Mother's Chronicles (Book 1)

3

Matteo

Matteo, Mother's brother, was born in Alexandria on July 13, 1876. As a barely one-year-old infant, he was taken to France by his parents. Although the Alfassas became naturalized French citizens only in 1890 (August 28), still Matteo went to school in France, as did his little sister Mirra. He was eighteen when he entered the Ecole Polytechnique, the prestigious Parisian high-technology seat of learning which churns out the cream of French engineers, administrators, etc.

Coming out, Matteo was posted to the Martinique, an overseas department of France. Martinique is an island off the Windward group, in the West Indies. A street there still bears his name.

Then, in 1900, Matteo went to New Caledonia as the Navy's Supply Officer. Mathilde had accompanied

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her adored son. In 1905, soon after his return from New Caledonia, he married. His wife, Eva Brosse, was born in 1883. They had two daughters, Simone and Janine, and a son, Etienne. The son followed in his father's footsteps and became a Polytechnician, he too! Etienne specialized in railway engineering; he worked in the Congo as a director of Railways (of the Congo-Océanie line). He is now a retired engineer of the State Railways, the SNCF. Matteo's children were almost toddlers when Mother left France in 1914. But one of his granddaughters came to Pondicherry in the mid-fifties with her Japanese husband, to see her "great-aunt."

In 1919, Matteo was appointed Governor of the Congo in Central Africa. Then, in 1934, he became the Governor of French Equatorial Africa. While the parents were away in Africa the three children lived with their grandmother. Mathilde looked after them well. Even today, Etienne and his sisters have kept a vivid and deep impression of their grandmother as an exceptional woman.*

* It is through the dilligence of our friend Rachel Neuville that the information on Matteo's family was obtained.

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The first eighteen years of Matteo's life were inextricably linked with his sister Mirra's. "A fright-fully serious boy," Mother said laughingly to Satprem, "and fright-fully studious, oh, it was frightful! Nevertheless a very strong character, strong-willed. And interesting. There was something interesting in him. When he was studying to enter the Polytechnique I studied with him, it interested me. We were very close, very (only eighteen months separated us). He was very violent, but had a tremendous strength of character."

Mother was very fond of her brother and often told us stories from her childhood in which Matteo figured, naturally. I wonder if it was the sight of my brother Abhay and me that called up memories of her brother and herself? As she went to and fro from her boudoir to Pavitra's office, Mother constantly saw us in Pavitra's Laboratory, working together. Abhay may have been seventeen or eighteen and I was twenty months his junior. He loved mathematics, while I liked geometry. We attended the same class taken by Pavitra. We were a medley crowd learning mathematics —our ages ranged from the early teens to over thirty. My

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brother and I, the best of friends, worked together in harmony. Mother frequently stopped to see what we were making: bath salts for Sri Aurobindo or for her, unless it was pastilles; or creams and powders for different usages, or Blue Water for the eyes, and so on (all formulas courtesy Pavitra). More likely than not it was just a pretext for Mother to stand talking to us. Looking back it seems to me that the few minutes with us refreshed her no end. Anyway, our joy was indescribable. Hearing her voice Pavitra would come and join us.

Once, I don't know how it cropped up, Mother started telling us about the awful hot temper of her brother and his extraordinary strength of character as well. "One day, we were playing croquet. Either he got beaten or for some other reason, he flew into a rage and struck me hard with his mallet; fortunately I escaped with only a slight scratch. Another time, we were sitting in a room and he threw a big chair at me; I ducked just in time and the chair passed over my head. A third time, as we were getting down from a carriage, he pushed me down under it; luckily the horse didn't move." I looked at Mother with my heart

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in my mouth at the narrow escapes she had had. Mother went on, "So when, after he almost killed me thrice, my mother said the third time, 'Next time, you will kill her,' he at once resolved never to let it happen again. And it never happened again."

Indeed Matteo's strength of character was such that even when he was governor in Africa, for over fourteen years, not once did people see him get angry. It was not for nothing that Matteo was Mathilde's and Barine's son. Matteo was a gentleman, refined and cultured. Not only he did the Ecole Polytechnique but he also graduated in arts from the Ecole Normale Supérieure where only the most brilliant pupils in arts are admitted. All those who knew Matteo were struck by his sense of justice and impressed by his extraordinary personality. Mother wrote on 17.7.40 that "My brother, the Governor General Alfassa, was since the beginning of the war at the head of the Colonial Information Service in the French Government." He passed away in Blois, France, on 12 August 1942, at the age of sixty-six.

My brother Abhay assisted Pavitra in his Workshop also, learning to handle all sorts of machinery.

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Pavitra was very particular about his machines, but soon had confidence in the way Abhay handled them. Finally, Abhay was put in complete charge of running the Workshop, with Pavitra remaining as consulting Head. Now, one day, while Abhay was working along with others on a construction site a near fatal accident took place through some negligence on the part of another person. But everyone had a miraculous escape. Mother then explained to us: why collective accidents occur, why some people scrape through, why others succumb, and so forth.

"There was a great pilot, an ace of the First World War," Mother began her story. "A wonderful pilot. He had won a great many victories and always came out unscathed. But something happened in his life and suddenly he felt that something —an accident — was going to befall him, and that it would be the end. What they call their 'good luck' had deserted him. This man left the military and took up a civilian job as a pilot in one of the airlines. No, sorry," Mother corrected herself, "he came out of the war and stayed with the air force. Once he wanted to fly

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all the way down to the south of Africa — from France to the south of Africa." Mother added reflectively, "Obviously something in his consciousness must have got dislocated; but as 1 didn't know him personally I can't say what had happened to him. He started from a certain town in France to reach Madagascar, I think (I am not sure), and from there he intended to fly back to France." Matteo now enters the picture. "My brother was then the Governor of Congo and wanted to join his post quickly. He asked to be taken as a passenger in the plane —the plane was meant for professional flights and testing purposes. Many people tried to dissuade my brother from getting into that plane, saying, 'These flights are always dangerous, no, don't take it.' But he went all the same. They had a breakdown and were stranded in the middle of Sahara —not a pleasant situation. But ultimately everything was put right as though by miracle. The plane took off, set down my brother in the Congo, his destination, then flew off farther south. Later, midway through the flight the plane crashed . . . the other one died. That this would happen was evident."

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Mother explained the cause of the partial accident. "My brother had a firm belief in his destiny, a certainty that nothing was going to happen to him. But the mixture of the two atmospheres was such that he couldn't avoid a disruption, since there was a breakdown and they were forced to land in Sahara; but things were eventually put right and there was no 'real' accident." The cause of the fatal accident? "But once my brother was gone, the other one's 'bad luck' (if you like!) operated at full force, the accident was total, and he was killed."

Mother cautioned us: "You must pay attention to the combination of atmospheres." That's why we had better look attentively at our fellow travellers —in this age of herd-travelling —and more specifically if we see a traveller who has "a dark swirl around him, better not travel with him, for there is sure to be an accident . . . perhaps not to him."

The moral: "Therefore, instead of knowing the mere surface of things, it is quite useful to go a little deeper."

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One day Mother narrated to Satprem an experience that Matteo had, which showed her brother's 'interesting' side. "At the age of eighteen (or he may have been seventeen or sixteen), when he was studying for the entrance examination to the Polytechnique, one day he was crossing the Seine (I think on the Pont des Arts). Halfway across, all of a sudden, he felt something descend into him, which immobilized him so powerfully that he stood rooted to the spot, petrified. Then he heard, though not actually a voice, something distinctly within him, 'If you want, you can become a god.' That's how it was translated in his consciousness. He told me that it had seized hold of him completely, immobilizing him —a tremendous power and extremely luminous. 'If you want, you can become a god.' But then, oh, in the experience itself, at that very instant, he replied, 'No, I want to serve humanity.' And it went away. Naturally, he took great care not to breathe a word to my mother, but we were close enough, and he told me. I said to him, 'Well, what a chump you are!'" Mother laughed. "Therefore, at that time he could have had a spiritual

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realization. He had the stuff."

"I want to serve humanity." That was indeed Matteo's motto. But regrettably Matteo did not understand what Mother and Sri Aurobindo were attempting: a RADICAL PROGRESS for humanity. "My brother and I," Mother said, "we lived our entire childhood together, so close, so very close we were—up to the time when he entered the Poly technique. Eighteen years. Yet he understood NOTHING." Was there a tinge of wistfulness in Mother's voice? "Yet he was intelligent, a capable man, he became a governor, and a rather successful governor, in several countries. But he understood NOTHING."

As a matter of fact, Matteo's highest conception seems to have been to 'serve humanity.' As Mother said, "He could conceive of nothing better than 'to help others' —philanthropy. That's why he became a governor. Upon leaving the Polytechnique he had the choice of several posts, and he expressly chose this post in the colonies, because his idea was 'to help the backward races to progress'— all that nonsense."

Why is it 'nonsense'? "It is egoism pure and

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simple," says Mother. "It's only because you consider that you are better than others and know better than they what they should be or do. That's what 'serving humanity' is. . . . When I saw the film Monsieur Vincent* I was greatly interested. He saw that whenever he fed ten, a thousand would flock to be fed. As Colbert told him, 'You seem to breed the poor by feeding them!'" Indeed, we can go on feeding the 'poor' by the millions till doomsday, we can open thousands of hospitals to cure the sick in billions, but can hunger ever be satisfied? Can the sick be cured for ever? Mother asks a very pertinent question, "How can you change something, without, in fact, having changed yourself?" Therein lies a key.

Matteo did not understand that Sri Aurobindo and Mother were concerned with the entire human species. They were preparing the next evolutionary step. "He was friends with Jules Romains, and Jules Romains told him that he had a great longing to

* A film on Saint Vincent de Paul (1580-1660), a French Catholic priest who founded several orders devoted to helping the poor.

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come here [to Pondicherry to meet Sri Aurobindo and Mother], but that he could not. Jules Romains understood better than my brother." Mother sighed. "There you are."

Nevertheless, Matteo redeemed himself. "But he did do one good thing in his life, my brother. He was in the Ministry of Colonies. The Minister, a little older than him, was a friend of his. I don't know what position my brother had, but everything passed through his hands. When the world war broke out — the First World War, when I was here —the British Government asked the French to expel Sri Aurobindo and deport him to Algeria. They did not want Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry; they were afraid. So when we came to know of this (Sri Aurobindo knew, we knew), I wrote to my brother saying, 'This must not be passed.' You see," Mother explained, "the expulsion order had gone to the Colonial Office for ratification, and he had the ratification papers in his hands. He put them in the bottom of his drawer. They were shelved. And fell into oblivion." Mother smiled, "That made up for the rest."

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To be more explicit. The British Government in India was, frankly speaking, scared stiff of the "most dangerous man," as Lord Minto, the Viceroy of India, was apt to say. For, Sri Aurobindo was not only the head of the nationalistic movement which was sweeping the country, he was also the FIRST Indian to send forth a cry for the independence of India. Another point. He had "an extraordinary hold over the affection of his countrymen," as observed Justice Beachcroft, when he acquitted Sri Aurobindo in the Alipore Bomb Case in 1909. This fact was frightening indeed to the British Government. Thus, according to Sir Baker, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, Sri Aurobindo was "our most conspicuous and most dangerous opponent." Whose object it was "to disseminate sedition through the press." Sri Aurobindo's pen had shaken the foundation of British imperialism.

As for Matteo, he really made up for his lack of understanding. Sri Aurobindo himself mentions how Matteo helped on another occasion, while explaining how a yogi applies an inner Force to deal with outside events. "We have had ourselves serious difficulties

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from the outside," he wrote on March 20, 1935, "petitions made against us to the Minister of Colonies in Paris and a report demanded from the Governor here which if acted on would have put the Ashram in serious jeopardy. We used outward means of a very slight and simple character, i.e. getting the Mother's brother (Governor in French Equatorial Africa) to intervene with the Ministry (and also an eminent writer in France, a disciple), but for the most part I used a strong inner Force to determine the action of Colonial Office, to get a favourable report from the Governor here, to turn the minds of some who were against us here and to nullify the enmity of others. In all these respects I succeeded," Sri Aurobindo states, "and our position here is made stronger than before; especially a new and favourable Governor has come." Sri Aurobindo concludes, "I give this as an example of how things have to be dealt with from the Yogic point of view."

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