THE MOTHER-26/...Part Two: The Road Together 6. Speaking the Word When I came to Pondicherry a programme was dictated to me from within for my Sadhana. I followed it and progressed for myself but could not do much by way of helping others. Then came the Mother and with her help I found the necessary method.237 — Sri Aurobindo 6-1. First Questions When Mirra met A.G., as Aurobindo Ghose was known since his arrival in Pondicherry, she had her questions ready. These questions were the natural result of her effort at inner development, and some of them we know because she has mentioned them. One question was about the state of samadhi or trance. As the Mother later narrated to her audience in the Ashram playground: ‘In all kinds of so-called spiritual literature I had always read wonderful things about this state of trance or Samadhi, but I had never experienced it. So I did not know whether this was perhaps a sign of inferiority. And when I came here, one of my first questions to Sri Aurobindo was: “What do you think of ‘samadhi,’ of that state of trance one does not remember? One enters into a condition which seems to be blissful, but when one comes out of it, one has no idea of what has happened.” He looked at me, saw what I meant and told me: “It is unconsciousness... You enter into what is called ‘samadhi’ when you go out of your conscious being and enter into a part of your being which is completely unconscious, or rather into a domain where you have no corresponding consciousness: you go beyond the field of your consciousness and enter a region where you are no longer conscious. You are in the impersonal state, that is to say, a state in which you are unconscious, and that is the reason why, naturally, you remember nothing, because you were not conscious of anything.” So this reassured me and I said: “Well. This has never happened to me.” He replied: “Nor to me.”’238 Another of Mirra’s questions was why, in spite of her many talents, she had always been so ‘mediocre’ in everything she did: painting, writing, music... Aurobindo’s answer was simply that this was indispensable for her development. We may infer that people who are extraordinarily gifted in a certain field have to dedicate their life exclusively to the realization of that one talent, while Mirra had to sample as varied an experience as possible and then engage in a totally new and synthetic enterprise. A third question — in reality her very first one — would prove to be of immense importance for the future. ‘It was the very first question which came up when I met Sri Aurobindo,’ the Mother said later. ‘Should you do your yoga, attain the goal, and then afterwards take up the work with others, or should you immediately let all those who have the same aspiration gather around you and go forward all together towards the goal? Because of my earlier work and all that I had tried out, I came to Sri Aurobindo with this question very precisely formulated. Because the two possibilities were there: either to practise an intensive individual sadhana by withdrawing from the world, that is, by no longer having any contact with others, or to let the group be formed naturally and spontaneously, not preventing it from being formed, allowing it to form by itself, and starting all together on the path. Well, the decision was not at all a mental choice, it came spontaneously. The circumstances were such that no choice was required. I mean, quite naturally, spontaneously, the group was formed in such a way that it became an imperious necessity. And so, once you have started like that, it is settled, you have to go on like that to the end.’239 The day after her arrival and her first meeting with Aurobindo, Mirra had an overwhelming experience. We know that she had already realized the Godhead in the heart and the full awakening of the kundalini. Now, with her openness, sensitivity and trained capacity to enter into others, she received from Aurobindo something she did not expect. ‘I was seated close to him [Aurobindo], simply, like that, on the floor. He was sitting on a chair, with a table in front of him, and on the other side of the table was Richard, and they were talking. I did not listen, I sat there just like that. I don’t know how long they went on talking, but suddenly I felt within me as it were a great Force — Peace! Silence! massive. It came, did like this [sweeping gesture at the level of the forehead], descended like that, and stopped here [gesture at the chest]. And when they finished talking, I stood up and left. And then I noticed that I didn’t have a single thought in my mind — that I knew nothing any more, understood nothing any more, that I was absolutely in a complete blank. Then I gave thanks to the Lord, and thanked Sri Aurobindo in my heart.’240 Aurobindo had imparted his ‘nirvanic’ silence to her, his first great realization obtained when sitting with V.B. Lele in Baroda and which had never left him since. Just before sitting down on the floor, Mirra had confided to him that, try as she may to establish that silence in the mind, she was unable to do it. Aurobindo had given it to her ‘without even intending to,’ just by occult communication and because of her total openness, which in their yoga would be called ‘surrender.’ Years later, when asked by Barin what had struck him most on first meeting Mirra, Aurobindo would indeed say her surrender, which was ‘so absolute and unreserved.’ From the moment their minds became silenced neither Aurobindo nor Mirra ‘thought’ any more as ordinary humans do. In their absolute surrender to the Divine their ‘thoughts’ came to them, were given to them how and when necessary, or when invited. A thought, as Mirra had learned from Théon and as she taught to her audiences in Paris, may be invisible to us because it belongs to a subtle, mental world, but it is all the same a concrete entity. Every human being lives within an occult edifice that consists of ‘constructions’ of thoughts. In people who are incapable of clear thinking, such an edifice is shabbily put together; in people who live mainly ‘in their head’ or in an unassailable conviction, such an edifice can be as impenetrable as a fortress the walls of a prison. In the course of her occult and spiritual explorations, Mirra had carefully built up ‘a magnificent construction’ which Aurobindo, just by his way of being, now destroyed in an instant — and she was immensely grateful for it. She took great care not to spoil the new poise, which never left her again. As usually happens at the time of a decisive new spiritual experience, Mirra felt as if all the preceding work meant nothing. ‘It seems to me that I am being born into a new life,’ she wrote in her diary, ‘and that all the methods, all the habits of the past can no longer be of any use. It seems to me that what I considered as results were nothing more than a preparation. I feel as if I have done nothing yet, as though I have 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 if 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... It seems to me that I have at last reached the threshold I so much sought for.’241 Then followed what is a regular feature in all true spiritual progress: the repercussion, the downward movement after an uplifting experience or spiritual realization. This is, according to Sri Aurobindo, the Black Dragon lashing out with its tail in an effort to swipe away the spiritual gain. ‘My physical organism suffered a defeat such as it had not known for several years, and during a few days all the forces of my body failed me... Something in this aggregate [her body] which constitutes the instrument I can put at Thy service is still obscure and obtuse; something does not respond as it should to Thy forces, and deforms and darkens their manifestation.’242 The problem she would have to grapple with at the end was already there at the beginning.
Posted on: Sun, 22 Sep 2013 00:50:23 +0000
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