Mother's Chronicles - Book Four

To pull her out of that tomb

was somehow our ambition.

Sujata — Satprem

April 30, 1984

A Word With You, Please!

Salutations! We meet once again to walk a little more with Mother on her journey on this Earth.

It has indeed been long since we last met. If I was compelled to leave you so long without any news you must acknowledge that I am making up for lost time, and that I have brought you a right royal fare!

At least that was my original intention. But not wishing to give you an indigestion, dear Reader, we shall serve first just the entree, the real feast is to follow soon.

This is what happened. In all innocence, let me confess, I set out on a little raft thinking that I had only a small stream to cross. For, thought I, there will be but a life sketch of Sri Aurobindo to be written and all the elements for that are given in the book Sri Aurobindo on Himself. But then I found myself in the middle of an ocean, bobbing up and down on my ill -equipped raft.

Well, to make a long story short, I needed answers to the questions that began to pop up in my mind, which meant a lot of investigative work; and who was to do it ? I turned to my Calcuttan brother, Nirmal Nahar, who at one time was a journalist, accredited to the Press Trust of India. What a boon

that turned out to be! For, frankly, without his help in unearthing and supplying me with a wealth of material on Sri Aurobindo's political as well as early life, and other matters, I don't know what would have happened to this book. And then, there is the invaluable work of editing done by Michel Danino, an onerous task cheerfully done.

A crucial period in human history, 1914 was the year Mirra set out to meet Sri Aurobindo. It was the best of modern West that went seeking the ancient knowledge of the East.

For his part, Sri Aurobindo from the East was thrown into the cauldron of the West's Industrial Revolution in the second half of the nineteenth century. Sri Aurobindo grew up there getting a firsthand experience of the modern West.

Here I intend to take you back not only one century, to Sri Aurobindo's past, but many many more, to India's past whence sprung her fountain of Knowledge : the Veda.

Let us start wading upstream.

Godspeed.

"A time-made body

housed the Illimitable"

(Savitri, II. 1.101)

"Thou shalt bear all things

that all things may change."

(Savitri, XI. 1.700)