“I know you already, I have known you before.”
These were the words which Maggi Lidchi-Grassi had said to the Mother soon after they met for the first time on 1 February 1960 in the Meditation Hall of the main building of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry. And while she spoke, tears rolled down her face. What was even more interesting was the remark that the Mother had made when She was informed of Maggi’s arrival: “It is someone I know.”
Marguerite Lidchi was born in Paris on 9 May 1930. One day, when she was seventeen years of age, she had gone to a bookshop on Champs Elysées to look for something to read. It was here that she came across a French translation of Sri Aurobindo’s Essays on the Gita. To quote her own words: ‘And I read it—how much I understood, with the mind, I don’t know, but obviously something was going inside.’
One day, when Marguerite was in her twenties, she realized that Krishna was speaking to her and that she had to find the thing which she had to do and no one else could do it for her. At that time she was living between two countries in Africa, Mozambique and South Africa. But the relation of India with these countries was quite strained and there was hardly any exchange at any level. One day, she came across the first volume of Sri Aurobindo’s masterpiece, The Synthesis of Yoga, in a bookstore. It was the only copy and the only book by Sri Aurobindo that the bookstore had. She went on reading it repeatedly and finally made up her mind to make a pilgrimage to Pondicherry. But she did not know how to fulfill her yearning to be in Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry. She wrote to the Mother who, to quote her own words, was ‘a secondary figure’ for her and informed Her about her difficulty. Soon a reply arrived that when the time comes, she would be able to visit the Ashram.
The response from Sri Aurobindo Ashram undoubtedly thrilled Marguerite but the possibility of visiting Pondicherry still remained quite remote to her. There was neither any diplomatic representative for India in South Africa or Mozambique nor was it common for young women to travel to India all alone in those days. Her father had visited India and had given her an account of the country’s poverty. Her family physician collected information from the United States Information Office and was confident of dissuading her with statistics for Pondicherry had the highest incidences of leprosy, filarial and dysentery. However, none of these dissuasions could change Marguerite’s heart. She began to prepare herself for her future spiritual life. She would sleep with Sri Aurobindo’s books under her pillow and wake up at 3 a.m. to mediate. In fact, she would meditate for at least six hours a day and read books written by Sri Aurobindo for another three hours.
In 1958 Marguerite went to nurse her ailing mother in the south of France. She was suffering from leukemia but was a very spiritual person. (Much later, seeing her photograph, the Mother had remarked that she was a very beautiful soul.) Marguerite had once seen in a vision that her mother and she had been nuns in the same convent in one of their previous births. She nursed her mother for six months and returned to Africa after her demise. But after she returned to Africa, she realized that the world there had survived without her and that nothing had changed substantially. She also realized that her departed mother was opening doors from the other world because soon after opportunities to travel to eastern countries came knocking at her door.
In 1959 a UNESCO congress on the great religions of the world was to be held in Manila, Philippines and a friend of Marguerite—who was one of the delegates—was unable to go. Thus Marguerite got the opportunity to attend the congress as an observer. Obviously there were difficulties; for instance, she had a Portuguese passport and had to change it back to a French passport. She travelled to Kenya to get a visa and left for Manila. At Manila, she met a Dr. Das Gupta, an exponent of Aurobindonian yoga. But someone asked her to beware of visiting the Ashram of Sri Aurobindo at Pondicherry as she might fall under the spell of the Mother.
After the UNESCO congress, Marguerite travelled to Japan where she stayed in a little inn and learnt Aibido — a form of non-aggressive martial art of self-defence which is never to attack — in Wei Shiba’s school. It was here that she learnt that confrontation, even physically, was far from being the best defence. She found her sojourn at Japan fascinating but it was Pondicherry and the Sri Aurobindo Ashram that was calling her soul incessantly. Having spent three months in Japan, she travelled to Colombo, Sri Lanka, from where she went to Chennai and boarded the train to Pondicherry. A.B. Patel, a disciple of the Mother, received her at the Pondicherry station. M.P. Pandit was one of the first inmates of the Ashram to meet her and inform the Mother about her arrival. And it was to him that the Mother had remarked: “It is someone I know.”
Although Marguerite considered visiting Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry as a pilgrimage, she was not quite sure what would happen after her arrival. She had her doubts. But when she came to the Ashram main building and stood in front of the Samadhi of Sri Aurobindo, something happened inwardly and she realized that she had done the right thing.
However, there were certain things which Marguerite found difficult to cope up with initially. For instance, she was not prepared for the ‘Indian form of devotion’ which startled her Western mind. To quote her words from an interview she had given to Malcolm Tillis in January 1981:
“I associated this [the Indian form of devotion] with the Mother rather than Sri Aurobindo. I wasn’t too happy seeing photos of Mother’s feet stuck up everywhere. And when I was offered photos of Mother which had been blessed by her, something in me withdrew and I became upset. It seemed to me if the Ashram Sri Aurobindo had founded wasn’t working, where else in the world could one go?”
Someone who was aware of Marguerite’s mental turmoil suggested that she should ask the Mother for an interview. On 1 February 1960, Marguerite met the Mother in the Meditation Hall situated on the ground floor of the Ashram main building where Mother was giving blessings to Her children. The moment she saw the Mother, all her reservations evaporated. When she looked into the eyes of the Mother, every turmoil and anguish was resolved and tears began to pour down her cheeks. And the Mother was all smiles! As already mentioned before, the Mother later met Marguerite in the first floor of the Ashram main building. This time she was alone with the Mother. Her first words to the Mother were: “I know you already, I have known you before.” And while she spoke, tears flowed down her face. She meditated with the Mother for a long time.
Marguerite recalls about her first meeting with the Mother: ‘Nothing else mattered — nothing mattered at all. Then I realized something I had read in Sri Aurobindo’s books but had never taken in: her consciousness was the same as his, though it manifested differently. When I understood that, I didn’t mind what was going on in the Ashram — it was irrelevant to the fundamental thing I had come for. That consciousness touched me, so I never again worried about the things that had first worried me.’ (Interview with Malcolm Tillis)
She further reminisces: ‘When I first came to the Ashram, Mother asked me where I was from. I told her I was born in Paris but I didn’t have any French blood as I was of Spanish Jewish descent, my father having been born in Turkey. She said: Oh, Maggi, just like me! Then I told her half my family were from Turkey, the other half from Egypt. She said again: Oh, Maggi, just like me! We went into whether we should speak together in English or French — she was also born in Paris. But when I told her I had learned my French from an English governess and that I spoke it with an English accent, she again burst out: Oh, Maggi, just like me!’ (Ibid.)
Prior to her joining the Ashram, Marguerite used to spend long hours in meditation. But the moment she settled down in the Ashram, everything stopped. She did not want to meditate and soon she stopped reading as well. She had admitted during the course of a conversation that there was a part in her that had not settled down in India and it found itself ‘jammed-in and went on strike’ and blocked absolute integration with Ashram life. Undoubtedly, it was a difficult period for her. But her soul had chosen to be in the Ashram and was not going to be at peace at any other place. This tug-of-war continued for two long years owing to which her health suffered considerably. The extreme heat of Pondicherry also added to her health issues and she contracted severe dysentery as a result of which she had to leave Pondicherry for a while. Her father had sent her an air ticket and she went back to the West but within two months she came back to Pondicherry to be with the Mother. ‘I never meant to stay away’, she would recall later, ‘But suddenly everything became unblocked: then I suppose I had the decisive experience of my life by yoga.’
M.P. Pandit recalls about Marguerite: ‘… when she arrived she found herself quite at home. Everyone liked her, her petite form, her agile gait and above all her perpetual smile. Inquisitive minds found out that at her home in South Africa there were many servants working for the family. And here she was moving about without a care in the world — or so it looked.’
One might wonder: how did Marguerite feel she had known the Mother before? The explanation was provided by the Mother Herself to Champaklal, Her most faithful servitor.
When the Mother was studying art in Paris, she had a very dear friend named Valentine. Both were of the same age and their friendship was so profound that when Valentine had to leave for Egypt after her marriage, she found it quite miserable to part with the Mother and had lost all taste for life. She died at childbirth at the age of nineteen in 1898. Incidentally she passed away a day before the birth of André Morisset, the Mother’s only son, who was born on 23 August 1898. The Mother had made an oil portrait of Valentine in 1897 on a small piece of ivory and had brought it with Her when She came to India for good. After Marguerite joined Sri Aurobindo Ashram as an inmate, the Mother gifted her the oil painting of her loving friend, telling her: “I loved you very much then and I love you even more now. You came back very quickly.” This painting was not the only gift that she received from the Mother. M.P. Pandit has remarked: ‘Once they met here, however, Mother showered her blessings and gifts, both inner and outer, so lavishly on her that all the longing of the past was forgotten.’
The portrait of Valentine made by the Mother and gifted to Maggi
The old intimacies between the Mother and Her loving child Maggi — as Marguerite came to be known in the Ashram — returned with some new added dimensions. On 3 November 1964, the Mother wrote to her:
‘Maggi, my dear child,
I am really happy with the manner in which your sadhana is developing and your growing receptivity.’
On another occasion the Mother wrote to Maggi:
‘I have to tell you that my perceptions concerning you are becoming more and more precise — and that I am convinced that your vital is united to a charming little fairy, charming, smiling attractive, who likes to do pretty little miracles that give a special flavor to human life, quite dull in general.
Your presence is a joy and your collaboration is precious…
And I too love you.’
In a letter addressed to the Mother, Maggi wrote: ‘Adored sweet Mother, I love you now and for ever. Your Maggi.’ The Mother answered back: ‘Adorable little Maggi, I love you.’
On one occasion the Mother had asked Champaklal to bring a card. When he brought one, She asked for a bigger one. Then the Mother took Maggi’s hand and with Her forefinger drew four circles in the palm and joined them with lines. Taking a deep breath, the Mother put Her chin on Her bosom and closed Her eyes in concentration. Then She said: “I have just created an order.” When Champaklal gave Her the card, the Mother wrote on it: ‘Maggi, Chevalier de la Gentillesse’, that is, ‘Knight of the Order of Nobility.’ (Interestingly, several years later, when Maggi started a home for children in Udavi and was asked to suggest a name, she heard the Mother’s voice saying, ‘Gentillesse’.)
On one of Maggi’s birthday, the Mother wrote to her: ‘To my sweet little fairy who brings a ray of sunshine to this earth.’ In fact, She used to address Maggi as Her ‘sweet fairy’, ‘good fairy’ on the letters and cards addressed to her. In a letter to Maggi, the Mother had written once: ‘Maggi, my dear little fairy, you are adorable and it is a great joy to be served by you. With all my tenderness and my blessings.’
M.P. Pandit has mentioned that the Mother’s love for Maggi would at times flow in ‘enveloping embraces, peals of laughter.’ ‘Mother observed’, he continues, ‘that when Maggi came into the room it was like being in a garden. The fairy used to weave gardens around them.’
Once when Sri Aurobindo Ashram was going through a period of financial crisis, Maggi—on being informed about it—instantly took out all the money that she had with her at the moment and offered it to the Mother. Later, the Mother narrated her gesture to M.P Pandit and remarked: “Maggi is a good girl. And beautiful too, beautiful of form and soul.” And he would also remark about Maggi: ‘She is one of the rare ones who think first of Mother’s convenience before they think of their own needs.’
Maggi would visit the Mother in Her apartments every day and it was quite an ‘intoxicating experience’ for her. The Mother, too, showered so much love on her that she became unaware of other people. Maggi did small things for the Mother like placing a cushion under Her feet when She came to the room after Her bath or taking the glass out of Her hand when She had finished drinking.
In 1968, Maggi founded Domani, an Italian magazine which propagated the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, along with her husband Alberto Grassi who was renamed ‘Nata’ by the Mother. For the first few years, Domani was printed on cycle styled free sheets. In 1968 the Mother gave a written message in Italian for this magazine: Sopravvivere e Rinnovarsi which means ‘Survive and Renew’. During Sri Aurobindo’s Birth Centenary in 1972, Domani appeared as a magazine and received an award in India in 1977 for its marvellous graphics. Several translations of the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were published in Domani which played a significant role in leading a large number of Italians to the path of Integral Yoga.
Maggi also served the Mother as Her secretary. Along with her husband, she prepared the amphitheatre for the inauguration ceremony of Auroville. During the inauguration of Auroville on 28 February 1968, she had read the Charter of Auroville in Spanish. As the Mother’s secretary, she used to take letters from Aurovilians to Her and arrange interviews of seekers with Her. After the Mother’s mahasamadhi, she maintained the birth records of children born in Auroville. She had also played a significant role in the early development of Auroville owing to which she was loved as an esteemed friend by many Aurovillians. No wonder the Mother had written on Her last birthday card to Maggi: “Good secretary and excellent disciple.”
Maggi also taught at ‘Knowledge’ — the Higher Course of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education — for several years where she conducted courses on mythology, legends, fairy tales and creative writing.
Along with her husband, Nata, Maggi established Udavi, a school for children in the village of Edayanchavadi situated on the border of Auroville. The name of Udavi (meaning ‘help’) was given by the Mother who wanted to help the underprivileged inhabitants of Edayanchavadi. The children were provided with meals thrice a day, well washed and ironed uniforms and school supplies. The system of Free Progress which was practised at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education was also introduced at Udavi. Maggi also set up the very first Free-Store within the grocery shop started by Nata at Edayanchavadi.
In the initial years, Udavi had to depend on donation for its sustenance. So Nata and Maggi decided to start a business venture to support Udavi. Thus took birth Auroshikha, an incense-making unit with the Mother’s blessings. Auroshikha not only provided employment to the local villagers but also provided a surplus through which the project of Udavi was supported. In the following years, Auroshikha emerged as one of the leading exporters of incense in India.
Another venture for which Maggi would be remembered is the Quiet Healing Centre. Her husband, Nata, had received a rather cold treatment when he was admitted in the Intensive Care Unit of a hospital in Europe. When he returned to Pondicherry and was admitted in the Ashram Nursing Home where he was taken good care of, he had once remarked to Maggi: “There ought to be a hospital of love like this.” Thus took birth the idea of Quiet Healing Centre in Maggi’s heart although it took several years to materialize. Maggi had an avid interest and faith in homeopathy. Once she was invited to a conference on spirituality organized in the United States of America where she presented a paper on the theme, ‘The Spiritual Implications of Homeopathy’. During her sojourn in the United States, she conducted further research on alternative therapies, visited several centres of healing and made further studies with the likes of Professor Masi in Italy and George Vithoulkas in Greece. In January 1987 she organized the first alternative healing multi-disciplinary congress at Pondicherry and Auroville. And it was during this occasion that the news of the healing centre was formally announced. Afterwards she was approached by a devotee named Gautam who offered to sell a strip of land owned by him along the beach near Auroville. As the story goes: the Mother, who used to walk on this strip of land several years ago, had felt a special energy there and had told Gautam that She wanted this land reserved for a healing centre. The Mother had also told Maggi that She had seen a wonderful project in Auroville in Her vision and that Maggi would be responsible to translate it into reality. Thus the land was acquired and in 1997 the Quiet Healing Centre was inaugurated.
Another project that Maggi had undertaken and was working on it till recently was a residential retreat centre called ‘Stillness’ which is based on the ‘power of stillness, on the power of symbol, and on the inspirational power of art.’ She had acquired a six acre plot of land at a very silent and peaceful area near Auroville where she had built a house and developed a beautiful garden. She had realized that there ought to be a place where not only would the Mother’s atmosphere be felt but ‘because we all talk too much and plan too much without stepping back into our ‘stillness’, that area where all the creativity takes birth.’
Maggi was also a prolific author who had written several stories, poems and novels. Her novel, Earthman, was published in 1967 and was followed by The First Wife (1981), Jitendra the Protector (an anthology of short stories in 1986), The Battle of Kurukshetra (1987) and The Legs of the Tortoise (1990). The last two novels based on the great epic, Mahabharata, were republished as a single volume in 2011 under the title of Great Golden Sacrifice of the Mahabharata. Her Great Sir and the Heavenly Lady (1993) and The Light that Shone into the Dark Abyss (1994) dealt with the pivotal roles played by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother during the Second World War. In 2010 she was honored with the prestigious ‘Sri Aurobindo Puraskar’ by Sri Aurobindo Bhavan, Kolkata, for her literary contributions.
It is noteworthy that the battle of Kurukshetra and the Second World War fascinated Maggi who observed several parallels between them. In an article entitled Striking Parallels (published in the June 2013 issue of Mother India, the monthly review of culture published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry), Maggi writes about the parallels that she has drawn between the said wars:
‘My relation with the Mahabharata was a vividly lived experience, its events not the happenings of a distant age, but one with the epic events through which we had just lived. Over the years, greatly aided by Sri Aurobindo’s Essays on the Gita and other writings, as some quantum of the Mahabharata’s spiritual wealth became accessible to me, I knew that I wanted to present it in a way that would make its wisdom and beauty more easily accessible to others. The more I studied the Mahabharata, the more striking were the parallels I discovered between its story of the conflict culminating in the battle of Kurukshetra, and the events culminating in World War II. In both cases there was a tremendous clash between the forces of darkness and the forces of light such as takes place in a time of changing Dharma. It is this clash — between Asura and Deva, to use Vedic terminology — with its result on humanity either taking a step forward or sliding back in barbarism: that is the theme of the Mahabharata. It seemed to me that this was also the central lesson learned from World War II.
‘Sometimes in my vision, the figures and events of the Mahabharata slid in and out of the drama the world had so recently witnessed in the rise and fall of Nazism. The parallels were uncanny.
‘Powerful and savage Jarasandha sought emperorship over Bharatvarsha, and in order to ensure his success, he was ready to offer Shiva the heads of a hundred captured kings as a sacrifice. At the war’s end, Hitler sealed and flooded the Berlin underground — the city’s faithful residents offered as a last desperate sacrifice to the dark power he worshipped.
‘While in exile, the Pandavas were told by a sage that Drona, Ashwatthama, and Greatfather Bheeshma himself would be possessed by some demonic powers. Writing to Nirodbaran — his disciple and later secretary — three years before the war, Sri Aurobindo said that Hitler and his chief lieutenants Goering and Goebbels were certainly under the grip of vital possession. For Sri Aurobindo, ‘vital beings’ were Asuras or forces adverse to the Light.
‘Dhritarashtra’s message to the Pandavas in the face of the war was, “It is better for the sons of Pandu to be dependents, beggars, and exiles all their lives than to enjoy the earth by the slaughter of their brothers, kinsmen and spiritual guides: contemplation is purer and nobler than action and worldly desires.” “Peace in our time” was the watchword of Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister whose foreign policy sought infamously to appease Hitler.
‘The parallels continue. After the war, Arjuna voices his confusion about a critical point: “In the forest you told us to wait out our exile for the full thirteen years, and then Dharma would be with us. But when Krishna came to the forest he said: ‘Fight now!’”
‘Vyasa answers: “I gave you of my knowledge… I walk within my Dharma. Krishna is free of Dharma. It will not work to act as though you are free of Dharma when you are not.” …
‘In the Mahabharata we can easily recognise Jarasandha and Dhritarashtra as asuric figures, Krishna as the embodiment of the Light and Arjuna, his instrument, as the champion of the Light.
‘During World War II, Hitler was clearly the Asura’s agent. But who in that battle was the champion of the Light? And where did the Light come from?
‘I tend to think it was Winston Churchill, whose inspiring speeches roused his listeners to implacable defiance in the face of what for long seemed the inevitability of defeat… If Arjuna was the hero fighting with weapons against overwhelming odds in the war Sri Krishna conducted from another dimension with his light and inspiration, Churchill was the hero of an unarmed, unprepared Britain fighting against overwhelming odds, with the only weapons she had — his speeches…
‘It was in this historical and philosophical context that I began to understand the Vedic ideas of sacrifice and surrender, and the joy experienced at the moment of acceptance. There are numerous examples of this in the Vedic hymns and in the Vedic concept of sacrifice, with which the Mahabharata abounds.
‘It is through Arjuna, my protagonist, that I personify a changing Dharma after Kurukshetra. It is through him that Krishna has been able to reveal the mystery of the Cosmos, and it is now through him that one sees a new model of a man grown wise. In his post-war Ashwamedha campaign we find the Kshatriya hero discovering and developing his feminine, intuitive, and compassionate side in his encounters with those he must challenge.
‘The Kali Yuga that Krishna predicted is upon us and is accelerating the rate of evolution at a dizzying pace. Forms of resistance are inevitable, as are clashes with forms of resistance. The evils that led to Kurukshetra and World War II are still the evils that haunt us — insensitivity, rivalry, greed, violence, competitiveness and the denial of love that created us. The pain and grief that these times have caused can only be healed by Harmony and Samata, two virtues held dear by both Sri Aurobindo and Mother.’ (pp. 493-498)
As mentioned already, Maggi was actively involved with the development of her dream-project, the Stillness Retreat Centre, till her last days. Occasional illnesses and physical setbacks could not deter her indomitable spirit. Richard Pearson has remarked to the present author that whenever he had met Maggi during his stay in the Ashram Nursing Home, he could see the Mother’s smile with her. She passed away in the early hours of the morning of 30 September 2024 at her residence situated at the outskirts of Auroville. Her funeral took place on Thursday, 3 October 2024 at Karuvadikuppam, Pondicherry. She would be missed by those who loved her and whose hearts she had touched with her love.
*
Maggi reading the Auroville Charter in Spanish on 28 February 1968
Maggi with Nata
Dr. Larry Seidlitz writes about the Quiet Healing Centre:
“Situated on seven acres of beautiful beachfront property, the Quiet Healing Center offers a wide range of natural treatments, courses, workshops, and accommodations. It is based on the understanding that we are spiritual beings seeking to express ourselves through our mental, emotional, and physical instruments. Its therapies “address the client on a deeper energetic level within a safe space of care, love and touch.” Here one can find treatments and courses in various types of massage, aquatic bodywork, shiatsu, acupuncture, physiotherapy, chiropractic therapy, homeopathy, bio-resonance therapy, sound healing, and other natural therapies. The accommodations provide for a restful, rejuvenating retreat from the stresses of life, with or without participations in the therapies, and the Quiet kitchen provides three natural, delicious vegetarian buffet style meals each day which are suited to both Western and Indian tastes.”
About the Stillness Retreat Centre, Dr. Larry adds:
“The “Stillness Project” is a planned “residential retreat center based on the power of stillness, on the power of symbol, and on the inspirational power of art.” Maggi and her companion Surekshita were drawn out of their home near the Ashram by the noise pollution, and obtained a six acre plot of land near Auroville in a very quiet area where they built a house and established a splendid garden. A friend had visited and suggested that what was needed is a retreat center with Mother’s atmosphere. Maggi agreed. She sometimes went to other meditation retreats centers, but she always had felt that the Mother’s atmosphere was missing. And while there is already the incomparable Matrimandir in Auroville, she explains that you can’t go there for 10 days or two weeks to stay and sleep and eat in that silent atmosphere. She feels such a place is needed “because we all talk too much and plan too much without stepping back into our ‘stillness,’ that area where all the creativity takes birth.”
The stillness project will consist of a main building and several ancillary buildings. The main building will have a central space for collective meditation, and 12 rooms for individual meditations. Each of the 12 rooms will be an art installation for evoking one of the Universal Mother’s 12 powers of the advent of the new cycle of evolution. Also, these individual meditation rooms will have glass walls and ceilings which will create an expansive atmosphere in which each one will be in connection with others and the building as a whole, but will still allow silence and solitude. The ancillary buildings will include a reception, dining room, kitchen, laundry-ironing-wardrobe, staff room, watch-man’s room, and a water tank.”
[Source: Collaboration, Fall 2013, pages 10 and 12]
Dr. Larry Seidlitz writes about another project undertaken by Maggi Lidchi-Grassi:
‘The In recent years, a project close to Maggi’s heart has been the widespread distribution of the homeopathic potentizations of Harmony and Samata, which are based on the relics of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, respectively, for the purpose of effecting positive change in the collective consciousness. The idea for this project was inspired in part by homeopathic colleagues Peter Cappell and Harry Van Der Zee. In the journal Homeopathic Links (2008), Chappell had suggested the idea of finding a homeopathic remedy for humanity’s negativities—such as greed, insensitivity, repressed anger, and hard-hearted over-intellectuality—and that if given to a critical number of people, it might effect a change in the racial consciousness. At the same time as reading Chappell’s article, Maggi also stumbled upon an earlier article by Van der Zee (Homeopathic Links, 2004), who wrote that the success of one of Chappell’s remedies in treating AIDS suggested that “it is possible to include understanding and intention in a homeopathic remedy.” Putting these ideas together, it occurred to her that where better to find that understanding and intention to relieve humanity’s negativities than in Sri Aurobindo and the Mother? She wondered “whether the subtle/spiritual/supramental energy that had been fixed in the cells of their bodies might not be releasable by the homeopathic process of potentization; and to wonder further what the effect might be on someone taking a potentization derived from such startling material.” (Homeopathic Links, summer 2010)
‘Maggi was in possession of some of Mother’s hairs, which the Mother had given her with the words, “All of me is potentially in this” Maggi “hoped that something of the Mother’s unutterable sweetness, compassion and love, as well as her indominable courage and yogic force would transpire in a potentization.” So from these hairs, the remedy Harmony was prepared. Subsequently, some parings of Sri Aurobindo’s nails which had been lovingly preserved by his attendant were given for potentization to make the remedy which came to be called Samata (Sanskrit for equanimity), which was thought might actuate his Himalayan stillness and calm.
‘Over a period of several years, Maggi tested the remedies with several hundred people, primarily in Pondicherry and its surroundings, who took either one or the other or both the remedies. Maggi has collected the testimonies from many of them of their effects and published her findings in the Homeopathic Links journal (summer 2010). She admits that this was not done in a scientific way, for example, by using a control group, but said that the results were so consistently positive (and sometimes profound) that it appeared inescapable that something of Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s energies were working through the remedies. Most of these people were in good health, and reported changes mainly in their state of consciousness, but some people had various health problems such as hypertension, cancer pain, migraine headaches, and chronic depression.
‘She explained that in some ways the results of the two remedies were similar, for example, in helping people “not to get upset by circumstances that would normally be very disturbing, but each had its individual character.” She indicates that the keywords that kept coming up in the reported effects of “Harmony” were “calm, compassion, connectedness, and consciousness in dreams,” and that there were reports of experiencing strong states of love and kindness. For Samata, the term “stillness” was most frequently reported, along with such descriptions as “calm,” serenity,” and “compassion.” While there are few detailed reports that have been published on the effects of Samata, a number of impressive findings on the beneficial health effects of Harmony have been described.
‘One of the “provers” for the Harmony remedy had had chronic pain and many health problems over a period of several years that led her to go to many doctors and alternative treatment providers, none of whom provided lasting relief. Her experience with “Harmony” was different, how-ever. She said that her pain went away and did not come back. Further, she says it has changed her completely, and her partner verified that “she is now a transformed person full of joy.” She characterized this inner change by saying that “somewhere within myself there is no space for fear or dramas. All that is over. All that I have to do and live from now onwards will be from another perspective.” Many others also found profound pain relief. One man who had been experiencing severe cancer pains found instant relief: “For the first time in years, my symptoms seemed to disappear almost completely and it was almost unbelievable… I feel a lot better physically than I have in recent years. At the psychological level Harmony has done wonders for me. I feel a sense of general well- being and a definite difference in the level of my spiritual consciousness.” Maggi added that this man continued to take Harmony daily for many months until his pain disappeared completely, and in fact, he became free of his cancer. Maggi stressed, however, that she was not claiming that Harmony was a cure for cancer. Another man who was in the terminal stages of cancer found an alleviation of his pain, symptoms and agitation, and he succumbed to his cancer after several weeks without the need for morphine. Another woman with cancer pains said that “Miraculously, the pain went away as if Mother took it into her own hand.” Another woman suffering from Parkinson’s Disease found relief such that her sleep improved dramatically: “It is difficult for me to sleep and since taking Harmony I can sleep beautifully, four hours in one go, and this is like a miracle for me.” Another person, who had been having migraine headaches for the past five years, reported that she immediately got a migraine when she first took the remedy, but it subsided after about an hour and she “has not had a migraine since.”
[Source: Collaboration, Fall 2013, pp. 11-12]
Thanks for publishing so many aspects of a great Sadhika, who received so much Love from The Mother. Her noble work in Auroville will be remembered . Her great literary work will also be a treasure for the seekers.
With full appreciation of your great effort in collecting so much details about Maggi’s activities and work.
–Prasenjit–
Dear Anurag,
Many thanks for this detailed and comprehensive profile – life & work – of a kinetic and a creative soul that Maggi was. Her “rich” life enriched the world, enriched India, enriched Auroville, enriched the Aurobindonian world.
A small correction – Maggi’s residence during the last two decades of life was not in Auroville but at the outskirts of Auroville, behind the Fertile community, in a plot she had purchased. Her initial idea was to settle down in a quiet corner of Auroville’s green belt it did not materialize. I will not go into the reasons for this but I would certainly say that certain things need to change, to improve, to evolve in Auroville’s admission system. Auroville’s admission system should be so organised that it identifies and encourages and facilitates the integration of creative talents and sincere collaboration of friends and deserving individuals. Maggi was the most deserving collaborator of Auroville and yet there was and there is no system in place to welcome and facilitate people whose presence can bring much help to Auroville.
In 2004 or 2005, Maggi started donating to the land consolidation cause of Auroville. I would reply to her with a note of thanks. Her letters accompanying the donations always ended with a drawing of a little fairy. Now, after reading this article, I understand better why she always drew a little fairy at the end of her letters. She would also always mention the name of Surakshita, who, I assume, was her companion and partner. On one occasion, she also helped prepare a draft of a better text of communication with the donors which we used for a long time.
One thing about the Master and Mother is that theirs is a golden chain which goes beyond this life. It is a golden chain of the soul. This means that Maggi has just gone behind the curtain to reappear again in a new body, a new mind, a new spirit amidst the human caravan to participate in the onward march to the new world envisioned by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
Dear Brother Aryadeep,
Thank you for pointing out the misinformation about Maggi’s residence. It has been corrected.
With warm regards,
Anurag
Auroville did not accept Maggie on several grounds. I will not enter into this.
The following write-up entitled ‘A NEW YEAR DREAM’ authored by Maggi was published in the April 2003 issue of ‘Mother India’ journal:
Between the night of the 31st of December 2002, the last of the year and the morning of the 1st January 2003, the first of this year I had this dream:
It was known that a very special child who had come with a gift for humanity had been born and we all went to see.
It was a very beautiful little boy, radiant light-filled and very very compassionate, (actually he looked about two and not new-born), and he was standing, supported by the hand of the person who was bathing him and to see him was a balm to the heart. I wanted to share this with you. It was a gift for all of us children of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and for the world.
Here is a review of Maggi Lidchi-Grassi’s book “Great Sir and the Heaven Lady ” authored by P. Raja and published in the October 2002 issue of ‘Mother India’ journal:
All of us who have read the Mahabharata remember the day of the Great Battle of Kurukshetra when Krishna drove Arjuna out to do battle with the Trigartas. They had sworn to kill Arjuna and kill themselves. What could Arjuna do alone against these thou-sands and thousands who had, on the very eve of this day, taken the solemn oath? Noth-ing. Arjuna could do nothing. Not even the bravest warrior and the world’s best archer had a chance. But Krishna was there. And suddenly the Trigartas fell to killing each other. Each saw in his comrades Arjuna or Krishna himself. By some divine multiplication or cloning Krishna had caused the enemy soldiers to fall upon and destroy each other.
We know of Dunkirk, that most critical moment in World War II when the defeat of the Allied forces seemed imminent. The British troops were trapped on a stretch of beach entirely without cover. But suddenly and somehow the weather changed in an unheard of manner for that time of the year and the Allied troops were evacuated under a thick screen of clouds and mist. The enemy aircraft that would have strafed them to ribbons had to return home. Sri Aurobindo speaks of divine intervention here.
Mother says of the Chinese who, in 1962, unexpectedly withdrew when they could so easily have proceeded over the border and invaded India that they were receptive to her force. There are many incidents of their occult working in times of war both on a general level and at an individual level. Mother Would at any time in World War II be “called” and her Being would go out and do what had to be done. Nirodbaran recounts how she came out of her trance one day to tell of two small children who had come home to find their house bombed and their parents dead. Mother had heard their call (was she not the Mother of all?) and had gone out in her subtle body to comfort them and do the necessary.
We cannot know what it was to be the Mother nor Sri Aurobindo in these instances nor how they worked revealing themselves to thousands at the same time in different ways. Sri Aurobindo specially was the soul of reticence. But one does wonder sometimes how it was for those who were rescued and comforted, who were given courage to fight on when all seemed lost, or courage to face death. Did these soldiers (or commanders who were inspired to make brilliant decisions) actually see Sri Aurobindo and Mother or hear them? These people who were open to the force – how did this force come to them, in what guise? For most of them, nearly all of them no doubt, there were only moments of heightened awareness, as we all feel at times when we are open to the force without having visions or hearing voices.
But there are those in war and peace who have the gift of perception of the source of their inspiration through one sense or another. Some are clairvoyant; some are clairaudient.
One such in World War II was John Kelly who was both, an eighteen year old Irish American infantry man, a simple Brooklyn-born boy who knew nothing of India and who had certainly never heard of Sri Aurobindo. It was 1944. Television was in its infancy and nobody knew anything about India except that there was a funny little man in a loincloth and round glasses making trouble for the British.
And yet one night on the battlefield with his mind defeated by the constant deafen-ing shelling, his nerves shattered, John saw Sri Aurobindo, yes, as we see him in the photo by Cartier Bresson, one shoulder bare, blazing majesty and light. Mother too appears to him on the same night as we see her in the photo taken in Japan in a dark long sleeved dress with a little collar and a shawl; a beautiful Goddess.
These heavenly parents led John through his terrible trench war.
There is adoration but also confusion and rebellion in John when he sees Bill Brown, the innocent new recruit, lying dead in the mud with his leg blown off next to him. In desperation and rebellion he weeps.
“Courage,” comes Sri Aurobindo’s voice. Yes. It’s all very well for you, says John. You are up there, with the Lady. But we have got bodies down here. That’s what we have to use down here.
It is the “Lady” who comforts. He will go on fighting because he knows this is what She would want him to do. This is only one of the many, many touching scenes.
Time and again Sri Aurobindo shows him, warning him of a building that is about to collapse, of a stretch of turf that is about to be shelled. And time and again, he leads him into danger so as to help him save not only his squad but his whole unit from death. John’s faith is tested to the breaking point. To be Their instrument is not always easy. At times it seems to John that he has a General sitting on his shoulder permanently. There is no letting up, not even when he incurs a minor wound which might earn him a respite in a rest camp.
“No,” says Sri Aurobindo.
“Look at all the others who goof off,” protests John.
“That’s why the war is taking so long,” replies Sri Aurobindo.
Yes, they really have these conversations. Finally the war ends and John’s unit comes upon a Nazi concentration camp. He understands now why his “Great Sir” (he still does not know who Sri Aurobindo is) is on their side and wishes he had been a better soldier.
After the War John falls into a deep depression. One night he prepares for death and in the darkness he sees a diamond blue light spinning. Sri Aurobindo comes to take him in his subtle body to the Ashram. But this part you must read for yourself. It is a healing dream.
Finally the next morning Sri Aurobindo tries to tell John his name. “Oro-bend.” John returns to America with only one aim: to understand what has happened to
him and to serve his Heavenly Parents. Of course, he doesn’t fit in. All the other men returning know that they will go back to school, or into their fathers’ businesses, to set up a hot-dog-stand, to work in a bank. But when you have received the touch of the Divine you do not know how to formulate your project. Somewhere you know you can only be led. There are no grooves into which to fit.
This is a true story and a wonderful story.
It starts out like any war story; battles, war-torn cities, your best friend dying on the first day. Then slowly the underlying Divine plan is revealed, the greater picture, the war between the forces of Light and the forces of Darkness which World War II was about which Maggi writes in “The Light That Shone Into the Dark Abyss”.
It is brilliantly written and carries you compellingly like a novel, and within all the horror and tragedy, there is humour and irony, Sri Aurobindo’s humour as well as soldier humour and an unforgettable chapter in which John goes to Ireland on leave and meets his pipe-smoking visionary grandmother from whom he has inherited “the sight” and who shows him the fairies, “the little people” flying up into the sunset.
War is a terrible tragedy but it hammered on the anvil that was John Kelly and brought forth his soul.
The story of how Maggi came to write this book is told in a postscript chapter and is in itself an astonishing narrative. It reveals how John learnt who Sri Aurobindo and Mother were and other mysteries.
Suffice it to say that the culmination of writing these two books was the appearance of Sri Aurobindo’s image on her photo of the Mother when “The Light That Shone Into the Dark Abyss” was published. She took it as an endorsement. Better than a Nobel Prize, I would say, wouldn’t you?
Here is another review of Maggi’s book “Great Sir and the Heaven Lady” authored by Archaka. It was published in the October 1995 issue of ‘Mother India’:
Writers are well aware of it: it is difficult to write a book about someone of the opposite sex. Psychologically, they always lack certain elements necessary for being completely true to fact. They may sound convincing, but there is a certain inner truth which escapes them. A male writer will not easily identify himself with a female character; a woman writer’s chances with regard to a male character are no better.
This is the main reason why m my opinion the book by Maggi is so remarkable: Great Sir and the Heaven Lady is the story of a man, told by a woman who removes herself from her femininity. Were this work to appear without the author’s name being given, everyone would think 1t to be the work of a man. But no: it is a woman who, from within, has reconstructed for us the true story of a young American soldier.
And here we find a second cause for wonder and surprise. For if it is difficult enough to change one’s sex in a sense, in order to be able to write a book, it is practically impossible for a woman to don the skin of a soldier and to evoke those essentially virile emotions which are created by the sight of a battlefield, by participation in the fights, and by the death of comrades with whom one exchanged jokes only the moment before.
And Maggi accomplishes this feat with the greatest possible ease and simplicity: she is John Kelly, the young infantryman who has a brush with death on every page and whom God guides and protects.
For she is not afraid to add another supreme difficulty to those I just mentioned. Her book about war is in fact a book about spirituality which may not come as a surprise to those who have read her “Battle of Kurukshetra”, but which, when it is a question of describing recent historic events, becomes a supreme literary achievement.
No preaching, no propaganda. Nothing but a description of facts by a novelist of the category of D. H. Lawrence: a profound human warmth, a poetry which arises straight from a simple and vibrant language, the sense of a divine presence at the core of all things, a divinity which is conscious of all our individual movements and of the place they occupy in the mystery of the world.
John Kelly, who is not at all a plaster saint, who is a young run-of-the-mill American and who has a girlfriend back in the United States, is inwardly a man with an unusual receptivity, a fact of which he becomes very much aware. A voice counsels him. It is the voice of “Great Sir”, as he calls him: Sri Aurobindo, as he finally discovers (but without knowing at once who Sri Aurobindo is in reality). An ineffable love enfolds him It is the love of Her whom he calls the “Heaven Lady”: the Mother (whom he will meet later at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram accompanied by Maggi).
I have nothing to add about this great and beautiful book, so powerful and so touching.
Really nothing?
Yes, there is one more thing: we are all of us John Kellys, humble little solders full of ignorance and naiveté, guided by a divine voice in the night of the world. It is not the least of Maggi’s virtues that she allows us to understand—that is, to have faith and hope, to listen within ourselves.
Here is a detailed account of the history of ‘The Quiet Healing Centre’ authored by Maggi herself. This article was published in the November 2006 issue of ‘Mother India’ under the title of HOW “THE QUIET HEALING CENTRE” QUIETLY CAME TO BE:
‘When did it start being? It could be said that this strip of beach was waiting since the beginning of time. We know that Mother had told Gautam, who owned that plot of land, that She wanted it reserved for a therapeutic centre. She Herself had gone there for walks in the early days and felt its special energy. Mother gave it the name “Quiet” and wrote it in Her own hand on the back of a photo of the beach with palm trees and a view of the sea. She never mentioned it to me in all the years that I was seeing Her every day, though She told me more than 35 years ago that She had seen, in fact that She was seeing, a wonderful project in Auroville which I would be responsible for realising. She was seeing it even as She spoke to me and was obviously charmed and delighted by it. It was “Quiet”. I would like to say a little about Mother’s great interest in healing about which She spoke to me on many occasions, especially concerning Auroville.
‘Mother asked me to write the first brochure of what Auroville wanted to be, as though it were a being, which of course it is, an entity with its own soul. She would say, “Auroville wants to be the City of Light” or “Auroville wants to be the city that heals” and this was a function that She felt as very central to Auroville, a healing at many levels.
‘It may surprise many that in those very early days She was even thinking of bringing out an Italian scientist who seemed to have found a cure for cancer from goat serum. It is known that goats never contract cancer, just as ducks never catch cold. In spite of the fact that She was always very much against injections She spoke of the possibility of letting him continue his research in Auroville because of the difficulties he was encountering in Italy. The Italian architect, Paolo Tommasi re-members this since Mother asked him to contact the man when he returned to Italy. Auroville would have supported him and his research. In the event nothing came of it. Mother also paid for the passage of a French healer that She had Satprem invite to the Ashram, as readers of the Agenda will know. I quote these two instances to show how much Mother felt that it was a function of Auroville to heal. She once said that emotional and other suffering was all drama, and She waved Her hand to dismiss it. There was still only one suffering and that was physical suffering. Of course this is what She said to me at a certain time and in a certain context, and as we know She must have said other things at other times.
‘It was long after, in 1983, that in the course of a long illness Nata had a very painful experience, both psychologically and physically, at a hospital in Europe. He had recovered splendidly from double pneumonia, with the help of a homeopathic remedy and visited a hospital for a check-up. His lungs were found to be clear, but he was given a diuretic I.V. which landed him in the intensive care ward. In this particular experience he found the doctors and nurses so cold and uncaring (one nurse even threatened him) that he who had never ever complained about his long illness actually wept, not for himself but for the condition of the world. It was probably here that the seed was planted for “Quiet”.
‘Here in the Ashram with the ever available and compassionate help of Dr. Dilip we were able to nurse Nata lovingly. Dr. Dilip only had to put a hand upon Nata’s arm for him to feel better. Like all true doctors, Dr. Dilip is a healer. Nata felt he was a shaman. One evening, some weeks before he left his body while I was feeding him he said suddenly, “There should be a hospital of love like this.” There was such a warm yearning aspiration in Nata’s voice that the words must have been mantric. I was filled with an unexpected knowledge and power and I kept on repeating, “There will be such a place, there will be such a place, we will build it.” A certain reasonable part of myself looked on in smiling disbelief. It had no intention of getting involved in this madness, but the words kept on coming out of my mouth, “We will do it, it will be done.” Nata too smiled, refusing to take the words seriously. He knew he had only a short time left in his body and patted my hand reminding me of this. But all I could do was to repeat what I had already said, that we would do it. If Nata’s words had been mantric, my voice must have carried so much conviction that the next day Nata got up and, dragging his oxygen cylinder with him, made a few crude drawings at his desk. He was an engineer, but those very rudimentary sketches were all he was able to manage before crawling back into bed. Those sketches brought “Quiet” one step nearer the physical plane. The most important part of this story has been told. Nata left his body on the 28th of March 1985. Perhaps there is not so much to add.
‘I had intended never, never to leave the Ashram again. Vishwajit predicted that I was going to have to visit several countries, which made me laugh in disbelief, but before the end of the year two factors joined to make his predictions come true. I had to find funds to finish Udavi school which Nata had started, inspired by Mother’s wish that he do something for the village of Edayanchavadi. I was told that there was a foundation in America that would probably give us the money if I went there to explain what we were doing in Udavi. And that very year I received an invitation out of the blue to present a paper at a Congress on spirituality, very near the headquarters of the Foundation. All my expenses were to be paid from the moment I left Pondicherry. I prepared a paper for the science section on the spiritual implications of homeopathy and it was accepted. This invitation came as a first indication that things would happen to help the “Hospital of Love” if I could remain open to the possibilities. I already knew that in the States I would research as much as possible into whatever lay on my path, the therapies which supported the intelligence of the organism and indeed one possibility after another opened up, mainly through people that I met at the Congress. The Native Americans have an astonishing knowledge and a cosmic comprehension of the causes and cures of disease. They understand that the disease itself is medicine. Everything is medicine.
‘Friends were ever eager to drive Ishita and myself to centres of healing. It was in Mexico that I remembered Mother’s deep desire to find a cure for cancer. There is a centre just over the border from the States where cancer is actually cured through diet, coffee enemas to stimulate the liver plus a vitamin which is extracted from the apricot kernel. I spoke to people in the clinic set amidst lovely grounds. Their tumours had begun to shrink after three weeks. One of the nurses there had originally come with a tumour the size of a grapefruit and had stayed on after her cure. This is the Gerson therapy named after the German physician who prescribed it. His daughter Charlotte explained that it was banned in the States because of the pharmaceutical industries. My interest in homeopathy was growing apace. I had already attended the courses of the Argentine master Professor Masi in Florence and now, as predicted by Vishwajit, I followed the teachings of George Vithoulkas in Greece and several other countries. I returned to India with the conviction that the “Hospital of Love” was unfolding. George Vithoulkas had agreed to come to Auroville and the Ashram and so, around his acceptance, developed the first alternative healing multi-disciplinary Congress in India which was held in Auroville and Pondicherry in January 1987. It was on this occasion that the intention of building a complementary healing centre was announced.
‘I better go back a few months. When I returned from my homeopathic courses in Greece Gautam caught me on my way to the Ashram one day. “Didn’t anyone tell you that I’ve been wanting to see you?” he said. He had heard that I was looking for a piece of land on the seafront for the “Hospital of Love” so that we could have hydrotherapies. Friends and therapists had donated a modest sum to acquire land. When I understood that he was trying to sell the piece of land on which Mother had wanted a therapeutic centre a deep silence descended on me.
‘Of course.
‘It was Mother all along. All remaining doubts evaporated. The money available was very little, certainly much too little for such a prize plot right on the beach, but faithful to Mother’s wish, Gautam let it go for whatever was there.
‘For seven years it was slow uphill work creating an infrastructure, the enclosure, borewell and a windmill, persuading the villagers that “Quiet” was no longer the place for their toddy shop and that the coconut trees could no longer be tapped. And then suddenly there was enough money to start the building. On the day the foundation stone was laid a blessing packet was placed under it, one of the two blessing packets that Mother had given Nata when he had in 28 days to complete the amphitheatre for the inauguration of Auroville in 1968. An enormous amount of earth had had to be moved with mumpties, but somehow, working three shifts, around the clock, the whole thing including underground toilets was finished in 26 days. There was certainly something in that packet.
‘Designed by Popo, the actual construction was finished in record time. And just before the inauguration Popo told me that in all his years of construction work in Auroville it was the first time that there had been no problems. Every time he came to the site and asked if there were any difficulties he was told, “No. No difficulties”— something totally new in his experience. I myself was convinced we had an Italian engineer pulling strings from other planes as well.
‘The story doesn’t end there.
‘One day shortly after “Quiet” had been inaugurated but before the Healing Retreats had started a burly and very excited Russian by the name of Joseph (I wouldn’t dream of trying to write it the way it is pronounced in Russian) knocked loudly at our door.
“I have to talk you Maggi”, he said, “I know that you are very reclused. People have told but they told also you can speak me about Temple. I want to speak you also about Temple”, he pointed at the chairs in our little enclosed garden for permission to sit. We sat and he closed his eyes obviously much moved about what he wanted to say and something in his vibration communicated itself to me. He wanted to ask me about the Temple in Auroville and how it had started. Now it was true that I had been in what must have been the first conversation ever held regarding the Matrimandir when Paolo Tommasi the Italian architect came to speak to Nata (who was in those days still in charge of all Auroville construction work) about his inspiration for a Temple which was to be the centre and force of cohesion for the new city. But there were now many others in Auroville who could speak to Joseph about the Matrimandir.
‘However I tried to re-evoke for him how stirred we had been by Paolo’s inspiration that day and how inspired we had been by Mother’s vision of the Inner Chamber complete with pillars. Which pillars? He asked me questions which didn’t at all fit in with what I was telling him and it became clear that we were speaking at cross-purposes. In the end we sorted it out: he was talking about the Temple of Healing. He was talking about “Quiet”, about Mother’s “Quiet Healing Centre”. It is true that with its multiple shiny white domes gleaming in the sun and even more by moonlight “Quiet” does look like a temple, a precious little temple set among palm trees with the sound of the sea and the rustle of palm fronds inviting to meditation.
‘This is what Joseph told me: He was a healer and ten years earlier he had been meditating one day in America when he had a clear vision of a Temple of Healing on a beach front with its white domes and palm trees. The vision had touched him with its quiet beauty and the special energy that he had felt emanating from it. He had known, had been “told” during his experience that it was still on another plane and that it would take ten years to be realised but he hadn’t been told where it would be situated. He had come to visit Auroville with his French companion Tara and since all the guest houses were very full and he was a healer they had been directed to “Quiet” where…he had found his Temple.
‘For the second time in ten years an enormous silence descended on me blocking out all irrelevancies.
‘We sat without speaking for a long time. I recalled Mother’s smile of musing delight as She saw “Quiet” and told me of a project I would be responsible for in Auroville. I heard Nata’s mantric words, “There should be a hospital of love, ‘un ospedale de l’amore’”—and all the toil and moil, the turmoil to bring things down from that plane where they already exist—ten years of planning and anxieties and frustrations (though never doubts) and how many years for the enormously more complex construction which the Mother had seen thirty-five years ago. That meditation room had been there all ready and waiting thirty-five years before and so was the whole Matrimandir with all Mother’s projects not yet realised on this plane, but waiting for action to be taken in the physical.
‘I remembered when in 1965 Mother wanted us to go and visit Auroville, and had us driven out to the area, eroded land and a few palm trees on the horizon. One had to use a lot of imagination and faith. And then something else came to me with stunning force. Yes “Quiet” …the Matrimandir …Mother had seen them. They were all waiting …where? Not up there as we always like to think since our minds are committed somehow to layers of space, as well as linear time, but waiting somewhere embedded in the present itself, and “Quiet” and the Matrimandir and all Mother’s promises are only a tiny part of the whole in which we have the enormous privilege of participating in, participating in a special way, for the whole world is participating in the huge change. The whole world is in transition towards that other promise and vision of Mother’s; the world of the Supramental.
‘Like “Quiet” was in 1985 when Nata uttered those words and even before when Mother saw it and spoke of it and how long before that! The Supramental world is embedded in the present and has been since the beginning of Time.
‘We are living out the Divine Plan. To remember that all the day-to-day difficulties will inevitably be resolved hastens the realisation. There are so many things that have been left to us to help us remember, like Mother’s declaration of 13th April 1962 which She dictated to Pavitra —
“And there was the certitude that what is to be done is done and that the Supramental Manifestation is realised….
“The certitude that what is to be done is done.
“All the results of the falsehood had disappeared: death was an illusion, sickness was an illusion, ignorance was an illusion—something that had no reality, no existence. Only Love and Love and Love and Love—immense, formidable, stupendous, carrying everything.
“And how to express it in the world? It was like an impossibility, because of the contradiction. But then it came: “You have accepted that the world should know the Supramental Truth… and it will be expressed totally, integrally.” Yes, yes….
“And the thing is done.
‘which brings us back to the inspiration for this article.
‘Nata was a man of enormous conviction which is a sort of power in itself.
‘I can still hear that aspiration in his voice, “There should be a hospital of love.” It was like a prayer, and it wasn’t for himself since he knew the days left to him were very few. The result of that aspiration has often been an inspiration for me. It is as though there exists a wanting that is true wanting, not desire, something quite different from desire, which has great strength, enormous potential, when you put your whole heart into something you move mountains and…a “Quiet Healing Centre”.
‘Well “Quiet” was finished in 1987. Even when I learnt that Mother had wanted a Healing Project on Gautam’s land I had no idea of exactly what She had in mind or rather above mind, and I don’t know why it never occurred to me to ask Gautam if She had said anything to him on the subject but it didn’t. When it was all finished Gautam came to visit “Quiet” and said, “Well what has been done is very much like what Mother wanted.” Some years later he fished out an old piece of paper on which he had written down Mother’s ideas for “Quiet”, and I was amazed, though I shouldn’t have been at how almost exactly “Quiet” conformed to Mother’s vision. But why was I amazed? Hadn’t She been building it all along? Sometimes our amazement seems a lack of faith. We can’t get rid of that “I am the doer.” Though goodness knows Mother sowed enough hints all along the road. First She said, “I’m seeing this place in Auroville”, then She got Nata practically on his deathbed to prompt me, then Gautam stood barring my way one day to say Mother wanted this Healing Centre 20 years ago, then She sent Joseph to say it was all already done before you laid the foundation stone, so why should I have been amazed when finally Mother’s plan surfaced in black and white on the paper Gautam handed me?
‘Oh Unbeliever! Finally what remains to amaze me is the tenacity of the ego we harbour which forgets who is doing the work.
‘Well never mind. Mother got around it and built “Quiet” in spite of it all.
‘At last at the beginning of 1997, exactly 10 years after the conference at which the project was first announced the lights went on, the telephone connection was given, all two days before the opening which Nirod came to grace. Dr. Diwan Harish Chand, the homeopath who had once saved Nata’s life very appropriately came down from Delhi to preside. He had planted the first tree 10 years before at the time of the multi-disciplinary Congress, and now cut the ribbon for “Quiet”.
‘“Quiet” was all ready and waiting for patients like the bride waiting for Her groom.
‘And he was not long in coming. In fact he arrived immediately, “Quiet’s” first patient: a youngish Westerner in his thirties. (I don’t give his nationality to allow him to remain anonymous even though he likes to tell his story.)
‘He was habituated to cocaine and he came sad-eyed and desperate and penniless with a letter from a friend asking me to do something to help him, in fact to save him. He had been through detoxifying treatments in hospital, and was taking methadone to ease him out of his craving but nothing helped.
‘“Quiet”… where Mother was waiting for him in the guise of a whole team of caring therapists, did help.
‘Afterwards when telling of his experience there he placed his hands on his chest to show us how his first therapist had approached him. It was like feeling the hand of love and healing for the first time. It was what had started to make him relax, his first massage. All day for many days he was lovingly subjected to mud packs, whirlpool baths, massages, physiotherapy, homeopathy and whatever treatments “Quiet” offered at the time, including just friendship and caring. Someone was detached to be with him all the time.
‘Slowly he emerged from his nightmare. Not only did he emerge into Mother’s Light but he found in himself the makings of a therapist. Through deep suffering he had found his vocation and his spiritual path. He has since studied and elaborated his own therapy, helped several young people on hard drugs to come out of their agony and has written a book about it all. He is an Aurovillian.
‘That was the very beginning of “Quiet”.
‘And what of Nata’s vision? How far did that correspond to the final result? Well as far as those first little plans so laboriously drawn by him, not at all. Though there is no doubt that they did bring “Quiet” down one step so that it became more believable and concrete per se and for me. In fact initially “Quiet” for one reason and another went through three different architects before the final plans were drawn up. One of the reasons was that it was believed by some that there would never be enough funds. Another was that many people were of the opinion that the beach should be developed with houses for individuals. Mother’s vision prevailed.
‘And as for the “Ospedale de l’Amore” it changed its name to what Mother had decided many years earlier and it really couldn’t be called a hospital at all. “Healing Centre” was much more appropriate. And yet…
‘Not long after “Quiet” was inaugurated it was decided to hold ten-day Healing Retreats at regular intervals. These retreats offered a variety of healing and releasing therapies including yoga which Mother had specifically mentioned, mud packs, oxygen immersion baths, jet baths, meditations, gem therapy, meditation music, work on the consciousness of the cells, homeopathy, various kinds of massages, dance therapy, back adjustments and even past life recall by an extraordinarily gifted and very lovely, compassionate Englishwoman, Jean.
‘The beach with its palm trees and the sound of the sea were themselves a therapy and people were asked to be as quiet as possible with as few preoccupations about their normal lives and work as possible and no contacts with the outside. The Mother had wanted “Quiet” to be a place where people could be still to recover from the jars of life.
‘At the end of ten days all the participants and therapists met to share their experiences and we were invited. As we walked in one of the participants, Shraddhavan, our “Mother India” poetess, embraced me. Her eyes were shining. I looked around at the circle of participants and therapists. They were smiling.
‘Many of the participants were known to me. They had spent time in the Ashram before going to Auroville. Others had come for homeopathy. Some like Bhavana were old-timers for whom I had carried messages to Mother. They were all beaming quietly. All had a look I didn’t remember seeing in them before. The tensions produced by riding their great black bikes over the difficult Auroville roads had smoothed out.
‘They had had an “Ospedale de l’Amore” ten-day treatment.
‘We all sat around in a circle and one participant after another gave an account of his/her ten days, its result, its impact on his/her life, the resolutions it had provoked for changes in lifestyle, exercise etc. Almost everybody spoke of their sense of increased well-being and release of tensions, both physical and psychological, which was to be expected but each and everyone of the participants without exception spoke with wonder or deep emotion about the caring and love they felt they had received as an important part of their healing experience. And then one of them, Guy of the Auroville Land Fund said something which brought tears to my eyes. He said that he had heard that “Quiet” had been conceived as “The Hospital of Love” and that was what it was. It had fulfilled exactly that function, and so also after all, exactly Nata’s aspiration had been realised.
‘Then, just as I was putting the finishing touches to this piece of writing and with a sort of synchronicity I love and which Mother tells us is the hallmark of the incoming age, I read a little piece in the latest Auroville “News and Notes” with the heading of “Thank You for Another Quiet Retreat”:
‘”I would like to thank all the wonderful friends at Quiet Healing Centre for a very lovely retreat. There is a great power in love which heals, and I felt all week totally immersed in this loving kindness.
(Signed) Jill”
‘So nine years after that first “Quiet” retreat, the flame of the “Ospedale de l’Amore” was still burning.
‘And in case any confirmation was still needed concerning the aspiration of a very loving man about two weeks later there was another small piece by Dianna concerning the following retreat from which I quote:
“Mother used to walk on this beach and actually visualized and named it “Quiet”. She mentioned many times that Auroville should be a place of healing on many levels. And Quiet has beautifully manifested Her vision with its glittering white domes and gentle caring atmosphere.
“I personally cannot imagine Auroville without Quiet’s support to aching limbs and spirits. To go down to that vast ocean and beach after the dense leafiness and even denser emotions of Auroville is to travel a long journey away. I felt they are truly offering us a gift on a silver plate with great warmth, love and a high level of professionalism.
“May many people be able to receive your love through Mother’s dream.”
‘And here, to finish this piece, is something else embedded in our present, a vision, a reminder, a promise.
I saw the Omnipotent’s flaming pioneers
Over the heavenly verge which turns towards life
Come crowding down the amber stairs of birth;
Forerunners of a divine multitude,
Out of the paths of the morning star they came
Into the little room of mortal life.
I saw them cross the twilight of an age,
The sun-eyed children of a marvellous dawn,
The great creators with wide brows of calm,
The massive barrier-breakers of the world
And wrestlers with destiny in her lists of will,
The labourers in the quarries of the gods,
The messengers of the Incommunicable,
The architects of immortality.
Into the fallen human sphere they came,
Faces that wore the Immortal’s glory still,
Voices that communed still with the thoughts of God,
Bodies made beautiful by the spirit’s light,
Carrying the magic word, the mystic fire,
Carrying the Dionysian cup of joy,…
Sri Aurobindo
(Savitri, pp. 343-44)
Maggi on K.D. Sethna alias Amal Kiran :
‘When I first reached the Ashram (at last) at the beginning of 1960, in good time for that extraordinary, memorable golden first anniversary of the Supramental Descent (for which Amal had received a special signal from Mother) I met many people. The two who most amazed and left an indelible impression on me were Nolini-da and Amal. My heart opened to both of them and both enveloped me in their love in different ways. Nolini-da with that calm, silent warmth of his eyes. (At the age of 75 he asked me to teach him Spanish (!) and we had some memorable lessons.) But I am here to write about Amal.
‘I was introduced to him as a French writer from Africa who wrote in English. If I expected a literary exchange I was mistaken though not at all disappointed. The first thing that struck me was that Amal, who had been pounding away at his typewriter, immediately turned away from it to give me his whole attention. He was smiling and full of good humour. And this in itself was ground for admiration. I was to learn that he was never disturbed by such intrusions. His big heart did not consider them intrusions. Never once did I see him irritated by the many invasions from visitors though he was one of the most visited people in the Ashram. It still is a source of amazement to me that in spite of this, of the monthly responsibility of ‘Mother India’ and of his what is commonly termed voluminous correspondence, he has published over fifty books and numerous articles. In all these forty-five years I have met no other writer who displayed such equanimity when interrupted at work.
‘To come back to this first visit. I remember him calling to his wife, Sehra, “Maggi has come all the way from Africa. She must be in need of refreshment.” He emanated both hospitality and joviality and kept a protective eye over me during my first three months’ visit. This protection extended to my departure via Madras where he had contacted someone to guide me around the city and to put me on a train for Bombay for which city he had also given me addresses of family and friends and letters of introduction.
‘The spiritual side of his influence can hardly be extricated from the very informal and humorous tone of our exchange, for it was woven into his conversation mostly in the form of anecdotes, reminiscences and quotations in the style with which readers of ‘Mother India’ are familiar. But the great treasure which I took back to Africa after that first (and last) visit was, as well as his deep warmth, his book of poetry, ‘The Secret Splendour’, with which he had presented me. I read the poems over and over again on the plane journey back to Africa and they not only sustained me in my painful separation from Mother and the Ashram but seemed to be part of the air currents on which the plane sped.
‘…’tis with mouth of clay I supplicate:
Speak to me heart to heart words intimate,
And all Thy formless glory turn to love
And mould Thy love into a human face.
‘Those lines were so much my own aspiration as well as what had been experienced in my first meeting with Mother that they never failed to draw psychic tears. That poem became a prayer and a mantra for me. Perhaps I was not able to convey to Amal how much and how deeply his verse touched me and, I’ve no doubt, influenced me as a poet. I still find it difficult to do so now as I write.
‘When I returned nine months later, Amal was there for me. He visited me in the little house (it was the converted stable of the big colonial house next door on Balcony street) that Mother had restored for me. He made sure that all was well, that I was comfortable and that the servant was all right and of course he asked and I told how things had been for me while I was away from Mother and the Ashram and, after that truly close beginning, in all these years we seldom met. We hardly met on the physical plane, that is. For Amal slipped in under my door every month or through my letter box with each copy of ‘Mother India’ or flung himself over the garden wall. Every issue of Mother India came like a personal message. With ‘Mother India’ he introduced me to devotees who had left their bodies as well as those still living and whom I would otherwise never have met. They shared with me their intimate experiences and darshans of Sri Aurobindo and Mother, their difficulties which were sometimes mine and their victories which sustained me and gave me hope. I learnt of how others had arrived at my Master’s feet, in what intricate ways they had been drawn to join in our great endeavour.
‘The quotations in the first pages were always just what I needed to be told at that time. I was introduced to parts of the infinite path and surprised by new lights on epics and poems I had studied in a dry and analytical manner at University.
‘Yes, with each issue Amal sent there came new lights and delights, and, very important in those first years, a growing and heart-warming sense of community.
‘I read his published letters to others, often as though they had been written to me. Indeed their caring and sage advice served me often and well.
When eight years after my return I had a sudden opening in poetry he was there to receive and print and sometimes comment on my verse. And he still is there nearly half a century later.
‘Sometimes a person comes into your life and runs through it like a slender thread of light of which you’re often not aware until occasion or circumstance runs it between finger and thumb as it were or more correctly between brain and heart. There have been many such when I’ve read his books or articles. When I was researching my ‘The Light that Shone into the Dark Abyss’ I came upon his article on the forces behind World War II. It was so good, so compelling that I quoted the whole thing. I did an enormous amount of research in preparation for this book, a sort of document which had the purpose of revealing the occult war behind the war of 1939-45, (World War II) and Sri Aurobindo’s and Mother’s role in it and I found nothing to compare with Amal’s insights and his exposition of Sri Aurobindo’s Light on the subject. It was a source of inspiration and aroused my admiration for the extent and depth of his knowledge. It deserves the same comment as Sri Aurobindo passed on his essay on Freewill though I make it without equal authority (!) “The article is excellent. In fact it could not be bettered.” One of the other occasions on which I felt that slender thread almost tangibly was when I was asked to write something for ‘Mother India’ on its 50th Anniversary in 1999. It was then as I wrote, as I conjured up the months and months and years and years of receiving ‘Mother India’ of the Blue Map with Mother’s Symbol at its heart on a pure white field that I realised how much it meant to me. And of course that meant Amal.
‘Yes, my heart still lifts every time I find ‘Mother India’ in my letter box or slipped under my door. It has been an essential part of my life in the Ashram. Life would have been poorer for me had not Amal one day launched this venture. Readers of ‘Mother India’ and those who visited his centenary exhibition must be aware of Amal’s dizzying encyclopedic knowledge but when I think of Amal it is primarily of Amal the poet and Amal of the warm heart. A month before his hundredth birthday some of my new poems were read by him and with his usual kindness he took the trouble of dictating comments on them, comments which say as much about himself as about the verses. Of one of them he says, “It’s a very strong-hearted yet gentle-handed work. I welcome it into my deepest self.” Of another, “There is a brave beauty in the words that makes us bind the words to our hearts.” At a hundred, Amal’s heart is still green and responsive and as eternally young as his dear cherubic extraordinarily unwrinkled visage.
‘There is one subject on which I disagree with Amal. He seems like Nolini-da to think it unlikely that now that Mother has left her body the transformation can be progressing, while I belong to the school that believes it is in full swing, the Force working behind the veil to wake up cells here and there and everywhere and really when one looks at Amal’s unlined face one has to wonder what his cells are up to but anyhow there should be many Amals, many Clear Rays in the world and they should all live to be at least a hundred.
‘So, for everything, thank you Amal and Bonne Fête en retard.’
[Written on the occasion of Amal Kiran’s Birth Centenary. Published in the May 2005 issue of ‘Mother India’.]
An interesting write-up by Maggi published in the April 1999 issue of ‘Mother India”:
I remember reading to the Mother the letter of a devotee recounting the incidents of her relationship with another devotee with whom she simply could not get on. The Mother listened in silence, chin on chest, eyes closed. The letter requested an answer, a solution. For a long time after I had finished reading there was silence. Then the Mother shook her head. She looked as though she were going to say something. Then, taking a breath, she shook her head again, and closing her eyes went inside herself.
Having to read certain letters regarding situations of human conflict to the Mother was not a comfortable or comforting task, and yet I could not refuse these letters. For one thing the Mother had given me this work asking me to help put out the fires whenever possible. The little fairy which she said inhabited me had a flair for fostering peace. And actually, whether under the influence of the “petite fée” or not, I have for a very long time known that it is worth putting in a lot of work to avoid conflict and misunderstanding which waste time and energy.
Still, thus particular occasion marked a conscious reformation of my attitude to conflict, because when the Mother finally opened her eyes she stroked my head, which was lying on the arm of her chair, and said, “Mon petit, people do not understand, when there is no harmony I cannot enter. It is like a barrier, disharmony is a barrier which keeps me out. Very few people understand this. They want my help. They want my blessings, but…” and here she pointed at the letter in my hand, ‘they behave like that. They keep me out. They make no effort.” She took the letter and wrote that the only solution was to surrender all difficulties to the Divine. And then she closed her eyes again and put her head down…
For all the time that the Mother was silent and turned within, and while she was writing, her words were working inside me so strongly that a vivid image of a closed door formed inside my mind. I had never seen it so clearly before. One invoked a higher energy, the Mother’s force, but if one were in disharmony with oneself or others it was like shutting the door on Her face. It was a disturbing realization, one of those times when one hears or reads something that makes such a deep impression that life is never quite the same afterwards.
The Mother could see what had happened to me because she leaned forward to embrace me and then asked me to read the next letter.
I can only say that the person who walked out of the Mother’s room that day was not the same person as had walked m. Not that I have always succeeded, but it is deeply embedded in my heart and mind that one must never begrudge the time and effort to try and establish harmony, and I believe that when one fails it is because one is awkward and probably not entirely sincere, the attempt coming more from the mind than from the heart.
But mostly it requires very, very little time or effort. The Mother says that if you smile at your enemy you disarm him.
Sometimes years of bitterness and resentment can be avoided if one takes the trouble, if trouble is the word at all, to write a note which says, “In case there was a misunderstanding, I want you to know I didn’t mean it that way … ” or, “If I have offended you I want to tell you how much 1t means to me that,” or, “How sorry I am.”
It is often easier and more effective to clear things up in writing, which gives the other person time to cool down, to be touched, whereas to meet someone head-on, even when one goes with the best of intentions, often ends in a collision, but if one does meet the person before the letter is written, a smile is recommended by the Mother, a gesture. In the Ashram the Mother has given us the delightful possibility of communicating in the language of flowers. Harmony, Collaboration with its spicy smell, or that big floppy good-natured looking flower called Goodwill.
At times, intentionally or unintentionally, we all do fairly hurtful things to one another. How much suffering could be avoided if one could simply, honestly say, “Sorry”. And as the Mother says, there is so much suffering in the world that one should not add a single drop to it, a single tear.
On a couple of occasions the Mother left me speechless by apologising. Once she had given me the work of writing out some passages of Savitri in very, very large letters so that she could read them by herself. She provided me with some beautiful thick felt pens and some refill ink since the large writing used a lot of ink. The next day she apologised several times for not having shown me how to remove the pen cap to refill the pen. She said she hadn’t been able to go to sleep thinking of how thoughtless she had been not to show me the way to fill the pen and how I might be struggling with it. On another occasion the Mother had mentioned a piece of personal information regarding someone whose letter I had read to her and I had sent a note up to the Mother saying that I wouldn’t want that person to think I had been divulging this personal matter. The Mother wrote back explaining why she had mentioned it, but that she would be more careful in future!
Once when Dilip Kumar Roy was very upset by something Sri Aurobindo had written, Sri Aurobindo wrote back gently that had he known the effect his letter would have had he would not have written it. That the Divine can come down to us in this manner gives one pause.
It is astonishing how many people doing yoga, our yoga, still say. “But why apologise if you’re in the right, if you never even intended to give offence. It’s their problem.” Well, for one thing we’re told on great authority that when there’s an argument both sides are in the wrong. But the thing to remember is that we are closing the door not only on the other person but on something much more important, on Divine help…
How important is it when people disagree, when devotees disagree among themselves? Probably most people have felt, even if briefly, at some time or other, “After all, we’re only human. It’s not possible to go through life without some bumps. Everyone gets irritable sometimes, and anyhow, some people really deserve … “Well, when the Mother met the Asura who inspired Hitler, she said to him, ‘I’m going to do with your people what you’re always doing with my children” And she set about putting Hitler against Russia. Evidently, when we dig our heels in to justify ourselves and maintain a position, we are being inspired by none other than what fosters world wars, concentration camps, holocausts and so on. There’s a thought! …