Did I not go to the Ashram to collect my research material on Sri Aurobindo? Yet seldom did I realise that the Mother is the Shakti of Sri Aurobindo—Mother, the supreme Puissance that springs into perpetual action as his inseparable poise of manifestation and expansion as well as in deep and mute contemplation and concentration. She is the Divine- in-manifestation, His Law and His Will. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are inseparable in infinite quiescence and kinesis. Says the Mother:
“Without him, I exist not;
Without me, he is unmanifest.”
Sri Aurobindo on Himself and On the Mother is a veritable Veda which unfolds to the seeker a whole world of spiritual felicities leading him to his integral identification with the Divine through love and surrender. I was looking for the essentials of evolution from the standpoint of Sri Aurobindo, and I was led imperceptibly by the Mother’s Grace into a new perception of life itself which involved my very existence here. Instead of going through the relevant literature on the subject I found myself totally engrossed with the many-splendoured Mother. She gave me the most memorable experience of my life; it is still fresh and inerasable in my consciousness.
The whole time I was at my desk, in 2W4, I was reading Sri Aurobindo’s On the Mother. The Mother clad in pure white salwar-kurta would be standing by my side all the time. Often times I wished and prayed to feel and see Sri Aurobindo’s Presence but that was not to be. I had not yet become intimate with the Mother. I knew and had read only Sri Aurobindo; here also my familiarity with him was mental. For hours without any let or break the Mother would stand beside me, and when I would slip into my bed to sleep she was already there within the mosquito net. During the night whenever I woke up I found her constantly present. With the result she was always with me, and I felt I did not have much sleep. My mental mind would even interpret it as an obsession. But that was not true as I felt fresh and energetic and perfectly normal. That again cannot be true; I was, infact, basking all the time in the sunshine of her loving Presence.
During the hours that I spent in the evenings in the Playground my mind would be a swarming mass of confusing questions relating to the individual, the universe and God, and more so the possibility and purpose of an Avatar. Relentlessly, I was made to toss, as it were, between my loving traditions and so called modernity, between faith and reason. With my head filled with such ignorance and confusion I would get up to go to her to do pranam in the hope that I would be answered. No sooner I would enter the orbit of her special presence than I would forget everything, all queries totally erased, and would fall at her lotus feet, and with my head on her knees and in her lap of light I would implore, “Mother, liberate me from all ignorance, liberate me from myself. Grant me the faith and the vision to see thy light.” The Mother, in her infinite compassion would bless me with both her hands gently pressing my head. And with a heavenly smile slip into my half-folded palms a bag of peanuts—her mahaprasad. As soon as I moved away from her aura my mind became once again the cauldron of confusion and chaos which it was a little while ago. This continued for about three weeks at which point I decided to seek an interview with her and place at her lotus feet my problems. The Mother graciously granted me permission. I was to see her in the late afternoon on 4th May, 1956, in the Playground. The expected hour was closing in, and I was getting ready for the most unexpected things to happen. It was to be an engagement with the Infinite, and I was only too aware of my limitations. A white cloud of abundant love, as it were, descended upon the place, and I was filled with peace and joy. On arrival from the tennis ground she went straight to the room where she was to see me. Like a prodigal son I fell at her feet, and did a long pranam. Recovering quickly from the spell of her divine proximity and the welcome shock of the transforming touch, I narrated to her briefly of my human predicament, of my ignorance and of the divine encounter and awaited her illuminant answer. She said softly, “Evidently, the force was working
