By The Way - Part III

BY THE WAY

Part - III

Note from the Publisher

Dada (Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya) is present in his office every morning from 8.30 to 11.45. During this time boys, girls and grownups from the Ashram comet see him. He also receives visitors. They all have something to ask him and Dada answers their questions. The visitor goes back happy. All those who are present in his office also enjoy his replies as well as the stories and humorous anecdotes he recounts. Time is happily spent.

Amalesh Bhattacharya, who has transcribed these conversations, sits in a corner and quietly notes everything down. The present selection of these jottings is the third part of By the Way and it is sincerely hoped that the readers enjoy it.

Pranab with the Mother in Her Room

The Mother in trance during Darshan

A visitor came to see Dada. As he finished talking with him he said at the end: 'Dada, I would like to ask you for something.'

'What would you like?' Dada asked.

'Dada, give me something that the Mother has touched. I Shall keep that with me all the time.'

'Have you ever had the Mother's Darshan before?' Dada enquired.

'Yes, I've had Her Darshan two or three times. I've bowed before the Mother and She has blessed me by touching my head with Her hand.'

'Then what more do you need?' Dada continued. 'The Mother has touched your body itself. This body She has touched is yours. What more can one ask for?'

*

One day during a conversation Dada observed :

'The Mother gives only that which can be got from Her. Its very hard to command Her. The Mother can give whatever you ask Her but then you need to have the strength to accept it.'

Someone said:

'I have heard, Dada, that Vijay Goswami would tell his disciple Kulda Brahmachari not to pray otherwise he would be in great trouble. He might concede your prayer.'

Gangaram-da remarked:

'One should not demand anything from the Mother. On the contrary one should always say: Mother, grant me whatever You wish. In this case the Mother grants us also the strength to accept what She gives.'

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Jyoti-di told Dada one day :

'Dada , you are incomparable. What a tremendous instrument really! Like a banyan tree. Who else has this kind of strength or greatness?'

'Why, are you all any less,' Dada replied. 'There are millions of people on this earth but only you among those millions have reached the Ashram and have had the good fortune to live here. Is that something negligible? All this love and affection and togetherness that exist between all of us, where would it all have been? Where would all of us have been? We may not even have known or crossed each other. Today we have all become part of one and the same family. This has happened due to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo's attraction. It has been possible only due to Their Grace. Otherwise, god knows where we would all have been! We have come here and all together we have created this divine family, this divine community.'

*

Dada remarked about someone:

'He came by himself the other day and told me :

"Dada, I have realised my mistake. I will try to correct myself."

I told him:

"None of us is perfect, neither you nor I. Do not go looking for another's fault. Look at only your faults and try to correct them. And one day you will see everything has been straightened out. I firmly believe that this time too everything will be straightened out."

When he has acknowledged his fault and understood, then he will certainly be able to correct himself. As he is conscious of his faults so will he also see and value the virtues in others. He will see how many qualities others have.'

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Shanti said to Dada the other day:

'Dada, I have met someone who resembles the man of your story. He was sleeping peacefully under a tree, without any stir or action.'

'Which story, Dada?' someone enquired.

Dada laughed and happily recounted the story.

'There was a man who would sleep peacefully under a tree. He would do nothing but quietly lie and sleep. He was very poor and his clothes too were torn and dirty. One day a passer by asked him:

"Don't you have anything to do? How can you just lie and sleep under this tree? Do you really enjoy this?"

The dull-eyed man asked:

"What will I get if I work?"

"What will you get? Why, you will earn some money."

"And what will I get if I have money?"

"You can have a house, a proper roof over your head with money."

"What will I get if I have a house and a roof?"

"Why, with a house you will live happily, you will eat and sleep peacefully."

"Well, don't I sleep peacefully, as it is?" the man replied."

Why should I complicate my life with work?"'

*

During a conversation someone referred to Purnanando, an old sadhak. Dada said:

'He had been round India thrice on foot. He was a saffron clad sannyasi, slimly-built but with a strong constitution and he walked every where till the very end of his life, never riding a cycle or getting onto a rickshaw. He lived his entire life in a simple little room under a staircase.

He looked after the Ashram godowns, keeping stock of everything. And whenever someone needed something he

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could immediately get it out. He was, however, short-tempered and would lose his cool over a trifle. But we had a good rapport and he listened to me. One day I told him:

"Purnanando-da, I need a little space in that godown to keep some photographic equipment."

He immediately made space so that I could store my photographic stuff.

Once, while Purnanando-da was going round the pilgrim-centres of India as a sannyasi, somewhere along the way a group of people prostrated themselves before him. They sat around him very respectfully and asked:

"Baba, tell us, who is greater, the yogi or the bhogi (one who enjoys life)?"

Poor Purnanando-da was in a fix. What could he say?

One of Purnanando-da's disciples was with him.

So while the people sat expectantly in front of him with folded hands, this disciple intervened to save him just in time:

"Baba has 'taken a vow of silence," he explained.'

*

Dada continued:

'Like Purnanando-da, Yoganando-da was another old sadhak. In the beginning he too had travelled across India as a sannyasi, a saffron-clad sannyasi. But after settling down in the Ashram he gave up his saffron robe.

Yoganando-da was very short-tempered and irascible. He was a nice man otherwise, but when he got into a temper it was quite awful. Yoganando-da used to work as a life-guard at the seashore in the Tennis-ground, keeping an eye on all those who went sea bathing. He would note down the names of those who came, the time they got into the sea, the time they got out, etc. and he regularly showed his notes to the Mother. The Mother would sign the daily sheet. He would also report to the Mother about the state of the sea, whether

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Pranab and Vishwajit at work in the photographic darkroom

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the sea was calm or there were lots of waves, etc. And he would communicate this in his kind of English: Mother, today less water, more waves; today more water, less waves. The Mother would also sign this report.

Visitors from the West used to also come for sea-bathing and Yoganando-da would keep their clothes. Now, Westerners usually think it right to pay for any services that are rendered. And so one day a western gentleman paid him ten rupees for keeping his clothes. Yoganando-da was indignant but he finally took the money and offered it to the Mother.

Yoganando-da's daily work was to gather flowers. He and Madan-da would go to collect flowers from outside the town. When the Mother used to come to the Playground, a garland made from those flowers would be put around Her neck.

Pondicherry was under French rule then. This was before1954. The French kept talking about their impending departure but had not budged yet. The Indian government had the whole town surrounded by the army.

Yoganando-da and Madan-da accidentally got onto the Indian side of the border in their search for flowers. The army snapped them up for questioning. Madan-da answered all their questions politely but Yoganando-da was out of his wits and gave them a taste of his temper. So the army men stripped him bare like a Greek statue and made him stand before making him march.

Yoganando-da knew a fellow-seeker, a sannyasi too, who had come to the Ashram for a few days. His name was Dhirananda. However, he did not accept the Mother and Sri Aurobindo as avatars.

One day, on hearing this, Yoganando-da began thrashing him in front of the Dining Room with his slipper. He kept yelling:

"First accept the Mother and Sri Aurobindo as avatars.You accept first, then I'll let you go. Come on, say!"'

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Yoganando-da on duty at the sea-bathing for Ashram children

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The Mother accepting the salute at the March Past in the Tennis-ground

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Dada recounted a strange ghost-story today.

There was a football match between four-five neighbouring villages and two boys from a nearby village had come to watch the match. As the match ended grey clouds suddenly appeared in the sky. So the boys got up hurriedly and began striding back to their village. It could rain anytime. The route was familiar, the places were familiar, the neighbouring villages too were all known. So they walked on briskly.

Within no time darkness enveloped the whole place, strong winds began to blow and it started raining. It was dark, as it is, and on top, the heavy rain was accompanied by winds. They could not see a thing. All of a sudden the known path turned unfamiliar. They felt as in a labyrinth. But still they walked on through that rain and wind, drenched? to the bone.

Suddenly the two boys noticed at a distance a splendid English cottage. There was light inside the house. They thought it would be wiser to take shelter from the heavy rain in that wooden cottage.

So looking like two wet crows in that rain they reached the gate and knocked. The door opened. A youngish-looking Englishwoman appeared.

'What do you want?' she asked.

'We are from a neighbouring village,' the two boys replied.

'We were going back home after a football match but we got totally soaked in this rain. Could we take shelter here? We're in quite a mess, really.'

The lady, probably moved by their plight, asked them to come in. She took out some clean clothes from a wardrobe and told them to take off their wet clothes and wear the dry ones.

'These are my son's clothes. My son studies engineering at Bangalore,' she explained. You can wear these clothes and rest a little on the sofa. I'll make you some piping-hot tea in the meantime.'

The lady went inside and came back with a tin of Huntley Palmer biscuits. It was a new tin and extremely beautiful. She

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opened the tin, removed the tinfoil seal and served the two boys some biscuits on a plate. Tea was getting ready. The two boys began munching the biscuits with great relish. These were expensive, foreign biscuits. The piping-hot tea arrived.

'The biscuits are just delicious!' the boys exclaimed. 'Can we take some with us?'

'Go on, take as many as you wish,' said the lady.

The two boys filled their pockets with biscuits.

'My husband, Mr Baron, has gone out for some work. He'll be back soon. Have your tea while I make you some dinner. You must be dreadfully hungry. The meat is already cooked, I'll just get some bread and toasts ready.'

And even as the lady spoke, outside, the wind raged accompanied by thunder and the rains showed no respite.

Just then Mr Baron entered. He was tall, handsome, manly and seemed a jolly sort. He began chatting merrily with the boys.

The meat was being warmed, the bread toasted. And not the slightest letup in the storm raging outside.

'How lucky we got such a perfect shelter,' the boys thought to themselves. 'God knows what would have happened to us otherwise!'

By then it was almost midnight. Just a few more minutes to go. The rain, it seemed, would go on for the whole night.

All of a sudden Mr Baron turned to his wife and exclaimed:

'Look at that! You've forgotten something, darling! Today is the 15th of July. I too had almost forgotten.'

Another crackling thunderbolt ripped the dark night outside. The windowpanes in the house rattled.

The Englishwoman looked frightened at her husband's words. Her eyes paled and her face stiffened.

'Yes, you're right. It is the 15th of July. It is only a few minutes to midnight.'

And she nervously looked at the clock on the wall.

'What will happen now?' she fearfully asked.

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The lady was trembling with fear. Her mouth went dry and her eyes dimmed.

Mr Baron stood up and looked at the boys:

'Listen, don't delay any longer. Go out at once. Don't stay for a second more. Leave right now!'

The boys were nonplussed:

'What are you saying, sir? Where can we go in this storm at this time of the night? You've taken such good care of us with your gentle hospitality. Now all of a sudden why do you want us to leave?'

Both the husband and wife kept looking nervously at the clock . Then the husband said gravely :

'I can't explain but if you want your good then ask no more questions. Just leave at once.'

When the boys still did not budge the Englishman took out a revolver from his pocket and screamed at them:

'If you don't go I'll shoot. Get out !'

What could the boys do now? And so in that dark night crackling with rain and thunder they rushed out of the house. The Englishman was screaming from behind:

'Run away quickly. Go away as far as you can .'

The boys started running breathlessly in the night through the rain and storm . Just then a thunderclap ripped the sky. The lightning cast a glow all around. And in that glow they noticed that the thunderbolt had hit the Englishman's cottage which was up in huge flames .

At once the two boys fell to the ground, unconscious.

After a long time, as the first rays of dawn appeared, the two boys came back to consciousness. They realised that they were lying just beside the path leading to their village, their own familiar village. Where was the Englishman's wooden cottage? Where was the gate that led to it? There wasn't the slightest trace. They lay just beside the path. The Mullicks' pond and their banana grove stood at a distance.

Incredible! Was it all magic?

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But they still wore the clothes given to them by the Englishwoman and in their trouser-pockets were the expensive foreign biscuits they had asked for at night. Were these too unreal?

They were dumbstruck.

It was believed that a long time back, exactly on the 15th of July, a night of rain and storm, at the stroke of midnight lightning had struck an English couple's cottage and both of them had died. Their son used to study engineering at Bangalore then.

Everyone was quite astounded by Dada's story. Someone remarked:

'Dada, I heard a similar story a long time ago. A man and his wife were driving along the Grand Trunk road at night. The car was going quite fast. On either side there was jungle and some open spaces. It was probably a night of the new moon and so it was pitch dark all around. From time to time a lorry or two would zoom past with their headlights on.

The man probably had some urgent work and he kept telling the driver to drive faster :

"I have to reach by ten o'clock."

The car sped on.

Suddenly the car collided head on with a truck. Both the husband and wife were badly injured on their heads. The side of the car was damaged. The driver was badly hurt too.

In the meantime the truck-driver had escaped with his truck.

In that dark, deserted night the driver noticed a magnificent cottage just beside the road next to the jungle. And there was light within.

The driver somehow reached this cottage and informed them about the accident.

Two people came running and carried the couple into the house. The house belonged to a surgeon. He had his operation theatre on the ground floor. The doctor told the couple that both needed to be operated upon at once.

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On completing the operation the doctor bandaged both their heads and gave them the necessary drugs and injections. Then turning to the driver he said :

"My people have mended your car. I suggest you take them immediately to Calcutta."

He mentioned the name of a nursing home in Calcutta as he wrote down the prescription.

"The doctor in this nursing home was my student . Here is the prescription and drive them straight to him ."

The driver took the prescription and helped the husband and wife into the car. He was amazed to see how the old, ramshackle car had been so quickly repaired. The car picked up speed as if it were brand-new.

He brought them to Calcutta to the said nursing home. He went to see the doctor with the prescription:

"I've brought you two patients of Dr Browning's. Dr Browning mentioned that you had been his student and that's why he was sending them to you. We had an accident. My boss and his wife were injured in the head. Dr Browning operated upon them himself before sending them to you."

The doctor stretched out his hand to take the prescription:

"Yes, Dr Browning was indeed my professor. But he died ten years ago in a plane-crash. Let me see the prescription... amazing! His own handwriting and on his letter paper!"

'The doctor was simply flabbergasted.'

After listening to this story someone remarked:

'There is a wonderful story of this type in Yogavashishtha's Ramayana, Dada. Rishi Vashishtha himself narrates the story :

There was a tapaswi named Gadhi. One morning he went out of the ashram to have a bath in a pond. Standing waist deep in water and contemplating the clear morning sky, he fell into a meditative state. In that meditative state he had a vision and saw that he was lying lifeless in his hut at the ashram and that some bodiless spirits were carrying him away. They carried him very far away to a village and took the lifeless body of

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the rishi to the area where the chandalas lived. There they placed the body into a chandala's wife's womb.

Rishi Gadhi was quite perplexed as he saw all this standing in water.

"But am I not alive? I have come to the pond to wash myself. How did I ever get into a chandala's wife's womb?"

He saw that the chandala's wife soon gave birth to a child. The child was dark like a chandala's son should be. He grew up and then one day he got married. He too had a couple of children. Then as he grew old, his wife and children all passed away. In deep sorrow the chandala wandered from place to place.

In the meanwhile the king of that kingdom died. The king's elephant was sent out on a mission. Who ever the elephant picked up would become the new king. The elephant picked up this chandala with his trunk and brought him to the royal court. The inhabitants of this kingdom accepted him as their king. He became known as the Gobol king.

Rishi Gadhi's vision continued. He now ruled as the Gobolking.

A long time went by.

One day, after removing his royal robes, the king was taking a walk out in the palace-gardens. Just then someone from that chandala village saw and recognised him. He called out :

"Hey chandala, what is this I see? You've become a king!" On hearing this the subjects began talking among themselves:

"Good Lord! We've been living on a chandala's mercy all this time! Our lives are soiled. Shame on us!"

To overcome their sorrow brought on by this realisation. they lit a fire and sacrificed themselves into it .

The Gobol king now thought that his living was quite pointless. So he too set himself on fire and ended his life.

Standing in the pond Rishi Gadhi started as he felt the heat of the fire. He dipped his head into the water once and walked back to the ashram. His strange vision continued to puzzle him :

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"I must have stayed in the water for a short while, he wondered, but in this short time I went through the myriad experiences of an entire life. I was born, grew up, got married, raised a family. They all died. Then I became a king and ruled for quite some time. All this within the span of a few seconds."

And thinking these thoughts Rishi Gadhi arrived in his ashram and sat down in his hut .

Just then a guest turned up at the ashram. He said to Rishi Gadhi :

"O Sage, I'm exhausted by my journey. I was returning from after performing the Chandrayan penance. I had gone to the Kir kingdom, where a chandala king was the ruler. Eight years ago he burnt himself to death. All his subjects, ministers, prime minister died in the same way too. It was to cancel that evil out that I had gone to Prayag to perform the Chandrayan penance."

Rishi Gadhi thought:

"How amazing! All that I experienced in the pond was not my imagination after all. It was indeed all very real. Events that had happened eight years earlier."

And the sage decided to go to this kingdom and see for himself.

So then one day the sage went to this kingdom. He saw that chandala village, its now familiar atmosphere, the chandala of life, all the inhabitants of the village, the known pathways and dwellings. He even recognised one of the villagers and asked him about that particular chandala. The villager answered:

"Yes, O Sage. That chandala later became a king. The king's elephant chose and picked him up to make him king. And eight years ago he burnt himself to death."

When Rishi Gadhi heard this he was dumbstruck. How could this have happened? He was still glowing with life. How could he have lived simultaneously and within such short span of time such a long life?

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So Rishi Gadhi went to his guru and put the question before him:

"What does this mean? Was all this illusory and a mental hallucination or was it a real fact, was it all false or true?"

Gadhi's guru explained:

"What you take for illusion has three levels of reality, the occult, the spiritual and the psychic. These different levels co-exist with this gross, earthly level. There is the spiritual plane and, deeper than this is the plane of consciousness and then the manifested planes. Human beings can station themselves on any of these three worlds, they can also have experiences or realisations at all these three levels at the same time. Man can station himself in all the three worlds together."'

When he heard this, Dada remarked:

'This is what in modern scientific language could be called the split-personality. The occult, the spiritual and the psychic are three levels of reality. All the three are real in their own way.'

Someone then asked:

'But in your story, Dada, the Huntley Palmer biscuits given by the Englishwoman, the clothes given by her to the boys, these didn't vanish like the spectral scene. Even after coming back to consciousness, the boys still had those clothes anthem and those biscuits they had eaten so happily. Similarly that doctor who had died in the accident, the bandages he tied, his prescription, letter-paper etc. were all real too. How can things given by a ghost be real?'

Someone answered:

'Why can't they be real? Things do materialise from the occult plane into the physical. Swami Vishuddhananda, Pundit Goliath Caviar's guru from Kasha, used to do this frequently. Goliath Caviar has himself written about this. Such things are quite common. At one time in the "Guesthouse", stones began to fall through a door and window into the kitchen that used to be in the veranda in front fore Aurobindo's room. A manservant had got an occultist to

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do this. Then the Mother intervened and stopped it. She put an end to his black magic. This incident is quite well-known.'

Then Dada mentioned:

'This reminds me of an incident from my childhood. There was once a large gathering of sadhus for a meal on the bank of the Ganga in Behrampur. A lot of sadhus had turned up for this meal. Among them was one who could grant you whatever you asked for by stretching his hand into the space above his head.

A boy from Behrampur named Santorum went to see this sadhu.

"What do you want," the sadhu enquired.

"A ripe mango," Santorum replied.

It was wintertime then and not the season for mangoes. The sadhu extended his hand into the empty space above his head and brought down a big ripe mango and gave it to him.

Immediately Santorum sank his teeth into this mango and began sucking it. It was a very sweet tree-ripened mango.

"Let me go and show it to my mother," Santorum thought to himself. And so sucking his mango he headed home.

What astonished him was that as soon as he crossed the. threshold of the house and got inside, the mango vanished into thin air.

We do not have any clue about the many such subtle, spiritual, inner worlds with their different levels, different planes of manifestation.'

While we were talking about all this Dada referred to recent experience of his. It happened some time before he had his last heart-problem.

'It was the 41 of December at about seven in the evening. Was sitting in my room. All of a sudden my eye was attracted to the wall in front of my room. I saw a huge revolving globe. All the countries and continents on the globe emerged from it and began circling around the globe. As if floating on water. Gradually they began circling one by one like in a geometric

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design. I felt as if I was witnessing the unity in diversity of the entire world.

The very next instant I saw before me a huge sand dune, a vast expanse of sand, somewhere by the sea, it seemed. At a distance, there was a single-storied house with a staircase in the front. Someone climbed up that staircase and went and stood on the covered terrace on the first floor.

Over the sands some people appeared, streaming in groups of young and old, boys and girls, men and women, children, a lot of army men too dressed in their battle fatigues, all walking towards this house. Each one of them held the Indian flag. Some people were coming by boat, some were walking, some were running. I kept seeing this for a long time. And with eyes wide awake. And even without my glasses it was all very clear. As at the cinema. And not as in one's sleep or imagination. I was seeing all this clearly before me. I would not have believed this to be possible had I not seen it myself.

The very next moment I see as if I am sitting in my room. The whole room is adorned with gold and pearls and diamonds and all kinds of precious gems. The curtains are like voiles of gold. The atmosphere in the house is very peaceful and pleasant.

Savitri and Vim aura were sitting in my room. I asked them:

"Can you see something?"

"Where, Dada? We can't see anything," they answered.

But I went on seeing everything clearly.

I now saw a lady dressed in white. She looked like a goddess. She came towards me and handed me a box beautifully encrusted with precious gems.

"What's inside?" I asked.

The woman did not utter a word. But I understood from her attitude that she had brought this gift for me.

I said:

"Only if I can use this for the-Mother and Sri Aurobindo's work will I take it."

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She silently and softly bowed her head in agreement. Then she placed that beautiful box in front of the Mother's and Sri Aurobindo's photos above me and bowed to them.

Then she stood on a somewhat raised platform in front, calm, poised, in a posture of unparalleled elegance and dignity, graceful and powerful. She held in her hand the Indian flag fluttering in the breeze. I felt I was seeing Mother India herself. She assured me that whatever might happen India's good was absolutely certain.

I saw some young boys and girls come and sit in front of me, some near my feet on the floor and some beside me. Some remained standing. A few boys came and sat on my left. I proceeded to stroke their backs affectionately but I could not feel their backs. I was just stroking vacant space.

The atmosphere in the room remained luminous, peaceful and filled with joy.

This continued till eight in the evening.

I kept seeing this and wondering at the same time:

What is all this that I can see? With eyes wide open and sitting?

At ten in the evening I saw another scene.

My room did not feel like mine. There was a river flowing at a distance. And its sloping embankments were very high .Beside this river stood a bamboo hut, a hut made of stripped bamboo.

I am lying on a bed in this room as in my own room.

People keep streaming in from the riverside in groups and everyone is carrying a gift of some sort. They are all offering these gifts to me. They are placing them on the floor. And the people keep coming. I do not quite know them but they are all very neatly and beautifully dressed. Their faces are glowing and they all look at me with great respect.

I could recognise only two people, Tinkari-da and Vasudha-ben, who entered my room drawing the curtain on the left side. Tinkari-da looked somewhat old but Vasudha-ben

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was dressed in neat, elegant clothes, her face was glowing and her hair was neatly plaited. She looked simply marvellous.

I then saw a fat, dark-complexioned man come and sit near my head . He too was carrying a gift-box. But he did not hand it to me nor did he say anything. He was weeping, weeping ceaselessly, so I asked him:

"Would you like to say something?"

The man does not answer but goes on weeping.

I asked again:

"What's wrong with you? Will you tell me?"

But the man keeps silent and goes on weeping.

A woman before me stretched her hand to give me some kind of an envelope. I stretched my arm to take it but she immediately withdrew her hand.

Then she stretched her arm out again with the envelope.

Once again just as I was about to take it she withdrew it.

The third time just as I caught the envelope it disappeared in my hand. The woman and that dark man also disappeared.

Then I see very near my bed a European lady standing with her back towards us. I am unable to see her face, just her back. In her hand she is holding a leather noose. There is a European man standing behind. He is looking furiously at the European woman as if he is against her idea. His look is one of anger at the woman. Neither of them, however, says anything.

For a long time both of them stood near my bed. The woman holding a noose in her hand with her back towards me and the man glaring at her.

They remained in this way for a long time.

Time rolled on and it was morning. The morning glow filled the four corners.

I got up and these two people melted away from in front of me like shadows.

I see I am sitting on my bed. Everything I saw was with eyes wide-awake. I felt as if the river at-the distance was Vaitarani. On the other side was the world beyond. I remained on this

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side. That fat, dark man who kept weeping was perhaps the "Man of Sorrow".'

As Dada ended, Ananda-da asked:

'Tell me, Dada, did you know at the time you were having this vision that this was a premonition of your heart-problem? Would you have resisted it in a spiritual way had you known about it?'

Dada replied:

'No, even if I had known I would not have done anything from my side. I leave it to the Mother. Whatever is Her wish, that will be. At all times, in all circumstances, this is my attitude.

However, when I go for an outing or in a car anywhere, I call the Mother and take Her protection, not just over myself but over the others as well.

Once Vishwajit was accompanying us to Cuddalore. There the road is very narrow. Two buses from opposite directions were standing next to each other. What Vishwajit did was rashly cycle between the two buses through the narrow pas sage. Had the two buses started off he would certainly have been crushed between them. So I began calling the Mother and asking for Her protection.

The buses did not move. And Vishwajit managed to get through that narrow passage. I felt relieved.

The two buses started just a second later. Had it happened earlier there would have been a disaster.

In any case, after I saw this vision, I had that problem on the 8th of December.

In the morning a little nagging pain started in my chest. I was quite alert as usual. I did some deep breathing and the pain subsided. The pain did not disappear altogether but it was now subdued.

The pain returned in the afternoon. It just would not go so I thought I should tell them. Otherwise it might be too late.

Hardly had I told Savitri this that everything fell astonishingly into place. All those who were needed came

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together, the doctor, the ambulance, some young men with a stretcher.

Within half an hour I was in the Nursing Home intensive care room.

The doctors checked my heartbeat. They seemed to be quite worried. I could see everything and feel everything. I was fully conscious.

The doctors were around me, Dr Jayaram, Dr Dilip, Dr Salila, Dr Gayatri.

At five o'clock in the evening they noticed on the monitoring machine that there was a blood-clot in my heart. And they dissolved it at once.

At seven in the evening my heartbeat stopped.

The doctors had just three minutes in hand. Whatever could be done had to be done within this time. If the heart remains still for more than three minutes then it becomes very difficult to save the patient.

Dr Salila fitted a machine onto my chest and got busy trying to give some electric shock therapy to the heart. A special gel has to be applied to the chest before giving this electric shock therapy. But they could not find that gel. So they used whatever they could find at hand and the machine was set to try and start the process. But as the machine had not been used for a long time it would not start.

One more attempt was made. Even then the machine did not start.

The heart was not beating during all this time. And the seconds were ticking by. Twenty-five, thirty seconds passed. The heart continued to be still.

Dr Salila and Dr Gayatri concentrated on the Mother in despair and then tried to start the machine as they had done previously. And this time the machine started. I felt the electric shock and a jerk on my chest.

As a result of the impact of that shock the heart started beating again. But I did not feel any pain and there was no fear or doubt in my mind.

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"So this is what they call death," I thought to myself. Dr Salila and Dr Gayatri began administering artificial respiration. This artificial respiration lasted continuously for half an hour.

At eleven at night they found out that the heart was not pumping as much as it normally should. Blood was not reaching all the blood-vessels in the brain. The blood was unable to circulate within the brain and kept returning to the heart. If this condition continued a little longer death would be certain. Medically this is known as pulmonary oedema. This continued for quite some time. Gradually I became drowsy. Perhaps I was given an injection. And then I was not conscious anymore.

I was told later that the heart began beating fully after a short while and the blood-flow into the brain became normal again.

Someone seems to have asked then:

"Doctor, what do you think?"

The doctors answered:

"We've done whatever we had to. Now it is between the Mother and Pranab."

Three weeks after this I came back from the Nursing Home.

The Mother had told me once:

"The heart never stops beating, it never takes any rest. If for some reason it stops once and then it resumes beating again it means the heart has got a new life. Then it can work harder and more powerfully."

I too think the same. I have received a new heart and a new life after this illness.

The Mother once told me:

"There are five ways of overcoming the fear of death. These five ways can be attained all together or one after the other. In the end all of them combine together and bring success."

First, the Mother said, we have to overcome the fear of death. This fear is embedded in our subconscious from our very birth. Everything will one day disappear, everything will vanish into an unknown, unconscious emptiness. Such is this

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fear. This fear has to be eliminated first with the help of the reason. We have to understand that life is an uninterrupted flow and that this flow never ends.

The second way: deep within our being there is a radiant light and this light is unwavering and steady. We have to unite with this immortal, indestructible light and radiance.

The third way is faith in the Divine and total surrender to Him.

The fourth way is to become a brave warrior. Through inner knowledge we have to know that death is nothing. It is nothing but a bad habit of the unconscious, material life. This habit has been encrusted into our mind, age after age, through various religious thought and collective attitudes. Different thoughts, sentiments and movements enter our being through the mind and take root in the depths from the surrounding collective or family environment. That is why like a true warrior we have to liberate ourselves fully from all this. We have to build a character that can bear all kinds of ordeals and is patient and firm. We have to understand that this is a battle. Like the fully awake, alert soldier who fights from his trench, our conscious ness too must battle tirelessly.

And the fifth way, according to the Mother, is to be rightly initiated after having acquired the complete knowledge of all the ways in order to penetrate the cave of death and to return from there alive, back into normal life and work and act effectively. This is not given to all. Only those who are trained and initiated in a special way are capable of this. I have told you about this only by way of information.

One person asked:

'Before your illness, Dada, the vision you had of Mother India, what did that tell you about India?'

Dada answered:

'India will continue to progress and improve. Whatever the Mother has said about India will come true. There is no other way. .

The Mother once wrote to me:

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(India must rise to the height of her mission and proclaim the Truth to the world.)

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(The effort to increase and enlighten the consciousness is the best way to serve the country.)

In 1969 when the political crisis in the country took place, the Mother offered some advice to Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister. The Mother gave me a copy of that as well. With the hope that they are pertinent I share these with you today:

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(Let India work for the future and take the lead. Thus she will recover her true place in the world.)

(Since long it was the habit to govern through division and opposition.

The time has come to govern through union, mutual understanding and collaboration.)

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(To find a collaborator, the value of the man is more important than the party to which he belongs.

The greatness of a country does not depend on the victory of a party, but on the union of all parties.)

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Once, the Mother wanted to give me a map of India.

I asked Her:

"Is this the map of undivided India?"

"No, this is a map of present-day India," the Mother replied.

"Let it be, Mother," I told Her. "I do not want it then. When you have a map of the undivided India then give me one."

The Mother then wrote a message to me:

(To Pranab

Never forget that you are not alone. The Divine is with you helping and guiding you. He is the companion who never fails, the friend whose love comforts and strengthens.)

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In 1947 when India attained Her independence the Mother gave a massage:

(To my dearest child, to my friend who is so close, with all my love.)'

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