Longings for The Mother (4): How Do You Do, Mother?

From a series of 15 contemplations, written by Indra Sen shortly after The Mother’s physical withdrawal

Mother, You are no longer visible, we feel curious and anxious and ask, How do You do? We never asked You, ‘How do You do?’ when You were physically present to us. We wished You, ‘Bonjour, Douce Mere’ and You replied so sweetly, ‘Bonjour, mon enfant’ and, when we were many together, ‘Bonjour, mes enfants.’

But now we feel curious and anxious also and ask, ‘How do You do, Mother?’ and also wish to inquire, ‘Where are You?’ and ‘What are You doing?’ ‘How are You occupied?’ ‘How do You find Your Ashram?’ ‘Is it going on to Your satisfaction?’ ‘Are you pleased with Your disciples?’ ‘What are Your instructions for us?’ — and so on and so forth.

Mother, You once said, ‘I can tell you where Sri Aurobindo is, I can give you His address, you can go and meet Him if you like.’ More precisely, You said, ‘His abode is in the subtle physical.’ Is Your abode too now the same, the subtle physical, from where the work on the gross physical is proceeding? The penetration and possession of the gross physical by the Supramental Power is, after all, now the work and that has to be achieved. May we take Your address to be the same as Sri Aurobindo’s?

But how shall we reach You there? We neither have the necessary discrimination of the different planes of being nor the power of the traveller of the worlds. We, on the other hand, find it much easier to meet You in the heart and occasionally get a visitation from You and Sri Aurobindo as a Presence within or without and feel assured, uplifted and thrilled. We ask and ask and we remain rather puzzled. You once spoke our language, though with lots of subtle overtones, we understood rightly or wrongly, but in any case we took it rather lightly. Now we ask and ask and wait for a response. Surely, you know what we ask, You, in fact, know our hearts without our asking and surely You do respond, but we are gross and Your language is now all subtle and we miss Your reciprocations. Or, our grosser parts insist on their own ways of action and reaction and our subtle parts are yet not good enough and we feel lost. Though, in part, lost yet also inwardly assured that our Mother is there, here with us, She loves us, guides us, protects us. We discover this feeling deep within us and feel thrilled, cherish our Mother all the more and seek to do Her will.

‘Mother, how do You do?’ thrills as a question. We accost You, we find You almost in front of us. And, when we find You in front of us, we ask again, ‘How do You do, Mother?’ We find You, as it were, smiling back to us and we are thrilled and feel it is nice to ask, ‘Mother, how do You do?’

Your smiling back, Mother, is a wonderful response, but turning towards You and asking, ‘How do you do, Mother?’ is itself so delightful and we wish to ask deep within our hearts again and again, ‘Mother, how do You do? How do You do? How do You do?’

Mother, grant us the will and capacity to turn to You again and again to know about You more and more in the varying situations of life and existence, offer our heart’s love to You and seek Your pleasure in all that we do.