Accountability in Sadhana

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The Mother’s Accountability of Her own Sadhana:

 

            “It was in 1910 that I had this sort of reversal of consciousness about which I spoke the other evening – that is, the first contact with the higher Divine – and it completely changed my life.

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             From that moment on, I was conscious that all one does is the expression of the indwelling Divine Will. But it is the Divine Will AT THE VERY CENTER of oneself, although for a while there remained an activity in the physical mind. But this was stilled two or three days after I saw Sri Aurobindo for the first time in 1914, and it never started up again. Silence settled. And the consciousness was established above the head.

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           In the first experience [of 1910], the consciousness was established in the psychic depths of the being, and from that poise issued the feeling of no longer doing anything but what the Divine wanted – it was the consciousness that the divine Will was all-powerful and that there was no longer any personal will, although there was still some mental activity and everything had to be made silent. In 1914, it was silenced, and the consciousness was established above the head. Here (the heart) and here (above the head), the connection is constant.

​(Q) Does one exclude the other?

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           They exist simultaneously; it’s the same thing. When you start becoming truly conscious, you realize that it depends upon the kinds of activities you have to do. When you do a certain kind of work, (1) it is in the heart that the Force gathers to radiate outwards, and when (2) you do another kind of work, it is above the head that the Force concentrates to radiate outwards, but the two are not separate: the center of activity is here or there depending upon what you have to do.” The Mother’s Agenda-6.6.1958

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         “I destroyed whatever was left – there were five thick volumes in which I had written every single day (there was some repetition, of course): the outcome of my concentrations…. Five thick notebooks, year after year.... Even here I kept on writing for a while.  

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            I wrote a lot in Japan. 

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            Anyway, everything of general interest was kept. But that's why there are gaps in the dates, otherwise it would be continuous – it was monumental, you know! 

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            It's only here that people started wanting to keep and keep and keep. (Mother makes a gesture of throwing everything over her shoulder.) The world is moving fast, the world is moving fast, fast, fast – why keep anything? ” The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-3/p-347,

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            “I began my sadhana at birth, without knowing that I was doing it. I have continued it throughout my whole life, which means for almost eighty years (even though for perhaps the first three or four years of my life it was only something stirring about in unconsciousness). But I began a deliberate, conscious sadhana at about the age of twenty-two or twenty-three, upon prepared ground. I am now more than eighty years old: I have thought of nothing but That, I have wanted nothing but That, I had no other interest in life, and not for a single minute have I ever forgotten that it was THAT that I wanted. There were not periods of remembering and forgetting: it was continuous, unceasing, day and night, from the age of twenty-four – and I had this experience for the first time about a week ago! So, I say that people who are in a hurry, people who are impatient, are arrogant fools.” The Mother/The Mother’s Agenda/01.05.1958,

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​            “The Divine puts on an appearance of humanity, assumes the outward human nature in order to tread the path and show it to human beings, but does not cease to be the Divine. It is a manifestation that takes place, a manifestation of a growing divine consciousness, not human turning into divine. The Mother was inwardly above the human even in childhood, so the view held by “many” is erroneous.”

Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-32/The Mother and Letters on the Mother/p-31-32

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            “When I was five years old...well I began with a consciousness. Of course I had no idea what it was. But my first experience was of the consciousness here (gesture above the head), which I felt like a Light and a Force; and I felt it there at the age of five. It was very pleasant sensation. I would sit in a little armchair made especially for me, all alone in my room, and I had a very pleasant feeling of something very strong, very luminous, and it was here (above the head) .... Then I would pull it down, for it was...it was truly my raison d’être.”  

The Mother/The Mother’s Agenda, July 25, 1962, 

 

​            "At any rate, I find it’s better to be the master rather than the slave. The feeling of being pulled by strings and being made to do things you may or may not want to do is a rather unpleasant sensation.... It’s quite irksome. Well, I don’t know, I, for one, found it quite irksome even when I was a small child. When I was five, I began finding it wholly intolerable, and I sought a way for it to be otherwise – without anyone being able to tell me anything. Because I knew no one capable of helping me, and I didn’t have the luck you have – someone who can tell you, ‘Here is what you must do.’ There was no one to tell me. I had to find it all by myself. I found it. I began at the age of five. And you, it’s a long time since you were five?...""

The Mother's Agenda/September 7, 1968

             

            "All mornings are difficult. It's odd: life as a whole goes by with almost dizzying speed – weeks and months go by like that – and mornings, about three hours every morning, last like a century! Each minute is won at the cost of an effort. It is the time of the work in the body, for the body, and not just one body: for instance, all the vibrations from sick people, all those problems of life come from everywhere. And for those three hours, there is tension, struggle, acute seeking for what should be done or for the attitude to be taken.... It's at that time that I have tested the power of the mantra. For those three hours, I repeat my mantra automatically, without stopping; and every time the difficulty increases, a kind of Power comes into those words and acts on Matter. And that's how I know: without the mantra, that work couldn't be done. But that's why I say it has to be YOUR mantra, not something you received from whomever – the mantra that arose spontaneously from your deeper being (gesture to the heart), from your inner guide. That's what holds out. When you don't know, when you don't understand, when you don't want to let the mind intervene and you are ...THAT is there; the mantra is there; and it helps you to get through. It helps to get through. It saves the situation at critical moments, it's a considerable support, considerable."

The Mother’s Agenda/September 23, 1964,

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              “In the night, I am always given a state of human consciousness to put right, one after another—there are millions of them. And there are always all the images and events that illustrate that particular state of consciousness. At times, it is very hard going: I wake up tired, as after a long period of work.”

The Mother/The Mother’s Agenda-5/p-170-71

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                         “...I was very ill, but I knew it was not this body (but it was this body’s consciousness), it was family of the Ashram, and the father was seeking help, looking for a doctor (all the details with such precision!..there are three sick people in the family.) And while that was going on, the body said to itself, “So I am identified with this person, since he is treating this person (me, that is); and since I am identified, I must do in this person what needs to be done.” Then I concentrated and called the forces of the Lord, and treated the person. All that down to the last detail. It lasted for two hours... it happened in the night when those people were asleep, and they didn’t realise...this body’s impression is that it has saved someone’s life...That union between the two, between the subtle physical and the material physical, is taking place all the time—day and night...there is an attempt to substitute one for the other.”

The Mother’s Agenda-11/149-150-151

 

              The Mother here memorised her action of universal subtle body without losing contact with the world, “This body was built for that purpose, because I remember very well that when the war—the First World War—started and I offered my body up in sacrifice to the Lord so that the war would not be in vain, every part of my body, one after another (the Mother touches her legs, her arms etc.), or sometimes the same part several times over, represented a battle field: I could see it, feel it, I LIVED IT... And while it went on, I would put the concentration of the divine Force there, so that—all–all that pain, all that suffering, everything—would hasten the preparation of the earth and the Descent of the Force. And that went on consciously (waking trance) throughout the war.” (The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-4/p-271) From the above narration it is understood that more and more human beings can act as a channel of descent of Divine force through purified subtle body and through this exercise the whole earth can experience transformation.

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            The Mother recounts, "That’s another interesting point, because I was an outright atheist: till the age of twenty, the very idea of God made me furious. Therefore I had the most solid base – no imaginings, no mystic atavism; my mother was very much an unbeliever and so was my father. So from the point of view of atavism it was very good: positivism, materialism. Only one thing: since I was very small, a will for perfection in any field whatever; a will for perfection and the sense of a limitless consciousness – no limits to one’s progress or to one’s power or to one’s scope. And that, since I was very small. But mentally, an absolute refusal to believe in a "God": I believed only in what I could touch and see. And the whole faculty for experiences was already there (they didn’t manifest because the time hadn’t come). Only, the sense of a Light here (gesture above the head), which began when I was very small, I was five, along with a will for perfection. (1) A will for perfection: oh, whatever I did always had to be the best I could do. And then, (2) a limitless consciousness. These two things. And my return to the Divine came about through Theon’s teaching, when I was told for the first time, "The Divine is within, there" (Mother strikes her breast). Then I felt at once, "Yes, this is it." Then I did all the work that’s taught to find Him again; and through here (gesture to the heart center) I went there (gesture of junction above with the Supreme). But outwardly, mentally, no religion – a horror of religions...And I see now that it was the most solid base possible for this experience: there was no danger of imaginings....I have tried many things, a great many, I have looked a great deal, and I see only one that’s absolute – only one that’s absolute and can bring the absolute result, it’s this (gesture turned Upward): the complete annulment of all that, leaving it all, "To You, Lord – You, You, to You." And it isn’t a being with a form, that’s not it; it isn’t a formless force, it’s ... It has nothing to do with thought, only with this: the contact. And the contact, an unmistakable contact, which nothing can imitate – nothing, nothing at all has the power to imitate it. And for every difficulty, every time, whatever it is, simply this: "Everything to You, Lord. Everything for You, to You. You alone can do it, You, You alone, You alone. You alone are the Truth; You alone are the Power." And those words are nothing, they are only the very clumsy expression of something ... a stupendous Power.... It’s only the incapacity, the clumsiness, the lack of faith we mix into it that takes away His power. The minute we are truly pure, that is, under His influence alone, there are no limits, no limits – nothing, nothing, there is nothing, no law of Nature that can resist, nothing, nothing..... Only, the whole thing is that the time must have come, there must be only That left – all the rest spoils, whatever it is, even the highest, purest, noblest, most beautiful and marvelous things: all that spoils. Only That.”

The Mother's Agenda/March 26, 1966,

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            “It’s strange. I say ‘strange’ because it’s due to her (The Mother's birth Mother) that I took birth in this body, that it was chosen. When she was very young she had a great aspiration. She was exactly twenty years older than I; she was twenty when I was born and I was her third child. The first was a son who died in Turkey when he was two months old, I think – they vaccinated him against smallpox and poisoned him, (laughing) god knows what it means! He died of convulsions. Next was my brother who was born in Egypt, at Alexandria, and then me, born in Paris when she was exactly twenty years old. At that time (especially since the death of her first child) she had a kind Of GREAT aspiration in her: her children had to be ‘the best in the world.’ It wasn’t an ambition, I don’t know what it was. And what a will she had! MY mother had a formidable will, like an iron bar, utterly impervious to all outside influence. Once she had made up her mind, it was made up; even if someone had been dying before her eyes, she wouldn’t have budged! And she decided: ‘My children will be the best in the world.’ …one thing she did have was a sense of progress; she felt that the world was progressing and we had to be better than anything that had come before – and that was sufficient…It’s strange, but that was sufficient…Did I tell you what happened to my brother? No?... My brother was a terribly serious boy, and frightfully studious – oh, it was awful! But he also had a very strong character, a strong will, and there was something interesting about him. When he was studying to enter the Polytechnique, I studied with him – it interested me. We were very intimate (there were only eighteen months between us). He was quite violent, but with an extraordinary strength of character. He almost killed me three times, but when my mother told him, ‘Next time, you will kill her,’ he resolved that it wouldn’t happen again – and it never did. But what I wanted to tell you is that one day when he was eighteen, just before the Polytechnique exams, as he was crossing the Seine (I think it was the Pont des Arts), suddenly in the middle of the bridge ... he felt something descend into him with such force that he became immobilized, petrified; then, although he didn’t exactly hear a voice, a very clear message came to him: ‘If you want, you can become a god’ – it was translated like that in his consciousness. He told me that it took hold of him entirely, immobilized him – a formidable and extremely luminous power: ‘If you want, you can become a god.’ Then, in the thick of the experience itself, he replied, ‘No, I want to serve humanity.’ And it was gone. Of course, he took great care to say nothing to my mother, but we were intimate enough for him to tell me about it. I told him, ‘Well (laughing), what an idiot you are!’…That’s the story…At that moment he could have had a spiritual realization: he had the right stuff… Three years later I had that experience – I’ve told you about it – of the Light piercing through me; I physically saw it enter into me. It was obviously the descent of a Being – not a past incarnation, but a Being from another plane. It was a golden light – the incarnation of a divine consciousness. Which proves that she succeeded for both her children…But she ...She was down on her knees before my brother. My mother scorned all religious sentiments as weakness and superstition and she absolutely denied the invisible. ‘It’s all brain disease,’ she would say! But she could say just as well, ‘Oh, my Matteo is my God, he is my God.’ The devil knows why, but in Alexandria she gave him the Italian name Matteo! And she truly treated him like a god. (In the Italian language, Matteo is a masculine given name that means "gift of God".) She left him only when he married, because then she really couldn’t continue to follow him around any longer…But what’s interesting, for instance, is that when her father died she knew  it; she saw him. She thought it was a dream-’a stupid dream.’ But he came to let her know he was dead and she saw him. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said, ‘a dream!’ (Mother laughs)…When my grandmother died.... My grandmother had the occult sense. She had made her own fortune (a sizeable fortune) and had had five children, each one more extravagant than the other. She considered me the only sensible person in the family and she shared her secrets with me. ‘You see,’ she told  me, ‘these people are going to squander all my money!’ She had a sixty year old son (she had married in Egypt at the age of fifteen, and had had this son when she was quite young). ‘You see this boy, he goes out and visits impossible people! And then he starts playing cards and loses all my money!’ I saw this ‘boy,’ I was there in the house when he came to her and said very politely, ‘Good-bye, mother, I’m going out to so-and-so’s house.’ ‘Ah, please don’t waste all my money, and take an overcoat – it’s getting chilly at night.’ Sixty years old! It was comical.... But to return to my story, after my grandmother died (I took a lot of care over her), she came to my mother (my mother was with her when she died; they embalmed her – she had gotten it into her head that she wanted to be burned, and since she died at Nice they had to embalm her so she could be burned in Paris). I was in Paris. My mother arrived with the body and told me, ‘Just imagine, I’m constantly seeing her! And what’s more, she gives me advice! “Don’t waste your money!” she tells me.’ ‘Well, she’s right, one must be careful,’ I replied. ‘But look here, she’s dead! Dead! How can she talk to me! She’s dead, I tell you, and quite dead at that!’ I said to her, ‘What does it mean, to die?’…It was all very funny… There was another reason. My father was wonderfully healthy and strong – well-balanced. He wasn’t very tall, but stocky. He did all his studies in Austria (at that time French was widely spoken in Austria, but he knew German, he knew English, Italian, Turkish), and there he had learned to ride horses in an extraordinary manner: he was so strong that he could bring a horse to the ground simply by pressing his knees. He could break anything at all with a blow of his fist, even one of those big silver five-franc pieces they had in those days – one blow and it was broken in two. Curiously enough, he looked Russian. I don’t know why. They used to call him Barine. What an equilibrium – an extraordinary physical poise! And not only did this man know all those languages, but I never saw such a brain for arithmetic. Never. He made a game of calculations – not the slightest effort – calculations with hundreds of digits! And on top of it, he loved birds. He had a room to himself in our apartment (because my mother could never much tolerate him), he had his separate room, and in it he kept a big cage ... full of canaries! During the day he would close the windows and let all the canaries loose....And could he tell stories! I think he read every novel available, all the stories he could find – extraordinary adventure stories, for he loved adventures. When we were kids he used to let us come into his room very early in the morning and, while still sitting in bed, tell us stories from the books he had read – but he told them as if they were his own, as if he’d had extraordinary adventures with outlaws, with wild animals. Every story he picked up he told as his own. We enjoyed it tremendously!...But one day when my brother had disobeyed him (Matteo must have been ten or eleven, and I perhaps nine or ten), I came into the dining room and saw my father sitting on a sofa with my brother across his knees; he had pulled down his trousers and was spanking him, I don’t know what for. It wasn’t a very serious spanking, but still.... I came in, drew myself up to my full height and said, ‘Papa, if you ever do that again, I am leaving this house!’ And with such authority, mon petit! He stopped and never did it again.”

The Mother’s Agenda-05.08.1961,

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            “Here, in Pondicherry, you cannot breathe without breathing my consciousness. It permeates the atmosphere in the subtle physical almost materially and extends right to the lake, seven miles away from here. Beyond, my consciousness can be felt in the material vital, and then on the mental and the other higher planes everywhere. When I came here for the first time, I felt Sri Aurobindo’s atmosphere, felt it materially, ten miles from the shore – ten nautical miles, not kilometers! It was very sudden, very concrete, a pure and luminous atmosphere, light, so light that it lifts you up.”

The Mother’s Agenda-1/Undated-1957,

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            “Madame Théon was the first to tell me what I was, what she saw: the crown of twelve pearls over the head. As for me, I had the experience of it, (But it seems I always had it, because when Madame Théon saw me, it's the first thing she told me; she didn't speak of "Maheshwari," but she said, "You have the white light" that automatically dissolves all ill will. And I did experience it: I saw beings crumble into dust.) after which I could simply use it at will: I just had to summon it. And I would see it just as I see you, in a perfectly objective way."

The Mother/The Mother's Agenda/July 10, 1965,

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            "Because, for example, when Sri Aurobindo and I were working to bring down the supramental forces, a descent from the mental plane to the vital plane, he was always telling me that everything I did (when we ‘meditated’ together, when we worked) – all my movements, all my gestures, all my postures, all my reactions – was absolutely tantric, as if I had pursued a tantric discipline. But it was spontaneous, it did not correspond to any knowledge, any idea, any will, nothing, and I thought it was like that simply because, as He knew, naturally I followed."

The Mother's Agenda/20.09.1960,

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            "“But I can tell you one thing: even before Her (The Mother’ four Personalities) coming, when, with Sri Aurobindo, I had begun going down (for the Yoga) from the mental plane to the vital plane, when we brought our yoga down from the mental plane into the vital plane, in less than a month (I was forty years old at the time – I didn’t seem very old, I looked less than forty, but I was forty anyway), after no more than a month of this yoga, I looked exactly like an 18 year old! And someone who knew me and had stayed with me in Japan came here, and when he saw me, he could scarcely believe his eyes! He said, ‘But my god, is it you?’ I said, ‘Of course!’... Only when we went down from the vital plane into the physical plane, all this went away – because on the physical plane, the work is much harder and we had so much to do, so many things to change.... But if a force like Hers (The Mother’s four Personalities) could manifest and be received here, it would have INESTIMABLE results! ...”

The Mother/The Mother’ Agenda-1/p-45,

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            "'The tantrics recognize seven chakras,’ I believe. Theon said he knew of more, specifically two below the body and three above. That is my experience as well – I know of twelve chakras. And really, the contact with the Divine Consciousness is there (the Mother motions above the head), not here (at the top of the head). One must surge up above.”

The Mother’s Agenda/October 11, 1960,

 

            “There is also what Theon and Madame Theon used to say. They never spoke of ‘Supermind,’ but they said the same thing as the Vedas, that the world of Truth must incarnate on earth and create a new world. They even picked up the old phrase from the Gospels, ‘new heavens and a new earth,’ which is the same thing the Vedas speak of. Madame Theon had this experience and she gave me the indication (she didn’t actually teach me) of how it was to be done. She would go out of her body and become conscious in the vital world (there were many intermediary states, too, if one cared to explore them). After the vital came the mental: you consciously went out of the vital body, you left it behind (you could see it) and you entered the mental world. Then you left the mental body and entered into.... They used different words, another classification (I don’t remember it), but even so, the experience was identical. And like that, she successively left twelve different bodies, one after another. She was extremely ‘developed,’ you see – individualized, organized. She could leave one body and enter the consciousness of the next plane, fully experience the surroundings and all that was there, describe it ... and so on, twelve times.

            I learned to do the same thing, and with great dexterity; I could halt on any plane, do what I had to do there, move around freely, see, observe, and then speak about what I had seen. And my last stage, which Theon called ‘pathétisme,’ a very barbaric but very expressive word, bordered on the Formless – he sometimes used the Jewish terminology, calling the Supreme ‘The Formless.’ (From this last stage one passed to the Formless – there was no further body to leave behind, one was beyond all possible forms, even all thoughtforms.) In this domain [the last stage before the Formless] one experienced total unity – unity in something that was the essence of Love; [378] Love was a manifestation more... ‘dense,’ he would always say (there were all sorts of different ‘densities’); and Love was a denser expression of That, the sense of perfect Unity – perfect unity, identity – with no longer any forms corresponding to those of the lower worlds. It was a Light! ... An almost immaculate white light, yet with something of a golden-rose in it (words are crude). This Light and this Experience were truly wonderful, inexpressible in words.

 

            Well, one time I was there (Theon used to warn against going beyond this domain, because he said you wouldn’t come back), ("Absorbed in the trance from which no soul returns," Savitri-384) but there I was, wanting to pass over to the other side, when – in a quite unexpected and astounding way – I found myself in the presence of the ‘principle,’ a principle of the human form. It didn’t resemble man as we are used to seeing him, but it was an upright form, standing just on the border between the world of forms and the Formless, like a kind of standard. At that time nobody had ever spoken to me about it and Madame Theon had never seen it – no one had ever seen or said anything. But I felt I was on the verge of discovering a secret.

 

            Afterwards, when I met Sri Aurobindo and talked to him about it, he told me, ‘It is surely the prototype of the supramental form.’ I saw it several times again, later on, and this proved to be true.

 

            But naturally, you understand, once the border has been crossed, there is no more ‘ascent’ and ‘descent’; you have the feeling of rising up only at the very start, while leaving the terrestrial consciousness and emerging into the higher mind. But once you have gone beyond that, there’s no notion of rising; there’s a sense, instead, of a sort of inner transformation.

 

            And from there I would redescend, re-entering my bodies one after another – there is a real feeling of re-entry; it actually produces friction.

 

            When one is on that highest height, the body is in a cataleptic state.

 

            I think I made this experiment in 1904, so when I arrived here it was all a work accomplished and a well-known domain; and when the question of finding the Supermind came up, I had only to resume an experience I was used to – I had learned to repeat it at will, through successive exteriorizations. It was a voluntary process.

 

            When I returned from Japan and we began to work together, Sri Aurobindo had already brought the supramental light into the mental world and was trying to transform the Mind. ‘It’s strange,’ he said to me, ‘it’s an endless work! Nothing seems to get done – everything is done and then constantly has to be done all over again.’ Then I gave him my personal impression, which went back to the old days with Theon: ‘It will be like that until we touch bottom.’ So instead of continuing to work in the Mind, both of us (I was the one who went through the experience ... how to put it? ... practically, objectively; he experienced it only in his consciousness, not in the body – but my body has always participated), both of us descended almost immediately (it was done in a day or two) from the Mind into the Vital, and so on quite rapidly, leaving the Mind as it was, fully in the light but not permanently transformed.

 

            Then a strange thing happened. When we were in the Vital, my body suddenly became young again, as it had been when I was eighteen years old! ... There was a young man named Pearson, a disciple of Tagore, who had lived with me in Japan for four years; he returned to India, and when he came to see me in Pondicherry, he was stupefied. ‘What has happened to you!’ he exclaimed. He hardly recognized me. During that same period (it didn’t last very long, only a few months), I received some old photographs from France and Sri Aurobindo saw one of me at the age of eighteen. ‘There!’ he said, ‘That’s how you are now!’ I wore my hair differently, but otherwise I was eighteen all over again.

 

            This lasted for a few months. Then we descended into the Physical – and all the trouble began. But we didn’t stay in the Physical, we descended into the Subconscient and from the Subconscient to the Inconscient. That was how we worked. And it was only when I descended into the Inconscient that I found the Divine Presence – there, in the midst of Darkness.

 

            It wasn’t the first time; when I was working with Theon at Tlemcen (the second time I was there), I descended into the total, unindividualized – that is, general – Inconscient (it was the time he wanted me to find the Mantra of Life).

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            And there I suddenly found myself in front of something like a vault or a grotto (of course, it was only something ‘like’ that), and when it opened, I saw a Being of iridescent light reclining with his head on his hand, fast asleep. All the light around him was iridescent. When I told Theon what I was seeing, he said it was ‘the immanent God in the depths of the Inconscient,’ who through his radiations was slowly waking the Inconscient to Consciousness. ("And Night can bare its core of mystic light;" Savitri-200) 

 

            But then a rather remarkable phenomenon occurred: when I looked at him, he woke up and opened his eyes, expressing the beginning of conscious, wakeful action.

 

            I have experienced the descent into the Inconscient many times (you (Satprem) remember, once you were there the day it happened – it had to do with divine Love); this experience of descending to the very bottom of the Inconscient and finding there the Divine Consciousness, the Divine Presence, under one form or another. it has happened quite frequently.” The Mother’s Agenda/November 7/1961, ("The secret God beneath the threshold dwells.” Savitri-68)​

 

            “But you see, you see all the way I have come...And I was born with a consciously prepared body—Sri Aurobindo was aware of that, he said it immediately the first time he saw me: I was born free. That is, from the spiritual standpoint: without any desire. Without any desire and attachment. And mon petit, if there is the slightest desire and the slightest attachment, it is IMPOSSIBLE to do this work.

             A vital like a warrior, with an absolute self-control (the vital of this present incarnation was sexless—a warrior), an absolutely calm and imperturbable warrior—no desires, no attachments...Since my earliest childhood, I have done things which, to human consciousness, are “monstrous;” my mother went so far as to tell me that I was a real “monster,” because I had neither attachments nor desires. If I was asked, “Would you like to do this?” I answered, “I don’t care.” If people were nasty to me, or if people died or went away, it left me absolutely calm—and so: “You are a monster, you have no feelings.”

             And with that preparation... It is eighty-six years since I came here, mon petit! For thirty years I worked with Sri Aurobindo consciously, without letup, night and day... We shouldn’t be in a hurry.”

The Mother’s Agenda/28.03.1964

"(Q) What made Sri Aurobindo stop?

 

He hasn’t stopped.

 

Stopped him physically, you mean?

 

(Q) Yes. What made him stop?

 

He decided he had to go.

 

               We tried, oh – myself in particular! I concentrated all my power to prevent him from going, and it made him suffer greatly, because ... he WANTED to go, he had decided – ‘he’ – the Supreme Lord had decided that he would go.

 

(Q) Yes, but why exactly was there this halt? He had come for that.

 

              But nothing has stopped! That’s precisely the point – he refuses to acknowledge that anything has stopped. Nothing has stopped. He came for that, and he arranged things to... to give a maximum number of chances (‘chance’ is one way of putting it), of possibilities – to put all the winning cards on our side."

The Mother's Agenda/July 15, 1961

                 

The Mother’s accountability after Sri Aurobindo left his earthly body:

“Her thoughts, her mind remembered Narad’s date.”

Savitri-469

​

“Immobile in herself, she gathered force.

This was the day when Satyavan must die.”

Savitri-10

​

“Twelve swift-winged months are given to him and her;

This day returning Satyavan must die.”

Savitri-431

​

   “Twelve passionate months led in a day of fate.”

Savitri-11

​

“It is decreed and Satyavan must die.

     The hour is fixed, chosen the fatal stroke.”

Savitri-458

           

           “And what comes to me is always this, the most severe test I could have been given: Sri Aurobindo’s departure. Because Sri Aurobindo used to speak as if he was not going to go.”

The Mother’s Agenda-6/p-347, 

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              "No one can imagine what it was, those thirty years I had (with Sri Aurobindo) ... beyond all problems and difficulties; we went through every possible difficulty – and it was nothing, NOTHING. It was nothing, it was ... like a great harmonious orchestra.

(silence)

              But ... it's clear that Matter must be rigorously hammered if it is to be made ready and able for this Transformation.

(silence) 

             And nothing, nothing imaginable in the eternal history of the universe can be compared to that shock (with Sri Aurobindo's departure): to have lived a perfect divine life as something completely natural and everyday, something OBVIOUS (it was never even in question), and then ... all of a sudden, physically – your base is snatched away. Well, to stay on after that! ... You just go, quite naturally: the base goes, you go."

The Mother's Agenda/January 9, 1962,

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             "Well, what Sri Aurobindo did by leaving his body is somewhat equivalent, although far more total and complete and absolute-because he had that experience, he had that, he had it; I saw him, I saw him supramental on his bed, sitting on his bed... He has written: I am not doing it individually, for myself, but for the whole earth. And it was exactly the same thing for me-but oh, that experience! Nothing counted for me anymore: people, the earth-even the earth itself had absolutely no importance."

The Mother/The Mother's Agenda/July-15, 1961

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​            “The Supermind had descended long ago—very long ago—into the mind and even into the vital: it was working in the physical also but indirectly through those intermediaries. The question was about the direct action of the Supermind in the physical. Sri Aurobindo said it could be possible only if the physical mind received the supramental light: the physical mind was the instrument for direct action upon the most material. This physical mind receiving the supramental light Sri Aurobindo called the Mind of Light… As soon as Sri Aurobindo withdrew from his body, what he has called the Mind of Light got realised in me.”

29 June 1953/The Mother/The Mother’s Centenary Works/Vol-13/p-62-63, 

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            "And I saw for Sri Aurobindo (although he hadn't yet started this systematic transformation; but still, he was constantly pulling the supramental force down into his body), even in his case, it took five days to show the first slight sign of decomposition. I would have kept his body longer, but the government always meddles in other people's business, naturally, and they pestered me awfully, saying it was forbidden to keep a body so long and that we should ... So when the body began to (what's the word?) shrink – it was shrinking and contracting, that is, dehydrating – then we had to do it. He had had enough time to come out, since almost everything came into my body – almost everything that was material came into my body."

The Mother/The Mother's Agenda/August 10, 1963

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            “No, it has made me understand something, but it’s something very (how can I put it?), very intimate.... When Sri Aurobindo left, I knew I had to cut the link with the psychic being, otherwise I would have gone with him; and as I had promised him I would stay on and do the work, I had to do that: I literally closed the door on the psychic and said, "For the moment this doesn’t exist anymore." It remained like that for ten years. After ten years, it slowly, slowly began to open again – it was frightening. But I was ready. It began to open again. But then, that experience surprised me when I had it; I wondered why it had been like that, why I had received that command and had to do it. And when there was in the body that identification with divine Love [a few days ago], after that had left, the cells were ordered to undergo a similar phenomenon [to what happened after Sri Aurobindo’s departure]. And I understood why the whole material world is closed: it’s to allow it to exist WITHOUT the experience [of divine Love]. Naturally, I had understood why I was made to close off my psychic, because ... because it was truly impossible, I couldn’t go on existing outwardly without Sri Aurobindo’s presence. Well then, the cells have understood that they must go on existing and living their life without the presence of divine Love. And that’s how it took place in the world: it was a necessary phenomenon for the formation and development of the material world... But we’re perhaps nearing ... We are nearing the time when it will be allowed to open again.

(silence)

​

            You remember, I don’t know if it was in a letter or an article, Sri Aurobindo spoke of the manifestation of divine Love; he said, "Truth will have to be established first, otherwise there will be catastrophes...." I understand that very well.

 

            But it’s a long time in coming! (Mother laughs)

 

         Up above, nothing is long. But anyway, it’s here that we are ordered to exist and to achieve.

​

            It’s on this occasion, too, that I had an answer regarding death. I was told, "But they all want to die! Because they don’t have the courage to be before That is manifested." And I saw – I clearly saw it was like that.

​

            The power of Death is that they all want to die! Not like that in their active thought, but in the body’s deep feeling, because it doesn’t have the courage to be without That – it takes great courage.... So they began with a complete ignorance and general stupidity, participating in all that this life is outwardly (as if it were something wonderful!). But as soon as they begin to grow a little wiser, it stops being wonderful. It’s like what I said about this flower [the lotus]: when you know how to look at a flower, at the so spontaneous and, oh, uncomplicated expression of this marvelous Love, then you understand how long the way is – all these attachments, all this importance we give to useless things, whereas there should be a spontaneous and natural beauty.

 

(Q) If the world understood too soon, nobody would want to stay on, basically! That’s the point.

 

             Yes, exactly! That’s the point.

 

           If they knew too soon, if they were able to see the opposition between what is and what must be, they wouldn’t have the courage. One must ... one must truly be heroic – heroic. I assure you, I see these cells, they are heroic – heroic. As for them, they don’t "know" in that mental way: it’s only their adoration that saves them. That is, "What You will, Lord, what You will, what You will ... ," with the simplicity of a child’s ingenuous heart: "What You will, what You will, what You will ... only what You will and nothing but what You will exists." Then it’s all right. But without that, it’s not possible. It’s not possible to know what they know and to continue to be if That isn’t there. You know, the feeling is, "At Your service, what You will, what You will ... whatever You will ... ," without discussion, without anything, without even a sensation, nothing: "What You will, what You will. "

 

            This is the only strength, there is no other.

Well, some have to do it, don’t they! Otherwise it would never get done.

 

            And at that moment (it was a rather difficult moment), there was even in the consciousness ... it was like a sword of white light that nothing can shake and which gave the cells the sensation, "What! But you should be in an ecstasy of joy, now that you know what will be" – what there IS, in principle.

 

            But it has caused a sort of detachment from the gestures, the outside, as if life weren’t quite real – yet real at the same time, but the Reality isn’t there. There is

the sense of the Presence; that’s constant. And that’s a good thing to begin with, it strongly counterbalances the sense and perception of all the Distortion. There is even an insistence from this Presence for That alone to exist and to increasingly reduce the reality of the perception of what must not be. There will be a great strength in the being when the perception of what must not be is dimmed, erased as something far away and nonexistent.

 

            That’s what is being prepared.

 

            What makes the work a little more complicated is that it isn’t limited to this

(Mother’s body), it’s everything, everything around and to a rather considerable distance. Because the contact in thought is almost perfectly established: it’s impossible for someone to think [of Mother] without there being a response in the consciousness – a response, a perception. So, imagine what it is     It’s rather vast and rather complicated.

 

            And there are kinds of rungs or stages – stages in the response of the consciousness; rungs and stages according to the degree of development and consciousness. It makes for, oh, not an immensity, but still a rather extensive world. In this perception, the earth isn’t very large.

 

             And there is a precision in details for tiny things, like what goes on in an individual’s consciousness, for instance, or the response to certain events. It’s very, very precise. But there is always a ban on saying things so as not to give them a power of concretization. But the work is being done like that, on all the planes; on all the planes (there are even planes beneath the feet), constantly, constantly, without stop, night and day.”

The Mother's Agenda/ July 27, 1966,

​

            “Sri Aurobindo had also written to the effect, ‘If Divine Love were to manifest now in all its fullness and totality, not a single material organism would but burst.’ So we must learn to widen, widen, widen not only the inner consciousness (that is relatively easy – at least feasible), but even this conglomeration of cells. And I’ve experienced this: you have to be able to widen this sort of crystallization if you want to be able to hold this Force. I know. Two or three times, upstairs (in Mother’s room), I felt the body about to burst. Actually, I was on the verge of saying, ‘burst and be done with.’ But Sri Aurobindo always intervened – all three times he intervened in an entirely tangible, living and concrete way ... and he arranged everything so that I was forced to wait.

 

Then weeks go by, sometimes even months, between one thing and another, so that some elasticity may come into these stupid cells.

 

So much time is wasted. We are ... oh! We are so hard! (Mother hits her body) As hard as a rock.

 

But three times now, I’ve really felt that I was on the verge of ... falling apart. The first time it brought a fever, a fever so ... I don’t know, as if I had at least 115°! – I was roasting from head to toe; everything became red hot, and then ... it was over. That was the day when suddenly – suddenly – I was ... You see, I had said to myself, ‘All right, you must be peaceful, let’s see what happens,’ so then I brought down the Peace, and immediately I was able to pass into a ‘second of unconsciousness – and I woke up in the subtle physical, in Sri Aurobindo’s abode.’ There he was. And then I spent some time with him, explaining the problem.

 

But that was really an experience, a decisive experience (it was many months ago, perhaps more than a year ago).

 

So I explained the problem to Sri Aurobindo, and he replied (by his expression, not with words, but it was clear), ‘Patience, patience – patience, it will come.’ And a few days after this experience, ‘by chance’ I came upon something he had written where precisely he explained that we are much too rigid, coagulated, clenched for these things to be able to manifest – we must widen, relax, become plastic.

But this takes time.”

The Mother’s Agenda/12th November 1960

 

(Q) If I may ask, has Sri Aurobindo remained quite conscious of material things?

 

Completely. (Mother reflects a moment) Well, completely material, no – only through me. He is conscious of material things through me, not directly. He is very conscious in the subtle physical, but that’s not quite the same, not quite (Mother makes a vague gesture), there is a difference.

 

To give a rather curious example, there was a kind of spell of illness over the Ashram, stemming mainly from people’s thoughts, from their way of thinking. It was quite widespread and it was horrible, gloomy, full of fear, pettiness, blind submission, oh! Everyone was in a state of expectation... In short, the atmosphere was such that there was an attempt to prevent me from leaving my room – I had to sneak out! It was disgusting! Well, on the very night I saw the spell over the Ashram, Sri Aurobindo was lying sick in his bed, just as I had seen him in 1950. Normally, we spend almost every night together, doing this, seeing that, arranging things, talking – it’s a kind of second life behind this one, and it makes existence pleasant. But that night when I had to sneak out of my room (in my nightgown!), and people were trying to find me to ... (laughing) force me back into bed, he was lying sick in bed – and this struck me hard, for it means these things still affect him in his consciousness. He was in a kind of trance and not at all well. It didn’t last, but nonetheless.... ” The Mother’s Agenda/ February 18, 1961

 

               "He (Sri Aurobindo) himself-he himself has a greater action, a greater power of action now than when he was in his body. Besides, that’s why he left-because it had to be done that way... It’s very tangible, you know. His action has become very tangible. Of course, it isn’t something mental at all. It is from another region. But it isn’t ethereal or-it’s tangible. I could almost say material." Dec-20/1972/The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-13/P-326-328,

​

            “Another thing, yesterday ... Something being prepared.... In the past, when Sri Aurobindo was there and I lived in that house which is now the "dormitory annex," there was a large verandah, and I used to walk up and down on the verandah (Sri Aurobindo was in his room, working), and I would walk alone; but I was never alone: Krishna was always there – Krishna, the god Krishna as he is known, but taller, more beautiful, and not with that ridiculous blue, you know, that slate blue! Not like that. And always, we always walked up and down together – we would walk together. He was just a little behind (gesture behind, almost against the nape of the neck and the shoulders); I was a little in front, as if my head was on his shoulder, and he would walk (I didn't have the feeling of my head resting on his shoulder, but that's how it was), and we would walk, we would communicate. That lasted more than a year, you know, every day. Then it ended. Afterwards I saw him from time to time (when we moved to the new house I saw him); sometimes at night when I was very tired, he would come and I would sleep on his shoulder. But I knew very well that it was a way Sri Aurobindo had of showing himself. Then when I came here [to Mother's present room], Sri Aurobindo had left, and I began walking up and down while reciting my mantra. Sri Aurobindo came, and he was at exactly the same place as Krishna was (same gesture, just behind the head); I would walk, and he was there, and we would walk together day after day, day after day. And it was becoming so concrete, so marvelous that I started thinking, "Why look after people and things, I want to remain like this for ever!" He caught my thought, and he said, "I am not coming anymore." And he stopped. I said, "Very well," and I started my mantra to the supreme Lord, and I tried a lot to have Him come and walk with me, but in no other form but Himself. And the Force, the Presence, everything was there, and I would feel Him more and more clearly, staying like that, just behind me, impersonal. For a few days, I've had a sort of feeling that I was close to something; and yesterday, for half an hour: THE Presence – a Presence ... An absolutely concrete presence. And it is He who told me, "First Krishna, then Sri Aurobindo, then I." The Mother’s Agenda/ June 18, 1965 (The three represent a hierarchy of consciousness in ascending order. The Mother here recounts Her relation with Sri Krishna, Sri Aurobindo and the Supreme Lord in the hierarchy of ascending Consciousness. This indicates that a diversity of experience is required to pursue integral Yoga and not to remain satisfied with any experience in any one plane of Consciousness.)

​

            "My impression is that Sri Aurobindo already has his subtle supramental form. For instance, when he has to move, he doesn't give the impression of being subject to the same laws as we are; but as it's subtle, it doesn't appear surprising. And also a sort of ubiquity: he is in several places at the same time. And a plasticity, an adaptability according to the work he wants to do, the people he meets. In those activities I am quite aware that I see him in a certain way, but I think others don't see him the same way – they see him differently, probably wearing clothes. When he ran in the forest, we were all alone, and it was a large forest without anyone there; then a few minutes later, we were somewhere else and there were people, other people to whom he spoke, and I didn't at all feel that the others were seeing him without clothes: they were certainly seeing him wearing clothes.... I saw him once, rather long ago: I told you the story of his boat, made also of clay.” The Mother’s Agenda/June 18/1965

​

             “You remember what I had said? That it would be an improved physical body that would make the transition between human body and Supramental body?...... Last night Sri Aurobindo told me in his own way that it was correct, that it was true. It was very interesting.... Very interesting... Last night, for a long time, we went to all sorts of places unknown to me: towns, countrysides, forests, etc. It lasted a very long time. And once, we were there, near a forest (near a road that crossed the forest) and we were busy and "talking" when all of a sudden, he leaped to his feet.... You know, he never wears any clothes, so to speak; when I saw him the first time in his house (his supramental house), in the subtle physical, he was without clothes; but it's a kind of vibrant matter: it's very material, very concrete, and it has a sort of color that isn't a color, which is a bit golden and radiant – it doesn't send out rays, but it vibrates with a radiant light. And at least nine times out of ten he is that way; generally, when we are together for some work, he is that way. Last night he was that way. So then I was busy (we had arranged something and I was busy) when, suddenly, I see him leap to his feet and run a hundred-meter sprint. At first I was shocked, I said to myself, "What's this?!" And with great ease, you know: he darted off, then stopped a few minutes, and then ran back. Then he stopped again, and went off a third time on a sprint: like the 100-meter race they run. But the third time, he had grown tall, with a slim body. Grown tall as if to demonstrate to me: this is the way the body will be transformed. He had grown very tall, very strong.... It was very interesting and absolutely unexpected.... The second time, he was stronger than the first; and the third time, he was magnificent: a tall, superb being with that vibrant, radiant substance. And what a sprint! What leaps! It was fantastic. The last time, it was fantastic, as if he skimmed over the ground...We "speak" very, very rarely. Sometimes he tells me something, but it's with a special import and a special aim – we understand each other without words. There he didn't say anything, but I understood.

​

            It was part of a very long activity, but that thing struck me very much because it was like the answer [to what I said some time ago]. He said, "Yes, it's true, you are right, it is like that." And that change in his body over the three times: the first time he was as I knew him, but younger and more agile;the second time he was already stronger; and the third time, he was magnificent... I wanted to tell you this.”

The Mother's Agenda/18th June, 1965 

​

            “The lack of receptivity of the earth and men is mostly responsible for the decision Sri Aurobindo has taken regarding his body. But one thing is certain: what has happened on the physical plane affects in no way the truth of his teaching. All that he has said is perfectly true and remains so. Time and the course of events will prove it abundantly.”

8 December 1950, The Mother/The Mother’s Centenary Works/13/p-7,

​

            “The lack of the earth’s receptivity and the behavior of Sri Aurobindo’s disciples are largely responsible for what happened to his body. But one thing is certain: the great misfortune that has just beset us in no way affects the truth of his teaching. All he said is perfectly true and remains so. Time and the course of events will make this abundantly clear.”

Feb-1951/Mother’s Agenda-Vol-1/P: 27,

 

               "Before, I always had the negative experience of the disappearance of the ego, of the oneness of Creation, where everything implying separation disappeared – an experience that, personally, I would call negative. Last Wednesday, while I was speaking (and that’s why at the end I could no longer find my words), I seemed suddenly to have left this negative phenomenon and entered into the positive experience: the experience of BEING the Supreme Lord, the experience that nothing exists but the Supreme Lord – all is the Supreme Lord, there is nothing else. And at that moment, the feeling of this infinite power that has no limit, that nothing can limit, was so overwhelming that all the functions of the body, of this mental machine that summons up words, all this was ... I could no longer speak French. Perhaps the words could have come to me in English – probably, because it was easier for Sri Aurobindo to express himself in English, and that’s how it must have happened: it was the part embodied in Sri Aurobindo (the part of the Supreme that was embodied in Sri Aurobindo for its manifestation) that had the experience. This is what joined back with the Origin and caused the experience – I was well aware of it. And that is probably why its transcription through English words would have been easier than through French words (for at these moments, such activities are purely mechanical, rather like automatic machines). And naturally the experience left something behind. It left the sense of a power that can no longer be ‘qualified,” really. And it was there yesterday evening." 

The Mother's Agenda/October 4, 1958

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            "It brings up very interesting things. (What I am going to say now is very personal and consequently cannot be used, but it may be kept anyway:) ...There are two parallel things that, from the eternal and supreme point of view, are of identical importance, in that both are equally essential for the realization to be a true realization.... On the one hand, there is what Sri Aurobindo – who, as the Avatar, represented the supreme Consciousness and Will on earth – declared me to be, that is, the supreme universal Mother; and on the other hand, there is what I am realizing in my body through the integral sadhana.’ I could be the supreme Mother and not do any sadhana, and as a matter of fact, as long as Sri Aurobindo was in his body, it was he who did the sadhana, and I received the effects. These effects were automatically established in the outer being, but he was the one doing it, not I – I was merely the bridge between his sadhana and the world. Only when he left his body was I forced to take up the sadhana myself; not only did I have to do what I was doing before – being a bridge between his sadhana and the world – but I had to carry on the sadhana myself. When he left, he turned over to me the responsibility for what he himself had been doing in his body, and I had to do it. So there are both these things. Sometimes one predominates, sometimes the other (I don’t mean successively in time, but ... it depends on the moment), and they are trying to combine in a total and perfect realization: the eternal, ineffable and immutable Consciousness of the Executrice of the Supreme, and the consciousness of the Sadhak of the integral Yoga who strives in an ascending effort towards an ever increasing progression."

The Mother's Agenda-October 10, 1958

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