THE MOTHER

SRIMATI PREMA NANDAKUMAR

Ninety-seven years ago, the Mother was born in France. As the daughter of a well-to-do banker, she had a sheltered and comfortable life. But this did not prevent her from contemplating upon the sorrows of mankind. A strange, recurrent dream made her decide upon a career meant to cure the ills of humanity.

“...every night as soon as I was in bed, it seemed to me that I came out of my body and rose straight up above the house, then above the town, very high. I saw myself then clad in a magnificent golden robe, longer than myself; and as I rose, that robe lengthened, spreading in a circle around me to form, as it were, an immense roof over the town. Then I would see coming out from all sides men, women, children, old men, sick men, unhappy men; they gathered under the outspread robe, imploring help, recounting their miseries, their sufferings, their pains. In reply, the robe, supple and living, stretched out to them individually, and as soon as they touched it, they were consoled or healed, and entered back into their body happier and stronger than they had ever been before coming out of it. Nothing appeared to me more beautiful, nothing made me more happy; and all the activities of the day seemed to me dull and colourless, without real life, in comparison with this activity of the night which was for me the true life.”

The Mother’s early life and this dream of hers bring to our mind a great epic heroine of Tamil Nadu, Manimekhalai. Manimekhalai too was drawn to the life of the spirit while still young, and was concerned with the sorrows of mankind. It appeared to those around her that she was ‘born’ to save mankind from its ills. Towards achieving her life’s mission she had to overcome the objection of her people and break many barriers placed across her path by man and fate. The Mother’s early dream and her subsequent divine ministry have a parallel in the pure and lustrous figure of Manimekhalai standing near the Padapankaja Peetika in the garden at Kachi, relieving the hunger of people through the divine vessel, Amudha Surabhi. The suffering people came to her, received her grace and went away with their troubles dissolved.

“Many people came to her

Speaking as many as

languages eighteen.

The blind, the deaf, the lame, the dumb,

Those with no guardians,

the sick;

People in ascetic garb, others ill with hunger;

Poverty-striken lazy persons

themselves to blame;

Thousands of animals and birds:

As life-saving medicine unto these

they praised Manimekhalai;

As if she were the resultant grace

Of giving charity

to worthy ascetics:

As the yield of the seed

When land, water, season and plough

Are properly tuned.”

The future ascetic-healer was perceived in the child by Manimekhalai’s mother. The Mother’s childhood dream belongs to this plane of being. As Professor K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar says of Her at this stage of life:

“The child is verily the blest seer, the great healer. Even the Himalayas of pain cannot altogether crush her; an indrawing movement of her immaculate expansive robe, and instantly the healing begins, and pain is exorcised away.”

As a young woman in Paris, she developed coteries to discuss spiritual problems which helped many perplexed beings to see straight. She also travelled widely with her husband. Her introspective nature was filled with spiritual strength due to these travels. A determination grew in her to chase away the shadows besieging the world. She recorded in her diary, her ideas and resolutions, and her deep desire for turning life on this earth into life divine. “Transmute me into that burning brazier so that all the atmosphere of earth may be purified with its flame,” she wrote on August 27, 1914. The prayer was a flame of enthusiastic hope, because she had recently met Sri Aurobindo. The Tamil epic Manimekhalai has a wonderful description of the Avatara of Buddha. “In the wide, wide world where stretched darkness everywhere, Buddha appeared as an effulgent Sun with rays extended.” The Mother met Sri Aurobindo on March 29, 1914 and recorded in her diary in similar vein:

“It matters not if there are hundreds of beings plunged in densest ignorance. He whom we saw yesterday is on earth: His presence is enough to prove that a day will come when darkness shall be transformed into light, when Thy reign shall be indeed established upon earth.

O Lord, Divine Builder of this marvel, my heart over-flowed with joy and gratitude when I think of it, and my hope is boundless.”

For both of them it was the beginning of a new stage in their spiritual life. Sri Aurobindo had attained personal Siddhi by now and was on the threshold of performing Yoga for the Supramentalisation of the entire humanity. The Mother too had undergone deep spiritual experiences and was ready to put her plans into action. For a time she, along with her husband and Sri Aurobindo, published two philosophical journals–the Arya in English and the Revue de Grande Synthese in French. The Mother had to leave for France because of the War, and later spent three spiritually fruitful years in Japan. She joined Sri Aurobindo in 1920 at Pondicherry to collaborate with him in his task of uplifting humanity. Half a century and more have passed since that time. Under the Mother’s guidance the Sri Aurobindo Ashram grew into an active spiritual centre where an integral way of living has been made possible. Combining the practical with the spiritual, all the activities of the Ashram are changed with a rare perfection. This was made possible by the presence of the Mother in its formative Fears. She directed all its activities for more than four decades with infinite care, a large vision and with minute attention to detail.

How to describe this lady? How to describe this unique personality who even at an ‘advanced’ age continued to take a close interest in the life of her children? For her disciples the answer was simple. The universal Mother had been born in the human form, the jugaddhatri had come to help her human children. Sri Aurobindo himself found in her presence the help that earth’s children needed to better themselves.

“Her embodiment is a chance for the earth-consciousness to receive the Supramental into it and to undergo just the transformation necessary for that to be possible.”

This spiritual significance apart, she endeared herself to millions by her dedication to an ideal and universal love for all kind. Whatever be the subject or problem, she would go straight the core and resolve it by bashing her advice on love and the progress of humanity. Thus in her recorded words, we have a ‘Tirunedundandakam’ or Divine Staff to help us in our journey through life.

Maternity, for example, has been debased by the unnecessarily loud slogans on family planning. But the Mother elevates maternity to the sphere of the spiritual and shows women the importance of their task.

“True maternity begins with the conscious creation of a being, with the willed shaping of a soul coming to develop and utilise a new body. The true domain of women is spiritual. We forget it but too often.”

To a pointed question, “What should be the ideal of a woman’s physical beauty,” the Mother’s answer is succinct and direct.

“A perfect harmony in the proportions, suppleness and strength, grace and force, plasticity and endurance, and above all, an excellent health, unvarying and unchanging, which is the result of a pure soul, a happy trust in life and an unshakable faith in the Divine Grace.”

The Mother emphasises the need for sincerity in all that we do, be it spiritual Yoga or physical handiwork.

“Sincerity is the basis of all true realisation. It is the means, it is the way and it is also the goal. Without sincerity, you may be sure of taking false steps without number and having to repair constantly the harm you would do to yourself and to others.

There is a wonderful joy in being sincere; every act of sincerity carries in itself its own reward: the feeling of purification, uplifting and liberation that one feels when one rejects even if it is a particle of falsehood. Sincerity is safety, protection, guide; ultimately it is the transforming power.”

The Mother was an ideal teacher. Just as the teacher descends to the level of the student in his explanations, and then suddenly ascends in knowledge along with his student now illumined, the Mother used the simplest expressions and homely similes in her talks and writings. The writings of Sri Aurobindo come upon us like an overwhelming flood. The Mother alone effectively drew from it the life-giving water that could be easily used by the Aurobindonians. For example, the entire Seventh Book of Savitri deals with Savitri’s Yoga, how she searched for her soul and met it, to gather spiritual strength as a preliminary to the work of earth-transformation. A voice had told Savitri as the fatal day approached:

Find out thy soul, recover thy hid self,

In silence seek God’s meaning in thy depths,

Then mortal nature change to the divine”.

Savitri’s Yoga follows, and this Yoga is described in great detail. Knowledge of the soul or antaratma is very difficult to come by as it was made clear to Nachiketas by Yama in Kathopanishad. How many layers of sense-created likes and dislikes cover this ancient, beginningless soul that is seated within our heart! The epic grandeur and symbol world of Sri Aurobindo are summarised by the Mother with effortless ease in one of her answers:

“Concentrate in the heart. Enter into it; go within and deep and far, as far as you can. Gather all the strings of your consciousness that are spread abroad, roll them up and take a plunge and sink down.

A fire is burning there, in the deep quietude of the heart. It is the divinity in you–your true being. Hear its voice, follow its dictates.”

A born teacher: a born leader too. The force of conviction in her words are conveyed even through the cold print. An unwavering flame-like voice was hers, and it is not easy to turn our attention away from its compelling tone.

“When you come to the Yoga, you must be ready to have all your mental buildings and all your vital scaffoldings shattered to pieces. You must be prepared to be suspended in the air with nothing to support you except your faith. You will have to forget your past self and its clingings altogether, to pluck it out of your consciousness and be born anew, free from every kind of bondage. Think not of what you were, but of what you aspire to be; be altogether in what you want to realise. Turn from your dead past and look straight towards the future. Your religion, country, family lie there; it is the Divine.”

Nothing is forgotten in her total vision. Each segment of our life is given its proper plane of action, but everything is to be done in a mood of total surrender to the Divine. Our memories are often our bitterest enemies. Like a hidden opponent they come upon us when we are least prepared, make us despondent, paralyse us with a sense of failure and incapacitate us from striving for future achievement. Memories are thus like the bonds of karma and create a sense of fatality. This despondency is nothing but the suicide of the spirit. Only the Divine has the power to cut the bonds of Karma; only a divine personality like the Mother can save us from the treacherous bonds of memory, save us from self-pity and self-denigration. Echoing Sri Aurobindo’s “We do not belong to the past dawns, but to the noons of the future”, the Mother baptised even people who had no contact with her into a new birth of aspiration and works. The Mother was certainly a “living demonstration of Sri Aurobindo’s teachings.” Like the Avatar described in Savitri she achieved a mighty awakening in earth’s consciousness by setting in motion many projects and training a devoted band of workers in Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

Sixty years ago, she wrote in her diary:

“My aspiration to Thee, O Lord, has taken the form of a beautiful rose, harmonious, full in bloom, rich in fragrance. I stretch it out to Thee with both arms in a gesture of offering and I ask of Thee: if my understanding is limited, widen it; if my knowledge is obscure, enlighten it; if my heart is empty of ardour, set it aflame; if my love is insignificant, make it intense; if my feelings are ignorant and egoistic, give them the full consciousness in the Truth. And the ‘I’ which demands this of Thee, O Lord, is not a little personality lost amidst thousands of others. It is the whole earth that aspires to Thee in a movement full of fervour.”

Even in those days when she was concerned with persona1 Yoga, she didn’t forget the suffering humanity. Divine, truly. But as far as she was concerned she was “a little personality” along with the rest of humanity; The beautiful image in the passage given above is intensely poetic. At the same time, it is also wonderfully prophetic.

How the “little personality’s” prayers ware answered has now become history. Her divine ministry of six decades has left the earth-atmosphere changed and charged with a new light.

But the work is not completed yet. Much remains to be done, and now we have only her words to guide us to our goal. But these words, like a mother’s to a child at an impressionable age, shall be hearkened.

“Once more we are at this moment at a decisive turn in the history of the earth. All the aspects of man’s progress should now unite with yet many others to form a more total and complete progress, a more perfect understanding of life, a more integral approach to the Divine. Even this unification is not sufficient. One must have faith, a vision of the future, of the goal towards which humanity is moving, of the future realisation of the world, the last spiritual revolution of which Sri Aurobindo speaks, that which will open the New Age that is to say, a Supramental revolution.”

The characteristic authoritative tone that is noticed in her sayings has a way of uplifting our hearts. Which of us can remain unmoved and inactive when we listen to her?

“India is the Guru of the world. The future structure of the world depends on India. India is the living soul. She incarnates the spiritual knowledge in the world...India must maintain the spiritual leadership of the world.”

“Space and time do not begin and end with the mental consciousness: even the Overmind has them. They are the forms of all cosmic existence: only, they vary on each level. Each world has its own space and time.”

–Mother

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