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The
Mother and Sri Aurobindo
--
Dr R Neerunjun Gopee
“Our
ideal is not that spirituality which withdraws from life,
but the conquest of life by the power of the spirit.”
–
Sri Aurobindo
Sri
Aurobindo, third of the four sons of Dr KD Ghose and his
wife Swarnalata, was born on August 15, 1872 at Calcutta. Dr
Ghose, who was a Civil Surgeon trained at Aberdeen in
Scotland, gave his newborn the name “Aravinda”, meaning
lotus in Sanskrit and signifying divine consciousness
spiritually. Sri Aurobindo lived until the ripe old age of
78, having only ever suffered one major illness some time
after he had returned to India from England, and towards the
end he had a fracture of the femur which healed in the usual
time. He left his physical body on 5 December 1950 at 1.26
a.m. The Mother, as his spiritual companion and successor
Mirra Richard was known, announced that “His body is
charged with such a concentration of supramental light that
there is no sign of decomposition”, and in fact it was not
until five days later that the light started to fade.
When
he was seven, his father took the family to England so that
his children would have an entirely English education,
beginning in Manchester where he spent five years studying
arithmetic, geography, French, English poetry and literature
including Shakespeare, and the Bible. He then was admitted
to St Paul’s School in London. Aurobindo turned out to be
an exceptionally brilliant student, bagging prizes in
literature and history. Already, at the age of twelve, he
had a mastery of Latin, Greek, English and French, and some
familiarity with German and Italian.
After
passing the Matriculation examination from St Paul’s in
1889, Aurobindo won the Senior Classical Scholarship to
King’s College in Cambridge. In 1890 he also took the
entrance examination for the Indian Civil Service (ICS),
coming out 11th and obtaining record marks in
Latin and Greek. He spent two years in Cambridge, studying
for the Classical Tripos, again doing exceptionally well in
his studies, bagging numerous prizes, being noted as a
speaker, and also passing the final examination for the ICS.
But he refused to take the mandatory riding test, because he
was not interested in an administrative job. Instead, “My
interest was in poetry and literature and the study of
languages and patriotic action.”
He
returmed to India in 1893 and joined the Baroda State
Service. But he tired of administrative work and after a few
years he was appointed as a teacher of English and French to
the Baroda College. He rose to become Professor of English
and eventually Assistant Principal of the College.
As
exceptional a student as he was, he also shone as a teacher:
he won the love, admiration and esteem of his pupils for his
profound knowledge, his meticulousness, his original
pedagogy and his attention to them. It was also for him a
time of intense personal study – Sanskrit, the Ramayana
and Mahabharata, the Geeta and the works of Kalidasa along
with other Indian languages (Gujarati, Marathi and Bengali)
in which he developed a degree of proficiency. Meanwhile, he
had established contact with his family in Calcutta and
visited them. Contact with Bengal brought awareness of
political happenings and Aurobindo became convinced that the
liberation of India from British rule was an indispensable
part of a new world order, and he was the first among Indian
leaders to declare a call for the complete Independence of
India from Britain.
To
this end he had started behind the scenes preparation in
Baroda, with his younger brother Barin. This work gathered
momentum when he moved to Calcutta in 1906 as Principal of
the newly-established National College. He wrote patriotic
articles in magazines he founded, Bande Mantaram and Karmayogin,
to the displeasure of the government. He was jailed for
a year for alleged sedition and came out a free man after
his trial. Subsequently he shifted to Pondicherry in the
south, arriving in April 1910 – never to return to
Calcutta.
He
began his study of the Vedas and pursued his yoga practice,
perfecting his technique of sadhana (spiritual
discipline). He had more mystical experiences that confirmed
to him the Vedic postulate of Spirit as being the substratum
of matter, “There is a Truth deeper and higher than the
truth of outward
existence, a light greater and higher than the light of
human understanding which comes by revelation and
inspiration.”
Most
of us live our lives at the level of the material needs of
the body and the questionings of the reasoning mind. Through
his experiences he established that our physical and mental
existences were but limited expressions of a higher truth,
the Consciousness-Force which manifests as different planes
of existence from the lower material to the highest
spiritual. Every human being has the potential to ascend to
this highest level and thus enrich his earthly existence and
that of others. The method that Sri Aurobindo perfected for
this attainment was “Integral Yoga”. It entailed going
beyond the mind to the Supermind which was the link to the
higher planes.
As
he became more and more involved in his studies and sadhana,
karma brought to the doors of the Pondicherry Ashram,
amongst other distinguished visitors, Paul and Mirra
Richard. As soon as Mirra saw him, at 3.30 in the afternoon
of 29 March 1914 at the new residence at 41, rue Francois
Martin, she “instantly recognized him as the ‘Krishna’
she had met so often in her visions.”
In
due course, Paul left and Mirra, who became known as The
Mother, stayed back to continue her spiritual journey with
Sri Aurobindo. From a few the number of disciples grew to
several, with many visitors coming from abroad too. As Sri
Aurobindo spent more and more time in his sadhana, the
running of the ashram was taken over gradually by The
Mother. Not only she had organizational skills, she also
acted as a link between the disciples and Sri Aurobindo.
It
is no coincidence that Mirra Richard became the foremost
disciple of Sri Aurobindo and continued his work after the
latter attained mahasmadhi on December 5, 1950. She was born
Mirra Alfassa on 21 February 1878 in Paris, of an Egyptian
mother and a Turkish father. She had a very cultured
upbringing both in her childhood and later when she joined
the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, being ground in music –
especially the piano – philosophy, political and social
systems, etc. What is remarkable, however, is that from her
childhood she started having spontaneous experiences
“including those of coming out of her body to discover
inner realities without understanding what they really
meant.”
She
has described these experiences in her own words in several
of her writings. Here are some extracts: “At the of
eighteen, I remember having such an intense need in me to
KNOW… I knew nothing but the things of ordinary life:
external knowledge… and it was NOTHING! None of it
explained anything to me. To know! It was to happen to me
when somebody told me that the Divine was within – the
teaching of the Geeta, but in words understandable to a
Westerner – that there was an inner Presence, that one
carried the Divine within oneself, oh!… What a revelation!
In a few minutes, I suddenly understood it all, all, all.”
In
1904, she had a series of visions: “I knew nothing of
India, mind you, nothing. In several of these visions I saw
Sri Aurobindo just as he looked physically, but glorified;
that is, the same man I would see on my first visit… I
prostrated before him in the Hindu manner. All this without
any comprehension... But my impression was that it (the
vision) was premonitory.”
In
the light of these visions, it becomes clear that Mother was
destined, as it were, to become the foremost disciple of Sri
Aurobindo and the person to transmit his legacy until she
herself passed on in November 1973. However, the good work
goes on at Auroville which she founded at Pondicherry. The
anniversary of her birthday on Tuesday next is a blessed
opportunity for us to reflect upon the deeper meanings and
karmic links of life, illustrated by her own passage on
planet Earth -- from the beginning almost a spiritual
journey. It took a perfect stranger born and brought up in a
foreign land and an alien culture to the feet of her master,
whom she had recognized in planes of consciousness years
before she actually came face to face with him. Indeed, come
to think of it, were they indeed strangers to each other?
Sri Aurobindo did say that other than his own, the language
and culture he felt closest to was French, although he had
never been to France. All this may appear very odd and
inexplicable to us. But happily this is not so – Sri
Aurobindo’s and Mother’s experiences and visions of
planes accessible through Integral Yoga provide the
intuitive rationale that underlies their connectivity. If we
search, we will surely find also.
RN
Gopee
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