I am always with you

Many people have met The Mother. Some were blessed by Her responding to their questions in writing. One of those is Frederick Schulze Buxloh, who first came to India in 1960 when he was 20 years old and then met The Mother for the first time. As he recalls in his recently published book “I am always with you”, There she was sitting behind the door, her legs resting on a little stool as they did not even reach the ground, her thin arms on the hard black carved armrests. She looked so fragile. I had made up my mind not to kneel down. But before I knew it, my knees buckled and I was kneeling. She looked at me and she said, “What do you want to do, do you want to be quiet or do you want to talk?” What rose up in me was “Can I do both,” but I could not speak. Then her eyes became very physical, almost a tangible force, like a beam … Never before had I felt that there was somebody who had seen me totally – not “accepted”, not “approved of”, but looked at – and it was such a joy to be fully known, to be free. It was the beginning of Frederick’s surrender and dedication to The Mother he loved.

We may expect that in the years to come many disciples and devotees will start sharing the memories of their contact with The Mother. But this book is the first of the kind of an Auroville resident and, as such, not only gives an insight into The Mother’s help with the author’s personal and family issues, but also of Mother’s views and support for the budding Auroville of which Frederick, his partner Shyama and her children became the early residents. 

In the chapter “Surrendering to The Mother” he describes what it meant to him to be close to The Mother, and how, when he once asked to see her, she wrote back I am always with you. Reflecting on these words many years later, Frederick realised that the ‘I’ is not really the physical Mother as he had come to know her, but rather an intensity of presence.

The book has 11 chapters and an epilogue. Each chapter’s focus is on a different aspect of The Mother: as a personal guru, an elder sister, a mother, an executive, an initiator, a leader of the evolution, as form maker, as manager, as referee and as the presence within. 

In the epilogue Frederick talks about the recent happenings in Auroville, starting in December 2021 with the destruction of the Youth Centre, and continuing today, as if the Auroville ideal is slowly being corrupted, shrunk, reduced to normalcy, and so in danger of becoming dead. Yet, he writes, there is another dimension too – there is a living presence now. “When The Mother speaks of a cradle for the Superman, or laboratory of the new world – it’s now.”

“I am always with you: With The Mother from 1960 onward”

Published by Auroville Press

ISBN 978-81-955314-9-3

187 pages

Price in India Rs 440

Available from Auroville Press, the Wild Seagull bookshop at the Visitor's Center and at Casablanca, Pondicherry.