Sri Aurobindo came to Me

Foreword

Dilip — I shall call him Dilip, as Dilip Kumar Roy sounds too pompous for so ethereal and lovable a spirit — Dilip has evolved an 'art' of biography all his own. Perhaps the word 'evolved' is somewhat inappropriate here: Dilip hasn't pursued laborious technological processes to arrive at his 'art'; it has just come to him or he has come by it as a matter of course — an edict of destiny, if you will, but no frowns, no tears, no nerve-racking researches. His two earlier works —Among the Great and The Subhash I knew — have made us familiar with the contours of this 'art' — an art so artless that it resembles the sinuous movements of a mountain-stream rather than the rigid outlines of a massive structure, a style so unlaboured that it seems to write itself out, a style marked by the naturalness and insinuating cadences of the living voice rather than the organised rhythms of a conscious artist. He writes only of people whom he has seen and known and verily grappled to his heart. How few biographers have subjected themselves to this discipline of resolved limitations! As Dilip writes of people he has known intimately, not only does he write, as a rule, from first-hand knowledge, he is also inevitably driven to project himself into the narratives. And so it comes about that when Dilip writes a biography, it turns out to be somewhat of an autobiography as well. There is, indeed, a fascinating muddling of categories of biography and autobiography, though the final result is not a muddle but the creation of a work pulsing with light and life, the convincing evocation of a person, a power an environment and a point of view.

Dilip's genius for friendship, discipleship, love is but one of his cardinal qualifications for essaying biographies. Friendship could be allied with reticence and taciturnity — a private affair,

pure and holy, not open to discussion, nor amenable to public exhibition. But no one law is valid for all. Boswell loved Johnson "on this side idolatry"; yet he was, in a manner of speaking, a "spy' — taking notes, making calculations, conducting Sherlock- Holmesian enquiries, prodding his hero at well-regulated intervals and photographing his reactions. In short, the lover has his own "axes to grind", though these have now been acclaimed worthy axes, burnished to an unfading golden hue. In like manner, Dilip too has not only a genius for friendship but also a genius for drawing his friends out. A delightful conversationalist, he is not unwilling to assume the pose of a forward child or of a fierce disputant, just to provoke the other person into a characteristic outburst, or a memorable statement, or a sudden jet of argument or laughter. He has sought numerous interviews and he has preserved a glittering record of them; even casual conversations have gone into his diaries to be drawn upon at need. And he has been a tireless correspondent. Dilip writes to A, who replies in due course: Dilip now writes to B enclosing A's reply: B's reply arrives at last; promptly Dilip writes to C attaching copies of A's and B's replies and writes to A once again asking him what he thinks of B's remarks... already I am getting lost in the labyrinth, but not so Dilip, he holds the clues in firm grasp! With perfect can dour he explains his method:

"It was often like this that it happened: sometimes a brother- disciple would write something to me where-upon Sri Aurobindo would comment. I would then convey to Krishnaprem how things stood, and then he, as often as not, would come forward with his reactions to the message of Gurudev, upon which Gurudev would have something more to say by way of clarification, al- most like a billiard-ball bounding and rebounding again and again."

And the process would, result in "far-reaching repercussions", achieving endless extension in space and time! One can only admire Dilip's adroitness which at once generates and controls the oceanic mass of correspondence — wave upon wave, overriding, interlocking, for ever changing and for ever the same! A

Page xxx

genius for friendship, love, adoration and imaginative sympathy, coupled with a genius for conversation and correspondence:

these native gifts Dilip has capitalised with the result that he is a biographer out of the ordinary, a biographer sui generis.

Sri Aurobindo was one of the five "great" men covered by Dilip in his Among the Great, he is frequently referred to or quoted in The Subhash I Knew; and whatever the theme, even when he is only writing a novel or a drama on Sri Chaitanya or a poem on Prahlad, Sri Aurobindo also is the theme — for Sri Aurobindo is the Ground, the Air, the interpenetrating Ether in Dilip's world. In his admirable new book, however — challengingly entitled Sri Aurobindo Came To Me — there is no Maya- screen between him and his alchemist-friend, Gurudev and all- in-all. Yet, although Sri Aurobindo is the confessed theme of Dilip's new book, his longest and greatest, it would be wrong to call it simply a biography of the Master. The title itself is audaciously disarming, Sri Aurobindo Came to Me\ The "inversion' is masterly. Dilip didn't go to Sri Aurobindo: Sri Aurobindo came to Dilip! Hasn't Sri Aurobindo himself declared that "he who chooses the Infinite has been chosen by the Infinite!" Also as Sri Aurobindo once confided to Dilip:

"Even before I met you for the first time, I knew of you and felt at once the contact of one with whom I had that relation which declares itself constantly through many lives.... It is a feeling which is never mistaken and gives the impression of one not only close to one but a part of one's existence."

Does it mean that Sri Aurobindo Came To Me is really Dilip's camouflaged autobiography? "This is not an autobiography," Dilip emphatically asserts. On the other hand there is a whole chapter entitled "Avowedly Personal', and even otherwise we catch Dilip saying "I will have to pause here and become, once more a little autobiographical." The book, then, is autobiographical without being an autobiography, and its principal merit is that the more we learn about Dilip the nearer we get to Sri Aurobindo. Nay, more: Dilip has projected into the main canvas other luminous figures as well, they too take us only

Page xxxi

closer to Sri Aurobindo. Dilip's way of writing can be tantalising, but it is also fascinating. He can combine the shrewdness of a diplomat with the irresponsibility of a spoilt child. But why complain? And, after all, what is there to com- plain about? Dilip's methods are his own: but he ends by over- whelming the reader, and leaves him with a sense of profound fulfilment.

With a rich multifoliate background, with influential friends the world over, having already made his mark in music and trailing clouds of glorious promise in other fields, Dilip nevertheless felt a gnawing discomfort in his heart and so visited Pondicherry and saw Sri Aurobindo in 1924. He returned in 1928 and joined the Ashram — and has been a sadhaka ever since. When Dilip took the decisive step and joined the Ashram, Sri Aurobindo had gone into complete seclusion, and hence letters were the only formal channel of communication between the master and the disciples. For years Sri Aurobindo spent whole nights answering his correspondents. And none of his correspondents was so demanding, so indefatigable, so irresistible, as Dilip. Sri Aurobindo's integral Yoga comprehended all life and sought to transform it; hence the letters that passed between him and Dilip were also all-inclusive in subject matter while the tone and the style too changes significantly even as the subject changed. There was, of course, the dominant preccupation with the Supramental Idea. What exactly was the Supra- mental? Did it really mean business? When and how would it set about the job of transforming earth-nature into supernature? There were Sri Aurobindo's published works, no doubt, where these and allied questions were exhaustively answered. Yet Dilip asked and asked, raised doubts and pronounced hypothesis, passed on titbits and obiter dicta and wouldn't be denied an answer. "I often conveyed to Gurudev such titbits to draw him out if I could", Dilip confesses, and adds: "as, I generally succeeded, I grew bolder...." Again: "Month after weary month I challenged him (Sri Aurobindo) to prove his thesis which I knew in my heart of hearts to be true and yet, curiously, I insisted on

flinging a deeper defiance every time he leaned down to accord me a kindlier handclasp". And again: "Thus I went on blowing my bubble of sorrow, inveigled by its phantom iridescence." But Sri Aurobindo patiently exposed Dilip's "unconscious paralogisms as well as wilful sophisms", and drew nearer and still nearer to his heart's core. If necessary, he was prepared to play the game even as Dilip himself played it — to go one better, in fact, in flashfulness. Dilip once tried the telegraphic style:

O Guru, I send you a Bengali poem of mine entitled Akuti which I translated last night into English. Can you revise it? Is it good? Mediocre? Worthless? Frank opinion, please! But what about Raihana's letter? Won't return? You keep mum. What's up? Bridge-building? Supramental? Wool-gathering?"

Sri Aurobindo's answer was like "an echo to the song":

"I shall see if I can get a few minutes for revising your English translation. But you seemed to have progressed greatly in your English verse. How so quickly? Yogic force? Internal combustion? The subliminal self? Raihana's letter and drawing which have unaccountably turned up again with me. Poltergeist? Your inadvertence? Mine?"

This extraordinary freedom which Dilip enjoyed in his relations with the Master has proved very fruitful indeed, for to it we owe the hundreds of letters which Sri Aurobindo wrote to his disciple. Was it wrong of Dilip to have occasionally almost 'gone for' Sri Aurobindo, to have so often provoked him and as often misunderstood him? But there is another side to the shield, as Dilip himself realises. "I console myself today", writes Dilip, "that even my wrongest moods did serve a two-fold purpose: first objectively, because they brought into relief his (Sri Aurobindo's) great understanding of and compassion for human nature... and then, subjectively, because it can hardly be gain-said that had I been by nature less intractable than I was, I might indeed, have been richer today in Yogic experience, but should I not have been poorer in my intimate knowledge of that human side of him which is so infinitely precious to me?" The same Dilip who brings out his Guru's humour and humanity is

Page xxxiii

fully aware also of the Master's global intelligence, the ambrosial quality of his mantric poetry, and the potencies of his earth- transforming Yoga. Dilip speaks about these, but others too have spoken about them; but only Dilip can reveal to us the less austere, the more human sides of Sri Aurobindo's power and personality. In his pages Sri Aurobindo remains a colossus, a veritable Himalayas of Wisdom and Power, but all is toned up with the embracing fluidity of love, and the Master who is "august and dire" is seen from the human end, to be also a "sweet fuller of desire."

Dilip writes in the course of the book that he has "no wish to 'write a manual of Yoga." If we wish to learn about Supramental Yoga, there are the Master's own works. Dilip's book is about Yogins more than about their Yoga — though, of course, Yoga comes breaking in. "The Making of Yogis' might, perhaps, have been a subtitle of the book. We watch the evolution of a Dilip, a Chadwick, a Nixon from agonised and purblind mortals into self-poised and more and more purposively and creatively active sadhakas. The master is, of course in a different category: for it would be wide off the mark to talk of his "evolution' — with him there has been "a manifestation of a growing Divine consciousness', but not something human, laboriously scaling higher regions. His sojourn, his descending into clay, has been necessary to "bring the heavens down'; and having assumed a human envelope, he has partaken of human joys and trials, with- out denying its quintessential nature. The effect of Dilip's book is to emphasize the humanity of the Master and also the growth in consciousness of his disciples. By apparently human ways the disciples are helped to transcend their humanity and achieve progress in their Yoga.

The book is of unusual interest to students of poetry and Yoga as references to poetry and poets are scattered all over. Sri Aurobindo was both poet and critic of poetry, and he was also the prophet of future poetry and, in very considerable measure, fulfiller of his own prophecy. Dilip does ample justice to all these facets, and the illustrative quotations and his own appreciative

Page xxxiv

comments enrich further a volume whose value even other wise must be priceless.

In conclusion, whatever else is read, Dilip's Sri Aurobindo Came to Me must also be read. Dilip was to Sri Aurobindo as St. John was in the bosom of Christ; and Sri Aurobindo Came to Me is the Aurobindonian Gospel according to Dilip — St. John. It is, accordingly, an indispensable book to all admirers of Sri Aurobindo; all students of Yoga; all lovers of poetry; and all serious practitioners of the creative art of Life.

K.R. SRINIVASA IYENGAR

Andhra University

Waltair

Page xxxv