Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

3. The Mother and the Practice of the Integral Yoga

Fragment ID: 19531

Two years before I came here I had a vision one night: High above in the sky I saw two dark blue feet. So far as I remember they were adorned only with anklets. The soles were the colour of the red lotus. I concluded they were the Mother’s lotus feet because that is how I felt and immediately saw a spotted cloth that is used in India in the Mother’s worship descending from Her right side. Who could be this Mother?

There is here a general symbolism in the details of the figure, but it is clearly the same experience [as in the next two visions] at its first stage in the first contact.

The same night or the next, I had another vision. In front of me I saw a pure white staircase; it went up for countless steps until the top of it got lost in the sky. A white figure in a pure white gown (European style) rapidly descended the upper part of the stairs and, taking her stand on the staircase, opened her arms to me. Who was this Mother?

Here and in the next it is obviously the Mother here. The staircase is a very usual symbol seen by many and it meant the acceptance and call to the ascent.

A third experience I had when I came here for the first time. One night I heard something descending with a revolving motion above my head. No sooner did I hear the sound than I saw a smaller image of the above white Lady entering into me from above and stopping somewhere in the heart region. Who is this Power and Personality? How is she related to the second, the second to the first and all the three to you? How can I be true to her and to you?

By self-opening and an increasing self-giving to the Divine.

All these are visions of the Mother and it agrees with what she felt when she first saw you.

22 March 1938