Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 2)

23

I thank you for your sustained periodic generosity to our work.

You have posed me the question:

"What is the interrelation between the Mother and Her Grace? I have searched for a clear answer in the books of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, as well as in your books and Mother India. On the one side the Divine Grace seems quite independent and separate; on the other side it appears to me to be the most important instrument of the Mother and a part of Her."

You quote a number of passages from the Mother and then conclude:

'It appears to me that, on the one hand, I have to surrender exclusively to the Mother, and on the other hand to give all my thanks to the Divine Grace. Not conceivable? Surely a pragmatic question."

I would say that the division you see in the quotations is also pragmatic or practical, depending merely on the theme to be developed. To me there is no Divine Grace which is not an outflow from a Divine Person either directly through an inward intervention or by way of help through an outward agency.

In general the working of Grace has two aspects. One is the inscrutable touch beyond all concept of merit and demerit. It does not seem to be in consideration of anything done by one. It just falls Like a sudden beam of light which has in view some purpose of eternity to be fulfilled in a passage of time - some purpose which appears to run secretly behind or below the quivering or quiet moments that make up the life that we consciously know to be ours. This beam can fall as plausibly on a so-called sinner as on an apparent saint. It is something for which we cannot trace a reason. If we could, it would be Justice and not Grace.

Perhaps not inconsistently I may recall the Mother once

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replying to the query why we didn't always find justice being done in the Ashram. She simply said: "This is not a place of Justice. It is a place of Grace. If justice were to be done, who would deserve to be here?" By "here" was meant the life in the presence of the Incarnate Divine.

Now for the other aspect of Grace - the one with which you are concerned. It can also be connected with the Mother's reply I have just quoted. The Ashram has been a creation of the Divine Personhood become human flesh and blood. The Grace which acts in response to our cry for help is the same Personhood, essentially divine yet with a human mystery within it capable any time of becoming flesh and blood like ours. So I would say that for us the Divine Grace is best figured as that inextinguishable splendour which has assumed the world-guiding countenance of Sri Aurobindo and that ever-overflowing love with which the Mother's face has taken up the travails of our groping world. The one to whom you, as you say, "have to surrender exclusively" is no other than the giver of "the Divine Grace" which, according to you, has to be the receiver of all your "thanks". .

Those who do not belong to the group called together out of millions by the Grace in the first aspect of inexplicable choice may envisage the Saviour Strength under any guise -sustainer Rama or enchanter Krishna, compassionate Buddha or all-merciful Allah's mediator Mohammed, beneficent Kwanon or Holy Mary the eternal intercessor. Even the habitual unbeliever who, when he finds himself helpless, instinctively turns to he-knows-not-what, is bound to feel the vague vastness of some being for whom he has no name.

Your puzzlement is really of the surface mind. You have yourself spontaneously answered your own question when with your typical beauty of soul you give me a supreme compliment which I can never truly live up to. You write to me in words whose sweetness is unbearable:

"Again and again I ask the Mother why I have got from Her the wondrous privilege to be one of your friends. I can only be boundlessly grateful to Her and Sri Aurobindo for

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this miraculous act of Grace, and to you for the acceptance of their will."

I am greatly moved by what you write apropos of my advice to you in the letter of May 7, 1990 to keep plants nearby and establish a communion with them. You say: "It was in connection with your experience on the way to your chair at the Samadhi. This communion with plants is for me also a favourite occupation, even if it is only one flower. 1 have two flower-beds before my home which I can plant as 1 like to do. Naturally during the last two summers of my illness I could do nothing. But I have some very fine rosebushes, which blossom in summer without too much care. But my most wonderful rose is the dried-up one which is lying together with the leaf of the Ashram's Service Tree in a blue glass-bulb, covered with a lid in blue glass too. It is the rose of the Mother! I got it from Her in 1972. In the evening, when lifting the lid for a short time, I often have the miraculous experience that the rose has a wonderful fragrance and often of a different kind, and this after nearly 20 years! This is my best communion with a flower."

Your "short report" about your health is typical of you: "Backache a little better, the colon still a little obstinate; underweight almost unchanged. But in spite of all this I have more strength for my daily pilgrimage. All is a little easier to endure."

The bravery that breathes through these words derives from the frame of being which is reflected in the term "pilgrimage". The daily movement is not just that of a passer through life: it is that of one who has a sacred destination towards which goes a dedicated heart, a consecrated mind -the outer instruments of a soul which knows why it is on earth and whose eyes are lit up with the vision of the Eternal Beauty awaiting it at the end of every moment.

I may mention that these days it is very necessary for me that this vision which has not been much wanting earlier should persist and even grow intenser. For I am in a peculiar situation. I am doing this letter not on my typewriter but in

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my own hand and will get it typed. For I am in the Ashram Nursing Home. On October 15 I had a nasty toss in my own working room. Suddenly, while moving with the help of my "walker" I fell backward, with the "walker" falling on top of me. When I touched the floor I found my right leg terribly wrenched by being pressed behind my bottom; it was a position of great pain and, what was worse, one from which it was impossible for me to get free. If I had been alone, inevitably with my door locked from inside, I don't know what would have happened. Luckily my friend who takes great care of me during several hours of the day before noon and several hours after sunset was there. The time was about 9 a.m. She pulled out my leg and I was appalled to see its state. The half below the knee was in one line and the half from the knee upward was in another. The sight was most inartistic. I gave the knee a push and the two parts got into some sort of line.

The Ashram doctor was called. He pressed around the most injured part and suspected a fracture of the thigh-bone (femur). I was surprised, for, owing to my lame left leg, I have fallen hundreds of times and most awkwardly on occasion, yet never had a fracture. Now the X-ray revealed a nasty multiple break at the spot where the thigh-bone joins the knee. The knee was very swollen and had internal bleeding. Our doctor called an orthopaedic surgeon who offered me three options of treatment from which to choose. One was operative internal fixation of the fracture which would ensure faster healing and early mobility but carried the risk of operative and anaesthetic shock to the nearly 87-year-old physical system. The second mode was immobilisation in plaster of Paris from the waist down to below the knee; this would have allowed the leg to be moved as a stiff whole from one side to the other, but six weeks in a P.O.P.-cast would so stiffen the knee that the leg would never bend henceforth. The third was to use a Thomas's splint for the whole leg, skeletal traction through a slim steel rod driven in the shin-bone (tibia) and the whole contraption hung on

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what is called a Balkan beam so as to ensure a balanced traction that would allow early knee movements, but not allow me at all to turn from side to side in bed. There was also the possibility of bed-sores. Looking at the three options I said "All are bad, how can I choose?" I left it to the wisdom of the surgeon to make the best of a bad job. After much consideration the third option was favoured. So I am here for six weeks in bed in a complicated apparatus and another less Spartan six weeks with rehabilitation therapy. At the end it is hoped that I will be able to take the body's weight on the healed leg.

The only things in my favour during the three months are three. I may keep remembering that I have walked faithfully in my Guru's footsteps, for in 1938 he also stumbled and had a most painful fall, hurting, like me, his right knee and breaking his right femur, though at a higher point than mine. The second consoling feature is that all day I am facing a window to the south permitting an enchanting prospect of slanting boughs, swaying with trembling leaves, against a changing skyscape. The third is that somehow the body has been most peaceful and my so-called "constant cheerfulness" is not due to just a mental equanimity but to a concrete sense of physical stillness, holding some inmost gift of Divine Grace in the form of an intrinsic happiness in the very substance of the injured and immobilised body. This was most tangible, as it were, during a week and a half after the blood from the knee was "aspirated" under local anaesthesia and, on the next day, that steel rod was made use of to facilitate the "balanced" traction.

At the beginning my relatives and friends were much alarmed over the possible danger to my life from the forced prolonged immobility in bed. My doctor-nephew in the U.S.A., horrified by the news about me on the phone, warned that a sudden blood clot might form and, on reaching the heart, prove fatal. According to the practice in the States, he advised an immediate operation and then, as soon as possible, little walks in the room. My niece went anxiously

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to and fro between the extremely open-minded doctor in charge of me and my phoning nephew, carrying on the discussion as to what should be done with the possibilities available here in the absence of an operation. A special drug was suggested, but the facilities for "monitoring" it would be lacking in Pondicherry. In the meantime a doctor-friend of mine preferred the reassuring information that seemingly an "ethnic" factor rendered a clot due to the legs' immobility very rare among Indians. However, a small daily dose of Aspirin, the drug known for its unclott

My days are spent in meditation or else in writing letters, dipping into literary journals and preparing future issues of Mother India. At night I doze off in spite of my rigid position without the aid of sleeping pills, but every now and then I have to pass urine. Some of my friends - especially two women, one a highly efficient English professional nurse and the other the very able manager of Mother India - most willingly and excellently take turns at sleeping in my room to give me the urine bottle four or five times as well as to help in other ways. The one who used to take care of me in my flat visits me twice a day for some hours and devotedly ministers to my needs, including mechanical exercise and massage to my legs. A particular friend interested in my inner life takes notes from me on it besides assisting in general with genuine concern.

The Ashram Nursing Home is a remarkable place. The doctors and the nurses - all of them dedicated to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother - are giving exemplary service. All the daily arrangements are most conducive to the patients' comfort and the medical treatment is scrupulously regular. Then there is the cleanliness and hygiene of the place. I couldn't help joking to the medicos in charge: "If I had known that the Nursing Home was so wonderful, I would have come here much earlier!"

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to and fro between the extremely open-minded doctor in charge of me and my phoning nephew, carrying on the discussion as to what should be done with the possibilities available here in the absence of an operation. A special drug was suggested, but the facilities for "monitoring" it would be lacking in Pondicherry. In the meantime a doctor-friend of mine pro

My days are spent in meditation or else in writing letters, dipping into literary journals and preparing future issues of Mother India. At night I doze off in spite of my rigid position without the aid of sleeping pills, but every now and then I have to pass urine. Some of my friends - especially two women, one a highly efficient English professional nurse and the other the very able manager of Mother India - most willingly and excellently take turns at sleeping in my room to give me the urine bottle four or five times as well as to help in other ways. The one who used to take care of me in my flat visits me twice a day for some hours and devotedly ministers to my needs, including mechanical exercise and massage to my legs. A particular friend interested in my inner life takes notes from me on it besides assisting in general with genuine concern.

The Ashram Nursing Home is a remarkable place. The doctors and the nurses - all of them dedicated to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother - are giving exemplary service. All the daily arrangements are most conducive to the patients' comfort and the medical treatment is scrupulously regular. Then there is the cleanliness and hygiene of the place. I couldn't help joking to the medicos in charge: "If I had known that the Nursing Home was so wonderful, I would have come here much earlier!"

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I wanted to know, it was important to know, why the accident had occurred. The knowledge is not to be mental, it has to come from a deeper source. Then we get a direction towards the opportunity to be taken. All the time Sri Aurobindo's hands and the Mother's are around us. Except for our follies, nothing actually happens here without their consent. They are even behind what we call catastrophes. Once these happen, our Gurus make them the means to push us along a new pathway. Part of their work is to ensure a "break" at times, though I do not necessarily mean breaking a bone!

When Sri Aurobindo went to jail, he asked Sri Krishna "Why?" The reply was that there was no other way to push him in the right direction. A drastic measure was needed to pull him out of politics. In my own small way I kept asking my Gurus for a clear answer to my question: "What is my fate now? What is the Grace granted me, however paradoxically?" The answer, on the night of October 22, was given as if face to face by Sri Aurobindo. It was around 1.15 a.m. The answer, clear and definite, was: "A greater calm and a greater self-dedication to the Mother. She will lift you high up beyond everything." That would mean complete freedom.

I am now as if lodged in some depth of my body most of the time. There is a great stillness, a compactness of consciousness in the physical self, a statuesque immobility over which passes continuously a breeze of happiness, the body can't but be happy. It is as though the physical arms were -in a phrase of Sri Aurobindo's - "taking to a voiceless supreme delight". The body is felt to have an existence of its own as a doer of Yoga. There is a kind of spiritual poise in the most outer nature. When this nature becomes wholly immobile, in a sense quite different from inertia, "Ananda" automatically follows. If only the immobility could last, become permanent! Then the body would have its own experience of liberation. I can't say mine has it, but some sustained bliss is present. My happy state appears to have no

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rhyme or reason for it. It just is. There is absolutely no attitude of the mind involved, no mental movement to be happy. I may describe it as an entire self-containment by the body, a holding together of the entire body-sense, a col-lectedness with a stilling of everything, a balanced moment prolonged indefinitely, as it were. Something grips one, one becomes totally free of talk, of controversy, of any altering situation. There is complete freedom and as a result an aura, a radiation all around, but that aura-sense is implicit, not explicit at present. One sort of holds the whole body inwardly suspended. I have earlier cultivated scattered moments of such suspense time and again. In the midst of talk, in the midst of dealing with people, you get out of everything, there is a transcendence of the usual time and space holding us. If one could remain like this always, it would be marvellous, with a physical translation of what Sri Aurobindo's Savitri calls

A poised serenity of tranquil strength,

A wide unshaken look on Time's unrest....

Environing the present accident is the persistent feeling of a "hiatus", a break with the past. Now the constant and continuous cry from within is: "Make me Yours, wholly Yours! It is not that the inmost 'I' belongs to anyone else, to anything else, but my being yours is not yet concretised fully in the entire 'Me'."

All this goes on. There is profound contentment. The body seems to have discovered how it has to be in order to rest totally. I may sum up by saying: "From a teeming yet incomplete earth, through a brief deadly hell, to a long and spacious heaven whose numerous secrecies are waiting to be explored. Such has been my passage soon after October 15 till now."

*

Leaving aside the fun tinkling between friendly hearts, now a strange word about my much-praised "cheerfulness"

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to which you allude. What appears as cheerfulness has actually nothing to do with mind or temperament. Though I have always been a practitioner of equanimity, the sense 1 have at present is altogether bodily. The whole body is inwardly held in an absolute stillness through which a profoundly quiet happiness blows as if from some dreamland. I am reminded of that line of Wordsworth's, suggestive of Unformulable secrets:

The Wind comes to me from the fields of sleep.

My entire bodily self feels as if it were living in a heaven that is at once remote and immediate. The view I have from my window of green-glimmering swaying branches against a sky of changing colour-washes - light blue, grey-white, gold-pink - this view I can sit up in my bed and enjoy almost endlessly, as though it were a sort of reflection of the dreamland at which I have hinted. Out of the heaven in which I have suddenly been put, what new life-quality will be given to me by the hands of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother which I feel mysteriously approaching me? Already what my body is holding is an enormous gift. But I am sure that much more is in store during the long months ahead.

Reading all this you may think I have been rapt away from all things human. There you will make a mistake. My calmness holds all the sweet voices I have known. If great issues can be compared to small ones, I am reminded of those two lines beginning a poem of mine entitled "Oversold":

All things are lost in Him, all things are found:

He rules an infinite hush that hears each sound.

* .

I am observing in connection with the body's quiet happiness what 1 can only call a new phenomenon of "time". There is a marked difference in time's flow. The body knows an outer

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self and an inner self. The outer feels all that is going on, the diversity of things happening to it. It passes through various experiences and moves from moment to moment, marking their changes of atmosphere and mutations of mood. The inner stands beyond everything and feels all moments as exactly the same - not only is there a sense of sameness but there is also a sense of sheer limpidity, a space - as it were - absolutely clear of every event known by the outer physical self.

In traditional terms, it is the Purusha, the being, as pure and still witness in contrast to the Prakriti, the nature with its constant flux and interplay of dull, active and cool-minded qualities. This watcher, although existing in time, is free from time's hold. He seems timeless within the temporal process. There is no day-after-day for him, no long drawn-out passage of the hours. Time is for him an eternal instant accompanying the common succession of endless instants. Therein lies - according to my perception - the immobile yet not inert peace, the calmly joyous freedom that subtly pervades my body independently of whatever cheerfulness or equanimity my mind possesses. To put it otherwise, there has come a waking perception constantly continuing of the absence of time's long passage, similar to the absence we realise by a back-look when we wake up from a night's dreamless sleep. A fully awake and therefore fully enjoyed sleep, blotting out all length of time, goes on side by side with the common hour-to-hour wakefulness that is our daily life. This imperturbable smiling freedom from the sense of the varying sequences of time is experienced Like a magical point in the middle of my chest. My main physical consciousness is concentrated there. There is no anxious looking forward to the end of my supposed discomfort in a state of complicated "traction" which allows no turning left or right in bed. For all I care this state may go on for ever as long as there persists my body's strange and sudden acquaintance with what our old scriptures have called "the eternal eater of the secret honey of existence".

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Reverting to time-terms, one is inclined to think of a faraway reflection of what the great mystics name Nunc stans, "the ever-standing Now", a perpetual Present swallowing up all past and future. In our yoga's language I would not speak of any "standing". I would just say of myself: 'Tying, endlessly accepted, in the time-transcending love-lap of the Divine Mother."

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