Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 2)

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I am going on as usual. The peace is there and the aspiration continues, but a big breakthrough has to come. When I look deep within myself, I seem to feel a thorough self-giving in general to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, but evidently whatever is there is not fully translated into the outer being with its remnants of the Old Adam though they are not specially lingering on the look-out for any old (or even young) Eve. I hope it won't take too long for the ordinary consciousness to kindle completely with the rose-and-white glow of the innermost profundity and the blue-silver-gold splendour of the overarching infinite. Will I have enough time to live altogether up to the futurist vision Sri Aurobindo had in choosing for me my Ashram name "Amal Kiran", meaning according to him "The Clear Ray"? The adjective separated from the noun may not be very difficult to exemplify in life: I could be sufficiently clear-headed. But for the day-to-day Me of the clear head to have a constant illumination which goes beyond the surface of things, a ray from behind and from above has to be at work. At all hours I have to be radiant-hearted on the one hand and, on the other, lustrously super-conscious. Then the day-to-day will be integrally in touch with the permanent. No doubt, the process is on towards a total harmony of the apparent and the passing with the immanent-immortal and the transcendent-eternal. But oh it is so slow! I pray that before this body falls, the Ever-unfalling who is deep down and high up may sojourn a la Omar Khayyam

Here in this battered caravanserai

Whose portals are alternate night and day.

(10.10.1990)

I am a little late in replying, as I often am. The thought of my

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habitual guilt was the first one this morning after the habitual feeling of a heart wanting to be pure of every desire except the ache for the Divine Beloved. On getting out of bed 1 reread your letter and was struck by two points.

First, your resolve "not to give a chance to any so-called great person" to become your "Guru". Once we are dedicated to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, who were never anxious to have disciples, how can we share our souls with anyone who claims spiritual eminence and is eager to have people falling at his feet? I remember my friend Purani telling me an incident of early days. Sri Aurobindo was standing at the door of his room while Purani was leaving. The disciple went down on his knees to make obeisance to Sri Aurobindo's feet. After a few seconds he lifted his head and looked up. There was nobody standing any more. Purani told me with a laugh:"Strange Guru indeed who runs away like that!"

You have also hit the mark when you declare: "I am quite a child but the Divine Mother's child. That is enough for me. I have no need of fame and name." This shows at the same time a natural humility, a proper sense of what is truly of worth in one and a detachment from common ambition. Having been accepted by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother should tend to give one an all-sufficing happiness. But the desire for fame, the yearning for name are not easy temptations to overcome if one has some talent beyond the ordinary. Rarely do specially gifted people act like Sri Aurobindo and the Mother who always tried to keep themselves in the background. Once the Mother, after reading an article of mine on her, published in the Bombay paper The Sunday Standard of February 17, 1952, told me: "When I read anything written on me in public, all my hair stands up! Speak about the aim of the Integral Yoga, the method of doing it, but I don't like my personality to be pushed forward. Not that I have any false modesty. I know where 1 have come from, but the thing of value for the world is our teaching. There may even be an unsympathetic response if

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the teaching is mixed up too much with us as persons." After a moment she added: "Keeping our persons back may be good practical policy too. Especially as regards the Western world it is better to speak of the Spiritual Truth impersonally."

I have gone through some tests of "fame and name" in my early life - having managed to distinguish myself during school and college days. I can't say I always came out successfully through the tests. But after joining the Ashram I spent many years during which all I cared for in connection with my writings was that they should pass under Sri Aurobindo's eyes and get acceptance or rejection. His comment and nothing else decided for me the worth of my prose or poetry. Once in the 'thirties I even set aside a friend's offer to publish all the poems I had so far written - set it aside because the collected works of my Guru had not yet come out. Later on, when books on various subjects from my pen accumulated I used to speculate how they could get published. Though I was never a pusher, I did feel it would be good if I could come out in print. However, one day, standing before the whole array of my numerous typescripts, kept in separate files, I suddenly became aware of a great wave of what I can only describe as a self-swallowing quietude of aloofness. In a movement simultaneously of humility and transcendence the words came out of my mouth: "It doesn't matter if none of these books get published!" That was a moment of immense relief - of profound freedom.

Many books of mine have seen the light since then - in fact 23 in all — but essentially with an impersonal attitude behind them. Today 18 books still remain unpublished. In relation to them, a few nights back I passed through what I consider one of the most important experiences of my Ashram life. It happened during sleep. I had a dream in which I found that the cupboard in which all my typescripts had been stored was quite empty! A ghastly surprise was the first reaction to their disappearance. Then something within

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me said: "Remember you have been doing Yoga. Are you or are you not taking this tragedy with perfect equanimity? It is impossible for you to rewrite these books. Can you rise above the tremendous void in front of you?" My spontaneous answer was "Yes." The next moment I woke up, a little stunned but deeply thankful to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother that even in the dream-state, face to face with an irreparable misfortune, my chief concern could be whether I was doing their Yoga properly.

If we may put together little things with great, I may recount a conversation with the Mother long ago. She used to be a very fine painter. Referring to her own work, she told me: "Some of my best paintings were done in Japan. But most of them are lost." I blurted out: "Is this not a great loss? What have you done about it?" With a calm smile she said: "Don't you know that we live in eternity?" As if from a sleep I had woken up, I looked into her eyes and murmured: "Of course, of course." It must be this occasion that sowed the seed of whatever distant sense I may have caught of the plenary Beyond, the Timelessness that is the All. A shadow of that eternal Fullness must have got projected in both the instances connected with my unpublished writings.

(20.10.1990)

I am glad that you have the ideal of spiritual development and realise at the age of fifty that time is running out. If your acute sense of having wasted half a century leads you to open more and more to Sri Aurobindo's Godward-guiding light and the Mother's life-divinising force, the past will not strike you as just a wilderness of vain hours but as a meandering preparation for the straight Yogic path that lies ahead. Feel increasingly a standing back in wide detachment from the crisscross of reactions in your outer being - reactions that are sensitive personal responses to hurting touches from the world or else self-indulgent answers to tempting stimuli from it. With such a background of peaceful imper-

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sonality at all times, let your foreground life be a constant uplifting of all these touches and stimuli to the subtle presence of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother that is always with you as at once a soothing supporter by your side and a forward-calling commander in front.

As for the disorders and misfires you find all around us today, don't allow them to trouble you overmuch. The best we can do is to appeal to our Gurus to hasten the advent of the Golden Age they have visioned in spite of being clearly conscious of the misery and madness of the world into which they had descended. If within our little individual world we try to live with the deep sense of them at secret work we shall have done our bit.

I was rather tickled by your final flourish: "Yours divinely, T. Prasad." What made you choose this mode of closing the letter? There must be something in your mind which led you to such an extraordinary gesture. From the purely literary viewpoint, "divinely" can prove to be the mot juste by getting followed by your surname "Prasad", a term which in India signifies something touched by or blessed by the Divine and taken as a gift from Him by human beings! But I don't think you intended this witticism.1

(25.12.1990)

The anecdotes you recount about your mother show clearly how spiritual help can come and change the whole aspect of a situation. But, whether we are helped or not in the way we

1. The writer's own explanation makes two attractive points. The first is that he is related to me by a divine dispensation - hence he is "divinely" related. He writes: "There is no other witticism on my part." The second point emerges when he adds: "Incidentally, let me tell you what I have been informed. When I was born, my grandmother was returning from her pilgrimage to Dwaraka, Krishna's birthplace. Before reaching our house she received the news. Immediately she exclaimed: Thakur has come to our house!' Thakur' means the Divine, and this word gives the initial in my name: T. Prasad'. Kindly wish that this name Thakur Prasad' may be realised in my life integrally by the Blessings of the Lord ."

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may expect, we must never lose faith in the Divine Power. Once we put ourselves in its hands, whatever happens is turned by it to our soul's good. Furthermore, the Divine's aim with us is to make our souls progress. If this progress is at times best brought about by what we may call unfavourable circumstances, the Divine's presence can very well be in them. All these are subtleties the believer has to bear in mind. But, of course, they have their truth provided our faith and trust in God and our adherence to Him with our inmost being are genuinely there. In any case, remembrance of Him, self-offering to Him, prayer to Him not only that His Will may be done but also that our wills may be guided by Him -these are the main points for a sincere sadhak.

(27.12.1990)

Your recent letter has made me sad. You ask me not to worry, but how can I not worry when your health is poor again and again and you are faced with the inconvenience of changing houses? Every day I invoke the Mother at the Samadhi to keep you well and protect you from all harm. I am sure her grace is with you. The greatest boon we can have from her is an inner openness to her and Sri Aurobindo, an openness which grows wider and deeper from moment to moment until finally a supreme experience comes in which at the same time there is an ineffable unmoving oneness with the Divine and an ever eloquent devotion, a ceaselessly appealing worship, a cry from the inmost heart: "I am yours, unite my will with your Will, guide me in everything, give me insight and compassion in my dealings with your children, and through all phases of life let a glowing laughing love be at play between us!"

(18.1.1991)

You are surprised at my saying that all of us are co-travellers towards what somewhere in each of us is a journey's end

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that has already been reached. Let me try to elucidate this cryptic-seeming statement.

When a disciple is accepted by the Mother she does two things. First, she builds a bridge between our outer self and our true being, the real soul of us and starts a traffic from the one to the other and establishes a future in which the erring human is seen as radiantly arriving at his angelic counterpart. However distant that future may be, it is firmly fixed by the Guru's hand outstretched with a touch of light to bless our dull-headed grope for God. The second thing the Mother does is an emanation of herself to go with us as a subtle companion to our thoughts and feelings, our words and actions, along the meander of our lives. This companion is meant to answer our cries for help and guide us through whatever may happen - the pull of pleasure or the push of pain - towards that "Immortal in the mortal" whom the Rigvedic Rishis sought to awake in us with their revelatory mantras and whose realisation by us one day or another is always kept in clear view by that emanation as if this truth of tomorrow were actually a fact of our own past which we are urged to remember.

(22.8.1990)

What has happened, obliging you to stay at home, is making you apparently stand still, but paradoxically it has pushed you farther on the great Path by bringing about a stillness within no less than without. Within, you are not standing still but becoming, as it were, a serenity rapidly moving inward and upward by a bit of spontaneous contact with that miraculous aspect of the Supreme Spirit:

Force one with unimaginable rest.

This miraculous aspect is hinted at by you in the image of the "Charioteer". You have written: "There is now more fun in various battles to follow, for I hope that more and more I

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will be aware who my Charioteer is." I catch a hint also in the expression: "a different kind of quiet joy." A joy that is quiet is one that does not agitate to move on its own: its quietness lies in giving itself into the hands of a Wisdom at once vast and warm and letting it carry the smiling smallness that we now are to realms beyond our ability to reach. No longer are we at the reins of life: a masked being is holding them and governing the red horse of reality and the white horse of the ideal and bearing us along to what he sees as our destiny. Soon the Charioteer will sweep away his mask and we shall see the radiance that is his face. This face will be like a mirror held before us. We shall wonder how our own face could be so flawless and how this perfection could be at the same time so infinitely distant and so intimately near. Suddenly the knowledge will take shape in our dazzled darkness that the ultimate truth is an ever-beautiful Other whom the heart in us needs to worship day after day and the Ever-blissful Self of our self in whom our mind can repose eternally. But before this truth comes alive and fulfils the dream we already have of it we must feel intensely that we do not career forth by our individual initiative: the fact must drive home to us that in "quiet joy" we are being driven by Divine Grace away from a false foreign country to our real Home which was long hidden from us. In short, we must have more and more the sense which is growing in you of our sadhana being led forward by Sri Aurobindo's Light and the Mother's Love rather than by our feverish effort to be a disciple of that Light and our conscious attempt to be a child of that Love. Spontaneously we must find our lives put happily in their guiding hands.

P.S. Your latest letter, handed to me at the Samadhi, has one outstanding burst of felicitous originality: "Why the hell does the inner being continue to be inner still?" You have summed up there, most poignantly, most wittily, the first call of the Aurobindonian Yoga upon us - the "psychic transformation" by which the inner being is no longer something to which we have to go, leaving the outer to its

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own devices, but a flame and a fragrance of God which has swept into our very surface and pervaded each movement of our external life. This transformation may seem just the initial definitive step of the Integral Yoga, but actually it is one that will prove to be the final basis of the fulfilment of Sri Aurobindo's work in the world. For the Supermind cannot be established on earth except through a soul-suffused body. Short of such a body, the transcendent glories will merely overhang the earth or at best surround it but never become luminous flesh and rapturous blood.

(5.9.1990)

All the news I get about you is good. I am told you have planned to be up and about in a few days. But I agreed with your messenger that you should not be rash. I added that this was the considered advice of a rash man - that is, of one who had learned (for others) the bitter consequences of rashness.

I have not much to pass on to you today - except a short reflection bom of my daily observation of flowers on my way to the Samadhi from the Ashram gate. Here it is:

"Who says there is no perfection on earth? Look at a fullblown sunflower: a poise of twelve petals publishing themseLves around a quiet centre - colour intense, shape clear-cut emerging from that small shadowed source - no flaw anywhere - some archetype visible, some supreme beauty symbolled out - but oh how brief-lived! Soon a slight sagging, a bit of curling up, and in no time the failure of a faultless flower. That is the whole tragedy of living things in our world: a burst of perfection yet no sustainment of splendour. How are we to bring permanence to the marvels life is capable of?

"So far there has been only one way. Art catches up the passing into the perennial - at least it makes the fleeting wonder persist through the ages. But here life has found outside itself the solace for its own transience - an immor-

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tality without the bliss of breath. When will the artist find the secret of making his very being a lasting work of art? Surely one who could build the Taj Mahal or paint Ajanta or sculpt the Pieta or pen the Divine Comedy has projected immortality from some living core of it within him. Have not the Vedic seers spoken of the Immortal in the mortal? But cannot that hidden godhead render his own embodiment godlike besides bodying it forth from himself by the wizardry of his creative hand? This is the challenge Sri Aurobindo has set us, and with his Truth-Consciousness he has given us the means to start towards meeting it by realising first

A Mind unvisited by illusion's gleams,

A Will expressive of Soul's deity,

A Strength not forced to stumble by its speed,

A Joy that drags not sorrow for its shade."

(17.9.1990)

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