Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 2)

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Your lament sounds genuine and, since it is so, you are sure to break open the closed recesses of your being. The fact that you have not come into physical contact with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother though they were on the earth in your lifetime is certainly unfortunate, but the conviction which you have that they were Divine Visitors to our world is strong enough to put you in inner contact with them. And remember that even now they are not merely discarnate spirits. Sri Aurobindo has given the assurance through the Mother that he would remain as a personal presence in "the earth's atmosphere" - that is, the subtle-physical plane, which is the plane closest to the earth - until the work he had undertaken is fulfilled. According to the Mother, he is there in a subtle-physical body very much like the form he had before but now perfect, "with the light of immortality upon it". At present the Mother too must be taken to exist on that plane in the same manner and active in the same way to fulfil in our world her transformative work. Always think of both her and Sri Aurobindo as still embodied beings and not only as pervading and guiding consciousnesses. By thinking thus, you will draw greater help from them towards your ultimate realisation.

Obstacles to the spiritual pursuit are there for each of us. The path is arduous and long, but once the innermost self has been awakened - the true soul within - we are never alone on the path. For, the true soul is a part of the Divine, a projection from the Supreme, and the Glorious Whole from which it has been put forth into the earth's evolutionary career is always with it. For us this Glorious Whole wears the august face of Sri Aurobindo or else bears the sweet features of the Mother. And since our Gurus have subtle-physical bodies we should be able to have with that Glorious Whole a more concrete and intimate sense of relationship than would otherwise be legitimate to assume. Of course, we can think of

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our Gurus as not only within us but also in front of us or above us, for the Glorious Whole is not confined to one place. It is not bound by our material space-laws. But, wherever we may feel it to be, we should be justified in believing that its essential eternity and infinity possess a concentration of them in a subtle-physical form in close rapport with us.

You may say: "The subtle-physical has still a distance from us and is not as Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were at one time." True, but I may remind you that even at that time they were not always accessible to sight and hearing and touch. No doubt, other signs of their accessibleness were there - e.g., letters - but our sadhana used to go on with Sri Aurobindo mostly an imagined presence - a compassionate power in a far-off room. Can his absence now from that room make a radical difference? Here an incident from my own life may shed light on this question.

From the end of 1927 to the end of 1950, everything that I wrote - prose or poetry - was written with Sri Aurobindo in view. Each writing of mine was either read by him or read out to him and he commented on it. And I used to appeal to him for help with a sense of his bodily being. When he left his body I felt most disheartened. "What will happen now? Who will help my writing work as he used to do?" - such was my anguished cry. I spoke my thought to my friend, Udar, who at that time had access to the Mother in those few days after the passing of Sri Aurobindo when she had suspended her usual round of activity .On December 17, if I remember aright - 12 days after the great Transition on the 5th - she met her children again. One by one we went to her. When my turn came, she looked into my eyes and held my right hand with hers and said: "Nothing has changed. Ask Sri Aurobindo for help as you have done in the past and you will get it in the same way as then. Nothing has changed." Her words put some heart into me, but my mind was still vague.

Two or three days later I had a special interview with her,

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I was to fly back to Bombay where I was living at that time. Mother India was being edited and published from there every fortnight as a cultural newspaper covering all fields, even politics, from the Aurobindonian viewpoint. I said to the Mother: "Hundreds of people are waiting to get some light from us on what has happened. Will you kindly tell me the meaning of the event so that I may tell them?" She answered: "It is perfectly clear to me. But I am not going to tell you. You must find out by yourself." Then I said: "Mother, give me the power to do so." I bowed at her feet and she blessed me. Before I left her, some words broke out from me, which are not relevant to the theme I am dealing with but which meant a great deal to me at the time and may be mentioned to complete my record of the interview. Spontaneously 1 said: "Mother, your life is most precious. If it is possible in time of danger to give a sacrifice for your safety, if the offering of anyone's life in place of yours can be allowed, I shall be most happy to give mine." I knew that my life was a very small thing and it was foolish to think of its substituting hers in an occult transaction, but my sense of her preciousness, all the more after Sri Aurobindo's departure, was so intense that I could not help this gesture of love as of a son for his cherished mother. I am sure all of us would have been ready to save her, if we could, in this way.

Now back to my subject. After I reached Bombay I spent several days without writing a line. But an appeal was there to Sri Aurobindo: "If I cannot write something adequate to what has happened, all that I have written so far in my life means nothing. And if I can do justice to the tremendous event, I won't care whether or not I write anything else in my life. Help me!"

More than a week passed. Then suddenly I felt as if a light had fallen on my mind. I went to my table and sat at my typewriter. I typed non-stop for a number of hours. My article was ready with the title: "The Passing of Sri Aurobindo: Its Inner Significance and Consequence." It was posted to the Mother. A few days later I got a telegram from

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Nolini: "Article admirable. Fully approved by Mother. Nothing to change." I may add here what I heard from my Associate Editor, Soli Albless, who was in Pondicherry at the t he  time. He wrote to me that the Mother had told our friend Yogendra at the Playground: "Amal's article is excellent. Tell him I am extremely satisfied." The next evening she said to Yogendra: "It's quite the best thing Amal has written. I
would like fifteen thousand copies of it to be printed. He can get this done in Bombay. Otherwise I'll have the printing ' done here." My article first appeared in Mother India. Then it  was made into a booklet, fifteen thousand copies as the Mother had wanted.

What do you gather from this story? As the Mother had told me, I asked Sri Aurobindo for help as if nothing had changed because of his leaving his body. The result was the best thing I had ever written. It proved the Mother absolutely right in assuring me that I would get inspiration from Sri Aurobindo just as before. And I have found during all the years since December 5, 1950 that Sri Aurobindo has never failed me. Whenever in my writing-work I have been up against a difficulty, even like facing a blank wall, I have put to him at night before going to sleep the exact problem and aspired for his help. Invariably something or other has turned up to pull me out of my predicament. Either the solution has come directly to my mind or I have come across a piece of writing in a book or an article to set me on the proper course or even presenting me with a ready-made answer. The long and short of my tale is that the lack of Sri Aurobindo's physical presence has not stood in the way of his assistance.

The same holds for the Mother. But I have observed that the response is most satisfying and even most prompt when, after offering my difficulty of any kind to her, I have stopped worrying about it myself. With a mental blank in me following the appeal, a confident complete detachment on my part from the problem, she has often brought about surprising results. Of course we cannot expect a recognisable

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solution every time. But neither did such a miracle happen when the Mother was in her physical body, though I have the faith that in all circumstances an answer from her was always there in some form or other we didn't immediately recognise. Our inner life is helped in however secret a way and sooner or later we discover the benefit. Her apparent denials are still acts of grace, for her love is ever present to bring our souls closer to felicity and fulfilment.

1 hope I haven't bored you with going on and on about just one point in your letter. The other important point is your concern that your wife, your son (12 years old) and your daughter (aged 17¹/₂ years) should follow along with you the Path shown by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. It is a worthy concern, but don't let it be an oppressive one to them. Live your life as much as you can in our Guru's light but don't preach too much to your family and don't seek to impose anything on them. Let your own life influence them without your having to point out its merits or your remmding them every now and then of what they should do. Every soul has its own curve of development, its own destiny. We should not try to pressurise people to fall into one pattern. The old-time fanatic single-tracked religious spirit is wrong. Invoke the Mother's grace for your family, live in the atmosphere of inner communion with her and she will do the needful for the souls of your people. Encourage them when required, indicate quietly the right direction but never try to push. Stop worrying about their destinies. Your children are quite young and it is natural that they should be not as serious as you may be about matters like sadhana. If they have love and respect for the Mother, it is enough to start with. Let this seed sprout in its own fashion under gentle rain and mild sunshine. There should be no attempt at a forced "hothouse" growth. I expect your wife is in tune with your own aspiration and is spontaneously turned towards the Divine, but even with her you should not dogmatise or set up rails along which she must run.

As regards your own sadhana, I don't know what exactly

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to say. You speak of "the resistance of inconscience and unfavourable circumstances" and "fears of weakness and depressions leading to unspirituai mental processes in us". It is the common lot of all who try to swim upstream. The real remedy is to find something within us to which swimming upstream is the most natural thing in the world. It is the psychic being of which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have written such a lot. Once you get into touch with this true soul, there is a happy spontaneity in turning towards the Divine. The psychic being makes no effort to find the Supreme, for as I have said, it is itself a part of the Supreme. From its deep place within our hearts, devotion and self-dedication flow automatically. There are several parts which are not in accord with its unforced movement. Instead of fighting with them in the name of an Ideal held by the mind, it is more practical to put these parts into contact with that inner fountain of surrender to the Divine. A general equanimity, a quiet confronting of circumstances, including those of our own many-shaded nature, is called for and, along with it, a gesture of putting them all before the Mother. Visualise her face and figure and remember those lines from Savitri:

Immortal rhythms swayed in her time-bom steps;

Her look, her smile awoke celestial sense

Even in earth-stuff, and their intense delight

Poured a supernal beauty on men's lives....

A deep of compassion, a hushed sanctuary,

Her inward help unbarred a gate in heaven;

Love in her was wider than the universe.

The whole world could take refuge in her single heart.

If you can conjure up the Mother's presence before you in bodily shape and let the inmost being in you put into her hands all your difficulties gathered together as if in a heap, the poignancy of your problems will disappear and the way will be clearer for your soul to suffuse the rest of your psychological self. The "unspirituai mental processes" will

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cease to bother you. If you are worried about your family's future because of certain tendencies which seem to you unspirituai in them, take them up again inwardly as though in a bundle and put them into the Mother's guiding and gracious hands. I may say not only "gracious" but also "graceful", for indeed they had an exquisiteness about them. I recollect once telling her: "Your hands in a certain posture remind me of Mona Lisa's as painted by Leonardo. I almost see those hands passing from that picture into yours." She replied: "It sometimes happens that certain bodily features of one's past birth are repeated in one's new form."

Your letter ends with the words: "Regards to your great self." The term "great self" translates accurately the Upa-nishad's Mahan atman. This Mohan atman is not anybody's private possession, except in the sense that it is a profound non-public secret, but it is in that sense the private possession of everybody, a universal consciousness which is one in all, hidden in you no less than in me, and waiting to be felt through an ever wider practice of what I have called "equanimity".

(13.7.1990)

X would be wrong in conceiving me as ambitious to make anybody my disciple. I offer nothing else than the deepest friendship I am capable of and I strive always to communicate my small attempts to be a mere tool in the all-guiding hands of Sri Aurobindo and be taken by them through every movement of life to the radiant feet of his companion and co-worker, the Divine Mother - feet that hold the sense of all journeys done and the promise to us that we world-wanderers will at last reach home by surrendering ourselves to them.

You have given me a good glimpse of your life when you were in service. It is a rare quality to pray to God to pardon whoever hurts one. And it is also rare to search for some fault in oneself which may have brought about the criticism,

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instead of being so filled with one's own merit as to resent the critical word or act. But the sensitiveness of which you speak is a weak point. One should have a calm and a poise which are beyond disturbance. Short of them, one should say to oneself: "Am I so important that nobody has the right to criticise me? Surely not. On the other hand, why should 1 attach such importance to people that what they say would have the power to hurt me? Neither I nor they really matter. Let me inwardly offer everything to the Divine. Whatever He wants should be done with me and in me."

To be strict about truth is a fine trait too, but the strictness must not be schoolmasterly. One should not be always on the watch to find reasons to punish; rather one should seek excuses to forgive. There is a Latin tag: Fortiter in re, suaviter in modo, which may be translated: "Firm in principle, gentle in practice." What is called "the human touch" has to be in action everywhere. My physical mother taught me in Parsi Gujarati: "Don't look simply at the chaal of a person, consider chiefly his haal" - that is, not just the conduct of a person but first of all his condition and his circumstances are to be kept in mind. Utmost clarity in the head, utmost charity in the heart - these must be our guides in all domains of life.

I am very much moved by your concern about me, your constant prayer for my health. I am sure your prayer will be answered - and I pray to be worthy of your love.

(22.7.1990)

It was most heart-kindling and mind-stirring to receive your enthusiastic response to my series in Mother India. Rarely does one get such appreciabon - and not only appreciation but also insight. An additional pleasure in reading your letter is the eloquent way it is written. There could not be a better review of my "Life-Poetry-Yoga". If this is what you call at the end "childish chattering" on your part, I wonder what unthinkable masterpieces would flow from your pen when

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you reach articulate adolescence and then pass on to expressive adulthood!

You have asked me what source my mind draws from in these communications. I don't know how to reply on my own. I'll convey to you - for what it may be worth - the memory which floated up when I closed my eyes and put your question to the Mother. I heard her repeat the words she had once spoken to me: "You have been painting pictures of flowers for me for years. Now I have the idea of putting in each room a flower-picture with its significance written below. For your room I am choosing the flower which means 'Krishna's light in the mind'."

(22.7.1990)

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