Stories of Auroville - Janet

How did she catch me? I had been travelling around Japan, Sri Lanka and India for a year intending to travel to Calcutta quite quickly to return to Canada because I had a boyfriend there and I was in love and I was tired of travelling. So I came to Pondicherry to stay for two or three nights and on the first day I walked into the Auroville office. There was lady there whom I had met in Japan before and she said ‘you have to meet the Mother’. I had heard of the Mother but I didn’t have a clue about her so I said ‘well why not? If meeting the Mother is the thing to do, then okay.’ It was arranged that I meet the Mother, that was in June 1968. I went up to the Mother’s room on Sunday morning. I am not sure if the experience was dramatic at the moment. It was more that it had a slow effect on me afterwards but she was…what I remember was the smile and she even laughed and asked if I spoke French because someone told her that I was from Canada. After it was over I remember being so tired, my God, it was like I had run a marathon, it was incredible. I was staying at Society Guest House, I went there and slept the whole day…

But after that my desire to leave to get back to Canada evaporated. I didn’t notice it at the time. It is just that I saw that month after month I was still in Pondicherry with no plans to leave.
After helping out to build a house in Auroville I asked the Mother if I could stay in Auroville and she approved. So that was how it happened, that was in September 1968.
I met the Mother another time on my birthday that year, but on my next birthday she was sick, so I couldn’t meet her. I saw her also when I got the name for the first house I built in Auroville. She gave me the name Joy for that house.

This is an excerpt from the book ‘Turning Points’ by Auroville Press.
To purchase the same have a look here.