AT THE FEET OF THE MOTHER

SURESH JOSHI

I was born at Almora, a beautiful town situated at the foot of the Himalayas. Surrounded by innumerable mountains with beautiful deodar and pine trees, waterfalls, lakes and orchards, Almora has been always a place of inspiration for the seekers and aspirants of natural and supernatural realities. When I was hardly five or six years old I had a special inclination towards God. Of course then God was for me either Rama or Krishna and the Divwe Mother was ‘Durga’. Very often I had the feeling as if the whole life which we were living and with which we were moving about was nothing but a dream. Our real life was somewhere else. When very young I used to bite sharply my fingers in order to know whether it gives a real sensation of pain or not.

At the age of five I was admitted in a local school. On the very first day, after spending one or two hours there, I came back running home, leaving behind my notebook and pen. I had no inclination for studies though I continued as a student for some years. Rather my love was Nature, the forests with prolific trees and flowers and the colourful birds singing amidst them. Most of my time was spent wandering through nearby forests or in sitting in some temple. I used to love reading also; not my school books, but books from my father’s library–the Mahabharata, Srimadbhagavata or stories from the Yogavasishta.

My father who was a man of spiritual pursuits inculcated in me a deep love for spiritual life. He made me remember by heart hundreds of beautiful Sanskrit verses and the Vada Mantras and narrated to me stories from the Upanishads and the Puranas. He taught me also how to do Pranavam and how to meditate. During this period I had sometime psychic experiences and visions. When I was twelve or thirteen years old, I heard from him about Sri Aurobindo. He said, “Sri Aurobindo is a great Yogi.” I do not know why the name “Sri Aurobindo” became so dear and loving to me. I did not know at that time anything about the Divine Mother. So one day I sent a reply-postcard addressed to Sri Aurobindo, conveying him my wish to join his Ashram and serve him. But I did not get any reply. Four years passed. I was about eighteen. One evening along with a friend I went to Sri Anandamayee’s Ashram–which was two miles away from my house. That was the day of “Sankirtan”. We both participated in it. After the programme was over someone distributed chocolates to all those present there. While returning, on the way, it was my friend who told me about the Mother of Sri Aurobindo Ashram. He said, “In Pondicherry Ashram there too is a Mother, very beautiful and with fair complexion. Every morning she gives Darshan from her balcony to her disciples and devotees and in the evening distributes sweets after the playground programme.” It was a surprising enough experience: the moment he uttered the word “Mother” I felt as if someone (or the vibrations of the word “Mother”) lit a fire in my heart centre. It was an intense and at the same time a soothing fire. It remained intense for few minutes but since then it has never extinguished. I told my friend, “Then I must go to the Mother.” This reminds me a line from the “Savitri”: “Thy unknown lover waiting for thee unknown.”

Soon the urge to see the Mother became very strong in me. After some wandering I left for Delhi, where my brother was living. I started learning photography with his help. But my thoughts were always at Pondicherry and in the Mother. Sometimes I committed blunders. Once when my brother asked me to develop five or six film rolls in the dark-room, instead of developing the rolls first in developer solution I put them in hypo solution. The result was all blank! My brother had to bear the consequence while I got some scolding from him.

But one fine morning some work led me to Dr R. S. Agarwal who had been associated to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram since 1932 and later became a disciple of Sri Aurobindo. He had opened a centre, ‘Sri Aurobindo Mandir’, adjacent to his Eye Hospital. I found Sri Aurobindo Mandir a place of peace and rest. It had a good library, with full sets of Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s books and records of various devotional songs and several pictures and photographs of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. In a few days Dr Agarwal and myself became good friends. I started visiting the Mandir regularly and participated in all their programmes. One evening, after the meditation was over, I expressed my desire to visit the Pondicherry Ashram to Dr Agarwal. He agreed to take me there as his assistant during his all India tour. It was during November 1951 Darshan that we came to Pondicherry and stayed for about 15 days.

As soon as my tour was over I told Dr Agarwal that now that my contract with him to work as his assistant is over, I would like to go back to Pondicherry Ashram to stay there for good. He agreed. But I had to rush back to Allahabad as my father fell ill. At Allahabad I often had the feeling–as if the Divine Mother was calling me back to Pondicherry. One day I asked my brother for Rs. 50 only and told him that the time had now come for me to go to the Mother and live at her feet. He was good enough to give me the money. The next day I purchased a ticket for Pondicherry for Rs. 42 and reached there on the morning of 7th July 1952. I left my luggage at the Railway Station in the care of a clerk and came walking to the Ashram. After reaching at the main building of the Ashram I met the gentleman in charge of the Reception Service and conveyed to him my desire to see the Secretary, Sri Nolini Kanta Gupta. He was kind enough to pass on my request to the Secretary. Within a few minutes Nolini-da (as we Ashramites call him affectionately) received me at the Ashram Reception Room. He asked me some questions concerning my ideas and studies about Yoga. My answer was simple “I have come here because the Mother is here. I want to stay here because She is here. I want to work here because I want to serve Her. Nolini-da was satisfied with my answers and told me that next day during the morning blessings he will take me to the Mother. I was very happy. I had only about four rupees with me and that was just enough for a day’s boarding and lodging charges in an Ashram Guest House. I never thought about the next day.

Next day, at about 9-30, Nolini-da took me to the Mother. He told a few words to her which I do not remember because my whole concentration was on the Mother’s face. She appeared to me the all loving, all-compassionate Mother. I felt as if I had found something most intimate and dear that was missing in my life perhaps since long centuries. She gave me a flower which signifies ‘Psychic Prayer.’ The Pranaam was over and for a few moments I was completely lost within myself.

After about an hour I enquired from Nolini-da what was the Mother’s decision about me. He said, since the Mother did not say anything then, he will ask her later. In the afternoon I went to him again. On seeing me, with a gentle smile, he said “The Mother said you can stay on here.” I was overwhelmed with joy and excitement. She allotted me work in one of the Ashram departments and arrangements were made for my boarding and lodging and other needs.

It was on the 8th July 1952 the Divine Mother graciously accepted me as her disciple and as her child. I was now launched onto a journey, with, to quote from the Savitri,

The unfelt Self within who is the guide,

The unknown Self above who is the goal.

The unfelt self had been revealed to me when first time I heard about the Mother. It was the Mother’s portion hidden deep in the heart, the “psychic being”, and as a guide it brought me to the unknown that was “the Mother” herself. But all this was only the first step for the beginning of Sadhana. In the physical, symbolically, we had met. But I have yet to realise her in her true reality, in her consciousness. Since then hundreds of times I have met her and received her blessings. But rarely did I speak to her. Whenever she was physically present before me I found myself either in silent prayers or in a state of aspiration, amidst an opportunity to offer myself to her. And I always experienced how her piercing look, going deeper and deeper into my inner region, was pouring down there her honey-delight. I think it was for this reason that she graciously granted me the privilege to have correspondence with her, writing whatever I wanted in a notebook and herself replying in the same.

The Mother has physically left us. But that sweet treasure of her consciousness and delight that she has established in us remains there for ever. Nay–this will go on expanding and growing, till the day when we shall feel her presence even in our most physical consciousness, in our external nature. She has left us from outside but she has come now close within us. From there she continues her work. Now it is our sole task to rediscover her and manifest her.

II

The patience the Mother showed in dealing with the rigidities and stupidities of our nature is beyond imagination. Once she said, of all the difficulties the most difficult thing was the conversion of the physical consciousness. This physical nature which is rigid, obstinate, obscure and inconscient, she had to deal with infinite patience and perseverance.

“Her love is eternal and her compassion is limitless!” A devotee from the West was once found drunk and stumbling half-consciously on the road. One of the Secretaries reported the matter to the Mother. She listened quietly and did not say anything. I thought that the man will be turned out. But she did not take any such action. Afterwards when he apologised to her in writing, she wrote back, “My dear child, my love and blessings are always with you.” And to another devotee from outside who had the same habit, she wrote, “The intoxication that one gets in union with the Divine is infinitely greater than one gets in drinking alcohol.” Always she wanted to make us taste the happiness and joy that come by rising above the lower consciousness and uniting with the higher consciousness.

To her there was nothing like small or big work. Whether it was a great world problem or a small individual problem, she gave an equal attention to each case. When a Sadhak wrote to her, “I do not think it would be bad to let you know of a thought, an idea which goes on in me, even if this idea, this thought is not good”, the Mother answered, “on the contrary it will be good to let me know immediately. Nothing is better than a confession for opening the closed doors. Tell me what you fear the most to tell me, and immediately you will find yourself closer to me.” She was always ready to answer any question however trivial–not only answer but ready to solve the problem if it was put before her with a child like simplicity. I had the habit of taking tea which I gave up for nearly about twelve years after I came here. Afterwards I felt like taking tea again and I asked the Mother for her sanction. She replied, “If you prepare tea by yourself it will be wastage of time and energy; better to take with someone who is ready to give you “little”. One of my friends who is in charge of one of our guest houses, very often invited me for tea. I asked the Mother her advice. She replied, “Yes, you can go there and have tea, provided you do not talk uselessly”. She never liked useless talking. Once she wrote to a disciple. “I have had the experience myself that one can be fully concentrated and have union with the Divine even whilst working physically with one’s hands; but naturally this asks for a little practice, and for this the most important thing is to avoid useless talking. It is not work but useless talk which takes us away from the Divine.”

Whether it was an ordinary work or so-called big work, she said, “The Yogic life does not depend on what one does but how one does it; I mean it is not so much the action which counts as the attitude, the spirit in which one acts. To know how to give yourself while washing dishes or serving meals brings you much nearer to the Divine than doing what we call “Great things” in a spirit of vanity and pride.

When someone wrote to her, “The person I love belongs to me”, the Mother replied, “This is a very ugly love, quite egoistic”. “The Ashram is not a place for being in love with anyone. If you want to lapse into such a stupidity, you may do it elsewhere, not here. It is not this person or that who attracts you...it is the eternal feminine in the lower Nature which attracts the eternal masculine in the lower Nature and creates an illusion in the mind; it is the great game, obscure and semi-conscious, of the forces of unillumined Nature, and as soon as one succeeds in escaping from its violent whirlwind, one finds very quickly that all desires and all attractions vanish, only the ardent aspiration for the Divine remains.”

For those who sincerely aspire to collaborate in her work, the great work of Transformation, and allow her Grace to purify, to refine, to sublimate their lower Nature, shall participate in this great manifestation–“Supramental manifestation”–and shall become the channel for expressing through their minds Her knowledge; through their hearts Her love; through their Wills, Her Power; and through their bodies, Her beauty upon this earth.

“Look for the inner causes of disharmony much more than the outer ones. It is the inside which governs the outside.”

–Mother

* The Sri Aurobindo Ashram has over fifteen hundred inmates. What brought them there? Each one might have a different tale to tell. But there is a theme which almost holds good in each case: The greatest miracle has taken place in their life without any external miracle.

Underlying this simple and sincere record by Mr. Joshi, recounted at the request of the Guest Editor, is the profound truth: he who chooses the Divine has already been chosen by the Divine.

–Guest Editor

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