My Pilgrimage to the Spirit

The Touch of Grace in Family and Social Life

I am a deputy of the aspiring world,
My spirit’s liberty I ask for all.” ||144.54||

When I joined the Ashram in 1927 I had the good fortune to accept two reformists—Sri Aurobindo and the Mother—as my Gurus. Both of them have revolutionized and reformed human life into Divine life and transformed the old face and outlook of Indian spirituality. They are the pioneers of a new ideal, namely that of transformation of human nature and divinization of human life.

This was the first time in the spiritual history of the whole universe that two mighty spiritual giants joined to become one spiritually though maintaining two separate envelopes. This divine union of two mighty powers of the Divine created a great force and attracted both men and women who joined them with trust and confidence, because they had the fortune of getting love along with guidance on the path from the Mother who was Divine. Theirs was such a living unity that Sri Aurobindo said that the Mother was his consciousness and the Mother said that Sri Aurobindo remained unmanifest without her. Also She said that without Sri Aurobindo She had no existence.

Sri Aurobindo had intensified the fire of aspiration which was burning within me during my childhood. I was imbued with the breath of his Grace and his revolutionary spirit. And when I went out from the Ashram in 1955, whether I wanted it or not, I was made to start my life as an Agent of a Bank and then as a medical practitioner.

Marriage is said to be a step towards the Divine. That marriage also I had to accept in order to revolutionize and to reform the rigid customs of dowry and the like in society. A freedom-fighter (who has been awarded a pension by the Government of India) joined in 1940, by the sheer and irresistible weight of her destiny another freedom-fighter who was preoccupied with the work of winning the freedom of his spirit from his nature.

The fusion of the two freedom-fighters gave birth to a girl named Arvinda in 1943, when our medical practice was in full swing in three dispensaries in the surroundings of Gomtipur, a suburb of Ahmedabad. It was difficult to go and attend the distant calls of the patients on a cycle. So a motor-cycle and a motor-car had entered our life to help the work. The work was being poured upon me and I had learnt to work in a quiet and prayerful mood and developed my consciousness which had transformed my work into a constant meditation and that continuous meditation was the only work that was naturally flowing out from me to meet the Divine at every moment.

Both of us desired no further children, if only we had one son. We prayed to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo for that and our prayer was granted and a boy named Prakash was born in 1946. He is now in the State Government service as an electrical engineer in Ahmedabad. It was after the birth of this child that I thought of proceeding to the Ashram after a period of eleven years to breathe in the bounty of the Grace of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo which led us to success. As I was learning to live for the Divine and to do every little work for the Divine, our whole life had become a process of Yoga leading us towards the union of the Divine with the result that our nature and life were undergoing a process of great change. In this way of life it was absolutely normal and natural for us to put all our problems, big or small, with trust and confidence before the Divine Guides—the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, and they never failed us.

My sleep was full of significant experiences and dreams. It appeared as if sleep was my via media to develop one side of my sadhana as work was the means to develop another side of my sadhana. As the Mother says in About Savitri:

For those who are more developed in the inner being than in the body, those who come down upon earth fully conscious and had their consciousness veiled and dulled by the contact of Matter, sleep is often a revelation. Because the body is asleep, inactive, the inner consciousness is more free, and in contact with what it knows more directly.... So all those who have come down upon earth fully developed and fully conscious at night when the body rests, remember what they were and what they can do. In fact, they actually continue to do their work at night when their body is immobile, they continue their activity and they do what they came to do upon earth, even before the body knows and can help in the work.

Lighting a pathway through strange symbol dreams
Across the ebbing of the seas of sleep. ||2.33||

In 1950 the preparations for the celebrations of the 80th birthday of Sri Aurobindo was getting on with great enthusiasm all over India. K. M. Munshi, the veteran man of letters and a disciple of Sri Aurobindo had taken much interest and committees were appointed in all cities of India for the celebration of Sri Aurobindo's birthday. Sri Jauhar from Delhi had written to me to take interest in the celebration, but somehow I was not finding my way clear to join the celebration in spite of myself. Whenever I set out to plan, some obstacle or other came in my way. My friends were astonished to find me in this condition, for I was considered to be the life and the soul of all activities of Sri Aurobindo centre in Ahmedabad. They asked me what the matter was with me. I could not express anything with certainty but I said: "I don't know, but we shall not be able to celebrate the 80th birthday. I had a vision of sunrise followed by a sunset and that was followed by unfathomable darkness. I felt we had to face the great sunset."

We had arranged a programme of our great musician of the Ashram, Sri Dilipkumar Roy in the townhall of Ahmedabad and collected a sum of Rs. 10,000 which was offered to the Mother Divine. After the programme was over and Dilipkumar's party had left for Patna, I received a telegram that Sri Aurobindo was not well. This news was a blow to me and at once made me uneasy. Hearing this news Dilipkumar postponed all his programmes and ran down to Pondicherry to our beloved Master.

The night that he left his body (December 5, 1950) I saw a dream. I was waiting in a beautiful garden full of wonderful flowers. There was a track in front of me and I was waiting for somebody who was to come by that track, and there appeared a burning sun rushing towards me. When it came nearer, I could recognize the face in the midst of the burning sun. It was the face of Sri Aurobindo. The rest of the body was not visible, but when it came nearer and nearer I could see a naked body in the burning sun and the three others who followed him. When they were quite near, the Master made a gesture to me to follow him, and within a few moments we were in his room. The Master took me on one side and asked me if I wanted any siddhi. I was rather astonished. When I kept quiet, he embraced me and kept his hand on my head and poured down whatever he had to give me. I was so much struck by this manner of his distributing his powers to his disciples that a feeling came to me that this distribution was the last award. These feelings moved me and in sleep I began to weep spontaneously. When my wife woke me up, she was surprised to see me in this condition. My pillow was completely wet with tears. She asked me what had happened. I told her that our Master Sri Aurobindo had left us physically. She could not believe me and then she also began to weep. She tuned in the radio in the morning, and we heard the news that Sri Aurobindo had left his body.

In 1956 I went with the members of my family to the Ashram with the idea of settling down in the Ashram if the Mother permitted. The children were of 13 and 10 years of age respectively. We stayed there for six weeks. The Mother was informed of our idea through my friend Dyuman and the reply that Dyuman brought was: "There is no objection to your staying here, but if you stay with the members of your family, they will not allow you to stay peacefully". No financial arrangements had been made for the family and I had to go back and wait for the hour of God to arrange everything in a way that either all or anyone who wanted to join the Ashram could do so without being a burden to it.

In our social life I was a revolutionary and a reformer. Those who have to do the pioneering work have to face the worst of difficulties and gain strength and energy and experience which are useful in fighting the battle of life. I was to face such difficulties, being a father of a girl for whom I had to find a suitable boy for marriage. The Patel community is the most rigid in these matters. When Arvinda passed the S.S.C. examination and when she expressed her desire not to study further but to take up some work, I asked her to select any work which she liked. At that time there was a strong movement to separate Gujarat from the Bombay State and many young students had sacrificed their lives in that movement. Finally, it was decided to make a separate State of Gujarat and applications were invited from those who wanted to join the State service. Arvinda got employed in the Secretariat in Ahmedabad. I had written to the Mother to solve the problem of her marriage and I was waiting quietly for the solution. One day a friend came and informed me that there was a boy who was a science graduate serving as a chemist in Alembic Chemicals at Baroda. Generally, I am not in the habit of attending social functions like marriages, for I am against the present structure of customs of our society. So I had very little chance of knowing many people in the society and I was rather in a bad fix while making an attempt to know the family of the boy who was in the service of Alembic Chemicals. One day a relative who was married in the village of that boy came to see me and I requested him to inquire and get detailed information regarding the boy and his family. He went to his house and asked his wife if she knew anything about the boy. She said she would get the details from her father. That evening her father accompanied the boy's grandfather who had missed the last bus to their village and came to pass that night in her house. She enquired and got the necessary information regarding the boy and told them all about Arvindabehn and her service. After a few days I went to Baroda and saw the boy in Alembic Chemicals and directly proposed to the boy to accompany me and have an exchange of ideas and to decide whether they could marry and be happy. This direct approach (instead of an approach through the boy's father) was not possible in that society but the boy agreed and my difficulty was solved. Now it was necessary to bring both of them together so that they could see each other, exchange their ideas and decide for themselves whether they should join to be happy or not. Their meeting was arranged, they had a talk and they decided to marry. The boy came forward to say that the marriage ceremony should be performed in a simple way and that it should be over by the evening. The Divine Mother so arranged that this was the first and the only boy I saw for Arvinda. I thanked the Mother Divine with gratitude for solving this problem. An invitation for the marriage was sent to the Divine Mother, I invoked her Presence in the marriage ceremony to bless the couple who had decided to proceed towards the Divine through marriage. We received the blessings from the Mother on the day of the marriage. The ceremony was kept at the bungalow of Sri Gatubhai Dhru, President of the Association of Reformist Marriages of Gujarat, Ahmedabad, in 1963.

By this time Prakash had passed his S.S.C. examination with first class and had joined St. Xavier's College of Science. After some years he joined L. D. Engineering College and at the end of three years he passed the last course of B.E. (Elec.) in 1968 and joined the State Government service at Baroda in the beginning, but subsequently he was transferred to Ahmedabad.

When he was in Baroda some relatives of his maternal side belonging to that orthodox society who had revolted against our reformist marriage in 1940 made a move to push one girl of that society into our house. I opposed. Later Prakash married the -same girl of his own choice from Nadiad.

All this time I was thinking to make some arrangements by which I could stay at the Ashram on my own. On the other hand the house where we lived was rather too small to accommodate the enlarged family and the visitors. Whatever we saved was being spent in the establishment of business and for the education of the children. We were accommodating our family with difficulty, while the other half of the house was in possession of my younger brother. After the death of .my father and mother, we had to divide our ancestral property in our village. We had a house and two shops in the village. My brother wanted to have that house independently for himself. He was allowed to have the village house on condition that he gave us his portion of the house where we lived in Gomtipur. The brother tried his best to dispose of his portion of the city house to outsiders. I had written the whole story to the - Mother and was waiting for the Divine Grace to change the circumstances in our favour. When he was in need of money and when he could not sell it to anybody else, he sold his portion of the house to me for Rs. 7,000 and I had to reconstruct the second floor and build a third floor which cost me Rs. 20,000. Though I had spent Rs. 35,000 for repairing the whole house the house remained old in appearance. But while spending this amount I had to keep in mind to get the return of amount I had invested at the minimum rate of 10%. The portion that was purchased was in the possession of old tenant paying very little rent. But it was against my feeling to ask them to increase the rent. I maintained very good relations with them and that paid me at the end—slowly I had prepared five shops on the road side of my house and excepting five shopkeepers there was no residential tenant.

Another matter I had to surrender to the working of the Grace of the Divine Mother was of one of the shopkeepers who was trying to sell away his shop with goodwill and wanted to make money. It was extremely difficult and complicated to prevent him from doing it. The law also could not prevent it. I permitted him to sell the shop with goodwill on condition that he should arrange to fix up new rent for the shop. He agreed but could not get any buyer. I wanted to go to the Ashram for darshan but I was detained by his movement which was creating complications for me. The shopkeeper got into difficulties and one day I came to know that he was dead. His son was more clever and was more difficult to deal with. He also tried to sell the shop with goodwill but when he could not do so he came to me to give the possession of the shop. I asked him to pay the amount of the rent and taxes that were due. Finally, I had to let go the amount and somehow I got the possession by the Grace of the Mother. The whole village was astonished to hear that I was given the possession by the shopkeeper. This shop was very big and had been in the possession of this shopkeeper for twenty-five years and fetched a rent of 25 rupees only. I made some changes and divided the shop into two equal parts and prepared two shops by spending a good amount of money and gave away both the shops on rent for 75 rupees each a month. So the shop which made me struggle for three years got me a rent of Rs. 150 per month. Who else could transform and raise the income from Rs. 25 to Rs. 150 excepting the Grace of the Divine Mother?

There was another case of the Divine Mother's help and protection. There are two houses in our khirki both having their ownership rights of the open land of that khirki. My neighbour insisted that open land of the khirki was solely his. I inquired in the city survey department but found that the land of khirki was going on in the name of the person who had sold his house to us and there was no trace of my neighobur's name nor of his father's. I applied for transferring the rights of the old owner who had sold the house to my father. After making necessary enquiry my name was entered as the owner of the open land of the khirki in which my house was situated. When my neighbour came to know about it, there was a great quarrel and I had to drag him to the criminal court three times. He tried to bribe the city surveyor and got his name entered but I took objection and I took the matter to the Chief Minister of Gujarat State. The struggle and the quarrel lasted for three full years with no result and with the death of my neighbour the matter stopped there.

It was by the Grace of the Divine Mother that I could get my brother's portion of the house in Gomtipur where I have been living since then. While repairing that portion of the house I had to spend a good amount. Anyway slowly I was able to arrange six shops and the Mother's Grace had changed most of the old tenants to fetch the best possible return for the money that had been spent in rearranging the house and in constructing six shops on the ground floor. This was a great solace and a gift from the Divine Grace to get a regular income of Rs. 300 out of shops which had fetched only Rs. 50 when we came to live in that house. It was by the Divine arrangement that in the last years of my life when I was eagerly waiting to dedicate the rest of my life to the Divine that I was awarded by the Divine Mother a providential pension of Rs. 300 per month and a house to live in. This was also an arrangement made by the Divine Grace that I might not have to look to my son or anybody else for living in the last days of my life. It was an arrangement made by the Divine Grace for our independent living.

It so happened that one of the shopkeepers in our house, a radio repairer who was regular in paying the rent, was not able to pay the rent for a long time. I had made it a rule not to go to collect the rent, unless they did not pay in time. We had developed good relations almost like members of one family and a tie of goodwill had developed day by day. As the radio repairer was too late in paying his rent, I went to him to inquire if he was in difficulty. He was not present, and somebody else was there. I asked him whether the shopkeeper was sick and inquired the cause of his absence. He was not able to give a satisfactory reply. By the time I was about to return, the radio repairer came and I asked him the cause of his absence and why he was late in paying the rent. In reply to my query he said he had been to the police station to get his brother-in-law released from the custody of the police as he was arrested for committing a theft in the studio of the Governor's photographer. I had read the news about the theft in the papers that the studio of the Governor's photographer was opened very skilfully with a duplicate key and articles worth thirty thousand were stolen along with a film on Bangla Desh which had been taken recently and was to be shown to Mrs. Indira Gandhi. While reading it I had felt that the theft was commited by the radio repairer's brother-in-law. My feeling was so strong that I warned the radio repairer to keep away from his brother-in-law because he was the man who had committed the theft. Also I warned him that if he continued to try to get him released from the custody of the police he would be entangled in the case and have to suffer the consequences. He tried to tell me that his brother-in-law was with him in his house that night up to 10-30 p.m. and then he went to his house. I told him that he had not gone to his house but had gone to commit this theft after leaving his house that night. So I advised him not to keep contact with him.

After four days my wife brought the news that four jeep cars full of police had cordoned off the shop of the radio repairer and were making some investigations. They were beating the radio repairer and asking questions. The police had also brought one man well-tied with ropes. Hearing this my doubts were confirmed and my warning to the radio repairer proved absolutely correct. When I read the news about the theft in the studio of the Governor's photographer, I had actually a vision of the radio repairer's brother-in-law opening the door of the studio with a duplicate key in the night and entering the studio. The expression of his face and his movement told me that he was there to commit a crime. When the police were searching the shop of the radio repairer, the whole of Gomtipur area rushed to the scene. When they came to know that I had warned the radio repairer, to his own astonishment, that his brother-in-law had committed that theft and that he should keep away from the man to save himself they were quite astonished to hear that and had come to ask me what power enabled me to have fore-knowledge about the theft. I told them that I knew many such things and I would not normally reveal those things to others. I had told this time to the radio repairer only to save him from the coming consequences.

After the search the radio repairer was also arrested and put in the police custody. The father of the radio repairer was informed by telegram. He came down immediately and got his son released on bail. This incident reflected upon the business of the radio repairer. Though he was an expert in his work people lost faith in him. It became difficult for him to get sufficient work and therefore he began to make attempts to sell his shop with goodwill. I had to make a great effort to prevent him from doing that. But one day he himself vacated the shop and gave possession of the shop to me by the Grace of the Divine Mother.

Six decades of my life in this body were over and when the seventh decade was running fast and was nearing its completion, I gave away the rights of publication of the third edition of my Gujarati book on Preservation of Health and Sight to Mahatma Gandhi's Navajivan Trust, Ahmedabad, as I was seriously planning to go to the Ashram and settle there for the rest of my life to complete my ascent to the spirit. The stream of my life was flowing so naturally that I learnt to do every little work for the Divine and to establish a constant union with Him and my existence was thus gradually getting transformed into a pilgrimage to the Spirit.

My pilgrimage to the Spirit had become a dedication pilgrimage for the rest of my life. I was pondering over the following conditions of the Divine's help mentioned by Sri Aurobindo:

A fixed and unfailing aspiration that calls from below and a Supreme Grace that answers from above.... But the Supreme Grace can act only in the conditions of Light and the Truth.... A glad and strong and helpful submission is demanded to the working of the Divine Force, the obedience of the illumined disciple of the Truth, of the inner warrior who fights against obscurity and falsehood, of the faithful servant of the Divine.

It was my sincere effort that had spontaneously led and transmuted my life into an everflowing river that absorbs all ills wherever it flows, and sanctifies and suggests by its own movements that it is moving towards the Divine. Life is a voyage towards the Divine and I was trying to prove it through my dedication pilgrimage. I did not attribute these successes to my individual capacity. All positive, inspiring and miraculous results were brought about by the Grace of the Divine Mother and not by that little 'I' of mine. I am ever grateful to my beloved Master and the Mother for their help to me to walk safely on the muddy and thorny path of life and to lead it to its fulfilment by transmuting it into a pure stream of Dedication Pilgrimage.

When I looked into the messages given in my blessing-card for my birthday on 28th October, 1973 I realized that I had been always praying to my Master to be with me throughout day and night and to make me feel his Presence in sleep as well as in waking. I was always praying for growth in me at all times, of the Truth, the Consciousness and the Bliss constantly.

I had indeed been keeping in my mind the direction given by him to live within and not to be shaken by outward happenings, to aspire intensely but without impatience, to remember that all shall be done if the God-touch is there, and his promise of hope that all things shall change in God's transfiguring hour.

There was the simple but most important message by the sweet Divine Mother asking us to be simple, to be happy, to remain quiet and do our work as well as we can—to keep ourselves always open towards her.

Shall we be able to do this?

He who wants the Divine, is wanted by the Divine....

The Mother