On the centenary of the Mother’s final arrival on the 24th April 1920
This faith is not about religion. Religion of all forms and faces is dated. The institutions built in the name of God, whether religious or ideological, have failed us. The pandemic has shown that man can no more rely on institutions. They are at best a scaffolding and a crutch, at worst a prison and a trap withholding the wide expansion of man’s Spirit. What is needed is to get back to the core of all Religions, the core even of all Ideologies, that the first thing needed is to build our inner beings in the light of what we wish to see outside us. It is this inner temple that we have ignored for long. It is this that needs to be cleaned, to be thoroughly ‘sanitised’ with the showers of the Spirit, cleansed of all dross and crudeness and hypocrisy so that we may discover the true peace and bliss of the Divine.
It is perhaps this that the Divine Mother wants us to do this time. Her first coming was largely incognito. We knew Her and yet knew Her not. Even when we were told that She is the Divine Mother we clung to Her only for our small human needs, seeking Her interventions for our little comforts and petty quarrels. That is why She had to withdraw from the limits of our sight so that at least the shock of the outer loss may awaken in us the intense need and longing to find Her within much like the sudden self-exile of Sri Krishna from Vrindavan released streams of unparalleled bhakti upon earth. His Feet could not be held by physical hands so the strings of the heart stretched far and wide to hold Him close to us. That is the true closeness, the closeness that does not depend upon any outer circumstance, the intimacy that is never lost, the union and communion that one can have everywhere, even beyond the gates of death. For She never abandons Her children and they who love Her and have faith in Her, they who seek to serve Her and sincerely want to belong to Her, live in Her and for Her are forever with Her and She with them. The doors to Her room where She physically lived may be closed but who can close the inner doors. This is the great truth that She perhaps wants us to learn and live. Nobody can stop us from meeting Her within our being. Nobody can prevent us from going there at any time of the day and night. Sri Aurobindo repeatedly reminds us of this deeper truth:
[the disciple]: While at the staircase I got an intense desire to see the Mother’s rooms. X suggested that when one is in difficulty, one should ask to go near to the Mother.
But the coming near to the Mother should be in the inner rooms, not the outer. For in the inner rooms one can always enter and even arrange to stay there permanently.
CWSA 32: 405 – 407
