Mother's Chronicles - Book Six

52

The Himalayas in Rue Dupleix

"Listen," Mother told Satprem on 29 May 1962, because Satprem wanted to go to the Himalayas, away from Pondicherry's heat, to write his book on Sri Aurobindo.¹ "Listen, I also had a longing to go to the Himalayas, I had a great longing for it when I was in France. When I came here the first time it was fine, I was very happy, everything was beautiful, everything was perfect, but ... oh, to go to the Himalayas for a while! (I always loved mountains.) I was living over there in the Dupleix house, and I used to meditate while walking back and forth. There was a small courtyard with a dividing wall, and shards of glass were stuck on top of the wall to keep out thieves. And I was meditating—meditating on the spiritual life—when suddenly something caught my eye: a ray of sunlight on a sharp piece of blue glass on top of the wall. And positively, spontaneously, without thinking or reflecting or anything ... I saw summits of the Himalayas: I was on the summits of the Himalayas.

"It lasted more than half an hour. It was a marvellous mountain scene, with mountain air and the lightness of the

Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness.

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mountains—it was all there. The splendour of sunlight on the Himalayan peaks.

"After that half-hour I hadn't the slightest wish to go!

"I'd had the FULL spiritual experience of the Himalayas.

"It was a grace given to me—a gift."

This was Mother's first visit to India.

On 7 March 1914 Mirra and Paul Richard had boarded the Japanese liner Kaga Maru at Marseille. After a few halts here and there, the ship arrived at Colombo port on 27 March. In Ceylon (Sri Lanka) they spent the whole day. They met a Buddhist monk. The next day they crossed over to India. They landed at Dhanuskodi. From Marseille to Dhanuskodi... three weeks had elapsed from the time Mirra had left the soil of France and set her foot on the soil of India.

Mirra was in South India.

On 29 March they reached Pondicherry.

Their first habitation was the Hôtel d'Europe, popularly known as Magrie Hotel.

Sri Aurobindo's 'trikaladrishti of Time' was now functioning rather accurately, although he still did not have full confidence in its action. On March 30 he noted, among other things, "Richard's arrival on the 29^th not as had been arranged on the 28^th, his visit on the same day, & less clearly in the afternoon."

Interesting also are his notings of the 29^th. "The afternoon & evening taken up by R's visit, Bh's [Bharati's] 8c translation of Rigveda 11.23 8c 24. Bh. has fresh Yogic experiences,—this time of the voice of God 8c miraculous cure____

"Bj. [Bejoy] gets the vision of the colour-body with regard to R—behind the physical body—yellow in blue, then red, red

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in black, again red and once more yellow in blue."

Sri Aurobindo observed that in political and social sphere "the power is not yet ripe for organised action.

"Veda 11.23, 24, 25, 26—completed today. This shows a great advance in sustained energy."

For election work, on April 13 Paul Richard had gone to Karikal with Mirra. Nolini records, "In this connection the Mother had to pay a' visit to Karikal once. This was her first direct experience of actual India, that is, what it is in its crude outward aspect. She gave us an amusing description of the room where she was put up, an old dilapidated room as dark as it was dirty and a paradise for white ants." Mother must have told them about it much later when she was more familiar with them. Besides they were then in Calcutta the three of them, Nolini, Moni and Saurin, and they returned only some five months later.

However, it was also at Karikal that Mother had seen people drinking "yellowish mud in which cows had bathed and done all the rest" and the village had not a single case of cholera although the other villages around had an epidemic of cholera!¹

Well, now that the din and dust of the elections had settled, what were the Richards going to do? Richard's idea was to stay on for two more years, as Sri Aurobindo told Motilal.

"Next as to money matter," Sri Aurobindo wrote in the same letter of 5 May 1914. "My present position is that I have exhausted all my money along with Rs. 60 Richard forced on me and am still in debt for the Rs. 130 due for the old rent. I

¹ Mother's Chronicles Book II, ch. 6, 'Illnesses.'

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do not like to take more money from Richard, for he has sold one fourth of his wife's fortune (a very small one) in order to be able to come and work for India, and the money he has can only carry him through the 2 years he thinks of staying here. I should therefore be impoverishing them by taking anything from them. Of course, they believe that money will come whenever it is necessary but then God's idea of necessity and ours do not always agree."

Sri Aurobindo was very explicit about his financial position.

"As for Rangaswamy, there is a fatality about his money,— it is intercepted by all sorts of people and very little reaches me even on the rare occasions when he sends anything. I have no hope therefore, of any regular help from that quarter. Even in the fact of your being unable to meet him, fate has been against us. On the other hand, Saurin writes that he has been able to 'fix' Rs. 1000 a year for me in Bengal. Is this merely the refixing of Das' promise or something else ? As for fixing, anything may be fixed orally or on paper, the difficulty is to realise what has been fixed. He says also there is Rs. 500 awaiting me, my share of the garden money [Sri Aurobindo's share of the sale of the Manicktolla Garden]. He wants it for his 'commerce,' but when I have no money to live on, I can hardly comply. He does not tell me what I am to do to get the money, but only that I can get it whenever I want it. I am writing to him to Meherpur, but if you see him in Calcutta, ask him to get it and send it to me at once. With this money I may be able to go on for a few months till something definite and regular can be settled and worked out. As for the sum I need monthly, so long as S. and the others do not return, I need Rs. 50 monthly for my own expenses and

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Rs. 10 not for myself, but still absolutely indispensable. When S. and the others return, that will no longer be sufficient. I am writing to S. to try and make some real bandanas [arrangement] about money before coming back. Please also press Shyam Babu and the others for the money due to me. This habit of defalcation of money for noble and philanthropic purposes in which usually the ego is largely the beneficiary is one of the curses of our movement and so long as it is continued Lakshmi will not return to this country. I have sharply discontinued all looseness of this kind myself and it must be discouraged henceforth wherever we meet it. It is much better and more honest to be a thief for our own personal benefit, than under these holy masks. And always, if one must plunder, it is best to do it as a Kshatriya, not with the corruption of the Vaishya spirit of gain which is the chief enemy in our present struggle." He explained to Motilal, "What you have to do, is to try to make some real arrangement, not a theoretical arrangement by which the burden of my expenses may be shifted off your shoulders until I am able to make my own provision."

To Saurin, Sri Aurobindo wrote a letter in June about money matters. "Sukumar has not yet sent the garden-money but I presume he will do so before long. I have received Rs. 400 of the Rs. 600 due to me from another quarter & hope to get the remainder by August. With the garden money, this will mean Rs. 1100, & with another Rs. 100 & 130 for payment of the old rent, we could just go on for a year even without the Rs. 1000 arrangement yearly or other money. But Rs. 150 is the real minimum sum needed, especially if we keep this house after Nagen goes, as Richard wishes.

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"As for your loans, my point was not about a legal process or any material trouble as the result of non-payment. It was that those who give the loan should not have any feeling of not being rightly dealt with, if we should fail to repay them, any feeling that advantage had been taken of their friendship. I have had too bad an experience of money-matters & their power to cool down friendly relations not to be on my guard in this respect. Therefore, I desire that there should be no ground left for future misunderstanding in any matter of the kind, & loans are the most fruitful of these things, much more than money asked or taken as a gift."

It is a human problem this dealing with money. "That men are attached to money is a thing known ever since humanity began its course," Sri Aurobindo once wryly remarked. And to the moanings of Dilip he consoled him (20 February 1936) in his own inimitable style. "As for the money-grabbing propensity, I fear all countries are like that now-a-days—it is an 'economic' world we are living in—with a very badly upset economy, a world governed by Mammon but Mammon suffering from overeating and a bad chronic stomachache. Perhaps there is hope of better things in that stomachache."

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