Past-life memories

(Shobha Mitra, 1953:) “Mother, I feel very scared to tell you something, but I cannot help telling it to you. This has been disturbing me very much.

(Mother:) Tell me, what's happened?

Mother, I do not know if this is a dream or some subtle vision or something created entirely by my imagination! When I lived in Calcutta, these incidents would unfold before my eyes quite suddenly, from time to time, and forgetting everything I would get lost in them. This would happen while I was working or studying and these incidents had no connection at all with me. My work would be interrupted, my revisions would stop, so much would I get carried away by them. This would last for some time, and then these scenes vanished. I would get back to whatever I was doing. This hasn't stopped even after coming here.

What do you see?

Suddenly, I see before my eyes a huge palace, absolutely marvellous and exquisite! I see a very well-furnished royal court with a queen seated on an imposing throne. She is my mother. I am her daughter, the royal princess of that kingdom. I am wearing a lovely pale blue Banarasi silk sari with golden zari-work on it. I am a young princess and am conscious of my beauty. I am bedecked with jewelry. My mother, the royal queen, is also dressed in a maroon-coloured Banarasi silk sari and wears a lot of rich jewels on her. Mother, this queen is actually the mother of our Ramanathan who resides in the Ashram. She is Tamil. It is she I see as the royal queen. I used to see her also in Calcutta. Seated on her throne, she is surrounded by ministers, as she listens to her subjects who have come for an audience with her. From time to time, she turns to her ministers to speak with them about matters related to the kingdom. I am watching her from a distance, from a very large verandah that is on the first floor of this palace. Standing in the verandah, I can see a part of the palace and the royal attendants bustling about. Everything about this scene is extremely refined, the palace, the court, the Queen-Mother and I! The Queen-Mother truly looks like an Indian queen. Whenever this scene emerges before my eyes, Mother, I just forget everything! I totally lose myself in it! I become another person when I see these scenes. Not mad exactly... but I become someone else! As if I was no more in this present existence. The other day, this happened to me in the middle of my physical activities in the Sports-ground. I had to tell the captain and leave the ground and sit out for a while. The captain and some other girls began wondering what had happened to me. I could not tell them anything. What is all this, Mother? Why does such a thing happen to me?

This is a memory from your past birth. In some past life you lived in that palace, you were a royal princess.

(After saying this, the Mother looked on into my eyes with a fixed concentration. Then She put her hand on my head and closed Her eyes and meditated for quite some time, as if She were in a trance. I kept completely silent. Then, She came out of that state and returned to Her normal self. She looked at me and smiled, that enthralling smile of Hers! I was mesmerised. Needless to say, after this moment, I never saw those scenes again.)”

(On her vision of the tall white being armed with a kind of halberd.)

(Mother to Satprem, 1962:) What was standing there was a manifestation of one of my states of being, a part of my vital being, or rather one of my innumerable vital beings – because I have quite a few! And this one is particularly interested in things on earth.

(Satprem:) A projection of yours – an emanation?

You know, mon petit, I said one day that in the history of earth, wherever there was a possibility for the Consciousness to manifest, I was there; this is a fact. It's like the story of Savitri: always there, always there, always there, in this one, that one – at certain times there were four emanations simultaneously! At the time of the Italian and French Renaissance. And again at the time of Christ, then too.... Oh, you know, I have remembered so many, many things! It would take volumes to tell it all. And then, more often than not (not always, but more often than not), what took part in this or that life was a particular yogic formation of the vital being – in other words something immortal. And when I came this time, as soon as I took up the yoga, they came back again from all sides, they were waiting. Some were simply waiting, others were working (they led their own independent lives) and they all gathered together again. That's how I got those memories. One after the other, those vital beings came – a deluge! I had barely enough time to assimilate one, to see, situate and integrate it, and another would come. They are quite independent, of course, they do their own work, but they are very centralized all the same. And there are all kinds – all kinds, anything you can imagine! Some of them have even been in men: they are not exclusively feminine.
         At first, I used to think they were fantasies.
         Before I met Sri Aurobindo they would come and come and come to me, night after night and sometimes during the day – a mass of things! Afterwards I told Sri Aurobindo about it, and he explained to me that it was quite natural. And indeed, it is quite natural: with the present incarnation of the Mahashakti (as he described it in Savitri), whatever is more or less bound up with Her wants to take part, that's quite natural. And it's particularly true for the vital: there has always been a preoccupation with organizing, centralizing, developing and unifying the vital forces, and controlling them. So there's a considerable number of vital beings, each with its own particular ability, who have played their role in history and now return.”

(Regarding the last conversation and Mother's ‘innumerable vital beings’, who reincarnated this time ‘in a deluge’:)

(Mother to Satprem, 1962:) “As a child, when I was around ten or twelve years old, I had some rather interesting experiences which I didn't understand at all. I had some history books – you know, the textbooks they give you to learn history. Well, I'd read and suddenly the book would seem to become transparent, or the printed words would become transparent, and I'd see other words or even pictures. I hadn't the faintest idea what was happening to me! And it appeared so natural to me that I thought it was the same for everybody. But my brother and I were great chums (he was only a year and a half older), so I would tell him: “They talk nonsense in history, you know – it is LIKE THIS; it isn't like that: it is LIKE THIS!” And several times the corrections I got on one person or another turned out to be quite exact and detailed. And (I see it now – I understood it later on) they were certainly memories. About some passages I would even say, “How stupid! It was never that; THIS is what was said. It never happened like that; THIS is how it happened.” And the book was simply open before me; I was just reading along like any other child and ... suddenly something would occur. It was something in me, of course, but I used to think it was in the book!”

---

See also

• Rebirth
• Memory