Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 2)

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You unpredictable wonderful little girl of fifty odd years, what is all this sudden lamentation and shedding of tears and self-doubting? The Divine Mother is always with you and has accepted you and given you not only good relatives and friends, dear and near ones, but also an elder soul-brother out of the blue who though physically far is ever close to you inwardly and never forgets you even when he delays writing letters. You must hold your soul in peace. We are devotees of Sri Aurobindo who said that his Yoga is founded in equanimity, a wide solid calm, which can sustain all the extraordinary experiences which he can give to his children. If there is no tranquil base, marvellous experiences may come but won't remain as part of one's being. If the foundation keeps shaking, how can a superstructure be established? "Towers may soar up but they Will topple if the ground is not steady. And there is a further reason for serenity. Let me come to it by way of a voice of wisdom from the past

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Dante wrote in Italian one of the most inspired lines in all poetry, the English of which would simply be: "In His Will is our peace." It means that our hearts can rest only by putting themselves in tune with whatever God wills for us. To accept inevitable circumstances, however hard they may seem - to carry on necessary work no matter how difficult or inconge-nial - to take with quiet gladness whatever lot appears to be ours as though divinely fated - to feel God's hand in all that is given us by the world's common or uncommon movement through time: such is the message of Dante's mahavakya, his great revelatory word. But perhaps something more may be added to complete the visionary drive behind his utterance.

If "in His Will is our peace", we may also consider the other side of the human-divine relationship, the traffic of truth between the Supreme Spirit and the aspiring soul, and deliver the message: "In our peace is His Will." This would

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mean three things. First, a natural state of peace in us would be the sign that God's Will is working in us. Secondly, with peace settled in our heart and mind we shall best know what God wills us to do. It is in the midst of an inner serenity that the urges from on high to right action will most easily arrive. Thirdly, the proof that right action has been done is that the after-glow of an action is peace within us.

At this point you are likely to ask: "How am I to get hold of peace? Will there be peace if I just say, 'Let there be peace'?" To the second question I have to answer both "No" and "Yes". On asserting peace in yourself you won't at once become peaceful. Perhaps the exact opposite would result -so paradoxical is our nature. But a persistent command -with a patient force in it - is bound to bring about, sooner or later, a subsidence of jarring and warring elements.And in this command we must have the sense of God's peace being called into us. Such a sense would imply that already a marvellous eternal peace exists and we do not have to manufacture it. What we have to do is to imagine it intensely and exert our will to draw it near: a prayerful power has to be exerted. A situation of this kind suggests another permutation and combination of the Dantesque mantra. It may run: "In our will is His peace." By means of a prayerful power, a strongly willed supplication aided by a constant resolve to practise detachment which would save us from sudden acute reactions of our nerves to the impact of events, we shall get closer and closer to the condition in which Sri Aurobindo pictures Savitri's father Aswapati in those lines which I have often quoted to my friends:

A poised serenity of tranquil strength,

A wide unshaken look on Time's unrest

Faced all experience with unaltered peace.

I hope you don't feel upset by this long endless-seeming discourse on not getting upset. It may remind you of what was said of Carlyle: "In 28 volumes of manifold eloquence he

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preached the virtue of silence." But possibly Carlyle was not as absurd as people might make him out. Silence is so rare a virtue that people may not realise the value and the need of it unless a gifted orator dins them into their ears. Again, if Carlyle had the capacity of silence in his own self, his words would have the capacity to evoke the sense of it in other people's minds. And surely Carlyle did know how to keep silent. There is the famous story of his visits to the poet Tennyson. The two friends would often sit at opposite ends by the fireplace, puffing at their pipes. After a couple of hours of absorption in their own thoughts, without the exchange of a single word, they would get up to part. Carlyle would say to Tennyson: "What a fine evening we have had!" One may wonder what was going on in them- during those two hours of keeping mum. A hint lies in Carlyle's general comment on Tennyson on one occasion: "He is a great fellow given to deep silences spent in cosmicising the chaos within him."

To cosmicise the inner chaos may be regarded by us as the true object of our Yoga. The process would be not only to bring the various parts of our being - often in conflict with one another - into a general harmony. The process would also be to introduce into our being a principle wider than the individual self. Something of the universal, the cosmic, has to come into play, taking us out of our limited ego. In this way something more than a concord within us would be achieved. There would be a happy attunement of ourselves with the world around us - both human creatures and the vast realm of Nature. A mighty Omnipresence would be felt, giving us the power to create peace wherever we go by a touch of the One God who is in the depths of all. But at the same time that an immense reconciling Oneness is evoked there is no loss of the -multiplicity held in the unity. An intimate concourse of persons would be a recurring note. While the single Spirit pervading all would be the basis, the rich element of varying personality would play infinitely upon it. For in the cosmicising act we bring into our ordinary

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nature two secret agents: the Self of selves on the one hand and the inmost individual soul who is a sweetness flowing out to fellow souls and a light which reveals them as brothers and sisters, inseparable children of the same Divine Parents who complete each other:

Calm husband, master of all life -

Radiant incalculable wife.

The Self of selves is the cosmos's truth of underlying and overarching eternity. The individual soul is the truth of the universe's endless time, the thread running through the ages, on which birth after birth is hung.

That's enough of Yogic philosophy and poetry for the present!

(29.4.1990)

Your two letters refer to some very important matters. First, the inner darshan of the Divine Mother on 6.5.81. Your reply to her offer to grant boons is exemplary: "I want only You and Your will." Of course, this is the most wonderful gift God can bestow: one who receives it will look on nothing else as worth having. It can fill the whole heart with an absolute sweetness, the sweetness of a Perfect Being's presence, and with the light of a Guidance that is unerring. But having such a Marvel enshrined within us must prepare us to stand with equanimity all that happens in our lives. For, just because the Eternal Beauty is lodged in our heart our days are not assured of smooth sailing. We are in a world of complex forces, chequered movements, which are natural to the limited mind, the restricted life-energy, the hampered and unstable body we possess. Difficulties, sufferings, failures are unavoidable - until the glorious hour in the future when what Sri Aurobindo has called the Supreme Truth-Consciousness, the all-transformative Supermind, descends in its fullness and evokes the same Godhead lying deep-hidden in

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each of our parts and the two by their combination begin a new race.

Religious people often complain: "We say our prayers regularly, we visit the temple on the right occasions, and yet many of our efforts prove fruitless, our bodies frequently fall ill, even some of our dear ones die before their time. Why all this when we are God's worshippers?" Whatever may be the causes of the mishaps these people meet with, they do not realise that their worship is not the soul's pure leap to its Maker: it is done with an ulterior motive - the desire for their own success, happiness, prosperity. God may grant appeals for personal benefits, but He also may not, and when selfish supplications are made He is not bound to respond to them. But what about his true devotees?

It is their misfortunes that raise the real question. But, as I have said, they too live in a world of imperfection and they too are themselves imperfect in their human parts. I remember once telling the Mother during a visit to the Ashram from Bombay: "Please arrange things so that everything may go harmoniously and no obstacles come in the way of my relationship with people and of my ultimate passage to you." The Mother replied: "Do you want the laws of the universe to change for your sake?" This did not mean that her blessings were not with me. But it meant that I, a mere human, who lived in the context of common existence, could not expect everything to happen according to my wish and convenience: even my path to the Divine would not necessarily run uncluttered. However, if one's inmost heart has been given to God and one feels that His wide wisdom and His beatific warmth are always with one, all untoward events will be intuited as happening with His knowledge and with His shaping hand secretly at work in them with care and love and the touch of a perfecting purpose. All unavoidable ill-luck will still serve His ends. Even at times He may grievously shock us into a rapid seeking of greater depths within us of intimacy with His infinite peace and His all-enfolding power. In any case, we shall have His company in the midst of every

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contretemps and recognise His hidden grace at each step across hurting stones. We shall hear Him saying like the Master-Sculptor imagined by a disciple of Sri Aurobindo:

Pain like a chisel I've brought to trace

The death of pain upon your face.

Or else His message will come to us in Sri Aurobindo's own words:

Bear; thou shalt find at last thy road to bliss.

Bliss is the secret stuff of all that lives.

Best of all, we shall find the Mother saying to us as she did in response to a disciple's prayer:

"I am always with you. I shall never fail you in prosperity or in adversity, even when you sink I am with you - I sink with you: I do not stand on the shore and merely look at you from a distance. 1 sink with you, I am in you: for lam you."

you say that on 9.5.81 you saw a vision of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother with your eyes open. As you know, it is the inner eyes that project their vision as if into physical space. But I would like to know how exactly the two figures fitted into the material surroundings within which they stood. Were they transparent, with their background showing through their bodies? Or did they assume a threedimen-sional solidity of form in their own subtle substance and seem to be a natural part of the earthly scene? Was the impression such as to make you feel that you could have touched their bodies?

You have asked me how you should study Savitri. The chief thing is to enter into its revelatory atmosphere. Read it so that your ear and not only your eye takes the poetry in. This means you must read it audibly. Further, try to receive the impact of the poetry as though the sound came from

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above your head and at the same time emerged from what the Rigveda terms the heart-ocean. This twofold arrival is the way of the Mantra. And the impact will tend to be received thus if you approach the poem with as hushed a mind as you can manage. Then within the mental stillness the sense will take shape and the inner eye will follow and distinguish the various contours of the vision-bearing thought and the inner ear will vibrate with the spiritual life-thrill accompanying that thought. Am I talking abracadabra?

(21.5.1990)

Your letter, as usual, is a long soliloquy - but it is not just X chatting with X but X communing with the Divine Mother whom he is nestling deep within him and with Amal whom he holds in some warm wideness of inner being.

The increasing apathy and detachment you speak of is basically the distance you feel from the old fellow you used to know as yourself. That fellow was full of responses and reactions and now he is not the whole of your being but a small part while the major space is occupied by One whom you can address most meaningfully with those lines of Manomohan Ghose, Sri Aurobindo's elder brother.

Augustest, dearest, whom no thought can trace,

Name murmuring out of birth's infinity,...

The other presence who edges out your usual being is nothing so lofty or so enrapturing but is ever an aspirant after the largeness and light which he dreams of as the poefs ambience so that some day it may be said of him in a phrase by your friend:

Far-visioned with the homeless heart he sings.

Your preoccupation with trees and flowers reminds me of a little experience I have been having these afternoons of visit

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to the Samadhi. Nowadays, owing to the increasing infirmity of my legs, the trudge from the Ashram Gate to the chair kept for me opposite the Samadhi is quite a strain. But(the strain of the body tends to vanish into a strain of music within me as I go looking at the several pots of plants ranged all along my passage. The continuous green of the leaves wafts to me a sustained heart-ease while the many-coloured and many-shaped blossoms seem to spring at me like fillips of sudden joy instilling an energy that is at once a light and a laugh.

This experience started as an occult answer to my need two weeks back. After each walk to the Samadhi courtyard my heart began to miss beats very closely, creating a marked discomfort in the chest. On returning home the same abnormality continued. Dr. Raichura, who verified it, was quite concerned. He got three cardiograms taken, one immediately after my homeward rickshaw-drive. All were most disappointing: they showed the heart throbbing away quite normally! The trouble, however, continued. I noticed that during those days there was a great diminution of the radiance I habitually feel in my mind and heart. Sorbitrate tablets, either swallowed or sublingual, were tried to promote better blood-circulation. But they acted only to cause a mild intoxication and a slight headache which went on for more than an hour. Dr. Dalai too lent a hand. He gave me the homoeopathic adaptation of Tincture Crataegus Oxyacantha (Hawthorne Berry), a heart-tonic once used by allopaths but now totally abandoned by them though much praised still by Hahnemann's followers. This tincture is a long-term treatment. No immediate result was noticed.

Then suddenly I had the experience of a big Shadow lifting from my head - and all was peace and brightness at once! For a day or two the miss-beats continued but I didn't care. One afternoon I completely forgot to take my pulse. The next day I found it normal. Both the doctors were glad to feel the heart running a steady course. Now, steady or not makes no difference. And I realise that my "illness" was

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really the attack of an occult hostile force to which I had somehow laid myself open.

I recalled that just before the abnormal phase I had been appealing to Sri Aurobindo, because of some vague unease, with that line from his poem Musa Spiritus: "All make tranquil, all make free." Somehow I had to pass through what the Bible terms "the Valley of the Shadow" (luckily not "of Death", as the Bible has it) before my appeal was answered.

It seems rather relevant in the cardiac context to note the whole stanza from which I had culled that line. It runs:

All make tranquil, all make free.

Let my heart-beats measure the footsteps of God

As He comes from His timeless infinity

To build in their rapture His burning abode.

May I fancy that somehow my heart missed those footsteps again and again or else that they became too light, too airy, to be measured? Perhaps the best thing to say would be: "There was not alertness enough on my side to match all the possible ways in which the Eternal's love responds to the call of Time's heart."

The experience of the sudden lifting of a Shadow reminds me of what happened 17 years ago. I have written of it to a friend and I may repeat it here. I was in Bombay and had a pecubar fever with a most unpleasant feeling in the stomach as if a little ogre were sitting there and being most capriciously choosy about nourishment. No medicine worked. Late one evening, after a week during which there was just a passive waiting on the Mother, I inwardly saw a fist come down with force somewhere at the back of me and immediately the ogre jumped out of my belly and I was perfectly normal. The fever disappeared and the same night I had a most vivid meeting with the Mother in a dream. My whole heart seemed to leap towards her with such emotion as I have rarely felt. She was still in her body at that time, though

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incommunicado - towards the end of October 1973.

(4.5.1990)

My health is fine except for the legs which are not very willing to do their proper job. They may argue from the strain they undergo that a person who lives so much in his head does not need them very much. But somehow I persuade them to make it possible for me not to try going to the Samadhi on my head! I spend an hour and a quarter there happily lost in the in-world, though often enough my eyes are fully open, mostly to take the out-world's splendour - the wide-spreading "Service Tree", the various sparkling flowers on the Samadhi as well as the lavish plant-arrangements in the Ashram-courtyard - as a flame to kindle further the aspiration towards the Divine Dweller of the depths and the heights. Occasionally some distractions take place, some small communications with other souls and at times even odd incidents.

Once when I used to sit just outside Dyuman's room and not as now under the clock opposite the Samadhi, a fellow came and asked me, pointing to the room: "Can I buy T-shirts here?" God knows what gave him that outlandish idea. Could he have seen sadhaks wearing T-shirts coming out of the room? Another chap put me the question: "Where is the Samadhi?" He had his back to it. I said: "Just turn round to see it." Evidently he was a serious seeker, but 1 suppose he mistook the actual Samadhi to be a little garden of an original kind set up to prepare the devotee's mind for the paradisal atmosphere of the actual location where the bodies of the Master and the Mother had been laid to rest. A third visitor on another day inquired with a very concerned face: "How to meditate when it is so hot?" I replied: "Very simple. Just take your shirt off." His eyes widened as if a revelation had been made. The next day he appeared on the scene in a joyous state of shirtless spirituality. One day a lady acquaintance from Bombay came up to me and asked: "Are

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you any relative of Amal Kiran?" I said: "Not at all." She looked amazed. Then I added: "I am Amal Kiran himself." Her face showed still greater amazement. It seemed to her strange indeed that instead of being my relative I should be myself. I have rarely seen a mystic so mystified.

One more anecdote, now with a profound significance. A sincere soul complained to me: "I have a great difficulty." "What is it?" I sympathetically inquired. He answered: "I like to come to the Samadhi again and again." "That's ideal," I commented. He looked distressed and said: "I come here to look at all the pretty girls putting their heads on the Samadhi." "Well," I remarked, "don't give up coming, but offer to the Mother all the charming faces you like to look at. She'll be quite pleased with such a bouquet of devoted flowers. She doesn't mind what you dedicate to her. She is interested to see that you follow her master-formula of Yoga to us: 'Remember and offer'."

The man who had been distressed smiled with relief. He moved away and stood on the other side of the Samadhi. When he turned his eyes to the young heads bowing, 1 sensed a sort of distance in them. Some phrases of the poet Meredith's glided into my mind, far exceeding the occasion but not quite irrelevant. They are those in which, according to Sri Aurobindo,' "the metrical sound floats and seems always on the point of drowning in some deep sea of inner intonation" and which he considers to be "a description which might well be applied to the whole drift and cause of this spiritual principle of rhythm". Meredith speaks of the Spirit of Colour who leads

Through widening chambers of surprise to where

Throbs rapture near an end that aye recedes,

Because his touch is infinite and lends

A yonder to all ends.

(12.6.1987)

1, The Future Poetry and Letters on Poetry, Literature and Art (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry 1972), pp. 164-165.

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