Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6

MOTHER told us long ago that our Ashram is an epitome of India. It represents all that is good in India and also all that is bad – all the bad qualities, her weaknesses, all that is crooked and false, dark and obscure. And the Ashram, being a concentrated centre of all that, represents them in a specially intense form.

Now the pressure from above has come to change and for that purpose all the dark points, all that is to be changed and rejected, have been exposed. They have been exposed everywhere – in the Ashram and also outside the Ashram, in the country in general the same defects and weaknesses, the same wrong movements.

In India, in the bigger field, the government is trying to check and control these movements by external means: to some extent it is necessary and so the Central Authority has been given that strength and capacity.

But the Ashram was made to be a conscious collective centre where these things should and must change from within, not under external compulsion, and that is why the Ashram was not given an authority strong enough to dominate or control them. Here, the change should be conscious and, as I said, from within.

And each one of us who are here in the Ashram is in turn

* Report of a private talk with Sri Nolini Kanta Gupta on 9 September, 1976.

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an epitome of the Ashram and all the good and bad elements and movements are in one way or other represented in him – even in the best ones the wrong movements can cast a shadow. So it is a task for everyone especially the so-called ‘best’ ones, that is, those who are more conscious, to detect and reject and change all that is wrong and false and develop all that is true and good, and thereby to change or help to change the very elements in Ashram-atmosphere as well as outside: that is the only solution and the only remedy – to cure the ills individually, personally in one's own consciousness. Then only a conscious collective consciousness can grow and develop in the Ashram with all these living and conscious units or cells and thereby change its own condition as well as the condition of India and also the condition of the world.

I say all this in view of the hard core, the strong seed that has to be formed out of which will sprout the future new creation. A centre should become such a seed, at least at its own centre, its own inmost centre; it must develop this inmost centre, its kernel, its living soul.

Mother also said that as India is a representative or an epitome of the world, – just in the same way as the Ashram is the epitome of India and each individual in his turn an epitome of the Ashram, – the world-problems will have to be solved in India. For India has the capacity and is destined to do so. When India solves her problems the world also will find its problems practically solved. And the Ashram is expected to show the way to the solution of India's problems. Can the Ashram rise up to play its role? At least that was the Mother's intention. It all depends upon its individual members.

Of course, we must remember, Mother's help is always there.

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