Sri Aurobindo came to Me

CHAPTER IV

The Ashram: The Call

Before I launch into the difficult task of setting down my various reactions to the Ashram-life that opened before me in 1928, I must portray my dread of such a life prior to my being plunged into it by a mysterious force which was at once too tangible to be dismissed as an airy nothing and too indefinable to be grappled with. For this it is necessary to go back a little even at the risk of becoming frankly autobiographical.

I was born in one of the most aristocratic Brahmin families of Bengal. My father's maternal uncle, Kalachand Goswami, traced a direct descent from the saintly Adwaita Goswami, one of Sri Chaitanya's intimates. My father's father, Diwan Kartikeya Chandra Roy, was a Prime Minister of one of the noblest and most ancient States of Bengal. Apart from the high status he enjoyed, his honesty and strength of character were legendary:

for his honesty the Prince once offered him a munificent reward which he declined because, he said, he could not possibly accept a reward for having done his bare duty. He was, besides, a bold free-thinker and wrote an autobiography which shocked many when it saw the light, nearly a century ago, because therein he not only frankly testified to his apostasy by saying that he could not believe in a good Sentinel watching over this incorrigible universe, but also vented openly his admiration of the mleccha (unclean) English and his partiality for their culture in toto.

My father, Dwijendralal Roy, who took after my grandfather, was also a remarkable personality and a brilliant scholar. He went to England on a State scholarship, returned with a diploma from Cirencester, was appointed a Deputy Magistrate under the British whose overlordship he cordially hated and ridiculed in

Page 11

his historical dramas which earned him the title of the greatest dramatist of modem India. I could willingly go on writing about his versatile genius and literary attainments but since that would be going beyond the purview of my undertaking, I must content myself with mentioning only such of his qualities as bear upon my theme.

My grandfather's robust uprightness and agnosticism had made, in the 'eighties, an indelible impression on his precocious son's avid, adolescent mind. His stay in England only deepened this trend he had imbibed from his idol. No wonder he came back from England an avowed atheist, a fiery free-thinker and an impatient iconoclast rolled into one. As, however, he was not a Prime Minister, he could be, and promptly was, excommunicated by his relations. Nothing daunted, the rebel wrote a scathing satire on Hindu orthodoxy and practically burned his boats by marrying my mother, the eldest daughter of a widow who had married a second time! Having now little more to lose and even less to fear, he went on squibbing our Hindu religiosity and formalism in his comic songs and satirical poems which won him quick and lasting fame. I was at the time still in my teens.

Being congenitally fond of laughter, I went on laughing with him when he made bold to include even the Gita as a target for his pasquinades. Of course he had nothing against the Gita itself, but he simply could not help pillorying those who lived an unclean life and yet made a fetish of the Gita in season and out. This I found very enjoyable and I remember how I used to sing merrily with him as the irreverent rollicked in laughter: (I give here a translation of only eight lines from his celebrated lampoon):

If I humbug the world to the top of my bent

Steal, swindle, blaspheme or perjure,

'Twill all be absolved by the Gita's Grace,

All ills of the flesh she can cure.

There can be no scriptures, 0 friend, like the Gita,

Page 12

Let's live with her name on our lips!

Glory to thee, 0 Gita, my angel,

Whose magic nought else can eclipse.

But even when I did enjoy such irresistible songs I could not go all the way with him in decrying religious ardour, having already at thirteen come under the influence of two direct disciples of Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa: Swami Brahmananda, the founder of Ramakrishna Mission, and "Sri M" the famous chronicler of the great Messiah. I cannot here possibly enlarge any more on my father's great though some-what enigmatic personality — since he composed some of the greatest hymns in the Bengali language (to Krishna, Shiva, Kali, Ganga, Sri Chaitanya, etc.) which he sang often with tears of ecstasy in his eyes. But one thing I must make clear at this stage — to obviate misunderstanding.

In my summary description of my two immediate forbears I may have unwittingly encouraged my readers to form a somewhat wrong notion about the part the deeper spiritual forces had played in moulding their lives. From what I have written, those who do not know well the best Indian minds may think that there is, in the last analysis, hardly any basic difference between these and those others who have been successfully westernised and completely insulated from India's ancient spiritual influences by the modem European outlook on life, as has happened — to give a typical contemporary example — with Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru. In other words, they may conclude, misled by our modem slogans, that the best minds among us may, like him, .achieve a lasting harmony only under the tutelage of the West. Such a view would be not only utterly unsound but demonstrably false. The best Indian minds, however effectually inseminated by the doctrines of Western materialism, can never find any true sustenance at the fount of visionless agnosticism and soulless science.

At the same time there is much debris we have to clear before We can reach the pure fount of spiritual wisdom we thirst for.

Page 13

My father felt this deeply no less than my grandfather had, in his day. Nevertheless they did not, in the last resort, throw away the baby along with the bath water. That was the reason why my father had nothing but approval for my adoration of Sri Ramakrishna even when he satirized the degenerate ritualism of superstitious Hindus. The point I want to make is that, when all is said and done, there is something in the submerged depths of the authentic Indian soul which cannot open permanently to any gospel other than that of the spirit no matter how high the stakes are.

Apropos, I am reminded of a striking remark of Lowes Dickinson, the famous rationalist who, after touring the Far East, wrote that neither Japan nor China was incomprehensible to the Western mind: it was only in India that he had been held up as before something utterly alien, even terrifying, to the Occident! And that is precisely why Pundit Jawaharlal finds Hindu culture so foreign even bizarre, and fails to understand the diverse ways in which its religious spirit has helped humanity, a failure which prompted Sri Aurobindo to write to me (commenting on a few excerpts I had sent him from Punditji's views on religion):

"I do not take the same view of the Hindu religion as Jawaharlal. Religion is indeed always imperfect because it is a mixture of man's spirituality with his endeavours that come in trying to sublimate ignorantly his lower nature. Hindu religion appears to me as a cathedral-temple half in ruins, noble in the mass, often fantastic in detail but always fantastic with a significance —crumbling or badly outworn in places, but a cathedral-temple in which service is still done to the Unseen and Its real Presence can be felt by those who enter with the right spirit....

"As for the other question — about the truth behind Hinduism — I can only say what to my view is the truth behind Hinduism, a truth contained in the very nature (not superficially seen of course) of human existence, something which is not the monopoly of Hinduism but of which Hinduism is the noblest expression."

Page 14

Lowes Dickinson and Pundit Nehru never felt this because neither could command "the right spirit". The reasons for this, however, would take me beyond the scope of my book. So to resume.

Unlike the typical positivist mind just referred to, I felt that I had a congenital streak of the mystic which Dickinson dubs incomprehensible and Punditji medieval. So I was not only willing but eager to play for higher stakes — " to live dangerously" as Nietzsche has put it. But as the days passed, I could neither perceive the call nor find a way to give a practical shape to my ideal. I was all but ready to "take the plunge" but where was the calling, haunting deep? And what is more, might not one hope to chance even upon a raft, if not a boat, when one felt helpless against the army of waves? That was the question I had to find an answer to once and for all.

An Ashram, a spiritual centre, a nucleus of aspirants? But being a born individualist, with love of freedom bred in my bones, I was scared at the prospect of having to live in a colony, in comparative seclusion under conditions which might prove more stringent than I could bear. Suppose I did not agree with the sadhakas? Suppose my Guru asked me to abide by rules I found impossible? Suppose I found it cramping — the monotony of the same task-round repeated day after day, year in and year out? All sorts of speculations seethed in my brain like irrepressible bubbles till, finally, I decided that we, modems, could not possibly find spiritual fulfilment through such a cheap escapist device, which, besides, had been tried in antiquity and found wanting.

And yet where and how else could one translate in daily life one's ideal of one-pointed sadhana (self-discipline), so indispensable to one who is. athirst for the all-transfiguring spiritual experience? The world, as I saw it, if not actually hostile, was certainly indifferent to all spiritual endeavour which could only attain fruition after an arduous effort at self-purification under the wise and beneficent guidance of a Godlike Master. But the strange thing was that while I yearned for the guidance

Page 15

I also dreaded the conditions under which alone it could become fruitful in the actual field of action, Yoga. I clearly saw that this would never do, and yet — the prospect of living cabined and cribbed, jostling against the same people day after day and taking orders from one I would not be able to approach, even to talk to — nay, I shuddered at the every thought!

But I had made one mistake, and a very serious one at that, as I came to realise later. This I must try to explain at some length if only to be intelligible.

I had come to realise, by and by, that in the present world at least, one could not possibly live like the mendicant of old, living on alms and trusting to the Unseen Providence to help keep our body and soul together, simply "giving all one had to the poor" and following a phantom, as my realist reason called it derisively. One must have an institution or asylum of some sort where one might reasonably hope to be able to live in comparative security in harmony with one's environment.

Nevertheless I felt deep misgivings about my congenital inability, first, to run in harness with a motley number whose susceptibilities were unlikely to leave mine alone; and, secondly, to find a living inspiration under the aegis of a Guru who was even more inaccessible than a Caliph in his garden retreat. This is no overstatement. For in those days Sri Aurobindo used to live behind a deep purdah. Nobody but the Mother had access to his ivory tower. And for any message from him we had to look up to her even as the proverbial chatak (bird) looks up to the sky for its message of rain in drought. It was from her mouth alone that sometimes dropped a few words of what our cloistered master had said about so and so or on sudden upheavals here and there. (It was only after 1930 that his correspondence began to assume the formidable proportions it did till, in the end, he had to write numerous letters in answer to ours from 9 P.M. till the small hours of the morning and this went on night after night for eight consecutive years. He lightly referred to it in one of his letters to me as "my feats of correspondence" — as they certainly were!)

Page 16

But as I grew more and more conscious of my incapacity (or shall I say ineligibility) for his or any other Master's Yoga, I found less and less comfort within the four walls of my refuge "far from the madding crowd". How could I possibly shape to strength in an atmosphere so alien to my temperament with no signs of changing, I asked myself again and again. When, at last, my mental anguish became unbearable, I wrote to Gurudev that I found my troubles as endless as they were inexplicable. It was then that help came in answer to the call of my helplessness:

Gurudev wrote to me in a letter (dated 25.6.1932) which made me see daylight. The gist of it was that in Yoga one had to grow progressively conscious of the world and its unpalatable realities, as he put it. "For," he explained, 'Knowledge when it goes to the root of our troubles has in itself a marvellous healing power as it were. As soon as you touch the quick of the trouble, as soon as you — diving down and down — get at what really ails you, the pain disappears as though by a miracle. Unflinching courage to reach the Knowledge is therefore of the very essence of Yoga. No lasting superstructure can be erected except on a solid basis of true knowledge. The feet must be sure of its ground before the head can hope to kiss the skies."

This letter revived my drooping spirits, acting like a veritable antidote to the pain that had accrued to me when it was borne home to me how far I really was from what I had to become. And I said to somebody with a smile: "I marvel how in Yoga diagnosis and treatment can be one!" But that is another story. To resume.

I had seen Sri Aurobindo for the first time in 1924. I have published a record of the conversations I had with him in my Among the Great and described the strange pull of his magnetic personality. But I have not yet written about how he induced in me often enough a peace and bliss that "passes all understanding," and how, at such times, I would just sit alone on the sea-beach for hours in an indescribable ecstasy, especially after a contact with him, however fleeting. To think that even a momentary glimpse of him or the touch of his palm on my head

Page 17

in token of blessing could initiate such interludes too good to be true and, withal, too vivid to be doubted! It was years ago but I can still recapture my first experience of the thrill as though it happened only yesterday. I will try to portray it as best I can, if only to keep a record for a few seekers.

Let me own, at the outset, that I have never had any supraphysical visions after receiving his blessings — as has happened to many another. And how often have I not importuned him to grant me the glimpse of a miracle star on an angel light or some form of ether and flame, as had fallen to the lot of so many and so frequently! I could almost see my fat self-esteem melt away under my nose as, time and time again, many — who were not even his disciples — recounted to me in thrilled voices, what they had seen! Could I, after such repeated discomfitures, help bearing him a grudge, as it were, for having conjured up nothing for me to glimpse as I contemplated his marvellous face of unearthly light? Nothing of the sort I had looked forward to ever happened; I saw nothing in my normal consciousness which was calculated to satisfy my deep thirst for divine miracles to be retailed later to my friends.* Nay, I was no authentic mystic, I said to myself with a sigh, nor even a clairvoyant, woe is me!

But mystic or not, I did feel something, sometimes, which might have been acclaimed by me as equally startling if not miraculous had not my preconceptions led me to focus my expectation on something entirely different — something I missed and therefore regretted, regretted and therefore repined, repined and therefore blamed myself till, at the end of the logical sequence, I decided, with a pang in my heart, that I was a fellow too matter-of-fact by temperament to be declared passport-worthy to the Treasurer of the apocalyptic thrills of Yoga.

_______________________________

*It was years later that such miracles began happening to me under the aegis of my daughter disciple Indira Devi about whom I have written at some length in the last but one Chapter. Those who would know more about these miracles may read my MIRACLES DO STILL HAPPEN and THE FLUTE CALLS STILL.

Page 18

But something did come through. What happened was that I felt that wherever I looked dripped bliss— sheer, unqualified, flawless bliss and what amazed me was that I could not trace its genesis in any shape or form. And once it was so intense and unwaning, this all-pervasive bliss, that I could not help feeling a little intrigued in the midst of my causeless rapture and asked myself how I would describe it if a friend were to drop in and cross-examine me as to its exact nature. A curious question formulated itself instantly (I was sitting intoxicated on the beach alone): "What is it that a human being loves most in life?" The answer burgeoned at once, equally from nowhere, voiced by my heart in ecstasy: "Air and light". And startled, as though my heart had suddenly developed a tongue, I heard it say to my imaginary cross-examiner in a voice deep with intoxication:

"Well, what I feel is something that can enable me not to miss even light and air, supposing somebody kept me in a dark underground cell for the rest of my life."

A strange question and a strange answer! And what is perhaps stranger still is that the experience was repeated several times in my Ashram life though it did not last as long as it did when it possessed me for the first time: for full two days and a half.

But miraculous though it may sound to believers, hard-baked rationalists are unlikely to be impressed by this response which culminated so often in ecstasy. So, I would just recapitulate here a vivid experience I had on the 15th of November, 1928, in Luck now: in other words, the antecedent call whose cumulative effect evoked the subsequent response. Those who have never experience "a call", as mystics put it, may not find it convincing, but those who know something about spiritual verities will not, I am sure, find my description uninteresting in spite of the inadequacy of my penmanship. I only regret that I will have to put it briefly because to tell it as I should would require too much space. Let this much of apology suffice as a prelude to what I may well call a miracle, in that it led me to decide in five minutes on a step which changed the whole course of my life. It happened like this:

Page 19

When I left Sri Aurobindo in 1924 — as I have described in Among the Great — he did, in effect, reject me calling my seeking a mere "mental" one. I was indeed cut to the quick, but I simply had to wait till I might develop in me the strength I then lacked to cut the Gordian knot, to exploit a vivid if a well- worn metaphor.

But, as it turned out with me, I did not find that mere waiting helped; rather it increased my deep reluctance to take refuge in him unconditionally. Besides, I had felt a deep malaise in the silent atmosphere in and about the Ashram. I was still too social an artist to relish the prospect of capitulating overnight to the grim Justiciary of Yoga, as I often put it in my care-free ir- reverence. I knew, indeed, that I was a seeker, but a seeker still vowed to Reason as his conscience-keeper. The motto of the great Paul Valerie still rang in my ears: "Bacon dirait que cet intellect est un idol. J'y consens, mais je n'en ai trouvé de meilleur. "*

At the same time, my father's mysticism recurred to me: the devotional songs he had composed towards the end of his life I often sang now in a moved voice and with a deepening nostalgia (I translate here the closing lines of one of these):

My day is done ...a truce to chaffering ... My debts are paid.... I hark to footfalls of Night... World-weary now, to thee, 0 Mother, I cling:

Grant me thy lap where the dark dissolves in white.

My grandfather also: had he not turned eventually from agnosticism to God-reliance? Had he not said on his death-bed that he did not want to be consoled, since the One who had provided for him so well in this world would surely take equal care of him in the next!

But, unlike them, I was in a peculiar position, a dilemma: on the one hand I was called to cut away from my moorings here

________________________

* "Bacon would say that the intellect is an idol. I agree, but I have yet to find a better one." (A L'EGARD DBS CHOSES ACTUELLES).

Page 20

and now while, on the other, I had not yet won anything which I might hold on to; so I hesitated and suffered till, in the end, I blurted it out to a friend who has since departed this life. He gave me a quizzical smile and said: "I will buy a ticket for you tomorrow; make straight for your Guru's Ashram where you belong. Surrender all you have and are to him."

"It's all very well to suggest remedies", I demurred ruefully "But what about the diagnosis?"

Being a medical man he gave a knowledgeable smile, and asked: "What is the trouble?"

"I wish I knew", I answered bitterly. "I only know that I am groping and suffering in deep darkness. My Guru has not given me anything tangible yet. Surely you don't except me to give up everything for nothing?"

His face fell.

"Dilip," he said, after a pause, "you have been weighed and found wanting. You are bargaining with the Divine! Quid pro quo?* This is not the spirit which had moved those who staked their all in the past for the All-in-all. I was mistaken in you.''

The shaft went home.... The whole night I could not sleep: I was bargaining! ... bargaining! ... bargaining! ... I felt small in my own eyes. ... And yet I could not take the plunge.

The next morning I sat down to meditate. I prayed to Gurudnsv as never before. Suddenly, when I found the pain in my heart unbearable, something happened. I cannot explain what it was but I felt that this time it was he who came to me.

I got up and took the next available train — in twenty minutes — to Bombay en route for Pondicherry after despatching him a telegram.

The Mother told me, on November 22nd, that I had had a sudden psychic opening and, so heard his call.

But I have done it — a dramatic indiscretion — even though I can truthfully claim that I have not been guilty of any overstatement. My watchful and reticent friend Krishnaprem

_________________

*Something for something.

Page 21

will, doubtless, take me to task again. But since I have let the dramatist in me have a field day, I shall be indulgent and let the footlights remain yet awhile. After all, I am an artist by necessity and the artist must harbour an actor — till, at least, he dies to art to be reborn to Yoga — an enemy within the gates, I concede, but still dear to the artist if not to the Yogi.

Page 22