Auroville: A City for the Future

By Anuradha Majumdar

For those who are satisfied with the world as it is, Auroville obviously has no reason to exist.

                                                                                                - The Mother

In March 1914, two people met in Puducherry: Sri Aurobindo, the Indian visionary and a leader of India's independence movement who had fled arrest by the British and sought refuge there, and Mirra Alfassa, who was the wife of a French politician, and who later came to be known as the Mother. This serendipitous meeting eventually led to the birth of Auroville, which was heralded as the City for the Future. For thousands of years, people have tried to develop better ways of living but, ironically, these have led to exploitation, divisions and turmoil. Auroville is an attempt to forge a new humanity, where people can focus on inner means and techniques to find an inner knowledge that empowers them to change the world without crushing it.Starting out in 1968 with a few thatched huts strewn across a barren plateau in south India, this future city began with just two things: a charter and a city plan to welcome people from around the world to create a life beyond national rivalries, social conventions, self-contradictory moralities and contending religions. Auroville was born to realize human unity through change of consciousness - a concept that still holds value in today's world.Told by someone who has lived the adventure for thirty-six years, this book explores how far the city has grown to resonate with its founding vision. Anu Majumdar examines the life of Auroville both as a resident and as an observer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Element
• Release date: Aug 25, 2017
• ISBN: 9789352770298

Anuradha Majumdar

Anu Majumdar was born in Allahabad. Discovering Sri Aurobindo while at college in Kolkata was a life-changing experience which led her to Auroville in 1979. She has worked in several areas including the Matrimandir construction site, at the Pour Tous food distribution unit, as a dancer-choreographer with the Auroville Dance Lab, edited Transcript, an online journal for arts and ideas. More recently she has explored the Auroville city plan as a map for integral change through talks and presentations. Her books include Refugees from Paradise and God Enchanter, Island of Infinity and Infinity Papers, Mobile Hour and Light Matter. Her poems and stories have been anthologized, written for choreography, for art installations and published in Prairie Schooner, The Punch Mag, Scroll and Arts Illustrated. For the last thirty-six years Auroville has been her home and unfolding universe.

Book preview

1

Consciousness

Auroville belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole.

But to live in Auroville one must be a willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness.

—Charter of Auroville

1

THE DESTINED MEETING

But now the destined spot and hour were close;

Unknowing she had neared her nameless goal …¹

—Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book 5, Canto 1

I

t began one afternoon in Pondicherry, just over a hundred years ago. On 29 March 1914, a French lady, thirty-six years of age, stepped out of her hotel still in her winter clothes, and made her way to No. 41, Rue Francois Martin. At that hour the streets of the little French colonial town were deserted. Two streets away, the Bay of Bengal lapped quietly against the shore. She had arrived in the morning, after three weeks of journeying across the sea, and news of their arrival had already been sent. She wanted to meet him alone.

She was Mirra Alfassa. He, Aurobindo Ghose, already known as Sri Aurobindo.

A few days prior to her departure from Paris, Mirra wrote in her diary: I turn towards the future … what it holds in store for us I do not know …². She set sail for India with her husband Paul Richard on 7 March, aboard the Japanese ship Kaga Maru. Surrounded by the vast solitude of the sea, Mirra’s inner gaze grew resonant. ‘Oh, these silent and pure nights,’ her diary said, ‘when my heart overflows and unites with Thy divine Love to penetrate all things, embrace all life …’³

Mirra was leaving behind a whole other life in Paris, her social milieu and friends and the groups that she had started, like L’Idee Nouvelle or The New Idea. Alexandra David-Neel, a member of the group, would recall those meetings and her friend in an interview:

‘We spent marvellous evenings together with friends, believing in a great future. At times we went to the Bois de Boulogne gardens, and watched the grasshopper-like early aeroplanes take off. I remember her elegance, her accomplishments, her intellect endowed with mystical tendencies. In spite of her great love and sweetness, in spite even of her inherent ease of making herself forgotten after achieving some noble deed, she couldn’t manage to hide very well the tremendous force she bore within herself.’⁴

Already, Mirra’s eyes were trained on the ‘future’. Life was her concern, not a bunch of fanciful ideas. On board the Kaga Maru, her diary entries intensified as the ship headed east, across the Arabian Sea, to a destiny still uncertain, but there was no turning back any more. She was travelling with her husband, Paul Richard, a French lawyer and politician, on his way to contest elections in Pondicherry. Richard was also interested in philosophy, and during an earlier visit there in 1910, to campaign for a friend, Richard had met Sri Aurobindo. The meetings left him so impressed that he resolved to return with his partner, Mirra Alfassa, someone spiritually far more advanced than him, Richard would say.

It would take another four years for that journey to happen. Meanwhile, Mirra met Abdu’l-Bahá, the spiritual leader of the Bah’i movement, in Paris who recognized her spiritual capacity and even requested her to take over his followers after he was gone, but Mirra refused. Interestingly, some years later, when she met Tagore in Japan, the Nobel laureate invited her to take charge of his university in Shantiniketan. Again, Mirra refused. Her work lay elsewhere.

Spiritual experiences, however high, mystical or powerful, were no longer enough for her. Something further called, a work whose demands seemed much greater. Human life lay mired in the densest ignorance, suffering and injustice. If there was work to be done, surely it was to change all that, but with what power? Did anyone know? Had anyone tried? It led to another group in Paris that she called the Cosmique, for which she wrote a manifesto for the future. Its focus was realizing a progressive universal harmony in the world, possible only through an awakening of the inner divine. Its aim: to found an ideal society in a favourable spot on earth. Evidently, something was starting to whisper inside her already, like a faraway dream, somewhere upon earth, a place that would make a difference. She had embarked on a much further journey on board the Kaga Maru.

Richard, Mirra’s second husband, was in a sense her raft to a new destiny. She had married him in 1911, after he returned from India, well aware of his difficult and violent personality. Several years earlier she had separated from her first husband, the artist Henri Morisset, with whom she had a child. Like her, Morisset had been an art student under the great Gustave Moreau, and Mirra could count a number of well-known Impressionists among her friends. Of Turkish–Egyptian parentage, but born in Paris, Mirra already inhabited many worlds.

The gears of destiny were changing rapidly as the ship neared Colombo. At no moment do I feel I am living outside Thee and never have horizons appeared vaster to me and the depths at once more luminous and unfathomable …⁵

Richard had maintained a correspondence with Sri Aurobindo during the interim years asking him about his yoga. I am developing the necessary powers for bringing down the spiritual on the material plane, Sri Aurobindo would write, but I defer writing to you of the results until certain experiments in which I am now engaged, have yielded fruit.⁶

The Richards disembarked at Colombo on 28 March 1914 and crossed the Palk Strait to the Indian shore. At Dhanushkodi they boarded the Boat Mail for Villupuram, finally reaching Pondicherry on the morning of 29 March.

Sri Aurobindo lived in No. 41, Rue Francois Martin then, with a group of young disciples who had followed him to Pondicherry after he fled arrest by the British in Calcutta. No. 41, that Mirra was about to visit, was a free and frugal household. The lone tap in the courtyard and the single gamchha served everyone in the house and, Sri Aurobindo, it is said, used the towel last. Every afternoon the disciples would go off to play football while Sri Aurobindo received visitors like the revolutionary poet Subramania Bharathi, his friend, Srinivasachari and others. By now Sri Aurobindo’s presence was known in Pondicherry and though his status had been regularized in the French territory, people knew that the house on Rue Francois Martin was constantly watched by British spies. There were attempts to frame him with false charges, to kidnap him, and even a cook turned out to be a spy. Finally, the British pressured the French government in Pondicherry to arrest him. The police went to search Sri Aurobindo’s house with a magistrate but were horrified to discover books in Greek and Latin lying about on his desk. Suitably awed, they pulled off the search. In March 1914, however, things changed suddenly at No. 41. The house was cleaned and spruced in anticipation of new visitors from Europe. Weeds were pulled out, chairs borrowed and extra light bulbs added, but in the midst of all this bustle Sri Aurobindo continued to work in silence. All that people noticed was the intense concentration that surrounded him and an unperturbed, peaceful beauty. I need some place of refuge, he had written to the Richards earlier, in which I can complete my Yoga unassailed and build up other souls around me. It seems to me that Pondicherry is the place appointed by those who are Beyond. ⁷

On 29 March, at 3.30 in the afternoon, the streets were silent in the little seaside town. Mirra walked up to the door of No. 41, which stood at the junction of two streets, and crossed the small courtyard to a staircase. The house was empty at that hour, the disciples had already left for their afternoon game of football. As Mirra climbed the stairs, Sri Aurobindo emerged from his room and came to the head of the stairs. Mirra froze. The vision attire exactly!

From the age of fifteen Mirra had experienced repeated visions of a dark figure, bare-chested, dressed in a sort of oriental attire, a white cloth draped over his shoulder. She had even invented a name for this mysterious figure: Krishna. Sri Aurobindo stood before her now, in a white dhoti, the end cloth draped easily over his bare, dark shoulder. Just like the ‘Krishna’ of her childhood visions. His gaze seemed far till he looked down at her. It was an instant spiritual recognition. The next day, her diary entry would state unequivocally:

It matters little that there are thousands of beings plunged in the densest ignorance, He whom we saw yesterday is on earth; his presence is enough to prove that a day will come when darkness shall be transformed into light, and Thy reign shall be indeed established upon earth.⁸

Sri Aurobindo was more cryptic. Soul kinship, a notebook entry would say soon after, but his epic poem, Savitri, would reveal far more of that meeting in the years to come.

Attracted as in heaven star by star,

They wondered at each other and rejoiced

And wove affinity in a silent gaze.

A moment passed that was eternity’s ray,

An hour began, the matrix of new Time.⁹

I sometimes wonder what my life would have been if that meeting had not happened. All of us in Auroville, consciously or unconsciously, have been born of that matrix. Without that flash of soul recognition would Auroville ever have existed? He whom we saw yesterday, is on earth … Without them, would it be there for us, a place to discover, step into by chance, or simply be born in and take it all for granted?

Soul affinity was not just an inner recognition but also a personal passport of entry. The stories are many, as innumerable and as varied as people living on this dusty adventurous path. But before going there let us follow for a little longer the trajectory of Sri Aurobindo and Mirra Alfassa, soon to be known as the Mother. What was the work they undertook together and why did it need a city called Auroville?

2

ANOTHER POWER

O Truth defended in thy secret sun …

Linger not long with thy transmuting hand

Pressed vainly on one golden bar of Time,

As if Time dare not open its heart to God …¹

—Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book 3, Canto 4

W

as there a power capable of changing things from their deepest roots? Mirra seemed confident after her first meeting with Sri Aurobindo: His presence is enough to prove that a day will come when darkness shall be transformed into light.

What was he doing exactly? And how did it all start?

Aurobindo Acroyd Ghose was the youngest son of Dr Krishnadhan Ghose, a civil surgeon in Rangpur, now in Bangladesh. A staunch Anglophile, Dr Ghose sent his sons to England in the hope of turning them into perfect sahibs unpolluted by anything Indian. Young ‘Auro’ was only seven when he was packed off to London to join his older brothers and was henceforth known as Acroyd. Fourteen years later Aurobindo completed his Tripos in the Classics from King’s College, Cambridge, and took the Indian Civil Service exam that his father so wished. But funds from home had gradually dwindled. The good doctor was known to treat his patients largely for free bringing difficult times for the brothers, who were often unable to pay their rent or for their food. Krishnadhan Ghose had meanwhile grown much less enchanted of his British masters. He now sent his sons newspaper clippings about injustices under the Raj and the nascent freedom movement. Aurobindo decided to give the compulsory riding test a miss and got himself disqualified from the ICS. Instead, he applied for a job with the Maharaja of Baroda, who happened to be visiting England, and was offered a position. But before sailing out for India in 1893, Aurobindo dropped his middle name, Acroyd, forever.

Aurobindo disembarked at the Apollo Bunder in Bombay after fourteen years of absence from his homeland. He was twenty-one years old. He sensed a vast calm descending over him as he stepped on Indian shores. It was his first spiritual experience. This encounter with a calm vastness would grow and affirm its presence from time to time, under different circumstances, over the next years. ‘This calm surrounded him and remained for long months afterwards, the realisation of the vacant Infinite while walking on the ridge of the Takht-i-[Sulaiman] in Kashmir, the living presence of Kali in a shrine in Chandod on the banks of the Narmada, the vision of the Godhead surging up from within when in danger of a carriage accident in Baroda.² It was his grounding in the infinite.

Aurobindo served in various capacities in Baroda over the next years, starting in the Revenue Department, then as the Maharaja’s secretary and as a French and English lecturer at the college. In 1904, he was appointed as the principal of Baroda College.

During those years Aurobindo familiarized himself with India, ordering trunk-loads of books, taking lessons in Sanskrit, Bengali and Gujarati and reading vast amounts of literature, philosophy and spiritual texts. At the same time, the burgeoning freedom movement began to gain his attention. Travelling between Baroda, his place of work, and Bengal, where his family lived, he became an active campaigner for a revolutionary movement that was taking shape. He met people, started contributing articles to the papers and proposed Swaraj, a complete independence for India.

Aurobindo’s interest in spiritual knowledge kept growing behind the scenes. He immersed himself in the Vedas that often confirmed his inner experiences, and soon after, a chance incident would signal a turning point. It happened when Barin, his youngest brother, fell violently ill during a visit to Baroda. Despite the best treatment and doctors there seemed to be no cure; then on a suggestion, a passing Naga sanyasi was invited to the house. The sadhu took a cupful of water, cut it crosswise as he repeated a mantra and asked the patient to drink it. The next morning Barin was completely cured.

It was an eye-opener at several levels. Yoga’s power to cure illness was well known. But if yoga did have such power, why were the people of his country living under the British yoke? Why was its knowledge not used by the people to set the country free? Why had it grown ritualistic and obscure, degraded by occult misuse and petty taboos? Its real knowledge seemed lost from life, overtaken by the priesthood and ceremonial exotica. Aurobindo began practising yoga on his own. He was now both principal of Baroda College and an active member of the revolutionary freedom movement. India was not just a piece of land, he would now write, but a divinity to be discovered and set free.

In 1906 Aurobindo Ghose finally left Baroda to take up an appointment in Calcutta, as the principal of the newly formed Bengal National College. The project initiated a free-minded nationalist assertion of freedom, with people like Tagore and Coomarasamy agreeing to teach courses at the college. The move to Calcutta also coincided with the launch of the Bande Mataram, a newspaper that Bipin Chandra Pal invited him to edit. The young editors had set their sights on a complete freedom from British rule. ‘We are arguing the impossibility of a healthy national development under foreign rule …’³ Srijut Aurobindo Ghose would write in his columns. The paper was read not only in Calcutta but across the country, and soon, even the British press began to take notice and long extracts from Bande Mataram were published every week in the Times, in London. He began touring the country to help build up the movement, traversing thousands of miles by train, from Bengal to Surat and further to Bombay, Nagpur and Poona. Masses of people are said to have thronged at railways stations each time his train halted. When he stepped out to speak, his voice was soft, it is said, his speeches delivered in measured cadences. All this while the inner experiences kept growing and were increasingly frequent and finally, during a three-day stopover in Baroda, he decided to take formal initiation under the yogi Vishnu Bhaskar Lele.

Aurobindo Ghose vanished from the crowds for three days. Shut in a room in the top floor of a house, right in the heart of town, even as people searched for him everywhere, Aurobindo said to Lele that he ‘wanted to do Yoga but for work, for action, not for Sanyasa and Nirvana’.⁴ Lele asked him to surrender himself entirely to the Inner Guide within. If he could do so, he would need no other guru.

It took less than three days for Aurobindo to make a complete surrender and achieve an absolute silence in the mind. This led to a series of ‘powerful experiences and radical changes in the consciousness which I had never intended’, Aurobindo wrote later. They were contrary to what he had expected, for they made him see the world and the impersonal universality of the absolute Brahman with a stupendous intensity. ‘It threw me into a condition above and without thought, unstained by any mental or vital movement, there was no ego … there was no One, or many even, only just absolutely That: featureless, relationless, sheer, indescribable … yet supremely and solely real … what it brought was an inexpressible Peace, an infinity of release and silence.’⁵ Aurobindo had entered what some describe as ‘Nirvikalpa samadhi’ or, Tat in Vedanta or else as nirvana among Buddhists, which usually marked a final liberation for mystics, a culminating point reached after years of effort. For Aurobindo, however, it signalled a starting point of sadhana. From here things would continue to evolve as he remained in that state day and night until ‘it began to disappear into a greater Super consciousness above …’⁶

Aurobindo continued to write and edit the daily editions of Bande Mataram, organizing secret meetings, addressing political rallies and even courting arrest. His political speeches now gained a different tenor. ‘Try to realize the strength within you, try to bring it forward, so that everything you do may not be your own doing but the doing of the Truth within … What can all these tribunals, all the powers of the world do to that which is within you, to that immortal, unborn, undying One that no sword can pierce, no fire burn, no jail confine or gallows end.’⁷ It was a passionate wake-up call for freedom to a comatose nation. Henry Nevinson, a journalist with the Manchester Guardian, who met him, for an interview, described Aurobino Ghose as a young man of about thirty-five, his ‘thin clear-cut face with a gravity that seemed immovable but his figure and bearing were that of an English graduate … He was the stuff that dreamers were made of, but dreamers who will act their dreams.’⁸

However, in 1908, even as the freedom movement gathered momentum, Aurobindo was arrested once again. This time it was in relation to a bomb case. If found guilty, he would be deported to the Andaman Islands, a kind of colonial-era Guantánamo Bay and left there to die. To start with he was imprisoned at the Alipore Jail which brought a dramatic turning point in his spiritual and political life and, for the first time, Aurobindo admitted that his faith was thoroughly shaken. Why had he been thrown in prison now? The movement that had been built up would be ruined. Who would carry it further? What was God’s intention? Was India not meant to be free?

A few days later, alone in his cell, he received a brief inner indication: a voice that asked him to ‘Wait and see’. Within the walls of his cell, he finally had a space at last where he would be left undisturbed. Gradually, he became aware of another presence pervading the prison cell, something quite extraordinary, marvellous and sweet. The presence was everywhere and now he saw that the walls of his prison cell was Krishna, the prison door was Krishna, the tree outside, the other inmates in the prison yard and all around him, there was nothing but Krishna. ‘The bonds you had not the strength to break, I have broken for you,’ the inner voice would further reveal. ‘I have had another thing for you to do and it is for that I have brought you here, to teach you what you could not learn for yourself and to train you for my work.’⁹ Thus the Gita became his guide. Abandon all dharmas and take refuge in me alone …

It was a period of an intensive spiritual growth, in between compulsory attendance at tedious court hearings and the inhuman arrangements of the solitary prison cell. Aurobindo practised the yoga of the Gita, meditated with the help of the Upanishads and for two weeks sensed the presence of Vivekananda around him continuously, telling him of the work that was still to be done. What he received from this experience was not religion, nor belief or doctrine, but a direct knowledge of the work before him.

By the time Aurobindo was acquitted and released from jail it was 1909. The political scene lay in a shambles. The Bande Mataram had been banned and shut down, the people had scattered and many more were still in jail. The fire had died. The freedom movement would have to be started all over again, from scratch. Aurobindo started a weekly paper, the Karmayogin, ostensibly focused on culture and philosophy. Though his readership revived quickly and despite the wide following his writing now had, there was a growing sense that his work lay elsewhere. Freedom was sure to come, it was now guaranteed, but people still needed time to grow towards it, to ask for that freedom themselves. And certainly, he needed time for his sadhana that was pressing. In the 19 February 1910 issue of the Karmayogin he wrote:

But in Europe and India alike we seem to stand on the threshold of a vast revolution, political, social and religious. Whatever nation now is the first to solve the problems which are threatening to hammer Governments, creeds, societies into pieces all the world over, will lead the world in the age that is coming. It is our ambition that India should be that nation. But in order that she should be what we wish, it is necessary that she should be capable of unsparing revolution. She must have the courage of her past knowledge and the immensity of soul that will measure itself with her future. This is impossible to England, it is not impossible to India …¹⁰

It was his last editorial, for soon afterwards news reached the Karmayogin office about an imminent plan to arrest Aurobindo Ghose. It is said that within minutes, even as he paced the room, he came to a decision, following an adesh, or an inner command, that directed him to leave for Chandernagore at once.

Chandernagore was then a French territory; theoretically at least, he could not be arrested there. Aurobindo left by boat the same afternoon, but once in Chandanagore, he went straight into hiding. He remained secluded for several weeks and in deep concentration even as the British hunted for him everywhere. Aurobindo’s next move came only after receiving further ‘sailing orders’ for Pondicherry. It was a perilous escape. He travelled via Calcutta in order to change boats, even disembark and ride a carriage through town to obtain a medical certificate before boarding the steamer for Sri Lanka that would make a stop at Pondicherry. If arrested he would be deported to the Andamans at once. The British had their spies out for him everywhere, for Aurobindo Ghose was now regarded as the most dangerous man in India by none other than the viceroy, Lord Minto. He reached Pondicherry on 4 April 1910, in complete secrecy. Only those who had been contacted for help knew of his arrival in the small French trading town by the sea. Once again Aurobindo went straight into hiding to avoid being traced till his status on French territory was cleared.

When I first came to Pondicherry, in May 1979, it was still a very quiet town. Silence was its deep signature, especially around the Ashram and the Beach Road which carried a presence, at once pervasive, near and sweet. Its joy was everywhere, in the breeze, in the sunlight, on the streets. As I walked along Cours Chabrol one morning, looking out at the sea and the vast blue horizon, I suddenly imagined a boat sailing into harbour from Calcutta. In a small cabin sat a man absorbed in silence. The formal reception committee wanting to receive him had been hurriedly disbanded. He was welcomed quietly by a small group and whisked away to Shankar Chetty’s house where he remained incognito for the next six months. The secrecy was not just about his freedom, or of India’s freedom, but to safeguard his ability to pursue his sadhana, which was pressing upon him now. In his very last article, smuggled across to the Karmayogin after he sailed for Pondicherry, there is a hint of what was in preparation since his experience at the Alipore Jail, and a reference to the work set in motion by Ramakrishna in Dakshineshwar and by Vivekananda. It was a work yet to be accomplished and realized concretely on earth:

Knowledge will not come without self-communion, without light from within … Every step that is taken in the light of a lower wisdom will fail until the truth is driven home. The work that was begun at Dakshineshwar is far from finished, it is not even understood. That which Vivekananda received and strove to develop, has not yet materialised … A less discreet revelation prepares, a more concrete force manifests …¹¹

3

THE FIRST ANCHOR

O strong forerunner, I have heard thy cry

One shall descend and break the iron Law,

Change Nature’s doom by the lone spirits’ power …¹

—Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book 3, Canto 4

P

ondicherry became Sri Aurobindo’s place of retreat, his cave of tapasya, though not of the ascetic kind, but a ‘special brand’ all his own. It was no longer only India’s freedom that concerned him. That India would be free he no longer doubted. The wheel had been set in motion, and it was only a matter of time. What India would do with its freedom concerned him far more. How would she grow? How would her spiritual knowledge impact humanity? India’s destiny demanded a sadhana for the Earth’s consciousness.

Despite seclusion, news of his arrival had spread in Pondicherry. Amont the old and young there was a fascination about this exiled leader of India’s freedom movement, now said to be a yogi. That he valued their help and comradeship equally was evidenced by the large number of local men who gathered around Sri Aurobindo during that time. There were stories, jokes and laughter as Srinivasachari and Bharathi and others joined the discussions around philosophy, literature and politics each evening. If Srinivasachari was absent, it is said, the spirit of irreverence extended to religion as well and ‘when these men returned home, people gathered around to hear what Sri Aurobindo had said’.² Here it is interesting to recall the story of a famous guru in the south who had declared the coming of an Uttara Yogi, or a yogi from the north, as he lay on his deathbed, in 1880. This yogi would come some thirty years after his passing he prophesied, and would work for the future of the world. His path of yoga would be a poorna yoga or, an integral yoga of spiritual realization and he urged his disciples to follow him after he was gone. Thirty years later, in Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo wrote an essay called ‘Yogic Sadhan’, which he described as a piece of ‘automatic writing’ but which, interestingly, he signed as Uttara Yogi because he did not want to put his name to it. It triggered the curiosity of those who knew of the old guru’s prophecy. He also left behind three clues by which to recognize the Uttara Yogi. These clues were traced to a letter that Sri Aurobindo had written to his wife, Mrinalini Devi, and which was seized by the British authorities during his arrest, produced in court and thus made public.

‘I have three madnesses,’ the letter declared. ‘The first … I firmly believe that the accomplisments, genius, higher education and learning and wealth that God has given me are His … My second … by whatever means, I must have the direct vision of God … My third madness is that while others look upon their country as an inert piece of matter … I look upon Her as the Mother … I have the strength to deliver this fallen race … ’³

Soon after his arrival in 1910, Paul Richard also landed in Pondicherry, as if on cue, to help a friend canvass for elections. Curious to learn more about Indian philosophy he asked around if he could meet a real yogi and was directed to the Shankar Chetty house where Sri Aurobindo lived. The meeting would leave Richard hugely impressed. But till he returned again with Mirra, Sri Aurobindo had much work ahead.

Even as Mirra was mapping out a programme with the Cosmique group in Paris, Sri Aurobindo drew up his plans in Pondicherry. While she focused on the need for an ideal society, the question remained: What power would allow such a change to happen?

Sri Aurobindo was tracking that force. The Vedas offered him powerful new revelations. They were certainly not ritualistic mutterings of madmen, not rigid religious doctrine, nor obscure, mystical nature worship. He dug deeper through etymological labyrinths of the texts and into his own inner experiences to recover a far more sophisticated symbolism and a very different meaning from what was conventionally accepted. This new interpretation, verified by experience, was at once yogic and psychological, revealing the Rig Veda, in particular, as a workbook of self-perfection that could open the doors of human evolution. Sri Aurobindo kept a meticulous record of his experiences during this period in Pondicherry, documenting experiments and spiritual developments every day. These were noted precisely, sometimes by the hour, much like a scientist, keeping systematic track of his discoveries—of the results, the successes and even of the failures. He was charting a map of uncharted territories.

I am concerned with the earth, not worlds beyond for their own sake; it is a terrestrial realisation that I seek and not a flight to distant summits. All other yogas regard this life as an illusion or a passing phase; the supramental yoga alone regards it as a thing created by the Divine for a progressive manifestation and takes the fulfilment of the life and the body as its object. The supramental is simply the Truth-Consciousness and what it brings in its descent is the full truth of life, the full truth of consciousness in Matter.⁴

Though nothing was evident on the surface, Mirra’s arrival would lead to the next step that he had been waiting for. After the first meetings, Mirra began settling down in Pondicherry. There was a range of things to adapt to, personal issues to deal with and rapid inner changes through the first summer months in India, but slowly, she was awakening to a completely new life.

Sri Aurobindo’s work had by now reached its first culmination. His interpretation of the Vedas was complete, so was his philosophy of the Upanishads and his commentary on the Gita. His theory of Integral Yoga had also fallen in place, and in addition, he had also surveyed social and political history