Chaitanya and Mira

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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