Education begins before Birth

 To the Women of Japan

To speak of children to the women of Japan is, I think, to speak to them of their dearest, their most sacred subject. Indeed, in no other country in the world have the children taken such an important, such a primordial place. They are, here, the centre of care and attention. On them are concentrated—and rightly—the hopes for the future. They are the living promise of growing prosperity for the country. Therefore, the most important work assigned to women in Japan is child-making. Maternity is considered as the principal role of woman. But this is true only so long as we understand what is meant by the word maternity. For   children into the world as rabbits do their young—instinctively, ignorantly, machine-like, that certainly cannot be called maternity! True maternity begins with the conscious creation of a being, with the willed shaping of a soul coming to develop and utilise a new body. The true domain of women is the spiritual. We forget it but too often.
To bear a child and construct his body almost subconsciously is not enough. The work really commences when, by the power of thought and will, we conceive and create a character capable of manifesting an ideal.
And do not say that we have no power for realising such a thing. Innumerable instances of this very effective power could be brought out as proofs.
First of all, the effect of physical environment was recognised and studied long ago. It is by surrounding women with forms of art and beauty that, little by little, the ancient Greeks created the exceptionally harmonious race that they were.
Individual instances of the same fact are numerous. It is not rare to see a woman who, while pregnant, had looked at constantly and admired a beautiful picture or statue, giving birth to a child after the perfect likeness of this picture or statue. I met several of these instances myself. Among them, I remember very clearly two little girls; they were twins and perfectly beautiful. But the most astonishing was how little like their parents they were. They reminded me of a very famous picture painted by the English artist Reynolds. One day I made this remark to the mother, who immediately exclaimed: "Indeed, is it not so? You will be interested to know that while I was expecting these children, I had, hanging above my bed, a very good reproduction of Reynolds' picture. Before going to sleep and as soon as I woke, my last and first glance was for that picture; and in my heart I hoped: may my children be like the faces in this picture. You see that I succeeded quite well!" In truth, she could be proud of her success, and her example is of great utility for other women.
But if we can obtain such results on the physical plane where the materials are the least plastic, how much more so on the psychological plane where the influence of thought and will is so powerful. Why accept the obscure bonds of heredity and atavism—which are nothing else than subconscious preferences for our own trend of character—when we can, by concentration and will, call into being a type constructed according to the highest ideal we are able to conceive? With this effort, maternity becomes truly precious and sacred; indeed with this, we enter the glorious work of the Spirit, and womanhood rises above animality and its ordinary instincts, towards real humanity and its powers.
In this effort, in this attempt, then, lies our true duty. And if this duty was always of the greatest importance, it certainly has taken a capital one in the present turn of the earth's evolution.
For we are living in an exceptional time at an exceptional turning point of the world's history. Never before, perhaps, did mankind pass through such a dark period of hatred, bloodshed and confusion. And, at the same time, never had such a strong, such an ardent hope awakened in the hearts of the people. Indeed, if we listen to our heart's voice, we immediately perceive that we are, more or less consciously, waiting for a new reign of justice, of beauty, of harmonious good-will and fraternity. And this seems in complete contradiction with the actual state of the world. But we all know that never is the night so dark as before the dawn. May not this darkness, then, be the sign of an approaching dawn? And as never was night so complete, so terrifying, maybe never will dawn have been so bright, so pure, so illuminating as the coming one.... After the bad dreams of the night the world will awaken to a new consciousness.
The civilisation which is ending now in such a dramatic way was based on the power of mind, mind dealing with matter and life. What it has been to the world, we have not to discuss here. But a new reign is coming, that of the Spirit: after the human, the divine.
Yet, if we have been fortunate enough to live on earth at such a stupendous, a unique time as this one, is it sufficient to stand and watch the unfolding events? All those who feel that their heart extends further than the limits of their own person and family, that their thought embraces more than small personal interests and local conventions, all those, in short, who realise that they belong not to themselves, or to their family, or even to their country, but to God who manifests Himself in all countries, through mankind, these, indeed, know that they must rise and set to work for the sake of humanity, for the advent of the Dawn.
And in this momentous, endless, many-sided work, what can be the part of womanhood? It is true that, as soon as great events and works are in question, the custom is to relegate women to a corner with a smile of patronising contempt which means: this is not your business, poor, feeble, futile creatures.... And women, submissive, childlike, lazy perhaps, have accepted, at least in many countries, this deplorable state of things. I dare to say that they are wrong. In the life of the future, there shall be no more room for such division, such disequilibrium between the masculine and the feminine. The true relation of the two sexes is an equal footing of mutual help and close collaboration. And from now, we must reassume our veritable position, take again our due place and assert our real importance—that of spiritual former and educator. Indeed, some men, perhaps a little vainglorious of their so-called advantages, may despise the apparent weakness of women (although even this exterior weakness is not quite certain) but: "Do what he may, the superman will have to be born of woman all the same", someone said very rightly.
The superman shall be born of woman, this is a big unquestionable truth; but it is not enough to be proud of this truth, we must clearly understand what it means, become aware of the responsibility it creates, and learn to face earnestly the task which is put before us. This task is precisely our most important share in the present world-wide work.
For that, we must first understand—at least in their broad lines—what are the means by which the present chaos and obscurity can be transformed into light and harmony.
Many means have been suggested: political, social, ethical, even religious.... Indeed, none of these seem sufficient to face with any reliable success the magnitude of the task to be done. Only a new spiritual influx, creating in man a new consciousness, can overcome the enormous mass of difficulties barring the way of the workers. A new spiritual light, a manifestation upon earth of some divine force unknown until now, a Thought of God, new for us, descending into this world and taking a new form here.
And here we come back to our starting point, to our duty of true maternity. For this form meant to manifest the spiritual force capable of transforming the earth's present conditions, this new form, who is to construct it if not the women?
Thus we see that at this critical period of the world's life it is no longer sufficient to give birth to a being in whom our highest personal ideal is manifested; we must strive to find out what is the future type, whose advent Nature is planning. It is no longer sufficient to form a man similar to the greatest men we have heard of or known, or even greater, more accomplished and gifted than they; we must strive to come in touch mentally, by the constant aspiration of our thought and will, with the supreme possibility which, exceeding all human measures and features, will give birth to the superman.
Once again Nature feels one of her great impulses towards the creation of something utterly new, something unexpected. And it is to this impulse that we must answer and obey.
Let us try first to discover where this impulse of Nature will lead us. And the best way for that is to look back on the lessons given to us by the Past.
We see that each progress of Nature, each manifestation of a new capacity and principle upon earth is marked by the appearance of a new species. In the same way, the progressive forms of the life of races, ofpeoples, of individuals, follow each other through the human cycles, ceaselessly inspired, fecundated, renewed by the efforts of the guides of humanity. And all these forms aim at the same goal, the mysterious, the glorious goal of Nature.[^1]
[^1]: It seems that the following paragraphs from an earlier draft were intended for insertion here:
Which is this goal? Toward what unexpected realisation of the future does Nature aim? What does she seek since her dark origins?
Each form that she creates is a fresh affirmation of that which through her will be born, of that which it is her mission to manifest.
Each species preparing the others, making them possible, bears witness to her untiring perseverance, is a proof of her solemn vow; in each one is a little more matter transfigured, announcing future dawns of intelligence. Through innumerable cycles how many paths has she had to follow in order to reach at last the cave of the anthropoid, the primitive man?
It is before him that will open the royal avenue leading to the palace of spirit. But how many races, how many generations will pass on the earth without discovering it, how many wrong paths will Nature follow in the footsteps of man. For, believing himself the masterpiece of the universe, he knows not that he has a further stage to pass through.
Could the idea of man be conceived, before he existed, in the obscure brain of even the nearest of his ancestors? Can the idea of the superman, before he exists, penetrate into the brain of man?
And yet, in every child of man which comes into the world, in every growing intelligence, in every effort of the emerging generations, in every attempt of human genius, Nature seeks the way which, once again, will lead her further.
Fifteen hundred million men since perhaps fifteen hundred centuries wander without finding this way.
Among the multitude of the ways over which all the efforts of their progress are scattered, in this domain as in all the others, only one is good: it is the way of synthetic perfections. Where to discover it?
And who among men dares to venture elsewhere than on the easy and well-beaten tracks? Who, knowing that there is another path which goes further, accepts to lose all in order to find it perhaps, to lose all in walking alone, in thinking alone, always apart among the others, not even certain of attaining what he seeks.
Try not to discover this one among the men who excel and shine, for these excel and shine only in being, somewhat more perfectly, similar to their own kind.
Precious stones also excel and shine among all the other stones, but the most beautiful gem is outside the series of chemical combinations from whence comes forth life. In the same way, ascending the series of forms, the most beautiful tree of the forest is outside the lines of evolution which lead the biological process up to the animal, up to man.
And once again, among men, the most admired, the most famous, the most artistic, the most learned, the most religious, may well find himself far off the way leading from man to superman.
Each race, each civilisation, each human society, each religion, represents a new attempt of Nature, one more effort adding to the long series of those she multiplied during countless time.
Now, as among all the animal forms there was one from which man was to come forth, so also, among the social and religious species, must one be born from which some day will come forth the superman.
For it is this which Nature seeks in all her successive attempts, from the first germination of life until man, until the God who shall be born of him.
In the multitude of men she seeks the possibility of the superman; and in each one of them, she aims towards the realisation of the divine.
It is to this call of Nature that we must answer, to this magnificent, to this grandiose work that we must devote ourselves. Let us try to make as clear as we can the steps of our advance on this difficult and as yet unexplored path.
First of all we must be careful, in our attempt to conceive the future man or superman, not to adopt an actual type of man, perfecting or aggrandising him. To avoid as much as possible this mistake we should study the teachings of life's evolution.
We have already seen that the appearance of a new species always announces the manifestation on earth of a new principle, a new plane of consciousness, a new force or power. But, at the same time while the new species acquires this formerly unmanifested power or consciousness, it may lose one or many of the perfections which were the characteristics of the immediately preceding species. For instance, to speak only of the last step of Nature's development, what are the greatest differences between man and his immediate predecessor, the ape? In the monkey we see vitality and physical ability reaching the utmost perfection, a perfection that the new species had to abandon. For man, there has been no more of that marvellous climbing up trees, somersaults over abysses, jumps from summit to summit, but in exchange he acquired intelligence, the power of reasoning, combining, constructing. Indeed with man it is the life of mind, of intellect which appeared on earth. Man is essentially a mental being; and if his possibilities do not stop there, if he feels in himself other worlds, other faculties, other planes of consciousness beyond his mental life, they are only as promises for the future, in the same way as the mental possibilities are latent in the monkey.
It is true that some men, very few, have lived in that world beyond, which we may call the spiritual; some have been, indeed, the living incarnations of that world on earth, but they are the exceptions, the forerunners showing the way to the race, leading it towards its future realisation, not the average man. But that which was the privilege of a few beings scattered through time and space, shall become the central characteristic of the new type which is to appear.
At present, man governs his life through reason; all the activities of the mind are of common use for him; his means of knowledge are observation and deduction; it is by and through reasoning that he takes his decision and chooses his way—or believes he does—in life.
The new race shall be governed by intuition, that is to say, direct perception of the divine law within. Some human beings actually know and experience intuition—as, undoubtedly, certain big gorillas of the forest have glimpses of reasoning.
In mankind, the very few who have cultivated their inner self, who have concentrated their energies on the discovery of the true law of their being, possess more or less the faculty of intuition. When the mind is perfectly silent, pure like a well-polished mirror, immobile as a pond on a breezeless day, then, from above, as the light of the stars drops in the motionless waters, so the light of the supermind, of the Truth within, shines in the quieted mind and gives birth to intuition. Those who are accustomed to listen to this voice out of the Silence, take it more and more as the instigating motive of their actions; and where others, the average men, wander along the intricate paths of reasoning, they go straight their way, guided through the windings of life by intuition, this superior instinct, as by a strong and unfailing hand.
This faculty which is exceptional, almost abnormal now, will certainly be quite common and natural for the new race, the man of tomorrow. But probably the constant exercise of it will be detrimental to the reasoning faculties. As man possesses no more the extreme physical ability of the monkey, so also will the superman lose the extreme mental ability of man,[^2] this ability to deceive himself and others.
[^2]: Alternative ending (from earlier draft): perhaps all of the power of reasoning; and, even, the organ itself may become useless, disappear little by little as the monkey's tail, which was of no use for man, disappeared from his physical body.
Thus, man's road to supermanhood will be open when he declares boldly that all he has yet developed, including the intellect of which he is so rightly and yet so vainly proud, is now no longer sufficient for him, and that to uncase, discover, set free this greater power within, shall be henceforward his great preoccupation. Then will his philosophy, art, science, ethics, social existence, vital pursuits be no longer an exercise of mind and life for themselves, in a circle, but a means for the discovery of a greater Truth behind mind and life and the bringing of its power into our human existence. And this discovery is that of our real, because our highest self and nature.
However, that self which we are not yet, but have to become, is not the strong vital Will hymned by Nietzsche, but a spiritual self and spiritual nature. For as soon as we speak of supermanhood we must be careful to avoid all confusion with the strong but so superficial and incomplete conception of Nietzsche's superman.
Indeed, since Nietzsche invented the word superman, when someone uses it to speak of the coming race, willingly or not, it evokes at the same time Nietzsche's conception. Certainly, his idea that to develop thesuperman out of our present very unsatisfactory manhood is our real business, is in itself an absolutely sound idea; certainly, his formula of our aim, "to become ourselves", implying, as it does, that man has not yet found all his true self, his true nature by which he can successfully and spontaneously live, could not be bettered; nevertheless, Nietzsche made the mistake we said we ought to avoid: his superman is but a man aggrandised, magnified, in whom Force has become super-dominant, crushing under its weight all the other attributes of man. Such cannot be our ideal. We see too well at present whither leads the exclusive worshipping of Force—to the crimes of the strong and the ruin of continents.
No, the way to supermanhood lies in the unfolding of the ever-perfect Spirit. All would change, all would become easy if man could once consent to be spiritualised. The higher perfection of the spiritual life will come by a spontaneous obedience of spiritualised man to the truth of his own realised being, when he has become himself, found his own real nature; but this spontaneity will not be instinctive and subconscient as in the animal, but intuitive and fully, integrally conscient.
Therefore, the individuals who will most help the future of humanity in the new age, will be those who will recognise a spiritual evolution as the destiny and therefore the great need of the human being, an evolution or conversion of the present type of humanity into a spiritualised humanity, even as the animal man has been largely converted into a highly mentalised humanity.
They will be comparatively indifferent to particular belief and form of religion, and leave men to resort to the beliefs and forms to which they are naturally drawn. They will only hold as essential the faith in the spiritual conversion. They will especially not make the mistake of thinking that this change can be effected by machinery and outward institutions; they will know and never forget that it has to be lived out by each man inwardly or it can never be made a reality.
And among these individuals, woman must be the first to realise this great change, as it is her special task to give birth in this world to the first specimens of the new race. And to be able to do this she must, more or less, conceive what will be the practical results of this spiritual conversion. For if it cannot be effected simply by exterior transformations, it can neither be realised without bringing forth such transformations.
These will certainly not be less in the moral and social domains than in the intellectual.
As religious beliefs and cults will become secondary, so also the ethical restrictions or prescriptions, rules of conduct or conventions will lose their importance.[^3]
[^3]: This paragraph and the two which precede it replace the following passage of an earlier draft:
But among these individuals woman, as we have already said, will have one special task to accomplish, that of giving birth in this world to the first specimens of the new race. And to be able to do this we must, more or less, conceive first in our thought the ideal of what the superman can be.
Of course, nothing is more difficult than to draw a picture of what will be the new race; it is an almost unrealisable attempt, and we shall certainly not try to enter into details; for we cannot ask of our mind to grasp with any certainty or accuracy this creation of the supermind, of the spirit.
But as we have already seen that the replacing of mental reason by intuitive knowledge will be one of the characteristic features of the future being, in the same way, morally and socially what can be the standard of the new race's life?
From the ethical point of view, for the individual of the new race there will certainly be no more restrictions or prescriptions, rules of conduct or conventions.
Actually, in human life, the whole moral problem is concentrated in the conflict between the vital will with its impulses and the mental power with its decrees. When the vital will is submitted to the mental power, then the life of the individual or of the society becomes moral. But it is only when both, vital will and mental power, are equally submissive to something higher, to the supermind, that human life is exceeded, that true spiritual life begins, the life of the superman; for his law will come from within, it will be the divine law shining in the centre of each being and governing life from therein, the divine law multiple in its manifestation but one in its origin. And because of its unity this law is the law of supreme order and harmony.
Thus the individual, no more guided by egoistical motives, laws or customs, shall abandon all selfish aims. His rule will be perfect disinterestedness. To act in view of a personal profit, either in this world or in another beyond, will become an unthinkable impossibility. For each act will be done in complete, simple, joyful obedience to the divine law which inspires it, without any seeking for reward or results, as the supreme reward will be in the very delight of acting under such inspiration, of being identified in conscience and will with the divine principle within oneself.
And in this identification the superman will find also his social standard. For in discovering the divine law in himself he will recognise the same divine law in every being, and by being identified with it in himself he will be identified with it in all, thus becoming aware of the unity of all, not only in essence and substance but also in the most exterior planes of life and form. He will not be a mind, a life or a body, but the informing and sustaining Soul or Self, silent, peaceful, eternal, that possesses them; and this Soul or Self he will find everywhere sustaining and informing and possessing all lives and minds and bodies. He will be conscious of this Self as the divine creator and doer of all works, one in all existences; for the many souls of the universal manifestation are only faces of the one Divine. He will perceive each being to be the universal Divinity presenting to him many faces; he will merge himself in That and perceive his own mind, life and body as only one presentation of the Self, and all whom we, at present, conceive of as others will be to his consciousness his own self in other minds, lives and bodies. He will be able to feel his body one with all bodies, as he will be aware constantly of the unity of all matter; he will unite himself in mind and heart with all existences; in short, he will see and feel his own person in all others and all others in himself, realising thus true solidarity in the perfection of unity.
But we must limit to these indispensable hints our description of the superman, and push no further our attempt to picture him, as we are convinced that any endeavour to be more precise would prove not only vain but useless. For it is not a number of imaginings, more or less exact, which can help us in the formation of the future type. It is by holding firm in our heart and mind the dynamism, the irresistible impetus given by a sincere and ardent aspiration, by maintaining in ourselves a certain state of enlightened receptivity towards the supreme Idea of the new race which wills to be manifested on earth, that we can take a decisive step in the formation of the sons of the future, and make ourselves fit to serve as intermediaries for the creation of those who shall save Humanity.[^4]
[^4]: Alternate ending (from an earlier draft): of the saviours of the world.
The earlier draft closes with the following additional paragraph:
For, in truth, saviours they will be, as each being of this new type will not live either for himself or for State or society, for the individual ego or the collective ego, but for something much greater, for God in himself and for God in the world.
The Mother

How to sleep

Why does one wake up tired in the morning, and what should one do to have a better sleep?

If you wake up tired in the morning, it is because of tamas, nothing else, a formidable mass of tamas; I myself noticed it when I began to do the yoga of the body. It is inevitable so long as the body is not transformed.

You must lie flat on your back and relax all the muscles and all the nerves—it is an easy thing to learn—to be like what I call a rag on a bed: nothing else remains. And if you can do that with the mind also, you get rid of all those stupid dreams that make you more tired when you get up than when you went to bed. It is the cellular activity of the brain that continues without control, and that tires one much. So, a total relaxation, a sort of complete calm, without tension, in which everything is stopped. But this is only the beginning.

Afterwards, you make a self-giving as total as possible, of everything, from top to bottom, from outside to inside, and an eradication, as total as possible, of all the resistance of the ego. And you begin repeating your mantra—your mantra, if you have one, or any word which has a power for you, a word leaping forth from the heart spontaneously, like a prayer, a word which sums up your aspiration. After repeating it a certain number of times, if you are accustomed to do so, you enter into trance. And from that trance, you pass into sleep. The trance lasts as long as it should and quite naturally, spontaneously, you pass into sleep. But when you come back from this sleep, you remember everything; the sleep was like a continuation of the trance.

Fundamentally, the sole purpose of sleep is to enable the body to assimilate the effect of the trance so that the effect may be received everywhere, and to enable the body to do its natural nocturnal function of eliminating toxins. And when you wake up, there is not that trace of heaviness which comes from sleep: the effect of the trance continues.

Even for those who have never been in trance, it is good to repeat a mantra, a word, a prayer before going into sleep. But there must be a life in the words; I do not mean an intellectual significance, nothing of that kind, but a vibration. And its effect on the body is extraordinary: it begins to vibrate, vibrate, vibrate... and quietly you let yourself go, as though you wanted to go to sleep. The body vibrates more and more, more and more, more and more, and away you go. That is the cure for tamas.

It is tamas which causes bad sleep. There are two kinds of bad sleep: the sleep that makes you heavy, dull, as if you lost all the effect of the effort you put in during the preceding day; and the sleep that exhausts you as if you had passed your time in fighting. I have noticed that if you cut your sleep into slices (it is a habit one can form), the nights become better. That is to say, you must be able to come back to your normal consciousness and normal aspiration at fixed intervals—come back at the call of the consciousness. But for that, you must not use an alarm clock! When you are in trance, it is not good to be shaken out of it.

When you are about to go to sleep, you can make a formation; say: "I shall wake up at such an hour" (you do that very well when you are a child). For the first stretch of sleep, you must count at least three hours; for the last, one hour is sufficient. But the first one must be three hours at the minimum. On the whole, you have to remain in bed at least seven hours; in six hours you do not have time enough to do much (naturally I am looking at it from the point of view of sadhana) to make the nights useful.

To make use of the nights is an excellent thing. It has a double effect: a negative effect, it prevents you from falling backward, losing what you have gained—that is indeed painful—and a positive effect, you make some progress, you continue your progress. You make use of the night, so there is no trace of fatigue any more.
Two things you must eliminate: falling into the stupor of the inconscience, with all the things of the subconscient and inconscient that rise up, invade you, enter you; and a vital and mental superactivity where you pass your time in fighting, literally, terrible battles. People come out of that state bruised, as if they had received blows. And they did receive them—it is not "as if"! And I see only one way out: to change the nature of sleep.

The Mother

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Issue No: 351, October 2018

Mother's foot soldier

Prasad joined Auroville in 1989. He has taught in New Creation School, worked on the Matrimandir and at present manages the construction unit aurOMira which is involved in the completion of the Sunship and Kalpana projects.

Auroville Today: How did you first come across Mother and Sri Aurobindo?

Prasad: I came across Sri Aurobindo because my brother Charles had read Sri Aurobindo’s books and told me about him and the Mother. He gave me some books of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. At the time I was only familiar with Swami Vivekananda, Ramakrishna. I looked at one of these books, it was the compilation What is Mind?, then threw it aside.

However, that night I saw Sri Aurobindo in my dream, so I took up that book again and started reading. And that was it; I never stopped. My brother gave me the rest of the books that were with him, then I went to the town library. There I found a cupboard in a cobwebbed corner that was full of Sri Aurobindo’s literature.

I was learning to meditate. So I would go to a playground at night and sit in meditation. We were living in Kerala, and these curious people would come and sit next to me and ask me what I was doing. I explained and told them what I was reading and they became interested. So we created a study circle and then, later, a sports circle, women’s circle and an educational circle where we taught English. None of us had any money, so we would get up at 3 o’clock in the morning to work in a coconut factory to finance these activities.

I became a member of the Sri Aurobindo Society. One day the postman delivered the Society magazine and at the back, there was an announcement that on 8.8.88, there would be a special Darshan at the Ashram. At once I had the feeling that a call was coming to me.

I came to the Ashram and stayed in a guest house but then ran out of money. I didn’t want to go away; I wanted to stay until the Darshan day. So I went to Vijay Poddar and told him I wanted to join the Ashram. He said he knew my family situation as we had already been in touch, and asked, ‘Why don’t you join the Sri Aurobindo Society so that we can support you financially?’. I told him again that I wanted to join the Ashram.

So he wrote a chit to Ravindraji about me. Ravindraji asked me why I wanted to join the Ashram. On the desk in the room where we met there was a small photo of The Mother. I looked at it and had the cheek to say that She was asking me to join the Ashram. He laughed and told me that they were looking for somebody to work on Cazanove Farm, which I think is one of the first farms bought by the Ashram. So I went there. I was accepted into the Ashram in 1988.

I had a great time while I was in the Ashram. I used to have wonderful conversations with Niroda in his room near the Samadhi. Then Nolinida’s hundredth birthday was approaching, and as his samadhi was at Cazanove we started making preparations to receive Champaklal and Niroda there. While I was cleaning up the place, I found a treasure: two photographs of Mother and Sri Aurobindo signed by them on Her birthday, Darshan day, 21st February 1933.

I asked Niroda if he would come to my room and invoke the Presence and Blessings of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo there. He came. While he was there he remarked ‘Look, we seniors are all leaving. It is up to you, the young generation, to take over and continue the work.’

However, I left the Ashram because there were certain rules I could not follow. I decided to come to Auroville. I went to the Visitors Centre and said that I wanted to join Auroville and was looking for some work that I could do. I told them that I could teach, among other things. They advised me to see Andre at New Creation. He was very welcoming and I began teaching there.

But after a couple of years you became involved with constructing Vikas community. How did that happen?

I was living in Aspiration. Satprem, who was also a resident, was upset at the way things were running there. He felt that we needed to create our own community. So Satprem, Kalyani and myself started the Vikas project. At first, we didn’t know what to call it, but one night when I was on night duty at Matrimandir this name came floating down like a feather. ‘Vikas’ means ‘expansion’, and this has always been a trait that appealed to me. In fact, my childhood hero was Alexander the Great who conquered the world horizontally. Sri Aurobindo did the same thing vertically!

So we started this project and I was the site supervisor. I had no prior experience of construction work – I had studied for a B.Sc. in which my major was maths and minor was physics. However, I had some training in people management because at Cazanove Farm I was in charge of 30-40 workers. But the fact that I could speak Tamil was the biggest advantage I had in working with the construction workers.

Meanwhile, I had begun working at Matrimandir, helping construct the catwalk and stairs that led to the roof.

Then I met a German girl: we fell in love but when she left I began thinking of going to Europe.

What was the attraction of the West?

I wanted to understand the West and why India and the West seem to have difficulty in working together. Also, when I was teaching in New Creation I felt I could not continue teaching unless I had a broader life experience.

Then I got the opportunity to go to Australia with an American lady. I had no financial means, so she said I could earn money there and afterwards travel to Europe. I was not sure whether I should go or not. When an older lady from the Ashram offered me relics of Mother’s hair, that was a clear indication for me that the Mother was giving me Her Sanction and Protection.

I found Australia so welcoming. When I was working at Matrimandir, I was looked down on as an economic migrant: I was just another worker and didn’t feel recognised as part of the team. But when I arrived at the airport in Australia a police officer walked up to me saying, ‘Welcome to Australia, sir.’ That was amazing. And then we went to live in a beautiful place called Cairns in Queensland, where there are two world heritage sites: The Rain Forest and the Great Barrier Reef, side-by-side.

Later I went to West Australia where I graduated from the University of Perth with a degree in film and television. But there is no film industry there, so a friend suggested I become a teacher. I did a one year course in education, during which I decided I wanted to teach aborigines.

Why?

I felt that Australia belongs to the aborigines. We are the guests, and I felt that since I was leading such a great life in Australia I wanted to do something for the indigenous people who gave me this opportunity.

I got a job in a remote school in Kimberley District Western Australia. The Principal asked me to teach maths and computer studies. As I’m Indian he immediately assumed that I would be good at these things!

The aboriginal elders wanted to meet the new teachers. Inherently they don’t trust non-aboriginal people because even as late as 1970 the white Australians were shooting aboriginal people for fun. I put together a slideshow where I mixed photographs of Indian Adivasis and aboriginal people. Then I asked them to tell me who was who. They couldn’t, and immediately they recognised that as an Indian I was part of their tribe. In fact, they gave me the honour of making me a tribal member.

I wrote a letter to one of the successful aboriginal corporations, offering to teach the students by creating multimedia classrooms with smartboard, laptops with wifi connection, data projector and surround sound system and online-based curriculum. In 2004 this kind of technology was only entering rich private schools in the cities. The problem is that the aboriginal people come and go: you never know who will be in your class next week. I found that the best solution was the individual lesson plan. I created a programme where students could come in at any time and try a certain level, and if it was too difficult they could easily go down a step until they found the right place to start.

The corporation gave me Aus $10,000 to set up a prototype classroom. Within two years, with additional funding from the Education Department of Western Australia, the entire school was converted into a smart classroom. I can confidently could say that it turned out to be one of the most IT- enhanced remote aboriginal schools in Australia.

In Australia, I met Tomoko from Japan, who became my life partner. When I returned to Auroville after 18 years with Tomoko and two children we didn’t have anywhere to live, so I asked an Aurovilian architect to help me finish a house in Surrender that had originally been intended for Prema. As the house under construction took longer than anticipated we went back to Australia.

When you returned to Auroville did you feel a different person from the one who had left many years before?

I remember talking to Otto at Financial Service after I came back and he said ‘You are different now’. I understood that I was not the same person, that there had been a fundamental change in me. I had left in some disappointment because I had not felt part of this place, but now I felt I couldn’t just blame the community for that: it was also something to do with me. At that time my consciousness had not yet developed, not evolved enough. But now I had the necessary qualifications and profile that the community was looking for: I’m deeply connected with Sri Aurobindo and Mother, I can speak Tamil, I can understand the Western culture, and I had the experience of being CEO of an organisation in Australia. So when I came back, instead of being on the bottom rung of the ladder, I was sucked into the major working groups. I was asked to become Executive of the Road Service, then a member of the Land Board and BCC.

You also became involved once more in construction.

The unfinished house in Surrender we live in after coming back here is one of the reasons I got into construction. It is still unfinished, it has already cost 56 lakh rupees and is still leaking after several repair works.

When I returned, I felt that construction in Auroville can be modernised and be made less- labour intensive by introducing new machinery. We also need to create bigger construction companies to develop our in-house capacity in Auroville. I would like to see an Auroville Building Service that would bring all aspects of construction under one umbrella. That was my aim when I started the construction company Aurocreation, (now called aurOMira). We have heavy equipment, as well as masons, carpenters, plumbers, painters and metalworkers. We also have 4 civil engineers and site supervisors and we offer training and employment for about 50 people from the surrounding villages.  They all work together which makes it easy for them to coordinate.

You also wanted to set up a central purchasing place and store for construction materials.

It didn’t work out at that time because I felt I didn’t get sufficient encouragement from the working group, but I still dream that it will happen one day. It sometimes seems as if, when Aurovilians join a working group, they lose all trust in their fellow-Aurovilians. This often seems to be blocking development, instead of encouraging it.

However, there is probably still some preparation I need to go through so that one day She will make me ready. I know I am imperfect, I have all possible weaknesses, but I want to be the Mother’s foot soldier. And I’m not afraid to fall down and get up again.

In Australia, you worked with the aborigines in order to help empower them. Are you trying to do the same thing with your Tamil workers here?

Yes. My involvement in the daily running of my construction company is minimal. I don’t micromanage because I want to encourage my workers to become leaders. 

Unfortunately, there is discrimination in Auroville. It is mostly unconscious but the reason I resigned from the Land Board was that some of the Indian members were treating the Tamil workers like inferiors and I didn’t want to be associated with that. Of course, you have to look at both sides of the spectrum: some Tamil people have swindled money and have tarnished their own culture. But I’ve got to know many Tamil people both inside and outside Auroville who are so genuine, so good. The Tamil people have a great culture. Unfortunately, many of them are poor. I believe that by giving them the opportunity to achieve their basic needs and a decent life the people of Tamil Nadu will be able to come back to their past glories and gain the appreciation they deserve.

Recently, I asked Shraddhavan if we could bring our aurOMira workers to Savitri Bhavan for a question and answer session about Auroville with Dhanalakshmi and Varadharajan. The idea was to help them understand better what we are trying to do here in Auroville and feel interested to be part of this adventure. She immediately welcomed us and there was a very good response from the workers, so now we have a weekly study session there. Then I thought, why don’t we sing Bande Mataram together? Because Sri Aurobindo said this is the mantra that liberated India. I felt we needed to invoke this mantra again for more liberation, especially for the people of this land.

You also have an idea to start a new community.

This new direction in my life came last year when I stayed in Golconde for some months. While I was there, I realised that being in a nuclear family is beautiful, but I also felt this limited family structure is no longer really appropriate here in Auroville: it doesn’t serve the aims of Auroville. I felt that I can do much more for Auroville by working with some like-minded people in a collective project.

The name of our proposed community is ‘Faith’. We don’t have a place yet, but whatever land we are given, we will respect the guidelines: if it’s farmland we will do farming, if it is forest, we will do forestry.

We are a group of very interesting people who are already inspiring each other. We get up early in the morning to collect seeds of the Palmyra tree and plan to plant them around the International Zone as a border. We also want to have a gift economy, so we are doing research into this and making healthy food for which people can make an offering towards land purchase.

Spiritually, the primary focus of this community is to find the psychic being, and we want to combine this with a collective life. Patricia, one of our members, said what we should be doing in Auroville is creating a gnostic society. This really captured my imagination.

But spirituality must include all aspects of life. In this context, there is a quotation from The Supramental Manifestation which has become the template for all my activities in Auroville. Sri Aurobindo writes that: an outer activity as well as an inner change is necessary. And it must be at once spiritual, cultural, educational, social and economical action.

So whatever we do in Auroville should have all these five elements – spiritual, cultural, educational, social and economic action. Often, we fail in this: we do educational research but the spiritual element is missing, or we do interesting cultural things but we don’t want to deal with the money aspect. I feel it is time to replace in Auroville the commercial model of the West by reviving the communal model of India.

Ultimately, if something is to manifest successfully in Auroville it has to have some kind of relationship to the supramental manifestation, otherwise, it will fall apart. 

In Savitri there are these magnificent lines:

A prayer, a master act, a king idea

Can link man’s strength to a transcendent Force.

In Auroville, we need to have that intense prayer so that we will be able to receive the ‘king idea’ which Mother has shared with us in her Dream and the Charter, so that it can be expressed in living action. For me, this is the key.

From an interview by Alan

The story behind aurOMira

I was looking for a name and symbol for the newly approved  Auroville Unit.

How I arrived at the name?

This has been my mantra during Ashram time. 

​

I combined Auro and Mira. Suddenly I noticed the Mantric word OM, where these two names were joined together. I wanted to emphasise this discovery in the name. So it is written as aurOMira. 

​

Next, I  was looking for the logo for the past six months and then I stumble across this correspondence between Sri Aurobindo, Mother and Their disciple Krishanalal. 

Then the colour came when I read this message which is influencing me a lot these days when it comes to the dealing of money. 

​

• Krishnalal ​saw the colour. I was not sure what colour to add then I l keywords were progress and generosity. It became obvious to me progress and generosity go hand in hand.  Luckily I found both of them in Mother's symbol. That is how I came with orange and purple. 

Last week I woke up 3 am and started to work on these for 4 straight hours and on an Adobe software called illustrator which I learned 20 years ago! 

And this is the outcome

In 50 years (2022)

"In fifty years the whole world, all the receptive section of humanity (I am not saying intellectual, I am saying receptive), all the receptive section of the world will be embraced – not “embraced”: ABSORBED in the power of Sri Aurobindo’s thought.

Dans cinquante ans, le monde, toute la partie réceptive (je ne dis pas intellectuelle, je dis réceptive), toute la partie réceptive du monde sera comme englobée – pas «englobée»: ABSORBÉE par la puissance de la pensée de Sri Aurobindo."

The Mother

Mother's Agenda, 16 Feb 1972

The Ashram's Spiritual History: Immortality Day

I arrived in the Ashram on December 16, 1927. It was a little more than a year after November 24, 1926, the Siddhi Day, the Day of Victory marking the descent of what Sri Aurobindo has called the Overmind, the Krishna Consciousness, the plane of the Great Gods, into the physical being of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. This Victory was to prepare the descent of the supreme divine dynamism that has never directly worked in the world and that Sri Aurobindo has termed the Supermind, the Truth-Consciousness, the spiritual Power holding the secret of Matter's total transformation.

The first sadhak I met was Pujalal who had come to the Pondicherry station to receive me and the girl I had married two months earlier and who afterwards came to be known in the Ashram as Lalita. We were taken to the room of Purani through whom I had corresponded with Sri Aurobindo. Purani had not yet returned from the main Ashram building where he had gone for some daily work entrusted to him. He came soon after. And, along with him and Pujala, we watched from a north window the Mother take her morning walk on the flat roof of the house some distance away, in which she and Sri Aurobindo had their rooms. She had her long brown hair down and in the morning light, she looked a vision of wonderful beauty. Immediately she won our hearts and turned us into disciples.

When she had finished her stroll we sat for a while in Purani's room before being taken to the house close to the main Ashram block, which the Mother had engaged for us. I noticed that a big white tomcat was sitting on Purani's bed. It was introduced to me as "Amar", the name signifying "Immortal". An unusual name—but I never knew its relevance till November 25, 1975, my seventy-first birthday.

 

It would seem that this beautiful cat was born on November 26, 1926 and got its name from the event that signalised that day, between which and the Day of Victory my date of birth was sandwiched. I came to know also that "Amar" had been given to Champa, the resident wife of a visiting sadhak, Punamchand, with some definite purpose and that later, when it died by falling into a well, the Mother, on learning the news, said, "Oh!"—an exclamation which meant as if the death had somehow been connected with her work as well as with the person to whom the tomcat had been given.

"Immortality Day" was an occasion mentioned to me by a few inmates of the Ashram during the early months of my stay there. But it soon fell into oblivion. Just some weeks back I referred to it in a letter to Udar who has been here for the last thirty-five years or so. He did not know what I was talking about and, when I told him a few things I had heard, he was surprised that nobody had even hinted to him of them in the past. At the moment, perhaps, I must be one of the two or three who alone remember that a great occasion led to the designation "Immortality Day". On observing the almost universal ignorance about it I made up my mind to have a talk with Champaklal who, according to my memory of the Ashram's early days, had been a participant in the ceremony which had taken place on November 26 forty-nine years before.

A natural chance came when I went up to meet him on my own "Bonne Fête". In the course of our conversation on various matters relating to his years with the Mother I asked him to tell me all he knew of the "Immortality Day". When I said that hardly anybody recalled it, he replied: "How could people know of it when Datta and I were most probably the only persons present on the occasion?" What I gathered from Champaklal, in addition to what I have already said on "Amar", is as follows:

At that time (1926) Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were living in the "Library House", the building to which the principal Ashram gate directly leads. A day or two before November 26, Champaklal arranged flowers on the floor of the Mother's room in the form of the Swastika. The Swastika is the sign of Immortality. The Mother commented that it was remarkable that he should have chosen to make this particular sign on that particular day. Her words seemed to suggest an inner spiritual movement going on, significant of what the Swastika represented. Then on the 26th, in the passage-room where soup used to be prepared, the Mother stood before a basin of water and, holding her hands over it, appeared to pass into the water a spiritual consciousness and power descending into her. She declared that a most important and fundamental event had occurred but it was both very sacred and secret. She asked for some small glass bottles. When they were brought, she poured the occultly charged water into them and gave them to those who were there. According to her, the divine principle of Immortality had been brought down on that day.

How should we understand the message of the event? Just as November 24 promised with the descent of the delegate consciousness of the Supermind the advent of the true Supramental Divinity, November 26 confirmed to the very last particular of supramentalisation what the earlier occasion had betokened in general: the very last particular is the divinisation of the body. In Indian spirituality, from the beginning. Immortality has stood for much more than the personal survival of physical death: it has stood for a realisation of the Divine Consciousness which is infinite and eternal, the supreme God-Self both within and beyond the changeful series of birth and death in which our common terrestrial existence is caught. Immortality, in the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, necessarily includes this experience. When the Overmind came down into his body and the Mother's, the highest range of past realisation of the Immortal Being was compassed not only in the inner consciousness but also in the outermost, with wonderful consequences in the material sheath itself and an earnest of the full and final result which would come by the arrival of the Supramental Truth. The total earnest of the Godlike future was revealed on November 26—a signal almost incredible to the human mind haunted and obsessed by millennia of mortality. That is why the Mother considered the revelation not only sacred but secret and that is why the memory of it was allowed to hide in the background.

However, in the interests of spiritual history, it needs to be brought forward now. Besides, a broad suggestion of the ultimate goal sought for was always given by the writings of the Mother as well as Sri Aurobindo. We may end with a quotation from the Mother:

"When it is said that by the union with the Divine one attains the consciousness of immortality/ it means that the consciousness in us is united with that which is immortal and therefore feels itself immortal. We become conscious of the domains where immortality exists. But that does not imply that the physical substance is transformed and becomes immortal; for that quite another procedure has to be followed, and you must not only let it work out the transformation of the physical consciousness, but also the transformation of the physical substance which is quite a considerable work."¹

The "Immortality Day" was the seed assurance that this "considerable work" which has been going on ever since will bear flower and fruit on the earth in the time to come.

 

*Mother India, February 21,1976.

¹Path to Perfection, Compiled from the Writings of the Mother by Keshavmurti (Dipti Publications, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1967), p. 79.


- K. D. Sethna

Amrita

Quotes on the way...

For the sake of the Divine

The only creation for which there is any place here is the supramental, the bringing of the divine Truth down on the earth, not only into the mind and vital but into the body and into Matter. Our object is not to remove all ‘limitations’ on the expansion of the ego or to give a free field and make unlimited room for the fulfillment of the ideas of the human mind or the desires of the ego-centered life-force. None of us are here to ‘do as we like’, or to create a world in which we shall at last be able to do as we like; we are here to do what the Divine wills and to create a world in which the Divine Will can manifest its truth no longer deformed by human ignorance or perverted and mistranslated by vital desire. The work which the sadhak of the supramental yoga has to do is not his own work for which he can lay down his own conditions, but the work of the Divine which he has to do according to the conditions laid down by the Divine. Our yoga is not for our own sake but for the sake of the Divine. It is not our personal manifestation that we are to seek, the manifestation of the individual ego freed from all bounds and from all bonds, but the manifestation of the Divine. Of that manifestation our own spiritual liberation, perfection, fullness is to be a result and a part, but not in any egoistic sense or for any ego-centered or self-seeking purpose. This liberation, perfection, fullness too must not be pursued for our own sake, but for the sake of the Divine.

Sri Aurobindo.                                                                                                           

The Mother’s Comment: 

It should be repeated over and over again – to oneself and to others, every minute. It is the perfect answer to the present condition. … We must publish it and repeat it to each and every one. (Agenda 1966, January 8)

___________________________________________________

I don’t see anything wrong in not being sentimental; nothing is further from true love, the divine love, then sentimentality.

The Mother

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The next greatest rapture to the love of God, is the love of God in men; there, too, one has the joy of multiplicity.

Sri Aurobindo

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Our first object shall be to declare this ideal: 

insist on the spiritual change as the first necessity and group together all who accept it and are ready to strive sincerely to fulfil it: our second shall be to build up not only an individual but a communal life on this principle. An outer activity, as well as an inner change, is needed and it must be at once a spiritual, cultural, educational, social and economical action. Its scope, too, will be at once individual and communal, regional and national, and eventually a work not only for the nation but for the whole human people. The immediate of this action will be a new creation, a spiritual education and culture, an enlarged social spirit founded not on division but on unity, on the perfect growth and freedom of the individual, but also on his unity with others and his dedication to a larger self in the people and in humanity, and the beginning of an endeavour towards the solution of the economic problem founded not on any western model but on the communal principle native to India.

Sri Aurobindo

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When you no longer have this generosity in your movements, you receive much less and this is one of the reasons—one of the chief reasons—why physical progress stops. It is because you become thrifty, you try not to waste; the mind intervenes: “Take care, don’t tire yourself, don’t do too much, etc.” The mind intervenes and physical receptivity diminishes a great deal. Finally, you do not grow any more—by growing reasonable, you stop growing altogether!

The Mother