A long-term Aurovilian’s description of her first experience of darshan in 1971.
Written 2008 for the publication Remembering Ma.
My first darshan 07.11.71
In 1969, while running a TV magazine in Holland, I one day remarked to a close musician friend of mine: “Oh dear, I wish I had something to believe in … I have so much energy and it’s such a waste to use it only for these dumb little stories we have to feed the public with … !”
Some weeks later my friend brought me a magazine, Bres Planète, in which I found an article by Ruud Lohman, “They build their own city”. “I think this is what you are looking for!” he said. I read the article, got in touch with a contact address given in it, went to a reading with slide shows and started reading Satprem’s “The Adventure of Consciousness”, in Dutch …
New worlds opened for me … Yes, yes, yes … , I kept thinking and feeling and sensing, this was it for me.
In order not to come with empty hands, I kept my job for another year, and it was in September 1971, after a half year of traveling in India (because “once I disappear in that Auroville, I probably never will get out of it …”) that I arrived in Pondicherry.
Immediately attracted by the very special energy field prevailing in the Ashram, I inwardly had the strong sense that I first needed to get closer, more familiar, more intimate with the Mother before going to Auroville. So I decided to remain in the Ashram for some time.
And then a bizarre problem arose. While I had given up my all and everything, had burned all my ships in order to come to the Mother and Auroville, I now found myself embodying an enormous resistance. For days and days I walked around Pondy, in the park, at the beach, sat in the playground, the Samadhi, continually struggling with thoughts like “How can she be divine … , she was married … , even had children … , what is divine anyway … ” etc. etc. … Until the day came that I finally shook myself, realising “What on earth do I care who she is or what she did … , let me listen to her message at least … !”
Having made up my mind, I then was ready. I asked for a darshan and, when the day came, went to the Ashram’s flower section to search for a flower to give to Mother. When asked which flower I wanted, I had absolutely no idea and suggested they give me something white.
A friendly sadhak gave me a bunch of white plumeria and there I went, to the Samadhi, waiting downstairs … , waiting on the stairs … , waiting half way … , it was a dreamlike, timeless waiting with a strange sort of intensity, as if there was no past and no future … , just a very full everlasting moment of waiting … , awaiting …
It was as if the space outside of me and the space inside of me had become exactly the same, mingling and getting stronger and stronger … , I could hear its muffled kind of sound …
And then I found myself in the room … and there she was … , so very very fragile and almost transparent … , almost blue … She was so light … , hardly sitting in her chair, — and the space intensified, throbbing, sounding …
When it was my turn I gave my flower and knelt down for her as I had seen the ones before me do. In one of Sri Aurobindo’s Letters On Yoga I had read that one had to “let Mother look into your heart,” so in all my naivety I looked up at her, opening my eyes for her to look into them. I didn’t look at her face, at her person, I just held my head a bit backwards and found myself opening my eyes, wide, like doors.
And there it came … , it was as if two beams or streams bored themselves, very steadily and gradually straight down into me … , almost like two rods physically drilling downwards, very slowly, very gently … And after staying there for some silent, ageless, timeless time … , the two beams very gently and slowly withdrew again. I felt them leaving me, and then … I looked at her … I saw her face, and she saw mine … , and we smiled and smiled … , and I felt her little tick on the top of my head and someone gave me a flower, and I floated and smiled and beamed out of the room, downstairs, into the world …
— and from that time onwards everything, everything was different …
By Mauna
Ruud Lohman is the author of A House for the Third Millennium (Essays on Matrimandir), Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, l992.