AT THE FEET OF THE MOTHER 1/B

Her ways

One Sunday morning the Irish nuns took us kids to attend at Mass. My place happened to be close to a statue of Mother Mary all dressed in black.   She had teardrops running over her cheeks and seven swords piercing her heart. 

 

 She looked so sad... I could not move my eyes from that pale and sad face...I well knew the tragedy of her sorrow and how deep it could be...  me too was shedding sorrowful tears for the same reason... she had lost her son, I had lost my mother... we were summoned in that almost unbearable sadness... she was as distressed as I was...

Then, a silent voice aroused from that child heart of mine telling her: Oh little Mother... how I wish to take those swords out of your heart!..

 A single golden, transparent ray came forth from her heart touching mine and at once my wounded heart was literally cauterized,  all my sadness had gone and at its place there was a scarf on my heart. 

 A five years old child cannot understand Mother's ways,  I trusted I could talk to her much as to an earthly mother and could receive an answer, I trusted  I could establish a personal relation with her, so it was but natural to me  when five years later, now ten years old I run to kneel at a picture of her asking for immediate help. 

There were blood running down my legs, they were simply piles but I was horrorized and insistently called her for help. Seeing that no answer came I run to the kitchen took some chickpeas and back, I knelt on them, in that way I meant her that "my call was -really- an emergency" and I was expecting her to answer me...While so knelt and never ceasing to say: Oh Mother please, please help me! I heard a strange sound at my back as little trumpets and then an incredibly sweet and caring feminine voice spoke to me, calling me by my name and motherly saying to stand up now. I was petrified in earing the sudden voice and I actually couldn't move at all... I was overwhelmed by panic in thinking that if I turned my head  I could see her, but I had to do something... I could not remain any longer on that painful position so after a while I turned my head a bit and in seeing that nobody was there anymore I took back the chickpeas to the kitchen. You can see how ungrateful I was because in both cases I never said a word of thanks!.. Whenever your difficulties are too heavy to bear do pray her, be immediate and insistent as a child would be, She can't resist that call.

When the divinity itself intervenes into your life compelled by a call, you will never be the same again, a mark has been posed on your soul, you have become one of "her own".

 That happened to me, mean time I had the least monastic aspiration growing up instead as a rebel - an anarcho spiritualist of a kind-, an artist and a poet till my twenties when I happened to read the "Autobiography of a yogi" by Paramahansa Yogananda. Yogananda described how himself and other indian yogis had had experiences with the divine Mother, me too had some in my youth but I had completely forgot them... The author awoke in me a renewed need to be in touch with her. Without me noticing it, the  divine sound of her voice was carved in my soul where I could still hear it...  She had been patient, waiting for me to remember her again...  

  

AT THE FEET OF THE MOTHER 1/A

Discipleship at the feet of the Mother.

It is difficult to understand my relation with the divine Mother without knowing the actual events which led to it. I do not present them in this series to let you know how good I am at that, or how pious and submitted my character is, but to let you know that it can become a Presence in -your- life too if you were convinced it to be a remote option in your life and only by great effort and by a titanic character  this could be achieved. 

Really, the Mother is a close presence in everything that exists in this universe which literally permeates with her presence, so she is everywhere and within ourselves too.

She is the Mother of the universe, the divine Shakti of the rishi, and when you are led to her presence -as She does sometimes- as the formless Goddess which is  eternal Bliss, Light and Power behind imagination, when you see the aquamarine energy pervading the whole universe, when you see her overwhelming core of white and golden light flowing from the divine planes as a cascade into the material universe, you cannot hold any doubt about it and say with the rishi "She is the eternal Shakti and Mother of the universe, to Her our praises". 

Her greatest mystery is how she can be both a forever unreachable and inconceivable divinity and yet a close and intimate figure in ourselves ready to answer our call for help, or greeting our offerings of devotion. Actually, she seems literally craving for the human heart to recognize her, after all, it is her purpose for us here to be conscious of her presence in our life and become a conscious instrument into her hands.

 One day the human species as a whole will recognize and live her presence, She herself will come on earth as an immortal being uplifting the human march towards paths of immortality. At that moment life on earth underwent an inconceivable transformation, the greatest part of the world population was involved with an healthy, balanced and spiritual life as well as in their environment, and Her immortal presence on earth would be of a tremendous impact  worldwide, She literally will drive a line between "before" and "after"  her coming in human history, she would consecrate the planet as one of her accepted and recognized disciples.

But now, today, when those far off events are still beyond sight, where is her hand and how we can make of her an intimate figure?  As she would say: "When it seems that I abandon you it is still my secret hand that leads you and that your eyes cannot see".

 So, it is not that she is not here but simply that -we- cannot perceive her, and to do that we need to get rid of the weight of a complicated character becoming as simple as possible, with an elastic, free and light intelligence able to perceive what otherwise remains conceived at our sight.

Her etheric aquamarine light is so powerful that great masses of water, oceans, sky and vegetation are coloured by that inner light  assuming hues of green and blue as a reflection of her presence.  Her prodigal and generous hand is within the tiny seed of wheat that when is sown gives plenty of seeds , her abundance is everywhere and everything tries to produce at its best, just because everything has the mother purpose within which leads to a plentiful life. 

If a little seed of wheat  is so generous to almost feed a human being when it is sown,   how much more generous should be a human being, much bigger and intelligent than a seed? And yet the human nature is so reluctant to fulfil this essential drive in everything that exists and surely, the blindness impeding us to see and feel the mother hand is proportional to the lack of generosity we demonstrate in our own life, both at individual and collective level. 

So, the degree of our generosity will always mark our real level, to us it should be as a mirror at the moment of analysing our character, if we lack of generosity or we display a mild proof of it, we do not really partecipe of the universal drive  towards abundance and delight, our  material riches and the artificial joy we obtain by them are but a surrogate of the real abundance which   is also sharing abundantly. 

The level of a State can be understood for the care it shows for the welfare of its own citizens, and when nations or coalition of nations withhold the right to a reasonable living of other nations, that too is at a larger scale what happens into a mean heart, unable and unwilling to flourish in abundance and freely sharing it.

So we should not be surprised when the hand of the Mother seems too far from sight, and yet even than, is only her purpose we fulfil but partially and imperfectly, and to her command only our life has to give immediate answer.

 When She calls either for good or worse, there is nothing we can do but answer and obey willingly or unwillingly. Only for a season she tolerates and allows us playing and entertaining ourselves with her toys, soon or later her transforming call has to be answered if we have to fulfil the very purpose of our presence here, if it remains unanswered or postponed, for a healing purpose we certainly will have to submit at her law for such cases, and if She is a Mother of life and abundance, She is the Great Kali too, destroying and reshaping her creation. 

For a human being, willing to follow her ways of abundance instead of those of destruction and decay  is not only a privilege, but a wise choice because her hand can be as abundant in giving as heavy and trying in her lessons.   

B. DE CLAIRVAUX, AN EARLY ADEPT OF THE MOTHER

 BERNARD DE CLAIRVAUX, AN EARLY ADEPT OF THE MOTHER

When we look at the traditional painting of the catholic imagery portraying Bernard de Clairvaux  while breastfed by Mother Mary we may think of it as a legend rather then a real miracle, certainly Bernard was a great devotee of the divine Mother, but the painting has rather an occult meaning: at the fashion of the time and in the veiled language of the Alchemist and the occultist it depicts the Adept.

The painter knew the occultist language and represented there the Adept while is fed by the Lac Virginis of the universal Mother, the Mother of Wisdom dear to the Alchemist and to the occult philosopher. More than a saint to the devotee, Bernard was considered a real Adept by the Alchemist.

In fact the existence of a branch of esoteric Christianism and the Holy Inquisition made it necessary a veiled message for this otherwise universal figure of a real adept of the Universal Mother as he was esteemed at his time.

Bernard had a strong urge for a monastic life at his early twenties, but he was not alone at the door of the Monastery of Citeaux, his religious drive was so strong that his brothers and several knights followed him when he went to take leave of them.

 The aged monk at the door could not believe at his eyes in seeing  that powerful group of knights and a lad on their horses pleading to be admitted to the Order. He runned as fast as he could on uncertain steps to inform the Abbot.

The venerand Stephen Harding, the Abbot of Citeaux had been seeing his aged monks dye one by one; of late,  but a handful of old monks and he himself were surviving between the silent walls.

 Stephen Harding, a great devotee of the divine Mother had been asking her a new lymph to vivify its monastery and his vision of a great spiritual regeneration of Europe, he could not understand why the Holy Mother gave him that vision without the means to realize it, and when the doorkeeper rushed into his room, Stephen knew that his prayers had been fulfilled.

In a few decades hundreds of Cistercian monasteries appeared all over Europe and thousands of monks embraced the austerity of the most rigorous branch of the Benedictine Order, at the same time, the ambitious plan to create an esoteric Order, the Templars, which would help to unify Europe under the rule of the Church, or rather of the Divinity were materialized by Stephen through his most outstanding disciple: Bernard de Clairvaux. 

Both Stephen and Bernard had celtic blood in their veins and had been fed in the belief of a prodigal universal Mother which ruled the creation, something in opposition with the judaic belief common at that time of a vengeance full male God frightening his devotees.

Both Master and disciple were successful in infusing the Catolicism with the celtic cult to a Mother in love with Her creation rather than at war with it, but their was more than a simple belief, they both were Adepts at the feet of the universal Mother and their was not a pretentious plan but followed Her own design for Europe and the world at large.

Physically Bernard was not as the painters drew him, he had a very pale skin, pale blue eyes and pale blond large hairs, a very thin figure made even more so for the rigorous austerities, with a powerful gaze that could frighten his observer. The paintings representing him have nothing in common with his real, emaciated figure, he had not the ecclesiastic tonsure and his hair long to the neck.

In earlier years Stephen had to run away from England, he was brotherly received in a french monastery when  hostility grew among monks with a relaxed way of living, Stephen and a small group where rather prone to reestablish the ancien austerity of the monastic life, but they met with a fierce resistance.

When Sri Aurobindo  slightly mentioned a previous life in which he was warmly received in France, some was led to believe in Leonardo da Vinci, but the words he used were those one would choose talking of simple, religious people rather describing the pump of a french monarchy as would be the case.

  I was unable in meeting with the original sentences to report here, but researches could be made that corroborate my conviction that Stephen Harding has been a previous incarnation (a Vibhuti) of Sri Aurobindo, and the work Stephen did, the spreading of the cult to the Mother and a Citadel of God which was supposed to become Europe are clear signs of the far viewing sight of a great spirit and the action of an Adept.

 In comparison, the brilliant mind and skill of Leonardo would not stand the humble but powerful action of spiritual regeneration which was set in motion in Europe by the austere Abbot, yet an almost unknown figure to his contemporaries and to the following generations.

Sometimes the work of an Adept of the divine Mother has not need to be known and recognised by the society, he works for the Mother and She only knows that he is fulfilling Her very purpose, a few may know, but, as in the paintings of the Adept fed by the Lac Virginis, the message goes in silent and cryptic symbols only accessible to the holder of the key.

Stephen could well be a powerful Vibhuti of the late Sri Aurobindo, and as the Master said, a Vibhuti do not has any need to know itself as a Vibhuti in order to accomplish his work, or it may come to know about it in later years when most of his work is accomplished.

The whole yoga of Sri Aurobindo is centered on the Mother doing her work within the disciple, both the humble Stephen and Sri Aurobindo infused the devotee and the spiritual researcher with  the necessity to reconnect with the original Mother, their action has deeply influenced both West and East, and surpassing the purpose of Stephen and Aravinda we may read a great divine purpose preparing the Age of the Mother.

As a matter of fact, to vivify the cult to Herself in the heart of the devotee, under Her form of Mother Mary, the universal Mother appeared several times in Europe noticeably to young people as in the case at Fatima and Lourdes, but these were not the only one and even recently in places around the world there have been apparition of Mother Mary.

One outstanding and revealing apparition happened in Africa to a poor she devotee. The divine Mother appeared into the hut of the devotee in an almost desertic environment.

Pleading the devotee to worship Her for the following days the Mother assured her that a spring of water would appear soon in her very humble hut as  it later happened, that a temple had to be erected there to shelter the spring, and this connection of the healing water with the divine Mother is revealing in such, that some  places of cult are and will be healing temples in the Age of the Mother, in the future of a regenerated and spiritualized human species.   

This connection of the healing water with the universal Mother is an outstanding fact, in many cultures water appears to have healing and sanctifying power, the aspersion with holy water and the baptism in the west or the ritual ablution into the water before worshipping and the offering of water to the divinity in the east both reveal the conviction of a healing power related with the water. 

Water is considered to have "memory" and the characteristic to get impregnated by the aura of the mystics becoming the vehicle of a healing process, possibly the human species needs to recuperate a genuine approach to the water, with the need to protect its effluents and recuperate its use as a healing vehicle rather than persisting with an utilitaristic use of it.

The very survival of the species is founded over the access to pure clean water to billions of individuals, and this fact has to be taken in consideration by the yoga practitioner, every effort and action should be made to promote it as a priority on scientific or political agendas.

A worldwide movement for the protection of water would agglutinate around it any kind of people independently of his culture, religion, political party, age or social status, it could become a very powerful instrument of pressure on the policies of governing powers. Artists and intellectuals should be summoned to convey the message into society. 

The protection of the water makes people communed with a different attitude not only with water but with its surroundings too and lately with everything that exists.

 The connection of the human being with the Holy Mother through the healing water is the mark of Her purpose for the Age of the Mother, when a wide spread attitude of respect will generate the affluence of people to the Temples of Healing Water for healing, worshipping and connection with the Mother.

The cult to the one original Mother is expected to substitute any other form of cult on the planet, human beings will be communed into a general worship and recognition of Her purpose both with the individuals and the planet they dwell. 

This will be a great epoch for humanity impulsed by a common spiritual rush and urge, the time of the plenitude of the Era of the Mother, when Initiates will dwell among people, yoga and spiritual disciplines will be common in large sectors of society, and the appearance of Savitri on earth, the first human being integrally divine from birth will take place to show the next tread to immortality for the humanity as a whole.

Sri Aurobindo promised to come back on earth in a body fully overmentalized, immune to death and expressing the full power of his divine condition.

 The conquest of death by humanity as a whole represents the divine plan for this planet, once that achieved, will not be the end but the beginning of associated planetary consciousness, the beginning of a new unthinkable adventure into higher levels of awareness and connection with other galactic human beings and forces which operates at higher levels of existence.  

  

Meeting Sri Aurobindo I

24 December 1999

Now I will start to relate the meetings with the Master especially because there are certain human natures that greatly rejoice to ear  the Master has appeared to someone. I´m one of those for instance, and literally drink any such experience, as those historically known in the circles of integral yoga.


I will briefly resume here a few previous circumstances: I´m sure it was 24th December, probably 1999, I didn´t note down the date but only the experience.

That unforgettable morning a complete thought crossed my mind clearly coming from outside: it said I should be back home because a "friend" would come to see me.

I was used to occasionally ear inner voice, but this one had reached me from the exterior, someone was sending me a message but I could not trace back the sender. 
I had different planes for the day but decided to answer the call, it quite intrigued me because I had recently moved to a different country and none of my friends knew about it, beside, I was living in a quite secluded place in the country side difficult to reach without a guide.

When I reached back home I made some cleaning and had some food and fruits ready just in case, later on I lighted the fire and disposed myself to wait.

Till late in the night none came.
 I had lost every hope and cross legged by the fire-place I resolved to go to sleep, bitterly considering that the next time I could not just trust any other such message.

But a moment before I stood up I seemed to ear someone approaching the entrance door, enter the house and get inside the sitting room.

I was immobile and open mouthed: as  by a command, all my hair stood on end on my head... no doubt it was a Presence... but a presence I could only "perceive", an invisible one.

I could only feel the tremendous impact its sudden appearance  had on the physical things, and concretely the walls of the house: it was such a "massive" presence that the very walls and roof  seemed on the point to explode unable to contain that cyclopic, super-human presence. 

 I was more then worried because the Presence didn´t identify itself nor said a single word, but what seemed worst, now was clearly advancing towards me!..
I closed my eyes and fervently prayed the Divine Mother to intervene, but there was no answer, when I opened them, the Presence was  standing immobile in front of me.
I had no option left. I was literally  petrified in asana on the soil and only could wait the next move.

Then the invisible Presence seemed to bend over me and touch as with a finger my "subtle physical body" on the sacral area, the lowest part of the spine, and suddenly a red-orange torrent of fire streamed out from the base of the spine remounting it.
Immediately the fire divided into two main streams now whitening as thin beams of white light which took  different balanced directions just below the navel, one upward and the other downward and dividing themselves in subsidiary beams of light which orderly circulated around the body leaving a trace, a net of light around the body, with tiny spots which started to reverberate along the beams.
The red-orange flame never ceased to enter and transform into beams of light, it was a constant inflow.

In  that position and with the tiny bulbs shining I thought I had to look like a Christmas tree with its lights on,  half-bitterly considering that I would look even more so because of the snow on top of it, referring to my hair surely whitened for the circumstance. 
I thought: Now only the star on the top most of the tree is missing... and the star arrived!

The two beams of light and their subsidiaries had now reached my head producing a horizontal, circular magnetic  pattern which radiated in waves in the air. 
I felt as never before in my life, a deep sense of well being and a deep unmovable peace.
Of course, at that moment I had lost all prevention  about the Presence, on the contrary, I innerly bowed pleading forgiveness for my previous reaction.
Strangely enough, my rectification seemed to have as answer the retrieving of the Presence.
I felt it was leaving me, retiring and I rushed a few questions with the hope to retain it a little more with me: Who are you?.. Shall I meet you again?.. Why..This?

But the Presence didn´t utter a word to answer my questions, only, just before disappearing, a single thought crossed again my mind proceeding now from the Presence: It is a bliss for the work ahead.
-...Work?..."Which" work?..
But the Presence wasn´t there anymore to answer...

I stood up immediately  and went to the mirror, with a breath of relieve I found no white hair and no trace of tiny bulbs on my face either, even though I could still feel the pulsating bulbs fading away.

But...Work? What that could mean? It was an absolute mystery and so had to remain till a few months later, when finally the mystery was disclosed by the Master himself.

****
This was the first of the cycle of meetings, it was as physical as possible, all the others would happen in different planes, but this one happened while absolutely awake in the physical body, and I certainly recognize that only by direct intervention of the Master I was able to perceive with my subtle body.
(The silence of the Presence seemed intentioned to fire up my subtle perception in those anguishing moments, it was a scaring though necessary situation so to create a direct passage from the physical to the subtle physical, and certainly perfectly controlled by the Master).

 I didn´t recognize it was the Master till a later occasion when, while looking at him, again I felt the same powerful and almost unbearable radiation of his body of glory.
Possibly I should say "overmental body", the fact remains it was a glorious body emitting such powerful radiation which deeply acted upon  my very atomic structure, and even then, I realized the Master was lowering the rate of his radiation for my own safety.

I report this experience for the purpose of study, the acupuncture and whomever has some easiness with a chart of acupuncture may depict quite well how the beams of light were circling around the body, as they perfectly resembled meridians of light. The interesting thing is that the whole structure of light has a starting point, the base of the spine. It seems the charts of acupuncture reflects a rather static vision of this circulating energy, and do not underline the circuit as ending around the head with a magnetic radiance, the magnetism of that light was quite an outstanding feature.
It created an authentic, subtle, magnetic field around the body.

Saving the distances, a similar magnetic field I found later around Sri Aurobindo himself, only, exceedingly more powerful.
From this and other experiences I got convinced that the Master can´t thoroughly manifest himself physically simply because we couldn´t bear the intensity of the vision and literally evaporate in a cloud of atoms.
  

The Book of the Divine Mother III

                                        Sri Paramahansa Yogananda


"Little sir, please be seated. I am talking to my Divine Mother."
Silently I had entered the room in great awe. The angelic appearance of Master Mahasaya fairly dazzled me. With silky white beard and large lustrous eyes, he seemed an incarnation of purity. His upraised chin and folded hands apprized me that my first visit had disturbed him in the midst of his devotions.
His simple words of greeting produced the most violent effect my nature had so far experienced. The bitter separation of my mother's death I had thought the measure of all anguish. Now an agony at separation from my Divine Mother was an indescribable torture of the spirit. I fell moaning to the floor.
"Little sir, quiet yourself!" The saint was sympathetically distressed.
Abandoned in some oceanic desolation, I clutched his feet as the sole raft of my rescue.
"Holy sir, thy intercession! Ask Divine Mother if I find any favor in Her sight!"
This promise is one not easily bestowed; the master was constrained to silence.
Beyond reach of doubt, I was convinced that Master Mahasaya was in intimate converse with the Universal Mother. It was deep humiliation to realize that my eyes were blind to Her who even at this moment was perceptible to the faultless gaze of the saint. Shamelessly gripping his feet, deaf to his gentle remonstrances, I besought him again and again for his intervening grace.
"I will make your plea to the Beloved." The master's capitulation came with a slow, compassionate smile.
What power in those few words, that my being should know release from its stormy exile?
"Sir, remember your pledge! I shall return soon for Her message!" Joyful anticipation rang in my voice that only a moment ago had been sobbing in sorrow.
Descending the long stairway, I was overwhelmed by memories. This house at 50 Amherst Street, now the residence of Master Mahasaya, had once been my family home, scene of my mother's death. Here my human heart had broken for the vanished mother; and here today my spirit had been as though crucified by absence of the Divine Mother. Hallowed walls, silent witness of my grievous hurts and final healing!
My steps were eager as I returned to my Gurpar Road home. Seeking the seclusion of my small attic, I remained in meditation until ten o'clock. The darkness of the warm Indian night was suddenly lit with a wondrous vision.
Haloed in splendor, the Divine Mother stood before me. Her face, tenderly smiling, was beauty itself.
"Always have I loved thee! Ever shall I love thee!"
The celestial tones still ringing in the air, She disappeared.

(from Autobiography of a YOGI, by Paramhansa Yogananda, chap.9, read it on Project Gutenberg)

                                         Master Mahasaya, a disciple of Sri
                                         Ramakrishna Paramahansa