Sri Aurobindo and Mother - The Mother meets Sri Aurobindo

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The Mother Meets Sri Aurobindo

On March 7, 1914, Mother was aboard the Kaga Maru sailing for Pondicherry.

'He whom we saw yesterday is on earth.'

Thus Mother wrote in her Prayers and Meditations of her meeting with Sri Aurobindo on 29th March 1914. 'Exactly my vision'—she narrated much later on. He whom she was seeing in her vision since 1904 corresponded exactly with Sri Aurobindo. In her own words:

I came here.... But something in me wanted to meet Sri Aurobindo all alone the first time. Richard went to him in the morning and I had an appointment for the afternoon. He was living in the house that's now part of the second dormitory, the old Guest House. I climbed up the stairway and he was standing there, waiting for me at the top of the stairs... EXACTLY my vision! Dressed the same way, in the same position, in profile, his head held high. He turned his head towards me... and I saw in his eyes that it was He. The two things clicked (gesture of instantaneous shock), the inner experience immediately became one with the outer experience and there was a fusion—the decisive shock.

But this was merely the beginning of my vision. Only after a series of experiences—a ten months' sojourn in Pondicherry, five years of separation, then the return to Pondicherry and the meeting in the same house and in the same way—did the END of the vision occur.... I was standing just beside him. My head wasn't exactly on his shoulder, but where his shoulder was (I don't know how to explain it—physically there was hardly any contact). We were standing side by side like that, gazing out through the open window, and then TOGETHER, at exactly the same moment, we felt, 'Now the Realisation will be accomplished.' That the seal was set and the Realisation would be accomplished. I felt the Thing descending massively within me, with the same certainty I had felt in my vision. From that moment on there was nothing to say—no words, nothing. We

knew it was THAT.¹

Mother met Sri Aurobindo again the next day (30.3.1914). But this time, Richard was there. The Mother has narrated the meeting in the following words:

I was sitting there on the veranda. There was a table in front of him, and Richard was on the other side facing him. They began talking. Myself, I was seated at his feet, very small, with the table just in front of me—it came to my forehead, which gave me a little protection... I didn't say anything, I didn't think anything, try anything, want anything—I merely sat near him. When I stood up half an hour later, he had put silence in my head, that's all, without my even having asked him—perhaps even without his trying.

Oh, I had tried—for years I had tried to catch silence in my head... I never succeeded. I could detach myself from it, but it would keep on turning... But at that moment, all the mental constructions, all the mental, speculative structures... none of it remained—a big hole.

And such a peaceful, such a luminous hole!

Afterwards, I kept very still so as not to disturb it. I didn't speak, above all I refrained from thinking and held it, held it tight against me—I said to myself, 'Make it last, make it last, make it last....'

For years, from 1912 to 1914, I did endless exercises, all kinds of things, even pranayama—if it would only shut up! Really, if it only be quiet!... I was able to go out (that wasn't difficult), but inside it kept turning.

This lasted about half an hour. I quietly remained there—I heard the noise of their conversation, but I wasn't listening. And then when I got up, I no longer knew anything, I no longer thought anything, I no longer had any mental construction— everything was gone, absolutely gone, blank!—as if I had just been born.²

Referring to this experience, she had said the following also:

It was in 1910 that I had... [a] reversal of consciousness... that .is, the first contact with the higher Divine—and it completely

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¹. Mother's Agenda, Vol. 2, pp. 405-6.
² Mother's Agenda, Vol. 1, pp. 421-2.

changed my life.

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 CENTRE 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.

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.¹

It would be rewarding to go through her journal Prayers and Meditations to get an intimate idea of what she felt and experienced during those days of her early meetings with Sri Aurobindo. We may cite here a few of these prayers and meditations:

March 30, 1914

In the presence of those who are integrally Thy servitors, those who have attained the perfect consciousness of Thy Presence, I become aware that I am still far, very far from what I yearn to realise; and I know that the highest I can conceive, the noblest and purest is still dark and ignorant beside what I should conceive. But this perception, far from being depressing, stimulates and strengthens the aspiration, the energy, the will to triumph over all obstacles so as to be at last identified with Thy law and Thy work.

Gradually the horizon becomes distinct, the path grows clear, and we move towards a greater and greater certitude.

It matters little that there are thousands of beings plunged in the densest ignorance, He whom we saw yesterday is on earth; his

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¹Ibid., pp. 163-4.

presence is enough to prove that a day will come when darkness shall be transformed into light, when Thy reign shall be indeed established upon earth.

O Lord, Divine Builder of this marvel, my heart overflows with joy and gratitude when I think of it, and my hope has no bounds.

My adoration is beyond all words, my reverence is silent.¹

April 1, 1914

I feel we have entered the very heart of Thy sanctuary and grown aware of Thy very will. A great joy, a deep peace reign in me, and yet all my inner constructions have vanished like a vain dream and I find myself now, before Thy immensity, without a frame or system, like a being not yet individualised. All the past in its external form seems ridiculously arbitrary to me, and yet I know it was useful in its own time.

But now all is changed: a new stage has begun.²

April3, 1914

It seems to me that I am being born to a new life and that all the methods, the habits of the past can no longer be of any use. It seems to me that what I thought were results is nothing more than a preparation. I feel as though I had done nothing yet, as though I . had not lived the spiritual life, only entered the path that leads to it, it seems to me that I know nothing, that I am incapable of formulating anything, that all experience is yet to begin. It is as though I were stripped of my entire past, of its errors as well as its conquests, as though all that has vanished and made room for a new-born child whose whole existence is yet to be lived, who has no Karma, no experience to learn from, but no error either which has to be set right. My head is empty of all knowledge and all certitude, but also of all vain thought. I feel that if I learn how to surrender without any resistance to this state, if I do not try to know or understand, if I consent to be completely like an ignorant and candid child, some new possibility will open before me. I know

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¹The Mother, Prayers and Meditations, p. 113.
² Ibid., p. 114.

that I must now definitively give myself up and be like an absolutely blank page on which Thy thought, Thy will, O Lord, can be inscribed freely without danger of any deformation.

An immense gratitude rises from my heart, it seems to me that I have at last reached the threshold I sought so much.

Grant, O Lord, that I may be sufficiently pure, impersonal, animated with Thy divine love to be able to cross it definitively.

Oh, to belong to Thee without any darkness, without any restriction!¹

April 7, 1914

O Lord, all thought seems dead within me.... I search for my conscious mind and I do not find it; I search for my individuality and I cannot discover it. anywhere; I search for my personal will and it is not there. I search for Thee and Thou art silent.... Silence, silence....

Now I seem to hear Thy voice: 'Never hast thou known how to die integrally. Always something in thee has wanted to know, to witness, to understand. Surrender completely, learn how to disappear, break the last barrier that separates thee from me; accomplish unreservedly thy act of surrender.' Alas, O Lord, for a long time have I wanted it, but I could not. Now wilt Thou give me the power to do so?

O Lord, my sweet eternal Master, break this resistance which fills me with anguish... deliver me from myself!²

April 10, 1914

Suddenly the veil was rent, the horizon was disclosed—and before the clear vision my whole being threw itself at Thy feet in a great outburst of gratitude. Yet in spite of this deep and integral joy all was calm, all was peaceful with the peace of eternity.

I seem to have no more limits; there is no longer the perception of the body, no sensations, no feelings, no thoughts—a clear, pure, tranquil immensity penetrated with love and light, filled with

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¹ Ibid., pp. 116-7.
² Ibid., p. 119-20.

an unspeakable beatitude is all that is there and that alone seems now to be myself, and this 'myself is so little the former 'I', selfish and limited, that I cannot tell if it is I or Thou, O Lord, sublime Master of our destinies.

It is as though all were energy, courage, force, will, infinite sweetness, incomparable compassion....

Even more forcibly than during these last days the past is dead and as though buried under the rays of a new life. The last glance that I have just thrown backward as I read a few pages of this book definitively convinced me of this death, and lightened of a great weight I present myself before Thee, O my divine Master, with all the simplicity, all the nudity of a child.... And still the one only thing I perceive is that calm and pure immensity....

Lord, Thou hast answered my prayer, Thou hast granted me what I have asked from Thee; the 'I' has disappeared, there is only a docile instrument put at Thy service, a centre of concentration and manifestation of Thy infinite and eternal rays; Thou hast taken my life and made it Thine; Thou hast taken my will and hast united it to Thine; Thou hast taken my love and identified it with Thine; Thou hast taken my thought and replaced it by Thy absolute consciousness.

The body, marvelling, bows its forehead in the dust in mute and submissive adoration.

And nothing else exists but Thou alone in the splendour of Thy immutable peace.¹

May 16, 1914

(...)

Now I understand clearly that union with Thee is not an aim to be pursued, so far as this present individuality is concerned; it is an accomplished fact since a long time. And that is why Thou seemest to tell me always: 'Do not delight in the ecstatic contemplation of this union; accomplish the mission I have entrusted to thee upon earth...'²

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¹ Ibid., pp. 122-3.
² Ibid., p. 142.

May 25, 1914

O Divine Master of love and purity, grant that in its least stages, its smallest activities, this instrument which wants to serve Thee worthily may be purified of all egoism, all error, all obscurity, so that nothing in it may impair, deform or stop Thy action. How many little recesses lie yet in shadow, far from the full light of Thy illumination: for these I ask the supreme happiness of this illumination.

Oh, to be the pure flawless crystal which lets Thy divine ray pass without obscuring, colouring or distorting it!—not from a desire for perfection but so that Thy work may be done as perfectly as possible.

And when I ask Thee this, the 'I' which speaks to Thee is the entire Earth, aspiring to be this pure diamond, a perfect reflector of Thy supreme light. All the hearts of men beat within my heart, all their thoughts vibrate in my thought, the slightest aspiration of a docile animal or a modest plant unites with my formidable aspiration, and all this rises towards Thee, for the conquest of Thy love and light, scaling the summits of Being to attain Thee, ravish Thee from Thy motionless beatitude and make Thee penetrate the darkness of suffering to transform it into divine Joy, into sovereign Peace. And this violence is made of an infinite love which gives itself and a trustful serenity which smiles with the certitude of Thy perfect Unity.

O my sweet Master, Thou art the Triumpher and the Triumph, the Victor and the Victory!¹

June 13, 1914

First of all, knowledge must be conquered, that is, one must learn to know Thee, to be united with Thee, and all means are good and may be used to attain this goal. But it would be a great mistake to believe that all is done when this goal is attained. All is done in principle, the victory is gained in theory, and those whose motive is only an egoistic aspiration for their own salvation may feel satisfied and live only in and for this communion, without caring at all for Thy manifestation.

But those whom Thou hast appointed as Thy representatives

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¹ Ibid, p. 155.

upon earth cannot rest content with the result so obtained. To know Thee, first and before all else, yes; but once Thy knowledge is acquired there remains all the work of Thy manifestation; and then there intervene the quality, force, complexity and perfection of this manifestation. Very often those who have known Thee dazzled and rapt in ecstasy by this knowledge, have been content to see Thee for themselves and express Thee somehow or other in their outermost being. He who wants to be perfect in Thy manifestation cannot be satisfied with that; he must manifest Thee on all the planes, in all the states of being, and thus turn the knowledge he has acquired to the best account for the whole universe.

Before the immensity of this programme, the entire being exults and sings a hymn of gladness to Thee.

All nature in full conscious activity, all vibrant with Thy sovereign forces, responds to their inspiration and wants to be illumined and transfigured by them...

Thou art the Master of the world, the sole Reality.¹

On the 15th August, 1914, Sri Aurobindo brought out the first issue of the Arya, a monthly journal devoted to the synthesis of knowledge. For the next seven years, Sri Aurobindo was to write, day after day, in one mighty avalanche almost the entire body of his work. He began writing three books simultaneously: The Secret of the Veda, The Life Divine, and The Synthesis of Yoga. Then he started writing five and even six books at a time—a most extraordinary feat! Mother has explained the secret of this feat:

Sri Aurobindo's consciousness was above, in the Supermind, but what formed the words was the consciousness IN HIS HANDS. He became aware of the words only as they were expressed.²

Sri Aurobindo was perfectly silent and transparent; the knowledge from above was transmitted through the silent mind direct to the consciousness in his hands which was doing all the work. Again, as Mother explained, 'He established silence in his head, He sat at his typewriter, and from above, from the higher regions, everything that had to be written came down, all-composed, and He had only to move his fingers on the machine—whereupon it was transcribed.³

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¹ Ibid., pp. 168-9.
² Conversations avec Pavitra, p.156.
³ The Mother, Questions and Answers, 29.8.1956.

During the period of 1914, when she was in Pondicherry, Mother came to see Sri Aurobindo every afternoon; she learnt Sanskrit from him She also formed a small group with the young men who were with Sri Aurobindo and a few soccer players from the 'Sports Club' of Pondicherry. The group was named by her 'L'ldee Nouvelle' (The New Idea). Already in 1913, Sri Aurobindo has described his small group in his letter as a seed plot, a laboratory. He had written:

I have also begun... the second part of my work which will consist in making men for the new age by imparting whatever Siddhi [power] I get to those who are chosen. From this point of view our little colony here is a sort of seed plot, a laboratory. The things I work out in it, are then extended outside.¹

The Mother was giving a concrete shape to the idea of the 'laboratory', through 'L'ldee Nouvelle'.²

In the meantime, however, World War I had broken out on the 1st of August 1914. Paul Richard was called to war, and this was the outward reason for departure from Pondicherry. While on board, the Kamo Maru, she described her terrible state in the line, 'Solitude, a harsh, intense solitude... flung headlong into a hell of darkness!'³ She could have stayed at Sri Aurobindo's side at Pondicherry, but what Paul Richard represented had to be conquered and transformed. A full effort had to be made. So, as she noted, 'No flight out of the world! The burden of its darkness and ugliness must be borne to the end....'⁴

She fell severely ill with a kind of generalised neuritis just after passing through the Suez Canal. As a matter of fact, for the next five years, she would go from one mortal illness to another, intrepidly, indomitably.

Mother spent one year in France, finding enough strength to take care of the wounded. Then, Paul Richard managed to get himself demobilised and sent to Japan. In Japan, Mother passed through mortal illnesses during her four years' stay.

She took upon her body the first wartime epidemic of Japan,

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¹ Sri Aurobindo, Supplement, Centenary Library, Vol. 27, p. 434.
² In due course, as the research work began to expand, the laboratory too grew, and Mother developed the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, and much later in 1968, another laboratory in the form of 'Auroville'.
³ The Mother, Prayers and Meditations, March 3, 1915, p. 291.
4 Ibid., March 7, 1915, p. 294-5.

which had resulted in hundreds upon thousands of deaths. She had got on a streetcar, crossed Tokyo, come back with the disease and fought with it in her body until she could cure the disease in its very roots. Mother has narrated the episode as follows:

There was an epidemic of influenza, an influenza that came from the war (the 1914 war), and was generally fatal. People would get pneumonia after three days, and plop! finished. In Japan they never have epidemics (it's a country where epidemics are unknown), so they were caught unawares; it was an ideal breeding ground, absolutely unprepared—incredible: people died by the thousands every day, it was incredible! Everybody lived in terror, they didn't dare to go out without masks over their mouths. Then somebody whom I won't name asked me (in a brusque tone), 'What IS this?' I answered him, 'Better not think about it.' 'Why not?' he said, 'It's very interesting! We must find out, at least you are able to find out whatever this is.' Silly me, I was just about to go out; I had to visit a girl who lived at the other end of Tokyo (Tokyo is the largest city in the world, it takes a long time to go from one end to the other), and I wasn't so well-off I could go about in a car: I took the tram.... What an atmosphere! An atmosphere of panic in the city! You see, we lived in a house surrounded by a big park, secluded, but the atmosphere in the city was horrible. And the question, 'What IS this?' naturally came to put me in contact—I came back home with the illness. I was sure to catch it, it had to happen! (laughing) I came home with it.

Like a bang on the head—I was completely dazed. They called a doctor. There were no medicines left in the city—there weren't enough medicines for people, but as we were considered important people (!) the doctor brought two tablets. I told him (laughing) 'Doctor, I never take any medicines.' 'What!' he said. 'It's so hard to get them!' 'That's just the point,' I replied, 'they're very good for others!' Then, then... suddenly (I was in bed, of course, with a first-rate fever), suddenly I felt seized by trance—the real trance, the kind that pushed you out of your body—and I knew. I knew: 'It's the end; if I can't resist it, it's the end.' So I looked. I looked and I saw it was a being whose head had been half blown off by a bomb and who didn't know he was dead, so he was hooking on to anybody he could to suck life. And each of those beings (I saw one over me, doing his 'business'!) was one of the countless dead. Each had a sort of atmosphere—a very widespread

atmosphere—of human decomposition, utterly pestilential, and that's what gave the illness. If it was merely that, you recovered but if it was one of those beings with half a head or half a body, a being who had been killed so brutally that he didn't know he was dead and was trying to get hold of a body in order to continue his life (the atmosphere made thousands of people catch the illness every day, it was swarming, an infection), well, with such beings, you died. Within three days it was over—even before, within a day, sometimes. So once I saw and knew, I collected all the occult energy, all the occult power, and... (Mother bangs down her fist, as if to force her way into her body) I found myself back in my bed, awake, and it was over. Not only was it over, but I stayed very quiet and began to work in the atmosphere.... From that moment... there were no new cases! It was so extraordinary that it appeared in the Japanese papers. They didn't know how it happened, but from that day on, from that night on, not a single fresh case. And people recovered little by little.

I told the story to our Japanese friend in whose house we were living, I told him, "well, that's what this illness is—a remnant of the war; and here's the way it happens.... And that being was repaid for his attempt!' Naturally, the fact that I repelled this influence by turning around and fighting... [dissolved the formation]. But what power it takes to do that! Extraordinary.

He told the story to some friends, who in turn told it to some friends, so in the end the story became known. There was even a sort of collective thanks from the city for my intervention....

But that feeling of being absolutely paralyzed, a prey to something—absolutely paralyzed, you can't... you are no longer in your body, you understand, you can't act on it any more. And a sense of liberation when you are able to turn around.

I had a tremendous fever, which naturally dropped little by little—after a few days I was completely cured; even immediately, I was almost cured....¹

During the sojourn in Japan, she had tuberculosis, which was cured only after her return to Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry. In passing, it may be mentioned that Rabindranath Tagore, who also happened to be in Japan at that time, came to know Mother, and struck by the clarity of her vision, he invited her to come and organise education

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¹Mother's Agenda, Vol. 4, pp. 116-8.

at his Santiniketan in Bengal. But Mother had already something else in view. During her stay in Japan, Mother also tried to put a little consciousness into the men and women of Japan, and something of this effort we can see in the talk that she gave to the women of Japan. She had remarked: That the superman shall be born of women is a great indisputable truth!... The true domain of women is spiritual. We forget it all often.¹

'Turn to the earth'—such was a constant message that she seemed to hear. Yet, she was asking what was contained in her destiny. In her contemplations, there was a constant note of her silence and battle and identification with the earth. On the other hand, Japan, with all its beauty, gave to her the splendour of landscapes and the divine smile of flowers. In her prayer of April 1, 1917, she wrote:

Thou hast shown to my mute and expectant soul all the splendour of fairy landscapes: trees at festival and lonely paths that seem to scale the sky.

But of my destiny Thou didst not speak to me. Must it be so veiled from me?...

Once more, everywhere I see cherry trees; Thou hast put a magical power in these flowers: they seem to speak of Thy sole Presence; they bring with them the smile of the Divine.

My body is at rest and my soul blossoms in light: what kind of a charm hast Thou put into these trees in flower?

O Japan, it is thy festive adorning, expression of thy goodwill, it is thy purest offering, the pledge of thy fidelity; it is thy way of saying that thou dost mirror the sky.

And now here is a magnificent country, of high mountains all covered with pines and richly tilled valleys. And the little pink roses this Chinese brings, are they a promise of the near future?²

And here is an illuminating experience of identification with cherry-blossoms, recorded on April 7, 1917:

A deep concentration seized on me, and I perceived that I was identifying myself with a single cherry-blossom, then through it, with all cherry-blossoms, and, as I descended deeper in the consciousness, following a stream of bluish force, I became suddenly

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¹ A Talk to the Women of Japan, 1917.
² The Mother, Prayers and Meditations, April 1, 1917, p. 358.

the cherry-tree itself, stretching towards the sky like so many arms its innumerable branches laden with their sacrifice of flowers. Then I heard distinctly this sentence:

Thus hast thou made thyself one with the soul of the cherry trees and so thou canst take note that it is the Divine who makes the offering of this flower-prayer to heaven.

When I had written it, all was effaced; but now the blood of the cherry-tree flows in my veins and with it flows an incomparable peace and force. What difference is there between the human body and the body of a tree? In truth, there is none: the consciousness which animates them is identically the same.

Then the cherry-tree whispered in my ear:

'It is in the cherry-blossom that lies the remedy for the disorders of the spring.¹

Japan is the land of the Buddha, and one of the most revealing experiences that Mother had in Japan was that of a communication that she received one evening from Sakyamuni. Mother has recorded this communication as follows:

December 20, 1916

(...)

(Communication received at 5.30 in the evening after meditation.)

As thou art contemplating me, I shall speak to thee this evening. I see in thy heart a diamond surrounded by a golden light. It is at once pure and warm, something which may manifest impersonal love; but why dost thou keep this treasure enclosed in that dark casket lined with deep purple? The outermost covering is of a deep lustreless blue, a real mantle of darkness. It would seem that thou art afraid of showing thy splendour. Learn to radiate and do not fear the storm: the wind carries us far from the shore but shows us over the world. Wouldst thou be thrifty of thy tenderness? But the source of love is infinite. Dost thou fear to be misunderstood? But where hast thou seen man capable of understanding the Divine? And if the eternal truth finds in thee a means of manifesting itself, what dost thou care for all the rest? Thou art like a

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¹The Mother, Prayers and Meditations, p. 359.

pilgrim coming out of the sanctuary; standing on the threshold in front of the crowd, he hesitates before revealing his precious secret, that of his supreme discovery. Listen, I too hesitated for days, for I could foresee both my preaching and its results: the imperfection of expression and the still greater imperfection of understanding. And yet I turned to the earth and men and brought them my message. Turn to the earth and men—isn't this the command thou always hearest in thy heart?—in thy heart, for it is that which carries a blessed message for those who are athirst for compassion. Henceforth nothing can attack the diamond. It is unassailable in its perfect constitution and the soft radiance that flashes from it can change many things in the heart of men. Thou doubtest thy power and fearest thy ignorance? It is precisely this that wraps up thy strength in that dark mantle of starless night. Thou hesitatest and tremblest as on the threshold of a mystery, for now the mystery of the manifestation seems to thee more terrible and unfathomable than that of the Eternal Cause. But thou must take courage again and obey the injunction from the depths. It is I who am telling thee this, for I know thee and love thee as thou didst know and love me once. I have appeared clearly before thy sight so that thou mayst in no way doubt my word. And also to thy eyes I have shown thy heart so that thou canst thus see what the supreme Truth has willed for it, so that thou mayst discover in it the law of thy being. The thing still seems to thee quite difficult: a day will come when thou wilt wonder how for so long it could have been otherwise.

Sakyamuni.¹

The earth was in pain, being shattered by the war. And to turn to the earth was to turn to the war. Recounting years later the inner experience of that war, Mother said:

I remember quite well that when the war—the first war—broke out, each part of my body, one after the other (and Mother touched her legs, arms, chest), or sometimes repeatedly the same part, symbolized battle-fields—I saw, felt and LIVED it. And each time... it was quite strange, for I had only to remain seated and watch: I saw it all in my body, here, there, there—everything that was happening. And while it was happening, I concentrated the

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¹The Mother, Prayers and Meditations, pp. 328-9.

divine Force there so that everything (all this pain, all this suffering, all of it)... so that it would hasten the preparation of the earth—or in truth, the descent of the Force.¹

The basic reason for the Mother to go with Paul Richard to France and Japan was to convert him, and this task, too, was extremely difficult. As Mother explained much later:

You know that I had taken on the conversion of the Lord of Falsehood: I tried to do it through an emanation incarnated in a physical being [Richard], and the greatest effort was made during those four years in Japan. The four years were coming to an end with an absolute inner certainty that there was nothing to be done—that it was impossible, impossible to do it this way. There was nothing to be done. And I was intensely concentrated, asking the Lord, 'Well, I made You a vow to do this, I had said, "Even if it's necessary to descend into hell, I'll descend into hell to do it...." Now tell me, what must I do?...' The power was plainly there: suddenly everything in me became still; the whole external being was completely immobilised and I had a vision of the Supreme... more beautiful than that of the Gita. A vision of the Supreme. And this vision literally gathered me into its arms; it turned towards the West, towards India, and offered me—and there at the other end I saw Sri Aurobindo. It was... I felt it physically. I saw, saw—my eyes were closed but I saw (twice I have had this vision of the Supreme—once here, much later—but this was the first time)... ineffable. It was as if this Immensity had reduced itself to a rather gigantic Being who lifted me up like a wisp of straw and offered me. Not a word, nothing else, only that.

Then everything vanished.

The next day we began preparing to return to India.²

In 1920, on her return journey to India, Mother stopped for a while in China. On 24th April, 1920, Mother returned to Pondicherry. Once again, on her arrival, she met Sri Aurobindo. As we have noted earlier, she had seen him earlier sixteen years ago for the first time in her vision, and this vision continued to come to her during all these years. But it was only now, after this meeting of 1920, that that vision

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¹.Satprem, Mother or the divine Materialism, p.268.
². Mother's Agenda, Vol 2. pp. 406-7

came to an end. As already mentioned earlier, in Mother's words:

Only after a series of experiences,—a ten months' sojourn in Pondicherry, five years of separation, then the return to Pondicherry and the meeting in the same house and in the same way—did the END of the vision occur.... I was standing just beside him. My head wasn't exactly on his shoulder, but where his shoulder was (I don't know how to explain it—physically there was hardly any contact). We were standing side by side like that, gazing out through the open window, and then TOGETHER, at exactly the same moment, we felt, 'Now the Realisation will be accomplished.' That the seal was set and the Realisation would be accomplished. I felt the Thing descending massively within me, with the same certainty I had felt in my vision. From that moment on there was nothing to say—no words, nothing. We knew it was THAT.¹

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¹ Ibid., pp. 405-6.