On 24
April 1951, the Mother presided over a convention where the resolution to
establish “an international university centre” was accepted. On 6 January 1952,
she inaugurated the Sri Aurobindo
International University Centre (renamed Sri Aurobindo International
Centre of Education in 1959). André wrote in an article with reference to this
context:
The best
way of preparing for the descent [of the Supramental] is the spreading of Sri
Aurobindo’s teachings. But they have to be correctly understood, because
misunderstandings would do more harm than good. If the Master’s message is
considered as” another philosophy” and subjected to rational analysis, or if it
is accepted merely as a convenient creed without the full aspiration of the
inner consciousness, very little headway will have been made.
Here
comes the University Centre. By awakening in the child the various faculties of
observation, judgment, self-respect as well as those of analysis and reasoning;
by making the adolescent discover the various parts of human knowledge instead
of imposing on him the absorption of a standardized concoction of magisterial
statements, the Centre will prepare students for a more complete realization.
No doubt many of them will not go all the way to Yoga, but they will have
acquired an understanding of the real meaning of Sri Aurobindo’s message.
That is
why the University Centre is linked with the Ashram. The presence of Sri
Aurobindo and of the Mother is an absolute necessity for the Centre to fulfil
its scope and the Centre itself is essential to prepare humanity for the
descent of the Supramental. [1]
In 1954,
the Mother wrote The Great Secret in
collaboration with Nolini Kanta Gupta, Pavitra, Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya and
André. The Great Secret cannot be termed as a
drama in its actual sense; it is a monologue of seven people. The background is
as follows: Six people (an artist, a statesman, a writer, an athlete, a
scientist and an industrialist) who happened to be the world’s most renowned
personalities have taken shelter in a life-boat as the ship in which they were
travelling to attend a world conference on human progress have sunk. There is a
seventh person who is the ‘Unknown Man’ whom nobody notices much. Each of the
six famous people recounts the story of their lives. In a letter dated 7 July
1954, the Mother wrote to André:
My dear André,
I know
that you are a very busy man and that you do not have much time to spare.
However, I am going to ask you to do something for me and I hope it will be
possible for you to do it.
The
thing is this.
For the
first of December I am preparing something which does not fall into any
category of dramatic art and which certainly cannot be called a play, but,
nevertheless, it will be put on stage and I hope that it will not be without
interest. I am putting words into the mouths of men who have had very different
lives and careers, and it would be better, naturally, if they did not all speak
the same language; I mean that their styles should differ. I have asked several
people to put themselves in the shoes of one character or another, and to write
down for me what, according to them, this character would say. If afterwards
there is any touching up to do, I shall do it.
I am
enclosing the introduction, which will be read out before the curtain rises; it
will give you some idea of what I want to do and help you to understand what I
mean.
Among
the characters, you will see that there is an industrialist, a big businessman.
I am not very familiar with industrial terms and language and I thought that
you could help me to write something true to life. The man tells the story of
his life and I want it to be the life of a big magnate (American or other) on the
lines of Ford, for example. I am making them speak one after another; they each
have a maximum of ten minutes to relate their lives, their great triumphs
which, at this critical hour, leave tem unsatisfied and yearning for something
which they do not know or understand. At the same time I am sending you the
conclusion of the industrialist’s speech as I conceive it, but of course you
can make any changes you find necessary.
I have
asked Pavitra to write the account of the Scientist, Nolini is dealing with the
man of letters, Pranab has already written what the sportsman will say (in
English, but I shall put it into French), I have already outlined the
statesman, I am taking care of the artist and of course the Unknown Man, since
I shall be speaking through him.
Afterwards
we shall still have to decide who the actors will be; Debou will play the
Unknown Man, Hriday the sportsman, I am trying to persuade Pavitra to embody
the scientist, Manoj will play either the artist or the writer. Naturally, the
ideal would be for you to come and speak what you have written— but may be you
will regard that as an unrealisable folly… To tell the truth, this is only a
feeler; we shall speak about it again later…I hope I have not left out anything
important. But if you want any further details, I shall send them to you. [2]
Let’s
quote the monologue of the industrialist as written by André in full as it
would portray the literary aspect of his personality:
Since we
are all opening our hearts and, moreover, since what I am going to say cannot
be used by my competitors or by those who resent my success—my so-called
success—I shall tell you the story of my life as I see it and not as it has
been so often related.
The
facts themselves have been correctly reported. My father was a blacksmith in a
small country town. From him I inherited a liking for metal-work; it was he who
taught me the joy of a work well done and the satisfaction of giving oneself
entirely to one’s task. He also instilled into me the desire to do always better—better
than others, better then before. The desire for gain was not his chief motive,
but he never denied that he was proud of being at the top of his profession and
he enjoyed the praise of his fellow-townsmen without any false modesty.
At the
beginning of the century, when the internal combustion engine made its first
appearance, we small boys were thrilled by the possibilities it opened up, and
to build a horseless carriage, or a motor-car as it was beginning to be called,
presented itself as a goal worthy of our greatest efforts. For the few models
we had already seen were very far from perfect.
The
first car, built with my own hands from parts collected here and there and
never intended for the use to which I put them, undoubtedly gave me the greatest
joy of my whole life. Perched precariously on a somewhat uncomfortable seat, I
drove the few hundred yards from my father’s workshop to the Town Hall, and
nothing seemed more beautiful to me than this odd contraption, wobbling and
puffing its way along, scattering the pedestrians and making the dogs bark and
the horses rear.
I shall
not dwell on the years that followed, on the hostility of those who proclaimed
that the horse had been created by God to draw carriages and that it was
already quite impious enough to have made railways without going even further
and launching these new diabolical inventions upon the roads and in the cities.
Even more numerous were those who could see no future in a temperamental
machine that could only be handled by experts or single-minded cranks. The few
adventurous souls who lent me my first dollars to set up a small workshop, hire
a couple of hands and buy some steel, seemed to have the same blind faith as
the first gold-seekers who went out in pursuit of a problematical and elusive
fortune in a hostile and desolate country.
As for
me, I was not seeking fortune but only the satisfaction of manufacturing a
motor-car that would be easier to handle and cheaper than the existing models.
I felt somehow that this means of transport should be economical because, after
all, its driving power would only have to be fed while it was working. If its
purchase price could be made low enough, many people would buy it who would shy
at the permanent expense of maintaining a team of horses.
Everybody
still remembers my first mass-produced model. It was high on its wheels so that
it could run on country roads, it was robustly built to stand up to the rough
handling of the crudest farm-hand, but somewhat despised by those who still
considered the motor-car a luxury for the wealthy. And yet this model, which
could be driven easily, almost effortlessly, already foreshadowed the time when
motor-cars would be handled even by the most inexperienced drivers.
Still it
was not until the First World War that the motor-car won its first great
victory over the horse. Ambulances, ammunition transports, everything that had
to move fast, everything that was unusually heavy was “motorised”. My factory
reached a tremendous pitch of activity. The huge quantities ordered by the Army
gave me the opportunity to improve my equipment and perfect new methods of
manufacture and assembly.
By the
end of the War, I had a smooth running organisation which, however, seemed out
of proportion to civilian needs. My assistants got scared. They urged me to
reduce the rate of manufacture, to dismiss some employees, to cancel orders
placed with suppliers and to wait some time to see where the actual demand
should stand. This was wise, no doubt; but here was an opportunity, probably
unique, to produce the cheapest car in the world. Slowing down the production
would mean an increase in costs. So I decided that the problem lay in selling
our output rather than in producing what people were willing to buy from us.
Within six months, after a brilliant advertising campaign, I had proved my
point.
From
then onwards my company moved forward almost by itself. More and more I had to
leave important decisions to my assistants and to confine myself to laying down
the guiding principles. These were, to produce at the lowest cost without
sacrificing quality and without reducing wages—actually, my workers should be
the highest paid in the world; to sell at the lowest price in order to go on
reaching ever new markets not only should the profit margin be brought down to
a minimum without jeopardising the stability of the company, but the
advertising should be handled so as to obtain the required turnover without
unduly increasing the cost of production; finally, in case normal suppliers demanded
too much profit, to have no hesitation in undertaking the manufacture of our
own spare parts, semi-finished products and even raw materials.
My
business began to grow as it were a living thing. Whatever I undertook seemed
to become successful. This is how I became almost a legendary figure, a
demi-god who had created a new way of life, an example to follow, so much so
that any trifling word of mine, any act however insignificant was analysed,
turned inside out, made into a greater principle and presented to the masses as
a new gospel.
Is there
anything real in all this? My business survives only by getting bigger. Any
check to its growth would be fatal. For the general expenses, which do not lag
far behind the increasing production, would soon swallow up the profit margin,
which is very narrow in comparison with the overall turnover. My business is
growing so rapidly that it now looks more like an inflated balloon than a
living body moving harmoniously and steadily towards maturity. For instance, some
departments have to drive their workers like galley-slaves in order to keep
pace with the rest, and as soon as this is corrected at one point by improving
the equipment, it reappears at another. I feel helpless in face of this state
of affairs, because any disruption in the production line would only result in
more hardship for the workers.
And what
have I contributed to humanity? Men travel more easily. Do they understand each
other any better? Following my example, all sorts of labour-saving gadgets have
been mass produced and made available to an increasing number of customers. How
far has this done anything more than to create new needs and a corresponding
greed for gain? My workers are well paid but it seems that I have only
succeeded in arousing in them the desire to earn always more—and above all more
than workers in other factories. I feel that they are dissatisfied, unhappy in
fact. Contrary to my hopes, raising their standard of living, assuring their
security, has not induced them to develop their human personality. Indeed, the
mass of human suffering remains practically unchanged, as formidable as ever,
and, it seems, incurable by the means I have used. There is something
fundamentally wrong which my actions fail to correct and which I even fail to
understand. I feel that there is a secret yet to be discovered; and without
this discovery all our efforts are in vain. [3]
André’s main objective in life
was to materialize the vast projects conceptualized by the Mother for the
Ashram in
André and Nolini
[1] Mother India,
January 1983, p. 41
[2] Collected Works
of the Mother, Vol. 12, pp. 474-475
[3] Ibid., pp.
489-492
[4] Mother India,
January 1983, p. 35