February 22, 1914 (PM 078)

This prayer gives us a beautiful glimpse into the Mother’s life as a child and her realisations before coming to Pondicherry.

February 22, 1914

WHEN I was a child — about the age of thirteen and for about a year — every night as soon as I was in bed, it seemed to me that I came out of my body and rose straight up above the house, then above the town, very high. I saw myself then clad in a magnificent golden robe, longer than myself; and as I rose, that robe lengthened, spreading in a circle around me to form, as it were, an immense roof over the town. Then I would see coming out from all sides men, women, children, old men, sick men, unhappy men; they gathered under the outspread robe, imploring help, recounting their miseries, their sufferings, their pains. In reply, the robe, supple and living, stretched out to them individually, and as soon as they touched it, they were consoled or healed, and entered back into their body happier and stronger than they had ever been before coming out of it. Nothing appeared to me more beautiful, nothing made me more happy; and all the activities of the day seemed to me dull and colourless, without real life, in comparison with this activity of the night which was for me the true life. Often as I thus rose, I would see on my left an old man, silent and immobile, who looked at me with a benevolent affection and encouraged me by his presence. This old man, dressed in a long robe of sombre violet, was the personification — I knew later — of him who is called the Man of Sorrows. Now the profound experience, the almost ineffable reality is translated in my brain by other notions which I can define thus:

Many a time during the day and in the night it seems to me that I, — that is to say, my consciousness is wholly concentrated in my heart, which is no longer an organ, not even a feeling, but the divine Love, impersonal, eternal; being this Love, I feel myself living in the centre of everything upon the whole earth, and at the same time it seems to me that I am stretching out immense, infinite arms and enveloping with a limitless tenderness all beings clasped, grouped, nestled upon my breast vaster than the universe…. Words are poor and clumsy, O divine Master, and mental translations are always childish…. But my aspiration for Thee is constant, and, to tell the truth, it is very often Thyself and Thou alone who livest in this body, an imperfect means of Thy manifestation.

May all beings be happy in the peace of Thy illumination!

The text above is quoted from the Third Edition, 1954 (translation by Rishabhchand Samsukha)
This book is freely available at https://www.auro-ebooks.com/prayers-and-meditations-1954-edition/