Sri Aurobindo came to Me

CHAPTER VIII

Guru, The Alchemist

To emphasise the difficulty which every Yogi has to face, and for a long time, let me venture a little further and say that the moment one gets along in Yoga, be it ever so little, the ego is confronted with new trials at every turn insomuch that one often feels like giving up in despair. At such crises it is only the Guru's direct help and sleepless guidance that can lift one out of the perilous slough of despond. Only the trouble is that the Guru's help can hardly be fully effective without the co-operation of the disciple who is, generally, too apt to rely more on miracle than on sadhana. That is why in spite of the Guru's repeated warnings he is found so prone to mistake a tamasic passivity for the sattwic surrender. Another reason is that the fool's paradise, however ephemeral, is delectable so long as it lasts; in other words, it is delightful to be lulled by the sophistry that since all is right with the Supervisor above, nothing can be seriously wrong with us, workmen, below. I remember clearly a bad jolt I received from a colleague who said to me flippantly: "If one is obligated to strive hard all the time, what, in the name of horse sense, is the good of having a Guru?" His whole psychological bent and convenient outlook made him look up, first and last, to the miracle of Sri Aurobindo's Force as the one and only solvent of all our difficulties. I told him that Sri Aurobindo had written once clearly and categorically to Nirod on this very point. "The mistake is to think that it must be either a miraculous Force or none. There is no miraculous Force and I do not deal in miracles." And then: "What is Sri Aurobindo's Force? It is not a personal property of this body of mine, it is a higher Force used by me or acting through me. Of course it is a Divine Force,

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for there is only one Force acting in the world, but it acts according to the nature of the instrument."

But, as the psycho-analyst rightly says, human beings are incalculable. For as soon as I quoted this letter to confute my friend's thesis, his eyes danced with joy. "I heartily agree," he cried triumphantly, "for that is just why I adore Gurudev: he will know how to act on me. Why then must I fall back upon individual effort when I can get things done more speedily by surrender? Since I have come for that, the Divine Force will surely act through Sri Aurobindo and transform me." Feeling bewildered, if not discomfited, I appealed again to Gurudev to tell us something definite to go upon and not leave us suspended in mid-air. Whereupon he wrote to me:

"In the early part of sadhana — and by early I do not mean a short part — effort is indispensable. Surrender of course, but surrender is not a thing that is done in a day. The mind has its ideas and it clings to them — the human vital resists surrender, for what it calls surrender in the early stages is a doubtful kind of self-giving with a demand in it — the physical consciousness is like a stone and what it calls surrender is often no more than inertia. It is only the psychic that knows how to surrender and the psychic is usually very much veiled in the beginning. When the psychic awakes, it can bring a sudden and true surrender of the whole being, for the difficulty of the rest is rapidly dealt with and disappears. But till then effort is indispensable. Or else it is necessary till the Force comes flooding down into the being from above and takes up the sadhana, does it for one more and more and leaves less and less to individual effort — but even then, if not effort, at least aspiration and vigilance are needed till the possession of mind, will, life and body by the Divine Power is complete."

But one who has not practised Yoga will be hardly likely to realise the point Gurudev wanted to make when he suggested that effort and surrender are interdependent. So I shall close the topic with the report of a talk which a pathetic believer had once with Gurudev on this very point.

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and rough in spite of the immense help I got from his tireless tolerance and specific directions? One could not both eat one's cake and have it. I could not very well decline the helping light and yet hope to dispel overnight the clinging darkness which caused me again and again to miss his smile of welcome and to misunderstand his injunctions — simple enough in all conscience — till once, surpassing myself in foolishness, I asked him, rhetorically, how I could possibly be expected to say that I wanted only to give myself to the Divine and not want Him, when I did want Him with "every drop of my blood"! "Could I afford to be dishonest?" I wrote grandiloquently, fully persuaded that I had been at once downright and clever if not original and brilliant!

Finally, to force the issue, I proposed to him to be allowed to do without food. I half meant it, I suppose, though I must have dreaded the prospect as I have always been an out and out normal man who had never found a regime of fasting invigorating.

"Since I find, Guru," I argued, "that do what I will I simply cannot accept the idea of surrendering my ego to your Lordship; since I find life meaningless without a deepening response from the Divine; and, lastly, since I find, I repeat, that I sincerely want you to endow me with the strength I so badly need to be able to get round my pride — please let me know if you will now approve of my prayopaveshana. I have read in the lives of some Yogis that they tried it in the last resort and succeeded.

Which brought me one of his tenderest letters.

"Dilip", he wrote, "I wrote to you all that in answer to your statement about your former idea of the Yoga that if one wanted the Divine, the Divine himself would take up the purifying of the heart and develop the sadhana and give the necessary experiences. I meant to say that it can and does happen in that way if one has trust and confidence in the Divine and the genuine will to surrender. For such a taking up involves one's putting oneself in the hands of the Divine rather than relying on one's own efforts alone and this implies one's putting one's trust and confidence in the Divine and a progressive self-giving. It is, in fact, the principle of sadhana that I myself followed and it is the

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central part of Yoga as I envisage it. It is, I suppose what Sri Ramakrishna meant by the method of the baby cat in his image.* But all cannot follow that at once: it takes time for them to arrive at it — it grows most when the mind and the vital fall quiet.

"What I meant by surrender was this inner surrender of the mind and the vital. There is, of course, the outer surrender also: the giving up of all that is found to conflict with the spirit or need of the sadhana, the offering, the obedience to the guidance of the Divine, whether directly, if one has reached that stage or through the psychic or to the guidance of the Guru. I may say that prayopaveshana has nothing to do with surrender: it is a form of tapasya of a very austere — and in my opinion, very excessive — kind, often dangerous. But I was speaking of the inner surrender.

"The core of this inner surrender is trust and confidence in the Divine. One takes the attitude 'I want the Divine and nothing else. (I do not know why you should think that you can b& asked to give up that — if there is not that, then the Yoga cannot be done). I want to give myself entirely to Him and since my soul wants that, it cannot be but that I shall meet and realise Him. I ask nothing but that and His action in me to bring me to Him, His action secret or open, veiled or manifest. I do not insist on my own time and way: let Him do all in his own time and way, I shall believe in Him, accept His will, aspire steadily for His light and presence and joy, go through all difficulties and delays, relying on Him and never giving up. Let my mind be quiet and, trust Him and let Him open it to His light; let my vital be quiet and turn to Him alone and let Him open it to His calm and Joy. All for Him and myself for Him. Whatever happens I will keep to this aspiration and self-giving and go on in perfect reliance that it will be done.'

"That is the attitude into which one must grow: for certainly it cannot be made perfect at once — mental and vital movements

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* Sri Ramakrishna said that the baby monkey clings to its mother whereas the baby cat lets itself be carried by its mother in a spirit of utter surrender and trust.

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cut across — but if one keeps the will to it, it will grow in the being. The rest is a matter of obedience to the guidance when it makes itself manifest — not allowing one's mental and vital movements to interfere.

"It was not my intention to say that this is the only way and sadhana cannot be done otherwise — there are so many others by which one can approach the Divine. But this is the only one I know by which the taking up of sadhanas by the Divine becomes a sensible fact before the preparation of the nature is done. In other methods the Divine action may be felt from time to time, but it remains mostly behind the veil till all is ready. In some sadhana the Divine action is not recognised: all must be done by tapasya. In most there is a mixing of the two: the tapasywa finally calling the direct help and intervention. The idea and experience of the Divine doing all belong to the Yoga based on surrender.

"But whatever way is followed, the one thing to be done is to be faithful and go on to the end. You have so often taken that attitude — stand by it, true to the inspiration of your soul.

"All can be done by the Divine: the heart and nature purified, the inner consciousness awakened, the veil removed — if one gives oneself to the Divine with trust and confidence and even if one cannot do so fully at once, yet the more one does so, the more the inner help and guidance come and the contact and the experience of the Divine grow within. If the questioning mind becomes less active and humility and the will to surrender grow in you, this ought to be perfectly possible. No other strength and tapasya are then needed but this alone."

But I must again pause here to state once more, even at the; risk of repetition, that what he called the "inner surrender", though difficult enough in all conscience, did not seem to us an unattainable ideal all along the line. What I mean will be perfectly intelligible to all who have trod this strait and thorny path spiralling up to self-perfection. For any sincere pilgrim on this path will have realised in his bright moods what a joy it is to want to surrender; he will ache to dedicate all he has and is to

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but which may appear identical or similar, different or dissimilar.

"The more imperfect a being is the more do its individual parts resemble each other, and the more do these parts resemble the whole. The more perfect the being is the more dissimilar are its parts. In the former case the parts are more or less a repetition of the whole: in the latter case they are totally unlike the whole."

It is as a result of this eminently verifiable fact of life through personal experience that human beings have remained incalculable since the dawn of time. Not only that: with the passage of time this element of unpredictability grows (even as a child grows in stature from day to day) till in adult consciousness every evolved being stands literally bewildered before the warring impulses in his own personality, some pulling him down, others making him soar, as Goethe expressed once with his rare power of imagery. "And when I think that I'm sitting on my hack and riding to the station I am in duty bound for, all of a sudden the mare under me will turn into a creature with uncontrollable desires and wings and run right away from me."

But few people can be as conscious as Goethe of "this multitudinousness in human personality", far less with any clue to the supreme art of harmonising the disparate strands of our nature.* Gurudev has explained this not only in his numerous letters but, what is infinitely more helpful, has placed within our reach the supreme talisman of his Yogic force without which

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*I have related elsewhere an experience — which I need not therefore repeat — with a Maharani. I spoke to her about my faith in the spiritual reality when I was in the grip of gloomy doubts. I wrote to Gurudev asking whether I had been insincere. To which he replied: Your experience with the Maharani. That happens to everybody: it is when that part of the consciousness comes up which not only believes these things but knows them to be true: the other part which is depressed and open to doubt and denial takes then a back seat or goes underground. People do not know this multitudinousness in human personality, so they call it insincerity in themselves or in others. But it is nothing of the kind. There are certain beliefs and feelings which something: in our nature holds on to with a firm grip, and storms and despondencies only cover but cannot destroy them."

(See Among the Great, American Edition — pp. 352- 353).

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we could at best curb to some extent our "uncontrollable desires" and incomprehensible impulses, but never find the way to changing intrinsically their native movements. As, however, this is not a practical treatise on Yoga, I shall not expatiate on this theme any further, but conclude this chapter with just a personal instance if only to clarify what exactly I want to convey by emphasizing the role of the 'transformer' as against that of the 'censor'.

When I came to be initiated in Yoga, I had no very clear idea of what "transformation of nature" meant. So I was wont to ask Gurudev again and again for clarification. Many of these letters have been published so that those who want more light can easily profit by these explanations. All I propose to do here is to give a brief account of what I experienced about the practical side of this transformation under Gurudev's concrete help and guidance.

I knew, of course, that every aspirant was expected to inhibit, or shall I say reject, the movements of his lower nature. One knows how to check impulses; but as to how I was to change them I had only the haziest notions. Once, in the 'thirties', I had a long talk with the late Upendranath Banerji, a quondam disciple of Gurudev. I remember his deep misgivings about the feasibility of transforming human nature. He said to me that he had definitely "experienced" that Yoga could bring into play forces which not only made a difference but sometimes even bordered upon the miraculous. But for all that, he had remained unconvinced, he added, about its ability to transform our natural and basic impulses. "Man remains at bottom what he is", he contended, "and if changes are brought about they can only be initiated laboriously and consolidated slowly by life, not Yoga."

But he was wrong. I told him this to his face as I gave him an account of my radically changed outlook on life. I talked about things that had appealed to me powerfully once but which appeared, after even a few years of Yoga, worse than pointless -— for instance, my career as a musician, my great delight in travelling, my immense zest in several intellectual pursuits, my interest in engrossing pastimes like chess or delightful games

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like tennis and so on. He gave me a very patient and sympathetic hearing and seemed genuinely interested in my change as I called it, but he wanted something more convincing and concrete to go upon, like some lasting change in my life of instincts or long- standing attachments. I had to be silent. For while, on the one hand, I could not tell all about my private life (and no one should — expect to one's Guru) on the other, I could not possibly make him see what I had seen, for the simple reason that Yoga, like lovemaking, cannot be done by proxy. Not only that: I knew him well; he was, indeed, a highly intelligent man; but his keen intelligence, like that of most intellectuals, demanded that spiritual truth be ultimately assayed by reason alone and that human intellect be the sole Judge of data which belonged to a realm beyond its own jurisdiction. Yet I showed him a letter which Gurudev had written to me in 1935:

"These things should not be spoken of but kept under cover. Even in ordinary non-spiritual things the action of invisible or subjective forces is open to doubt and discussion in which there could be no material certitude — while the spiritual force is invisible in itself and also invisible in its action. So it is idle to try to prove that such and such a result was the effect of a spiritual force. Each must form his own ideas about that — for if it is accepted it cannot be as a result of proof and argument, but only as a result of experience, of faith or of that insight in the heart or the deeper intelligence which looks behind deeper appearances and sees what is behind them. The spiritual consciousness does not claim in that way, it can state the truth about itself but not fight for personal acceptance. A general and impersonal statement about the spiritual force is another matter, but I doubt whether the time has come for it or whether it could be understood by the mere reasoning intelligence."

But in as much as Gurudev permitted me last year to publish in America what he had told me about his occult experiences, I may, I think, venture to make public what I could not, twelve years ago. For I know from personal experience that many people are tired today of this sterile scepticism—as I was myself before

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my plunge for Yoga. Even one of the greatest of modern sceptics, Bertrand Russell, a thinker who once preached the gospel of "the will to doubt" says today in 1950: "But if philosophy is to serve a positive purpose, it must not teach mere scepticism, for, while the dogmatist is harmful, the sceptic is useless."

A welcome change indeed — in one who fought so hard against faith and for so long! So I may perhaps make bold to relate what I have experienced personally about Gurudev's power functioning slowly but surely like that of a true alchemist.

When I had finally taken refuge in the Ashram, in 1928, I was far from realising the import of Gurudev's sadhana and aim, especially when he wrote: "I do not wish to disguise from you the difficulty of this great and tremendous change or the possibility that you may have a long and hard work before you " etc.* I had not even fully envisaged what was implied by his wanting to change the stuff of our nature without which the higher Yogic consciousness could not, he stressed, possibly come to stay. I only knew of the rejection of the wrong impulses, which everybody equates more or less with controlling or curbing.

But the more I curbed these the more it was borne home to me that although one could act faultlessly up to a point — "scorning delights and living laborious days" — such Miltonic feats of will, however difficult and praiseworthy, fell far short of the aim of Yoga, namely, the total transformation of the impulses which bred the faults and their attendant disharmonies. To give an instance or two: I found that I could, generally speaking, restrain-my temper but not help feeling irritated; or, I could refuse tasty dishes but not do away with the greed for them.

The first defect was not so difficult to get rid of. But it was the second, which I am going to write about, that gave me no end of trouble — and how stubbornly! I shall put it as briefly as I can.

When I came to the Ashram I had, naturally, to agree to the vegetarian diet, as Gurudev and Mother were both in favour of

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* I have quoted the letter in full in Chapter V while giving an account of the difficulties I had to encounter.

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vegetarianism. I wanted, nevertheless, to eat fish and meat especially fish which my Bengali palate simply "adored" like a gourmand. So I missed it more than anything else. I had been told by some that I would get used to the simple vegetarian diet. But the prophecy was not fulfilled. With time my desire for fish only grew till I felt guilty, secretly, and struggled conscientiously against my greed. But in vain. I dreamed of fish — night after 'night. After eight years of Ashram life I went out for three months and found that my hankering for fish had not yet been conquered. I returned to the Ashram a sadder if a wiser man. To have practised Yoga under the aegis of the greatest living Yogi and yet to have succumbed to my greed for such inferior pleasures the moment I went outside! But do what I would, I could not bring myself to decline whenever fish was served me in Calcutta and elsewhere. Again and again I took a silent vow never to touch fish any more but again and again I broke it as soon as my friends or relations pressed me to take fish. To cut a long story short, my remorse was brought to a head when, in 1938, I went on eating fish at the palace of my friend and host, Rajarao Dhirendra Narayan Roy. I felt more ill-at-ease in his company since he was at the time a strict vegetarian under medical advice, so that I had no longer even the excuse of being tempted to eat fish in order to be social. But although my weakness made me depressed, yet I simply could not reform. So I started telling others that it did not matter, even quoting scripture like the Prince of Darkness:

"I think the importance of sattwic food from the spiritual point of view has been exaggerated. Food is rather a question of hygiene etc."*

It was eleven years ago and I cannot clearly recall what happened on that memorable night when, after having declined to eat fish for a few days, I again succumbed. All I can remember is that it was a banquet given in my honour by the Rajarao and

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*This letter written to a friend of mine in 1937 was printed subsequently in Vol. II of Letters of Sri Aurobindo, Section XI .

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that the famous caterers Firpo had been requisitioned to make the banquet worthy of my host and his distinguished literary guests. I must have been pressed by these to be "a sport" and so forced to capitulate once again to the irresistible lobsters and the peerless hilsa from the Ganges.

That unforgettable night! After the great éclat came the inevitable reaction and I felt simply ashamed of myself as never before. I tried to drown my qualms in sleep but in vain. So, I got up, lighted some incense-sticks and prayed at the foot of a portrait of Gurudev. As I thought of him, tears coursed freely down my cheeks.

I do not know how to convince my readers. Probably they will simply decline to be convinced and I could hardly blame them should they doubt my testimony, the less so because, when all is said, one is often led to exaggerate when one feels, as I do, a deep gratitude to the benefactor one belauds. But even when I concede this, I cannot possibly admit that I am consciously overstating the experience I have decided to relate as simply and truthfully as I can.

I saw that night the radiant figure of Gurudev — in my dream. He gave me his blessing and said: "From tomorrow you wi1l be able to give up fish."

He vanished. I woke up in a thrill of joy. From the next day I not only gave up fish but felt not the slightest hankering for it I have, indeed, taken fish on occasion since, but never with the same relish nor consciousness of being a bondslave to my palate. Perhaps once or twice in six months I have tasted fish but what is far more convincing to me, not to mention gratifying, is that since that momentous night I have never felt the least craving for fish. Also, shall I add that I have even last year, during my protracted musical tour, stayed with rich epicures and gourmets and sat at their tables day after day without touching fish once even though pressed hard to be convivial.

But as the Yogic Force (which produces such indubitable results and brings about the changes in the aspirant's outer mixture) is invisible to most of us when it is actually working as a leaven

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in our being and consciousness, we do often feel hard put to it to accept its functioning as "businesslike and practical" — as I often put it to Gurudev. Not that I did not want to believe — sometimes I actually longed to believe — and yet, often enough, I found it far from easy to accept in to to what he asserted as hundred per cent authentic and verifiable! And with what an accent would he exhort me! — "It is this faith you need to develop," he wrote once to me in the 'thirties, "a faith which is in consonance with reason and common sense — that if the divine exists and has called you to the path, as is evident, then there must be a Divine Guidance behind and that through and in spite of all difficulties you shall arrive. Not to listen to the hostile voices that suggest failure or to the voices of that impatient vital haste that echo them, not to believe that because great difficulties are there, there can be no success or that because the Divine has not yet shown himself he will never show himself, but to take the position that every one takes when he fixes his mind on a great and difficult goal: 'I will go on till I succeed and I will succeed — all difficulties notwithstanding', to which the believer in the Divine adds: The Divine exists, He is there, and since

He exists, my following after Him cannot fail. I will go through everything till I find Him."

When he wrote this he knew of course that it was not so easy for impatient aspirants like us, with our eyes straining all the time for quick results, to have an unshakable faith in "an invisible force producing tangible results" as I phrased it. So he went on getting round my non-experience with all the weight of his ex- perience of which I must give one more instance before I draw this topic to a close.

After he wrote to me in his famous letter on doubt (quoted in full in my Among the Great) I had a wordy tussle with a sadhaka in the Ashram. In this instance he seemed to have caught something but I thought he was expressing himself badly when he claimed that "Sri Aurobindo's Force" could not be called "invisible" since it translated itself in "visible changes" even in the outer nature of many an aspirant. So I wrote to Gurudev

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requesting him to throw some light on this somewhat obscure point. After a lot of speculation I ended on my old note of helpless query: did the Force mean business? Were the changes stressed by my friend incontrovertible? — and so on!

To which he wrote back:

"The Invisible Force producing tangible results both inward and outward is the whole meaning of the Yogic consciousness. Your question about Yoga bringing merely a feeling of Power without any result was really very strange. Who would be satisfied with such a meaningless hallucination and call it Power? If we had not had thousands of experiences showing that the Power within could alter the mind, develop its powers, add new ones, bring in new ranges of knowledge, master the vital movements, change the character, influence men and things, control the conditions and functionings of the body, work as a concrete dynamic Force on other forces, modify events, etc. etc., we would not speak of it as we do. Moreover, it is not only in its results but in its movements that the Force is tangible and concrete. When I speak of feeling Force or Power, I do not mean simply having a vague sense of it, but feeling it concretely and consequently being able to direct it, manipulate it, watch its movements, be conscious of its mass and intensity and in the same way as of other opposing forces; all these things are possible and usual by the development of Yoga."

And then in reply to my pointed question about my own capacity to achieve results he wrote in the end:

"It is not that you are incapable of it, for it was several times on the point of being done. But your external mind has interfered always — questioning, doubting, asking for something more external, not waiting for the movement to continue, for the inward to externalise itself and make itself concrete. That is why I object to this worship of doubt. It is not that I used not to have doubts "myself more formidable than any you have ever thought of—but I did not allow them to interfere with the development of my experience: I let it continue until it had sufficient body for me to know what it was and what it could bring me."

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What he referred to here as "on the point of being done" in myself was an experience which used to recur constantly in those days: a deepening of consciousness would set in till I would be just on the point of crossing a line; I would then in my impatience want to expedite this with my active mind and instantly miss the experience. In other words, I would strive a little too hard in my meditation which created a tension and so forfeit the legitimate fruit of my arduous endeavour because of my attitude of non-passivity. Mother told me pointedly that this created a tension in my consciousness and that was why I baulked just on the threshold of experience. This made me so despondent that I wrote a long letter to Gurudev blaming it all on him for having kept me in the dark so long when I had been going on the wrong track all through.

"But this is unfair, Guru", I wrote in a rapid crescendo of despair, "since your Yoga, now offered to us, seems to be cultured for superhuman beings. But then how could it help us, feckless mortals, who must take only one of two attitudes: effort or inertia. So, I strained, alas, only to be told that straining could not help. And yet when X wrote he wanted to do nothing you girded at his lethargy and Mother told him that God only helped those who helped themselves! You do remind one of Krishna who enjoyed driving Arjuna mad by exhorting him to hunt with the hounds just after having counselled him to run with the hare."

He gave me a long reply to this which I need not quote in full as it has already been printed in part : I shall only quote an excerpt which was kept back at the time as being too personal.

After stressing once more the difference between a "vital straining and pulling and a spontaneous psychic openness", he added:

"It is not that pulling and straining and tension can do nothing; in the end they prevail for some result or another, but with difficulty, delay, struggle, strong upheavals of the Force breaking through inspite of all. Sri Ramakrishna himself began by pulling and straining and got his result, but at the cost of a tremendous and perilous upsetting; afterwards he took the quiet psychic way

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whenever he wanted a result and got it with ease and in a minimum time. You say that this way is too difficult for you or the likes of you.

.....That is a strange misconception, for it is on the contrary the easiest and simplest and the most direct way, and anyone can do it, if he makes his mind and vital quiet; even those who have a tenth of your capacity can do it. It is the other way of tension and strain and hard endeavour that is difficult and needs a great force of tapasya. As for the Mother and myself, we have had to try all ways, follow all methods, to surmount mountains of difficulties, a far heavier burden to bear than you or anybody else in the Ashram or outside, far more difficult conditions, battles to fight, wounds to endure, ways to cleave through impenetrable morass and desert and forest, hostile masses to conquer, a work such as I am certain none else had to do before us. For the Leader of the Way in a work like ours has not only to bring down and represent or embody the Divine, but to represent, too, the ascending element in humanity and to bear the burden of humanity to the full and experience, not in a mere play or lila but in grim earnest, all the obstruction, difficulty, opposition, baffled and hampered and only slowly victorious labour which are possible on the Path."

And lastly with what solicitude and tender affection he consoled the recalcitrant! —

"But it is not necessary nor tolerable that all that should be repeated again to the full in the experience of others. It is because we have the complete experience that we can show a straighter and easier road to others — if they will only consent to take it. It is because of our experience won at a tremendous price that we can urge upon you and others: Take the psychic attitude; follow the straight sunlit path, with the Divine openly or secretly upbearing you — if secretly, he will show himself in good time — do not insist on the hard, hampered, roundabout and difficult journey."

I do not know if any other Guru in the past ever spoke in such language not only throbbing with sincerity but— to quote Madame Gabriela Mistral's tribute to Sri Aurobindo —

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"presenting the rare phenomenon of an exposition clear as a beautiful diamond without the danger of confounding the layman." And, she cogently adds: "Six foreign languages have given the Master of Pondicherry a gift of co-ordination, a clarity free from gaudiness and a charm that borders on the magical.... We have before us a prose which approximates to that of the great Eckhart, German classicist and fountain-head of European mysticism." So she rejoices: " these are indeed 'glad tidings' that come to us: to know that there is a place in the world where culture has reached its tone of dignity by uniting in one man a supernatural life with a consummate literary style, thus making use of his beautifully austere and classical prose to serve as the handmaid of the spirit."

She has hit the nail on the head, for the Guru in Sri Aurobindo becomes so convincing to sceptics like myself because even when we stay opaque to his spiritual vision, he moves us, in spite of ourselves, to a partial psychic translucency by this irresistible "gift" of his crystalline experience and expression which "reaches us" at a time when we are besieged by a "petrifying materialism."

As I read the above tribute after the passing of Sri Aurobindo on the 5th December, last year (1950), a great sadness invaded me. Yes, I told myself, she is right. Perhaps it was this obstinate crust of scepticism even in his disciples, on whom he had showered so much love, that was partly responsible for his withdrawal! And what a love it was! It moved me to joy and melancholy when I read of this burning aspiration to change the suffering earth by the light he had himself attained and yet could not fully bring down — just because we, his might-have-been beneficiaries, combated it with our deep, persistent denial and would not wholly believe that he had, indeed, come to us to lead our earth-consciousness to a higher and wider fulfilment. We only, alas, went on asking ourselves whether he had really meant it when he announced in his credo, Savitri, that the supreme manifestation must be sought not in the viewless Empyrean but here below, on earth, because

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"Earth is the chosen place of the mightiest souls;

Earth is the heroic spirit's battled field,

The forge where the Arch-mason shapes his works."

Any lastly, when the supreme invited Savitri to leave "the earthly race" to its imperfect light because "all shall be done by the long act of Time," she answered that she had never hankered for a selfish salvation:

"I keep my will to save the world and man

Even the charm of thy alluring voice, 0 blissful godhead, cannot seize and snare. I sacrifice not earth to happier worlds."

One is reminded of the great Prahlad's prayer to the Lord in the Bhagavat (7.9.44):

Often, 0 Lord, the solitaries

in a silence live apart Aspiring only to perfect

their own salvation's marvel art, Oblivious to the anarchy

of life, unmindful of the vast Sorrows' tears wherewith this our

earth is soaked from core to crust.

Who will redeem this suffering

if thy Compassion stands aside? I ache not for salvation if

the rest in misery abide.

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