Blessed are those

Streams of light through doors of eyes (Mauna)

From an article by Mauna from Mother India magazine

In 1969, while running a TV magazine in Holland, I one day remarked to a close musician friend of mine: "Oh dear, I wish I had something to believe in. I have so much energy and it's such a waste to use it only for these dumb little stories we have to feed the public with."

Some weeks later my friend brought me a magazine, 'Bres Planete', in which I found an article by Ruud Lohman, "They build their own city." "I think this is the place you are looking for!" said my friend. I read the article, got in touch with a contact address given in it, went to a reading with slide shows and started reading Satprem's "The Adventure of Consciousness", in Dutch.

New worlds opened for me. Yes, yes, yes... I kept thinking and feeling and sensing. This was it for me.

In order not to come with empty hands I kept my job for another year and it was in September 1971 after a half year of travelling in India (because once I disappear in Auroville, I probably never will get out of it.) that I arrived in Pondicherry, now Puducherry.

Immediately attracted by the very special energy field prevailing in the Ashram, I inwardly had the strong sense that I first needed to get closer, more familiar, more intimate with the Mother before going to Auroville. So I decided to remain in the Ashram for some time.

And then a bizarre problem arose. While I had given up my all and everything, had burned all my ships in order to come to the Mother and Auroville, I now found myself embodying an enormous resistance. For days and days I walked around Pondy, in the park, at the beach, sat in the playground, the Samadhi, continually struggling with thoughts like "How can She be Divine? She was married - even had children. What is divine anyway? etc etc." Until the day came that I finally shook myself, realising "What

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the heck do I care who She is or what She did. Let me listen to Her message."

Having made up my mind, I then was ready. I asked for a darshan and, when the day came (7.11.71), went to the Ashram's flower section to search for a flower to give to Mother. When asked which flower I wanted, I had absolutely no idea and suggested they give me something white.

A friendly sadhak gave me a bunch of white plumeria (psychological perfection) and there I went, to the Samadhi, waiting downstairs, waiting up the stairs, waiting half way... It was a dreamlike, timeless waiting with a strange sort of intensity as if there was no past and no future. Just a very full everlasting moment of waiting, awaiting...

It was as if the space outside of me and the space inside of me became exactly the same, mingling and getting stronger and stronger. I could hear its sound.

And then I found myself in the room and there She was. So very very fragile and almost transparent... almost blue... She was so light, hardly sitting in Her chair.... And the space intensified, throbbing, sounding.

When it was my turn I gave my flower and knelt down for Her as 1 had seen the ones before me do. In one of Sri Aurobindo's 'Letters On Yoga' I had read that one had to "let Mother look into your heart. " So in all my naivety I looked up at Her, opening my eyes for Her to look into them. I didn't look at Her face, at Her looks, I just held my head a bit backwards and found myself opening my eyes, wide, like doors.

And there it came. It was as if two beams or streams bored themselves, very steadily and gradually straight down into me almost like two rods physically drilling downwards, very slowly, very gently... And after staying there for some silent, ageless, timeless time the two beams very gently and slowly withdrew again. I felt them leaving me, and then... I looked at Her. I saw Her face, and She saw mine ... and we smiled and smiled and I felt Her little

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tick on the top of my head and someone gave me a flower, and I floated and smiled and beamed out of the room, downstairs, into the world. And from that time onwards everything, everything was different.

Courtesy: Mother India Magazine, Puducherry

(Mauna is an old timer resident of Auroville working in the field of outreach communication.)

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