Life
with SriAurobindo
…over
the last few days, the life I led with Sri Aurobindo suddenly
came back to me… What helped this to happen was reading
passages about me in his book, letters he wrote about me
that I had never read before. And it all came back, those
full thirty years I lived with him….
Psychologically, there was no struggle, no tension, no effort—not
ONCE; I was living in total and confident serenity. On the
material there were attacks, but even these he took upon
himself. Well, I saw it all, all those thirty years of life;
not for a SECOND did I have any sense of responsibility,
in spite of all the work I was doing, all the organization
and everything. He had supposedly passed on the responsibility
to me, you see, but he was standing behind—HE was actually
doing everything! I was active, but with absolutely no responsibility.
I never felt responsible for a single minute—he took
the full responsibility. It was really….
For
the first seven years he was doing the work, not me. He
was the one who saw people; I looked after his personal
affairs, his housekeeping, his food, his clothes and so
forth. I kept myself quietly busy with that, doing nothing
else, not seeing people, simply looking after his material
life—like a child at play. It was seven years of integral
peace.
Later,
when he withdrew and put me in front, there was naturally
a bit more activity, as well as the semblance of responsibility—bur
it was only a semblance. What security! A sense of total,
total security—for thirty years. Not once…. There
was just a single scratch, so to speak, when he had that
accident and broke his leg. There was a formation at work
(an adverse force) and he wasn't taking sufficient precautions
for himself because it was directed against both of us,
and more especially against me (it had tried once or twice
to fracture my skull, things like that). Well, he was so
intent on keeping it from seriously touching my body that
it managed to sneak in and break his leg. That was a shock,
but he straightened everything out again almost immediately—it
all fell back into place and went on like that till the
end.
And
the feeling was so strong that even during his illness (which
lasted for months, you know), I had a sense of perfect security;
so much so that the idea of his life being really affected
in the least by this illness couldn't even occur to me!
I didn't want to believe it when the doctor said, "It's
over." I didn't want to believe it. And as long as
I stayed in the room…with me in the room he couldn't
leave his body. And so there was a terrible tension in him
- on the one hand inner will to depart, and then this thing
holding him there in his body: the fact that I knew he was
alive and could only be alive. He had to signal me to go
to my room, supposedly to rest (I didn't rest); and no sooner
had I left his room than he was gone. They immediately called
me back…. That's how it was. Then when he came to me,
when I really was what had happened, when he went out of
his body and entered into mine (the most material part of
him, the part involved with external things) and I understood
that I had the entire responsibility for all the work AND
for the sadhana—well, then I locked a part of me away,
a deep psychic part that was living, beyond all responsibility,
in the ECSTASY of the realization: the Supreme. I took it
and locked it away, I sealed it off and said, "You're
not moving until … until all the rest is ready."
That
in itself was a miracle. If I hadn't done it I would have
followed him—and there would have been no one to do
the Work. I would have followed him automatically, without
even thinking about it. But when he entered into me, he
said, "You will do the work; one of us had to go, and
I am going, but you will do the work."
And
that door was opened again only ten years later, in 1960. Even
then, it was done with great care - it was one of last year's
major difficulties.
-
The Mother
