The Last Stand

The Mother’s Departure

“…one wraps oneself in Mother’s flag patriotically, but underneath there is the selfish old species which defends its rights and privileges.” - Satprem

Why did Satprem take a defiant stance in the days following 17th November, 1973?

Following The Mother’s departure, events unfolded at such a dizzying pace that Satprem - although posessing the inner conviction to take a contrarian stand - could actually do nothing to change the course of events. He remained a mute spectator, watching the charade as if in a daze. But in the years that followed, he never hesitated to expose a certain travesty that occured on 17th November 1973 in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. And in this, he behaved like a man on a Mission, for the Divine had indeed tasked him with one. 

Satprem writes in [The Mind of the Cells]

Five years earlier, in 1967, in the middle of a conversation, Mother stopped abruptly, asked me to take a piece of paper and a pencil, and started dictating in a completely neutral tone of voice, as if she were speaking from “elsewhere”

Because of the necessities of the transformation, this body may enter a state of trance that will appear cataleptic. Above all, no doctors! Do not hasten, either, to announce my death and to give the government the right to intervene. Keep me carefully sheltered from all injuries that may come from outside — infection, poisoning, etc. — and have untiring patience: it may last days, perhaps weeks, perhaps even longer, and you will have to wait patiently for me to come naturally out of that state once the work of transformation is accomplished.

Mother's Agenda > January 14, 1967

I would like people not to put me in a box and shove the body... like that, because it will be aware of it, it will feel it, and that will mean adding one more misery to all those it has had. Let them wait till it deteriorates. I am saying this to you, so you will be able to say it to others if necessary.

Because even long after doctors will have declared it to be dead, it will be conscious: its cells are conscious.

Mother's Agenda > May 24, 1969

 I seem to bring together all the resistances of the world.... You see, I have a solution for the transformation of the body but ... it has never been done before, so it's extremely ... hard to believe. I can't believe that it's that. Yet it's the only solution I see. So the body wants to fall asleep and awaken (“fall asleep” in a certain sense: I am perfectly conscious), and awaken only after it is transformed. But people will never have the patience to stand it, to take care.... Everyone will think that it's the end and they won't take care of me anymore.

Mother's Agenda > April 7, 1973

Now, two months earlier, in January 1973, Mother had had a vision and, gasping for breath, she narrated it to me: she was being buried alive. It was the third time she had seen that.

 Oh, I haven't told you: it was yesterday or the day before, I don't remember; all of a sudden, for two or three minutes, my body was seized by a horror ... the idea of being put like that into a tomb, it was so horrifying! Horrifying! I couldn't have stood it for more than a few minutes. It was horrifying. And not because I was being buried alive: it was because my body was conscious. It was considered “dead” by everybody since the heart had stopped beating — yet it was conscious. It was a horrifying experience.... I showed all the signs of death, that is, the heart wasn't working anymore, nothing was working — and I was conscious. It was conscious. We must... we must warn them not to rush to....

Mother's Agenda > January 10, 1973

Then the second time:

... Because it may be ... it may be temporary. Do you understand? It may be momentary, do you understand? Do you understand what I mean?... I feel there is an attempt to transform this body, it feels it, it's full of willingness, but I don't know if it will be capable. Do you follow? So, for some time, it may give the impression that it's all over, but it would only be temporary. It might start again. Because I may be incapable of speaking at that time and of saying it. So I am telling you.... I don't know. I don't know what will happen! There are times when it becomes so difficult that I wonder whether the body will be able to hold out. But I would like there to be someone to prevent them from doing such a stupid thing, because all the work would be lost. People with some authority must be there and say, “You must not do this, Mother does not want” — you....

Mother's Agenda > April 3 & 5, 1972

So what did we expect of Satprem? Betray this trust, this love, this sense of honour and duty that has in the past inspired men to sacrifice their lives and much more?. Did we expect him to not utter a word and bury this inconvenient Truth that was staring him in the face? Hence, Satprem came out and unequivocally accused the Earth of a dreadful betrayal - however he absolved the specific individuals in question :

“And there is no one to really blame in that formidable tragedy, each of the actors probably did exactly what they had to..” [The Mutation of Death]

As far as the prestige of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and his obligation to this institution is concerned, Satprem responds with a question:

Were Peter and Paul the disciples of Christ, or of the Vatican? Was Vivekananda the disciple of Sri Ramakrishna or of the Ramakrishna Mission? Was Marx a disciple of the Kremlin? [Notebooks of an Apocalypse (1973-1978)]

The Ashram was a spiritual laboratory of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother; where can the prestige of a laboratory lie other than in conducting an experiment successfully?

What is the problem in every wise declaration made about The Mother’s Departure?

A lot has been said about 17th November, 1973 and the status of the Supramental Work. The reactions have ranged from the Transformation being ‘postponed’ and not ‘cancelled’, to scanning through every page of Sri Aurobindo’s and The Mother’s works to prove that this can no longer be done after Their departure, to optimistically believing in some subtle physical body where the process is continuing. 

The point is not in who said what - it is in asking on what basis were such statements made. What did anyone understand of that Work which we are hailing to have succeeded or failed or postponed? The Mother’s statement to Satprem-….”you are the only one I can talk to. The others don't understand”  sounds a deafening refrain to all the wise explanations of the event.

Meanwhile, the man who apparently understood - or at least understood things differently - held on to only one certitude - that the next species will BE. 

But Evolution will take PLACE anyway.
It is the thing most inevitable there is, after human stupidity. [Notebooks of an Apocalypse - 1987]

And they said: Oh! the transformation is stopped, oh! the Hour of God has been missed, oh! the Moment is passed, the world was not ready⎯the fools! Could the pithecanthropus have ever stopped the torrent of mental evolution and prevent themselves from becoming men!? [The Mutation of Death]

Does it mean that the resistance and negation of the little spiritualists and the little materialists are greater and stronger than the evolutionary push? For we are going to change tack, without a shadow of doubt. 

Mother and Sri Aurobindo did not come to preach or to reveal: they came to DO. And they did what they had come to do. “The thing is done.” They came to extricate and free a set of cells as they are, without their evolutionary coatings or encrustations, in a corner of matter, in a corner of human cellular substance, in spite of — or because of — all the obstacles. Their bodies were the laboratory of evolution. What they did is an evolutionary operation.

Has evolution ever been known to fail?

It is the one thing that never fails, it is the most infallible thing in the world — gospels can fail, but not the cell. Once it has taken something into its “head,” or into its programme, it holds fast to it — until the next evolutionary disturber.

Mother and Sri Aurobindo are great disturbers. One just has to look to see.

We see nothing, as usual, except slogans and millions of radios and televisions around the world, shouting out falsehood-truths or truth-falsehoods, and no one understands anything anymore, except that the foundations are shaking.  [The Mind of the Cells]

And he groped in the dark till the end:

I have followed Mother's journey step by step without understanding anything, or rather, with thousands of successive understandings, and I am scarcely better off today, on page 164, than eighteen years ago when Mother first began with me. So let there be no mistake: I am not skillfully leading the reader in a direction that I know in advance and am carefully saving for the end. I do not know what the direction is! I am leading the reader "nowhere"!—but perhaps just going there will make it "somewhere." That is all. I am going blindly into that, clinging to Mother's hand on the other side of the veil and praying that She guides me in the right direction—I do not know the direction. It is an adventure into the unknown. I am writing each line without knowing the next one. No one can possibly imagine what that means.  [The New Species]

Interestingly, the world had no ambiguity and could confidently issue transformation certificates about the amount of work done. After all, ships in harbour can make any number of statements about the nature, duration, status and perils of a voyage- it is of little consequence unless one sets sail to conquer the sea. Nevertheless, we went on proclaiming that the old body has been discarded and to do more was not possible and a New Body will come.

But The Agenda does not end on this victorious note that surely is a comforting solace and neither does it end on the defeatist note that borders on appalling treachery. 

It ends with a haunting question that one has to someday have the courage to frame and face. 

Can this mystery of The Mother’s Departure and our culpability ever be resolved?

The Mother's departure on 17th November, 1973 is a muted controversy that is invoked and resolved on each anniversary - sincerely and scrupulously. But it refuses to end because we are employing the wrong tool to tackle the issue. Here, the mind is not the best arbiter as it cannot even grasp such statements without faltering:

It has come to the point where if I had no regard for people's peace of mind, I would say, “I don't know whether I am alive or dead!... If you totally eliminate that sensation, the type of relation that allows people to say "I am alive"... or "I am not alive", the distinction NO LONGER EXISTS. Well, for me, it has been completely eliminated.

Mother's Agenda > June 12, 1962

What happened in 1973 when She left this so-called life, which was no longer life, to enter that alleged death which was not death either? But of course, She was no longer "alive" — and had not been for a long time! And of course, She is not dead! You only die from this life.

So where is She?

And all this concerns a BODILY consciousness, you see, it was not her mind that dreamed of immortality: it was HER BODY that lived otherwise, perceived otherwise, walked otherwise and was... in something else. What is that "something else?" That other bodily, material thing. Another state of Matter in Matter?

The New Species

This was the basis of Satprem’s denial of 17th November- how could anyone comprehend the circumstances of Her ‘Death’ when those of Her ‘Life’ completely escaped us?

But Satprem’s accusations only made the spiritual community more defensive. How could they be accused to be obtuse - they 'the chosen ones' - they 'the devoted servitors' - they had who not reacted to Her departure in a tragic or sentimental or ignorant manner but with a spiritual equality.

'What more is asked of us?' : wonders this baffled aspiring world of sadhaks.

Countless seekers and devotees have seen Her in various subtle planes of existence, She has assured us of Her victory, Her constant guidance and Love and we continue to feel Her presence in our hearts, in our minds, in our soul - of course, She lives in our memories, our prayers - ….but physically?

We have all accepted the PHYSICAL fact. And then we wove a magnificent narrative around it - devotional and replete with all the visions and intuitions of the new age spirituality.

But none of this resolves the haunting sense of unease that lingers on even after all these decades. Who was in the right and who wrong?

This debate ends in the BODY. For you can challenge every belief, every argument, every approach but a PHYSICAL SENSATION is irrefutable. The truth of 17th November can only be ascertained in the CELLS of the body - it is not the mind or the heart, neither the thoughts nor the emotions - but this throbbing, aching , mortal, corporeal entity, which should have refused to believe that She is weak, She is ill, She needs food, She needs medicines - and finally the undeniable fact of the couch carrying Her body to be buried.

Evidently - we didn’t refuse to believe it. Because we couldn’t. No amount of instructions and counter instructions, statements and counter statements, books, letters, declarations can impose the NEW LIFE upon a physical consciousness which has not yet experienced a single sensation of it.

This is where Satprem faltered - he perceived our inability as insolence and in his passionate flight towards the Future he forgot that a blind man cannot be cured by a dose of scolding. It only increased resentment and confusion.

The Mother had said:

...each one does the best he can...

Mother's Agenda > Feb 27, 1971

….they're already doing their utmost, and I can't ask for more.

Mother's Agenda > April 7, 1973

The blame ends there.

Perhaps, someday we will exceed this ‘best’- but for that, one needs to acknowledge the fact that our best was not good enough and stop labelling the first person who challenges our ‘best’ to be a fanatic who ‘doesn’t understand the complexities of Integral Yoga’.

In any case, the human species is dying a complex death - one needs to find the next Life - fanatically or amicably - not to make new declarations - but for the body to LIVE that Immortality in each cell and the New world to declare itself.