The Service Tree

It was significant that Sri Aurobindo's body should have been interred at the centre of the Ashram complex, and beside the "Service" tree. Was it all part of "God's secret plan" that the Mother had asked Dyuman and Manubhai, the Ashram gardener, to bring a sapling of Peltaphorum pterocarpum (Copper Pod) from the French colonial garden to replace the mango tree that had died sometime back? Was it again part of that divine foresight that she had named the flower of this tree "Service"? On Tuesday, 4 January 1930 the sapling was placed in a six foot deep pit that Dyuman, Ambu and Manubhai had themselves dug and filled with compost. The tree flourished in the coming years, and its branches spread out in all directions, often obstructing the movement of persons in the Ashram courtyard. A proposal was made to the Mother that the tree or at least some of its branches should be cut down, but she would not hear of it. In fact the Mother used to pay special attention to facilitate the full and unimpeded growth of its hundred arms and pervasive personality. She asked Sammer, the Czech architect of "Golconde", to design artistic pillars and railings to support the sagging branches. Known always and loved as the Service tree, it was now - in the winter of 1950 to serve with its golden flowers as the golden canopy for Sri Aurobindo's Samadhi and give harbourage to an unceasing flow of disciples and devotees at all hours of the day. Rightly has the Service tree inspired many an Ashram poet to spontaneous rhythmic utterance. Thus Pujalal, whom the Mother had called "My poet":

Calm thou standest here close by

The Master's deep material trance;

Thine is a silent prayer's cry

That mates with God's all-gracious glance.



The Golden God thou serves! here

Thou hast the Mother's golden grace;

All gold thou shalt be. Soul sincere!

And shower gold on earth apace.





And thus, William Jones, a devotee poet, in "Sylvan Samadhi":



Fraternal tree, this metaphor is best:

My immobility became a tomb

Of massive grey-veined marble; incense bloom

Of rose and jasmine dreamed upon its breast;



A gold embrace of boughs a golden vigil kept;

Close by a sacred body's sleep, my thinking slept.





(K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar in ‘On The Mother’, Chapter 35, ‘Mysterious Sacrifice’, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, Pondicherry)



”Sri Aurobindo came upon earth to teach this truth to men. He told them that man is only a transitional being living in a mental consciousness, but with the possibility of acquiring a new consciousness, the Truth-consciousness, and capable of living a life perfectly harmonious, good and beautiful, happy and fully conscious.