Mother's Chronicles (Book 2)

15

The Vision

Mirra had come to an impasse.

Then suddenly several things happened. Events now came crowding thick and fast upon her.

First of all an experience made her know of an inner discovery to be made. "The first time I knew — and nobody told it to me, I knew it through an experience—the first time I knew that there was a discovery to be made within myself, ah, well, it was THE MOST IMPORTANT thing; it had to come before all else."

Next. She met an Indian, an ardent devotee of the Gita.¹ And a lover of silence. But he spoke to Mirra. "I met a man," Mother told us. "I was, I think, perhaps twenty-one years old—either twenty or twenty -

1. We believe his name was Gann Chakravarty.

Page 175

one. I met a man who was Indian and came from India. He spoke to me about the Gita. A translation existed (rather a bad one) and he advised me to read it. And he gave me the key to it —his key, it was his key. He told me, 'Read the Gita.' " Mother said in an aside, "That translation of the Gita was not worth much, but at any rate it was the only one in French; in those days I wouldn't have understood anything in any other language. Besides, the English translations are as bad; and I didn't have ... Sri Aurobindo had not yet written his [Essays on the Gita]" Mother again took up the thread of her story: "He said, 'Read the Gita, and take Krishna as the symbol of the Immanent God, the God within.' That's all he told me. He said to me, 'Read it with this knowledge that, in the Gita, Krishna represents the Immanent God, the God who is within you.' "

Mother was telling all this to the flower of the Ashram's youth. "How many years have you been here . . . half asleep?" Some had been there almost since their babyhood; now their ages ranged from late teens to late twenties. "I am even surprised that you don't feel this intense need: how to know your inner self?"

Page 176

But Mirra was not even a quarter asleep, oh no! Her need to know was intense and she dived into the inner quest. "Between eighteen and twenty," Mother said again, "I had obtained a conscious and constant union with the Divine Presence." And she told those sitting before her, "And you! Everything has been explained to you, half the work has been done for you, you have been helped not only with words but in every possible manner, you have been put on the road to this inner discovery . . . and then you let yourselves live 'just like that': it will come when it will come.... If you think of it at all!"

Mirra was made of another stuff. This constant union with the inner Divine Presence "I did it ALL ALONE, I had ABSOLUTELY NOBODY to help me, not even books."

But just after receiving the hint from the devotee of the Gita, Mirra came across a book. "When I had in my hands (a little bit later) Vivekananda's Raja-Yoga, it seemed such a marvellous thing to me, no, that somebody could explain something to me!" But she never met Vivekananda. "This made me gain in a few months what otherwise I might have taken years to do."

Page 177

It was beyond Mother to understand how "knowing that you have a divine consciousness within you, you can still go on sleeping night after night and playing day after day . . . and not be . . . not be in a state of ACUTE enthusiasm and will to come into contact with you! —with you, yes, with yourself, there, inside (Mother indicates the middle of the chest). That, that is beyond me!"

Mirra did not waste a second. No, never. "And when, as I said, a book or a man crossed my path, just to give me a small indication, to tell me: 'Here, if you do like this, the way will open up before you,' why, I rushed headlong like a . . . like a cyclone."

Like a cyclone.

"And nothing could have stopped me."

Mirra was one of those who cannot stop until they have found the Fountain from which springs the Water of Life.

*

* *

This union with the inner Divine —or the 'psychic being' to use the evolved terminology of Mother — bore

Page 178

a precious fruit. "Once you have found your psychic being —instantaneously, do you hear —you get the sense of immortality."

Precious, because "From the time I had the experience of psychic immortality —of the immortality of consciousness — which was in 1902

*

* *

But Mirra's 'thirst to know' was not quenched. True enough, she now understood a lot of things which had puzzled her before, but ALL

The rational explanation was to come soon. A person spoke to her of Théon and his teaching. It was Thémanlys, a young man and a friend of Matteo's. "When I was first told, 'The Divine is within, there,'

Page 179

Mother strikes her breast, "then at once I felt, 'Yes, that's it.' " '

Max Théon and his wife, Madame Théon, were both occultists. They were the first to open the doors of Knowledge to Mirra. "Ah, I am not mad!"

*

* *

A third thing happened.

It was around this time that Mirra had a series of dreams.

"Just when I started to work with ... not with Théon personally, but with someone who knew him — a boy who was a chum of my brother's. Well, at that time I had a series of visions, several of those visions. Mark you," Mother said frankly to Satprem, "I knew nothing about India, nothing—just as Europeans know nothing: it's a country where people have certain habits and some religions, with a confused and hazy history, and where many 'extraordinary' things are said to have happened. There, you see! It means that I knew nothing." She then described to

Page 180

him her visions about which she had never uttered a word to anybody before. "Well then, I saw ... I saw Sri Aurobindo in these visions, exactly as he was physically, but more glorious. I mean, the same man as I was to see the first time I met him: almost thin, with that golden-bronze hue, that clear-cut profile, the unruly beard, the long hair, dressed in dhoti With one end thrown over his shoulder, arms bare, a part of the body also bare, and bare-footed." Mirra had never seen such dress. "At the time I thought it to be a 'vision attire'! Which is to say that I knew nothing about India; I had never seen an Indian dressed in the Indian way."

They were not mere dreams. "I saw him therefore. They were symbolic visions and at the same time spiritual FACTS absolutely decisive spiritual experiences and facts of meeting and of a united perception of the Work to be accomplished." Mother's voice travelled a long, long way. "And in those visions I did something which I had never done: I prostrated myself, and in the Hindu way." But Mirra was perplexed, "I did it, and at the same time the external being wondered, 'What's all this!' "

Page 181

At the time Mirra was unaware of the existence of Sri Aurobindo. She thought she was seeing Sri Krishna of the Gita. Understandably she never mentioned this to anyone. But she had noted down that series of visions, all the same. "Only, I got the feeling that it was premonitory, and that one day something like this would happen."

'Something like this' to 'happen' took some ten years. Then these visions became a material fact. Mirra had to exhaust the exploration of the field of Occultism before she would be ready to begin her 'Work' with Sri Aurobindo.

"And this had remained in the background of the consciousness . . . constantly."

Then Mirra will meet Sri Aurobindo.

Then, together, the Cyclone and the Volcano will set out to

"Break the seals of Matter's sleep, Break the trance of the unseen height."

End of Book Two

Page 182