Champaklal Speaks

Meditation on the Battlefield

In the 1920s, as you know, the building now known as 'the Ashram' used to be four separate houses which we called Library House, Rosary House, Secretariat House and Meditation House.¹

I speak here of Rosary House where today [early 1970s] Pujalal's rooms are and the cartonnerie [box-making room] where Navinchandra makes cardboard boxes for Prosperity. The entrance to Rosary House has not changed, only the doors of the gate have been replaced. Upstairs, on the eastern side, where Abhay Singh's rooms are, there was just one room and it was allotted to Doraiswami. On the opposite side, where Navajata's rooms are, there was a large terrace in which pots of rose plants were kept. Mother was deeply interested in roses, so Amrita maintained that garden and Barin tended the plants. This is why that house was called Rosary House.

Incidentally, the roses were taken to Mother in an interesting way. They were placed in a tin and closed with an almost airtight lid. When the lid was opened in her presence, the fragrance of the roses would spread all around her.

My story belongs to the time when Mother was conducting occult experiments on cats and took great care of them. They roamed around freely. Just inside Rosary house, very near the gate there was an open well and there was a chance of their falling into the well. So 1 Mother thought of covering it with a lid. Though in those days Mother neither met people nor went out of Library House, one day, to my great surprise, she took me with her to this uncovered well and asked me: “Could you prepare a cover for this well?”

I said, “Yes, Mother, I can try.”

She asked me to buy dealwood boxes, giving detailed instructions including their price and where those boxes would be available. I went and bought a big box.

In my schooldays I had learnt a little bit of carpentry. In fact at my uncle's abhyasagriha, I was not interested in anything except drawing and carpentry, both of which were useful things to know, Possibly if I had studied well, I might have become a scholar but in the process I might have lost the opportunity of becoming a servant of the Divine!

To come back to the story. I took the box to Guest House (where I was then living) and started working in the courtyard where at present Green Group children play in the evenings, Naturally it made a big noise and one sadhak came out of his room and began to grumble that it was disturbing his meditation. In those days sadhaks were very fond of meditating.

When I informed Mother about it, she said: “Sri Aurobindo and I are not disturbed by noise. If one cannot meditate amidst noise it only proves that one is not truly meditating. One must be able to meditate on the battlefield. We are not particular. If they are disturbed there, you may work here; disturb here.”

When the poor sadhak who had complained came to know of this, he was very sorry and asked to be pardoned. Of course I had not said anything to him. Thus I did not have to change the place of work and when the cover was completed, Mother was very happy—happy both for the completion of the work and the change in the sadhak.