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The Mother ‘re-sized’
In a variety of ways the choices people and groups make, individually or collectively, are exposed for what they are in the light of higher studies. They reflect either a wide and all-encompassing vision, or else a personalised, and by this very reason, a fragmentation that is expressive of the ordinary human condition. In this light there is another interesting anecdote to relate from our historical documentation concerning the Mother’s original vision and plan, which once again reveals that there are no pretences and truth is manifest at all times. It is in the way that Sri Aurobindo addressed his co-worker of the Solar Line. She was always the Mother, with the article.
         After dismissal of her original vision and adoption of the Auroville architect’s version in the 1970s, simultaneously a movement began to drop the article.  She became simply ‘Mother’. Everywhere in print or in speech, in both the Ashram and Auroville, the tendency was to an article-less ‘Mother’. She was thus dislodged from her cosmic completeness and converted into an intimate, loving, and very human creature; but that much diminished by this imposition. Certainly it is worth noting that rejection of her original vision and plan by Auroville was fully in consonance with this diminishing. To experience the Mother, creator of such a superlative vision, as the embodiment herself of the Cosmic Truth, one would have to make a supreme effort to expand one’s consciousness accordingly. It is an accomplishment that requires serious yogic commitment.
          Sri Aurobindo never sanctioned this custom, yet it gained ground and acceptance pari passu with the construction of the temple. In fact it was propagated by the very group of people who spear-headed the drive to adopt the architect’s model. We have reached the point today where this mode of addressing the Mother has come to distinguish the followers of that camp (the whole of Auroville) as a sort of signature. Some sections of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram still hold out, but they are fast becoming a minority. But let us examine the deeper significance in the development of ‘the Mother’ to ‘Mother’, and in so doing disclose its place in the total context of the Mother’s work where there are no ‘coincidences’.
          Sri Aurobindo’s name consists of 3 + 9 = 12 letters. The Mother (complete formula) is 3 + 6 = 9. Dropping the article leaves poor Mother dangling with only the 6! This means that the 3 has been eliminated. And it is precisely the 3^rd Power that gives birth to the true Centre and the consequent perfect alignment – exactly what is missing in the Auroville construction. No true centre, no perfect alignment – and no luminous Globe, or the Third Power in the Chamber’s Core. Without the 3 there is no Knowledge (symbolised by the luminous translucent Globe, the only light-filled object in the Chamber) and the Chamber cannot be a conscious experience of the Absolute Truth that is its essence, its core substance. In its present state it may be all things to all people, as comforting as ‘Mother’ surely is. However, in its shadow form it is a reinforcement of that very relativity we seek to overcome as a species, as a civilisation, as individuals.
          Thus, dropping the article is perfectly in keeping with the Auroville dismissal of centimetres as bearing any intrinsic value. Similar to Dr Peter Plichta’s criticism of contemporary science, to the builders of the shadow temple centimetres also have no intrinsic value.

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