Instruments of the Mother
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(Janina, 1957:) “What I wanted to tell you is this. Yesterday Mother has settled down in me in a way. After a few days of opening me and enlarging She just came and is in me. This does not mean that no waves, suggestions, movements arise, but it means – as I feel – becoming an instrument and being continuously transformed. Great inner difficulties may come, but all becomes different. Today I could even be natural in Her nearness. … I felt only that now She wants to work through me, with me becoming Her in all my movements and seeing Her in everybody and everything. In my patient when I wash him, I wash Mother – in my helper, I feel Mother's love streaming through me to her (she is not easy). The difference between this and what was before, in Europe, is that I just simply feel Her in me. Her hands in mine, Her head in mine, Her heart in mine. And so I am becoming wider and wider and Love is streaming around in me. Mother gave me this wonder of a nursing home just for me to create and it will be something wonderfully individual as I am also a portion of Her. I am sorry I cannot write normal letters when I write to you, but this is right.”[1]
(Janina:) “My letters have not given you until now an idea of the most inner process that is going on – the deeper and deeper self-giving. It is as if I was continuously being broken by overpowering Love, Her Love; it is clear that the ego hidden in all the corners must disappear and I experience it as being broken, the body too, and the body kneeling prostrates itself with its forehead almost on, or near, the floor. This movement comes spontaneously and a vibrating force moves the body. It is just natural and it is a delight too, there is no strain in anything. And all this process is connected with X [Janina's helper in the Nursing Home]. In Europe we would talk about asuras and forces and try fervently to remain positive. Here, Mother has given me X that I may give myself more and more to her as if she were Mother Herself. All these orders I get during Darshan. And X is Mother Herself. So I often prostrate myself inwardly during my work with her. I often kneel near her (understand me well, I am very matter of fact!) because she is the Highest with a mask. And then when I do it with enough surrender and purity I feel Mother working through me. I do not know what She does but now I have experienced that if we give ourselves to the Mother in the evil, as if for being eaten up, She can really do the work, Her work. But all this comes just naturally, there is no tension, only happiness and gratitude and pain and suffering mixed together in a state that I cannot describe yet.”[2]
(Janina:) “Yesterday I grasped what She wanted from me. For two days already I felt from time to time as if a mountain or huge waves were coming on me and pushing me back. She wants me to step back this time, as completely as I can – and to make room for Her. And I feel how foolish it is to push oneself into a place which God wants to occupy. But I grasped it with my heart rather. It was yesterday evening during the French talk for children. Among other things She was explaining how Sri Aurobindo used to free people from an obsessing thought or illness. And She was moving Her hands and fingers showing how He just took the thought out and removed it gently – the fact of His and Her Almighty Love became so overwhelming to me that I at last experienced that I cannot exist in God's Presence – I have to annul myself, just to become nothing. And now the time will come to practise it and persevere and persevere in this way. But my happiness is so great, so great....”[3]
| Questions and Answers 1957–1958 January 8, 1958  PDF (6 pages) |
  (29:20)
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(Janina:) “It is high time to move out of this ‘house’ definitely. So She made me feel this morning. She tolerated for a long time the conceited lodger, who imagined that he was the true owner, and She let him make a fool of himself but now – She said – it is enough. She started already yesterday, to show me methodically that I just stand in Her way. Almost each action I do She showed me how I spoilt it by mixing myself into it. Exercises, walking on the street, attitude to people, working, painting... Oh, it is as if a loving teacher was bent over me explaining to me my lesson with such infinite patience and love that I just cannot do anything else but learn the lesson as quickly as possible. My gratitude is so great that I realised today that being prostrated before Her is becoming almost the normal, continuous attitude. And if I do not learn this lesson now I will always see myself as on a stage where She is acting and where ‘I’, the dwarf actor, am just continuously doubling Her in a miserable distorted way, crawling and jumping between Her legs. She started this new process in me the day before yesterday during the distribution I mentioned. She filled me with something that grew and grew in my heart, until I realised that these were my dear old patient and my servants. She just opened my heart like a box and put them in. So there is no more of forcing myself to love them, or aspiring for it, they are just there in my heart (in the inner heart). In a strange way I even feel, really feel, that my heart is heavier, that I am really carrying something. It is like being pregnant, so it really is. And She said that this heart can stretch itself infinitely, so now when I go somewhere or meet people I just take them one by one and put them in my heart.”[4]
(Janina:) “This morning I noticed that She is in my heart. She is there, simply, in all Her Glory. And I asked Her what I should do now. She has already placed the old man and the servants in this heart and now I see that it is filled with Her and that She works there silently with Her divine smile as in Her own house. There is nothing for me to do, only to prostrate myself and be the most humble witness of Her actions. Now all my movements will change, they will become more delicate, more subtle, because it is She who lives in this body and it will try to carry Her in itself with the greatest care and love. For She is the greatest treasure in all the infinite Universe.”[5]
(Janina:) “I am so happy today, so very happy. … She is my only refuge. I try to give to Her every little thing I am doing, thinking or feeling. This might be ‘work’ for years, but something decisive has happened. Oh, it is as if I have already once written this to you – but now it is much more concrete – it is as if somebody was freeing me from the burden of centuries. I have never realised before how harmful the mind can be. Of course, it had its value in the development of the individual ego, but now it is like putting down a heavy rucksack in the mountains beside the lake and sighing with happiness. And it is so much easier to feel humility and go on deepening it. Nothing in me questions or reasons – I just prostrate myself before God and aspire to learn to be nothing. Life seems to have become so simple; just to go on giving myself and aspiring and rejecting – all the work of purification She is doing Herself. All this is so clearly said in Sri Aurobindo's The Mother, but before so many things escaped me or I felt them differently or the mind simply prevented them from being felt.”[6]
“The Mother”
(Janina:) “I have given Her my mind and now I am without mind. Every time the mind wants to work the rejection brings it quietude and I see the futility of all these millions and millions of thoughts that used to fill my life, make me miserable, upset me, made me think how shall I do this or that or what will happen next. And I also understand what She means by wasting, squandering oneself – it is just all this turning and turning of useless stuff being produced instead of one single turning to Her and giving and giving oneself and all the centres and all one is and all one has. Every day is for me a new revelation in this process of self-giving because it seems to be without end and goes on and on deepening itself. I think that everything, just in deepening itself, becomes simpler.”[7]
See also