The Sun and The Rainbow

THE FIRST AMERICANS IN THE

SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM

RECOLLECTIONS OF THEM AND NOTES ON SOME

PERSONAL TOPICS RELATED TO AMERICA

1

The first American name to fly about in the Ashram's air was one that significantly had a plural ring: McPheeters. It was two Americans who jointly started the flow of the New World to the Newer World which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had begun to build in the Old. They were husband and wife: Vaun and Janet McPheeters.

They were here already before I stepped into Pondicherry on December 16, 1927. The Mother had given them the upper floor of a two-storey house, a comfortable apartment with a good open veranda and a big terrace above. Both of them must have been past fifty. Vaun was a huge hulk of a man with practically no hair on his big impressive head. Janet was a smallish person and fairly thin. I came to know them very
well and they were always kind to me, especially as I was comparatively a very young man - just turned twenty-three. We used to meet often on their veranda and have long talks . A.B. Purani was another of their intimate friends.

They had undergone the discipline of meditation in the States with a spiritual teacher named Debbitt. I Iwas told he had quite a following. I remember seeing not only a photograph of him in the McPheeters' album but also a book of his lessons or instructions in typescript. He had a strong handsome clean-

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shaven face with powerful eyes. The McPheeters thought very highly of him, believing he had a cosmic consciousness in which he must have contacted Sri Aurobindo. I was not very much struck by what I had heard about his philosophy, and even made to Purani a rather irreverent joke comparing this teacher to Sri Aurobindo as "Debit" to "Credit".

Janet at some point of her stay here, got from Sri Aurobindo an Ashram name: "Shantimayi" ("one who is full of peace"). She never went out of Pondicherry after her arrival. Vaun, after a year's stay, travelled in India and was absent from the Ashram for a fairly long period. When he returned he was not quite the same person, either psychologically or physically. His health had suffered a good deal and he lacked the old concentration on Yoga.

In the early days, whenever I asked him about his sadhana he would mostly say with a broad smile and an expressive movement of his hand at head-level, "Coming and going, going and coming!" Now it appeared there was less "coming" and more "going".

But during the time he had been in the Ashram, he along with Janet had lived in close touch with the Mother. In his absence, Shantimayi became a part of the group of about twenty people who used to sit with the Mother every evening in the "Prosperity" Store-room for an hour or so before the Soup Distribution downstairs. She entered fully into the spirit of the happy illuminative talks and intuition-developing games held there. She made one of three Westerners who were present in that group — the two others being Pavitra (Philippe Barbier St. Hilaire) and Datta (Dorothy Hodgson).

When Vaun decided to leave the Ashram for good, Janet appeared very unwilling but left out of a sense of duty. She kept corresponding with the Mother for a year or two from the States. Much more than Vaun she may be considered the first American to have become a sadhak of the Integral Yoga — though at the start both of them were equally sincere and ardent in their aspirations.

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They had a great fund of humour — and Shantimayi was both amazed and tickled when our diminutive Ashram engineer, Chandulal, who also attended the meetings in the "Prosperity" Store-room perpetrated one of his "howlers" in English by summing up her character. He said: "Shantimayi is frivolous in the eyes but serious in the back."

In Light and Laughter. Some Talks at Pondicherry I have recounted an amusing incident at the first darshan both these Americans and I had of Sri Aurobindo who had withdrawn from public contacts after November 24, 1926. The darshan was on February 21, 1928, the Mother's birthday, an occasion
on which, as on two others in the year (August 15, Sri Aurobindo's birthday, and November 24, "the Day of Victory") both the Master and the Mother received, one by one, all the sadhaks and some visitors to the 'Ashram. Let me quote from that book:

"I happened to be just behind them in the queue and I couldn't help overhearing their agitated conversation. It seemed a big problem had arisen at the last minute: to whom to bow first, the Mother or Sri Aurobindo? Vaun told his wife : 'Ifwe bow to Sri Aurobindo first, the Mother will feel insulted; if we bow to the Mother first, Sri Aurobindo will get offended. So what should we do?' I too was very much intrigued by this almost insoluble problem. But they had remarkable ingenuity. Their solution was: not to bow to either of them - but to put their heads, one after the other in the empty space between the two! Of course they had the unique privilege of having blessings from both Gurus at once but they missed the feet of either! For the likes of me it was no problem because Sri Aurobindo was quite new and unknown to us, while the
Mother had become familiar; and while Sri Aurobindo was sitting very gravely the Mother was all smiles to set us at ease. So we went straight to her, got soothed by her, gained some moral courage, then proceeded to Sri Aurobindo and looked at him." (pp. 24-25, third edition)

I recall another funny incident. There was to be no smok-

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ing in the Ashram, but Vaun had not been able yet to give up his pipe. The Mother used to visit their flat every week. Once, before the hour fixed, Vaun was having his little "pipe-dream". The Mother arrived earlier and Vaun in a hurry put his pipe on a ledge outside one of his windows where the Mother would be unlikely to see it. But it so happened that the Mother, after the usual meditation with them, went straight to that particular window and looked out of it. Naturally she caught sight of the concealed pipe. Vaun was embarrassed but the Mother laughed heartily and he and Janet joined in the laughter. Later they remarked: "It isn't possible to hide anything from the Mother."

The Mother had once told me: "When a person wants to conceal something from me, the thought of the thing to be hidden keeps hovering all about him and I immediately catch it."

Shantimayi and Vaun were always anxious to get Indian-ised. Whenever she went out of doors, she dressed in a sari. She looked elegant in this dress — the white sari matching her white bobbed hair and making more graceful her somewhat bony body. Vaun moved about in a dhoti topped by a white shirt, like most of the Ashram-inmates.

Shantimayi once asked Purani how Indians managed to have strong white teeth. Purani attributed the strength and the glitter to the use of "tooth-sticks" — that is, small sticks of the neem or banyan tree, which were to be chewed at one end to make a kind of brush and then moved vigorously over the teeth as well as repeatedly bitten to get the astringent juice out of them on to the teeth and gums. This sort of morning-practice was a much more athletic exercise than ordinary tooth-brushing with a soft paste. Shantimayi religiously took to the Indian way. After a couple of days her teeth looked a little whiter but unfortunately, because of the strenuous stick-chewing she had done, all her gold fillings fell out!

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2

Apropos of the first Americans in the Ashram, I may write of my connection with America as an Ashramite, repeating what I have recounted elsewhere about my return to the Ashram in 1954 after several years' absence. As if from something above the head, from some uplifted luminous watching Will, the decision appeared to come in early February 1953 that I should make my home again near the Mother. When the decision was conveyed to her during my visit for the darshan of February 21 she confirmed its authenticity. But to make it practicable in terms of rupees was not easy. In an interview I laid all my difficulties before the Mother. At that time I was somewhat hard-up and I said: "Mother, I must have Rs. 500 to settle a few matters and pay for a thorough migration with my wife Sehra and our dog Bingo." The Mother replied: "So you must have Rs. 500?" I gave a big serious nod and she smiled.

I went back to Bombay and fixed the time of my permanent return a few months ahead. Weeks rolled by but there was no prospect of those Rs. 500 materialising in a lump sum.

In December of the previous year, an American journalist, Harvey Breit, had come to Bombay with a scheme of the Ford Foundation for a special India-Supplement to the Atlantic Monthly. I was introduced to him and he commissioned an article on Sri Aurobindo and his Ashram. I wrote my piece, 2000 words or so. It was approved. I asked hesitatingly whether there would be any payment. "Of course," was the answer, "we'll write to you from the States." But even after months there was no word from the Atlantic Monthly. Now the month I had fixed for my return to Pondicherry was approaching. Within a fortnight of D-Day (Divine Day, naturally) I got a letter from America. It said that a cheque was enclosed on the Ford Foundation's account in an Indian bank. I unfolded the cheque. There, unbelievably, was an order for Rs. 500. Not a rupee more, not a rupee less! But the story of the Grace does not end here. A week later I received another letter.

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It was apologetic, saying that owing to certain unavoidable circumstances the Supplement had to be cut down considerably and that, though my article had been much appreciated, it could not be used. This did not mean the withdrawal of the payment. The payment would be made and I was even told that the compilers claimed no right to the article: it could be sold by me anywhere else.

Thus my article went all the way from India to the U.S.A. and came back to me with a gift of the exact amount I had mentioned to the Mother and she had endorsed. Again, to take me to the Ashram of Sri Aurobindo, it had appropriately to be an article on Sri Aurobindo and his Ashram.

What is of further and final interest is that many years earlier there had been a talk between the Mother and myself about financial aid to the Ashram from America. She had said: "I have a feeling that we may have something to do with Henry Ford." Years afterwards, Margaret Wilson, the daughter of the one-time President Woodrow Wilson, came to stay in the Ashram and she got in touch with Ford. Ford replied that, as he believed in reincarnation, he would be interested to meet somebody who could throw light on his past births. Miss Wilson spoke with the Mother. The Mother said she could certainly throw some light. It appears that Ford was eager to pay a visit to the Ashram. Unhappily, adverse circumstances delayed his coming. A little later he died. So the only help that has come so far from the side of Ford are those Rs. 500 as a windfall to one to whom the Mother had talked about Ford's possible help.

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