Mother's Chronicles - Book Six

2

Mirra Was Born Free

"Sri Aurobindo saw with more clarity," said Mother to Satprem while explaining a certain situation. "It was even the first thing he told the boys around him when I came in 1914— he had seen me but once—he told them that I, Mirra (he at once called me by my first name) 'was born free.' "

He also told the boys that he had "never seen anywhere a self-surrender so absolute and unreserved."

Mirra had met Sri Aurobindo on 29 March, at 3:30 in the afternoon, at the Guest House to which Sri Aurobindo had moved with the boys a few months earlier.

We have promptings more insistent than that of reason. Mirra was prompted by what—she did not know—to go see Sri Aurobindo all alone? "I climbed up the stairway and he was standing there, waiting for me at the top of the stairs." Mother's eyes widened at the recollection. "Ex-act-ly my vision! Dressed the same way, in the same position, in profile, his head held high. He turned his head towards me, and I saw in his eyes that it was He. The two things clicked (Mother gestured), the inner experience immediately combined with the outer experience and there was a fusion: the decisive shock."

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They talked that day a little. Mirra told Sri Aurobindo in a few words some of her realizations, and about a particular difficulty which, so far, she had not been able to overcome. It was mental stillness she had striven to obtain. A mental stillness in which anything can pass through your head without causing the least ripple. "It is the stuff of the mental being that is still, so still that nothing disturbs it" as Sri Aurobindo described it. If thoughts or activities come, "they come from outside and cross the mind as a flight of birds crosses the sky in a windless air. It passes, disturbs nothing, leaving no trace."

Mother said candidly that she had tried complete mental silence but had not succeeded. "I had tried, but couldn't do it. I could be silent when I wanted to, but as soon as I stopped thinking solely of that, stopped wanting only that, the invasion resumed, and the work had to be done all over again," Mother sighed. "That's all I told him, not in great detail, but in a few words."

To next day's meeting with Sri Aurobindo she went with Paul Richard. "He saw me the next day for half an hour. I sat down, it was on the verandah of the Guest House; I was sitting there on the verandah." She sat on the floor near Sri Aurobindo. "There was a table in front of him, and Richard was on the other side facing him. They began talking. I myself was seated at his feet, very small, with the table just in front of me, it came up to my forehead, giving me a little protection." Sri Aurobindo was seated in a chair as was Richard across the table. "Then I sat down near him and he began talking with Richard, about the world, Yoga, the future, all kinds of things: what was going to happen—he already knew the war would break out.

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All at once I felt a great Force come into me......''

This was 1914, war broke out in August, and he already knew it towards the end of March or early April. So the two of them talked and talked and talked—great speculations." To Mirra, who had had her visions and revelations—she too—this was past history, and she wasn't interested in those speculations. She didn't really listen. "I didn't say anything, I didn't think anything, try anything, want anything, I merely sat near him."

That day was 30 March 1914. "I was just sitting there, not listening, but all at once I felt a great Force come into me—a peace, a silence, something massive! It came, did this (Mother swept her hand across her forehead), descended and stopped here," she said pointing to her chest. That is to say, it encompassed the three active mental centres. "When they finished talking, I got up and left. And then I noticed that not a thought remained —I no longer knew anything or understood anything. I was absolutely BLANK. SO I gave thanks to the Lord and thanked Sri Aurobindo in my heart."

So many things in her life had completely gone from Mirra's consciousness, all that was useless perhaps. But all that was preparing the Being for its action was held in a clear vision. "Even before coming here and meeting Sri Aurobindo," disclosed Mother, "I had realized everything needed to begin his Yoga. It was all ready, classified, organized. Magnificent! A superb mental construction ... which he demolished in five minutes!"

The unexpected turn of events left Mirra wonderstruck. "How happy I was! Aah! It was really the reward for all my efforts." A structure of so many years' standing, gone up in a whiff!

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"Nothing! I knew nothing anymore, understood nothing at all—not a single idea left in my head! Everything I had carefully built up over so many years—I was past thirty-five, I think —through all my experiences: conscious yoga, non-conscious yoga, life, experiences lived, classified and organized—oh, what a monument!—crash! It all came tumbling down. Magnificent I hadn't even asked him."

Mirra had tried. From 1912 to '14 she had done endless exercises to still her mind. She could easily go out of her body, but the mind inside kept running. "For years I had tried to catch silence in my head, I never could. I could detach myself from it, but it would keep on running. But at that moment, all the mental constructions, all the mental, speculative structures ... none of it remained—a big hole.

"Such a peaceful, such a luminous hole!"

But how many of us are capable of bearing a silent, a holey mind? Sri Aurobindo had imparted that gift to others before Mirra. "One (not a disciple—I had no disciples in those days)," explained Sri Aurobindo, "asked me how to do Yoga. I said: 'Make your mind quiet first' He did and his mind became quite silent and empty. Then he rushed to me saying, 'My brain is empty of thoughts, I cannot think. I am becoming an idiot' " Sri Aurobindo always had a strong sense of the ludicrous. "He did not pause to look and see where these thoughts he uttered were coming from! Nor did he realize that one who is already an idiot cannot become one." He added frankly, "Anyhow I was not patient in those days and I dropped him and let him lose his miraculously achieved silence."

Mirra, on the contrary, was very appreciative of that miraculous

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gift. "Afterwards, I kept very still so as not to disturb it. I didn't speak, I took good care -to refrain from thinking, and held it tight, held it tight against me. I said to myself, 'Make it last, make it last, make it last.......''

For eight to ten days she hugged it close. She was living in her inner joy, while nothing inside her stirred. "I spoke as little as possible and it was like a mechanism, it wasn't me. Then slowly, slowly, as falling drop by drop, something was built up again. But it had no limits, it had no ..." She paused, looking back across the years. "It was vast as the universe and wonderfully still and luminous." Pointing to her head, "Nothing here, but THERE," she said, making a gesture above the head. "And then everything began to be seen from there."

Once it was done, it was done. "It was well rooted."

It never left her. "You know," Mother told Satprem in a wondering voice, "as a proof of Sri Aurobindo's power, it's incomparable! I don't believe there has ever been an example of such a—how can I put it?—such a total success: a miracle. It has NEVER left me. I went to Japan, I did all sorts of things, had all possible adventures, even the most unpleasant, but it never left me--stillness, stillness, stillness...." Her voice trailed off.

"And it was he who did it, entirely. I didn't even ask him, there was no aspiration, nothing... I wasn't doing anything— just sitting there. He seemed outwardly to be fully engrossed in his conversation about this and that and what was going to happen in the world........"

Mirra was sitting quietly at Sri Aurobindo's feet while he talked with Richard. She heard the sound of their conversation,

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without paying much heed. "This lasted about half an hour," said Mother. "And then when I got up, I no longer knew anything, I no longer thought anything, I no longer had any mental construction. Everything was gone, absolutely gone. Blank. As if I had just been born."

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