Growing up with the Mother

Preface

Growing up with the Mother is an experience not easy to put into words.

“Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive but to be young was very heaven.”

It is not often that a person gets the privilege of close proximity, guidance and love from the Divine incarnate in a human form and that too of a wonderful Mother. “A Mother to our wants, a friend in our difficulties, a persistent and tranquil counsellor and mentor, chasing away with Her radiant smile the clouds of gloom and fretfulness and depression, reminding always of the ever present help, pointing to the eternal sunshine.” My destiny took me to Pondicherry and engulfed me in Her Divine embrace at the tender age of eight. Since then there has been no looking back. The Mother has been my pole star and my guiding light and will ever be the “raison d’etre” of my existence.

Over the years I received Her boundless love, affection, guidance and protection through personal contact and through letters and correspondence which helped me through my difficulties and failures and through the ups and downs of life, which I would now like to share with my friends and seekers on the path.

Most of these questions and answers, in the original French and English translations, have been printed in the Ashram Bulletins and have appeared in different volumes of the Collected Works of The Mother, but are being published here as a collection for the first time showing how the Mother patiently and persistently helped and guided a young girl towards the discovery of her inner being and held out Her ever helping hand, nurtured her growth, and led her on to the path of spirituality.

This long overdue book contains my correspondence and conversations with the Mother between 1959 and 1973. It also has some personal letters and messages given by the Mother before 1959. What She wrote in my notebooks between 1950 and 1958 for the Group A (Green Group) classes of which I was the captain from the age of 10 1/2, however, has not been incorporated. I hope to bring these out as a separate book in the near future.

My questions and answers of the Mother on Thoughts and Aphorisms are also not included here, since these have appeared as a separate book entitled On Thoughts and Aphorisms.

While working with the Mother on the book Flowers and Their Messages in which the Mother gave a short commentary on each flower, I also asked many questions on flowers and vegetal life which did not find place in the final print of the book Flowers and Their Messages. Hence, these have been incorporated here as a separate chapter on flowers. But the innumerable questions and answers on clarifications of colours of flowers, significances, their translations into English etc., have not been included since it would not make interesting reading for everybody.

I owe a deep debt of gratefulness to kindred souls, too numerous to acknowledge separately, who have helped me to collect, compile, correct, illustrate and prepare the material for this book. They have inspired me with words of encouragement throughout. For me they have been the instruments of the Mother’s love.

As we enter the new millennium which is the harbinger of a new light and force and life, I feel a deep joy in sharing this treasure of messages, correspondence and conversations, that give a wonderful insight and guidance to seekers on the spiritual path. It also shows the natural unfolding of the Mother’s relationship with a child of the Ashram and Her persistent guidance towards the flowering of a psychic being. Her encouragement, love and compassion were boundless and infinite. She has nourished my soul, my mind and my heart in the process of their growth.

In deep gratitude I offer this work at Her feet.

Tara Jauhar

New Delhi, 1.1.2000