Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 3)

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I am always glad to hear from you but feet sad that all the news is not happy. There are two components here: one is the actual weakness, trivial thoughts, lack of sleep - the other is the worry about these things. Take them for brute facts without thinking: "How long will they last? Will they be there for ever? What other troubles will come in their wake?" When you write, "My equipoise is gone", you touch the real mishap. But this is not an irrevocable affair. Call for Sri Aurobindo's peace which is invisibly there all the time above you and around you and deep within you. Once he has accepted you as his own, he never leaves you. The same with the Mother's sweet grace. She can never be far from you and both she and the Lord hold you always in their arms. Try to be conscious of this fact and do not allow your heart and mind to be troubled, no matter how many outward "ills" (as Hamlet would say) "the flesh is heir to". The Divine Presence has been established in your life: you have only to grow aware of it. Once you realise that it is ever accompanying you, all those "ills" will be held securely in an inner calm, kept within their proper limits - that is, the sheer physical sense - and not permitted to overflow into the rest of your psychology. I am not telling you all this out of a book of wisdom but reading out what is written on the pages of my own life. So many bodily inconveniences and even aches are part of my days -and nights - and yet my eyes are filled with glorious memories of Sri Aurobindo's serene greatness and the Mother's depths of love, and with those memories their actual beings are present with me from hour to hour and a far-away smile plays about my Ups - far-away because 1 am inwardly taken to a dreamful distance from those inconveniences and aches. From that distance" they look small, insignificant. The same can happen to your troubles, for surely you are as much a child of His imperturbable immensity and Her intensity of bliss as I am. Remember also that I invoke their help every

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afternoon at the Samadhi and seek to make you remember the help which is unfailingly with you.

You find it difficult to understand why Dyuman didn't look at Sri Aurobindo while working in his room, I can try to lessen your difficulty by recounting one incident. After the Soup Distribution in the old days I used to go ahead and wait in the courtyard of the main building for the Mother to pass on her way to the staircase leading upstairs. Once I saw the silhouette of Sri Aurobindo behind the shutters on the first floor. I felt very happy. When I told the Mother of it afterwards, she said: "It is better not to look at him." Evidently the work he was doing on his own body at that time was not to be interfered with by anyone looking at it. Some subtle vibrations touching it were to be avoided.

As for the operation on me in London, it was because of the attack of polio I had suffered when 3 years old. The heel of my left foot was pulled up so much that I had to walk with my hand on my left knee in order to press the heel down to floor-level. Walking like that, bent all the time, I would have developed a permanent spinal curvature. To save me from it and give me a fair deal in life, my father, along with my mother, took me to London. There were in fact two operations under a mask of ether. A famous surgeon, Dr. Tubby, did the job. My father took me from clinic to clinic in Harley Street, asking each doctor for his method. Dr. Tubby's struck papa as the best. All the others had offered to do the work free, papa being himself a doctor. Tubby was greedy and asked for a high fee. But papa accepted him. The operations made me a straight fellow and in course of time I could ride horses to my heart's content and in Pondy go cycling every day. I could cycle till quite late in my life - in the early part of my stay after the second home-coming in 1954, I wasn't so handicapped or rather "leggicapped" until about ten years back -more acutely from 1985 or so.

(7.4.1990)

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Your series of questions is frightening and causes a lot of worry to me about you. You must take yourself in hand with a quiet determination to get rid of the psychological difficulties. The root of them seems to me a deep-seated sense of loneliness. You appear to have no friends in tune with you - and you are not sufficiently in tune with your own soul. I have no doubt that your soul is awake and is near Sri Aurobindo but somehow does not realise how near Sri Aurobindo is to it. This reads like a paradox; actually it signifies that you are doubting whether Sri Aurobindo cares for you sufficiently in spite of your worshipping him and invoking him. I think you are setting up the test of a sign. It is as if you were asking: "If Sri Aurobindo cares for me, how is it that my troubles are continuing? Why doesn't he attend to my mental disturbances and my bodily ailments? How am I to know of his relationship to me if there are no concrete answers to my appeals?" On my side, I may tell you: "If there is somebody who loves you, would that person's attention to you and warmth towards you depend for proof only on his or her ability to get rid of some disorder, inner or outer, troubling you? Love is an absolute value independent of whether this or that action is possible. The very presence of the loving heart and face is a boon and must be felt in your own depths as divine grace. Then you will experience a wonderful solace. Strength and tranquillity will be yours, making you free in the centre of your being from all that burdens or hurts you. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' may still be all about you but something in you will be like the woman in the circus who stands intact while her husband throws knives at Her from a distance, knives that stick in the board behind her close to her ears and neck and arms stretched on either side yet never touch her anywhere! The real You will be that woman while your superficial self will be the board into which the knives plunge. Perhaps the intuition may come to you that even the knives are thrown by a love whom you haven't recognised and that, despite their seeming attack, you are preserved safe and that they have come for some reason you

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cannot as yet understand and are not a punishment or a sign of neglect: they are meant to make you go deeper into yourself and realise something within you which, as the Gita says, 'fire cannot burn nor water drown nor sword pierce.' Perhaps without the assault of fire and water and sword you are incapable of the desired realisation. Once that secret aim is fulfilled, at least the psychological troubles will disappear. The body's ills may continue according to the frailty of our mortal state, but all the fears and confusions and regrets and achings will vanish or linger only as harmless ghosts - fading memories and not living facts."

I have in my own life found that Sri Aurobindo approaches us in various manners. I may even say "in various disguises". At times the most inauspicious occasions have him strongest behind them. Or we may aver that if we look for him behind them we shall surely find him and he will help us to take a short-cut to our spiritual goal across what looks like - in T.S. Eliot's words -

A whole Thibet of broken stones

That lie, fang-up...

The difficulty appalling us has to evoke in our hearts an intense cry to see the Beloved's face through the terrifying mask and in response we shall discover tender arms stretching out to us to bear us towards that face and out of the hurting tract to a bliss beyond all our dreams - a great enfolding quietude of the Unknown in which moment after moment passes glimmering like star after gold star. It is shortsightedness that discerns always the Devil behind disasters. Of course, the Divine does not deliberately create catastrophes. They occur as part of our wandering through "this transient and unhappy world". But there is nothing that does not carry the Divine within it. Even the Devil can be a puppet in God's hands - provided we invoke God's presence and pray to Him to show Himself and reveal to us the secret benefit which always sits smiling in the core of every

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misfortune - hidden with its sweetness and light behind what Sri Aurobindo interpreting Virgil calls "the touch of tears in mortal things". I am telling you these paradoxical matters not by a flight of ingenious theological theory. It is my very pulses that are beating out truths to you. I have gone under the Shadow and met through it the Sun.

(27.4.1990)

Our way to the Divine will be the swiftest as well as the sweetest if its starting-point is the deep heart in us, "the crimson-throbbing glow" of spontaneous devotion to Him, for, it would be impelled and guided by the Supreme Beauty and Bliss from its own secret station in the embodied human being.

Of course a Power of all-unifying Eternity has to descend from above and there has to be the pull of a Power of varicoloured Infinity from around and one has to feel at the back of one a nameless Peace that is a Power to stand everything without personal reaction. But these greatnesses are likely to be drawn to us by the Divine Himself acting from our heart-centre, and not need our own exertion in the direct sense though some initiative on the part of creatures who are self-aware is always expected, an eager cry and a glad consent to the Deathless In-dweller to do everything for them.

(27.11.1986)

Your reference to drawing makes me aware that an old dream of mine is still to be fulfilled. From my earliest remembered years the re-creation of the visible world on paper has fascinated me. When my parents took me to England at the age of five and a half years I happened to be the only child on board the French ship in" which we sailed, who could trace recognisable shapes with a pencil. The French boys and girls would flock round me and look over my shoulders with jubilant cries of "Cheval! Cheval!" The drawing of horses

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used to be my favourite occupation. I have always loved these glorious animals. When the Mother once told me that she hoped to cure my defective leg one day, the first thought that came to me was: "I shall immediately get a beautiful white horse between my legs!" Ever since the operation in London set right the left leg whose heel had been pulled up by polio when I had been about three years old, riding has been a passion with me. I gave rein (literally) to this passion up to the time I came to the Ashram at the age of 23. It was on a "hill-station" near Bombay, where my grandmother had a cottage and where she and the family went during the hot months of May and October and in the Christmas season. In Pondicherry there was no chance for riding. But once after three years of horse-starved eyes I heard a clop-clop under my window. I looked out and saw a man atop a fine steed passing through the street. At once I ran down and followed the pair as far as I could and came back with an old dream revived. For days I longed for horses. I even wished I could have one staying with me in my room. I could understand the redeeming mania of that monster of cruelty, the Roman emperor Caligula. He had a horse which he adored. It was given the best apartment in the royal palace and was made to attend all the meetings of the Roman Senate, Whenever a law was to be passed, the stallion was told about it and all the grave toga'd elders had to watch for some sign from the animal - a turn of the head one way or another or a flick of the ears or a faint or emphatic neigh - to ascertain its vote for or against. Three of my best poems are about horses, I recall the beginning of the last one:

Who shall tame the tarpan,

Horse of wild Tartary?

No word of wisdom in his ear

Blows out the fire in his eye.

I am afraid the equestrian topic has galloped me far afield from the subject of drawing. At one time I had to make a

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choice between training to be an artist and practising to be an author. The latter activity came more easy. So I set aside my pencils and brushes. When I joined the Ashram, one day the Mother suddenly asked me whether I would take up the work of painting the various flowers she was giving to her disciples every morning. I asked her: "How do you know I can draw and paint?" She gave the enigmatic answer:" I can see it from your hands." I took up the work and did it for years. Later I had the idea of making a picture for each of my poems. I did two and then something made me set aside the project. But I kept it in mind and hoped that some day when I had more leisure I would depict the vision and symbol of every poem of mine. But that day of meaningful line and revelatory colour has not dawned yet. A poem touching on "overhead" worlds hasacouplet which will be a challenge to the artist in me:

Bodies of fire and ecstasies of line

Where passion's mortal music grows divine.

Sri Aurobindo considered this couplet one of the best things I had done and said it had the power of revelation.

(12.11.1987)

Yes, it's been a long time since we last corresponded, person to person, and not merely in the course of our press-work. But, of course, the inner communion has never been interrupted. You are an intrinsic part of my consciousness and your face comes up before me time and again and often' at odd moments. The other day it appeared quite vividly while I was taking my bath. Perhaps the occasion symbolises the presentation of the naked truth of Amal to his all-understanding all-pardoning friend.

Nolini was always open to correction if the pointer came from someone who had both goodwill and competence. More than once he has made changes on my prompting. Only once he did not comply. A certain statement of his was meant to be

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made public. He had signed it with "Nolini-da". I suggested that the "da" was out of place, I believed that it was appropriate when others spoke of one or quoted one and should not come from one's own self. Perhaps I am mistaken, and certain pronouncements may need to be given explicitly as by an "elder brother" in order to be impressive?

I personally have never cared about respectful address. An old friend of mine, now dead, Premanand, who used to be the Ashram librarian, would feel offended if anybody called him "Premanand-ji". I think he felt that the would-be respectful appurtenance spoiled the beauty of the name. At least it adds nothing significant to my mind and assimilates the name to the sphere of public relationship and thereby removes the attention from its meaningful sound. Of course, if the addition is made out of genuine affection and not merely deferential formality it has a sentimental value. In any case I don't expect anyone to "Amal-da" me, much less "Amal-ji" me. However, when the "da"-ing or "ji"-ing takes place, I don't frown or feel disgusted like Premanand.

As for the missing passages in Nolini's translation of Savitri, your two dreams seem to suggest that they are hiding somewhere. The vision of an exercise-book provides the clue most probably. I am reminded of a very important historical case. The last few cantos of Dante's Divina Commedia were missing. At least the very last is absolutely the ne plus ultra of poetry, I have made a translation or rather a transcreation of it. It is included in "Overhead Poetry": Poems with Sri Aurobindo's Comments (pp. 127-131). The loss of it would have been irreparable. The editors were in a quandary. Then a nephew of Dante's had a vivid dream in which the poet appeared and told the young man that he had kept the manuscript safe in a certain wall niche. On following the instructions as to where exactly the niche was, the cantos were found and the complete poem published to the immense benefit of the world's aesthetico-religious mind.

Before I came to know of this incident I had written a short story involving the manuscript of the Divina Commedia. There

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the pile of the poet's writing is saved from being destroyed by a fire. Around this point a dramatic sequence of events is woven, posing an intense moral-aesthetic problem. The story was seen by Sri Aurobindo and much appreciated. It is included, along with another short story, in my book: The Sun and the Rainbow. If at some time you feel interested to read the two stories I'll send you my copy of the book. This book was not printed at our press but at Raju's for the sake of coping with the limited money available from some friends in Hyderabad. My copy rather than any other is recommended because some needed corrections have been made in it. One of the stories is called "The Hero" and is based upon an anecdote told me by the Mother. The other, which concerns Dante, is titled: "A Mere Manuscript."

Strange things have been happening of late to me. I have written of them to two or three friends and at least one letter will appear in a future Mother India relating them. But I mustn't make you wait till then. Let me tell you my story.

For some time I was feeling as if the usual radiance that had seemed to pervade my mind and heart had diminished a good deal. In this clouded condition my heart began to play tricks. After every fourth or fifth beat there was a beat missed, causing a vague discomfort in my chest. The miss-beats were mostly at the Samadhi after my walk from the Ashram gate to my chair under the clock opposite the Samadhi. Dr. Raichura checked the pulse several times and felt quite concerned. Three cardiograms were taken, one immediately after my drive home in a rickshaw after the visit to the Ashram. They proved very disappointing - in the sense that all of them showed the heart beating regularly! Yet the irregularity went on at the Samadhi and even at home. I was put on Sorbitrate tablets, either swallowed or put under the tongue. They did not have the expected effect of stopping the irregularity by increasing the circulation'of the blood. All they did was to create a mild headache accompanied by a sense of unsteadiness in the head, lasting for several hours. Then suddenly one evening I felt as if a large shadow had been lifted off my head!

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At once I felt perfectly normal again and the mind and heart knew the old brightness. There are still occasional miss-beats - even at the Samadhi. But I am completely free from their effects on the whole system. They don't matter at all.

Towards the end of this period I made a discovery. The strain on the body during my weak-legged trudge in the Ashram tends to vanish into a strain of music within me if 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 spring into my sight like little fillips of sudden joy instilling an energy that is both a light and a laugh.

I had never before realised such effects of flowers and foliage. What exactly must be happening? Do they communicate with us on their own?I suppose they do, but my intuition is that they are only aspects of a universal Presence -all Nature as a living being - which is ready to enter into a psychological exchange with us. It delivers various messages or rather states of consciousness through all its visible components: changing sky-pageantry, mountain-soars and valley-dips, winding rivers and rhythmic seas, stretches of tremulous greenery, sweeps of swaying blooms. Wordsworth was the first high-priest of this Nature-communion in English literature - an intimacy either by a vast single peaceful en-foldment or by a multiplicity of mood-touches soothing or stirring. You may remember his rapturous response to a field of dancing daffodils on the one hand and on the other his deep absorption in

The silence that is in the starry sky,

The sleep that is among the lonely hills. .

(9.5.1990)

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