A Luminous Life

Meeting The Mother: February 21st

My first meeting with the Mother had actually come earlier, on her birthday, the 21st of February, when — through Nolini-da's kind arrangement, since the other children could not attend — I was permitted to join the Ashram courtyard for the collective meditation. In those days the Mother would come out from her room, stand on the little terrace leaning against the railing, and meditate while all of us sat below in the courtyard near the Samadhi. Wanting to look older than I was, I had worn a sari that day — I was tall for my age — and slipped in behind my mother, unnoticed.

As I entered that courtyard, a strange sense of familiarity surged up in me, as if I belonged there, as if I had come home. I had not yet had Sri Aurobindo's Darshan, had not yet found the one I sought — but something in me said, this is the path, this meditation into which I have entered by itself. It meant that the Guru had chosen me before I had chosen him.

After that I read the whole of the book that had come into our house — I knew it, quite literally, by heart; I had a photographic memory as a child, and could recite whole pages, footnotes and all, to my astonished father, who was not himself interested in reading it.