Mother's Chronicles (Book 1)

15

Deer, Squirrels & Gnomes

"I did not know what meditation was ..." said Mother.

Although nobody had spoken to Mirra of meditation or how to meditate, this lack of knowledge did not prevent her from meditating. She would sit in her little chair and get into contact with that 'pleasant sensation' —meditate. Or, sit under a tree and be lost to the world—meditate.

In her inimitable way, Mother tried to teach the Ashram children about trees and the 'consciousness in trees.' She said, "I knew about it in France from my childhood." It was in 1952, and her audience was between eight and fourteen. "When I was young," Mother told them, "I was perhaps twelve, I often went walking in a big forest near Paris. A famous forest it

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was, the Fontainebleau forest. Great trees of over two thousand years old are there. At that time nobody had yet spoken to me of meditation or how to meditate. All the same, whenever I went there and sat under those great trees, I would feel very calm and concentrated inwardly, and almost lose the sense of the external world and feel an intimate contact with them. And I was very happy. 1 was so much identified with those great trees in my consciousness that little birds and squirrels would come in front of me without any hesitation and even sit on my body and play freely." Mother said to the children, "If you go and sit with your back against a tree, you can feel in your very body its sap rising." Mother added that some trees can even grow in friendship with men. "They have a very great affection," she said. "Their generosity in giving protection is probably far greater than man's."

Through Mother's storytelling, we children learned to love trees; we learned about meditation, about identification, about consciousness. And we learned that all things are endowed with "life" because all things have "consciousness" in them.

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"This consciousness exists not only in human beings and plants and trees, but also in all the things of the universe. It is there in the sun and in the moon and in the stars. It also exists in animals and birds; as well as in countries, nations, rivers and mountains."

As usual, when talking to Satprem, Mother gave the true reason (which she learned when she was in her twenties) for the birds, the squirrels coming to her as they did, without any hesitation. Mirra herself was as yet unaware of what she embodied, but not so the animals.

Mother then described to Satprem what happened in the Fontainebleau forest: "I was eleven, or twelve, when my mother rented a cottage at the edge of the forest. We didn't need to cross the town. I used to go out and sit in the forest all by myself. I would sit and be lost in reverie. One day —it happened often — one day squirrels had come, several birds were there, and also," Mother opened wide her large eyes, "deer, looking on. So pretty it all was! When I opened my eyes and saw this, I found it charming."

At the time Mirra simply lived her experiences in

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the visible and the invisible. "Interestingly there was nothing mental about it: I didn't know the existence of these things, I didn't know what meditation was —I meditated without having the least idea of what it was. I knew nothing, absolutely nothing, my mother had kept it all completely taboo: these subjects are not to be broached, they drive you crazy."

When we say "the visible and the invisible," we of course mean, for our eyes. Mirra's eyes pierced easily, automatically even, the veil of invisibility.

One morning in 1953, I was in the laboratory, filling bottles with Pine Bath received from France, which Mother used in her baths. Pavitra dropped in for some work or other —I was also his secretary —and stood looking at the dark green colour of the liquid, with a golden-russet tint to it. Mother was passing by just then. Seeing us, she too came in. She asked what we were talking about. Pavitra said he was asking me what the colour reminded me of. (As a matter of fact, he would often test me and others in a similar offhand way.) I said, "Autumn." Mother looked at Pavitra; he said, "It reminds one of a forest." Mother agreed

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with him. She said, "Yes, the Black Forest." Then Mother told us a story from her childhood. "I had once been to the Black Forest. I was quite small, about eight years old. My brother was one and half years older. We had gone to Baden-Baden. There I saw gnomes." She gave a vivid description, "They like to play hide-and-seek. I loved watching them. They were dressed in green. It was very difficult to distinguish them from the green foliage. But I could see them quite plainly." Not so Matteo. "My brother didn't like it, though. He could only hear the sound caused by their games, but couldn't see them. It scared him. And he would also ask me not to go to the forest." Their nanny added her voice to Matteo's. "Our bonne would tell us not to go to the forest towards dusk, as it was the time when the little people came out to play. Our bonne would ask us to stay near the house and play in the garden." Mother then remembered that "This was my only visit to Germany. I have never been there since."

Sri Aurobindo once referred to this "sight" of Mother's when he was discussing Jules Romains' book

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The Eyeless Sight with some disciples. He said, "In her chil hood, the Mother was able to see even in the dark and she had developed the power of sight everywhere. She is, even now, able to see from behind and this general sight works more accurately than the physical eyes. It works best when the eyes are closed."

Which fact two of Sri Aurobindo's attendants found out to their discomfiture. One day, as Mother was combing Sri Aurobindo's silken hair (which could not be left to the tender mercies of the ham-handed disciples, for even Sri Aurobindo ended up by jokingly asking them, 'Have you left some hair?'), she was overtaken by trance —a frequent occurrence during that Second World War period. Well, her eyes were half-closed, her body swayed, but the hands went on doing their work. The two attendants there, overgrown babies that they were, began to joke and play with each other, silently of course, assuming that she would not notice their pranks. But as Mother went out of the room, she told them, "I can see everything. I have eyes at the back of my head."

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