This is as an introduction to The Mother’s Shrine and its Inhabitants, an exhibition put up by
Paulette at Auroville, 19 February-5 March 2009. The photographs were taken by
her. ~ RYD]
In recent years I have been actively involved putting
up photographic exhibitions. Last year I have put up three on macro photography
of flowers with Mother’s spiritual significance and two on the villagers This
year I came up with three exhibitions in two months; a fourth one is expected
in April. Photography, Photoshop and exhibitions are the space where, shutting
off the rest of the world, I return to the centre. Seeking for the way back to
the original purity that once was our own, before the great fall; when mind was
not split from intuition and the knowledge from within of sacred things
directed human life, in a dreamlike state of innocence, harmony and oneness
with each and all. The choice of the themes of those exhibitions, dictated from
within, is part of that journey: great sadhaks and sadhakas at the Sri
Aurobindo Ashram along with children; flowers and grasses as a guide to the
psychic being; neighbouring villagers embodying the sacred and the numinous in
daily life. And now, the Matrimandir building and its inhabitants—birds and
squirrels—displayed in Pitanga until March 5th.
The Mother called an early vision of hers ‘the Mother’s
shrine’. But her ‘shrine’ is not just a building; it is an atmosphere, the play
of seasons, the passing clouds, the murmur of the wind, the flowers’ hue, the
myriad of creatures living in the sacred precinct… She told an ashramite that
even a stone could be her temple… Gradually the overwhelming experience that had
enwrapped me for months, compelling me to take more and more pictures of our
neighbours in the villages (first their religious festivals and deities, then
their huts and sacred spots and mystic diagrams) started to repeat itself in my
early morning promenades to Matrimandir, emerging out of the mist like an
other-worldly spacecraft. Wandering around as if that was
“No one I am, I who am all that is”………
Slowly, as when in the seclusion of my darkroom in
Rome, in a dim light, I witnessed the emerging of a new form out of the
transparent liquid—a form at first faint, then more and more palpable—the more
I took pictures of the Matrimandir, the banyan tree and their inhabitants, the
more I felt pervaded by a feeling of joy, of oneness. It was not just the
building that drew me like a gigantic magnet but another force too, or rather
the same force that I could at last comprehend in its entirety—as if I was
decoding the secret message of that building, which is not just a building but
an unfathomable centre of consciousness. And I learnt to listen, as a child
learns to crawl and take the first steps… As I had learnt to listen to the
song, so ancient, of the sacred and the numinous that is the tale our
neighbours in the villages tell, if our inner ears are alert, to those among us
awakening, back to a reality that once was everyone’s but most of us have lost.
Whether
As a child I too lived in that world… Playing the red
Indian shaman I spent the day in the woods, watching the garlands of flowers
and leaves (my offering to the water King) carried away by the gentle stream of
rivulets and mini waterfalls… And here I was, finding again my
companions-travellers! First in the neighbouring villages, for whom living
those mysteries is reality—then in the myriads of creatures whose abode is
Matrimandir and its banyan tree. “The savage” had taken hold of me once more—as
it happened all the time throughout my childhood—and never let me since. I
won’t enter into those mysteries; one’s secret kingdom is to be safely guarded.
But at a junction where in Auroville we seem having touched the bottom—if there
is a bottom! —there is something the birds and the squirrels at Matrimandir
wish me to convey…
All species there, at peace with each other, live
happily and free, allowing space to each and all. Even temporary or new
dwellers like the green parrots (there are so many in the Vikas’s building
where I live—are some of them shifting to Matrimandir?) are allowed their spot.
Reminding me of the great Dattatreya who, born out of most beautiful Anusuya
seduced by the three gods, had twenty-four gurus but none was human… Even the
minas, birds who in Vikas attack each other ferociously (I have been chasing
them away repeatedly, appalled by the cruelty towards their peers), around
Matrimandir don’t display signs of aggressiveness. Unity in diversity, divine
anarchy: this is what the birds and squirrels of Matrimandir are teaching us.
Collectively, the perfect organization. Individually, the way to back to
selfhood.
Taking pictures those early mornings, alone, gradually
turned into a form of meditation. More and more I felt that those are the real
inhabitants of Matrimandir—and we, the unworthy guests. At a time of turmoil
and dissolution, in Auroville as elsewhere in the world, being exposed to the
innocence and sharing of those free beings turned into a balm and a solace.
Wishing to merge forever in the hieratic majesty of that building, one with all
those creatures, gradually I lost the boundaries of my narrow self: I was free,
forever one—like them!
Worshipping the Mother in the Matrimandir splendour as
in the tiniest creature, let’s find again the shaman dormant in all of us, and
heal…
P.S. A dream I had some years ago comes back. I was in
a dark tunnel. Instead of walking towards the exit, unknowingly I walked to the
wrong direction. In the utmost darkness I saw the smiling face of the great
warrior Sitting Bull. And I thanked the Lord for making me enter that tunnel,
getting more and more lost—for without this I would have not met the Great
Healer’s smile.
