Mother's Chronicles - Book Three

21

Om

That Mirra had "the BEING capable of gaining this knowledge" within her is without a shadow of doubt.

Matteo's son Etienne Alfassa told the following story to our friend Rachel Neuville, from whom we heard it. In the beginning, Mirra used to pull along her brother to those 'spiritist' reunions. One day, as they went in, they were told that there was a young man who was a first-rate subject. But he looked rather puny. Matteo perceived a heap of big, fat dictionaries in the drawing-room, and he willed the young man to carry them across to the other end of the room. To his own and the group's amazement the youth lifted the pile of dictionaries and began carrying them. Then Matteo said to himself, "But he won't be able to carry them, he'll collapse!" And it happened!

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Midway through, the young man fainted. Matteo became furious and turning to his sister said, "Look at what you made me do. Never again shall I accompany you to these reunions."

Mirra replied, "But why did you first think that he should take the books and next that he wouldn't be able to carry them?!"

This is a typical incident showing at one stroke Matteo's strong willpower and Mirra's uncanny habit of reading thoughts. I guess Matteo's anger melted at once at the reasonableness of his sister's remark. In any event, Matteo loved his sister with all his heart, so perhaps he relented and continued to accompany Mirra to those reunions and other gatherings.

"Did anyone here ever happen to faint all of a sudden, as though accidentally?" Mother was addressing her class of 1951. What with students and teachers and many elders from the Ashram it was a motley crowd in that classroom. We students were not bad as such but we were quite young and didn't know much about things that really mattered. She was explaining to us about going out of one's body. "You see your body, don't you, and wonder, 'But what's it doing there in

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that ridiculous position?' And you rush back inside."

A condition is however attached to this 'seeing' when you are out of your body: you have to have the visual organ of your subtle physical body well developed. Mirra had seen to it when she was confined to bed for five months in Rue Lemercier.

"It happened to me once in Paris," she said. "1 was given a good dinner, then 1 went to a conference hall, 1 think. There were lots of people, it was very hot. I was standing there with my good dinner lying on my stomach, when suddenly 1 felt uneasy. I said to my companion, 'We must get out at once.' Once outside- it was the Trocadero Square- 1 fell in a dead faint. 1 saw my body there and 1 found it so ridiculous that 1 rushed back into it and scolded it roundly. I told it, 'You shouldn't play such tricks on me!'"

Mother often referred to a certain conference to which she had gone. She always remembered it when talking with Satprem about mantras or about the inherent power of some words. A mantra can consist of one single word or a string of words. It is a power, mantra-shakti.

"A mantra given you by a guru has only the

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power of realizing the experience attained by the discoverer of the mantra. This power is automatically there, because the sound holds the experience."

There is a transference of power from the Guru — hard to get such a guru! —to the disciple who receives all the power of the initiator. Generally, a mantra is meant to evoke a certain deity. But it also lends itself to all sorts of uses. For example, a mantra-siddha, that is, one who has mastered the art of applying a mantra, can easily protect others or himself from harm. Such a case of a Sadhu was witnessed not by an occultist or a theosophist, but by an army general! The General noticed a scorpion close to the foot of the Sadhu. "Don't move," he said, "there is a scorpion by your foot." The Sadhu leaned over, and when he saw the scorpion he pointed his fingers at it, upon which the animal immediately and in the presence of the General shrivelled up and died. "You seem to have some powers already," the General could not refrain from saying. But the Sadhu simply waived the matter aside as being of no importance. This account was given by Sir John Woodroffe.

The Vedas are divided into two parts: Mantra

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and Brahmana. The Mantra or the metrical portion is known as Samhita.

"We must recollect that in the Vedic system the Word was the creatrix," explains Sri Aurobindo. "The ancient Vedic theory and practice extended the creative action of speech by the Mantra. The theory of the Mantra is that it is a word of power born out of the secret depths of our being where it has been brooded upon by a deeper consciousness than the mental . . ." And its power of action? "The Mantra can not only create new subjective states in ourselves, alter our psychical being, reveal knowledge and faculties we did not before possess, can not only produce similar results in other minds than that of the user, but can produce vibrations in the mental and vital atmosphere which result in effects, in actions and even in the production of material forms on the physical plane."

Then he said a very significant thing. "Thus we see that the theory of creation by the Word, and the theory of the material creation by sound-vibration in the ether correspond and are two logical poles of the same idea. They both belong to the same ancient Vedic system."

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The Word itself has its seed-sounds —the seed-sounds of the Tantriks —which carry in them the principles of things. "The Word has its rhythms, for it is no disordered vibration, but moves out into great cosmic measures; and according to the rhythm is the law, arrangement, harmony, processes of the world it builds."

And one of the greatest seed-sounds of the Word is the eternal syllable of the Veda: OM.

"In the Indian languages they have this sound OM," said Mother, "which is a marvel.

"I once saw it in Paris, at a time when I knew nothing about India, absolutely nothing except the usual rubbish. I didn't even know what a mantra was.

"The first time I heard it ... I had gone to a lecture given by some fellow who, supposedly, had practised 'y°g^a for one year in the Himalayas, and he was discoursing upon his experience —none too interesting at that. It was a certain Bernard who had spent one year in India, in the Himalayas, and he was visited by yogis whom he didn't know. He was living all alone in a hut in the Himalayas. And a yogi came to visit him, didn't say anything to him, but sat by his

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side and then left. And this yogi simply told him, 'OM:

"This Bernard returned to France and recounted his experiences in India, and then he said the word. Suddenly, in the course of his lecture, he uttered the sound OM. Then I saw the whole room we were in fill up all at once with light, a golden, vibrant light. I was probably the only one to have noticed it. At that time 1 knew nothing about India, but when he uttered the word OM . . ." Mother brought her arms down in a swift gesture. "It came — a Force like this —my whole, entire body, everything vibrated in an extraordinary way! It was like a revelation-all, but all started vibrating. Then I said, 'At last, here's the true sound!' Yet I knew nothing, but nothing, nor even what that meant or anything.

"Then I forgot this business. But it so happened that two or three times the same experience recurred in two or three different countries and with different persons, and every time there was this sound OM, I always saw the same light suddenly fill up the place.

"Then I understood.

"That particular sound holds the vibration of

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thousands upon thousands of years of spiritual aspiration—man's aspiration to the Supreme is there in its entirety. And the power is automatically there since the experience is there. Oh, a tremendous power. Tremendous."

OM or AUM is known also as the first seed-mantra of the Vedas. It is also said that the three letters represent the three Godheads: A = Vishnu, U = Maheshwar (or Shiva), M = Brahma.

"Do you know what they say?" Mother said to Satprem. "That OM is the totality of the sounds of the creation perceived by the Supreme; He hears OM like a call to Him. It's magnificent as idea, as symbol . . ."

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