Moments Eternal

Waiting for the Mother

I wait for you, O Lord,

With eyes wide awake but see you not,

But this very waiting for you With so much joy is fraught!

In the evening when I used to go to the Mother, She would open the door in front of the staircase around eight. A handful of us girls received the Mother’s flower-blessings. We used to sit on the staircase in the evening and wait for the Mother. Sometimes we waited beyond eight, nine or even ten o’clock. The Mother had not yet come. We had not eaten and very often we had to wait in that condition. Then She would open the door and hurriedly hand us the flowers. Sometimes She was so deeply absorbed in meditation that She would not open the door. We used to sit there for the Mother and wait for hours—and we loved this wonderful waiting. Like our grandmothers and other elderly members of the family in this country who do their daily evening adoration, we too would remain seated and think of Her quietly. We never felt in the least tired or impatient but always had the feeling that we were sitting close to the Mother. That is why I say:

I wait for you, O Lord,

With eyes wide awake but see you not,

But this very waiting for you

With so much joy is fraught!

One day an elderly woman amongst us became restless while waiting for the Mother and suddenly got up. She took her plate of flowers, opened the door slightly and tried to place it on a cupboard. I requested her repeatedly to wait a little longer for the Mother.

“You will leave and the Mother might just then open the door.”

She did not listen to me and, in fact, got angry. Just as she was going downstairs the Mother opened the door! We all stood up quite stunned with disbelief. What kind of test was this? One after the other we took our flower-blessings from Her and went down. I was the last to go to the Mother. I had hardly got into the room when the Mother asked me gravely:

“Who has left this plate of flowers?”

I do not know why but I kept quiet. The Mother Herself then continued:

“I know who has kept these flowers. I know each one’s flower-plate.” (Many used to offer their flowers on a plate or in a flower-basket and the Mother filled their container with garlands or different kinds of flowers.)

The Mother went on very sadly:

“You are most amazing, really! You cannot wait for me even for a little while without getting impatient? You know even gods and goddesses wait eagerly to get a glimpse of me. Great sages and rishis consider themselves eternally grateful if they get even an instant’s vision of me. You have got me so easily that you do not place any value on it.”

Hearing these words from the Mother I was somehow filled with pain. I told the Mother:

“Gods and goddesses or sages and rishis know You as the Eternal Divine Shakti but You are our Mother, You are our Friend. It is true we see You also as the Eternal Shakti but it is more as our Mother and our Friend that we really know You. That is why we make such demands on You and even get upset with You. When we stand or sit under the shade of a tree do we think ‘Ah, how lovely is the shade of this tree’? You are our Friend, our Mother!”

Saying this I felt somewhat burdened within. On behalf of everybody I started asking for forgiveness from the Mother within. Is there no forgiveness for the conduct of unknowing foolish children?

The Mother became strangely silent. From Her eyes soft gentle love began to radiate like moonlight. The Mother responded to my call, “You are our Mother.” I felt as if the Mother was forgiving us all our ignorance and our impudence. Isn’t She forgiving us all the time? She held me close to Her bosom. My body still remembers that hug of love and feels it with gratitude.

The Mother told Champaklal-ji:

“You see me in my human form. That is all that your eyes can comprehend. You behave with me as if I were really a human being and nothing else!”

Nirod-da has written:

“Sri Aurobindo told his attendants: ‘I have come down so close to you and yet you cannot understand me, cannot know me, cannot reach me.’ ”

A line from sadhak Ramprasad comes to mind:

“Who can know you if you do not let yourself be known?”

Nolini-da has written:

“How effortlessly we got a touch of Their body—there was no effort or striving of any kind on our part—but as a result we lost the real value of all the treasures that were proffered. How many times did They allude to this with some sadness—and we, like spoilt children of a rich man, wasted all the wealth away.”

When Sri Aurobindo announced that this Mother was the same as the Divine Mother and He Himself then retired into intense sadhana, a few old sadhaks did not readily accept Her as the “Mother”, some of them even revolted.

Sometimes in the evenings, Nolini-da used to read out from his own writings to a few of us in his outer room. When the number of persons wanting to attend these readings increased the class was shifted to the Meditation Hall. We would all sit facing Nolini-da. During one such class Nolini-da told us:

“You have all known the Mother as ‘Mother’ so very effortlessly. However we were not as fortunate. We had to overcome a lot of resistance in order to accept the Mother as

‘Mother’.”

The gods can’t stand our impudence. After all they too are the Mother’s children. They punish our human arrogance. Let me recount to you one incident here. It happened long ago. At that time the local population of Pondicherry was quite hostile to the Ashram.

One of the Ashram boys was walking by the sea. All of a sudden he noticed at a distance that a group of locals was desecrating a photograph of the Mother. The Ashram boy ran and jumped down from the pier putting his life at risk. He managed to snatch away the Mother’s picture from that whole group of people. The Mother was told about this incident and She forgave them. However the gods avenged this act of foolishness. After this incident it stopped raining in Pondicherry. For several years it did not rain a drop! You cannot imagine the terrible time we went through without water. Water for houses was brought in ‘vandis’ from great distances. Those were very bad days indeed! Then the Mother herself interceded with Indra, the god of rain, in order to relieve us of our misery. She gave to the smaller children of the “Red Group” a prayer to learn. She drew a symbol of water on the ground and the little ones went over this water symbol reciting this prayer in French over and over again:

Pluie, Pluie, Pluie, nous voulons la Pluie

Pluie, Pluie, Pluie, nous demandons la Pluie

Pluie, Pluie, Pluie, nous avons besoin de la Pluie

Pluie, Pluie, Pluie, nous prions pour la Pluie.

(Rain, Rain, Rain, we want the Rain Rain, Rain, Rain, we ask for Rain Rain, Rain, Rain, we need the Rain Rain, Rain, Rain, we pray for Rain.)

All of us who were in the Playground at that time were quite nonplussed by the Mother’s wondrous ways. The Playground had been turned into a seat of prayer and yagna. We looked on quite mesmerised and wondering: So all this is true after all! As a child I used to hear from my grandmothers that when the gods were angry or displeased pestilence and famine and other such inauspicious events took place and entire villages and towns were devastated. I would sneer in disbelief then. How many yagnas and austerities were necessary to bring the gods back onto our side! We have read about so many yagnas in Puranic stories or in the Mahabharata and heard so many stories from the elders ever since our childhood. But it is only after seeing the Mother make arrangements for invoking the god Indra through prayer that I understood that all those stories heard from the elders were not simply stories or imagination. And even today in our country, in this modern age, whenever there is famine or any other inauspicious event, yagnas are performed in order to appease the gods.