WHY is it that we are drawn irresistibly into the presence of the Mother again and again when once we had visited her? Ere we had seen her, our life is a quest for some- thing that we do not know: after the first visit to Jillelia- mudi, it is a quest for the inner solace which we had experienced in her presence- it is a quest for something we had known but we don’t find anywhere else. In her company we experience that life has been unburdened, we feel that our personality, for the first time, is expanding like the vast expanse of space, made pure as the sky,blissful as the fresh flowers of spring season. We feel that our mind is stilled as the still flame and brightened as the morn ing sun. In her presence, we feel the Purity and the Bliss that we originally are and clearly cognise the difference between what we were before and after visiting the mother. It is for this that we visit her again and again! “The. Guru is quiet and peace pre vails in all–” we are reminded of these words of Ramana Maharshi; and these–“The cos mic mind manifesting in in some rare sage is able to effect the linkage of the individual mind with the in ner Self”
On closer observation of one’s experience in the presence of Mother, one finds that the innumerable problems that vex the mind in our day to day life and the myriad purposeless musings and obser- vations in which the mind loses itself everyday are all arrested. The mind is calmed just as a busy city calms down at the onset of the night.Quiet peace prevails. After thoughts still wander, the vistas of the mind yet they are few like solitary night walkers and are mostly confined to Mother, her greatness and the observation of the activities at the Ashram. Quite imperceptibly, the mind is drawn closer and closer to the state of one pointedness for which strive in vain by ourselves. The whole period of our stay becomes, as it were,a steady flow of purity, calm and bliss. In short Sadhana automatically goes on in us without our effort and perhaps without our notice! Her miraculous form, her incomparable words, her profound silence, her joy- these enchant the Visitor’s mind and keep him spell bound to one object of thought —-the miracle that is Mother. One extraordinary experience that is most commonly we shared by the majority of the visitors is the sudden gushing of a strange, undescribable emotion that brings about a flow of tears from one’s eyes, the quivering of the lips and th: chin, and sometimes a visitor is found loudly weep ing either while prostrating before her feet or while lean ing in her lap. Even the one who experiences will not be able to explain or express the reason for it but under gces the experience even repeatedly sometimes! Once I made bold to ask Mother why most of the people who come to her weep in her presence. On several occasions she evaded an answer; at thers she simply hinted at it by passing an unrelated re mark that real goodness of the other brings tears to one’s eyes and make one. weep. But when once someone pres sed her for a proper reason she said that the reason for their weeping is the same as the one for a child crying at its birth.
“Does it mean that your ‘Darshan marks a rebirth of the inner being?” someone asked.
“Yes” she said, “In fact that is not sorrow at all. Ordinary sorrow has a reason for it; but this has none. You call it weeping only for want of a better word to describe it. It is not real weeping,! She said. It must be remarked here that one’s age, status or the inner ability to suppress one’s feelings are of no avail when once Mother tickles that mysterious experience in us throwing open the flood gates of the heart. The moments following that strange experi. ence come nearest to one’s intellectual conception of the word Samadhi”. When I later pondered over it, I was reminded of the “Bhakti Sutras” which describe the flow of tears, choking of the voice and the quivering of the body as being the external signs of intense Bhakti.
This flow of tears experi- enced by sometimes at the first sight of Mother, some times during one’s prolonged stay and sometimes while taking leave of her. That she has a direct control and com mand of the fountain heads of their feelings in our hearts, I had ample experience and proof. I had it when I boasted that I am the only one who could restrain it and be unaffected by such a feeling. I had seen that the glance of Mother cast on us sometimes sparks off the explosive emo tion. On one occasion puja was going on and Mother was sitting on platform raised for the purpose. I was sitting there. When Mcther glanced at me once, I suddenly became sad and I was surprised at what I thought was a coinci dence. She purposefully kept her eyes away from me, I did not know why. When I was so thinking, sne glanced at me a second time and there tears stood tip-toe on my eye lids; my voice choked and my brain got tense owing to my efforts to restrain and suppress the tears. Then I knew why she did not look at me for long. I was so trapped in an inner crux between the intense emotion and the effort to suppress that I inwardly prayed to Mother to let out the feeling rather than leave me in the hellish trap. Then she turned her gaze in my direction and fixed it on me. Tears rolled freely from my eyes. I was immensely relieved of my inner tension and I know that our feelings are entirely at her command. On several occasions I had seen her visitors who, feeling shy to allow their tears to flow freely, are subject to intolerable inner tension; and then Mother calls them near and gently touches their head. There comes an outburst of their feeling and they cry burying their heads in her lap or bowing at her feet. Some of them continue in the same mood for quite a long time and there are others who, during the several days of their stay, experience profuse flow of tears whenever they allow their gaze to rest on her form for a few moments at a stretch. It is really a matter of her grace that lay men like us, who hardly succeed in pursuing Sadhana with any consistency, are suddenly wafted into such heights of spiritual exultation that the outward signs of intense Bhakti like Narada’s “Bhakti Sutras” manifest in us just by the sight of her form. or her touch or even by a word addressed to us by the Mother. It is the veritable baptism of tears.
What is the basis of such an experience? The following words of Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi seem to contain the clue to it-
“Association with the wise will make the mind sink into the Heart. Such association is both mental and physical.
The extremely visible being (of the Guru) pushes the mind inward. He is in the heart of the seeker and so he draws the latter’ s inward bent mind into the heart.
The gist of this is conveyed by what Mother said when she was asked by someone whe there perfect on can be attained through her (Mother) **What is there to be attained through me? I am the Mother. Seeing Mother is Attaining!” Finally, we shall conclude by nothing this conversation of a devotee with Maharashi. Disciple: Horripilation. sobb ing voice, joyful tears etc, are mentioned in “Atma Vidyaa Vilaasa” and other works. Are these found in Samadhi, or before, or after? Maharshi: All these are the symptoms of exceedingly subtle modes of mind (vrittis)… Samadhi is per fect peace where these can not find place. After emerg ing from Samadhi the remembrance of the state gives rise to these symptoms. In bhakti marga, these are the precursors to Samadhi.
Mother, when questioned about it, said that people weep before her for the same reason for which they weep when they were born, thereby signifying that visiting her constitutes a spiritual rebirth. Let us see what Bhagavan said to amplify the same truth-
“The fact of the ego rising from the Self and forgetting it is birth. The present desire to regain one’s Mother is in reality the desire to regain the Self, which is the same as realising one self, or the death of the ego; this is surrender into the mother”…
“Mother, I had a mantropadesam from a guru. He warned me not to transgress certain rules of personal conduct. I could not control myself, and I am in the great distress of fear. What shall I do hereafter Mother? Stop or continue the japam?”
“There is nothing like a deity “hitting on your head” for the so-called transgressions, my child. No one can, and you too can’t look upon your wife as mother. If you could, you wouldn’t revert to your original attitude to an order or advice. Banish all fear, my child. Do what you could whole-heartedly”.