Sri Aurobindo came to Me

CHAPTER XII

The Mother

In the preceding chapters I kept the Mother somewhat in the background because to the superficial view hers must appear a personality very distinct from that of Sri Aurobindo. But one who has won to the deeper vision and tried to follow the phenomenal growth of the Ashram cannot but be persuaded that without her dominant presence, superhuman patience and genius for organization (not to mention her ineffable personality of light and grace and courage) Sri Aurobindo's Synthetic Yoga would never have found the convincing shape it has: in other words, his gospel could not have found an adequate medium of expression in the practical field. But even this is by no means the whole story. For none can hope to understand Sri Aurobindo fully without a basic understanding of his estimate of the place of the Mother's divinity in his Yoga. One of his oldest and staunchest disciples, Rajani Palit, wrote to him (in August, 1938):

There are many who hold that the Mother was human once upon a time — to judge from her Prayers — but has outgrown her humanity through her sadhana. But to my psychic feeling, she is the Mother Divine herself, putting on the cloak of obscurity and suffering in order that we, humans, may be delivered out of our ignorance into knowledge, and out of our suffering into bliss."

To that Sri Aurobindo replied categorically: "The Divine puts on an appearance of humanity, assumes the outward human nature in order to tread the path and show it to human beings, but does not cease to be the 'Divine". It is a manifestation that takes place, manifestation of a growing Divine consciousness, not human turning into divine. The Mother was inwardly above

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The Mother blessing, Indira Devi

the human even in childhood. So the view held by 'many' is erroneous."

It will serve no useful purpose to go into the why and wherefore of it all. For after all the recognition of the Mother's greatness or her Yogic Force is not like the positing of a scientific hypothesis to be 'assumed and accepted tentatively' subject to revision and modification as new data come to light. Still, as one of the major aims of my reminiscences is to testify to Yogic truths and experiences as I and others have realised them in the Ashram, a personal impression of the Mother may well be recorded here as germane to my purpose. Naturally, I hesitate to deal with a personality such as the Mother's in such a summary fashion, but she will, I hope, pardon such babbling tributes knowing that even in our inspired moods we can hardly expect to express more than a fraction of what we owe to her.

I shall describe in brief my first experience of her Force since it may help my readers to glimpse in her what we ourselves did intermittently in the course of our day-to-day struggles with our obstinate egos opposing her will. When I met her for the first time in August 1928,1 was struck by her sweet personality and felt a deep exhilaration which I could not account for. The joy left a cadence of music in my heart though, of course, there could be no question of surrendering my will to hers. The first question I asked her was whether what Sri Aurobindo called the Yogic Force acting through her personality could achieve anything "tangible".

She gave me an amused smile.

"What do you mean by 'tangible' ?"

"You see, Mother," I answered, "I have been praying daily before Sri Ramakrishna's photograph for years — since my adolescence. But though I have often felt an upsurge of bhakti, I have never yet felt anything else, far less seen any gardens of gleam, letters of light, figures of flame etc. I have therefore come to the conclusion that I am too opaque to the inward ray of the Spirit. I know really less than nothing about Yogic Force. Let me add that though my interest in life as it is is fast petering out

I cannot yet make up my mind to take the plunge — breaking away from my moorings. To cut a long story short, I would ask you if you could possibly initiate me in your Yoga — for I understand I have to obtain initiation, first and last, from you. I can accept to wait till I feel more sure about your Yogic Force being a living reality. My position is this: I can stake everything I still cherish — but only for something real and concrete, not something vague and apocryphal. In short, I cannot take a leap blindfold into the unknown. So I have come to ask you very simply — but trenchantly — whether you can possibly give me a trial so as to convince me about the reality of your Yogic Force. But mind you, I want the Force to speak to me in a way which cannot possibly be explained away as auto suggestion, wishful thinking or hallucination."

' Mother smiled once more.

"I can try'" she said simply. "You are at the Hotel? when do you retire for the night? At nine? Meditate at that hour in your room — try to open yourself to me and I will concentrate on you from here. Maybe you will get something which cannot be explained away even by such impressive names scientific or otherwise."

(I have of course given here, as usual, only the gist of our talk. But as we did not talk of anything very profound I can claim to have given a fairly faithful description of what passed between us on the 16th August, 1928.)

The experience came in a most curious way. As, after dinner, I went up to my room in the Hotel, I sat down on the floor. It was quite cool with the fan whirling at top speed. I must here inform the reader that I have never been timid by nature, nor had I, hitherto, ever experienced anything eerie or even strange during my meditations. An old disciple had indeed once advised me, casually, to take the Mother's name should anything 'untoward' happen. But I had only smiled at the word. How could anything untoward happen to me when I only wanted Krishna? Besides, ghosts and spirits were too fantastic to be able to exist except, of course, as vapours of a heated brain.

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So, naturally, I sat down to meditation in a flawlessly confident mood. I did indeed expect to see so many things: lights, colours, some figures, with luck may be even a radiant form — who knows? But then, I told myself, I must be on my guard: strong desires and expectations might very well take shape as forms in one's meditation and auto-suggestion must, above all, be staved off — and so on. In short, in my wise folly, I was unwittingly arming myself with vigilance against my Gurus.

Suddenly I found my body stiffening and I started perspiring profusely; then — to complete my discomfiture — my heart beat so fast that I got scared. What is all this? Suddenly I remembered and took the Mother's name. At once the palpitation ceased. But I was wet all over with perspiration, and the tension in my body increased till my muscles became so stiff that I felt a positive pain.

As soon as the palpitation ceased, my fear left me but not my astonishment. For, palpably, some extraneous force was acting on my body — a force the like of which I had never experienced so vividly before! Also, obviously, it had nothing to do with auto-suggestion since I had never even imagined that an invisible Force could so convincingly twist the live, material muscles of a strong sceptic — healthy, wide-awake and normal to his fingertips! So I did not know what to make of it all: what came to pass was too outlandish to be true and yet wasn' t it too concrete to be dismissed as fanciful!

But that was, alas, all. I saw nothing — not even a grasshopper, to say nothing of a benevolent deity — felt no joy, no peace, no strength, no bhakti. Most disappointing and yet in a way so utterly, overwhelmingly impressive! For a person almost inaccessible to fear was here getting scared, a heart which had never palpitated was fluttering causelessly! And last, though not least, profuse perspiration, in a cool room, attended by the sensation of one's muscles being actually manhandled all over one's body! I was convinced that a definite Force was taking

liberties with me — albeit in an almost impertinent if not lunatic way!

Next morning, after relating to Mother the whole gamut of my curious experiences, I asked her why she had so oddly wanted to cause me this kind of meaningless pain when she could well have given me peace and joy and so many other things worth while.

"But I didn't want to cause you pain at all," she laughed, vastly tickled. "Only, you were resisting, so my Force could not give you the peace and joy which you would have felt if you had not opposed it tooth and nail, with all the weapons of your wise scepticism and assured ignorance. One must have trust in the Divine."

"But you need not worry," she added, mollifyingly, "for I have found you quite receptive. I will say no more now. Go on . with your meditations: my help will always be with you. The tension and pain will disappear after a week or two — or perhaps sooner if you can manage to trust the Divine Grace which brought you to Sri Aurobindo."

What she had foretold came to pass afterwards in due course. I was impressed, naturally. So there were, really and literally, "more things in heaven and earth" than could be dreamt of by the "philosophy" of reason and science! It is all very well to talk contemptuously of supernatural phenomena (didn't the Christ castigate the itch for a "sign" as vulgar?) but when these fall within our ken and can be traced to the agency of one whom we sincerely esteem, an indelible mark is left, inevitably, on our minds. So hence-forth I began to look upon the Mother as superior to all of us put together, even though my highbrow reason wanted to dismiss such powers rather summarily. Besides, was she not primarily responsible for my heightened respect for the occult powers of Yoga which in its turn helped me weather the storm of opposition I had to pass through before I could come to port at her feet for good?

I say 'for good' because I mean it. Not that I have not often

wanted also to leave 'for good', thanks to my strong self-will, but even in my worst moods I knew full well that I would never be able to cut away from my moorings — in the last resort. I often recited in self-felicitation (calling myself a sincere fellow on top of being a "good man") the Lord's challenge to Mephistopheles:

Ein guter Mensch in seinem dunklen Orange .

1st sich des rechten Weges wohl bewuszt¹

But though in my heart of hearts I knew that it could not possibly be otherwise, in the thick of my crises I have often felt like throwing up the sponge when nothing but her active help and sustaining Grace could have kept me from swerving from the right movement, "the homeward way". For although I have, in my wrong moods, often enough wanted to go over her head to Sri Aurobindo for redress, I have been fully conscious every time that had she not been as lenient as she was, I would never have won his support when I thus appealed to his adjudication as against hers. I make mention of this to stress not only her leniency and tolerance but also her understanding of the deep streak of perversity, inherent in human nature, which remains one of the greatest hurdles our aspiration has to cross -— a task we could never have achieved had she not forgiven our lapses and misdemeanours again and again.

I have hinted already at her greatness which could forgive so readily and will have a good deal more to say about it in the • concluding chapter. I can tell, besides, of a number of instances in which her soul of compassion tolerated and forgave even dire treachery on the part of some of her rredeemable disciples. But I cannot recall a more convincing instance than the one I am going to relate: convincing because it moved and overawed even

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' Goetthe's Faust:

A good man, however driven by his blind impulse,

Shall stay ever conscious of the homeward way.

the sturdy heart of rebellion in me which has been responsible, by and large, for my darkest sufferings on the path of Yoga. It happened in the thirties. I have forgotten the genesis of my trouble — the exact pinprick to my susceptibility which was the cause of the resultant septicemia — but shall I ever forget the revelation which followed? But I must first give a picture of the context.

In those days I, like many another, used to see the Mother once a week to have an intimate talk. Something happened which made me conclude hastily that she had done me a grave injustice in believing a false allegation against me. So I sent her word that I would meet her no more as I owed her no allegiance whatsoever. At the same time I wrote a long letter to Sri Aurobindo telling him that I had come to the Ashram for him alone, so that if he decided the case in her favour as 'against mine I would sooner leave the Ashram than submit to injustice. Then I went off at a mad tangent and added that she seemed displeased with me presumably for loving him more but I could not help it and did not think that love could be diverted like water in any direction one liked. Besides, I reminded him, I had accepted her only because he had wished it and so I went on in this utterly "dare-divine" strain till I wrote to the Mother herself:

"If you choose to frown on me because I love Sri Aurobindo more than yourself, than I must stay impenitent since I did come here primarily for him and accepted you because he had wanted me to turn to you. I never made a secret of this, as I saw no reason why I should stifle the voice of truth. I know full well that he will never approve of my placing him above yourself but as that is my present feeling I cannot behave as if it were otherwise. Now you can do your worst: I am ready to leave this evening: only he will have to dismiss me personally, remember! For I can take no orders from you."

I was desperate, obviously, and although in my extremity I still repeated Goethe's couplet about the good man being saved at the eleventh hour, I did not see how I was to be spared the

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consequences of my own gratuitous insolence. So I brooded in my abysmal gloom when Sri Nolini Gupta came to me with a message from her: she wished to see me. "But I am not going to submit to being frowned upon," I snapped. "I am only waiting for a letter of dismissal from Gurudev and as soon as it comes I will clear out."

"Mother has no intention of frowning on you," he said. "For she told me it was a case of pure misunderstanding "At all events," he pleaded, "you should not be so discourteous as to refuse to see her when she personally summons you to be able to explain it all."

I went — sullenly.

Mother smiled at me as only she could, in the circumstances. I could hardly believe my eyes! But her unexpected sweet smile sent a thought flashing through me which I can only describe by the epithet "heart-warming." So all is not lost — not yet! And simultaneously, I felt how much I depended on just that one smile of hers even when I defiantly asserted that she was nothing to me. How could one stay in such a God-forsaken seclusion uncompanioned by her smile and loving support? Besides, hadn't she revealed to us on so many occasions that her ways were radically different from those of a moralist reforming with rhetoric or of a school-mistress correcting with a cane? Had I not borne witness myself to so many instances of her forbearance and charity? All such thoughts pullulated in me, induced by her one fecund smile. Then as I sat down on the floor (she was sitting on a divan with her beautiful hair let loose), she placed a hand on my shoulder and looked steadfastly at me. I fought bravely with my unruly tears.

"But can I possibly be angry with anyone who loves Sri Aurobindo as you do?" she said, very simply. Her eyes radiated a strange light, a marvellous blend of strength, tenderness and humility. "My own feelings apart, do I not know how Sri Aurobindo cherishes you? So how could you think it possible for me to frown upon one whom he greets with a smile? Am I not here to serve him with all I have and am — even as you, his near and dear disciples, are?"

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She would have said more had I not burst into tears.

That day I had a new glimpse ( or shall I say vision?) of humility derived from true spiritual reverence. I accepted her on her own as my spiritual Mother on that morning — of my full and final initiation.

I have often enough, in my wrong moods, criticized her — sometimes with no excuse at all, at others goaded by a misunderstanding, and every time has she come down to me to explain her point of view, never once minding the hurt of insults but, withal, never letting truth down. But there, alas, lay the crux of the difficulty for such as we. For it was her cleaving to truth which we so often misinterpreted as hardness, not realising that she could scarcely have grown to her stature had she faltered the least in her stand on the plinth of truth. Notwithstanding, we wanted so often to ingratiate ourselves with her through dissimulation, hoping she would never find it out. But though she could forgive again and again to give delinquents "yet another chance", she could not be cheated because she had won, through her sadhana, the touchstone of insight and spiritual wisdom. But knowing little of such wisdom, we failed to realise how it could help her assay the truth about our struggling selves. I shall end this chapter with a talk I had with her nearly twenty years ago — 1932, to be more precise with no other object than to delineate how her wisdom impressed me. But I warn my reader that it is going to be just a random sample of her talk abridged to my understanding. For though I got Sri Aurobindo to revise my report then, I cannot possibly claim that it does anything like justice to her marvellous power of expressing simply what is perforce passing complex. Besides, in twenty years she too has grown (Sri Aurobindo wrote to me once that in the way of the spirit one can and must always rise higher and higher and dive deeper and deeper). So I do not know if she will approve of what was once approved two decades ago. But as I shall be submitting this to her once again for her final revision and seal

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I need not be too apologetic about the inadequacy of my report.' For obviously, I can only imbibe her in the measure of my receptivity. So I may offer what little I can, hoping that it may reveal at least a fraction of what she wanted to convey.

The occasion was a Bengali song which I had composed in the Sanskrit mandakranta metre. In a musical soiree I had sung it to her and others within the Ashram precincts. Sri Aurobindo (who had heard it from his room) wrote to me: "Your song Nada, 'Sound', is truly wonderful and it is a beautiful poem too". I give below my English translation:

Who is she, the formless, gleaming and hurtling

Through the skies in the lightning's flares!

Who is she, the fearless, loud in the clanging

Of the storm and its frenzied blares!

Who is she, there dancing deep in the roar

And the raging orgies of the ocean,

Resonant in the ululation on high

And the cloudland's booms of explosion.

Who is she, the bounteous, comes dissolving

As rain in a mystic murmur

To her children appealing in the heart's awed hush

As the Mother of sleep, the soul-charmer!

All the world breaks out in love's diapason:

"To the stricken on the brink of disaster

After the deluge of darkling doom

Thou com'st as redeeming lustre."

She greeted me with her usual beaming smile as I entered her sanctum sanctorum where she used to meditate with us individually, when many people had many kinds of experiences.

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' This whole chapter was read and sanctioned in toto for publication by the Mother herself.

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Also she used to tell us of things she had seen within us. Only those who have had such confidential interviews with her know how much she could and did give in those days through her exquisite touch, smile, glance and talk. I could only meditate perfunctorily with her because I was always looking forward eagerly to the talk that would follow. She knew it and so she never meditated long with me. To each she gave according to his need.

So after the short meditation I looked up and met her eyes.

"Your song on sound last evening," she said, "was power, power, power all through. You expressed the conflicts of Nature so powerfully and truly that I was very pleased. I saw descending upon you from above an intense white light with a great power. Under its pressure there was proceeding from you a very generous outflow of vital force — in the best sense of the term — on to all round you. And the resolution of the conflicts into the chords of Victory was remarkable. Then, above some of the notes you sang, I contacted a vast peace and Ananda, which will be expressed more amply in the measure of your progressive identification with what inspired it. But even at this stage of your sadhana the peace that was waiting lasted fairly long and in some portions of your music I saw you were not you but Music itself."

"That is what constitutes genius," she added with one of her rarest smiles. "You know I do not believe in paying compliments. I tell you this simply because I saw it. "I am overjoyed, Mother," I said. "Only I wish the peace and bliss you contacted might endure a little longer."

"I wish it no less," she returned. "In fact it has been part of my endeavour to make it stay permanently. But as you haven't yet experienced it, it didn't endure. Nevertheless, the notes you sang on Peace rang, at times, with an intensely concentrated fervour. Your theme was 'Sound', wasn't it? It was effectively expressed. The finale towards which it was leading was the grandeur of the descent into this world of a harmony which is not beyond its reach, and that reminded me of Beethoven's Ninth symphony. You have heard it, haven't you?" I nodded.

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"Your music yesterday seemed to me to be making an opening towards that grand Power, of course, not in the European but in the Indian way — and not yet in its native amplitude and glory but in the full process of formation and crystallisation.

"Great geniuses, when they truly achieve great things," she continued, "lose the sense of their separate ego and identity — namarupa — and become the thing itself, the thing they manifest; so it was with you when you sang certain of those notes, which were truly marvellous. What you invoked could not come down to stay, I repeat, at this stage of your sadhana, but when you will have had the full experience of the Divine — it will come down fully and permanently — when you will have touched the acme of your personality. It is not yet come, but it is fast coming. And the white Light descending on you which was flowing and reaching others was dazzling, like, what shall I say? — you have seen snowy mountain-tops reflecting a dazzling white light, haven't you?"

"Yes, Mother," I said, thrilled. I hung on her every word now.

"The light I saw round you was like that," she said. "It was a descent of Power— Power......concentrated."

"It is so pleasing to me," she went on "to see true and rapid growth in people, to see them evolving, that is, rising higher and higher progressively."

"But how about being ambitious, Mother? I asked. "For sometimes I feel I am not getting on famously because I am still a little too athirst for fame."

"I always blame people for not being ambitious enough," she rejoined. "I always tell people: be more ambitious — ambitious to grow, ambitious to be divine warriors, ambitious to achieve things really worth while. The only thing is: the ego's human limitations have to be consciously transcended since otherwise unimpeded and true growth is not possible. Let it be your ambition to be content with nothing less than the highest."

"I have latterly had some inexplicable and, if I may say so, curiously vivid feelings, Mother," I said, "I have felt again and again that I must grow and grow as never before: only I must

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purge myself of all cravings — like personal ambition. A voice cries out to me insistently that I must strive all the time to dedicate my gifts — such as they are — to the Divine as a loyal servant does to his master. And I am glad to say that now-a-days I do not feel tempted, as I used to formerly, to exploit my capacities for purely personal ends. My greatest defect in this connection seems to be that I am still extremely sensitive to praise — even of charlatans. Only," I added smiling, as she smiled back at me, "fortunately for me, such praise comes my way but rarely, since they are saying all sorts of things against me outside, as you know."

"What have you to do with appreciation, here or outside, whether of connoisseurs or charlatans, since you know that you came for the Divine sincerely and that the Divine has attested it by accepting you? Let the whole world misunderstand you, how can it make the least difference now — so far as you are concerned?"

"But you need not look so frightfully abashed," she added, twinkling at me and patting me on the hand, "few are the artists who are not avid of praise, who don't doubt but that the world has been created to revolve around them, and if far more serious defects of your character have had their backs broken already, your fame-hunger, the clinging leech, too, will have to capitulate some day — don't you worry. Your difficulties will then disappear at one sweep, I tell you. Incidentally, I saw this once again yesterday, while you were producing certain specific notes, when — as I told you just now — I saw you no longer as Dilip, but as Music pure: then flashed before me your true being — which, by the way, is an old acquaintance of mine — a splendid being. But about this I would rather not speak now — as I want you to realise it yourself— why, you will know later on."

"You take my breath away, Mother," I said. "Only, my mind is incorrigible, you know, and keeps on saying that I am too unreceptive and normal by constitution to the miracle - the impossible. So I have to sigh and say to myself: never mind, be yourself, since that is the utmost you can do — when all is said and done."

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"But what is the meaning of being oneself, may I ask?" Mother returned quickly. "Most people accept their limitations and, identifying themselves with their limited selves, say gloomily: 'This is what we are!' But that is all nonsense. You cannot equate yourself with your surface personality any more than you can equate the man to be with the embryo, or the tree to come with the sapling. It is only when you have realised the Divine that you can say that you have met your real self. We get a glimpse of this truth when we see a genius making the impossible possible — which he does because it is his métier. But how does he achieve such miracles? Simply by refusing to identify himself with what he is on his lower levels: in other words, by transcending the mould of his unevolved personality and identifying himself with his inspiration, more or less. Do you understand?"

"Do you mean one has to equate oneself first with what one expresses?

"You may put it that way," she said, "for that too is a way, as you yourself achieved partly yesterday while you were singing — that is what I meant by saying that while you were singing you became one with what you expressed or rather with what got expressed through you. But you must not infer from this that it is the only way. In fact the way varies with the temperament."

"Is that the reason why Sri Aurobindo has written in his Synthesis of Yoga that everyone must find out his own Yoga?"

Mother nodded.

"And that is why we say that what we prescribe for one is for himself alone and must not be taken as a general prescription or rule for all. But to come back to your music."

She gave me a very kind look. I was thrilled. For she had never before spoken to me about my own music so intimately and appreciatively. Unfortunately I missed much of what she said. What I could grasp I will reproduce below but more as a gist than as a verbatim report:

"It is very remarkable and interesting", she went on, "to trace the changes and evolution in your music and creative power. The fund of vital force in you one day suddenly turned

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and from that day forth your music was fundamentally altered in its character and outlook; you have continued ever since to succeed, progressively, in expressing what you sang. For instance, when you sang your song on Kali the other day, she actually appeared in the subtle and danced before my eyes, as I told you, and also her characteristic red colour appeared. When you sang of Shiva, he actually came and stood before me and you. When you sang of Krishna, the blue colour, which is His colour, appeared and, just when your aspiration mounted and He was about to manifest Himself, you stopped."

"I regret so much, Mother," I said smiling. "I wish I had known, for I would then have emitted 'a cry that shivers to the tingling stars.'"

"No matter," said Mother, giving me an answering smile. "The stars will tingle all right — all in good time. Besides, Krishna is difficult to invoke in this way, much more difficult than Kali. But what I am emphasising is that you have been succeeding more and more in expressing your theme: the white light which developed yesterday is an instance in point."

"I see a most beautiful lambent golden shimmer on your face, Mother," I exclaimed in great joy, "and do you know, this morning I saw a most lovely green on the wall — like a tongue of flame! But though such things I have seen, I have never before seen this sort of flashing gold on your face at such close quarters. Whatever can it mean?"

"It means that your inner vision is developing," she said with a beaming smile, "and when this power will further increase, new and vivid worlds will open before your eyes. This is only the beginning, the outer fringe, as Sri Aurobindo wrote to you the other day when you started seeing these colours everywhere round you, which he advised you to develop.'

"If you had acquired more of these powers of vision", she went on, "you would have been delighted to see — what I saw the other day while meditating with you — how beautifully

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' "Develop this power of the inner sense and all that it brings you," wrote Sri

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certain lovely colours were organising themselves within you_ symbolical of the flowering of your inner creative powers_ I feel interested also in the results, for example, to observe how the musical atmosphere is gradually concentrating round all the participants — to notice how the first amateurish feeling among the sadhakas, too, is vanishing, gradually.

"And I wanted it all to shape precisely like that, as you know," she continued. "I want you to create music in our Ashram the like of which one will not find anywhere else. I don't care to have music here to please a few people who have nothing to do or are easily satisfied."

"With your blessings, Mother, it will be like that, I am sure," I said in joy, "and I am so persuaded because now-a-days I often feel the bubbling of such a new power in me when I sing and compose — such new turns of melodies seem to drop from above like manna as it were — that I keep telling myself that it must be all due to the Guru's grace. Only," I added, "I feel a deep diffidence overtaking me almost simultaneously.... I do not know how to express it ....but you know it all...."

"Go on," she said, without helping me out.

I did not know how to express it. I groped for it for a few seconds, then said: "You know all, Mother, so what's the use of my telling you that my chief obstacle is in the mental and not in the vital."

"I know," she nodded, but said no more.

So I had nothing for it but to go on.

"What I mean," I said, "or rather, what I feel is that the vital, whatever its faults, is entirely willing to submit, but not the mental, which wants to understand, to question, to weigh the pros and cons — as though without such deep precautions convictions were neither attainable nor worth having. But to

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Aurobindo to me in February, 1932. "These first seeings are only an outer fringe.... behind lie whole worlds of experience which fill what seems to the natural man the gap (your Russell's inner void') between the earth-consciousness and the Eternal Infinite."

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do it justice, it does not yet know how to win to simple faith. The evidences of the hostile powers leave it only an aftermath of doubts — the testimony of the senses against there being a beneficent Deity ruling the world proves too strong for it. No wonder it find it so hard to see things clearly in all this self created blur. Or perhaps, as I some-times infer from my recalcitrance to the higher Light, I have no native capacity for spiritual experience, no congenital power of vision which can glimpse Grace even in this world of awful wars and petty preoccupations."

She shook her head.

"But you have the vision," she said. "And you have had evidences galore of the reality of the Divine Grace. Only you do not yet know how to appraise the one and recognise the other."

"I see what you mean, Mother," I answered, dubiously. "You wrote to me the other day that what I call 'human at its best' is synonymous really with the Divine, so that, boiled down, it comes only to quibbling about terminology or vocabulary — isn't that what you meant? This much I see. But tell me: am I wrong in assuming that the Divine must be a reality of such an alchemic power that, once seen. His power can transmute all our doubts into faith? Tell me, is this preconception of mine true or untrue?"

"Quite true."

"Well then, that is what I want to see, which I don't yet. But Sri Aurobindo writes that if I want to see the Divine in the human being I can see Him; if not, I can only see the human. I cannot understand this fully. For take my own case: Not only do I want to see the Divine in the human Guru, but I want it first and last. There are my friends who raise hell when they are asked or even expected to believe in a Personal God. There are other who cannot admit a God, or admit grudgingly a formless Presence. There are yet others who will have nothing to do with Guruvada or Avatarvada. But these difficulties I can simply ignore. Ever since I was thirteen I have wept —

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actually shed tears — praying to see the Divine in the human being, the human form. My friends used to call Sri Ramakmshna only a great man, nothing more; but I could never think of him as anything short of an Avatar, What always moved me so powerfully was a saying of the Gopis who, when offered Brahmajnana by Sri Krishna, declined with thanks, saying: 'What have we to do with the All-pervasive Formleses and Knowledge of It, when we have you in our midst?, Of all the religions I feel the most powerful kinship with the Vaislhnava outlook because of its emphasis on Naralila — the Human Incarnation. To see the Divine in the human is, I agree, the summit vision — for me, anyway; so that not only do I want to see the Divine in you and Sri Aurobindo but I want nothing more ardently. Yet the fact remains that I have not seen,. I see your kindness, grace, generosity, your inexhaustible patience, unquestioned wisdom, power of work, skill of organisation etc. But I do not find that enough: I want to see in you the Divine — the throbbing, the indubitable, the dazzling Divine. Here too, surely, it cannot be just a matter of terminology:, since I want to see in you, I repeat, such an outburst of Divinity which, once seen, would cut all the knots of my heart and resolve all my doubts — bhidyante hridaya-grcunthih chhidyante sarva samsayah. But unhappily, I have not seen that — as yet. Evidently. For my doubts persist, you see.. Now, tell me once for all: is this too due to a mere confusion of terms or quibbling about worlds?"

Mother held my eyes for a few seconds in silence, then smiled. "Listen", she said at last, in her half-musing dreamy way which I always found so beautiful. "Anything that make life exalting, anything that lifts you up above the lowest type of living in a mere animal harmony, anything that is great, noble, self-sacrificing, self-giving, inspiring, beautiful, is a missionary of the Divine. What I mean is: had it not been for the coming down of the Divine and His touching our souls with His higher attributes, there could have been no evolution from the lesser to the greater. In other words;, life would have

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stayed utterly drab and dismal if the Divine had not come and touched some part at least of our leaden hearts into gold. So I repeat that whenever you see anything truly great, elevating, or heart-warming, you are seeing the Divine without knowing it. Only you call it 'human in the noblest sense' — that is the root of confusion. Once you wrote to Sri Aurobindo that you simply love artists like Tagore atheists like Russell or Sarat Chatterjee, because they depict beautiful things and stand up for noble values. But if and when they do that, they are standing up for the Divine values without knowing it. Do you see my point?"

"I do, Mother," I answered. "Only, I am afraid, it leaves the central problem no nearer solution. For if, say, our Tagores and Russells and Sarat Chatterjees had really seen the Divine in the course of their noble quests — through humanitarianism and art and science — would they have just stopped where they did? I mean to ask: would they have remained — unlike Sri Krishna, Chaitanya, Buddha, Ramarkrishna, Sri Aurobindo — as unhappy and unenlightened as they are? Why are they thoroughly shaken by the shocks of life, why does the spectacle of life afflict them with sheer despair? In a word, why are they so limited? Evidently because there is a deeper, more intimate, more pervading experience of the Divine possible which has not yet fallen to their lot in the course of their seekings and proddings. Is it not so?"

"Quite", she answered. "But that is just where Yoga comes in. For Yoga is, in effect, a high-pitched endeavour to catch and retain what the Tagores and Russells and Sarat Chatterjees may at best glimpse fugitively but can not hold, far less possess. I have often said that the Divine visits us in the midst of our self-regarding petty pursuits and clamourings inspired by greed and the darkness of our wrong movements like a breath of wind — an exhilarating mountain-whiff which touches you, enraptures you but then passes on. You run after it, but the breeze is no more. It is that which leaves people brooding and mourning. You say you haven't glimpsed the Divine. You have,

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in your brightest and purest moments. But only a glimpse — a touch of the breeze. You have run after it, but could not overtake it."

"My heart agrees partly, Mother," I said. "But you will pardon me if I demur that my having had a glimpse does not lessen my gloom that follows when I forfeit it the next moment; it only deepens my despair. For those who have never had such a glimpse have this advantage over such as we that, having never seen even fugitively what we have, they stay more or less contentedy tethered to their inferior pleasures. But not we, whose nostalgia has been aroused by the vision to which we have thrilled in eager wonder — because we are left with no clue to the problem of how to make it abide. That is why we, humans, can ill afford to do without an assurance that what is wafted to us like an elusive aroma on nameless wings and seems too lovely to be true, is none the less attainable by us, feckless creatures, inspite of appearances, as said, for instance, the beautiful exhortation of A.E.:

The unattainable beauty

The thought of which was pain

That flickered in eyes and lips

And vanished again:

That fugitive beauty

Though shalt attain."

"Quite," she acquiesced. "And that is why Yoga has to be practised, I repeat. For Yoga is, in essence, nothing but the method and the process by which you grow to the unattainable and realise permanently the Eternal by and through what seems to be fugitive. In other words, there is a way of inducing the incredible, the elusive Unattainable — the Divine Light and Love and Truth — to accept our hospitality, to come to stay as our guests. Yoga shows you the way. You love a woman, a friend, an idol — but though the first taste of love sends you into raptures, you find these petering out leaving you only an aftermath of drabness, of disillusionment. Why does this

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happen again and again? Because the person you love is not divinised. You grasp at fire but hug smoke and ashes. Your friend betrays selfishness, your beloved possessiveness, your idol feet of clay. Why? Because in them the Divine is assorted with the human. It is to reach to and realise permanently the essence of divinity in love and affection and life that we are here. You must claim the fire but reject the ashes, win the light but stave off the heat, welcome affection but cast away selfishness, invite joy but shut out pain and boredom. To sum up, to extract the pure gold purged of the dross that clings to it obstinately must be your one aspiration, your one sadhana."

"For that," she continued, "the first thing is to recognise the Divine in the best values, to see Him in everything that exalts, to be conscious — progressively and on every plane of your being — of the movements which lead to confusion or the mixture by acquiring the power to discriminate unerringly between what is to be cherished and what is to be abolished. That is why I wrote to you that to start with, you must, once and for all, get rid of this confusion between the human and the Divine and remember that the Divine cannot fail you if you are utterly sincere and want Him above everything else." She gave me an abstracted smile and then went on: "And so far as you are concerned, the very fact that you can love so spontaneously shows that the Divine is more in you than in many another who cannot love or feel for others. The very fact that you are stirred so much by the loftiest sentiments whether of poets like Tagore or atheists like Russell or great Yogis like Sri Ramakrishna shows that the Divine values move you to your depths, no matter who advocates them. Never mind what the atheists or the artists say when they claim that they love the human. For their loves and ideas at their purest and loftiest are Divine in essence."

Years later I was reminded of this when I was reading the famous hymn of Akrur to Krishna:

As all the rivers run to meet the sea,

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Though some run straight and others deviously,

So all who worship what their hearts adore

Unwittingly, Lord, sail for thine one Shore.'

__________________

' Sarva eva yajanti twam Sarvadeva-Maheshwwaram

Ye pyanyadevatabhakta yadyapyanyadhiyah h Prabho

Yathadriprabava nadyah parjanya-puritah prarabho

Vishanthi sarvatah Sindhum tadvat twam gatatayontatah.

The Bhagavat, 10.10.

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