Amal-Kiran - Poet and Critic

The Triple Labour of Association

TO HAVE known Amal Kiran was a grace, an unanticipated and clearly an undeserved benediction. For how is one to anticipate or deserve an encounter destined to alter the entire focus of one's life? That providential meeting occurred for me more than twenty years ago at a critical moment of my life when a great difficulty faced me in publishing my two volumes, Glimpses of the Mother's Life. Amal Kiran opened his heart and poured love and compassion on a budding writer.

I started compiling from 1973 the Mother's autobiographical accounts. I was fortunate enough that I had the privilege to have guidance from the Mother’s son Monsieur André Morisset in the project.  But he felt the need of a competent English editor to check the manuscript. He suggested the name of K.D. Sethna whom I knew in several respects, not only as the learned editor of Mother India since its inception in 1949 but also as a gigantic scholar, a true Aurobindo, a genuine poet of Overhead Poetry, the sadhak to whom Sri Aurobindo had written most of the letters on Savitri, and the authentic interpreter of Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga. A doubt crept into my mind: "How can I venture to approach him to guide me in this project? Has he got time for it?" But nothing is impossible if the "God-touch is there". One evening I sat near the Samadhi. At that time he had come with his wife Sehra and sat outside Dyuman-bhai's room, facing the Samadhi. Without hesitation I went to him and made an appeal in the following words: "Would you give some time to become the editor of my projected compilation Glimpses of the Mother's Life?" I also mentioned: "Andre-da has advised me to come to you for help in editing the book." Amal was very happy and wanted to see my manuscript. After seeing my manuscript he said to me that he would help me. So he became the editor and thus I could bring out the two volumes of compilation under his guidance.

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The Mother's outer life is difficult to seize or narrate in an authoritative manner. She never wrote any comprehensive systematic account of her life. But a fair quantity of genuine biographical material is scattered in her books, talks, and Prayers and Meditations. The biographical account had to be sorted out and arranged in a chronological order, related to the various phases of the Mother's life, and given the form of a well-connected story. This last function has been so admirably performed by the editor, along with Shraddhavan, an English lady from Auroville, that one feels as if one is reading an autobiography.  The story moves in a limpid flow. It is a solid work done in record time.

I faced obstacle after obstacle in publishing these two volumes, but generous help came from Jayantilal-bhai. Very heartily he took up the job and brought out two elegant artistic volumes. I thanked also Amal Kiran that he stood firmly on my side and quietly faced all opposition that was encountered in the project. After the publication of the two volumes, praises and recognition came from every corner of the world. There are precious moments in battle when victory glimmers amidst the storm.

Always Amal tells me: "Nilima, take writing as your sadhana. Don't run after praise and publication. Try to bring perfection even in a small detail." Slowly my writing career began under his loving care and guidance. He is really a task master. But when he looks frankly at imperfections, errors, weaknesses in various spheres, there is also the accompanying vibration of love which softens all troubles; it lifts me to a higher plane of seeing that comprehends and harmonises and that keeps everything on the focus of benevolence. Spontaneity, genuineness, and generosity characterize his action. None would ever feel small when with him.

K.D. Sethna distinguishes himself by playing many roles: a political commentator, philosophical thinker, literary critic, insightful poet, a historian, and a researcher. I shall specifically expound in this article his contribution as a journalist and his spiritual interpretation in the essay The Passing of Sri Aurobindo.

     He is the veteran editor of the journal Mother India, Monthly

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Review of Culture, whose spiritual creative hands have opened up a new vista, a new exposition of Sri Aurobindo's philosophy, vision of Indian culture, political thought, Integral Yoga and the Mother's teachings. He launched the journal, aspiring for a new future, on February 21st, 1949, the Mother's birthday. Mother India drew its inspiration from the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and sought to deal with various problems, national and international, in the light of their world-vision, based on the synthesis of spirit and matter in the mind of the world, particularly of free India.

The proposal was really mooted by a young businessman from Bombay, Keshavdeo R. Poddar, named by the Mother Navajata, The New-born One, though he was not an Ashramite at that time. Sethna says, "...he conceived a paper which would busy itself with that world's problems without any narrow business concern". So Poddar put the project before the Mother with Sethna's name as the editor.

The Mother consulted Sri Aurobindo and both approved of it. When both the Gurus approved of the proposal Sethna could not say "No". The magazine was fixed to appear as a fortnightly and the date planned to publish it was 21 February 1949, the Mother's seventy-first birthday.

The title of the journal was appropriately given by the wife of the editor, Sehra. Sethna says; "What she brought up answered at once to the truth behind the publication-date by harmonising with (1) the fact that the base of operations, besides being the motherland of Sri Aurobindo, was the country which the Mother, while hailing from the West, has still made her own Soul's choice, and (2) the vision of the Ashram-Mother as incarnating not only the "Wisdom-Splendour" that is the universe's fount -

Creatrix, the Eternal's artist Bride...¹

but also that particular face and front of the infinite, the Goddess Bharat-Shakti

Who watches over India till the end² -

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mothering especially the India of the Rishis, the Yogis, the Saints and, above all, the Avatars.

The editor was in a great dilemma: How would a magazine with spiritual background work out in the commercial capital of India? The spirit and commerce seemed two antithetical words. The desperateness of the proposed venture vanished from the editor's mind by the message from Aldous Huxley for the first issue, on 29.1.1949: "I wish you all success in your venture. You will, of course, be a voice crying in the wilderness. But if a few individuals pay attention, something will have been accomplished."

Sethna writes: "The editor was rather worried over that part of his job which was to consist in writing thousands of words on various political themes in a manner that would be clear, cogent, penetrating, widely informed, easily authoritative, enlightened by Sri Aurobindo's thought." In order to be relieved from the burden, he put it to the Mother: "I have to be an expert political thinker and writer. But I have no turn for politics and no touch with it." She smiled a cool sweet smile and answered: "Neither have I." The editor got a start: "Well, then what shall I do?" Again the imperturbable sweetness and then the reply: "There is Sri Aurobindo, He will guide you in everything." A sudden flood of power swept over the hearer. "Oh, yes," he said, "Sri Aurobindo will surely do the impossible." And Sri Aurobindo did it. Once a sadhak expressed a sceptical attitude about the authenticity of the views expressed in the fortnightly. Sri Aurobindo exclaimed: "Doesn't he know that Mother India is my paper?"

The main articles for the first issue were written by the editor and the associate editor S. Albless and sent to Pondicherry. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother listened carefully when Nolini-da read them out. Both approved the articles and sent words of appreciation,

     The Mother India's Office in Bombay was set up just six or seven weeks before the journal commenced. Veteran journalists from various parts of the city advised that material for the magazine should be collected sufficiently in advance, at least six

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months before the start. The editor had material only for two or three issues. The warning finger suggested: "Better to lie quiet for a few months than go up a rocket and come down a stick!" Bur the editor did not lose courage. He put the problem before the Mother. He sent an urgent letter. "All journalists advise us to postpone publication for some months. They say that we must be well stocked with articles: otherwise we are doomed.  My own instinct is that of Marshal Foch at the Battle of the Marne in 1914, He sent the message to the headquarters; 'Mon centre cede, ma droite recule, situation excellente, j'attaque. (My centre is giving way, my right wing is in retreat, situation excellent, I am attacking.)’ What do you say?" On 27 January 1949, the editor received the telegram: "Stick to the date. Live on faith. Blessings - Mother." With a whoop the office went into action - and faith in the Mother's Grace has kept Mother India in action up to now.

After Sri Aurobindo's passing the Mother did not like political writings to be published in the magazine. According to her suggestion Mother India was converted wholly into a cultural review; from a fortnightly it became a monthly with a different format. Sometime in 1953, the Mother decided to shift the office from Bombay to Pondicherry. The editor came back to the Ashram in February 1954. Even now he is doing his editorial work as efficiently as ever, age notwithstanding.

On 15 October 1991, Amal met with a serious accident. He fell down in his office room while moving with the help of his Walker' and his right thigh was fractured. He was taken to the Ashram Nursing Home.

It was decided by the doctors that his leg should be kept under traction. I was with him often in the Nursing Home and noticed what an uncomfortable life it was for him. But he was calm, always smiling. The days were spent in meditation, in writing letters, dipping into literary journals or else preparing the future issues of Mother India. I remember that he told me, just two days after his fall, that he had matter ready for the next issue, but that it might not be possible to continue under these circumstances. As the manager of Mother India, without thinking for a moment, I told him: "No, Amal, the Mother's Mother India cannot be

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discontinued. Did you forget the Mother's gracious telegram at the time of your first publication, 'Stick to me date, live on faith, Blessings'." When I reminded him of these words his face lighted up and he said: "Yes, it will be continued." I kept on saying: "Whatever help you need from me for bringing out the magazine I am ready to give." I have found that he was able to bring out subsequent issues very meticulously without any difficulty. What Grace it was!

I shall now briefly talk about Sethna's interpretative essay The Passing of Sri Aurobindo. It is based on his inner observations of "No one can write about my life because it is not on the surface for anyone to see." Besides his brilliant career in England, his fiery political thought and activity and preaching of revolutionary action, there is nothing outwardly to be noticed. His life was too deeply inward. He has compassed all the traditional Yogas with their experiences and realisations. His stupendous endeavour was to bring the hitherto Unmanifest into the human consciousness and to establish it on the earth. So, about his passing, Sethna says: "No Yogi dies in the ordinary meaning of the word: his consciousness always exceeds the formula of the physical body, he is beyond and greater than his material sheath even while he inhabits it, and his action on mankind is essentially through his free and ample spirit to which both life and death are small masks of a fully aware immortality in the limitless being of the Divine and the Eternal."

Sethna showed deep insight and penned a thought-provoking statement on Sri Aurobindo's passing. His inner interpretation runs as in the following passage:

"Sri Aurobindo, the Yogi of the Supermind descending into the outer as well as the inner being and bringing a divine life on earth in addition to the infinite immortality of the Beyond, cannot be looked upon as passing away on account of old age and physical causes. Whatever the purely clinical picture, it must have behind it a significance integral with his highly significant and immeasurably more-than-physical life of spiritual attainment." Furthermore, Sethna explained: “The evolutionary was always

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fused with the revolutionary in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga of the Supermind and, just as his life's audacities, like those of his art of poetry and prose, were always felicitous, full of ease and aptness, gloriously adapting nature rather than violating it, so too the adventure of his death would be no utter supernormal but carry for all its profound import and exceptional mode some semblance of the common passage to the stillness and the shadow.'' Whatever the physical sciences described, the physical causes were quite in contradiction to truth that Sri Aurobindo did not pass always as a result of them. Sethna says that this fact is based not only on Sri Aurobindo's special spiritual status but also on a number of remarkable physical facts. "Doctors have declared, on the strength of typical non-response to stimuli, that he entered into deep coma in consequence of an extreme uraemic condition following upon a failure of ail treatment. As every medical tyro knows, such a state of uraemic coma admits of no return to consciousness. Yet to the surprise of the doctors attending on him, Sri Aurobindo opened his eyes at frequent intervals and asked for a drink or inquired what the time was! This repeated occurrence of the scientifically impossible leads one to believe that the deep uraemic coma was intermixed, as it were, with a very conscious Yogic self-withdrawal from an instrument which was too damaged to be kept for common use but with yet could nor quite bar the uncommon will of its master. Here was no brain of mere carbon and iron and phosphorus: here was the subtilised servitor of a mind that had sat on the peaks of God and from there could command response in the midst of all material determinism. Even half an hour before the breathing ceased and the heart stopped beating, Sri Aurobindo looked out from his calm compassionate eyes, spoke the name of the doctor by his side and drank some water. This was the strangest uraemic coma in medical history."

On 5 December 1950 Sri Aurobindo passed away but his body "was found to have retained the beautiful white-gold colour that had distinguished it during his lifetime. There was not the slightest trace of decomposition". The same day the Mother

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announced: 'The funeral of Sri Aurobindo has nor taken place today. His body is charged with such a concentration of Supramental light that there is so sign of decomposition and the body will be kept lying on his bed as long as it remains intact." Later she reported: "As soon as Sri Aurobindo withdrew from his body, what he called the Mind of Light got realised in me." The Mother speaks of the Mind of Light as follows: "The Supermind had descended long ago — very long ago — into the mind and even into the vital: it was working in the physical also but indirectly through those intermediaries. The question was about the direct action of the Supermind in the physical. Sri Aurobindo said it could be possible only if the physical mind received the supramental light: the physical mind was the instrument for direct action upon the most material. This physical mind receiving the supramental light Sri Aurobindo called the Mind of Light."

Amal Kiran writes apropos of the full circumstances of Sri Aurobindo's passing: "Whoever has studied the full circumstances knows too that as a result of this grand and dreadful strategic sacrifice the new power which Sri Aurobindo has variously termed Supermind, Gnosis, Truth-Consciousness came down at last into earth's being and established a first centre of action."

About this article the Mother sent a telegram to Amal, through Nolini-da, on 22 December 1950: “Your passing of Sri Aurobindo 'admirable'. Fully approved by the Mother. Nothing to change."

The Mother's message to Yogendra, Associate Manager of Mother India, elaborates this further: "I have read Amal's article.  It is excellent, Tell him I am extremely satisfied, I would like to have it printed in booklet form. He can get it printed in Bombay. If not, I will print it here." (28 December 1950). The Mother's comment to Yogendra on this article is: "It is the best thing he has written, I would like to print 15,000 copies." (29 December 1950)

A revelation came on 4 April 1954 to the gifted poet about that extremely significant event, the realisation of the Mind of Light in the Mother:

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The core of a deathless sun is now the brain

And each grey cell bursts to omniscient gold.

When the Mother read this poem she said: 'The first two lines are sheer revelation. They catch exactly what took place."

NILIMA DAS

References

1. Savitri (Centenary Edition, 1972), p. 345.

2. Collected Poems (Centenary Edition, 1972), p. 291.

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