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SEQUENCE - 1: THE EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS
TOPIC 1:
Incident a)
“In the unfolding process of the Self
Sometimes the inexpressible Mystery
Elects a human vessel of descent.”
(Savitri BI. C4)
The unfolding process of the Self is the millennial march of earth’s evolution through matter, plant-life, animal-life and man. But Man is not the last
rung of evolution. His ignorance and his incapacity have to be transformed and higher powers of consciousness have to be brought down. Man must perfect himself both within and without and thus evolve into his own
greater levels of consciousness.
TOPIC 2:
Incident a)
In this ascending movement of Evolution the Divine Consciousness takes a human birth and hastens the coming of the next evolutionary stage.
When the
hour drew near for a Higher Consciousness beyond Mind to be manifested, there came upon earth the dual Powers, the Supramental Harbingers—Sri Aurobindo and The Mother:
SEQUENCE - 2: SRI AUROBINDO’S BIRTH: 1872
TOPIC 1:
Incident a)
“A strong son of lightning came down to the earth with fire-feet of swiftness,
splendid;
Light was born in a womb and thunder’s force filled a human frame.
The calm speed of Heaven, the sweet greatness, pure passion, winged power
had descended ;
All the gods in a mortal body dwelt, bore a single name.”
(SABCL 5, 595)
Incident b)
Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta at 4.50 a.m., on the morning of 15 August 1872. To Dr. Krishna Dhan Ghosh, a brilliant Civil Surgeon of Calcutta,
and Swarnalata, a stunningly beautiful lady known for her beauty and called the Rose of Rangpur, was born their third son. It was a Thursday, the day of Brihaspati, who, with his triumphant cry dispels and scatters
all powers of the Night. So too, Sri Aurobindo came to dispel the darkness in Man and announce the coming of the Divine Dawn :
“Golden he came,
Armed with the flame
Looked on the world that his greatness and passion must free…”
(MC-4/38)
TOPIC 2:
The word ‘Aravinda’ in Sanskrit means a lotus and it symbolises Divine Consciousness - a significantly prophetic name for the child.
Explaining the inner significance of Sri Aurobindo’s birth The Mother said that his birth was “eternal in the history of the Universe”:
- “Physically, the consequences of the birth will be of eternal importance in the world.
- Mentally, it is a birth that will be eternally remembered in the universal history.
- Psychically, a birth that recurs for ever from age to age upon earth.
- Spiritually, the birth of the Eternal upon earth.”
SEQUENCE - 3 : SRI AUROBINDO’S CHILDHOOD: 1872—78
TOPIC 1:
Up to the age of five Sri Aurobindo was with his parents at Rangpur. Occasionally the family visited Deoghar and stayed with their maternal grandfather
Rishi Rajnarain Bose – a great patriot and exponent of Indian culture.
TOPIC 2:
Dr. K.D. Ghosh, who was among the first few Bengalis to go to England where he took his M.D. Degree, ‘was steeped in the prevailing spirit of
Anglicism’. He did not want his children to imbibe anything of their Motherland – neither her ancient traditions nor her rich culture and language. So, right from their childhood the children were kept away – away
from all Indian influence and away from home.
The three sons, Binoy Bhushan, Manmohan and Sri Aurobindo were sent to
Loretto Convent School at Darjeeling – a school intended for the sons of
British administrators in India.
TOPIC 3:
Incident a)
In the shadow of the Himalayas, in sight of the wonderful snow-capped peaks like the Kanchenjunga – about which Sri Aurobindo wrote a poem, even when
he was only six years old – the children “were brought up in alien surroundings.” Sri Aurobindo took some time to get himself adjusted to this alien place but soon “his wide awake intelligence and the singular
sweetness of his nature” impressed deeply the Irish nuns who were running the Convent School.
Incident b)
In later years Sri Aurobindo recalled ‘the roads with the golden ferns’ in Darjeeling. He even recounted a significant inner experience he had during
his brief stay of two years in Darjeeling:
“I was lying down one day when I saw suddenly a great darkness rushing into me and enveloping me and the whole of the universe … after that I had a
great Tamas – darkness – always hanging on to me all along my stay in England. It left me only when I was coming back to India”.
SEQUENCE - 4: THE MOTHER’S BIRTH 1878
TOPIC 1:
In the meantime, another event of cosmic significance was being prepared: the preparation of the body in the womb of Mathilde Ismaloun. “Even before I
was born my body was prepared by Mahasaraswati. Yes, while I was in the womb of my mother,” explained The Mother. “Before that, Mahasaraswati prepared the womb itself.”
Like the Goddess Durga of the Indian lore, who was born out of the different powers of all the Godheads, The Mother’s body too was prepared by
Mahasaraswati from “all the elements of the various aspects of the Supreme Mother”. Thus —
“A miracle of the Absolute was born,
Infinity put on a finite soul,
All ocean lived within a wandering drop,
A time-made body housed the Illimitable.”
(Savitri)
TOPIC 2:
Incident a)
The Mother was born in Paris on 21 February 1878, in the mid-morning at 10.15 a.m. It was again a Thursday, the day of Brihaspathi – ‘the King, he in
whom the soul-power goes in front’. At her birth she was named – seemingly an Indian name—Mirra Alfassa. Thus her initials were M.A., and all her clothes and belongings carried the initials MA. So she was called MA
(Mother) even from her childhood!
Incident b)
She chose France for her birth because “ It is France that can connect Europe with India. There are great spiritual possibilities for France ... It is
through France that the spiritual message will reach Europe.”
Incident c)
She was born into a unique family – her mother, Mathilde Ismaloun was from Egypt and she was said to be descendent of the Egyptian pharaohs. The
father, Maurice Alfassa, was from Turkey, dominated by the Islamic faith. Just a year before The Mother’s birth the parents had shifted from Egypt to Paris – the heartcentre of Europe.
TOPIC 3:
Though born into such a family of mixed race and religion and nationality, The Mother declared:
“I belong to no nation, no civilisation, no society, no race, but to the Divine”.
“I belong to the divine alone and my action upon earth is and will always be for the triumph of the Divine….”
Neither history or prehistory could have exclusive claim on her, for, as The Mother wrote:
“Since the beginning of the earth, wherever and whenever there was the possibility of manifesting a ray of Consciousness, I was there.”
TOPIC 4:
The Mother’s birth can perhaps be best described as:
“One had returned from the transcendent planes
And bore anew the load of mortal breath,
Who had striven of old with our darkness and our pain;…
Once more with her fathomless heart she fronted Time…
Once more that Will put on an earthy shape.”
(B IV, C1)
SEQUENCE - 5: Sri Aurobindo: Manchester: 1879-1884
TOPIC 1:
Incident a)
It was as if The Mother’s birth in Paris had prepared the occult atmosphere for Sri Aurobindo to travel to the West, to England.
Sri Aurobindo, the ‘voyager upon eternity’s seas’, set sail in the middle of 1879. He and his two brothers were placed in the care of Rev. William H
Drewett. and his wife. Apart from finalising all the necessary arrangements for the lodging and education of his sons, Dr. Krishnadhan Ghose left strict instructions that his children should not be allowed to make
the ‘acquaintance of any Indian or undergo any Indian influence.’ (SABCL, 26, p. 41).
Incident b)
The reason why the three sons were taken to England was that Dr. Ghosh wanted his children should become great men, ‘becons of the world’, and in
British India, the greatest possible career for a native was that of the coveted Civil Service of India. And to be able to pass the ICS, it was necessary that the children should be educated in England right from
their childhood.
So, as a child of seven, Sri Aurobindo was taken to England and for the next fourteen years, from 1879 to 1893, he stayed there, away from parents and
family and home.
TOPIC 2:
Incident a)
From the quiet rural settings of Rangpur and the hushed mountain solitude of Darjeeling, Sri Aurobindo had found himself suddenly in the second largest
city of England – Manchester. But, fortunately, he did not have to go out much into or travel through the notoriously ugly city. Being only seven and probably considered too young to attend school, Sri Aurobindo was
tutored at home by Mr & Mrs. Drewett.
Incident b)
The young student learned rapidly Latin, French, Arithmetic and Geography. English was like his mother tongue – so he indulged in reading books of his
choice. He read the Bible, Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats and others. He even attempted composing verses for the ‘Fox Family Magazine’. His first published poem, called ‘Light’ gives the reader a
foretaste of the future poet:
“I waken the flowers in the dew – spangled bowers,
The birds in their chambers of green
And mountain and plain glow with beauty again,
As they bask in their matinal sheen.”
This passion for poetry remained with Sri Aurobindo all through his life and it fulfilled itself only in the mantric utterances of Savitri.
TOPIC 3:
Incident a)
Steeped in literature and poetry, Sri Aurobindo was hardly sports-minded. He wrote to a biographer that he “only played cricket as a small boy in Mr.
Drewett’s garden at Manchester and not at all well”.
Though frail and weak but not unhealthy, he did not involve in any kind of exercises or sports that a young boy would normally do.
Incident b)
Nor was Sri Aurobindo any religious-minded. The old mother Drewett was a fervent Evangelist and tried to save the souls of the three Indian boys by
converting them. But she hardly succeeded. “I never became a Christian and never used to go to Church,” protested Sri Aurobindo when he was asked if he were converted.
TOPIC 4:
What occupied his mind, apart from poetry was the thought of the liberation of India. Even when he was only eleven years, he “received strongly the
impression that a period of general upheaval and great evolutionary changes was coming in the world and he himself was destined to play a part in it.’’ On receiving from his father the newspaper The Bangalee with passages marked relating cases of maltreatment of Indians by Englishmen,” Sri Aurobindo’s attention was drawn to India and his strong ‘impression’ of a general upheaval in the world was “canalised into the idea of the liberation of his own country. But the ‘firm decision’ took a full shape only towards the end of another four years,” – that is when he was in London, studying at St. Paul’s School which he joined in September, 1884.
TOPIC 5:
But, by the time he joined St. Paul’s School, the Drewetts emigrated to Australia leaving the children in the care of the old mother Drewett. And as
the old lady was a pious Christian she felt she could not stay in the same house with the boys who were “unbelievers.” And she too went to live elsewhere. By this time, Dr. Krishnadhan Ghosh had become rather
irregular in his remittances. So right from their early teenage the Ghosh brothers were thrown mostly on their own resources.
SEQUENCE - 6: THE MOTHER’S CHILDHOOD: 1879-84
TOPIC 1:
Incident a)
Like Dr. K.D. Ghosh, who had wanted to make his three sons ‘lamps not only of India but of the world’, Mathilde also aspired to make her children ‘best
in the world’. She brought them up in an ascetic and stoical manner. “When we were very small, recounted The Mother, my brother and I, she spent her time dinning into our hearts that one is not on earth to have a
good time, that it is constant hell, but one has to put up with it, and the only satisfaction to be got out of life is in doing one’s duty.”
Incident b)
So, wanting her children to realise the ‘highest ideal’ she never allowed them to be “ill-tempered or discontented or lazy.”
Once when Mathilde scolded her, The Mother “felt all the human misery and all this human falsehood”, and tears welled out of her eyes. The Mother had
felt deeply the world’s miseries, their weight pressing upon her:
“Even in her childish movements could be felt
The nearness of a light still kept from earth,
Feelings that only eternity could share,
Thoughts natural and native to the gods.”
(SABCL, 29, p. 355)
Incident c)
But, at other times,
“A lovelier light assumed her spirit brow
And sweet and solemn grew her musing gaze”,
when she sat still in her small armchair, all engrossed in meditation. “A very brilliant light would then descend over my head and produce some turmoil
inside my brain,” explained The Mother. “Gradually I began to feel, ‘I shall have to do some tremendously great work that nobody yet knows.” Later on she would say that she was as though born with the knowledge of
the mission she was to fulfil on earth.
Incident d)
Indeed, “The Mother, was inwardly above the human even in childhood,” affirmed Sri Aurobindo. He added that her growth was verily “the manifestation of
a divine consciousness, not human turning into the divine.” From the age of five itself The Mother was conscious that she did not belong to this world, and that she did not have a human consciousness. At this age,
she used to feel constantly ‘a light and force above her head penetrate her brain and gradually shape her life.”
SEQUENCE - 7 : THE INCARNATE DUAL POWERS
TOPIC 1:
Incident a)
Thus the two incarnate Powers, Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, shaped their lives amid alien cultures and ethos:
“Heirs of their past, future’s discoverers,
Electors of their own self-chosen lot
They waited for the adventure of new life.”
Incident b)
Unknown to each other they grew up preparing for their ‘great work’. Their outer developments took two directions that were more complementary than
contradictory. Sri Aurobindo’s direction was to discover the “earth’s brooding wisdom”:
“Mounting from mind’s last peaks to mate with gods,
Making earth’s brilliant thoughts a springing board
To dive into the cosmic vastnesses,
The knowledge of the thinker and the seen
Saw the unseen and thought the unthinkable,
Opened the enormous doors of the unknown,
Rent Man’s horizons of infinity”.
(BIV, C2)
Incident c)
And The Mother’s outer development was in the direction of catching “the underlying patterns of the unseen”:
“Overpassing lines that please the outward eyes
But hide the sight of that which lives within
Sculpture and painting concentrated sense
Upon an inner vision’s motionless verge
Revealed a figure of the invisible,
Unveiled all Nature’s meaning in a form,
Or caught into a body the Divine”.
(BIV, C2)
SEQUENCE - 8: Sri Aurobindo: London : 1885-90
TOPIC 1:
Incident a)
In September 1884 Sri Aurobindo was elected to St. Paul’s School, London as a Foundationer. The Foundation scholars were regarded as the elite of the
school. The Head Master of the School, Dr. Walker, who was considered to ‘be the most outstanding English headmasters of the day’ was so impressed by Sri Aurobindo’s proficiency in Latin that he took up the young
boy himself ‘to ground him in Greek and then pushed him rapidly into the higher classes of the school.’
Incident b)
“Up to the age of fifteen I was known as a very promising scholar at St. Paul’s. After fifteen I lost this reputation,” said Sri Aurobindo. In the
last three years at St. Paul’s he simply went through his school course and spent his spare time reading avidly the history of ancient and medieval and modern Europe as well as the French and English Poets and
Novelists, Classical Poets—Homer, Aristophanes, Dante and Goethe – all in their original languages.
The old Head Master of St. Paul is reported to have said ‘that of all the boys who passed through his hand during the last twenty five or thirty
years, Arabindo was by far and above the most richly endowed in intellectual capacity.” (MC, IV, p. 144)
TOPIC 2:
It was more to escape from the ‘miles of soulless brick’ of the city that Sri Aurobindo and his brothers went during the summer holidays to some hill
or seaside resort. They went sometimes to Keswick or to the Lake District and enjoyed long walks along the lovely lakes, all placid and calm. Sri Aurobindo fondly remembered these walks.
TOPIC 3:
Perhaps these holiday – walks were the last indulgence in luxury. For in the last two years at St. Paul’s their father’s remittances had stopped
completely and they were forced to live on a starvation diet. “We lived for one year on five shillings a week that my elder brother was getting…” described Sri Aurobindo. “We didn’t have a winter coat. We used to
take tea, bread and ham in the morning and some sausages in the evening.” And their rooms at the top of the South Kensington Liberal Club had no heating arrangement or fire.
SEQUENCE - 9: SRI AUROBINDO CAMBRIDGE : 1890 – 92
TOPIC 1:
However, the economic hardships did not in any way prevent Sri Aurobindo from passing the final exam at St. Paul’s in December 1889 with flying
colours. Immediately afterwards he took the Examination for Scholarships to King’s College, Cambridge. He passed the examination with record marks and obtained the Open Scholarship of £ 80 a year. It was on
correcting three papers of this Examination that Oscar Browning commented:
“I suppose you know you passed an extraordinarily high examination. I have examined papers at thirteen examinations and I have never during that
time seen such excellent papers as yours.”
TOPIC 2:
Incident a)
But, as Dr. Krishnadhan Ghosh wanted his son to take up I.C.S. and thereby become a member of the ‘heaven-born’ bureaucracy in India, Sri Aurobindo, in
obedience to his father’s wishes joined the I.C.S. class organised by St. Paul’s School. He passed the Open Entrance Scholarship in July 1890, securing eleventh place and scoring record marks in Greek and Latin.
Incident b)
It was a double strain on Sri Aurobindo – the studies in the Classics at King’s College and the studies for I.C.S. as a probationer. In spite of this
tremendous strain Sri Aurobindo passed in May 1892 the First part of the classical Tripos examination in the first class. At the same time he won the Rawley Prize for Greek Iambics and other prizes in King’s
College. Of his achievement James Cotton, Sri Aurobindo’s senior tutor, wrote:
“That a man should have been able to do this … and at the same time to keep up his I.C.S. work, proves very unusual industry and capacity. Besides
his classical scholarship he possessed a knowledge of English literature far beyond the average of undergraduates, and wrote a much better English style than most young Englishmen…”
TOPIC 3:
Apart from his commitment to his studies for the Classical Scholarship, Sri Aurobindo had to study all the subjects for the I.C.S.: British and Indian
law, History and Geography of India, Political Economy, Classical Languages and the Vernacular Languages of India. Amongst the Vernacular languages, he chose Hindustani and among the Classical, he took up Sanskrit.
“I learnt Sanskrit by reading the
Nala-Damayanti episode of the Mahabharata”, said Sri Aurobindo.
TOPIC 4:
Incident a)
The master of languages, Sri Aurobindo, used all his poetic talent to fashion ‘piece after finely-wrought piece of natural magic”. “Sensitive to beauty
in its diverse forms and intensities, he could respond to the authentic with his whole soul.” (KRS, p. 38) He composed a number of lyric poems, a ballad, a verse play and a philosophical dialogue entitled ‘The
Harmony of Virtue.’ His lyrics, later published under the title ‘Songs to Myrtilla and Other Poems’ were inspired by the Greek Muse. The theme of love and death, which is the main theme of his later epic poetry, occupies the juvenile heart of Sri Aurobindo. Hear these lines from his poem, ‘Night by the sea’:
Love, a moment drop thy hands;
Night within my soul expands.
Veil thy beauties milk-rose-fair
In that dark and showering hair…
Beauty pays her boon of breath
To thy narrow credit, Death,
Leaving a brief perfume ...
Incident b)
Most of his juvenilia was influenced not only by the Romantic poets such as Shelley and Keats but also by the Victorian poets—Stephen Philips, Arnold
and Swinburne. “Still it is possible that the general atmosphere of the later Victorian decline … may have helped to mould my work and undoubtedly dates and carries the stamp of the time in which it was written”,
wrote Sri Aurobindo to a literary critic.
TOPIC 5:
Incident a)
If poetry inflamed his imagination, the spirit of nationalism inspired his heart. During his London days he had joined a secret society significantly
called “Lotus and Dagger” in which each member took a vow to work for the liberation of India. While at Cambridge, Sri Aurobindo became for some time the secretary of Indian Majlis and gave a number of strong
speeches, specially about India which, as he afterwards learnt, had their part in determining the authorities to exclude him from the Indian Civil Service “The failure in the riding test was only the occasion, for
in some other cases an opportunity was given for remedying this defect in India itself,” clarified Sri Aurobindo.
Incident b)
In fact, Sri Aurobindo himself was not interested in getting through the ICS for he found out what sort of work it was and he had no interest in
administrative life. He admitted: “I didn’t want to be in the British Government service. I had a strong dislike for the British.” So although he successfully passed the First and Second Periodicals and the final
written exam as well, “by certain manoeuvres he managed to get himself disqualified for riding without himself rejecting the Service…”
Incident c)
There seems to have been a deeper reason for Sri Aurobindo absenting himself from the riding test. Motilal Roy wrote in his Bengali book :
“I note what I heard in 1913 from Sri Aurobindo himself.”
“On the eve of appearing for the Riding Examination I became engrossed. Then, in a state of drowsiness, I had two dreams. First I met the presiding
Deity of Britain’s destiny. I was on the point of stepping towards the throne of the Emperor of India, she (the Deity) greeted me smilingly, with many favourable words. The next instant a Sannyasin appeared with
a trident in hand. Giving me the mantra of Indian culture he awakened me. His message I made my ideal. I absented myself from the Riding Examination.” (MC IV, p. 230)
In any case, it was a rejection that changed the course of British history in India! The letter of rejection from the India Office was delivered to Sri
Aurobindo on 7 December 1892.
TOPIC 6:
Incident a)
It was terrible news for Dr. Krishnadhan Ghosh. Wrote Sri Aurobindo:
“My failure in the I.C.S. riding text was a great disappointment to my father, for he had arranged everything for me through Sir Henry Cotton…. All
that came down like a wall.”
Incident b)
And this disappointment became a death-blow when it was coupled with the information he heard from Grindlays, his bankers, that Roumania, the
particular steamer in which Sri Aurobindo had departed from England, had gone down off the coast of Portugal near Lisbon. The news came as a stunning blow and Dr. Krishnadhan Ghosh, who was already suffering from a
weak heart collapsed the same night and died the same night repeating his favourite son’s name, ‘Auro’, ‘Auro’ just as King Dasaratha had died uttering the name of his son—‘Ram’, ‘Ram’!!
Sri Aurobindo returned to India not in ‘Roumania’ but in the steamship ‘Carthage’ which left the London’s Royal Albert docks around 9 a.m. on 12
January, 1893.
TOPIC 7:
Incident a)
“It is strange how things arrange themselves at times,” wrote Sri Aurobindo. “When I failed in the I.C.S. riding test and was looking for a job,
the Gaekwar [The Maharaja of Baroda] happened to be in London … I don’t remember … I think I applied for the job when the Gaekwar was in England … We consulted an authority about the pay we should propose
… He said we could propose Rs.200.”
Incident b)
Sri Aurobindo then set sail homeward -- he was destined ‘to liberate The Mother and through her liberate the world.’ Standing on the decks of the
Carthage Sri Aurobindo cast one last look at the country where he had spent his formative years. He bade England a farewell, an ‘Envoi’:
“ For in Sicilian olive-groves no more
Or seldom must my footprints now be seen,
Nor tread Athenian lane, nor yet explore
Paranassus or thy voiceful shores, O Hippocrene.
Me from her lotus heaven Saraswati
Has called to regions of eternal snow
And Ganges pacing to the southern sea,
Ganges upon whose shores the flowers of Eden blow.”
TOPIC 8:
Incident a)
Leaving England was not difficult for Sri Aurobindo. He hadn’t developed any sentimental attachment with the English people or to England as a country.
It had offered him best of poetry and literature and high efforts in intellectual thought, and nothing more. On the inner level of experience, life in England had contributed two minor experiences. When Sri
Aurobindo was twelve or thirteen, something came upon him and he felt that he ought to give up selfishness and he tried it in his own way to put it into practice. However small an experience, it “was a sort of
turning-point in my inner life,” told Sri Aurobindo.
Incident b)
The second experience came just before he left England. While reading Max Muller’s translation of Vedanta he came upon the idea of Atman and he thought
that this was the true thing to be realised. “It was the mental rather than the spiritual experience of the Atman,” explained Sri Aurobindo. “I felt the One only as true; it was an experience absolutely Shankarite
in its sense. It lasted only for a short time.”
Apart from these two glimpses of an inner life Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual life had no milestone experiences during his long sojourn in England.
Incident c)
So he left England, without regret or attachment. “If there was attachment to a European land as a second country,” wrote Sri Aurobindo in later years,
“it was intellectually and emotionally to one not seen or lived in this life, not England, but France.”
France, where The Mother was growing up into her girlhood and in whom —
“… Nature seemed a dream of the Divine
And beauty and grace and grandeur had their home,
Harboured the childhood of the incarnate flame.
(BV, C1)
SEQUENCE - 10: The Mother: Paris : 1885-92
TOPIC 1:
As Sri Aurobindo left behind him the Western world and headed towards India, The Mother woke to the Western culture. Almost simultaneously she learned
reading and writing, painting, music and tennis and occultism.
Incident a)
At seven The Mother still did not know how to read. But, one day, when her elder brother, Mattéo, refused to tell her what he was reading and enjoying,
The Mother asked him to teach how to read. He showed her the letters and how to form words. And a week later she knew how to read.
Incident b)
From her childhood The Mother was very observant. “I passed my time observing,” she would say, “I registered everything, I learnt all I could, I did
not stop learning.” Because of this innate capacity to observe and to absorb, The Mother would plunge whole heartedly into any thing – master it, experience its essence and after a time when the thing didn’t seem to
be important she would “pass on to another thing: painting, music, science, literature… all, all; practical things.” Practical things like jumping, skipping, running, games etc.
Incident c)
The Mother as a young girl was very agile with skipping ropes. Generally she could swing the rope four times in a complete circle in one jump! “And
with a little effort I could swing the rope five times in one jump,” she added, smilingly.
Incident d)
One day, The Mother was in the grand salon of square du Roule. Playfully she told her friends, “I’ll show you something: how one should dance. The
salon was about 12 metres long and she went to a corner to get the longest distance. “I was standing in the corner,” she later recounted, “and hop! up I went… I came down on the tips of my toes, rebounded and
reached the other corner. Quite evidently I was carried,” noted The Mother.
Incident e)
Yes, it was the same force, that ‘something’ which ‘upbore’ her and literally set her down on the ground, when The Mother fell from a height of 3
metres! One day, in the Fountainbleu forest, she was pacing with her friends when suddenly she came to a place jutting on over the road by about 3 metres. “Well, so great was my momentum that I was unable to stop,”
said The Mother. And then she fell.. or, did she sail through the air! “I fell very, very slowly… not a scratch, not a speck of dust, nothing – absolutely intact...”
Incident f)
Was it not again the same great force that had come down into The Mother when she lifted up a bully of her class and threw him down with a thump? This
force, The Mother later recognised, was that of Mahakali.
TOPIC 2:
Incident a)
But, her passion was tennis. She started learning it when she was only eight years. And the best way to learn it was, of course, to play with the best
players! Although at times thy looked surprised they played with her in the end. Sure, The Mother never won against them, but “I learnt much”, she said in later years.
Incident b)
And she did not stop playing tennis until she was over eightly. In later years, the game, however became a means to direct her force to the opposite
player and to help him or her spiritually. One day she told one of the disciples, “You see, my child, I don’t play tennis merely for the sake of exercise. I play because with each stroke, each return, I can send
some good atmosphere and bring down light and peace to remove the depression or the psychological problems of the players in the opposite court. And to those who are physically unwell, I send strength and energy
with each ball, so that they may recover their health… Thus, you see, even in tennis I am helping each one to solve his difficulties and to grow towards progress and perfection.” (MC II, p. 116-7).
TOPIC 3:
The Mother was like that always – aiming at perfection and self-mastery. She would be alert to any external vibration and always involved in fathoming
life’s mysteries.
Incident a)
One day, Mathilde took The Mother to a funeral. She was not at all acquainted with the dead person, but, a great sorrow, a deep pain seized The Mother.
“I observed very, very clearly,” analysed The Mother. “I toldmyself: ‘surely it is their sorrow I am feeling, for a I have no reason to be specially affected by this person’s death’”.
This self-analysis would usually take the form of projecting herself upon a screen as in a cinema, observing herself moving on it. And this process
helped her gain the true direction of her life. “It seemed tremendously interesting to me, the most interesting thing in the world, said The Mother.” “I was five or six or seven years old… and I had a father who
loved circus, and he came and told me: ‘Come with me, I am going to the circus on Sunday. I said, ‘No, I am doing something much more interesting than going to the circus!”
Incident b)
She was exclusively occupied with informing herself, learning understanding, knowing. That was her interest, her passion. Once, when she was eight
years she visited the Black Forest at Baden-Baden, Germany. There The Mother saw gnomes playing hide and seek. She loved watching them. She was not afraid of the gnomes.
Incident c)
Nor was she afraid of solitary walks in the old forest and sitting alone under the huge two thousand years old trees in the Fontainebleu forest. “I was
so much identified with those great trees in my consciousness that little birds and squirrels would come in front of me without any hesitation and even sit on my body and play freely”.
Incident d)
She could identify not only with the trees but with animals, such as lions. In Paris there was a garden called ‘The Garden of Plants’. A magnificent
lion was kept there, all caged up. But the lion would always hide himself behind a door whenever visitors came to see him! “I saw that and one day I went up to the cage and began speaking to it” told The Mother.
‘Oh! how handsome me you are, what a pity that you are hiding yourself like this, how much we would like to see you…” Well, he listened. Then, little by little, it looked at me askance… later it brought out its paw
and, finally, put the tip of its nose against the bars as if saying, ‘At last, here is someone who understand me.”!
TOPIC 4:
Incident a)
For The Mother, the inner and the outer worlds were fused:
“All her life’s turns led her to symbol doors
Admitting to secret Powers that were her kin;
Adept of truth, initiate of bliss,…
She laid the secrecies of her heart’s deep muse
Upon the altar of the Wonderful…”
(BIV, C2)
Incident b)
Upon the altar of the Wonderful The Mother first offered her skill in painting. She started painting at the age of eight and already at the age of ten
she was doing oil paintings – portraits! ‘At twelve... I had an all absorbing curiosity, an interest for anything to do with art, with beauty – music, painting,” said The Mother, while recounting incidents of her
childhood. “When I looked at a painting, suddenly there would be an opening in my head and I would see the origin of the painting – and such colours!” she would say. (MC 1, 101)
Incident c)
It was the same with music. “Once I went to the world of music,” she narrated. “And what I heard was so marvellous, so unbelievably beautiful, that
even after waking I remained stunned for hours. Unbelievable.”
Incident d)
Unbelievable was also her experience on listening to Beethoven’s concerto in D. “… with the very first notes, it’s as if my head had suddenly burst
open and, I was cast up into such a splendour, oh!… Absolutely marvellous. For more than an hour I was in a state of bliss..”
Incident e)
Another time, when she was about fourteen, The Mother once went to a Jewish temple to attend a marriage. “The music was playing, and I was up there,
rapt… There were some leaded – glass windows… and I was gazing at one of them, when suddenly, through the window came a flash, like thunderbolt, like lightning. It entered like this (strikes her chest), and next… I
felt myself becoming vast and all- powerful… It lasted for days.” In later days The Mother explained, “That light which went through me, I saw it physically enter me. Obviously it was the descent of a being – not a
past incarnation, but a being from another plane. The light was golden. It was the incarnation of a divine consciousness.” (MC1,102)
Incident f)
The Mother’s music—she had started learning the piano when she was around ten years – was also imbued with the ‘rapturous depths’ for, as she once
said, “I don’t try to play music, it’s a kind of meditation with sounds.”
Explaining about the world of music, The Mother described:
“The first zone you meet is painting, sculpture, architecture: all that has a material from. The zone of forms… Next comes the musical zone. There
you find the origin of the sounds that have inspired various composers. These are the great musical waves without a sound… At the top of the musical zone it starts to become waves, vibratory waves… That’s the
topmost…” (MC1, 104)
“Constantly I hear like great musical waves. I have but to go within a bit and it’s there, I can hear it… And each time I hear these waves my hands
long to play.” It was this kind of music, music without sounds, that she gave to humanity in her New Year music year after during the last few decades of her stay at the Ashram.” (Ibid, 105)
TOPIC 5:
Incident a)
Along with all her painting and music classes, The Mother joined in 1888, an exclusive school for the rich for formal academic education. “I never went
to a public school, told The Mother, because my mother considered it unfitting for a girl to be in a public school.” She was not interested in learning for the sake of ‘having a knowing air’. She wanted to
understand all that she did and it was understanding that brought her great joy. “… all my studies were like that, the whole time. I enjoyed myself-enjoyed, enjoyed, enjoyed... it was all enjoyable.”
Incident b)
Her enjoyment in the studies and her serious involvement in her academic education is partially reflected in her school essay, written when she was
only twelve, entitled ‘The Path of Later On and the Road of Tomorrow’. A simple story but one that catches in depth the psychology of a young student. It had quite surprised The Mother’s teacher of literature. “He
eyed me with misgivings,” said The Mother, recounting about her school days.
In spite of all her other non-academic pursuits, The Mother was generally at the top of her class in all subjects and on finishing her school she
received the Prix D’Honneur.
TOPIC 6:
Incident a)
Talking of non-academic pursuits, The Mother took to the practice of occultism even at the age of twelve. “One goes out of one’s body, one is tied by
something resembling an almost imperceptible thread – if the thread is cut, it is all over.” But, she had no fear – feared nothing. When she went out of the body she saw that the air around us is filled with
multitudes of small formations… “and this is not always quite pretty!” she said.
Incident b)
She explored not only the occult worlds but also the subliminal worlds. Between the ages of 11 and 13 The Mother had a series of psychic and spiritual
experiences “which revealed to her not only the existence of God, but man’s possibility of uniting with him… of manifesting him upon earth in a life divine”:
“Her spirit saw the world as living God;
It saw the one and knew that all was He.
She knew him as the Absolute’s self space,
One with herself and ground of all things here.”
“This, along with a practical discipline for its fulfilment was given to me during my body’s sleep by several teachers”… said The Mother. “Later on
… the spiritual and psychic relation with one of these beings became more and more clear and frequent; … at that time I was led to call him Krishna.”
Incident c)
This was the period when she used to go out of the body every night and do the work to which she alluded to in the Prayers and Meditation – her
journal of inner quest – on 22 February 1914:
“As soon as I had gone to bed it seemed to me that I went out of my body and rose straight up above the house, then above the city, very high
above. Then I used to see myself clad in a magnificent golden robe, much longer than myself; and as I rose higher, the robe would stretch spreading out in a circle around me to form a kind of immense roof over
the city. Then I would see men, women, children, old men, the sick, the unfortunate coming out from every side; they would gather under the outspread robe, begging for help, telling of their miseries, their
suffering, their hardships. In reply, the robe, supple and alive, would extend towards each one of them individually, and as soon as they had touched it, they were comforted or healed…” (MV 1, p. 81)
Many years later, The Mother thus explained the meaning of her dream:
“The impersonal, eternal divine love. Being this love, I feel myself living in the centre of all things upon the whole earth and, at the same time,
it seems to me that I am immense, infinite arms stretching out and enveloping with a boundless tenderness all beings clasped, gathered up, nestled upon my breast, vaster than the universe.”
Incident d)
Thus The Mother spent her childhood days observing and participating simultaneously in different worlds – the physical the occult and the subliminal:
“A little figure in infinity
Yet stood and seemed the Eternal’s very house,
As if the world’s centre was her very soul
And all wide space was but its outer robe.”
Just when The Mother was getting ready to take a plunge into the psyche of European culture, Sri Aurobindo was preparing to plummet the depths of
ancient India’s culture.
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