Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 3)

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I have brought out from my drawer a regular heap of letters from you calling out for answers. All are vibrant with affectionate warmth and each has its own particular spark of inner light, showing that my friend has really been living with a sense of Sri Aurobindo tingling in his mind and a feeling of the Mother a-throb in his heart and, along with these Divine Ones, a few humans are also at home in his sincere aspiring life. I am sure nobody can say about you what my late friend Anil Kumar once told me people were saying about him. His words have stuck in my memory because of both their quaint imagery and their Anil-Kumarish English: "People think Anil Kumar has no backbone and no legs. He is simply sitting and digesting foods."

Let me try to take up your notes chronologically. I was surprised to find one as early in the year as 31.3.91. It is one of the shortest but packed with sweetness as well as an imaginative thrill. It has also a Biblical ring by a repeated use of the conjunction "And". It runs:

My dear Amal,

And then "Savitri" again!

And a Sunday of rest, relaxation and peace!

And when I come across the lines:

And Will is a conscious chariot of the Gods,

And Life, a splendour-stream of musing Force,

Carries the voices of the mystic Suns...

as a sequel there appears before my mind's eye Sri A

urobindo's "The Clear Ray" - my dear and rare friend

"Amal Kiran". My feeling is too evident to elucidate.

I feel deeply moved, nor can I be happier than when I am associated with lines from Savitri. In my whole life in the Ashram I have made only two impassioned dramatic statements to the Mother. The first was a little ridiculous. It

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couched the very first declaration I made to her. I said with a sort of sweeping gesture: "I have seen everything of life. Now I want only God." You may remember that the Mother coolly asked me: "How old are you?" I replied: "Twenty-three." She gave what I may term a serious smile and remarked: "At twenty-three you have seen everything of life? Don't be in a hurry to make any decision. Stay here for some time and look around. If the life here suits you, join the Ashram." As I have always commented, the Mother's response was like ice-water dashed on my enthusiasm, but I realised that she was a Guru who was not avid to have disciples and this was definitely in her favour in my eyes. I stayed on - for good! And it was many years later that I made my other impassioned pronouncement. I had worked almost single-handed for the Ashram to bring out the first one-volume edition of the complete Savitri along with the copious letters Sri Aurobindo had written to me apropos of his epic - the 1954 "University" publication. While preparing it I had several occasions to talk with the Mother on various points and she was quite aware of my labour of love. Still, it so happened that when the book was out she did not give me a copy. After a few days I drew her attention to the fact and declared what Savitri meant to me. I made the resounding statement: "I would give my heart's blood for Savitri." She at once asked Champaklal for a copy and, writing my name on it and signing, presented it to me.

Yes, I would give my heart's blood because it is as if it were itself given to me by Savitri Ever since, apropos of a certain spiritual situation suggested by a poem of mine, Sri Aurobindo quoted two lines telling of a Ray from the Transcendent coming through the silent Brahman -

Piercing the limitless Unknowable,

Breaking the vacancy and voiceless peace -

ever since he quoted them and, in answer to my question where these profoundly reverberating lines had hailed from.

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wrote the single word "Savitri" - ever since that mystery-packed moment I have felt my very heart to be a rhythm of life wakened by the grace of the Power which could create such poetry and whose Ray from the Transcendent was the ultimate source of whatever little light was sought to be evoked in me by the Aurobindonian gift of my new name "Amal Kiran" meaning "The Clear Ray".

You write as though my life were already carrying "the voices of the mystic Suns". I wish that were true. But what is true is that indeed from far-away those golden accents have raised as an echo in my depths the constant prayer:

Voice of Infinity, sound in my heart, -

Call of the One!

Stamp there thy radiance, never to part,

O living Sun.

Your next "missive" is of 13.4.91. It has many interesting facets of your inner and outer life. I pick out a few. You have conjured up the picture of some of you sitting around Nolini after his dinner and before putting him to bed. The talk turns on past births. Somebody asks N who you were in the Ramayana epoch (Yuga). You write: "He did not answer, kept quiet. When pressed again, he replied very softly: 'He was a friend of mine.' " No wonder you were "overjoyed", thinking: "being his friend I was not far away from the Divine, - he being with the Divine." I am glad to mark that for all your devotion to N the topmost concern in you was the Divine and you did not stop short with whatever was noteworthily Nolinian and that to you the most noteworthy part in him was the one turned Divineward. The next point that strikes me is the natural way in which "the Ramayana epoch" figures in the talk.It is taken for granted that it was a genuine historical age and not a mytho-legendary one. Sri Aurobindo has affirmed that in the cultural process of the ages the Rama-figure stands for the establishment of the dharmic (ethical) mind over the mental titanism on the one hand and on the

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other the animal mentality, two trends in the path of human evolution.) Sri Aurobindo also declares that in the Rama depicted by Valmiki he can feel the afflatus of Avatarhood, the movements of a consciousness beyond the personal, a consciousness that has a cosmic character.) How far back in time may Rama be considered to have existed? My new chronology dates Krishna at the time of the Bharata War to c. 1482 or 1452 B.C. The recent underwater archaeological finds at Dwaraka put Krishna's submerged Dwaraka at about the same time. In the traditional table of royal genealogies, starting with Manu Vaivasvata, Krishna's number is 94 and Rama's 65 - a difference of 30 generations. Taking a generation to be roughly 30 years we get about 900 years. This would carry Rama to around 900 years before the Bharata War: that is, c. 2382 or 2352 B.C.

Here I may clear a possible misunderstanding. In chapter X, verse 31 of the Gita, Krishna speaking of his Vibhutis (manifesting human instruments) tells us: "I am Rama among warriors." We must remember that Indian tradition knows of two Ramas: Rama Jamadagnya and Rama Dasarathi. The former is also called Parasurama, "Rama of the Axe". This designation distinguishes him as a warrior. It is to him that Krishna refers.

You have quaintly wondered, before Nolini's reply, whether your "evolution" had reached the "human level by that period". According to archaeology, man in some form or other is about two million years old. The modern form was approached at least 20,000 years ago. Surely, there had been time enough for each of us to attain the human level by the Ramayana epoch. The Tantra calculates that three lakhs of lives had to be passed through before the soul could have a human embodiment. Earth's long history amply allows time for our pre-human past. You and I are certain to have been real Manu-man (mental being) and not something like Hanu-man when Rama flourished and Nolini was in his train.(In fact, I believe that most disciples of Sri Aurobindo were with Sri Aurobindo each time he manifested in human history,

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especially when he must have taken an Avataric form to establish a new level of consciousness.

A prominent feature of your letter is the "vision" you had of Mahakali in the state of a semi-sleep into which you had entered after reading those beautiful words of the Mother to Huta published by Huta in White Roses: "Behind the sorrow and loneliness, behind the emptiness and the feeling of incapacity, there is the golden light of the Divine Presence shining soft and warm." You write about the Mahakali you saw: "She was not terrible-looking, she looked affectionate and soothing..." Your pair of adjectives answer well to the Mother's "soft and warm". Of course, Mahakali too, as Sri Aurobindo has said, "is the Mother..." And her motherliness, her affectionate and soothing aspect is natural for those who invoke her to remove their defects with rapidity, those who are on her side and not stuck in their follies and obscurities. The dreadful aspect is only for those who are enemies of the Divine within and without. "Terrible," writes Sri Aurobindo, "is her face to the Asura."

(10.9.1991)

According to the ancient Indian wisdom, our non-spiritual condition, our delusive ignorance consists essentially in being locked up in ourselves, being exclusive of our true reality which includes everyone and everything, an inner vastness which rules out the feeling of the other, the alien that can oppose and injure one. Do you remember the Chhandogya Upanishad's glorious utterance: "There is no happiness in the small: immensity alone is felicity"? The Veda always associates brihat (the Vast) with its satyam (the True) as well as its ritam (the Right) in describing the supreme world of the soul's fulfilment.

I say "world" because the Rishis employ the term loka or its equivalents which do not cut off the Beyond from the Here; it is not into a worldlessness that one enters when one is "fear-free", the term the Rigveda uses for the highest spiritual

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realisation: one enters an ideal world high above, which has no divisiveness and fulfils our multiple earthly existence by providing the basic unity weaving everything together instead of setting one part over against the others as here below. And the correspondence of the higher with the lower in being no void, no worldlessness, leads to the compatibility of the Here and the Beyond so that the Seers, once they have realised the underlying unity of things by constant contact with the Beyond, do not fly away from the Here but remain to work towards a finer and greater life: there is no "refusal of the ascetic" as in later ages.

The compatibility persists as a vital element in the Upanishads where often there is talk of Brahmaloka and not just Brahman. The context in which Yajnavalkya and Janaka figure with their "That which is free from fear" (a Rigvedic echo) is, I think, particularly rich in reference to Brahmaloka. Indeed Yajnavalkya is a denizen par excellence of both the Here and the Yonder: with one hand he keeps a hold on the earth and with the other reaches out to the empyrean. In a most exalted way he settles for "All this and Heaven too". He seems to have anticipated Sri Aurobindo in a more flamboyant manner than would suit our Master's nature.

Your letter of 23.5.91 relates two dreams, both on a Tuesday. Your dreams of Nolini used to occur mostly on this day - but now, in answer to your call to him, a lesser sadhak made his appearance as though he were an envoy from him. What you saw seems to add one more chapter to Amal Kiran's visits to the Press in the old days to carry out some alterations and corrections. Such a move by him is characteristic. He is a typical case of the ache for perfection in both poetry and prose. Some ideality ever haunts him and he goes on chiselling until the vague vision he has discerned in his depths looks out at him from his literary work in a splendid clarity suddenly emerging from his stroke on shaping stroke on the challenging material before him. If not in anything else, his copious alterations and corrections show him to be a true disciple of the creator of Savitri who made nearly a dozen

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transcripts of it in order not merely to make it as poetic as possible but also to charge it with the utmost power of spiritual illumination. Apropos of your dream I may add that along with typifying the ever-aspiring Amal the writer, what you dreamt of typifies the never-tiring helper in you. You have recorded your response to my proposal for alterations and corrections: "My attitude was - these must be done: we must oblige him."

(10.9.1991)

You have written: "Yesterday a friend of mine asked a question to which I would like to have an answer. I can't find it. She was telling me how shockingly dirty and noisy and smelly Pondicherry is felt in contrast to the U.S.A. I said that this feeling would wear off, that she would get used to Pondicherry. Then she said: 'Yes, I know I'll get used to it, but why do I have to get used to all this dirt and disturbance when 1 can live in a beautiful place?' So that's the question. Of course to be in Pondicherry in the Ashram is the apparent answer. But what is the spiritual reason for her having to be in an environment which is unpleasant and distasteful?"

I think the problem goes beyond Pondicherry though Pondicherry is a significant focus in the spiritual reason for vour friend having to be in an environment comparatively repulsive. The problem touches on India as a whole in contrast to the U.S.A. And, as your friend is in Pondicherry for the Ashram, we have to ask why of all countries India, which Pondicherry with its Ashram represents, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother chose for their spiritual work.

I believe India was chosen for what I regard as the supreme divine manifestation for two reasons. The inner being of what historically and geographically has come to be known as the Indian subcontinent is spiritually charged beyond that of any other country. From the time of the ancient Rigveda to our own day the soul-search for the Eternal and the Infinite has been more intense here than

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anywhere else, India has the greatest potentiality for the work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. This is the first reason.

The second reason is that at present India's outer being is very deeply sunk in dirt and noise and stench reflecting a marked imperfection in life-style. Such an excessive condition calls out for a change. Hence the Divine's response by physically carrying on its work in the midst of all this disagreeable environment. The extraordinary inner spiritual potentiality has to come forth and set right the marked exterior imbalance. Especially fitting is it for Sri Aurobindo and the Mother to be here because their Integral Yoga is meant not for a glorious flight to a perfect Beyond but for a splendid all-round manifestation of a Divine Life on earth. That manifestation has to be through a power of the Spirit mostly unexplored hitherto and never really mobilised for terrestrial use, a power of the supreme Personal Godhead which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother call Supermind or Truth-Consciousness. The power's transformative no less than creative fullness is not only high above, waiting to descend, but also hidden below in Matter itself to be evoked for evolution by its free counterpart in co-operation with the aspiring and self-surrendering human soul.

Of course we need not seek out as much as possible the marked exterior imbalance of the Indian scene. All Pondicherry is not haunted by it. But if it falls to our lot and we try to escape instead of dealing with it, we shall fail to be followers of the Aurobindonian mission which has selected India very deliberately for its field. That mission aims ultimately to alter the ugly surroundings it is set in and, in the meantime, it has given us the ability to rise above the surrounding ugliness by an inner equanimity while outwardly doing our best to change it with whatever means we possess. The Mother, who was put forward by Sri Aurobindo as the Shakti of his dynamic world-vision, exemplified at the same time the bringing forth of the highest spiritual consciousness and the most refined artistic taste which would help transfigure the extremely deficient Indian scene.

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Out of all improvable places in India Pondicherry has become Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's centre of action because it has most suited their mission. By an adesh, an inner command, by Sri Krishna, Sri Aurobindo left his political life and went first to Chandernagore in French India and then to Pondicherry. If he had remained in British India he would have never been free from the harassment a nationalist leader, who had set his sights on his country's complete independence, would have suffered. As for the Mother, Sri Aurobindo's being in the capital of French India was just right for her who was a French citizen and had heard of him from her husband who had gone there four years earlier and returned now in connection with the programme of a political party in the town.

Hence, as Aurobindonians, we have to be in India's Pondicherry in order to help to the furthest extent the greatest spiritual mission on earth and calmly bear whatever physical conditions in it we cannot change in spite of our best efforts. These conditions are not accidental on the whole: they are bound up with a divine destiny.

(10.1,1993)

A friend thought it a good idea to make me recite the whole of Savitri as well as several short poems of Sri Aurobindo. Twice a week the recording was done. It took a long time for all this verse to combine with Amal's voice - come out "amalgamated", we may say.

The first principle of good recitation is that the words should stand forth clearly. One may put emotion in, but not by blurring the words.)! once heard a passage from the book The Mother declaimed at the Playground by one of our boys when Jawaharlal Nehru had visited the Ashram. It was a powerful passage - 1 think about the action of Mahakali - but the declaimer was so carried away and spoke so vehemently with all his passion poured into the meaning that I could hardly recognise the words. I have also listened to taped

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readings by eminent English poets - T.S. Eliot, for instance. Although Eliot made each word clear-cut one was sent to sleep after a time by the utterly neutral tone. This was the other extreme. To get the right mean, one must realise a few facts. I know that in good poetry the emotion is in-built, the words are so arranged by inspiration that they carry home the heart-thrill meant to be communicated. But surely to adopt a monotone is not to do justice to the varied cunning of felicitous phrase and rhythm that constitutes true poetry. Some change of pitch and volume and speed is called for, not overwhelming the words but helping them to take off properly towards the hearer. The in-built heart-thrill is such that it can be caught by reading silently with the eye, but when it has to be transferred audibly to the non-reader, the voice has to wing it just a little. For, the hearer is not always able to concentrate on the felicities of art: they need to be brought out by the play of the reciter's tone. Some judicious "emoting" with the voice is in order. But the emoting must have behind it a genuine steeping of the declaimer in both the content and the form of the verse. He must be careful of stresses, the quantities (that is, the long and short vowels), the pauses, not to mention the pronunciation, no less than receptive of the inner thrust of the poet's vision. In other words, the emoting has to do nothing more than convey the poem's own emotion by an echo in one's heart and a reflex in one's mind. As little as possible of one's private feeling should be added. The moment this feeling intervenes substantially the language is apt to get fuzzy. The moment the fuzziness starts, the very first principle of good recitation is violated: the correct conveyance of the verbal shape, the verbal structure.

(29.7.1983)

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