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11. Mother's Unique Ways with her children

 

A tantric guru who came to have Mother's Darshan exclaimed in pleasant surprise, "The Lalitha I worship is here."

Answering someone on violence, Mother said violence is justified only in self-defense. Though she has said that, she did not use violence even in self-defense against those who tried to harm her in one way or another. When news was brought to Sri Aurobindo that a magician who had caused a rain of stones to fall in the residences of Ashramites was sinking, Sri Aurobindo took pity on him and said he need not die for throwing a few stones. Sri Aurobindo helped the magician revive.

I have repeatedly said in several places that Mother answers prayers that were not voiced by the devotees. Further, in instances when the devotee's affairs are caught in a tangle and are spoiled and news comes to him after the loss is incurred, if he can bring himself to pray to Mother to save the situation that was already lost, Mother will act in a unique way. She does save the situation. The faith of the devotee to pray to her after the work has been spoiled, is no ordinary faith. It is extraordinary. Should he keep his faith and go about uncovering the situation, he would find that Mother, on his behalf, had been present in the situation and arranged things in such a way that the situation could be saved later. Every turn of events would be seen containing a circumstance by which the whole situation could be retrieved.

A research scholar found his guide took a dislike for him and vowed he would never certify his thesis as bonafide. The guide left the job and sought another job somewhere in North India. The scholar hoped against hope and had his term extended to the full permissible limit of four years. He had almost given up. When there were only four days left before the day of expiry, someone at that stage told him to pray to Mother, whom the scholar had not even heard of. He prayed and then travelled 200 miles to the university to submit his thesis on the very last day without the signature of his guide. The Registrar of the University told the scholar that the guide happened to be in town and he could try his luck. With trepidation the scholar went to the guide's place where he was warmly welcomed. The guide was all smiles, explaining that in the evening he was leaving on a foreign tour, and he volunteered to certify the thesis. Mother always acts like that. She arranges affairs around you in such a fashion that your work can be accomplished. She is present wherever you go for your work in the form of a friend, a relative, a helpful officer, a kind hearted VIP, a favourable rule, etc. Such is her ubiquity.

Mother is universal. She is not confined to Pondicherry or even India. What is done to Mother as work or service has always a tendency to spread far and wide, covering the devotee's entire area of emotional identification. If a devotee of Mother engages himself in a certain kind of activity-for example, he purchases a yarn mill-Mother's influence over the entire spinning industry will be noticed. Not only the devotee's mill will prosper, but the entire industry will too. The owner of a coffee estate offered his estate to Mother. Mother advised him to run it himself considering that in spirit it was hers. The estate, which had been losing turned the corner and later it was sold. Even after it left the hands of the devotee, the value of the estate began to rise and registered a three-fold gain in price in three years and in 10 years its value rose 25-fold. The entire field of coffee growing began to prosper beyond measure. That is Mother's universality.

A devotee was working in a godforsaken area on top of a hillock. As drinking water did not exist there, he used to carry it with him during his visits. Since every novel thing he attempted was a success, some friends even were bold enough to suggest he could try to tap the ground water. He tried. It was a success. Mother did not stop there. He found out that his entire estate was full of underground water. More was to come. The entire region was soon dotted with borewells and came to be known as a water-rich region.

Mother's gaze is very powerful!  Only those who are open in their souls can meet her gaze and hold it for awhile. A tall majestic sadhu visited the Ashram and impressed everyone by the tejas on his face. When he came before Mother for Darshan, he could not meet her gaze and looked away at once. Not many can hold Mother's gaze for a full minute. A healer came from France. He was an uneducated ordinary worker. When She looked into his eyes, he held it for more than a full minute. Mother was surprised at his receptivity and continued to give Her grace through her gaze. When the man was saturated and Mother turned her eyes away, it was a full 20 minutes, a unique experience even for Mother.

In the days of Sri Aurobindo and even a little later, visitors who came to have Mother's Darshan would be brought by a sadhak to the morning balcony Darshan. Mother would express her opinion after seeing the man. If he met with Mother's approval, he would be brought to Mother the following day for pranams. A newcomer was so brought to the balcony one morning and Mother called his sadhak friend to express her approval. She explained she saw the tall man with the beard that morning and the sadhak could bring him to her for pranams. The sadhak was surprised. His friend was short and had no beard. Mother wanted to be sure and gave precise instructions as to which side the visitor should stand on and asked him to be brought again to the balcony the following day. Again Mother saw him tall and with a beard. What Mother saw was the visitor's appearance in the previous birth.

A famous Tamil writer called Va. Ra. lived in the Ashram in the early days. When he first came, Sri Aurobindo described the facial appearance of this writer. No one could see it on the face of the visitor. Va. Ra. left and returned after a year to live in the Ashram. Everyone was struck by his appearance. It fully matched Sri Aurobindo's description a year earlier. Sri Aurobindo in his subtle vision had seen how Va. Ra. would look after a year.

Most people who take to Mother come to Her attracted by her spiritual greatness. Many do not even know of the several aspects of Mother till they become familiar with Ashram life. Whether the devotees know or not, Mother's powers express themselves in the lives of the devotees. One such is an interesting power of Hers. If a devotee is endowed with all the requirements of a job and is emotionally identified with his institution, he will be fast rising to the top wherever he is or however big the organisation he serves. There are cases of people who have risen to the top post of an All India Organisation, state politics, etc.

Sri Aurobindo's Purna Yoga has a declared aim of defeating death. He even says one of the first attainments is the capacity to prolong life at will. In the case of a devotee it expresses as a longer life than decreed. Dangers to life predicted by horoscope become void after taking to Mother. The inauspicious hour, or rahukalam, is a part of the Indian tradition. Rahukalam is known to be the arch enemy of any act. After taking to Mother inauspicious hour loses its potency unless the devotee retains his faith in it. Even if the devotee has started ignoring rahukalam, people in the social milieu have faith in it. Their faith will keep the atmosphere of life conducive to the play of rahukalam. It works in a strange reverse fashion. The power of undoing of rahukalam works in the life of a devotee by undoing his obstacles. That is Mother's way in life. A devotee farmer was invited by a land development officer to avail of a Rs.25,000 loan. The hour of submitting the application coincided with rahukalam. The devotee disregarded it. But rahukalam has retained its power. The secretary of the bank raised impossible objections to the application, much to the embarrassment of the officer who invited the farmer. The very first step was not taken for months. Rahukalam proved itself powerful. The Indian bank came to know of the farmer's activities and invited him and offered Rs.2 lakhs. Had the Land Mortgage Bank been quick, the farmer's sale deeds would have been pledged to it and to retrieve them was no mean job. Perhaps the offer might not have waited until the procedures of retrieving the documents with a bank were fulfilled. Rahukalam, which acted according to its original character, happened to serve the devotee in this case. When a man faces an obstacle in life and understands that would be his undoing, he prays to God. When his prayer is answered, the bhakta finds the obstacle disappearing. He offers a deeply felt prayer of gratitude. Mother also acts similarly removing the obstacles. When the devotee is faced with an obstacle, one of Her ways is to convert it into an opportunity. That is unique with Mother.

An industrial group with a Rs. 10 crore[i]  turnover got into real trouble by some misdeeds. One of the members was a devotee. What was normal in the trade came to be considered an error in this particular case. Ordinarily such errors are leniently viewed or given a token punishment. In this case, it was taken up by political rivals to settle an ancient grudge, with the result that this group had become a scapegoat. They were past redemption. All the members of the group resigned to their fate and were ready to be wiped out. The devotee member had not lost faith. He believed that Mother would not let him down. He persisted in his efforts to raise their heads above water. Slowly things changed complexion. They began to come out of the ordeal. Winds of change were favourable. The efforts made for survival opened new opportunities, new contacts, etc. As a result they weathered the storm and survived. Not only that. In three years their turnover crossed Rs.100 crores and in another four years their assets grew to the level of Rs.100 crores. Mother had turned the difficulty into opportunity.

There is an anecdote about Madhvachariyar, the founder of the philosophy of Dualism. While travelling in the Himalayas, he asked one of his disciples to stay in a mutt there and wait for him to return. The loyalty of the disciple would not allow the Master to travel alone. He followed the master. After some time the Master turned around and saw the disciple. He waved his hand and pronounced, "Go back". The disciple was lifted into the sky and was deposited back in the mutt. A Master's words have such power in the material world. Mother's Power is real in the world of matter and can be felt as such.

When a person is a source of trouble, Mother's way of removing the trouble is to make the same person set it right.

Anyone anywhere in the world, if he is inwardly receptive, can receive Mother's Force and the results of Her work for the world. The only thing that matters is the inner receptivity, nothing else.

She used to see a ball of light on the tip of her pen when she wrote. The light prevented her from seeing the writing. Still she wrote correctly.

On his 60th birthday a sadhak came to Mother for birthday blessings. She asked him what he wanted and without waiting for an answer she asked if he would like strength. She put her hand on his head. As if a tap had opened, strength flowed into him. For several years after that, he used to join the running competition with youngsters and complete it.

An elderly man who is a devotee of Sri Aurobindo introduced a young man to the Ashram. The young man seriously took to Mother and was following as many disciplines of Mother as he could. One of those disciplines was if someone hurts you, do not consider whether it is right, but look inside yourself for the dark spot that invited the external hurt. Do not react even in thought. One day the youngster came to see the elderly man and also brought a friend. The elderly man evinced interest in the newcomer. The young man said that they had both been to visit the Samadhi where his friend had sat for some time. While he was sitting there, he felt he was bodily lifted into the air and reached the top level of a drain pipe which was outside Mother's room. When the young man reported this to an elderly sadhak in the Ashram whom he used to meet, the sadhak explained that his friend had relations with Mother in earlier births, since his subtle being had risen up to the pipe outside Mother's room. When the elderly man heard this report, he frowned and said that the whole thing existed only in his friend's imagination. The young man could not reconcile the comments of the sadhak with those of this elderly man. Yet he was interested in not reacting but finding inside himself what could have brought this unseemly comment of the elderly man. In the process, the young man was silent for about half a minute. The elderly man became excited, lost his usual poise and spoke agitatedly, "It is silly and stupid on my part to have made this comment, especially when a sadhak has given an interpretation. What do I know?"  Mother's disciplines are powerful and can not only bring about desirable changes in oneself but can change the external situation too. Inner control leads to mastery over external events.

Sylvia, an Australian lady, cabled from London that she would be visiting Pondicherry. Robert received the cable and arranged for a room in an Ashram guesthouse. Sylvia was a businesswoman who had purchased some handloom goods from Robert. She had not heard about the Ashram but was visiting Pondicherry just because it happened to be on her route back from London. Sylvia did not show up on the given day but reached there one day later. Robert met her more out of courtesy than for work. He found her full of fear and pale like a ghost. She asked what hotel it was and commented about the extraordinary peace that was there, not knowing it was an Ashram guesthouse. Then she began to explain what had happened to her and why she had come a day late. She had reached Bombay from London and had a seat on the Madras flight. Somehow, that seat was given to someone else and she was offered one on the next flight. Not being used to such practices, Sylvia raised a storm in the office and had everyone shaking. But nothing could be done to restore her lost seat. She was seething with anger when she saw the plane take off. To her horror a few minutes later she witnessed that same plane crash. She was horrified to think that she was supposed to be on that flight. She could not overcome the horror even after a day.

The fact that Sylvia was passing through Pondicherry, staying in an Ashram guesthouse and meeting a sadhak was enough to take her out of the danger of a plane crash. Mother's protective wings extend far beyond Her children.

A service organisation and a business organisation were run by the same proprietor. The business was small with several lakhs of rupees[ii]  turnover. It so happened that the service organisation came in touch with Mother. It matured to the point where the service wing did some service to Mother. The head of the service wing who was not known outside his profession started to become famous, powerful and prosperous beyond measure. The institution itself expanded to double and treble in size. The proprietor's real interest was in the business wing. That began to prosper limitlessly. Where the proprietor's emotions were focussed there was great growth. It rose to the No.1 position in its industry in the state and No.2 position at the all-India level, raising its turnover 28 times. The proprietor did not even know that his service wing was rendering service to Mother in the initial years. Even much later, he never knew what service had been rendered. Still Mother's Force awarded its prize to those who offered Her service.

If someone has accepted Mother and he examines his life after a little while, he will find there exists no problems of any description. There are rare instances where problems do exist. Those are problems wantonly created by the devotee out of his preferences.

 


[i] One crore  = 10 million. Ten crores of rupees equals  approximately $2.5 million in 1999

[ii] A lakh = 100,000.  One lakh of rupees in 1999 is approximately $  2325.



book | by Dr. Radut