Guiding Light of The Month

O Lord, how ardently do I call and implore Thy love! Grant that my aspiration may be intense enough to awaken the same aspiration everywhere: oh, may good- ness, justice and peace reign as supreme masters, may ignorant egoism be overcome, darkness be suddenly illu- minated by Thy pure Light; may the blind see, the deaf hear, may Thy law be proclaimed in every place and, in a constantly progressive union, in an ever more perfect harmony, may all, like one single being, stretch out their arms towards Thee to identify themselves with Thee and manifest Thee upon earth. - The Mother

The Mother as Mahalakshmi



We know Mahalakshmi popularly as the goddess of wealth. But she is not just the power of wealth, she also represents material organisation because the two are deeply connected. Wealth cannot appear where material organisation is lacking. Wealth cannot appear where the flow of matter, the flow of energies and the flow of thoughts is wasted or is in chaos. It is the same power presiding over both aspects. And it was interesting to observe that the Mother always insisted on proper utilisation of material resources. When the Ashram was first established, there was not much money available. And she made sure every little bit was used, even waste paper was collected and recycled. During the war when there was a serious shortage of goods, even the tiny pieces of soap were collected and put together to make new cakes of soap. Such was the detailed effort to prevent waste.

Much later, in the fifties, she noted that Mother Nature has agreed to cooperate with her in the Work. And since then, as you know, the wealth and resources available in the Ashram have been increasing. But when this decision to cooperate was first made, the Mother wanted to test how far that cooperation could go in material circumstances. She took as one of the experiments the work which was being done by one of the disciples to establish a sugar factory on the outskirts of Pondicherry. The Mother took special pains to see how far Nature’s cooperation would go in that effort.

Before the factory was started Mother herself saw the plans. There was a need to dig for water. She looked at the layout for a while and then marking one spot said, “Dig here”. That spot has a perennial flow of water gushing out to this day, something quite unusual for that region.

The machinery was installed and all the time she was receiving detailed reports. At some stage when the machines were started they were seen to undergo frequent breakdowns for no apparent reason. The Mother was asked about it and she said that the sugar cane which was being crushed to make the juice was putting out an energy of resentment which was accumulating and causing the breakdown of the equipment. She described that she had then created an occult formation there so that the same energies would be diverted towards the maintenance of the factory. Since then the breakdowns stopped and to this day it is one of the most prosperous sugar factories in that region. Such was the detail to which she tested the cooperation that Nature extended to her.

(The Mother: Some Insights, Sraddhalu Ranade, Service Letter, February 1996)

No comments: