PREFACE
Often enough, when I sing in our temple, Indira Devi goes off into a mystic trance — samadhi — and sees Mira singing or dancing, in a Brindavan temple, in the midst of some devotees or learned sadhus who start with her a discussion or an altercation, as the case may be. After a time, when Indira Devi comes to, she relates in a half-trance—bhav-samadhi—these singular experiences: historical scenes recaptured or else Mira's stories and parables. As she goes on recounting them, she often breaks out laughing or clapping her hands ecstatically like a child and sometimes — when talking in a faltering accent about "her Gopal's" love — her voice grows husky with emotion and tears trickle down her cheeks moving even the hearts of hard-boiled sceptics and critics. I present here, in the form of a play, a few scenes she saw re-enacted in Brindavan along with a few communications she has had from Mira who comes to her daily. She used to keep a record of her talks with Mira in her diaries of old dating as far back as 1950, some of which were pub- lished in Pondicherry just eleven years ago in her first book of Mira- bhajans entitled Shrutanjali, a sheaf of sweet songs Mira would sing to her day after marvellous day. These she (Indira) would dictate to us then and there directly after her samadhi in which state she heard Mira speak or sing as the case might be.
To quote hereanent the comment of Sri Aurobindo, (and who could be a greater authority on authentic mystic experiences than he?) he wrote to me three letters when I sent him a few of Indira's songs with an elaborate account of their genesis and transcription.
"There is nothing impossible," he wrote first, "in Mira Bai mani- festing in this way through the agency of Indira's trance, provided she (Mira) is still sufficiently in touch with this world to accom- pany Krishna where He manifests and in that case there would be no impossibility either in her taking the part she did in Indira's vision of her and her action. If Indira wrote in Hindi with which she was not used to write and it was under the influence of Mira- bai, that would be a fairly strong evidence of the reality of Mira- bai's presence and influence on her." (7.5.50)
"It is evident," he further explained in his second letter, "that Indira is receiving inspiration for her Hindi songs from the Mira of her vision and that her consciousness and the consciousness of
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Mira are collaborating on some plane super'conscient to the ordinary human mind: an occult plane; also this influence is not an illusion but a reality, otherwise the thing could not happen as it does in actual fact. Such things do happen on the occult plane, they are not new and unprecedented." (2.6.50)
"In any case," he went on to stress, "the poems Mirabai has conveyed through Indira — for that much seems to be clear — are beautiful and the whole phenomenon of Indira dictating in a language she does not know well... is truly remarkable and very convincing of the genuineness of the whole thing." (11,6.50)
I need only add that I am sure that these experiences and songs (a few of which I have translated here in English) will go on ins- piring — irrespective of caste or creed, race or religion — all true devotees, aspirants and seekers who must need the light of Love Divine to help them tread the Path.
One last word:
As for the Lord's coming to Sanatan and Mira and playing at hide and seek with them, I know full well that such experiences of even the greatest mystics and God-lovers are sure to be scotched today by many as figments of the imagination. But I am not con- cerned with critics who cannot believe because they do not know:
I am concerned, first and last, with spiritual seekers as against mere investigators who cannot possibly assay the truth of such experiences as happen on the mystic plane for the simple reason that they have not been there. So I will conclude with citing a rele- vant passage from Sri Aurobindo's Essays on the Gi'ta:
"Far from the Infinite being unable to take on finiteness, the whole universe is nothing else but that; we can see, look as we may, nothing else at all in the whole world we inhabit... the Divine takes upon Himself the human nature with all its outward limitations" .,.. because "the human limitation must be assumed in order to show how it can be overcome."
For the rest, I can only add that if a single devotee, reading this play, feels even a fraction of the rapture and sense of illumination that I have felt while writing it, I shall deem myself amply repaid for my pains.
DILIP KUMAR ROY
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