions and it inevitably threw its shadow on Richard and Mirra for it soon became clear that they would have to return to France. Richard was in the Reserve list of the Army and Mirra had her own calls to duty. So, in spite of their deep commitment to the Arya and l'Idee Nouvelle, the decision to go had to be taken. In her diary entries we find expressions of Mirra's anguish but also of her unquestioning surrender to the Lord in trustfulness and readiness to accept whatever might come to her.

After a modest celebration of her birthday on February 21, 1915, Mirra and Richard left for France the next day and, with their departure, the entire burden of bringing out the Arya fell on Sri Aurobindo. However, although the French Revue had to be discontinued, there was no interruption in the publication of even a single issue of the Arya.

Let us now take a look at the major sequences that Sri Aurobindo wrote for the Arya. These were:

The Life Divine — August 1914 to January 1919

The Synthesis of Yoga — August 1914 to January 1921

The Secret of the Veda— August 1914 to July 1916

Isha Upanishad— August 1914 to May 1915

Kena Upanishad— June 1915 to July 1916

The Ideal of Human Unity— September 1915 to July 1918

Essays on the Gita (First Series) — August 1916 to July 1918

The Psychology of Social Development— August 1916 to July 1918 (later published as The Human Cycle)

The Future Poetry— December 1917 to July 1920

Essays on the Gita (Second Series) — August 1918 to July 1920

The Renaissance in India— August 1918 to November 1918

Is India Civilised?— December 1918 to February 1919

A Rationalistic Critic of Indian Culture — February 1919 to July 1919

A Defence of Indian Culture — August 1919 to January 1921

The last three series were later published under one title as The Foundations of Indian Culture.

In 1918, at the end of the fourth year of the Arya, Sri Aurobindo reviewed all that had appeared in the journal up to then in order to bring out the underlying plan which was partly obscured by the fact that some of the sequences appeared simultaneously and all were written serially. I will give you some extracts from this review so that you may better appreciate his integral vision.

‘We start from the idea', he wrote, 'that humanity is moving to a great change of its life which will even lead to a new life of the race, — in all countries where men think, there is now in various forms that idea and that hope, — and our aim has been to search for the spiritual, religious and other truth which can enlighten and guide the race in this movement and endeavour.... All philosophy is concerned with the relations between two things, the fundamental truth of existence and the forms in which existence presents itself to our experience. The deepest experience shows that the fundamental truth is truth of the Spirit; the other is the truth of life, truth of form and shaping force and living idea and action. Here the West and East have followed divergent lines. The West has laid most emphasis on truth of life and for a time came to stake its whole existence upon truth of life alone, to deny the existence of Spirit or to relegate it to the domain of the unknown and unknowable; from that exaggeration it is now beginning to return. The East has laid most emphasis on truth of the Spirit and for a time came, at least in India, to stake its whole existence upon that truth alone, to neglect the possibilities of life or to limit it to a narrow development or a fixed status; the East too is beginning to return from this exaggeration. The West is reawaking to the truth of the Spirit and the spiritual possibilities of life, the East is reawaking to the truth of Life and tends towards a new application to it of its spiritual knowledge.'

In Sri Aurobindo's view, the antinomy created between the East and the West is an unreal one. He writes: 'Spirit being the fundamental truth of existence, life can be only its manifestation; Spirit must be not only the origin of life but its basis, its pervading reality and its highest and total result. But the forms of life as they appear to us are at once its disguises and its instruments of self-manifestation. Man has to grow in knowledge till they cease to be disguises and grow in spiritual power and quality till they become in him its perfect instruments. To grow into the fullness of the divine is the true law of human life and to shape his earthly existence into its image is the meaning of his evolution. This is the fundamental tenet of the philosophy of the Arya.

Sri Aurobindo then explained how this central truth has been considered from different aspects in his writings. 'This truth', he wrote, 'had to be worked out first of all from- the metaphysical point of view; for in philosophy metaphysical truth is the nucleus of the rest, it is the statement of the last and most general truths on which all the others depend or in which they are gathered up. Therefore we gave the first place to the "Life Divine".' To quote him further: It was necessary to show that these truths were not inconsistent with the old Vedantic truths, therefore we included explanations from this point of view of the Veda, two of the Upanishads and the Gita. But the Veda has been obscured by the ritualists and scholiasts. Therefore we showed in a series of articles, initially only as yet, the way of writing of the Vedic mystics, their system of symbols and the truths they figure. Among the Upanishads we took the Isha and the Kena; to be full we should have added the Taittiriya, but it is a long one and for it we had no space. The Gita we are treating as a powerful application of truth of spirit to the largest and most difficult part of the truth of life, to action, and a way by which action can lead us to birth into the Spirit and can be harmonised with the spiritual life. Truth of philosophy is of a merely theoretical value unless it can be lived, and we have therefore tried in the "Synthesis of Yoga" to arrive at a synthetical view of the principles and methods of the various lines of spiritual self-discipline and the way in which they can lead to an integral divine life in the human existence. But this is an individual self-development, and therefore it was necessary to show too how our ideal can work out in the social life of mankind. In the "Psychology of Social Development" we have indicated how these truths affect the evolution of human society. In the "Ideal of Human Unity" we have taken the present trend of mankind towards a closer unification and tried to appreciate its tendencies and show what is wanting to them in order that real human unity may be achieved.'

I hope you can now see more clearly the wonderful mosaic that constitutes Sri Aurobindo's writings. I would also ask you to read the series of essays he wrote during the closing years of the Arya on the foundations and main-springs of Indian culture and civilisation. Through these interpretations he has given us a vision of India which needs to be shared by his countrymen, if India is to help and play her rightful role in the advancement of humanity. Let me give you just one quotation from The Renaissance in India: 'Spirituality is indeed the master-key of the Indian mind; the sense of the infinite is native to it. India saw from the beginning, — and, even in her ages of reason and her age of increasing ignorance, she never lost hold of the insight, — that life cannot be rightly seen in the sole light, cannot be perfectly lived in the sole power of its externalities. She was alive to the greatness of material laws and forces; she had a keen eye for the importance of the physical sciences; she knew how to organise the arts of ordinary life. But she saw that the physical does not get its full sense until it stands in right relation to the supra-physical; she saw that the complexity of the universe could not be explained in the present terms of man or seen by his superficial sight, that there were other powers behind, other powers within man himself of which he is normally unaware, that he is conscious only of a small part of himself, that the invisible always surrounds the visible, the supra-sensible the sensible, even as infinity always surrounds the finite. She saw too that man has the power of exceeding himself, of becoming himself more entirely and profoundly than he is, — truths which have only recently begun to be seen in Europe and seem even now too great for its common intelligence. She saw the myriad gods beyond man, God beyond the gods, and beyond God his own ineffable eternity; she saw that there were ranges of life beyond our life, ranges of mind beyond our present mind and above these she saw the splendours of the spirit. Then with that calm audacity of her intuition which knew no fear or littleness and shrank from no act whether of spiritual or intellectual, ethical or vital courage, she declared that there was none of these things which man could not attain if he trained his will and knowledge; he could conquer these ranges of mind, become the spirit, become a'god, become one with God, become the ineffable Brahman. And with the logical practicality and sense of science and organised method which distinguished her mentality, she set forth immediately to find out the way. Hence from long ages of this insight and practice there was ingrained in her her spirituality, her powerful psychic tendency, her great yearning to grapple with the infinite and possess it, her ineradicable religious sense, her idealism, her Yoga, the constant turn of her art and her philosophy.' It has been a long quotation but, carried away by its magnificence, I did not know where to stop!

How is it possible, you may now ask, for one person, howsoever gifted, to write on such diverse subjects, all concerned with the highest reaches of human vision and thought, month after month without the inspiration flagging, without any discontinuity in the arguments and in a language which one of his English disciples Arjava (J.A. Chadwick) aptly described as 'global', a word which was new when Arjava used it? Moreover, Sri Aurobindo did not write in book form, at leisure and with the advantage of making changes and corrections as necessary, but in serial instalments as if he were writing a novel for a popular magazine! I, for one, do not know of any comparable instance in the sphere of journalism, literature or philosophy. There is another question: How could Sri Aurobindo, who never made a deep study of philosophy write a philosophical masterpiece such as The Life Divine? Sri Aurobindo himself has given us the answer to these questions. Nothing that he wrote, he explained, was the result of strenuous individual effort or intense intellectual activity, but was the outcome of the Yogic Force he had developed through his sadhana. Once, in a mood of doubt and scepticism, I wrote to him that too much is made of Yoga-Force and that for any real and remarkable achievement the main issue is to be born with the capacity and then to have the determination to develop it; and I concluded, '...then Force or no Force, one will have the result. Well?' In his characteristic way, he parried my question with one of his own: 'How was it that I who was unable to understand and follow a metaphysical argument and whom a page of Kant or Hegel or Hume or even Berkeley left either dazed and uncomprehending and fatigued or totally uninterested because I could not fathom or follow, suddenly began writing pages of the stuff as soon as I started the Arya and alit now reputed to be a great philosopher? Kindly reflect a little and don't talk facile nonsense. Even if a thing can be done in a moment or a few days by Yoga which would ordinarily take a long, "assiduous, sincere and earnest" cultivation, that would of itself show the power of the Yoga force. But here a faculty that did not exist appears quickly and spontaneously or impotence changes into highest potency or an obstructed talent changes with equal rapidity into fluent and facile sovereignty. If you deny that evidence, no evidence will convince you, because you are determined to think otherwise.' Also, in a letter to another disciple, Dilip Kumar Roy, he wrote: 'And philosophy! Let me tell you in confidence that I never, never, never was a philosopher — although I have written philosophy which is another story altogether. I knew precious little about philosophy before I did the Yoga and came to Pondicherry —I was a poet and a politician, not a philosopher. How I managed to do it and why? First, because Richard proposed to me to cooperate in a philosophical review — and as my theory was that a Yogi ought to be able to turn his hand to anything, I could not very well refuse; and then he had to go to the war and left me in the lurch with sixty-four pages a month of philosophy all to write by my lonely self. Secondly, because I had only to write down in the terms of the intellect all that I had observed and come to know in practising Yoga daily and the philosophy was there automatically. But that is not being a philosopher!' And the Mother has explained: 'Sri Aurobindo began writing the Arya in 1914. It was neither a mental knowledge nor even a mental creation which he transcribed: he silenced his mind and sat at the typewriter, and from above, from the higher planes, all that had to be written came down, all ready, and he had only to move his fingers on the typewriter and it was transcribed. It was in this state of mental silence which allows the knowledge — and even the expression —from above to pass through that he wrote the whole Arya, with its sixty-four printed pages a month. This is why, besides, he could do it, for if it had been a mental work of construction it would have been quite impossible.'

One more word about the Arya. When it was being planned, Richard reckoned on getting as a start 200 subscribers in France for the French edition and Sri Aurobindo wrote to Motilal Roy about the English edition: 'Let .us try 250 subscribers to start with, with the ideal of having 800 to 1000 in the first year. If these subscribers can be got before the Review starts, we shall have a sound financial foundation to start with. The question is, can they be got?' In the event, even 250 subscribers could not be secured from Bengal and, after the Richards' departure, the French Revue had to be discontinued. However, although the original targets could not be achieved, the Arya did not incur any financial loss but, in fact, earned a surplus which was a considerable help towards meeting Sri Aurobindo's establishment expenses. Sri Aurobindo did not expect a large public response and wrote in a letter that 'the Arya presents a new philosophy and a new method of Yoga and everything that is new takes time to get a hearing.' There were, however, a few deserving readers who recognised the great truths which were being formulated in the Arya and which, with the passage of time, have gained increasing acceptance. Moreover, the fact that the Arya appeared at a time when the First World War broke out cannot be dismissed as a mere coincidence. In the subtle world of thought the Arya represented a counterpoise of spiritual knowledge and harmony against the vibrations let loose by the senseless destruction of the war.

With France and England fighting side by side as allies in Europe, relations between the Governments of French and British India improved with the result that the latter made renewed efforts to deal with the swadeshi revolutionaries in Pondicherry who were a thorn in their flesh. There was an attempt at this time to get the French Government to agree to extradite Sri Aurobindo. The Mother was then still in Pondicherry. Years afterwards we heard from her that, on coming to know of this threat, she wrote to her brother who was then a highly placed Government official in Paris (later he became the Governor of one of the French colonies) to see if he could intervene in any way. He succeeded in preventing Sri Aurobindo's dossier from reaching the higher authorities and eventually the matter went no further. However, throughout the war years, the Government of India kept a specially close watch on the swadeshis. You will remember that, shortly after the outbreak of the war, Nolini, Saurin and Suresh had returned to Pondicherry from their visit to Bengal. Bijoy now wished to pay a brief visit also, although Sri Aurobindo warned him of the danger; and it turned out that, immediately he crossed the border, he was arrested and kept in jail for the duration of the war.

After arriving in France the Mother became seriously ill, her physical body reflecting the sufferings of the war-ravaged world. In April she left Paris and went to Lunel in the South of France where she spent the next six months. Her diary entries reveal that even during her illness she continued through her sadhana to exert an occult influence on men and events. There was some correspondence between Sri Aurobindo and her during this period, touching generally upon their common spiritual quest and goal and the inevitable struggles and vicissitudes of their unprecedented Yoga. Perhaps it was at this time that there was a suggestion that their Yoga could be better pursued in a place less exposed to British interference than Pondicherry, for in a letter to the Mother on May 6, 1915, Sri Aurobindo wrote: 'The whole earth is now under one law and answers to the same vibrations and I am sceptical of finding any place where the clash of the struggle will not pursue us. In any case, an effective retirement does not seem to be my destiny. I must remain in touch with the world until I have either mastered adverse circumstances or succumbed or carried on the struggle between the spiritual and the physical so far as I am destined to carry it on....

‘One needs to have a calm heart, a settled will, entire self-abnegation and the eyes constantly fixed on the beyond to live undiscouraged in times like these which are truly a period of universal decomposition. For myself, I follow the Voice.... The result is not mine and hardly at all now even the labour.' He wrote again on May 20: 'Heaven we have possessed, but not the earth; but the fullness of the Yoga is to make, in the formula of the Veda, "Heaven and Earth equal and one."' These words are almost repeated in the Mother's diary entry on July 31: 'The heavens are definitely conquered, and nothing and nobody could have the power of wresting them from me. But the conquest of the earth has still to be made; it is being carried on in the very heart of the turmoil....' On July 28, in another letter, Sri Aurobindo drew a parallel between the spiritual conflict within and the world conflict without: 'Everything internal is ripe or ripening, but there is a sort of locked struggle in which neither side can make a very appreciable advance (somewhat like the trench warfare in Europe), the spiritual force insisting against the resistance of the physical world, that resistance disputing every inch and making more or less effective counter-attacks.... And if there were not the strength and Ananda within, it would be harassing and disgusting work; but the eye of knowledge looks beyond and sees that it is only a protracted episode.'

The strength and Ananda did indeed prevail, for an aura of great peace and serenity surrounded Sri Aurobindo. Outwardly his life followed a more or less regular routine. He read the Hindu in the mornings, met special visitors before lunch, wrote out his articles for the Arya whenever he could find time, received his close associates (Bharati, Srinivasachari and a few others) in the evenings and had dinner usually at nine. To the small group of young men who lived with him he was friend, comrade, teacher, chief and Guru but his own relations with those around him in the house were more of a friend and companion than of a Guru. In his behaviour with others he treated everyone as his equal including the servants. Once, it appears, his foot touched a young associate accidentally; immediately he sat up and said: 'I beg your pardon.' On another occasion, a press compositor had brought the proofs late because of his drunkenness and when he was being berated by one of the inmates, Sri Aurobindo came out and said: 'You have no right to interfere in his personal life. It is meaningless to give him advice. He has perfect freedom to drink. What you should tell him is to observe the terms of his service and bring the proofs regularly.'

During this period the number of visitors started increasing. A Danish painter, Johannes Hohlenberg, came and did a portrait of Sri Aurobindo. In 1916 Khaserao Jadhav, Sri Aurobindo's old friend from Baroda came specially to meet him. A young but regular visitor was K. Amudan, whom Sri Aurobindo later gave the name 'Amrita', who first came in 1913 when he was still a school boy. Soon he was an ardent disciple and by 1919 he had become a member of the household. When the Ashram came into being, he was to render invaluable service and was one of the Mother's most devoted workers. Another notable visitor was T.V. Kapali Sastry, an extraordinary scholar and initiate. He used to read the Arya from cover to cover as soon as an issue came out and, having fallen under its spell, he called on Sri Aurobindo in 1917. An adept in various branches of learning — Veda, Tantra, Ayurveda, Astrology etc., he was also a philosopher and poet. Later he joined the Ashram and was a widely respected figure.

Let me now return to France briefly. In November 1915 the Mother left Lunel and came back to her home in Paris. But this was to be a short stay. Richard was given an important assignment in Japan. Mirra decided to accompany him and on March 13, 1916, they set sail from London. The Mother was to stay in Japan for the next four years. Here it will not be possible to dwell on her many experiences in Japan and I shall merely mention that they were a perfect preparation for the great work ahead of her on her return to India. Incidentally, when Rabindranath Tagore visited Japan in 1919 he met the Mother. The poet was so impressed by her personality that he requested her to come to Shantiniketan and take charge of the institution. The Mother could not accept the offer as she knew that although her field of work was India, the centre was not Shantiniketan.

Before leaving for Japan, the Mother had sent some funds for the purpose of starting the 'Aryan Stores' to be managed by Saurin. It was expected to provide a modest income for Sri Aurobindo's household. The store was opened in September 1916 and Sri Aurobindo was present at the opening ceremony. However, this business experiment did not make much headway and the financial position continued to be difficult throughout these years. On a deeper plane, these difficulties were only an outer sign of the larger struggle against anti-divine forces which had ranged themselves to thwart Sri Aurobindo's sadhana. In Sri Aurobindo's view, money is a universal force which in its origin and true action belongs to the Divine but it has been usurped for the purposes of ego and held by hostile influences and perverted to their purpose. In the course of a conversation Sri Aurobindo once said: 'As the money-power today is in the hands of the hostile forces, naturally, we have to fight them. Whenever they see that you are trying to oust them they will try to thwart your efforts. You have to bring a higher power than these and put them down.'

After reaching Japan it seems that the Mother wrote to Sri Aurobindo mentioning some difficulties or recoils in a particular phase of her sadhana. In a long reply dated June 26, 1916, Sri Aurobindo explained the special difficulties which were inherent in their Yoga and in the course of this letter he wrote: 'The ordinary Yoga is usually concentrated on a single aim and therefore less exposed to such recoils; ours is so complex and many-sided and embraces such large aims that we cannot expect any smooth progress until we near the completion of an effort, —especially as all the hostile forces in the spiritual world are in a constant state of opposition and besiege our gains; for the complete victory of a single one of us would mean a general downfall among them. In fact by our own unaided effort we could not hope to succeed. It is only in proportion as we come into a more and more universal communion with the Highest that we can hope to overcome with any finality.... The final goal is far but the progress made in the face of so constant and massive an opposition is the guarantee of its being gained in the end. But the time is in other hands than ours. Therefore I have put impatience and dissatisfaction far away from me.'

In 1917 Sri Aurobindo had another visitor, B. Shiva Rao, who was the secretary of Mrs. Annie Besant, leader of the Home Rule Movement at that time. More than fifty years later, Shiva Rao wrote an interesting account of that meeting: 'The Home Rule Movement was at that time quickly gathering support and vitality mainly as a result of the war-time internments. Some of us who were on the staff of New India went out on trips to build up a campaign of organisation. One of these trips took me to Pondicherry where Sri Aurobindo had made his home after leaving Bengal in 1910. Even in those early days there was an atmosphere of great peace and serenity about him which left on me a deep, enduring impression. He spoke softly, almost in whispers. He thought Mrs. Besant was absolutely right in preaching Home Rule for India, as well as in her unqualified support of the Allies in the First World War against Germany....'

In 1918, when it was apparent that the war was coming to an end, the British Government announced the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms which were meant as a step towards self-government for India. In response to a request from Mrs. Besant for an opinion on the reform proposals, Sri Aurobindo wrote a letter which was published in New India on August 10, 1918. He described the proposal as a 'cleverly constructed Chinese puzzle' and added that 'even a three days' examination has failed to discover in them one atom of real power given to these new legislatures.... On the other hand, new and most dangerous irresponsible powers are assumed by the Government. How, under the circumstances, is acceptance possible?' He concluded: 'The struggle cannot be avoided; it can only be evaded for the moment, and if you evade it now, you will have it tomorrow or the day after, with the danger of its taking a more virulent form.' The letter was not signed by Sri Aurobindo but appeared under the name, 'An Indian Nationalist'. As a rule, he refrained from making public pronouncements on the issues of the day. His Yoga had now assumed vast dimensions and he preferred to concentrate his Force on planes, occult or hidden from us, to bring about the changes he sought.

I shall give you an example of his pre-vision of events to come. In December 1918, Ambalal B. Purani (you may remember his name — he was an early disciple of Sri Aurobindo, who later became one of his personal attendants and also his biographer) came to Pondicherry for the first time. Sri Aurobindo knew about this young man through his elder brother Chhotalal, to whom Sri Aurobindo had given a revolutionary programme in 1908 at Baroda. Ambalal himself was an ardent nationalist and revolutionary but after reading the Arya he was also interested in sadhana and wrote to Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo gave Purani an interview which he has recounted fully in his biography of Sri Aurobindo. I shall give you extracts from it, for it is indeed a remarkable record.

After Purani had described his efforts at sadhana and the organisation their group had set up for revolutionary work, the 'dialogue was as follows:

Purani: Sadhana is all right, but it is difficult to concentrate on it so long as India is not free.

Sri Aurobindo: Perhaps it may not be necessary to resort to revolutionary activities to free India.

Purani: But without that how is the British government to go from India?

Sri Aurobindo: That is another question; but if India can be free without revolutionary activity, why should you execute the plan?

It is better to concentrate on yoga — spiritual practice.

Purani: But India is a land that has sadhana in its blood. When India is free, I believe thousands will devote themselves to yoga. But in the world today who will listen to the truth or spirituality of slaves?

Sri Aurobindo: India has already decided to win freedom and so there will certainly be found leaders and men to work for that goal. But all are not called to yoga. So, when you have the call, is it not better to concentrate upon it?...

Purani: But even supposing that I admit and agree to sadhana, that is, yoga, as being of greater importance and even intellectually understand that I should concentrate upon it, my difficulty is that I feel intensely that I must do something for the freedom of India. I have been unable to sleep soundly for the last two years and a half. I can remain quiet if I make a very strong effort. But the concentration of my whole being turns towards India's freedom. It is difficult for me to sleep till that is secured.

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?' I could feel the echo of doubt and challenge in my own question.

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, considered the question within myself, and said: If you give the assurance, I can accept it.'

Sri Aurobindo: Then I give you the assurance that India will be free.

As the year 1918 was drawing to a close, the sad news of Mrinalini's death at Calcutta reached Sri Aurobindo. She had fallen a victim to the virulent influenza epidemic which ravaged the world after the war and died suddenly on December 17, 1918., We heard later that a framed photograph of Mrinalini in Sri Aurobindo's room fell down during a spell of rain and storm at this time.

Mrinalini had received permission from Sri Aurobindo to come to Pondicherry and was in fact making preparations to do so when death intervened. During her years of separation from Sri Aurobindo she had borne her trials with great fortitude and steadfast devotion to her husband.

There is a letter dated February 19, 1919 from Sri Aurobindo to his father-in-law, Bhupal Chandra Bose, which allows us a glimpse of the depths of Sri Aurobindo's feelings. It reads:

‘My dear father-in-law,

I have not written to you with regard to this fatal event in both our lives; words are useless in face of the feelings it has caused, if even they can ever express our deepest emotions. God has seen good to lay upon me the one sorrow that could still touch me to the centre. He knows better than ourselves what is best for each of us, and now that the first sense of the irreparable has passed, I can bow with submission to His divine purpose. The physical tie between us is, as you say, severed; but the tie of affection subsists for me. Where I have once loved, I do not cease from loving. Besides she who was the cause of it, still is near though not visible to our physical vision.

'It is needless to say much about the matters of which you write in your letter. I approve of everything that you propose. Whatever Mrinalini would have desired, should be done, and I have no doubt that this is what she would have approved of. I consent to the chudis Ibangles] being kept by her mother; but I should be glad if you would send me two or three of her books, especially if there are any in which her name is written. I have only of her her letters and a photograph.'

With the end of the war on November 11, 1918, the world started slowly getting back to normalcy and the way became clear for the Mother to leave Japan. However, it was not until 1920 that she was able to complete her preparations for returning to India, and with her 'second coming' our story enters a new phase.