Bhagwandas
(Bhagwandas:) “It was at Gilbert Jeune [a famous bookshop for students] in Paris in 1966. I spotted a book called The Adventure of Consciousness and Joy. And Joy. There was only one copy left in the Spirituality section. No book by Mother or Sri Aurobindo. What struck me was: The Adventure of Consciousness and Joy. I started reading, and I could not leave it. I didn't have much money at that time (I was doing my military service), so I stayed four hours in the bookshop reading. Finally I felt that I had to buy it. I used up my last francs and I purchased it.
Soon after that, I was punished because I had overstayed my leave, and was sent to the military prison in Mont Valerian. I had brought with me L'Aventure. I spent one fantastic month in that military prison, alone in a cell, hooked on to that book. It triggered a whole process within myself: what is consciousness? Why do religions give unsatisfying answers? At last I had found answers which not only satisfied me on an intellectual level, but which opened me onto a world the existence of which I did not even suspect.
I wrote to the Ashram. I got an answer from Pavitra, “You should study Sri Aurobindo and Mother still further, because for the time being we are not equipped to receive people like you.” At that time Auroville did not exist.
After some time I put the Adventure away in a chest with my other books, and I forgot about it for two years. Then in 1968, looking for something, I found it again. I took it out and opened it at the beginning of the chapter on the psychic centre. I read the first line: “Of all the feelings one experiences when the psychic door opens, the most immediate and irresistible is that of having always existed and of existing forever.” I had a shock! Again I felt connected to some inner dimension which was normally not alive in myself. Everything was coming back with the same intensity, the same acuity.
Very soon after, a magazine called Planète published an article on Sri Aurobindo and Auroville. The time had come to act. That day, I decided to leave. Whatever happened, I was determined.
I went to Paris to know more about the author of that article, Jacques Berger. This person had had a vision of Sri Aurobindo in his dream. I met him; he had just come back from Pondicherry. He told me about his experience; he was full of it. We had a very intimate conversation. He gave me the address of some people who were connected to Sri Aurobindo. There I found somebody who had an approach a bit similar to mine and we decided to travel together by road to Pondicherry.
It took us three months. The closer we came to Pondicherry, the more urgent it became. We arrived on the 5th December 1968. The door of the Ashram was closed. It was 10 a.m., and the time for the 5th December meditation.
Three months after my arrival, I was still unclear what to do. I was not certain if I wanted to stay. Maybe due to a Christian sense of guilt, my nights were poisoned with nightmares. I had visions of Mother as a gargoyle. During the day I was totally immersed in Mother's Entretiens and all the discoveries I was making, but at night it was exactly the reverse. I could not stand it any longer. Also I did not have any money left.
I had three projects. Either I went to Japan to continue to practise Judo, because it was something I liked very much.
Or I became a sannyasin (I had read Ram Dass' book with great enthusiasm. He would walk the length and breadth of India, repeating the mantra Ram-Ram. He passed through everything, crossing ravines etc. He would ask Ram, “Now I am facing a wall. What shall I do? Tell me.” He was constantly putting the Divine to the test. I wanted very much to do the same and see how, practically, the divine Consciousness could be of help in material life. “I have no money any more. Let us see how you look after me.”) So I was planning to do something like that.
My third project, which was a bit crazy, was to return to Paris riding a camel (I had fallen in love with camels) and do some reporting for Paris Match. That was a famous French magazine where I had worked as a documentalist. (When I had resigned from this job, the staff manager was very angry. She told me, “You don't realize, you got a job at Paris Match and you got it without any recommendation, and now you want to resign!” I told her that perhaps I could write some article for the magazine on my way back. She was even angrier: “And to cap it all, you think that you are a reporter?”)
Anyway, these were the three possibilities. Auroville did not exist yet.
One day I wrote to Mother telling her about these projects and asking her to decide. Purna took my letter to Mother, and came back the following morning, saying, “You can go and see Mother.” That was an incredible joy. I thought: I am going to have the answer to my questions!
So I had the darshan of Mother. It was an experience which immediately annulled all my thoughts. There was nothing, no questions any more. It felt like a surgical operation; it was really Kali who entered into me. I found myself completely laid bare, almost suffocating under this avalanche of energy, under those incredible eyes, and the feeling to be totally exposed, with no secrets any more. Somebody who drills through you and uncovers your most intimate secrets, who penetrates into you better than you can do so yourself. I do not know how long this lasted; there was no time any more. Afterwards I was granted her marvellous smile, Lakshmi's smile, and it was as if the operation was over; cauterized.
I left, and I was just starting down the stairs, when suddenly my mind started working again, and my first thought was of revolt: But she did not answer me! She did not answer my questions! What will I do now? Fear, uncertainty, a maelstrom of thoughts. I had hardly reached the bottom of the staircase than I was in full-blown revolt.
I had to go somewhere, so I went to Indian Coffee House to take a coffee, meet people and discuss. I needed to let off steam. This reaction of revolt lasted for three days. I was conscious, I was telling myself: why...? But nothing doing, impossible to control. The third day, I met Roger. We did not know each other; we spoke for an hour and at the end he told me, “Auroville is just starting, we need people like you. Wouldn't you like to stay in Auroville?” That immediately struck some chord in me. It was the answer I had been waiting for. I told him, “Ask the Mother.”
The following day Roger told me that there was a house for me, and from that day I felt totally taken care of, I had no insecurity anymore. I still didn't have money, but I felt totally looked after. That pilgrimage I had wanted to do was not necessary anymore. I did not need to go anywhere. It was there.
First I stayed in Promesse, we were nine or ten there. We had to start building Aspiration for the arrival of the caravan. The work progressed fast, money was there and very quickly about a dozen huts were built. Some Ashramites, old sadhaks, used to come to visit us. They would speak to us about Mother and Sri Aurobindo, trying to educate this youth which were good-willed but totally ignorant. We had a very good contact with those people. They came every two or three days. The people who had come from France were not very sophisticated, and not very inspiring for those sadhaks dressed in white. So the visits from the Ashramites stopped almost completely.
Until the arrival of the caravan it was a pretty easy life. We were waiting for its arrival, waiting for the beginning of the adventure of a collective life. But after it arrived, we went into a free fall. These people had come full of inter-relationship problems, they were very tired. The material conditions were difficult. We did not have even a collective kitchen. There was no fence – we did not want fences – so all the ladies of the village going to fetch water every morning would peep into the huts... There was no nature even. We would plant a few trees and then the goats would come and eat everything. Only parrots passed through the sky. They could not even stop anywhere, there were no trees to sit on. So there were no birds. It felt as if we were descending into the cave age. Nobody was there to guide us. Of course there were Mother's writings, but practically, what should be done? We sometimes spent entire nights discussing how we should organise ourselves.
Some of us said, “We should go and see Satprem, maybe he could give us some advice.” We went one evening. He stayed silent, then looked at us one by one, and just said, “I cannot, it is not my work.”
We wrote to Mother with our questions. The following day she asked us to come. Our first question was about work. There was pressure from people [Navajata, Shyamsundar and Roger Anger in particular] that we should set up businesses, earn money, that everybody should work in a productive unit. But it did not correspond to our inner aspiration and we felt ill at ease. We did not want to be obliged to do certain things. It did not mean that we did not want to work; most of the people were ready to work. So we (three of us, Christof, Alain M. and me) went to see Mother and she gave us the first answers. Her answers were deeply satisfying, because she could harmonize the need for the things of the spirit with the need for common sense. First of all she insisted on the fact that we had to be very clear about what we wanted. Our objectives had to be clearly defined. Mental clarity was indispensable. The quality of the action would depend on how clear our goal was. Then she said that each one had to find what he needed to accomplish: some will build houses, some will plant flowers, some others will work in an enterprise, others still with cycle or will work on their body. The importance was no in what we did, but in the attitude with which we did it. Each of us had to have the freedom to express his inner aspiration in the work he did, so this work would help him to get to know himself and evolve. The third element in her answer was the harmonization: To harmonize the different motivations so that the result of the action, if it was a collective, would be as efficient as possible.
Later I realized that first she always gave an answer at the highest level, addressing conscious beings. But in the reality, when, after some time, again concrete problems were presented to her, obviously then she would say, “All right, si vous en êtes encore là, then we have to have rules.” Otherwise it will be chaos. So at the end, she remarked that each Aurovilian had to give a minimum of four hours work to the collective – which was not the case at the beginning. There had been too many abuses. The same thing happened in relation to drugs. At the very beginning, she was counting on people who were coming more conscious, with inner maturity, people for whom the inner work, the yoga, would come first. In that case obviously outer rules would have been unnecessary.
The first encounter was something very intense. Then she asked, “Would you like a bath of the Lord?” She plunged us into a meditation.
I had brought a tape recorder because I thought that what Mother was going to tell us was not for us alone. I had started recording, then Mère looked at me.
“What are you doing?”
“Mother, I would like to record what you say, to play it to our friends at Aspiration.”
“Oh, I don't like it so much, but all right.”
We played this recording in the Aspiration cafeteria. Everyone was there, and it was a great moment. We were maybe thirty. Everybody felt it was the true answer. Mother had told us when we left, “If you have other questions, come back next Friday.” Ah, it was an immense joy. When the others heard that, they said, “All right, but it should not be always the same people.” We agreed, though we were a bit disappointed. The following Friday the first thing we told Mother was that some other people wanted also to come. She remained silent, then,
“But are they sincere?”
“Well... yes.”
“So tell them: those who are sincere, who have true questions, can come. And you will come back with them.”
Everyone was happy! For me it was the real beginning of Auroville.
So we came back again and again. What happened was that after some time we didn't have questions any more. We had lots of them when we left Aspiration, and then in front of her, pffft, they disappeared! We looked at each other: who was going to speak? A lot of encounters were silent. When Mother saw that there were no questions sincere enough to pass the test of her presence, she gave us that ‘bath of the Lord’, which was fabulous.
But there were some conversations when she gave very very practical answers, for instance on pets, on sport, on the relation with the body, relationship with the villagers, money questions, economy. Key questions. The same questions we have today.
We used to stay a long time with her, half an hour, forty-five minutes, and her entourage were not happy because we took up too much of her time.
One particular incident fascinated me and made me understand something. One day in our group was Christel, a German girl, very slender, very delicate, like a crystal. And with us also was Krishna, our African giant, two meters tall, very powerful. They were one behind the other. After the talk, each one passed in front of Mother and had a personal darshan. I remember the contact that Mother had with each one. It was amazing how she totally identified with each person. In front of Christel she was Lakshmi, the Mother of infinite sweetness, delicate as lace. Christel left, and while she was going away Mother's eyes followed her, as if they were looking at something behind her (maybe something of her subtle body). In the meantime, Krishna had come closer and knelt in front of her. Krishna was very impressive, with a powerful body, and in a state of receptivity. In an extraordinary moment I caught the change in Mother's eyes. They were still filled with Christel's energy, and suddenly, in a fraction of a second, she became so powerful! Her whole body straightened up and she faced Krishna, expressing that same power. She took him by his arms and started laughing, and Krishna also laughed, they were laughing together. It was as if she took him into her body, and she had become even more colossal than Krishna!
This moment did not belong to this earth, I felt. We were transported somewhere else. At times it is as if we lived in another space and time. We were just on the edge of a world that we didn't know, a world which we did not understand, but which was manifested by Mother's presence.
This is what motivated me to be in Auroville.”[1]
- ↑ Turning Points: An inner story of the beginnings of Auroville, First Edition, p.44, “On the edge of another world”