The following is the introductory text to the exhibition
of photographs I took in 1983: “Sadhaks of Integral Yoga – Sri Aurobindo Ashram”,
displayed at Pitanga, Auroville, February 14 – March 3, 2012. Monday to
Saturday 8-12.30 and 2 – 6 pm. Closed on Sundays, and on 28th February.
SADHAKS
AT THE SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM, ‘PARADISE ON
EARTH’
Italy, June 1973. I meet my mime teacher, whom I had not seen for ten years,
in a park. He tells me about a theatre actress who is just back from India.
When, alone, I sit on a bench gazing at a large tree, I lose consciousness of
my surroundings for one and half hours. A few days later, I meet the actress.
She shows me a small photograph of Sri Aurobindo, taken shortly before his
passing; I see God. She tells me about Sri Aurobindo, ‘the revolutionary’, and
other things. Here is the answer I was always looking for.
December
1973, Sri Aurobindo Ashram. I address in French a young Indian woman standing
at the gate. She replies in French and takes me to the inner courtyard, the
location of the ‘samadhi’, a white marble memorial where Sri Aurobindo’s and
Mother’s bodies are laid to rest. Upon seeing the sacred shrine covered with
flowers, along with all the people clad in white, who appear to me like angels,
tears roll down my cheeks. I feel that I have returned home, finding the way
back to realms I had visited as a child, and then lost. Vainly had I tried to
pierce through the veil to that world again; but the more I tried, the more it
kept eluding me, like a distant dream.
The
following day the young woman – who happens to be the granddaughter of the late
Rishabchand[1] – takes me to her
home, where she lived with her younger sister and her aunt. At the age of three
she was presented to the Mother and, unable to separate from her, she refused
to return to her prosperous family in Calcutta.
So the Mother confided the child to her aunt, a yogini who spent eight hours a
day for twenty-eight years, until 1962, in the Mother’s room at Her service.
During those years there was, as yet, no kindergarten at the Ashram; so,
following her auntie about, Mounnou also spent her days in the Mother’s room.
The young woman who, as a child, sat on Champaklal’s lap, while playing with
his beard, became my first friend there – and her aunt, one of the Mother’s
attendant, my second. I was subsequently introduced to the world of the early
sadhaks of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, paraphrasing the words of Nolinida[2], “paradise on earth”.
These
relationships were my gateway to that other world, the Sri Aurobindo
Ashram of the golden years, which was under the direct guidance of Sri
Aurobindo and the Mother, who were charting the path to the Supermind and
a unitary world of free multiplicity. But let’s never forget that
at the same time Nirod, the prankster, graciously entertained Sri Aurobindo on
a variety of subjects and, with both of them cracking jokes, everything turned
into laughter. The Divine is humour too; it is an important aspect of Grace.
There are no words to describe the way I felt, as I was privy to secret
teachings not through words, but by example and radiance of being, which I
received from each and all of them. I never felt lonely or abandoned as, for
me, the Guru was there, in them, through them, immortal.
Guru,
father, mother, spouse, child and revolutionary companion, Sri Aurobindo was
everything for me, the beginning and end of my universe. I pursued my path my
own way, spontaneously, shunning those giving advices and ludicrously posing as
teachers: the Guru is within, in the sanctuary of one’s heart, and there is no
other teaching. I was forced to build a barrier to prevent the intrusion of
blabbering parrot-like people with their endless chant, “Mother told me this,
Mother told me that.” The consequence of the inner violence perpetrated by such
individuals was that, for the first one and half years, I could not open to the
Mother. I recognized two opposite worlds: that of the early sadhaks, for whom
everything was divine, and their atmosphere in which I bathed, where only Love
exists, and Love and more Love, the world of pure psychic beings – and that of
the others’, a lifeless, dull parody of what cannot be taught. Nor did the
sadhaks take offence when told that I was unable to accept the Mother because
of the others’ idle chatter. My bond with Sri Aurobindo was such that the
Mother’s attendant, her family and others in their special milieu kept on
laughing, while telling me, “One day you will remember her.” And when that day
actually came, I fell on my knees. But I
will never forget the loving compassion and liberalism of those early sadhaks,
who accepted me as I was: a young married Italian woman, but who came alone, as
yet without a clue on the nature and significance of the Avatar and, on top of
that, even refusing the Mother! They simply kept on cheerfully laughing at my
foolish resistance and that was it.
With
the special permission of the Ashram Trust I was allowed to live for a few
months with J. K. K., the Mother’s attendant, in the house allotted to her. The
Mother had come there three times and sat on her bed, to stop the young woman
with a fiery character from leaving the Ashram. Two younger sadhikas shared my
friend’s house with her; in the past, up to six female ashramites had been
living there, sharing the kitchen and common exterior bathroom. Experiencing
the life of early ashramites from close up gave me a hint of how their sadhana
proceeded, in a path that makes no distinction between the inner and outer
life, both being mutually interdependent. In Their yoga, perfection through
purnayoga is to be attained in one’s daily work and living, at every
instant, as a perpetual offering to the Divine of one’s thoughts, feelings and
deeds. When J. K. K. came in the thirties she was only eighteen, and the Mother
almost immediately chose her as one of her attendants. The way she had
come was special too. The Ashram, then, had only a hundred and twenty
inmates, living in basic facilities and having no contacts with the external
world, and there were no new admissions. Consequently, few people were
appointed to deal with eventual visitors. The Mother dealt with each case
individually, with her assignments and accommodations differing according to
the inner needs and development of the disciple. The Ashram had so little money,
those days, that tea was served only once a day; once a week the ashramites
cued like little children to get a mint candy that the Mother put in their
mouth.
Day
in and day out, year in and year out, mostly at teatime, J. K. K. told me
precious details about the Mother and her surroundings. Though afterwards her
family lost its wealth, the Mother had been brought up a distinguished lady
with a superior education. Both intellectually and artistically she was at
the cultural summit of being. Yet, my friend informed me how careful the Mother
was with the humblest things, which moved me to tears. The lingerie the
Mother wore under her exquisite external vestments, given to her by loving
disciples, was carefully mended when necessary. She did not discard one single
object; even ordinary boxes and scraps of paper were reused. My sadhika friend
dealt in the same way with her own clothes and objects, treating them as old
friends. For decades after the Mother left the body, J. K. K.’s sadhana
continued to involve wiping every object down to the tiniest in the Mother’s
old room, which is adjacent to Sri Aurobindo’s.[3]
I
started extensively reading Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s books, publishing
long compilations in book-form from their works, only when I moved to
Auroville. Bathing in the atmosphere of the early sadhaks, as long as I
lived in Pondicherry
the Mother’s Prayers and Meditations and
Sri Aurobindo’s Last Poems were all I
longed for. My sadhana proceeded according to my experience, as a humble initiate,
of the spiritual significance the Mother had given to flowers, which she saw as
a powerful tool to trigger the emergence of the psychic being. Inwardly
integrating the message of some of the flowers, artistically displayed in the
shape of a mandala on the samadhi, I got the message for the day. The first
year I did not even ride a bicycle, I only walked, as every flower or blade of
grass, every spot on the walls or sidewalks was a source of wonder and delight.
By repeating the same act every day, at the same time, in the presence of the
same people, I gradually understood what the path of Integral Yoga is all
about: day-to-day methodical routine fully concentrated on the Divine. The sadhaka is alone with the Divine, with no other guru but one’s
psychic being. Meditation or other practices, even states of samadhi, are no
more than optional, the way of Integral Yoga being relentless concentration, at
every instant of time. Whether awake and engrossed in work and one’s daily
activities or sleeping and dreaming, a state of inward concentration is
required, encompassing all layers and planes of being from the subtlest to the
densest, down to the last cell in the body.
This
is what I learnt, without words, just absorbing like a sponge the atmosphere
radiating from those sadhakas. Some had come very young; others got married and
had children but, by the time they joined the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, they were
there for the Divine and only the Divine. Through their integrity and total
dedication, their utmost simplicity that is true greatness of being I felt,
tangibly, that the Mother’s work is not a chimera, nor a utopia. I
realized that it is the future awaiting all of us the moment we surrender to
the Call. Ultimately, it is the only thing worth living for, the very purpose
of our taking birth, our mission and our destiny.
That
world, Nolinida’s ‘paradise on earth’, and my own too, because of which I left
behind whatever I had, is no more. I had the privilege to be a witness of it
for a while, as long as it was able to manifest, before having to plunge back
to our day-to-day reality, with all its harshness but also its challenges and
call for transformation. Whenever it becomes too tough and I feel I can no
longer take it I take shelter in that world, which is eternal and exists
forever; calling for the Mother’s Grace that we too, in Auroville as at the Sri
Aurobindo Ashram, can become living messengers of beauty and graciousness, with
the pure flow of psychic and divine love. Paulette paulette@auroville.org.in
