A circular pathway girdles the Matrimandir and the Petals. Eight Pathways lead steeply down between the Petals to the Lotus Pond below. On the North, South, East and West axis wider pathways lead down to stairs which rise up through the Pillars to the doorways. To enter the Matrimandir one has to go down one of these four wide pathways between two large Petals. At the bottom one has to remove one’s shoes and climb the wide granite staircase rising between the Pillars to the doors above.
In 1972, the Mother named the four pairs of Pillars which support the Matrimandir after Her four Aspects or Personalities. In Sri Aurobindo’s words, these Personalities are:
One is her personality of calm wideness and comprehending wisdom and tranquil benignity and inexhaustible compassion and sovereign and surpassing majesty and all-ruling greatness.
Another embodies her power of splendid strength and irresistible passion, her warrior mood, her overwhelming will, her impetuous swiftness and world-shaking force.
A third is vivid and sweet and wonderful with her deep secret of beauty and harmony and fine rhythm, her intricate and subtle opulence, her compelling attraction and captivating grace.
The fourth is equipped with her close and profound capacity to initiate knowledge and careful flawless work and quiet and exact perfection in all things
Above each of the four entrances, a golden ‘shield’ has been installed and in front of these ‘shields’ has been placed a very large golden disc with four petals, at the centre of which a geometrical shape indicates which entrance one faces:
Having reached the top of the granite stairs, and passed through the glass door, one enters the First Level, a transition level whose floor is made of white and grey marble and where one sits on a circular bench of white marble to put on white socks.
To continue one’s ascent to the Inner Chamber, one has to go through a narrow doorway made of staggered marble blocks leading to the Central Staircase. A glass floor, through which one can see the Lotus Pond below. gives the impression that the Central Staircase is suspended in mid-air. The architect conceived the staggering of these large blocks as a symbol of the need to make an effort in this yoga. Beyond the doorways one comes into a brightly lit spiral staircase made entirely of white marble. The inner wall is made up of an intricate marble mosaic. As its outer wall is an inverted cone, the higher one climbs, the wider the steps become and the more one discovers the golden-pink of the Inner Skin whose colour permeates everything, including the white marble.
Having climbed one of the two spiral staircases, one reaches the vastness of the second level. It is entirely bathed in golden-pink light which filters through the Inner Skin.
The second level has a white marble floor enclosed by a glass parapet topped by a white wooden handrail over which one can look down to the white marble benches of the First Level.
From inside, the Matrimandir is a translucent sphere, except between each pair of Pillars where the concrete shell is concealed by a mosaic of white marble with joints made of golden tiles. Water runs down the middle of each Pillar along a narrow channel of golden tiles.
The mantra ‘Om Anandamayi, Chatanyamayi, Satyamayi, Parame’ is inscribed on a marble slab by two of the four fountains on the East and West.
The two landings at the North and South Pillars, which mark the starting point of the Spiral Ramps, are clad with white marble from Rajasthan. Two tall white marble sculptures stand by these two landings and both hold a lamp whose tiny white flame is kept burning.
From the base of the fountains, Spiral Ramps soar upwards to the vestibules of the Inner Chamber. The floor of the ramps is covered in white carpet and the parapets are made of curved white glass with a white wooden handrail. From the ramps one can look up to the raw concrete floor of the suspended dodecagon of the Inner Chamber. And one can look down on the white marble Mother Symbol which forms the cylindrical core of the spiral staircases, through which the ray of sunlight passes to the small crystal at the heart of the Lotus Pond below. Looking outwards one is enveloped in the beauty of the golden-pink light filtering through the Inner Skin.
From outside the Matrimandir looks like a radiating golden Supramental sun; but from inside The Mother wanted it to appear like a translucent sphere which lets in a golden pink light. She gave the architect a small swatch of a saree to show him the particular colour she wanted. The colour is that of a hibiscus (Hibiscus rosa – sinensis) which the Mother named: “Beauty of Supramental Love” and “Auroville”. The comment she gave for this flower is: “It invites us to live at its height”.
To create a translucent inner skin of this particular colour, a very special white fabric (made of fiberglass woven in a sophisticated manner) has been stretched over 756 triangular frames (made of aluminium profiles especially extruded for this purpose). Coloured foil of the precise colour has been placed on the outer shell’s 668 portholes to filter the natural light that enters in through them in the daytime.
The Chamber is a place meant for concentration,
to learn how to concentrate to find one’s consciousness.
Concentration, for our yoga, means when the consciousness is fixed in a particular state or movement ; meditation is when the inner mind is looking at things to get the right knowledge.
Sri Aurobindo
From the second level, the two spiraling ramps lead to two vestibules from which one enters into the Inner Chamber through double doors made of thick white marble slabs. When closed, these doors are more or less invisible as She did not ‘see’ them in Her vision. According to the Mother’s wishes, one enters by the East door.
The Inner Chamber has been built exactly according to the “repeated visions” of the Mother. She described it to an Ashram engineer, Udar, who at Her request made a measured drawing which She then passed on to the architect whom She told not to change anything and to include this Chamber in a larger building, which she said she had not ‘seen’.
The Inner Chamber has a radius of 12 meters. Its twelve sided walls are 8.65 meters tall and are clad in white marble from Lasa in Italy. The white ceiling of the Inner Chamber also has 12 facets, each sloping at 30° upwards towards the center. At its center the Inner Chamber is 15.2 meters high. There are 12 large steel cylindrical columns of 60 centimeters diameter, covered with white lacquer, which the Mother had clearly ‘seen’ and which stand half-way between the center of the room and each one of its 12 corners. As their height is the same as that of the walls, they do not touch the ceiling and have no structural function. Except at the center of the room, the floor is covered with a white woolen carpet.
The Inner Chamber has no windows but it is air-conditioned. The only light comes from a single vertical beam of light, which The Mother described as slightly golden and visible. This beam is normally a sunbeam which is reflected down into the Chamber by a heliostat, whose computerized tracking system keeps it very precisely oriented. Electrical spotlights create a similar effect at night and on cloudy days.
At the center of the room, there is the object of concentration upon which this beam of sunlight falls.
This object is a crystal globe at the very center of the Chamber. This crystal globe is 70 centimeters in diameter and weighs 400kg. It has been custom-made of optically perfect glass in Germany by ‘Schott’ and later polished by ‘Zeiss’.
It rests on a 35 centimeter cube-shaped stand consisting of 4 upright gilded Sri Aurobindo symbols which support each other by the points of their triangles.
This cube stands at the center of the room on a 3 meter diameter Mother symbol which is engraved into a white marble slab.
The crystal globe is positioned exactly at the center of the sphere.
The Mother stressed that “the important thing is the play of the sunbeam on the center. Because that becomes a symbol – the symbol of the future realization.”
The Inner Chamber is a place meant for concentration, to “learn how to concentrate” with a view to try to find one’s consciousness.
“Concentration, for our yoga, means when the consciousness is fixed in a particular state, for example “peace” or movement, for example “aspiration, will, coming into contact with the Mother, taking the Mother’s name”; meditation is when the inner mind is looking at things to get the right knowledge.” (Sri Aurobindo)
The Mother clearly expressed the wish that Sri Aurobindo and Her teaching should not become the basis of any new religion or sect. Hence, She did not want religious practices of any kind to take place in the Matrimandir – not even organized collective concentrations. No statues, no photos, no incense, no flowers, no music, nothing that might give birth to a new cult.
From the pathway encircling the Matrimandir, eight pathways lead steeply down between the Petals to the Lotus Pond below.
Initially the architect had wanted to build a pond filled with lotuses, but when he realised that lotuses will not bloom in the shade, instead of plants, he used 216 petal-shaped marble slabs to create a pond over which water flows from the outside towards the centre. At the centre of this pond, there is a crystal globe, 17 centimetres in diameter, which receives the beam of sunlight which transits Matrimandir from top to bottom, as if to ‘illuminate the depths’.
There are benches where people can sit to concentrate on the Mother’s four Aspects or Personalities while sitting under the pair of Pillars after which they are named. Above the Lotus Pond, a Mother symbol, clad in white marble, allows the sunbeam to pass through its central point and fall onto the small crystal globe below.
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