The Mother’s Work
The Mother came to
Their meeting on 29 March 1914 must
be taken as a momentous event in the annals of spirituality. Here the
crystal-bright pearly river joined the ocean of honey-fire, the divine Shakti
mingling with the tapas-agni of the divine Purusha. The splendid occult and the
invasive spiritual came together to do the divine work of a new manifestation.
Later the Mother told:
I came to India to meet Sri
Aurobindo…I continued to live here in order to do his work which is by serving
the Truth… to hasten the rule of the Divine Love upon earth.
How was she going to accomplish the
task, of establishing the Rule of the Divine upon Earth? But she entrusts the
destiny to him alone, him who guides us, who moves and inspires us in our
awareness. She is certain about it and addresses her prayer to that guide. The
prayer is dated 29 March 1914, the day of her arrival in
On the next day after meeting Sri
Aurobindo for the first time, she writes:
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 and Thy reign shall indeed be established upon earth.
About Sri Aurobindo the Mother
said: “As soon as I saw Sri Aurobindo I recognised in him the well-known being
whom I used to call
And about the Mother Sri Aurobindo
writes in a letter dated 23 September 1935: “The Mother comes in order to bring
down the Supramental and it is the descent which makes her full manifestation
here possible.”
In another place he speaks of her
as the presence and power of the Divine Mother that “mediates between the
sanction and the call.”
Human aspiration to grow in
divinity and the answering consent of that divinity are the two ends of the evolutionary
process and it is she who, forming the dynamic link between the two, carries
this evolution forward. From Untruth to Truth, from Ignorance to Knowledge,
from Darkness to Light, from Death to Immortality has been the ancient prayer,
and its twofold fulfilment is the executive engagement of the divine Shakti.
Whatever she does in this respect, she unceasingly and without sparing any
effort, carries it in the Will of the Supreme.
In fact the Mother revealed that
since “the beginning of the earth, wherever and whenever there was the
possibility of manifesting a ray of the Consciousness” she was there. She was
told to plunge into Matter and identify herself with it; because it is there
that the Divine would manifest. That was the assignment given to her.
The strategy was to carry out the
work by invoking higher and higher powers and establishing them more and more
in this frustrating material existence; they have to become a dynamic fact in
life. The Mother’s share of the work was the second. Towards the first Sri
Aurobindo, after getting the Overmental Siddhi in the physical, devoted
untiringly 24 years from 1926 onward. He found it necessary to retire and
concentrate on the descent of the Supramental in the earth-consciousness.
Since then the Mother took charge
of the Ashram and gave to it another direction, a much wider basis for the
universalisation of their achievements.
She was now “at the centre of the
organisation”. At that time, in 1927, there were just 30 disciples but in less
than two years the number increased to 90 with seventeen houses for their stay.
Presently there are some 1500 disciples in the Ashram. People came from all the
walks of life, men and women, elderly persons and the young, from different
parts of India and from abroad, with varying backgrounds and qualifications, established
writers, poets, painters, musicians, thinkers, philosophers, engineers, doctors,
bureaucrats, businessmen,—accomplished souls aspiring to live a life in the
greatness of the creative-expressive spirit.
The Mother had to take care of them
al, on the physical material plane also. She had to organise services to look
after such a large family with diverse interests and with different
expectations, they coming from different backgrounds. Soon she created a number
of departments and attended to their daily essential problems, be they big or
small. Reception, Dining Room, Bakery, Laundry, Domestic Services, Health Care,
Building Maintenance, Electrical, Workshop, Furniture, Gardens, Agricultural
Farms, Dairies Tailoring, Cobbler-work, Hair-cutting, Weaving, Cycle Shop were
a few of these visible aspects of her activities. Along with that grew other
departments: Music, Painting, Poetry, Embroidery, Dancing, Drama, Theatre,
Photography, Physical Culture, Cottage Industries, Printing Press,
Publications, and so on. And all this had to be done within the limited
resources available at that time.
Work as a necessary aspect of
spiritual growth was the truth that found its place in the scheme of things
deeply spiritual. That gives a certain solidity and equipoise to one’s sadhana
and prepares the base more luminously. By it the will in action opens out to
higher consciousness bringing perfection to it. Similarly, to express the
creative delight through music, painting, poetry was equally important and
great attention was paid towards this.
During the Wartime another
situation arose and the Mother had to start a School for the children of the
disciples who had come to the Ashram. We may briefly list the stages of these
developments:
·
2
December 1943 School formally opened.
·
24
April 1951 All
·
6
January 1952 inauguration of Sri Aurobindo University Centre.
·
1959
renaming as Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education.
It is a broad based educational
programme consisting of Humanities, Languages, Fine Arts, Sciences,
Engineering, Vocational Training, etc. Not that these subjects are not taught
elsewhere. In any good university there is perhaps a much wider coverage and a
deeper presentation of the academic and professional aspects. But these tend to
become too specialised to the extent that the wholesomeness of education
suffers.
In the light of Sri Aurobindo’s
teachings there should be a fivefold educational system to take care of the
five aspects of an individual:
·
Physical—special
emphasis is laid on building up a strong, healthy and harmonious body;
gymnastics, athletics, sports, swimming, body building may be the elements of
this education but awakening of the body consciousness to receive higher force
and open to its possibility of perfection are the essential features of this
education. Children from kindergarten, boys and girls, elderly men and women of
all ages, even nonagenarians, participate in this comprehensive agenda.
·
Vital—channeling
of the life-force for creative activities, preparing oneself to meet
difficulties and conquer them, promoting the spirit of heroism and nobility
have to be inculcated for better fulfilment of life.
·
Mental—formation
and organisation of activities, development of mental faculties and putting
them at the service of higher values is necessary for an-all round development.
·
Psychic—The
divine spark that grows from life to life is the psychic being and it is that
which makes one a true individual. Becoming conscious of the psychic being is
the real aim of education.
·
Spiritual—beyond
this education is the preparation to grow in the Divine Consciousness. This
will allow the race to develop itself further and bring the birth of the
supramental being closer.
Enlarging on the Ashram experiment
the Mother moved to larger humanity, to prepare it as a necessary step towards
a new race capable of manifesting the supramental. She was 90 when the
Auroville project was initiated, but it was all in the enthusiasm as if in
terms of years she was in her young age.
In 1964 a World Conference was organised and
the international city soon started taking shape. It was planned as a universal
town where men and women from all countries will be able to live in peace and
progressive harmony. The purpose is to achieve human unity; even more than
that, to make it a cradle for the intermediate race. It is this new humanity
from which will come beings to join the supramental race living a divine life
upon the earth.
The Mother envisioned that “there
should be somewhere on earth a place…where all human beings of goodwill who
have a sincere aspiration could live freely as citizens of the world and obey
one single authority, that of the supreme truth…” Although it was a dream, she
was conscious of the fact that it could be turned into a reality. It was the
dream of the Lord, she said, and his dreams turn out to be true.
Inauguration of Auroville took
place on 28 February 1968. Almost every nation (124) and all the states of
Divided into four zones,—Residential,
Industrial, Cultural, International,—it is a city planned for 50 000 residents.
According to the Mother, a place larger than this is not fit for living. There
are at present 1500 members with some of them living there for 30 years.
On 21 February 1971 the Mother
initiated the project of Matrimandir as a living symbol of Auroville’s
aspiration for the Divine, a unique place in the wilderness of man’s hopes and
struggles. Matrimandir is the soul of Auroville.
If the Ashram and Auroville were
the preparatory projects of the Mother, there true fulfilment is to be seen in
the
On 25 September 1914 the Mother had
addressed her prayer to the Divine and adorable Mother as follows: “The Lord
has willed and Thou dost execute: A new Light shall break upon the earth. A new
world shall be born, and things that were promised shall be fulfilled.” After
years of intense tapasya the will of the Lord was executed by the Power that
came down upon the earth to accomplish it.
On 29 February 1956 the great step
forward was taken. About it the Mother tells:
This evening the Divine Presence,
concrete and material, was there present amongst you. I had a form of living
gold, bigger than the universe, and I was facing a huge and massive golden door
which separated the world from the Divine.
As I looked at the door, I knew and
willed, in a single movement of consciousness, that the “time has come”, and
lifting with both hands a mighty golden hammer I struck one blow, one single
blow on the door and the door was shattered to pieces.
Then the supramental Light and
Force and Consciousness rushed down upon earth in an uniterrupted flow.
She also declared:
A new light breaks upon the earth,
a new world is born.
The things that were promised are
fulfilled.
About this fulfilment of the
promise the Mother spoke as follows: The really new thing is that a new world
is born, born, born. It is not the old one transforming itself, it is a new
world which is born. It is a new world never known earlier. Indeed what was to
be done was done.
Earlier, in 1926, she had received
the Word of Creation and built a new world. But this was not to be. She had
begun a sort of overmental creation for some months. But Sri Aurobindo saw it differently.
“We want to establish the Supermind on earth… in order to create the new world,
the supramental world in its integrality.”
That had meant a more arduous and
prolonged endeavour. The beginning of it was in the realisation of the surhomme consciousness on 1 January
1969. A golden light, transparent and benevolent, very strong, very powerful,
filled the body’s cells. They told of their effort to be transformed.
The work of physical transformation
was the last one Sri Aurobindo had entrusted to the Mother. It involved
altogether new difficulties, the difficulty of the dark and inconscient matter.
The physical had to receive the supramental. The sleep of the past had to be
awoken and the body’s cells had to respond to the Light that was coming down
all the way up to the subtle physical. The course adopted by the Mother was to
invoke the Divine Will and leave all to it. She used the body of the past to
build the New Body, a prototype of the supramental body and stepped into it on
17 November twenty-seven years ago, in 1973. The complete psychisation of the
cellular consciousness was the assurance of immortality of the physical. She is
there in the new body and the work continues in the Will of the Supreme.
From “Darkness to Light” made
possible the passage from “Death to Immortality”. Her one aim in life was to
give concrete form to Sri Aurobindo’s great teaching. He had told her to do it
and that is why she did it. Hers was a life charged with earth’s destiny and
God-given might the force that worked in her and through her.
Let us look here into some of the
statements the Mother made apropos of
[On 2 June 1947 Lord Louis
Mountbatten, the Viceroy of India, delivered a radio speech proposing the
partition of Pakistan from India, and of certain other parts of India into
Hindu and Muslim states. After hearing the broadcast, Mother issued the
following statement.]
A proposal has been made for the
solution of our difficulties in organising Indian independence and it is being
accepted with whatever bitterness of regret and searchings of the heart by
Indian leaders.
But do you know why this proposal
has been made to us? It is to prove to us the absurdity of our quarrels.
And do you know why we have to
accept these proposals? It is to prove to ourselves the absurdity of our
quarrels.
Clearly, this is not a solution; it
is a test, an ordeal which, if we live it out in all sincerity, will prove to
us that it is not by cutting a country into small bits that we shall bring
about its unity and its greatness; it is not by opposing interests against each
other that we can win for it prosperity; it is not by setting one dogma against
another that we can serve the spirit of Truth. In spite of all,
Let the soul of
3 June 1947
The Soul of India is one and
indivisible.
6 June 1947
15 August 1947
O our Mother, O Soul of India,
Mother who hast never forsaken thy children even in the days of darkest
depression, even when they turned away from thy voice, served other masters and
denied thee, now when they have arisen and the light is on thy face in this
dawn of thy liberation, in this great hour we salute thee. Guide us so that the
horizon of freedom opening before us may be also a horizon of true greatness
and of thy true life in the community of the nations. Guide us so that we may
be always on the side of great ideals and show to men thy true visage, as a
leader in the ways of the spirit and a friend and helper of all the peoples.
[About “the Mother's map of
The map was made after the
partition.
It is the map of the true
29 July 1964
You have said in one of Your
messages: “The number one problem for
Become conscious of your psychic
being. Let your psychic being become intensely interested in
15 June 1970
It is for the sake and triumph of
Truth that
16 September 1965
Blessings.
2 August 1970
Basic Issues of Indian Education
[In August 1965 an Education
Commission of the Government of India visited the Ashram to evaluate the ideals
and educational methods of the Centre of Education. At that time a group of
teachers submitted this series of questions to the Mother.]
Q: In view of the present and the
future of national and international living, what is it that
A: Prepare her children for the
rejection of falsehood and the manifestation of Truth.
Q: The country feels much concerned
about national unity. What is the Mother's vision of things? How will
A: The unity of all the nations is
the compelling future of the world. But for the unity of all nations to be
possible, each nation must first realise its own unity.
5 August 1965
15 November 1955
I pray to you to save
Yes, it seems rather necessary.
1955
[Messages for Mrs Indira Gandhi,
Prime Minister of India, who visited the Ashram]
Let
Since long it was the habit to
govern through division and opposition.
The time has come to govern through
union, mutual understanding and collaboration.
To choose a collaborator, the value
of the man is more important than the party to which he belongs.
The greatness of a country does not
depend on the victory of a party but on the union of all the parties.
6 October 1969