Memories of First Darshan

It Was She

The few minutes of waiting, seated on the top steps of the steep stairway, elapsed in an absolute void. All thoughts had departed in an instant, the images also, — it was not so much a silence, as a sort of stupefaction.

At a certain moment, a brahmin with a long white beard, dressed in an immaculate dhoti, the torso bare, signed to us to come in.

I went in after Maggi, and to my vision there appeared unexpectedly, — facing the door through which we had entered, seated on an armchair, looking at us without smiling, — a being impossible to describe.

I did what my companion had done, kneeled before Her. My eyes met Hers, and instantly I was captured by the intensity that emanated from Her eyes.

I cannot say how long I remained thus, how many minutes elapsed under that severe penetrating look, searching in the most hidden corners of my being to see what was in there, to examine the most secret intentions, the truth of my being: who I was, why I was in Pondicherry, what I was in this life and in my previous births, and what my future would be . . . .

It seemed to me, at a certain moment, that the severity of expression changed, became gentler, but I cannot be certain.

I was held under that look, transfixed like a bird caught in the glare of headlights. I dared not move.

Unexpectedly, the face was illumined by a smile.

Oh God, what a smile! It had the intensity of a thousand suns, it was sweetness and love bestowed on a human being, on me.

. . .

She gave me a rose and dismissed me.

While coming down the stairs, returning home . . . I felt that my eyes were moist.

It was She, I had recognised Her, I had found Her again, She had emerged once more from the depths of the consciousness to show Herself to me, Her disciple of all times.

I returned home without a word, with that red rose in my hands, my heart in tumult and profound echoes that, like the waves that perturb a lake, followed one another to a shore I did not know, and which I could not see.

I sat down on a sofa, and then the tears ran freely.

There were hours of silent tears, quiet, full of peace, with a vision that embraced the past, the present and the future, tears that dissolved the last reserves, broke down the ultimate resistances. I knew who I had been, the value of the acts I had committed, the why of so many things that till then had remained in the domain of uncertainty, what it was that awaited me, and what it was that the Mother wanted of me.

I was ready for everything, to undertake everything, to submit myself to the total annulment of what in the West is termed personality, which basically is nothing but a fierce ego, avid and stupid.

In that moment there surged in me the imperious command never to leave the Ashram.

This did not surprise me because in that place of my being where truth has its seat, the decision had already been taken. My surface being was not conscious of it yet, but everything was consummated.

I no longer belonged to myself, no longer belonged to the world in which I had lived. I belonged to nothing and none that was not the Shakti, the Mother.

— Nata

(Translated from the original Italian, Su Questo Stesso Terreno, published by Edizione Mediterranee, Rome, 1979, pp. 104–06)