Mother's Chronicles (Book 2)

12

And Religions

"I have never been on very good terms with religions," said Mother.

It was the militant sectarian outlook in religions that revolted her. Indeed, the narrow mentality that asserts the illogical idea of a single religion for all mankind is ludicrous to a degree. "That narrow absurdity prances about as the one true religion," wrote Sri Aurobindo in The Foundations of Indian Culture, "which all must accept on peril of persecution by men here and spiritual rejection or fierce eternal punishment by God in other worlds. . . . This grotesque creation of human unreason is the parent of so much intolerance, cruelty, obscurantism and aggressive fanaticism."

Mother was against religions as humans practise them. She had NO quarrel with the Bringers of Light,

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in whose names religions are founded. She knew only too well what burden THEY

Once Mother met a person. The chap expressly put his hands on her shoulders, which caused her to make a wry face, because she was not expecting anything of the kind. Shortly afterwards, she was asked about her feeling, her 'experience,' in the hope no doubt of hearing a wondrous tale! Mother made no reply. Years later she told Satprem: "I still remember my experience." Which was not at all intellectual, mind you. "Exactly the impression of something like what Christ must have suffered when he felt the weight of the cross. It was the weight of a mass of obscurity, of ignorance, a universal ill-will, a total incomprehension, you know, something. . . . Truly, it was like that, as though I were carrying a dreadful weight—which was dreadful not because of its weight, but because of its obscurity. I then told myself, 'Well, well! Christ must have felt like this when they put him on the cross.' "

Mirra had witnessed far too much wretchedness and misery caused in the name of religion to be on good terms with it. Take, for example, the case of her fellow artist.

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"She was a fellow student in the studio. For years we had painted together. Also, she was a very gentle girl, older than I, very serious, and a very good painter. During the last years of my stay in Paris, I often met her and spoke to her of things occult and of the 'Cosmic Philosophy' in the beginning, and then later of what I knew about Sri Aurobindo." Mother interposed, "I had a 'group' there, and I used to explain certain things." More about this 'group' in due course. "And she used to listen with wide comprehension—she understood, she adhered. Now, one day I went to her house and she told me that she was in great torment. When she was awake she had no doubts, she understood well, she felt the limitations and obscurities of religion." Mother filled us in on her studio mate's background: "She came from a family with several archbishops, a cardinal —well, one of those 'old French families.' Then she told me, 'But at night, I wake up suddenly with such an anguish, and something (it must be in my subconscient) which tells me, "But after all this, what if you go to hell?" ' And she repeated to me: 'When I am awake it has no force, but at night when it comes up from the subconscient

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it chokes me.' I looked then," declared Mother, "and saw over the earth this huge octopus-like formation of the Church —of hell —by which they keep their hold on people. The fear of hell."

Could Mirra possibly tolerate a religion whose means of action is fear? How degrading!

"That brought home to me the magnitude of the problem —it is terrestrial."

This stray example out of the many incidents which Mother recounted to Satprem will give us an inkling of the kind of impression they left her with. These impressions were piled upon those already created by the stories of the Inquisition (pdor Christ, who preached the gospel of Love!) —that barbaric persecution which drew a long, red and hideous stain across the religious history of Europe.

And how does a religion come into being? Many years ago, Mother had explained: "The occasion for its birth is the coming of a great Teacher into the world. He comes and reveals and is the incarnation of a divine Truth. But men seize upon it, trade upon it, make an almost political organization out of it. The religion is equipped by them with a government and

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policy and laws, with its creeds and dogmas, its rites and ceremonies, all binding upon its adherents, all absolute and inviolable." An elaborate machinery for the salvation of mankind. A Church. The first spontaneous and potent attempt to convert the whole life into spiritual living yields up its place to the dominance of the outer machinery. The sheltering structure becomes a tomb.

If Buddha were "to come back and see what has been made of his teaching, he would immediately run back to Nirvana!" And if Jesus were to return and see the forms imposed on his teaching, "he would not be able to recognise what he taught."

An achalāyatan.¹

As for Christ, Sri Aurobindo said clearly: "Christ came into the world to purify, not to fulfil. He himself foreknew the failure of his mission and the necessity of his return with the sword of God into a world that had rejected him."

1. Achalāyatan, a play by Tagore. Its theme is the return of the Guru to his old haunts only to find that his disciples have turned everything into rigid laws from which nobody is allowed to deviate even a hair's breadth. The guru brings in fresh air, and breaks that tomb-like structure.

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But while speaking about the negative sides of a religion Mother would say in the same breath, "This is but ONE ASPECT

Yet again, all this never prevented Mother from carrying on her studies —she studied everything, as we know —of comparative religion. Whichever the continent and whatever the religion, she would always visit the local religious sanctuary, then note and compare what she had seen and felt in each of them.

I am tempted to share with you some of her findings. For Mother never ceases to bring into view the rest of the country that lies hidden behind the surface.

—"In the Protestant temples," she noted, "it stopped with the mind, there was nothing else — nothing, dry, dry. A mind, and behind, nothing."

—"As for the Catholics," she observed, "it all depends a great deal upon the church or the cathedral — the place. Mixed."

—"The Buddhist temples are VERY GOOD, "Mother declared. "Evidently nihilist, but the atmosphere

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is always very concentrated —concentrated and SINCERE.

— The temples in India? "Oh! I have met all sorts of things —many little devils —but all sorts. Here, it has been really very interesting." We have met some of the devils that Mother encountered; we hope to meet the other 'sorts' soon.

But all lowness and narrowness and shallowness were anathema to Mir a Ismalun's granddaughter. "Throughout the whole human history," Mother told us, "those who came with special capacities, a special grace, and who tried to pull men out of their ordinary rut, were more or less persecuted, martyred, burnt alive, put on the cross." The common herd seems driven by a kind of rancour for what exceeds it.

To illustrate her remark, the great narrater opened her granary and pulled out a grain for us.

"I knew Abdul Baha a lot. He was the successor to Baha-Ullah, the founder of the Bahai religion. Abdul Baha was his son; born in prison, he lived in prison up to the age of forty, I think. When he came out of prison, his father was dead and he began preaching his father's religion. He recounted to me

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the story of his life and what happened in Persia in the early days of this religion. And I remember him saying, with what intense joy, with what sense of the Divine presence and Divine force those people went to the sacrifice." History informs us that Islam's reforms were fraught with sacrifice. All the first adherents paid their change of religion with their lives. In Persia, their persecution beggars all description.

"He always spoke to me," Mother continued, "about a person who was a great poet it seems, and who was arrested as a heretic because he followed the Bahai religion. They took him away to kill him —burn him or hang him or crucify him, I don't quite know, the kind of death in fashion then. And as he gave voice to his faith and said that he would gladly suffer anything for his faith and his God, people thought up the idea of sticking small stubs of candles over his body, on his arms, his shoulders, and lighting the stubs. As is natural, the candles melted, spreading scalding wax all over, till the candle wicks burned the skin. When they were torturing this man, Abdul Baha was there, apparently; and as they came to the place where they were going to kill the man, Abdul Baha

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drew near him to tell his affection to the man . . . who was in an ecstasy of joy. Abdul Baha spoke to him about his sufferings, the man replied, 'Suffer! This is one of the finest hours in my life.'

Really, "How much hatred and stupidity men succeed in packing up decorously and labelling 'Religion'!" had exclaimed Sri Aurobindo.

Isn't it strange that the cradle of the three great religions that dominate the world—Judaism, Christian-ism, Islamism—coincides with the cradle of terrorism!

"Basically," Mother summed up, "the only thing required is to abolish all limits."

She loved to tell the story of "the first-born Asura, who challenged the Supreme Lord. The Asura said, 'I am as great as Thou!' The reply was, 'I wish you would become greater than I, then there will be no more Asura.' "

1. The persecution of the Bahais in Iran continues unabated to this day, in the form of denial of employment to Bahais in the government and of education to their children, confiscation of their properties, etc. —a calculated onslaught in the name of Islam against these 'heretics,' culminating in the murders of many Bahai leaders with official blessings.

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