At the feet of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo

Part - I

A story of long, long ago. It is half a century since I came to Sri Aurobindo, Pondicherry. Thenceforth I have been living in this hallowed place, the pilgrim-home of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo.

Myself and Dilip arrived here on 22nd November 1928. Till then many warring thoughts and feelings had crowded into my mind. But when I stepped into the Ashram, I saw that the mind had become quiet, free from fears and anxieties and was prepared to accept. I found myself gradually at home in the sacred precincts of the Ashram, though everything was still unfamiliar and strange. But the distance soon vanished and by the Grace of the Mother’s and Sri Aurobindo’s touch, a new world came to light which was reflected in the lives of the inmates. I perceived that a new consciousness was seeking an opportunity to be born at every instant.

Inspired by the unique teachings of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, my journey started leading through an unaccustomed path to an unknown world, gathering on the way various rich experiences and insights, as the consciousness opened itself to new horizons of mystic beauty and wonder. I could perceive clearly that many veils were being lifted, what had been obscure became lucid and an awareness of many things hidden before took shape.

On my arrival I thought there were altogether 60-70 inmates, the number of women being about 12 to 14. There were no children; but I noticed one or two teen-age girls, one of whom lived for some time in the same house where I had been given a room when I had first come. The great devotion I once saw in this small girl gave me a thrilled experience which I shall now narrate.

A few days after I had come, I obtained two photographs of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo in order to keep them in my room. I had a very beautiful photo frame with me; the Mother’s picture did not fit it, while Sri Aurobindo’s was all right in every way except that it was slightly taller. So without any qualms I cut off some portion of the lower part of it and fitted it into the frame. We often take such liberties in the case of friends and relatives and do not feel at all uneasy about it, but I did not realise that to put these friends’ and relatives’ photos on the same level as those of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo was a big error of inner perception. That is why I could pare off and throw into the dust-bin the image of the very feet we had come to adore! It was a photo, no doubt, but the photo of the Avatar’s feet!

That small girl came one day to my room and was very pleased to see Sri Aurobindo’s picture in that frame, but when she heard what I had done, she was startled and tears began to roll down her cheeks. With an anguished voice, she said, “How could you cut and throw away Sri Aurobindo’s feet?” I was stunned, gazed at her face and saw what love and devotion were shining there. I fathomed the gulf of difference between her and me. She opened my eyes that day.

All the inmates seemed to be preoccupied with their sadhana. There was a sincere awakening in them to prepare themselves for practising Sri Aurobindo’s yoga and an earnest effort was evident. Sadhana did not mean only meditation and concentration or the following of some special method. Work, activity, studies, etc., whatever one was doing, was done as a part of sadhana. Therefore each one pursued his own way in accord with his inner need and particular urge. There were no external rites and ceremonies to be observed in this sadhana and it did not depend on any fixed rules and methods. What it depended on was something else. When one came from outside, what one particularly felt at first was the atmosphere of the Ashram. It indicated the way in which the Ashram-life should proceed.

I had never before entered into such a concentrated hushed surrounding, nor had I experienced any touch of it. But it takes very little time to understand that the foundation of this life rests upon one who not only influences, penetrates and pervades the atmosphere, but even pulsates in the bosom of stillness. The entire rhythm of life flows in a single-pointed direction. All mind and life tend towards it: hardly any chatting or gossip, nor any sensational movement, no visits from people except on business. Silent consecration of oneself to the work in order to make it a flawless and harmonious achievement was evident in each one’s sincere effort.

Each member’s work was indeed a marvel. Could one work in this manner unless one deeply loved the Divine? The girl about whom I spoke was barely 14 years old and with what joy and ardour she was embroidering one sari after another for the Mother! Her perseverance was as endless as her fervour. Not only at saris did I see her doing this, but also at many other things. What she sewed with subtle artistry is a thing that even now is an object of admiration; even now people say, “No, it isn’t work, it is adoration of the Divine.”

As I am speaking of the early days of the Ashram, when I was a newcomer, and as I am painting the memory of those past days of my Ashram-life, let me first of all offer my heartfelt gratitude to one whose contact and companionship was at the root of my acceptance of the spiritual life. From him I received ever fresh inspiration, inner sympathy and encouragement to take up this life. Above all it was he who brought me to this life, and through him I got the supreme opportunity of accepting the Mother and Sri Aurobindo as my Gurus. To him, therefore, my whole life’s sincere pranam.

By “Ashram” is meant the building in which the Mother and Sri Aurobindo lived. This building consisted of four small and big houses. They were at first separate; when the Ashram was formed they were one by one bought and, after they had been broken, repaired, their parts joined here and there or doors made, they were welded into one large building. These houses occupying the four corners in a rectangular fashion were constituted into one whole structure, which we call the Ashram. More correctly, it is the main building of the Ashram.

When one enters here through the main gate, the two-storey building that first catches the eye, was the origin of what we call the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. In 1922 Sri Aurobindo and the Mother came to this house with some disciples. The Mother founded the Ashram while living in this house. Sri Aurobindo used to live on the first floor in the south-west part. On 24th November 1926, he attained the Realisation known as the Descent of the Overmind¹ and, leaving the entire charge to the Mother, he retired from that day into seclusion “obviously to work things out” as he wrote to Nirodbaran.

Later, when the house situated on the north-east corner of the Ashram was bought, they came to live there (somewhere at the beginning of February 1927). I saw them already installed there when I arrived. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo lived on the first floor and they gave darshan from a small room on the south-east side. The interviews with the Mother used to take place in this room.

Below, on the ground floor, Nolini² lived in one room, by the side of which was the room of Amrita³. Ambalal Purani⁴ had a room on the left side of the outer courtyard. Purani was once leader of the Gujarat youth movement. Pavitra⁵ (name given by Sri Aurobindo) lived in the upper storey of a building which was joined with the western side of the main building. His French name was Philippe Barbier de Saint-Hilaire. In one room below lived the Ashram engineer Chandulal⁶. There was a gate on the northern side through which the Mother used to go out for a motor drive for about 11/2 hours every evening. Pavitra was her driver. Most of the inmates used to gather at the gate to have the Mother’s Darshan. That house was later demolished and the present new one erected.

The “Library House” was the name given to the building in front of the main gate. I saw Anilbaran living in the room which Sri Aurobindo had once occupied. The Mother’s room on the north was now Champaklal’s. Since then we have been seeing Champaklal as the most devoted servant of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. The library was set up on the ground-floor, and in the adjacent room were kept newspapers spread on mats. It was named “Reading Room” and visited by the sadhaks in their leisure hours.

The front courtyard had a kind of shed where the milkmen brought their cows to be milked after the udders had been washed with potassium permanganate. The sadhak-supervisor of this work used, to filter this frothy milk through a clean piece of cloth (one cannot but wonder at the meticulous cleanliness and tidiness observed here in everything). The sadhak was named Dara by Sri Aurobindo. The affluent Mussulman family of Hyderabad to which he belonged had settled here a few months before me. There were three brothers, two sisters and their step-mother. They were very handsome people.

At the end of the large courtyard of the Library House was another house called by the Mother “Rosary House”.

You crossed a small yard to enter this house and on its left side was a thatched cottage — the Ashram kitchen. The maid-servants did the cooking and the sadhaks served the dishes. The sadhikas took up the cooking job a year or two after my arrival and I used to cook twice a week. The entire cooking work had to be done by oneself. No servants were available to help us. As I was a little liberal in the use of oil and ghee, Sri Aurobindo once jokingly said, “If Sahana were to cook, the Ashram would turn insolvent in three months.”

The sadhak who had the sole charge of the cooking and the Dining Room was named “Dyuman” by Sri Aurobindo, his former name having been Chunibhai. The marketing and other supplies were in his hand. He lived on the top floor of the Rosary House from where began the building which lodged the Mother and Sri Aurobindo.

I had my first Darshan in this house and all the Darshans were given in the same room where the Mother and Sri Aurobindo used to take their seat side by side. It would be futile to describe to a layman what Darshan was — what the Two gave and what we received. The last joint Darshan was on the 24th November 1950.

At the end of many changes, the present picture of the Ashram is something like this — a huge building with a large courtyard. At the centre of the courtyard and serving as the luminous heart of it is the Samadhi of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, the source of our very life-breath, a fountain of Shakti and inspiration. Their sacred relics, remnants of their earthly embodiments, are lying there.

There will they remain —

Soil one with the soil touching the earth
Bearing its burden as an act of benediction
So long as piercing the inmost armour
Of the darkest night,
Enters not the Light.

Years before the Mother was laid in the Samadhi, the nearby house in which she lived had one more storey erected for her own use.

At the time when I came, most of the houses were rented and very few bought. All of them were known by the names given by the Mother. The inmates lived distributed in them.

Three meals were served; in the morning, one big bowl of ‘phoscao’ — it tasted like ‘cocoa’ but more savoury, some pieces of toast and one banana. The Dining Room was a long thatched hall on the north-west of the Ashram building. Nolini was among those inmates who used to serve; he gave ‘phoscao’ and toast. At noon, we had rice, two curries or one curry and dal, sometimes khicheri with fritters, one big bowl of curd and two bananas, and bread, if wanted. For dinner, which was served early in the evening, we had bread, curry or dal and a big bowl of milk. Two or three days a week, a big bowl of ‘payesh’ (a kind of pudding) was given. Those who did not eat in the Dining Room had their meals sent with maid-servants to their respective rooms in an enamel dish covered with another dish. All the sadhikas ate at home.

On the first of every month, the Mother would distribute the necessary requirements of the inmates, such as soap, towel, gamcha, etc. Of course, a quantity or quota was fixed for each individual. Things were distributed from the same hall as is done now. The Mother would come in the afternoon and, after she had seated herself, the function started. The requirements of each individual were prettily arranged in a cardboard box. The inmates, proceeding in a file towards the Mother, would stand before her and accept their boxes. She would give Rs. 2 as our pocket money. Thus we received whatever we needed from the Mother herself.

Flowers have a unique place in the Ashram and the way of dealing with them is something new and excites our wonder. There is deep intimacy between them and our life. We have almost forgotten their common names and what we know is the name given by the Mother to each flower according to its inner vibration — its spiritual meaning. For instance, the meaning of tulsi is “devotion” and we know it as such and have offered it to the Mother as “devotion”; we have forgotten the other name. Similarly with shephali. To the Mother it is “aspiration” and to us it is the same. Thus all flowers are known to us by their inner significances. In all countries the flower is a part of religious ceremonies and offered in worship to God. But here it is much more, it has been the language of our inner communication with the Mother. How often have we not intimated our heart’s yearning through the flowers and received her blessings and directions through them!

Every morning our life began with pranam to the Mother and her blessings. She came down at about 6 a.m. to give blessings and took her seat in the room now occupied by Bula, head of the Electric Department. A slightly elevated wooden pedestal, covered with a velvet cushion formed her seat, and by her side stood a large dish containing various flowers. We waited outside and when she had sat down we entered one by one and bowed at her feet. She placed her right hand on our heads and then gave flowers, after which we came away. All this giving and receiving took place in utter but eloquent silence. Some people meditated in the room as long as the Mother stayed there.

At that time we lived always in an atmosphere in which we felt as if life were an integral part of something which never allowed us to forget why we had come here. The taste, the touch it brought, opened as it were a new horizon, gave a new turn and changed our outlook on life. Everything was bathed in a new light. Life had awakened in a new dream, an inner springtide.

Every evening, at 8 p.m., what was called the Soup Distribution Ceremony took place. It was held daily in the present large Reception Hall facing the main entrance of the Ashram. The Mother used to distribute the soup to all inmates. She would come and sit in a chair situated on a low pedestal at the centre of the eastern wail. One dim light was kept burning and all others were put out. The Hall was bathed in an atmosphere as pure as it was deep and intense. A large vessel containing the soup was put on a wooden stool in front of her. She would stretch out her two hands over the vessel and concentrate awhile, invoking Sri Aurobindo’s force. Then the distribution would begin. Each sadhak meditating in his place allotted by the Mother would now get up in turn and approach her, carrying a cup in his hand. She would fill the cup offered to her with soup, take a sip from it and give it back to him. Then he would slowly come out of the Hall. The ceremony would last more than an hour and a profound silence charged with an intense inner glow was maintained all through.

In that dim light it felt as if a glimpse of a new world, the reflection of a higher being, had fallen upon the consciousness and was spreading itself. Some other influence than the earthly became dense and perceptible. The inner and outer parts seemed to get crystallised in that condensed stillness and one’s identity started fading away. I could not perceive where I was or where I had entered — unknown, unheard-of perceptions of the inner world would become distinct. Amidst all these things the Mother looked wonderfully charming and manifested divine moods. Her eyes did not appear at all like human eyes. And what a look. Piercing the bodily armour it could reach the innermost part, and see its very core. And her smile had no parallel, it cannot be compared either. She very often kept holding in her hand the soup-cup in a state of immobile trance. Then, as she returned to her physical consciousness, the distribution would begin again in an easy natural manner — as if nothing had happened in the interval.

Soon after my arrival I was permitted to see the Mother once a week, and once a week she came to my room and sanctified it with the touch of her feet. My book of life was filled with her instructions during this time. With what care she taught us how to take every step, to observe, and to look within! She gave me the force to know myself, to choose the right thing from among a confused heap of falsehoods. Our whole life she cast into a new mould to prepare it for a divine life, a new birth of consciousness, an inner life. Nolini had written to me before I came to the Ashram, “Here the resources of ordinary life will be of no use at all.” Its meaning became gradually clear to me.

The Mother visited our house on her way to her evening-drive. We used to see her in the morning. On Sunday evenings she went to Dilip’s house where an English lady from London, named Miss Maitland, was also accommodated. She had come to spend six months in the Ashram — she used to attend the Sunday meetings and ask the Mother whatever questions she had and get replies from her. Besides Maitland the group was made up of Nolini, Doraiswamy Iyyer (a Madras-advocate then visiting the Ashram every week-end), the American Vaun Macpheeters and his wife Jeanette (renamed Shantimayi here), Pavitra, Dilip and myself. The Mother started with a meditation, sometimes on a particular topic, and enquired at the end of the meditation what its result was in each individual. Then followed questions and answers, which were recorded in shorthand by Shantimayi. This phase began on 7th April 1929 and lasted fifteen weeks. All the questions and answers running into fifteen chapters were published in 1931 in book-form under the title Conversations with the Mother. It was not meant for sale but for free distribution by the Mother to the sadhaks. Later, it was available for sale. Since then many conversations of the Mother have come out in parts known as Talks of the Mother. In Dilip’s house was the origin of such conversations. One was lost in wonder at the incandescent touch of the Mother’s fathomless wisdom.

The Mother used to take some of us by turns once a week for a motor-drive in the afternoon. The lucky ones were Doraiswamy, Nolini, Chadwick, Dilip and myself. Chadwick, an Englishman, came to India as a professor of Mathematical Logic in Lucknow University. Subsequently he became Sri Aurobindo’s disciple and came away to Pondicherry after I had arrived. Sri Aurobindo gave him the name ‘Arjavananda’ — in short, Arjava. The Mother’s car was driven by Pavitra, Doraiswamy sat by his side while we followed this car in a small Fiat. We visited many places far away. Pavitra seemed to know where to go, where to stop, which direction to take. A great experience it was to be with the Mother, the atmosphere changing everywhere as it were by itself.

When the car stopped, the Mother got down first, then the others. As she walked on, we followed her. It seemed all the paths and byways were familiar to her. After we had walked some distance, she would sit in a place of her choice and we took our places around, very close to her. To sit so near to her in an open space where nature was so charmingly beautiful was an unimaginable delight. She had brought with her some French lozenges and gave one to each of us.

One day a villager brought, wrapped in banana leaves, some palm fruits plucked and peeled from a nearby tree and offered them to the Mother. She asked us if we would take them. Dilip and myself picked up two fruits. Another day, when we had comfortably seated ourselves in a place, we noticed a hideous insect crawling towards us. We felt naturally very uneasy and fidgety. Our attention and gaze were glued on it and all were ready to get up at the least sign. But Mother remained unperturbed and slowly moved the insect out of the way. She was not pleased at all with our being so easily disturbed. She and Sri Aurobindo never approved of fear of any kind. It was very harmful to our sadhana, they maintained. Sri Aurobindo once wrote to me, “All fear ought to be cast out.”

On 18 October 1931 the Mother fell seriously ill and for one month we could not see her. We were extremely dejected. The day when she came down to give us blessings again was a most happy one; we felt the same as on seeing Sri Aurobindo on darshan days. This delight is beyond description; its nature, its stuff is of a special order. Such things belong to another domain than the earth and come from there. The Ashram-life went through a lot of change after this illness. The Mother used to come a little late in the morning for our pranam which was now held in the hall in front of Amrita’s room. The pranam continued till 12. Her evening drive, her visit to sadhaks’ houses, the soup-distribution, etc. — all these stopped for good. Once or twice, however, we had a glimpse of her when she passed from one house to another within the main Ashram block. In 1946, the Mother again began to come out where exercises and games had started in the Ashram. She used to visit regularly the Playground to make the activities run smoothly. After her illness in 1931, we visited her only when we were called. There was no hard and fast rule about it. The Mother’s illness was quite a different thing from what we call illness. Sri Aurobindo wrote about it in answer to a sadhak’s query:

“I have not yet said anything about the Mother’s illness because to do so would have needed a long consideration of what those who are at the centre of a work like this have to be, what they have to take upon themselves of human or terrestrial nature and its limitations and how much they have to bear of the difficulties of transformation. All that is not only difficult in itself for the mind to understand but difficult for me to write in such a way as to bring it home to those who have not our consciousness or experience. I suppose it is to be written but I have not yet found the necessary form or the necessary leisure.”

(19 December 1931)

One can have some rough idea of the true nature of the Mother’s illness when one reads her Prayer of 24 November of the same year from her book, Prayers and Meditations, in the light of this illness. Let me quote it:

November 24, 1931
O My Lord, my sweet Master, for the accomplishment of Thy work I have sunk down into the unfathomable depths of Matter, I have touched with my finger the horror of the falsehood and the inconscience, I have reached the seat of oblivion and a supreme obscurity. But in my heart was the Remembrance, from my heart there leaped the call which could arrive to Thee: “Lord, Lord, everywhere Thy enemies appear triumphant; falsehood is the monarch of the world; life without Thee is a death, a perpetual hell; doubt has usurped the place of Hope and revolt has pushed out Submission; Faith is spent, Gratitude is not born; blind passions and murderous instincts and a guilty weakness have covered and stifled Thy Sweet Law of Love. Lord, wilt Thou permit Thy enemies to prevail, falsehood and ugliness and suffering to triumph? Lord, give the command to conquer and victory will be there. I know we are unworthy, I know the world is not yet ready. But I cry to Thee with an absolute faith in Thy Grace and I know that Thy Grace will save.”

Thus my prayer rushed up towards Thee; and, from the depths of the abyss, I beheld Thee in Thy radiant splendour; Thou didst appear and Thou saidst to me: “Lose not courage, be firm, be confident, — I COME.”

A few days after my arrival, I got permission to cook for the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. There was then no separate kitchen for them. With the Mother’s permission the inmates would cook something at their homes, some every day, others on two days or once a week and so on, again without any rigidly fixed rules. Neither was there any direction given to us how to cook (of course, it was all vegetarian diet).

Whatever was prepared with devotion was acceptable to them, they ate very little. However, I used to cook twice a week. What a joy it was! I would also now and then go to the Mother to learn something about cooking and she would tell me quite readily, especially when I wanted to prepare some French dish. We knew their usual meal-time and we would accordingly carry our food-offerings on a tray and leave them at a particular place meant for them or give them into Champaklal’s hands. In the evening we brought back the dishes and partook of the prasad left for us.

Another English lady, Dorothy Hodgson, known as “Datta” (the name given by Sri Aurobindo), occasionally carried the dishes. She was said to have lived with the Mother in Europe for some time and had travelled to many places with her. She gave us the impression of a pure white flower dedicated at the feet of the Divine.

All the sadhaks and sadhikas lived in separate rooms in small houses. Each one had a cot, a table, a chair and a clothes-rack, and each had a servant for an hour or two. That was sufficient, for nobody cooked at home except for tea which they prepared on their stoves. The tea leaves were supplied according to the fixed quota, as was done with all other things.

The life in the Ashram often made me feel how few were our real needs and to what proportions had we swollen them. The inconvenience that we feel is indeed of the mind not of the body and, when we want to ignore it, it is usually the mind that protests. I did find at the beginning some difficulty in adjusting myself to the limited measure allowed but the Mother’s Grace soon made me see from where came the so-called objections. Much had I thought of hard austerities regarding sadhana before coming here, but found that the way of sadhana here was not at all one of that type. No one needed to follow that difficult path.

In order that we might give ourselves fully to the Divine, the Mother had provided for all our needs and we had not to worry about anything. I realised after a few days’ stay that the Mother and Sri Aurobindo did not of themselves speak to the sadhaks about sadhana nor did they give any direction. For, instead of an outer explanation, they relied more upon an inner help by virtue of which the sadhak could develop a power of understanding from within. Sri Aurobindo emphasises more an inner growth, a development of consciousness. When, however, the sadhaks under trying situations wanted to know something definite, the answers were given according to the urgency or importance of the inner demand. Sri Aurobindo would answer in letters, the Mother in various subtle ways.

One could see the Mother whenever there was a need. She spent about four hours daily for the interviews. Some she would call every day, or once or twice a week, once in two weeks or even a month. During those days one could talk about one’s sadhana or work and get the Mother’s answers. Many a time she made her meaning clear through her looks and not through any speech. Sometimes, though one had gone to her with a problem the Mother started meditating with one, keeping her hand on one’s head; the question was now totally forgotten and the being was brimmed to the full with an unearthly reward. The Mother wrote letters too to a few. But our Gurus’ ways of communication was specially through silence, and their help and guidance, their abundant grace were constantly with us, whether we knew it or not. Our rhythm and view of life had therefore changed considerably. We could see things from a different angle, in a different perspective. A radical change of man’s consciousness and its transformation by the descent of the Supermind was the mission the Mother and Sri Aurobindo had come to fulfil. That is the purpose of the Yoga. They took us forward almost by holding our hands not counting any difficulty, however colossal it might be, or avoiding any struggle and suffering, however painful. When they had to deal with the three dimensions of heaven, earth and the abyss, even a grain of sand was not too small for them. It is for this reason that they have accepted us, insignificant as we are, and spared no pains. Otherwise who will consider our life worth so much? Once Sri Aurobindo wrote to me:

“We mind no trouble so long as we can carry you farther and farther on the path of transformation. Let the greater consciousness, the vastness and the peace grow in you and the psychic liberated from these veils flood you with the divine love and the soul’s happiness. We shall certainly concentrate our endeavour to help you towards that.”

I had a bent towards meditation. I was not attracted by the gospel of work nor did I understand its place or need in Sadhana. But gradually the necessity of work made itself felt and I came to see that the radical change and transformation of Nature which was the Mother’s and Sri Aurobindo’s primary aim could not be achieved except through work. What I found on my arrival was that everyone was busy with his appointed work. I too took my plunge and the spiritual result, I perceived, was no less from work than from meditation. Of course the work had to be the Gita’s dedicated work. As I proceeded with quite an inner joy, a trouble surfaced. It brought a mood of meditation which interrupted the course of the work and I could not but meditate. Not only so, I dived so deep inside that the work was forgotten. But that was not a true attitude, I felt. So I wrote to the Mother to clear my doubt. She wrote: “...when you are at work, it is always better to remain fully aware of your body and its action. With my love and blessings”.

The Mother and Sri Aurobindo say that all depends on the attitude. I understood my mistake. Afterwards they made me feel in various ways what is the attitude with which I should do work. Even while working, every moment should be an act of worship, a meditation on the Mother, and from it will come knowledge — fine, flawless, well-organised and desirable work dedicated to the Mother should be our sadhana of self-offering. This was the object of work.

I remember an instance. I had brought a sewing machine with me; whatever little sewing-work was done I did on it. The Mother wanted occasionally the machine to be used for some special work. I had a mental fear that perhaps I would be asked to take charge of sewing in the Ashram. And that was what actually happened. A new department to deal with the dresses of women-disciples was opened and I was given charge of it. What a joke! I knew nothing of cutting, measuring, etc. I somehow had managed to get through odd jobs at home and that too purely for fun. When now the work had seriously fallen upon me, I began to ponder how to do it. Well, in spite of my lack of skill, the work proceeded smoothly. A few young sadhikas joined the department. As the work began to multiply so did the workers. And not only did I find a rasa (joy) in it, but I also developed gradually an attraction to it. When the work I did not fancy came from the Mother herself, it changed its aspect. Now it was no longer a question of like or dislike and it grew into a thing after my own heart.

Since 1931 I had quite often written letters to Sri Aurobindo. The correspondence started from 1930 and became regular from 1932 till 1938, the year of his accident. I expressed in these letters in detail all about my inner condition and movement of Sadhana, since he wanted it so. He wrote, “It is absolutely necessary to write everything freely and write daily.” So everything good and bad had to be written. The mind was not always willing to do so, it looked for many pretexts and means by which it could avoid telling the whole truth and let him know just what was convenient to me: in short, only a partial truth. I wondered at the way the mind played no end of tricks and ruses with itself in my being. The letters were addressed to the Mother in both Bengali and English. But it was Sri Aurobindo who replied to them in English. Very rarely he wrote a few lines in Bengali. Most interesting it was to observe that, though the mind was reluctant to write, yet when I finished, whatever I had to write had come through, nothing was kept back. It was as if someone had propelled me from behind. One day, I was extremely unwilling to write and I knew that I should not encourage this reluctance, still I simply wrote: “Today I feel no inclination to write.” Sri Aurobindo sent back not a word in reply except simply three big signs of exclamation (!!!) in the margin of my letter. I did not know what to make of it — to laugh or to weep. Another amusing incident: I had a strong desire to eat one or two things — it was uncontrollable. The mind was actively working as to how to satisfy the desire. Finally I wrote: “Mother, today I am feeling somewhat greedy. Do you know what it is about? Eggs, lobster and tin-sardine. Terribly greedy, Mother. Either remove this desire or give me permission to eat and protection at the same time.” Next day, the reply came from Sri Aurobindo:

“Certainly not! You can eat up your desire — that is the only fish or flesh that can be given to you! It is simply an old samskara rising from the subconscient — these things have never to be indulged, they rise in order to be dismissed.”

Satire, enlivened with laughter! But, strangely enough, I noticed that just after writing my letter, my desire had vanished and in its place reigned a pure joy and contentment. I got the first taste of joy that comes when one abstains from indulging a desire. I had read somewhere some lines written by Nolini to the same effect. They now glowed intensely in my mind: “When you grant me a vital desire I am not pleased, your granting shows that the vital is still unprepared to forgo its food. But when you withhold from me an earthly satisfaction, a secret ease and joy flow into me, by this sign I feel I am ready for the Delight that is yours.”

While writing to Sri Aurobindo, I felt very often that I could not express myself precisely in English. I would then use Bengali terms at places and ask him their English equivalents. Sri Aurobindo would put their English renderings on the top of the Bengali expressions. I give here some tokens of his exquisite translations — rather to demonstrate his love and grace flowing through these translations.

I wrote: “Let me grow into the true consciousness and the veil of darkness that still keeps you separate from me drop down and with your light let my temple become...” Then I continued in Bengali which Sri Aurobindo translated thus: “a-gleam with light and radiant and may the downpour of the rays of the Light remove all veil of division in me and may I find you within me in your self-revelation.”

Another of Sri Aurobindo’s English translations: “I feel now the inexpressible sweetness of that which is beyond description forming between you and me. It is such a satisfying experience.”

I wrote the following in English: except for the words which Sri Aurobindo translated by “hushed and solitary” and after which he continued with a further expression: “Today also I cherish the same feeling within myself. I am feeling as quiet inwardly as if the main gate of a passage which was always busy with a crowd of all sorts of demands and cravings, etc., is closed, or the passage has become hushed and solitary without the excited crowd, that is to say the footsteps of the crowd are heard no more.”

At one time the Mother climbed daily to the terrace and spent some time there. I wrote to her one day’s incident:

“Recently I notice that before you go down from the terrace in the evenings you stand for a longer time and I feel just at the time that you give us something especially, so I also concentrate to receive and feel what you give, but this evening suddenly I saw your physical body had disappeared, there was no sign of it! Then again in a few seconds your figure reappeared.” The last portion of my letter was in Bengali. It began with “I felt at that moment...” Sri Aurobindo translated the rest: “You mixed with the sky (ether) and became one with all things.”

Apropos of a letter of mine on 28.8.1932, Sri Aurobindo wrote:

“The Mother makes an invocation or aspiration and stands till the movement is over. Yesterday she passed for some time beyond the sense of body and it is perhaps this that made you see in that way.”

When there were mistakes in English in my letters Sri Aurobindo used to correct them on my own insistence. Though he was so short of time, he yet did it without the least murmur of annoyance or unwillingness. In an unstinted measure he poured his grace. Now I cannot but repent for the unnecessary trouble people like me gave him just to get some selfish satisfaction.

In September 1930 my eldest sister Amiya came from Burma to visit the Ashram with her two sons Bula and Kunal. A house was hired for them for three months on the sea-shore. I recollect the Mother’s going to see the house, walking by the sea-shore from Dilip’s house. We were with her. When my other elder sister arrived, the Mother went there twice at their request. After three months, when she heard that they had to go back she said: “It is a pity that they are going.”

When the date for their departure was fixed, the Mother went one day to their house and, standing before a window, looked for a while towards the sea and said, “It is better not to be on the sea now.”

Amiya was in a fix. Then the Mother herself asked her to go back after 18th January, but on learning that their house’s three months’ lease was at an end, she arranged to shift them to an Ashram house. Amiya shared my room. I was then living on the first floor of what is at the present ‘Huta House’. Bula and Kunal were kept upstairs in the ‘Guest House’ (now called ‘Dortoir’).

I remember what a terribly stormy sea (in fact, due to a cyclone) it was on the day when, according to the previous decision, they should have been on the sea! And the Mother’s prevision! It was a frightful experience: trees were crashing, houses were tumbling down, their roofs blown away, doors and windows flung open by the blast and we were struggling in vain to shut them. What a calamity! I had not seen such a wild storm before. When it stopped Nolini and Amrita came to Amiya’s house on the sea-side (they were still there), wrapped up in blankets. I was at Dilip’s house when the storm threatened. I had just come out into the street to reach home in time and was caught as I tried to advance, the fury of the air-currents swept and hurled one back towards the sea as if my body was a piece of straw. I narrowly escaped a watery grave. As I reached home, I felt I had passed through a crisis. Later on, we heard that during that fierce upheaval Sri Aurobindo’s windows were all open and he was absorbed in doing his own work. Not a drop of rain had come inside!

Amiya and her children returned to Burma after receiving the Mother’s blessings on 18th January, as had been suggested by her. They came back the next January along with my second sister Nolina. This time to the Mother accommodated them in an Ashram-rented house (next to our press) called “Budi House” by the sea-side. In April my third sister Aruna came with her sons Ashok and Deval and was put up in the same house. After a few months all of them were transferred to another rented house very near the Ashram, which is now the Jhunjhun Boarding. A very remarkable feature of this time was the occasional visits of Nolini and Amrita at the special request of my sisters. We used to hear from them stories of the early Ashram life, about the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, and about themselves, where they had stayed at first, how they had come to the Ashram and what relation was theirs with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and many anecdotes and humorous incidents.

It was Nolini who first told us about Sri Aurobindo’s departure from the Ganges’ ferry at Calcutta for Chandannagore. How we laughed when he narrated the story of how the pigtail of Amrita who was a Brahmin’s son had been sheared off. Then the incident of the mischief caused by evil spirits in the Guest House (where Sri Aurobindo lived). Some stones were thrown into the courtyard, they fell even inside the rooms though all doors and windows were shut. So sensational were these stories that we listened with almost bated breath. At times Nolini would talk about the fiery old days — the historical event in the Muraripukur house, the search by the Police, the trial-episode in the court, the famous revolver episode, the assassination of the approver Noren Goswami in the jail, the jail-life in Sri Aurobindo’s company and many stories connected with it. All these were new to us and we heard them as if they were extracts from a novel.

Another small incident is still fresh in my mind. I was sitting in my room; someone came and delivered an envelope. It was a tiny letter of a few lines from the Mother. Though small, the letter contained a treasure which could not be measured by any human standard. I was lost in wonder: to think that amidst her thousand occupations she could remember my sister’s children and find time to send a letter though they had come only for a temporary stay. She wrote:

“Sahana,

Pavitra is taking out the car this afternoon. I thought that Aruna and her two children might like to go for a drive. It seems to me that Kunal can go also; he is quite strong enough now for the drive to do him good.

Will you inform them that Pavitra will be at their house with the car at 4.30?”

(21 May 1932)

How happy the children were and the sisters were almost in tears. They had tasted a joy which was divine!

When I had arrived at the Ashram I had seen the Mother giving the New-Year blessings at midnight. It was a unique experience to go and see her during that hour. The quiet, still and meditative night created the same inner mood in us and our little human form would get merged in the limitless expanse of the living darkness. The Infinite, the Eternal would become a more and more vivid contact. In due time we climbed up the steps very slowly and softly, aware of the new birth the Mother would confer on us at our auspicious meeting. On the last step, as we turned to the right, the Mother’s figure came into view sitting upright in a chair. Only the profile of her face could be seen in the light of the single dim reddish lamp and we felt as if we had stepped into a dream-world. The intense silence of the night had become more intense there and the Mother’s face shone like the first glimmering of dawn. Words fail to express the extraordinary impression our souls received from the divine beauty of that inscrutable face and, when after receiving her blessings, we would get up, her victorious smile would fill our hearts with a joy beyond any comparison. Some fruit like an orange or a piece of chocolate she would put into our hands. Whatever she gave carried with it an inner means for going forward, and a touch that broke the spell of ignorance. Her look, her smile, her touch — everything brought to us our souls’ nourishment. For three years we were blest with this New-Year gift.

Then in 1931 she fell ill, after which she started giving the New-Year blessing in another way. That was also a unique experience and it evokes a thrill in our being in the very cells even when we think of it. We used to gather before Nolini’s courtyard at midnight to receive the Mother’s blessings, all of us in a meditative mood which was then quite usual. We had gone deep within when suddenly the sound of her organ-music pealed through the dark night and reached us like a burst of sparkling light, awaking all senses. Along with it, came floating her own song. Words are mute before the enchanting spell created by her wonderful voice and its power. One felt as if the full-throated solemn voice was rising from a deep bass and its vibration carried aloft our consciousness somewhere and drew out the inner being to the surface. Nothing can express the strange ecstasy of that experience. When the song and music had stopped, we went to her one by one and returned with her blessings and some fruits or sweets. We saw her sitting in the same way as before in the dim light, keeping open the gates of another world.

We heard her sing once or twice, but several times her organ-music. Whoever heard this music played at night knows what it is. We used to wait on tiptoe for that night. She never played from music-books or other composers’ pieces. She used to sit with closed eyes before the organ and played whatever came through. Nobody would believe that it was her own improvisation and not a copy from other musicians. There was never the slightest flaw in the harmony. After 1938, the year of Sri Aurobindo’s accident, she used to play in Pavitra’s room and the night-ceremony had stopped, for what reason I don’t remember now except that at 6 a.m. she would stand in the small passage at the top of the main staircase and many of us would go to see her. She wished us “Bonne annee” in French and we repeated the same in reply. She gave us some green leaves called ‘New Birth’ by way of blessings. This “New Birth’ and special blessings were also given by her on 24th December, for Christmas Day.

I took up embroidery work and started making a screen for the big door of the Mother’s room. Sanjiban, a fine artist of the Ashram, had prepared the design according to her instructions. All the houses of the French Regime had very large doors and windows. For one of those doors I was preparing a huge screen which would hang down to the floor as we find in drawing-rooms. Since some embroidery work had to be done upon the screen, I went to see the Mother to receive instructions about it. She, after a moment’s silence, asked, “Maurice Magre will be paying a visit to the Ashram. Can you finish the screen before he comes? You have still three months.” I replied with gusto, “Certainly, Mother, I can.” She was pleased and blessed me. With much joy I did pranam at her feet and received, along with her blessing, a big red rose, signifying “All human passion turned into love for the Divine.” I returned with the firm resolve that I must fulfil my promise. I surmised that if I had to do it I must work eleven to twelve hours a day. I started in right earnest. It was a great surprise that I never felt tired in the least after working at a stretch for many hours. Since the mind dwelt in the Mother’s consciousness it brought deep concentration, and joy in the work, especially because I was fulfilling the Mother’s wish.

Let me give a little description of the detailed work upon the screen, so that one may appreciate it fully. First, one sees a part of a huge trunk of a tree against the body of the screen; thick branches stem out of it, mounting upwards, and on the top of one of the branches a white peacock is seated and looks downwards, while another white peacock perched below gazes at the upper one, stretching his neck. Each peacock is as big as a well-developed Bengali girl. Sanjiban’s design was superb. I felt distinctly during the work where the flow of energy came from, abolishing all sense of fatigue. Not only so, I had spiritual perceptions of many kinds. I finished the screen in time and went to see the Mother. With close scrutiny and visible pleasure she examined all the details of the work. Her joy seemed to be much more than mine. Here was a new experience for me. I do not remember to have seen anyone who took so much interest, appraise the value and appreciate in this manner. I spread the whole screen on the floor and the Mother looked and looked, her face beaming, and then she said in French, “Oh, ça, c’est magnifique!” I felt my cup was full. Even now that screen is hung in Sri Aurobindo’s room on each November-Darshan day. One has to see it in order to believe that something made fifty years ago could be preserved with so much care. What should have worn out fold by fold remains intact in all its splendour. This is how, I thought in wonder, the Mother transmutes our offering of brass into gold.

Now I shall relate two strange dreams of mine. They were so clear and distinct that I took them to be more than dreams. Whatever significance they had for me, I communicated it to the Mother. The first dream:

“I saw from inside a room the sea coming near the house and then beginning to swell into huge mountains. If these terrifying surges broke, I felt the entire town, at least myself, would be swept away. But death being so near could not frighten or disturb me at all. I felt somewhere quite secure and well-protected by an armour. Even if the waves surged in a flood, they would pass over my house and I would remain unhurt — that was my feeling. So I could quietly watch the waves from inside my closed windows. Now they came in rapid succession and burst into a vast sheet of water and then the flood rushed far beyond my house. I saw this deluge like a witness and was in no way involved in it. And what I called my house was not really so. When the flood had stopped and the water had drawn back, I began to inspect the outside and noticed that some portion of the house had crumbled down and a new building was coming up from within. I reflected, amazed, ‘Oh, I did not know that a new house was being built from inside the old one. As the wall is broken down in parts, I can see the new foundation.’

“I was observing closely and found it very strange and could not but admire the new method of construction. I went inside the house and when I came out, the entire old house seemed to have tumbled down and in its place stood a house with a different design, made of quite other materials.

“I have interpreted the dream in this way. In the first part, I felt completely safe in the midst of danger, because I lived under your protection. The danger, not being able to make any dent on the fort, has passed over. I remained safe and sound. Would it mean that the flood of desires comes to carry us away, but if we live in our true being, guarded by the Divine, it passes without touching us and we can witness the dance of the stormy surges in a detached manner? This was the meaning I could gather from the first part of the dream. About the second part it was like this: the old house in which I lived was my external being with its old nature. From the very bottom of this old nature you had started building a new nature. We do not notice the new construction because we are not sufficiently conscious of the Divine’s work, so that when the veil of darkness is partly dropped (corresponding to the partial collapse of the house), we become conscious of it. And with the growth of the consciousness, the light increases and finally is revealed the transformed being in the true light of the developed awareness. The new house is the symbol of the radical transformation of human nature.”

Sri Aurobindo wrote:

“It was a good symbolic dream and your interpretation seems to me correct except for one detail. The sea cannot be the tide of vital desires; it must be the flood of the world forces.”

(9 January 1932)

The second dream:

A few of us were walking along a sea-shore. The sea was not at all like the one normally known. The very sight of it was fearful and terrible; its water was jet-black and crammed with frightful sea-creatures — each one of them most hideous and all pullulating in the dark water. The body felt terribly uneasy. Most of these beings were like huge snakes: long, thick and black. There were no waves. As far as one could see, it was a dreadful vast and dark expanse of water stretched, as it were, like a gigantic snake, giving a sense of terror. Far away could be seen a very exquisite island where the Mother and Sri Aurobindo lived. I had to go there, but no way could be found. One could not even think of swimming across; the sea was so packed with those strange animals. In trying to swim one would have to brush against them. But, strangely enough, when my companions had gone forward, I plunged into that sea and began to swim along with those pullulating beasts. Pushing them aside with both hands I made my way through them more than through the water, but my gaze was fixed towards the island where the Mother and Sri Aurobindo were. I felt I must reach there. Nothing else mattered. As I neared the island my feet touched the bottom and with a great joy I walked to the shore. Suddenly I saw Sri Aurobindo with his two hands outstretched and, lifting me up, he said, “You have crossed.” I was so happy to hear it that even after waking up from the dream, I said again and again to myself, “When Sri Aurobindo has uttered these words, cross I must.”

I understood from this dream what Sri Aurobindo meant by the word “plunge”. Looking no other way, thinking of nothing else, if one could take the plunge for the Divine alone, the Divine himself would come and land us on the shore. Otherwise one could go on cogitating and no way would be found and the plunge remain untaken. Once the plunge is taken, considerations of duty or danger have no place. This was revealed in the dream. Daunted by nothing, with eyes fixed upon the island, I advanced and Sri Aurobindo delivered me. Though a dream it was, it brought an inexpressible taste of delight not to be affected by anything.

I was to see the Mother the next morning. So I told her orally the dream. She heard intently and placed her hand for a long while on my head and said sweetly, “It is not a mere dream.” She said many other things besides, which cannot be told.

Now let me narrate the story of my experiences while I was singing. Here is my letter to the Mother:

“Mother mine,

“I had a wonderful experience. I cannot but write to you about it at once. There is a song of Kabir, ‘Conquering my heart, Sri Rama was seated within it.’ I was singing it, sitting alone on the terrace at about 7 p.m. I wished to sing it to you on Friday. I had often had my good experiences during singing. I had felt then the descent of a being and its presence, and that I was just an instrument. All the movements of my songs were led by it. Sometimes it gave me the perception of a wide opening of my inner self, and an aspiration rising from a deep source lifted my entire being to a summit height. But what happened today was unique. It was like this.

“When I had sung a part of Kabir’s song, I could feel a power coming down and the volume of my voice increasing. The inner self opened entirely, and strange tunes and rhythms began to pour out spontaneously with such speed that I wondered how it was possible. There was a clear feeling that they owed nothing to me, that I was just a channel and they came tumbling down eager to express themselves. Suddenly I heard my voice gaining twice its volume — so much force was there. And I heard distinctly another voice expressing itself through my voice. When I experienced this, I felt it was no longer myself or my own desire that was singing. I could not stop, it did not depend on me. I had never sung a single song at such length, I was simply charmed and overwhelmed by these exceptional manifestations of sound, voice and tune.”

Sri Aurobindo answered:

“Yes, it was quite right and a very high experience.”

After this experience, I observed that the atmosphere, when I sang on the terrace to the Mother alone, was quite different from the one when I sang at other places. I wrote to the Mother:

“Oh Mother,

“I have observed that when I sing to you on your terrace, the voice becomes very forceful, which is not so elsewhere. So I wrote to you that a special force works from behind, making me sing differently. It must be your force, isn’t it, Mother? I feel it must be your force that makes me sing and makes the singing so intense. The difference is too obvious! But why should it be so? If it is your force acting I should sing equally well everywhere. If I have a psychic connection with you, such difference as regards time and space should not be there. Is it not then my inability to remain in the true consciousness, the true condition, that makes the difference?”

Sri Aurobindo wrote in reply:

“You have seen very accurately (as expressed in today’s letter) the reason for the difference between your singing on the roof and your singing elsewhere. But that is no reason why you should not sing elsewhere.”

(19 March 1932)

The first time I became nervous in my life was when I had to sing before Sri Aurobindo on 15th August 1929 (the day of his Darshan).

I had come to the Ashram the previous year in November. The Darshan was finished in the morning. At 4 p.m., when the Mother was to distribute the Darshan-garlands from the Darshan-room, Dilip and I were supposed to sing in the Meditation Hall, sitting near the third door on the right side. That door would remain closed and just behind it, from the adjacent room, Sri Aurobindo would hear our song. I had sung in many big gatherings, had danced before Rabindranath on the stage without ever knowing what nervousness was. I first started singing D. L. Roy’s “Shall I worship you in the form of an idol?” — Dilip was playing on the harmonium. I found that my voice had turned absolutely wooden, hard like the bamboo, no suppleness, no flexibility at all. This had never happened before. I sang all right but it was by no means singing. Then, when Dilip sang, it was not bad, though it was not in his usual style. At the end, we sang a duet, a song by Mirabai “Keep me as thy servant.” Now we could sing a little better and more freely. How strange! I asked the Mother, “What can be the reason, Mother? I have never become nervous wherever I have sung before!”

The Mother replied, “You forget in whose Presence you were singing. Your vital being became nervous before that Divine Presence.”

Once in one or two months the Mother used to hear our music in the hall before Amrita’s room — Dilip and myself, either of us alone, or together. Those inmates who could sing were sometimes trained by Dilip and they also sang. The Mother would sit in front and our music was intensely felt as an offering at her feet. What a difference between singing before her and elsewhere! Those who were present at these soirees had various experiences which they wrote to the Mother. There were choruses too in which my sisters took part. A South Indian sadhak also joined us. He used sometimes to sing Hindi classical songs.

Singing to the Mother was enough of an inner plenitude: when, besides, the next morning Sri Aurobindo sent his opinions written in his own hand, it was a double joy, not possible to express in words. There used to be instrumental music also. Doraiswamy played on the Veena. Sometimes, Doraiswamy, his daughter Kausiki and I used to play together — they played on the Veena and I on the Sitar. I either practised old tunes in a new way or played an entirely new one. Once all of us together played an old tune called ‘Kalengra’, with many new things added to it. The Mother liked it very much. Whenever something especially pleased her, she wanted it to be repeated in the next soiree.

Lalita, a Parsi sadhika, used to play on the piano. She joined our chorus. Then there was an English lady named by Sri Aurobindo Nandini, who was an exquisite cello-player. The Mother liked her music immensely. Sri Aurobindo considered her a born musician. When, however, she played in our chorus, it was simply splendid. She also accompanied Dilip’s European music. Dilip’s voice was marvellous, and the Mother liked to hear his European music very much. Her power of inspiration cut a new way for him in his world of songs.

On 24th April, 1932, we arranged a musical soiree, very probably to celebrate the Mother’s final arrival in Pondicherry on that day twelve years earlier. The next day, she sent this written message-cum-blessing:

“To all those who took part in today’s singing and music:

Sri Aurobindo and myself have felt that there was a great progress this time. It was not only from the exterior point of view of execution, but in the greater aim of the concentration behind it and in the inner attitude.

May the day bring its benediction to all.”

(24.4.32)

I was cherishing a hope to show my dancing to the Mother, but as I did not know dancing very well, there was some hesitation lest I should waste her time. At last I expressed my desire. She consented to see my dance. When I came to the Ashram, I had thought I would have to give up all art for the sake of sadhana, but such sacrifice was not needed. Sri Aurobindo’s yoga includes all. He wrote afterwards:

“The development of capacities is not only permissible but right when it can be made part of Yoga; one can give not only one’s soul, but all one’s powers to the Divine.” (29.6.31)

I was preparing joyfully the dance I wanted to show to the Mother. Dancing and music had been my passions from childhood. But since dancing was taboo in respectable families, I had to suppress my liking for it. As I grew up and became independent, I did what I could in my own way. I had not seen dancing of any kind anywhere except on the Bengali stage. Still, I felt a magnetic pull towards it.

I started preparing a dance tuned to Rabindranath Tagore’s song, “Along with the rhythm of the dancing”. The Mother saw it in the Meditation Hall upstairs. This was the first time she saw my performance. It was in 1931.

After it, she drew up a plan for us to compose the song-part of the dance. While my part was to dance, her plan had four parts expressing four moods:

1) A measureless void in Radha’s mind and body. She is groping in the dark.

2) She is seeking all around, but does not find him whom she seeks. Unbearable is the anguish. At times, she hears as it were the almost forgotten anklet bells come floating from afar. She becomes impatient — a restless mood. Then all of a sudden she hears the sound of the flute. Depression vanishes. The sound comes nearer and Radha experiences ecstasy.

3) Krishna appears.

4) Radha’s surrender at his feet.

These are the four moods. Dilip composed wonderful dance-music for them. Its rich artistry of tune and striking variety of rhythm appealed very much to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. I practised my dances in a large hall at Dilip’s place. When previously I had wanted to practise my dance to the tune of Rabindranath’s song in the same room, Sri Aurobindo had replied (referring to a sadhak who lived just under that hail downstairs,): “He is too serious to be danced over.” Now, Sri Aurobindo gave permission. I was puzzled and asked him: “You wrote differently before, and now this change?” He replied:

“Perhaps before long he will cease to be too serious.”

I could not contain my laughter. In everything there was his touch of humour. I began my practice but the dance fell short of the expected height. I worked hard. Meanwhile something happened. Dilip composed another beautiful piece of music — for a Dawn-dance. I tried both the dances in my own house. This Dawn-dance came off very easily and I made a discovery from it about which I wrote to the Mother: “I perceived, as I was dancing, something in a new way. Please tell me if there is any truth in it. When I started the Radha’s dance, my purpose was to execute the mood of the song in the poses of the dance. As Radha’s feelings are usually very intense to the Indians, especially to the Bengalis, there was nothing very new in this mood. Whatever mood the song expressed, I tried to feel it first and then give it a form. But when I started the Dawn-dance, no clear form of the mood had emerged beforehand. What appeared was the feeling of the vibration of the mood in the singing before I had understood how the language or the feeling of the song was expressed. Following that vibration the movements and various poses began to be formed. I did not remember the words of the song, only followed its inner movements. Thus, it was felt to be a new experience, having a truth in it. All things seem to have a vibration. These are, however, big words for me. What I want to say is that the ‘Radha’s song’ was much easier than the Dawn-dance song even with regard to composition. We were not so familiar with the mood and form of the Dawn-dance; the composition too was difficult. In these respects it was a new creation. So I said that I did not try to get at any definite form at first; nevertheless everything came down very easily and naturally and I understood the inner movements. Am I right in my analysis? Is there any truth here?”

Sri Aurobindo replied:

“To feel the vibration and develop from it the rhythm of the dance is the right way to create something true; the other way, to understand with the mind and work out with the mind only or mainly is the mental way; it is laborious and difficult and has not got the same spontaneous inspiration.”

(29.4.32)

I was working upon the Radha’s dance but the result was not satisfactory; the true thing eluded me, though I felt at times as if I was on the verge of it when the dancing took different turns giving me a feeling of contentment. I wondered then how a person who knew very little of dance could do it. It did not take long to realise that it was not due to my power. But whenever I tried to do it by my own power, I failed. It was understood that I was following the second method mentioned by Sri Aurobindo — my mind was working, so it could not open itself. There was more labour in consequence and more time. At times I went to the Mother to show her my dance; she encouraged me a lot and expressed sympathy. One day she said, “You have to bring in more variety in your dance. See, how rich is Dilip’s song in variety of movement.”

In this manner I proceeded somehow to the stage of Krishna’s appearance and was thinking of beginning Radha’s surrender when the Mother called and told me many things. To her nothing has an end, she has an inexhaustible store from which she can fill up our scanty hoarding. What happened next day was a big surprise — her trust in one who could do nothing, and her encouraging words to a novice were beyond imagination. She wrote:

“Sahana,

To complete what I told you yesterday about Radha’s dance I have noted down as an indication of the thought and feeling Radha must have within her when she stands at the end in front of Krishna — ‘Every thought of my mind, each emotion of my heart, every movement of my being, every sensation, each cell of my body, each drop of my blood, all is yours, yours absolutely, yours without reserve. You can decide my life or my death, my happiness or my sorrow, my pleasure or my pain, whatever you do with me, whatever comes to me from you will lead me to Divine Rapture.’”

What can I say about my inner feeling when I received from her this supreme boon! What did she reveal to me through this prayer of Radha, what tone of complete surrender did she make me hear? This was my constant thought. Her every word was aglow with the signature of heavenly love. What was she teaching me through this dance as a pretext, where was she leading me and to follow which rhythm in life? My whole being was hushed to fullness and tears began to flow. I could clearly understand what was meant by accepting everything as a part of yoga.

Clear it was that the Radha-dance was the sadhana of a complete surrender to the Divine and we had come to do that sadhana. We can well understand from this letter of the Mother the way in which she and Sri Aurobindo want always to lift us to what they hold up before our consciousness.

I am speaking of the time when our sadhana took a particular turn, when we were not going out or seeing anyone without the Mother’s permission. She knew all about our sadhana. She created such an atmosphere around us that we felt we were living within her. Nothing could come near or violate it. There was a kind of cordon sanitaire, within which we were moving with great care. Wherever a strong attachment was found, blow after blow fell upon it. The Divine and the undivine forces were at play. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother explained to us what was unintelligible and showed mistakes or defects in what we were supposed to have understood. Self-introspection became very important. Whenever they saw something good in us, they encouraged and awakened a true interest in it, and if there was anything unseemly, they corrected it and lighted a flame of hope and faith. Even their reproach was couched in terms of tender sympathy. How many times and in how many ways they told and taught us the necessity of turning inward and the way to do it, how to bring about total sincerity! To study oneself at every step on the way to the transformation of consciousness, this unique training opened before us a new world, and what a number of worlds seemed to be there in oneself!

Sri Aurobindo had told us to surrender ourselves to the Mother, and one could clearly perceive that working in all of us. He also insisted many times that we must tell her everything not only in general but even in detail. We felt indeed that these yogic movements were becoming the natural rhythm of our lives. It was well understood by us that the Mother knew everything, yet the fact of telling everything and opening ourselves to her bound us intimately to her and set her force working in us far more easily in the way she wanted so that our psychic being might awake and come to the front. Sri Aurobindo wrote to me:

“When the psychic being is in front, the sadhana becomes natural and easy and it is a question of time and natural development. When the mind or the vital or the physical consciousness is on the top the sadhana is a tapasya and a struggle.”

(10.7.34)

To lead us like blind men by the hand was not the method followed by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. They wanted that we should be conscious of all our movements and tread the path accordingly. Many a time I observed that whenever we took a wrong step, they came forward with outstretched hands to help and lift us up, but at the same time they moved us to find out what had led us to act wrongly and they wanted us to profit by that discovery. As a result we got the insight which helped us to grow from within. Thus through all our mistakes and rise and fall, success and failure, we could go forward.

Once a relative wanted to come here. When I asked for some directions about it, Sri Aurobindo wrote:

“As for your inner attitude it must remain the same. Not to be excited or drawn outwards by these ‘incidents’ of the outward life or by the coming in of new elements is the rule; they must come in like waves into an untroubled sea and mix in it and become themselves untroubled and serene.

“Your present attitude and condition is all that it should be — only you must remain vigilant always. For when the condition is good, the lower movements have a habit of subsiding and become quiescent, hiding as it were — or they go out of the nature and remain at a distance. But if they see that the sadhak is losing his vigilance, then they slowly begin to rise or draw nearer, most often unseen, and when he is quite off his guard, surge up suddenly or make a sudden irruption. That continues until the whole nature, mental, vital, physical down to the very subconscient is enlightened, conscious, full of the Divine. Till that happens one must always remain watchful in a sleepless vigilance.”

(26.5.32)

Many things, which had often appeared to us meaningless trifles, did not seem so to the Mother’s and Sri Aurobindo’s eyes, and when they made us aware of the inner movements behind them, we could detect them appearing in many forms. Nothing happens, nothing in life is without reason, there is always a hidden meaning or a true cause — this is what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother taught us again and again, removing the veil of our outer consciousness. I wrote to Sri Aurobindo:

“You have written that my physical consciousness has the habit of responding to illness. But I am not at all aware of it. How to become so? Whatever little perception I do have, makes me feel that I don’t want these things at any cost, for they do a lot of harm to me. So, I would like to know how to become conscious of them.”

One day I was suddenly drawn into a discussion. It was about the mind. Those present wanted to say that the mind is such an instrument that it can understand everything. It can consider, discern and differentiate; it alone has the power to know the truth and make one recognise it. The importance of mind, reflection, thoughtfulness — these were the topic of discussion. I could not quite accept their view, for my mind followed what it had learnt from the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. I wrote to Sri Aurobindo what I thought and asked what his view was. This is just a part of what I wrote:

“I don’t believe that it is our mind that helps us to know the Truth from falsehood and so on, but our true being, our psychic, that helps us to know things; it is when the mind is influenced by the psychic consciously or unconsciously, that the true discrimination can be done, otherwise if the physical mind is left alone, however great it may be, it always confuses things and prevents them from being seen in the true way.”

Sri Aurobindo’s reply:

“To see the Truth does not depend on a big intellect or small intellect. It depends on being in contact with the Truth, and the mind silent and quiet to receive it. The biggest intellects can make errors of the worst kind and confuse Truth and falsehood if they have not the contact with the Truth or the direct experience.”

(01 August 1932)

Another time I wrote in search of knowledge:

“Mother, something I have been waiting to know from you very clearly and openly. When someone is broken down by mental distress or depression, does it not truly help him if a person visits him and, sitting by his side like a friend, talks or converses with him? My own experience testifies to its good effect. Of course I am speaking of doing it with a non-egoistic attitude. I mean that if one has a true attitude and feels that through the discussions one was doing your work — would that be fruitless? Many hold that during such times discussions are baseless. My belief is that it all depends on one’s attitude. If, of course, the person himself wants no interference, it is different. Otherwise I have seen that a single word at time produces a striking effect so much so that everything changes, and the inner being takes the right bend and all becomes safe — this has often happened. It was so in the case of my mother. Does it then mean nothing? My wrong belief? Please let me know the truth.”

Sri Aurobindo replied:

“It is very often extremely useful to speak in these circumstances if the one who speaks is known or felt by the other to have sympathy with him and if he speaks in the right way.”

(24 April 1935)

I asked the Mother and Sri Aurobindo a lot of questions, not for the sake of asking them, but in order to understand rightly and clear up any doubt. As long as I did not get the clarification the mind remained disturbed. While answering my points, Sri Aurobindo explained in detail so that I might grasp them well. Once I wanted to know the difference between song and poetry — I had often felt the difference, while singing, that poetry had to be understood by the mind (so had said somebody long ago) and song was a matter of feeling. “Is that so?” was the question. How beautifully he explained the difference! Here is the letter:

“No, a song is not a kind of poem — or need not be. There are some very good songs which are not poems at all. In Europe song-writers or the writers of the librettos of the great operas are not classed among poets. In Asia the attempt to combine song-quality with poetic value has been more common, but this is not essential. In ancient Greece also lyric poetry was often composed with a view to being set to music. But still poetry and song-writing, though they can be combined, are two different arts.

“The difference is not that poetry has to be understood and music or singing felt (anubhuti). If you only understand the intellectual content of a poem, its words and ideas, you have not really appreciated the poem at all. And a poem which contains only that and nothing else, is not true poetry. A true poem contains something else which has to be felt just as you feel music and that is it’s more important and essential part. It has, first, a rhythm, just as music has, though of a different kind, and it is the rhythm that helps this something else to come out through the medium of the words. The words by themselves do not carry it or cannot bring it out altogether, and this is shown by the fact that the same words written in a different order and without rhythm or without the proper rhythm would not at all move or impress you in the same way. This something else is an inner content or suggestion, a soul-feeling or soul-experience, a vital feeling or life-experience, a mental emotion, vision, or experience (not merely an idea), and it is only if you can catch this and reproduce the experience in yourself, that you have got what the poem can give you, not otherwise.

“The real difference between a poem and a song is that a song is written with a view to be set to musical rhythm and a poem is written with a view to poetic rhythm or word-music. The two rhythms are quite different. That is why a poem cannot be set to music unless it has either been written with an eye to both kinds of rhythm or else happens to have (without especially intending it) a movement which makes it easy or at least possible to set to music. This happens often with lyrical poetry, less often with other kinds. There is also this usual character of a song that it is satisfied to be very simple in its content bringing out a single idea or feeling, and leaving it to the music’ to develop it; but this is not always done.”

(04 July 1931)

I was faced by the question: “If we find someone standing against a truth and attacking it by using falsehood as his means, what in that case should be the mental attitude of a sadhak? Should he, practising his yogic equality, be indifferent to it or lift his sword against the falsehood?” The question came up because some person wrote a letter attacking the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. We were much excited by it and hotly discussed what our attitude should be towards such persons — should we at all keep any contact with them? I was in two minds — perhaps there should not be so strong a feeling of hostility or contempt. One of us asserted very forcefully that far from keeping no contact with such persons, even conciliation was never out of the question. So I wrote to Sri Aurobindo about it, fully supporting that speaker’s view.

This is what Sri Aurobindo answered:

“No doubt hatred and cursing are not the proper attitude. It is true that to look upon all things and all people with a calm and clear vision, to be uninvolved and impartial in one’s own judgement is a quite proper yogic attitude. A condition of perfect can be established in which one sees all as equal, friends and enemies included, and is not disturbed by what men do or by what happens. The question is whether this is all that is demanded from us. If so, then the general attitude will be one of a neutral indifference to everything. But the Gita which strongly insists on a perfect and absolute samatā goes on to say, ‘Fight, destroy the adversary, conquer.’ If there is no kind of general action wanted, no loyalty to Truth as against Falsehood except for one’s personal sadhana, no will for the Truth to conquer, then the samatā of indifference will suffice. But here there is a work to be done, a Truth to be established against which immense forces are arrayed, invisible forces which can use visible things and persons and actions for their instruments. If one is among the disciples, the seeker of this Truth, one has to take sides for the Truth, one has to stand against the Forces that attack it and seek to stifle it. Arjuna wanted not to stand for either side, to refuse any action of hostility even to the assailants; Sri Krishna who insisted so much on samatā, strongly rebuked his attitude and insisted on his fighting the adversary, ‘Have samatā,’ he said, ‘and seeing clearly the Truth, fight.’ Therefore to take sides with the Truth and to refuse to concede anything to the Falsehood that attacks, to be unflinchingly loyal and against the hostiles and the attackers is not inconsistent with equality. It is personal and egoistic feeling that has to be thrown away; hatred and vital ill-will have to be rejected. But loyalty and refusal to compromise with the assailants and the hostiles or to dally with their ideas and demands and say ‘After all we can compromise with what they ask from us,’ or to accept them as companions and our own people — these things have a great importance. If the attack were a physical menace to the Mother and the work and the Asram, one would see this at once. But because the attack is of a subtler kind, can a passive attitude be right? It is a spiritual battle inward and outward — by neutrality and compromise or even passivity one may allow the enemy Forces to pass and crush down the Truth and its children. If you look at this point you will see that if the inner spiritual equality is right, the active loyalty and firm taking of sides which ‘K’ insists on is as right, and the two cannot be incompatible.

I have of course treated it as a general question apart from all particular cases or personal questions. It is a principle of action that has to be seen in its right light and proportion.”

(13 September 1936)

I wanted to know the difference between consciousness and transformation in detail and I got this reply:

“Your statement of the different parts of the being as you experience them is perfectly correct and well-observed, and it shows too that your experience of these things is not merely mental but genuine and living. As for your question about consciousness and transformation: the answer is that consciousness is made up of two elements, awareness of self and things and forces and conscious power. Awareness is the first thing necessary, you have to be aware of things in the right consciousness, in the right way, seeing them in their truth, but awareness by itself is not enough. There must be a Will and Force that makes the consciousness effective. Somebody may have the full consciousness of what has to be changed, what has to go and what has to come in its place but may be helpless to make the change. Another may have the will-force but for want of the right awareness may be unable to apply it in the right way at the right place. The advantage of being in the psychic consciousness is that you have the right awareness and its will being in harmony with the Mother’s will, you can call in the Mother’s Force to make the change. Those who live in the mind and in the vital are not so well able to do this; they are obliged to use mostly their personal effort and as awareness and will-force of mind and vital are divided and imperfect, the work done is imperfect and not definitive. It is only in the supermind that Awareness, Will, Force are always one movement and automatically effective.”

Once I approached two respected and thoughtful sadhaks who had a considerable knowledge and whose views carried a special weight and wanted to know from them where was the true difference between intellect, intellectual and intelligence. They explained it very well, but I found that they held two different views while I was quite ignorant. Therefore, though the difference was clear, the matter as a whole remained indistinct. I had to write to Sri Aurobindo. From his reply I could make out where precisely was my mistake. He wrote:

“X asked me the question and I answered it on the basis of the current meaning of ‘intellect and intellectual’. People in ordinary speech do not make any distinction between intellect and intelligence, though of course it is quite true that a man may have a good or even a fine intelligence without being an intellectual. But ordinarily all thinking is attributed to the ‘intellect’, an intellectual therefore is a man whose main business or activity is to think about things — a philosopher, a poet, a scientist, a critic of art and literature or of life are all classed together as intellectuals. A theorist on economy and politics is an intellectual, a politician or financier is not, unless he theorises on his own subject or is a thinker on another.

“Y’s distinction is based on those I have made here, but these distinctions are not current in ordinary speech, except one or two and those even in a very imperfect way. If I go by these distinctions then the intellectuals will no longer be called intellectuals but thinkers and creators — except a certain class of them. Intellectual or intellectual thinker will then be one who is a thinker by his reason or mainly by his reason — e.g., Bertrand Russell, Bernard Shaw, Wells etc. Tagore thinks by vision, imagination, feeling and intuition, not by the reason — at least that is true of his writings. C. R. Das himself would not be an intellectual — in politics, literature and everything else he was an ‘intuitive’ and ‘emotive’ man. But, as I say, these would be distinctions not ordinarily current. In ordinary parlance Tagore, Das, and everybody of the kind would all be called intellectuals also. The general mind does not make these subtle distinctions, it takes things in the mass roughly — and it is right in doing so, for otherwise it would lose itself altogether.

“As for barristers etc. a man to succeed as barrister must have legal knowledge, and the power to apply it. It is not necessary that he should be a thinker even on his own subject or an intellectual. It is the same with all professional men, — doctors, engineers etc. etc.; they may be intellectual as well as successful in their profession, but they need not be.

“P.S. Argument properly speaking needs some power of logical intellect: but it can be specialised in a certain line. The power of argument does not by itself make a man intellectual.”

I was then suffering from insomnia. For nights and days together I could not get a wink of sleep. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo had done a lot, thought about it and written many letters full of love and affection. One day, I went to see the Mother. Oh, that day is still fresh in mind — she went on looking at me in a manner that baffles description — there was so much tenderness, softness, and deep compassion in that incomparable look! Keeping her eyes fixed on mine, with the sweetest voice, slowly she said, “I want you to sleep.” My eyes kept gazing at her eyes till they were filled with tears. Nor did it end here. Next day Sri Aurobindo wrote:

“Mother said you looked rather thin and pulled down. Is it only the absence of sleep or are you eating too little? You said you had hunger — if so you ought to eat well, because underfeeding is not good for the nerves.”

(15 March 1935)

Even after such letters replete with solicitude and sweetness, when the insomnia was once again on the increase, Sri Aurobindo wanted me to have some medical treatment. But I misunderstood his well-meant advice and refused it; I thought he was pushing me away from him. His reply given below will speak of the reaction of my mind born of that misunderstanding.

“It was precisely out of solicitude for you because the suffering of insomnia and the spasms had been excessive that I proposed to you to take the help of treatment. It is a fact of my experience that when the resistance in the body is too strong and persistent, it can help to take some aid of physical means as an instrumentation for the Force to work more directly on the body itself; for the body then feels itself supported against the resistance from both sides, by means both physical as well as supraphysical. The Mother’s Force can work through both together. It is surprising that you should take my suggestion in this way as if it meant an abandonment and refusal to help you! But it is still more surprising that you should have taken Mother’s smile at Pranam for sarcasm! The only thing she put in it was an insistence for the cloud that she saw covering the body-consciousness and interfering with its receptivity to lift. You must not allow this clouding attack to come between your mind and the Mother. Reject these distorting suggestions and keep its openness so that it may help to reopen up a full receptivity in the material body also. If you do not like to take any treatment, I shall try to manage without that if you keep me informed every day without fail, even on those days you feel relieved, till all trace of the attack is over!”

(01 September 1936)

Many moods and forms have I seen of my clouded mind. There is a letter from Sri Aurobindo in reply to one such sample:

“I see that you have not sent your book, nor any letter and I am told you did not come to Pranam. Are you then determined to reject us and our help and shut yourself up in your despondency?

“But what is the reason for so violent a change? The Mother and myself at least have not changed towards you and the causes you alleged for feeling otherwise are so small and trifling that they could not support any such idea once you looked at them straight...

“There remains the difficulty of your sadhana. But you have had much more violent difficulties and downfalls and recovered from them and found your way clearer. Why should now a recrudescence of certain movements which you yourself say was slight or the sense of the difficulty of overcoming egoism (which everybody feels and not only yourself) lead to such persistence in despair and a turning away from help and light?

“I hope you will gather yourself together, make an effort and get out of this groove quickly into the joy and love of the Divine which you had before. On our side nothing is changed — the love and help are there as before and I hope you will feel them behind these few lines.”

(9 September 1933)

The day I received this letter, everything in me melted along with the tears that poured from my eyes.

There was a proposal to translate into Bengali Sri Aurobindo’s small Book, Six Poems, and to dedicate the translation in a printed form as an offering at his feet on 15th August, 1934 on the occasion of his birthday. Six sadhaks would translate these six poems. Nolini asked me to translate one of them. The five others were Nolini Kanta Gupta himself, Suresh Chakravarty, Anilbaran Roy, Dilip Kumar Roy and Behari Barua. The one I was to translate was “In Horis Aeternum” — a very difficult poem. I had much doubt if I could cope with it.

Still, when such a great opportunity had arrived I didn’t want it to go by easily. I consented, knowing that I could draw upon the Mother and Sri Aurobindo’s force. Sri Aurobindo gave his consent and I started with great zeal. Often I had to seek his help regarding many points. I quote here a few instances of the verbal exchanges.

“Your ‘In Horis Aeternum’,” I wrote, “has put me to a lot of trouble. Many people are discouraging me saying that this poem is very difficult, almost impossible to translate. Dilip holds the same opinion. Quite a few seem to have tried and failed. Only Nolini gives some hope. ‘To make an effort is good in every way,’ he says. We are all aware that the poem is truly difficult. Even so, I am emboldened to undertake its translation, relying entirely on your help and inspiration, not on my own capacity. When I am depending on One whose force makes the impossible a possibility, then — who knows? — I may also succeed. With this ray of ‘who knows?’ I have advanced. Besides, to feel what you have written and try to give it a form has a great value and delight. However, I have made a rough attempt of four lines. Dilip has seen them, and did not seem to have been impressed. He said, ‘It won’t do as it is, you have to change a lot.’ I don’t mind doing so but I can’t quite understand what I should do. Do you also think that the poem can’t be translated? Please tell me frankly — so that I may not stick on to something which is impossible.”

Sri Aurobindo’s reply:

“The poem is not at all easy to translate, but one cannot say that it is impossible, one can always try provided one is prepared not to mind if it is a failure or half-success. To try sometimes even impossible things can be a very good training for the capacity.”

MYSELF: “Translation of Mother’s writing and of yours can never be equivalent to the original, nobody expects it. But whatever approximation is possible, whatever inspiration can be received should be enough so long as the thought and movement are preserved.”

SRI AUROBINDO: “Yes. A complete equivalent is not likely — but something approximative can be done.”

MYSELF: “One thing: I am doing my translation in blank verse. Dilip objects strongly to it. He says that without rhyme it won’t do. Do you have the same view?”

SRI AUROBINDO: “If it can be done in rhyme so much the better — as the original is in rhyme. But if not, it can be tried in blank verse. The form will not be the same, but to keep something of the movement may not be impossible.”

MYSELF: “I am rewriting it, in rhyme. It appears very difficult, but very attractive too. A great urge is pressing me and I am trying hard. The first four lines are not yet done well. The ‘movement’ can be felt, but the adequate expression has yet to come. So I remain unsatisfied. I tried one long line in blank verse. As Nolini found ‘it somewhat heavy’, I am changing it. The expression ‘unchangeable monotone’ I can’t echo in Bengali to my satisfaction. Please give me light, inspiration. Whether I can do it or not, the very attempt to do your things gives me great joy. I feel as if I am always in contact with you. The consciousness remains turned upward, and there is a strange feeling of some inner change. That is why I want to continue and can’t give up though I can’t do it well. And I am troubling you for nothing. Again, I want to know more clearly if in these two lines

‘Over its head like a gold ball the sun tossed by the gods in their play
Follows its curve’,

The second ‘its’ refers to the sun.”

SRI AUROBINDO: “It is the sun’s own curve.”

MYSELF: “I have done some parts. May I send them to you as samples so that you may decide if it will do?”

SRI AUROBINDO: “Yes, you can send.”

I sent the samples. On seeing them, Sri Aurobindo wrote: “You have made an excellent start.”

MYSELF: “Please explain to me this line I have marked. I can’t get the full sense of it:

‘Something that waits, something that wanders and settles not, a Nothing that was all and is found’.”

Sri Aurobindo replied in Bengali, which may be translated thus: “The sense is: something ineffable — as if it is nothing asat, yet it is everything, contains everything — it was not, yet it can be obtained, and once obtained, everything is obtained. I don’t know if I have made it clear.”

MYSELF: “The last line as I have translated it doesn’t satisfy me at all. Something is missing. I have made changes; Dilip wants further changes and is helping me too. He has changed the last three words, I am sending them. If you think that Dilip’s version is better, that will be kept.”

SRI AUROBINDO: “I cannot say that I approve of either of Dilip’s last words or any of the other alterations suggested by you or Nolini. All seem to miss the mark.”

However, finally after many changes the poem took shape. Dilip worked hard at it. Nolini and Dilip encouraged and helped to make possible what was really impossible. Dilip himself wrote a letter to Sri Aurobindo after the completion. It will be seen from Sri Aurobindo’s reply how patiently he saw our work and taught and helped us.

Dilip wrote:

“I feel the last verse makes very clear meaning anyway, but since Sahana is not pleased with it and she has been labouring at it for days, I think I may have mistaken your meaning. Doubtless, the ‘Something’ I could not keep as I took it to mean that the passing moment reflects the Eternal when ‘Caught by the spirit in sense’. Tell me therefore — O Lord, I must stop.”

Sri Aurobindo’s reply:

“Dilip,

I think it is a very fine rendering. In line 4 however I would not say that there is no reference to day as a movement of time but only to the noon, the day as sunlit space rather than time, it is the fixed moment, as it were, the motionless scene of noon. The eye is of course the sun itself, I mark by the dash that I have finished with my first symbol of the gold ball and go off to the second quite different one.

In the last line your translation is indeed very clear and precise in meaning, but it is perhaps too precise — the ‘something’ twice repeated is meant to give a sense of just the opposite, an imprecise unseizable something which is at once nothing and all things at a time. It is found no doubt in the momentary things and all is there, but the finding is less definite than your translation suggests. But the expression নাস্তিরূপে ছিল যে সর্ব্বাস্তি is very good.

One point more. ‘Caught by the spirit in sense “means” there is a spirit in sense (sense not being sense alone) that catches the eternal out of perishable hours in these things’.”

At one time I used to write a lot of poems. That was one of the brightest periods as regards writing poetry. Nolini Kanta Gupta and Suresh Chakravarty had of course started long ago, Anilbaran also, Dilip, Nishikanta were going on with great speed. Behari Barua, Jatin Das of Chittagong were also on the list. Nirod’s niece Jyotirmala (formerly Jyotirmoyee) started writing here and was doing it remarkably. Nirod too put his hand to it and was faring well. I used to compose from childhood, but not regularly. My writing was intermittent, following the pressure of inspiration. Anil Kumar Bhatta was another novice. Amal Kiran (K. D. Sethna) was already a poet, but here his poetry took a different colour. Arjava (John Chadwick) started writing here and became a fine poet. His poems, which were many, were published by the Ashram after his death. Romen, a mere boy, began writing poems in English and was doing well. Besides Nolini, Dilip, Nirod and Anilbaran were writing in both English and Bengali. Nishikanta brought out a book of English poems — Nolini was writing in French also. Harin came, as a great genius, and went on writing in huge quantity. He composed directly on the typewriter. He was already known as a fine poet. Sri Aurobindo had written a glorious review of his first book, The Feast of Youth, in the Arya. Nishikanta’s genius had flowered in Shantiniketan, but here it took a different turn and his poems earned high praise from Sri Aurobindo.

Jyotirmala, Nirod, Anil Bhatta, Amiya and myself learnt Bengali and Sanskrit laghu-guru chhanda from Dilip for some time. Dilip had then become a master in chhanda. He and Nishikanta were making various experiments in laghu-guru and were trying to introduce it in Bengali poetry and song, not without success. Laghu-guru seems to create a deep feeling and a fine sound-vibration. It has not only a mantric effect, it carries great power too. To know its rules is not sufficient. One must know how to read it as well. Then alone its nature, beauty and special delight can be grasped. The Bengali ear is not used to the swing of this chhanda, but with a little practice one can catch and enjoy it.

Among us, Jyotirmala had made a good progress. Nirod and myself were also doing well. We three and Anil Bhatta used to write daily at a fixed hour and invoke Sri Aurobindo’s inspiration before doing it. It was done as a part of our Sadhana. What we wanted was that our poetry should be cast and shaped from its very roots by his inspiration. A new zeal and taste carried us forward. When a poem was finished, how eagerly we sent it to Sri Aurobindo and how expectantly we waited for his reply which Nolini used to bring the next morning! It was his duty to deliver letters at every house by 7 a.m. With Sri Aurobindo’s touch and his remarks the poems would come back filling our beings with an uncommon exhilaration. Sometimes he would say “Good”, “Fine” or even “Very beautiful” about my poems. As his appreciation increased, so did my joy. Only those who received something from the Mother or Sri Aurobindo can appreciate their full impact. I would invite his suggestions at times when particularly some alternatives had to be chosen. For instance, I asked: “Which one is better — নবারুণ সাপে’, ‘ঊষসীর সাপে’ না ‘অহনার সাপে’?”

He replied: “On the whole নবারুণ seems to me better.”

One can almost say he led us onward, holding us by the hand. We were making various experiments with poetry, not regarding the poetic beauty alone, but regarding the rhythm too. The more we entered into the rhythmic varieties the more was the enjoyment... We realised that the knowledge of rhythm intensifies this delight.

Feeling and beauty of words apart, the swing of chhanda, which was something unknown before, gave a new taste, an increased pleasure in poetry. I had loved poetry always but I did not know it had so many aspects to delight us. As I proceeded onward, a door suddenly opened, as it were, of an unknown house and lines of English poetry began to come. Most incredible! I was astonished. I knew very little of English, yet the lines were coming in that tongue. I set them down in this form:

Mother, in my deep heart I find
A jewel shines amidst the night,
When all the mortals senses are blind
It speaks to the stars of unknown height.

Mother, a flame of love so sweet
Sways along the path of gold
And rises to touch your heavenly feet
Where sun and moon and stars you mould.

Mother, a flower of eternity
Unfolds its petals within my soul.
I sing to the light that unveils to me.
The Crystal tower, your shining goal.

Mother, in my precious secret spot,
I am nestled on your breast alone
Where all my parts are gathered and brought.
Before the dream of your opening-dawn.

Nirod took my poem to Sri Aurobindo, since by then all correspondence had come to a stop. Sri Aurobindo corrected it like this:

Mother! deep in my heart I find
A jewel glimmering in the night,
When every mortal sense is blind
It speaks to stars of unknown height.

Mother! a love-flame swift and sweet
Swaying along the path of gold,
It rises to your heavenly feet
Where sun and moon and stars you mould.

Mother! the flower of eternity
Unfolds its petals in my soul,
I sing to its light that unveils to me
A crystal tower, your shining goal.

Mother! in a lonely secret spot
I am cradled on your breast alone
Where all of me is gathered, brought
Into your dream of opening-Dawn.

Another incident to note. I was working in the Building Department, supervising the repair and construction of houses, and dealing with workers. One day when I was inspecting the repair of a house called Nanteuil House, one line in English began to hover around me:

Travels from height to height unseen.

Well, I was puzzled; neither could I drive it away, it would insist on coming back. So I started jotting down lines just as they flowed in. Here they are after Sri Aurobindo’s correction:

An emerald-soul of peaks within
Travels from height to height unseen;
The shadow of the Infinite falls on earth’s pain
A golden desire, a heavenly rain.
Transcendent of Time’s moments, power
Comes encircling the eternal hour.
The sun above, the moon below,
Unheard foot-falls come soft and slow,
A bell rings from Eternity:
Whirling the Almighty’s power, She
Creates a land of blue and white
Within the smoke and doze of night:
She comes in her golden robe of fire
To release God-music from earth’s lyre.

After a few days, as I sat down to write, I found that like the English poem some lines in Bengali were coming whose meaning was unintelligible to me. It seemed very strange and intricate since Bengali was my own native tongue. However, I went on writing and tearing up as things seemed to have no head or tail. For six days I continued in this way till I met Nirod and said to him, “What is all this happening to me? Can you tell me?” He said, “Can you recite some lines?” I did that quite easily, for they had become so natural after so many days of repetition. He heard them and said, “They are oceans of mystic lines. Don’t throw away. Finish them as they come and give them to me. I shall show them to Sri Aurobindo.”

With a wild fervour, I finished the poem. Though it was all Greek, it read well and I felt something, as if there was some stuff in it. Nirod showed it to Sri Aurobindo and, before I had time to ask him, he said: “Sri Aurobindo read your poem and said, ‘If Sahana throws away such inspiration, then what’s the use of giving her inspiration?’” And when Nirod reported the meaning of the poem as explained by Sri Aurobindo I was not only astonished, I became speechless and wondered how the mysteries of the unseen world could pass through my pen.

Warmly encouraging me Nirod said, “Go on writing even if you don’t understand.” So I continued for some days writing mystic poems. Sometimes words dropped into me, whose meaning was unknown to me and I had to consult people or the dictionary if any such words actually existed. A poem came in this manner, whose language was simply majestic and would give an impression that I was a master of Bengali.

Then I felt that, though it was all a puzzle, far behind my consciousness, the image of Shiva appeared again and again. The lines gave me a thrill, the reading of them was accompanied by an inner satisfaction. After writing some new lines, my heart was full — how wonderful are the lines and the picture they evoke, I said to myself....

I took the poem after completing it to Nolini. He is very fond of mystic poems and understands them well. He read and said that the poem was about Shiva. Nirod then showed it to Sri Aurobindo. The meaning he made out was also beyond my grasp, relating to higher worlds. It was about Shiva all right, and many other things he said which made me gape with wonder.

After practising for some days, I had an insight into a few features of these mystic poems. They cannot be written nor corrected by one’s own effort, both their coming and their correction follow the same method. Mind’s intervention is not possible, since what the poems are going to say and how they will say it are entirely unknown to the writer. The planes from which they come are beyond the reach of the mind. So the only thing to do is to make oneself an instrument and let the inspiration flow. Very often I tried to change by the mind and the result was a marked discord, incongruous with the original inspiration and stood out glaringly. Mystic poems create their own atmosphere and their language is veiled with a mystery. Besides, they don’t express all that they want to say and what they say suggests an infinite meaning lying concealed behind the words. Just as knowledge has no end, and the more one enters within the more is the new light discovered, so are the mystic poems. A touch unfathomed is felt which suggests much more than it reveals.

Nolini rendered one of my mystic poems into English. I quote it here and close the chapter on mystic poetry.

The first tremor of the Light, to the dream-journey
Night’s desire is now appeased, She feels the Sun within her,
The Mother of Infinity holds in her bosom her first guest;
The Call awakens in the lotus-scented senses.

On the far shore where moves the Fiery Wheel
Rose, unheeded, the cry of the Space, —
It spread and enveloped even our shadowy horizons:
A golden vision flutters on Earth’s eye-lids,
As the flaming Spider weaves his luminous web around himself!

The Bard wheels onward in his sweeping march:
He gathers in perfect rhythm the soul’s obeisances,
Urges secreted in the heart, of the sun-flower,
Hymns limned in her petalled gold!
Darkness massed on darkness has burst all on a sudden:
Eyes once closed open to the Lightning’s flare.

When I arrived here, we had three darshans of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo in a year. Following a severe accident to Sri Aurobindo, another ‘darshan’ was added on and from 24th April 1939 onwards. This was the date when the Mother had come permanently to the Ashram nineteen years earlier. So we had four darshans altogether.

Let me relate here the story of the shocking accident and what a terrible experience it was for all of us! It happened on the eve of the November Darshan. Since we could see Sri Aurobindo only on Darshan days, the Darshan to us was something ineffable and we waited for each Darshan with an ardour that went on increasing Darshan after Darshan. It was a thirst that remained ever unsatisfied and it was never a simple Darshan. Each occasion was for us a supreme moment of experience and realisation. It carried a golden opportunity to obtain what was unobtainable and Sri Aurobindo alone could give it, nobody else. Hence as the day approached, our being collected itself and became more and more concentrated on a single aim. How should we receive best what Sri Aurobindo had to give? This thought occupied our whole consciousness.

The Darshan began at 7 a.m. I lived alone in a small one-storeyed house just opposite the Mother’s on the other side of the road. The darshan room was next to the Mother’s room. I could see it clearly through my windows in front of me. On the eve of darshan the room was being decorated and I could hear the come-and-go of the people, their murmurings and could watch them carrying flowers, garlands and various outfits. I was also filled with an inner surge of joy — all because I would see the Great One very soon with dawn-break. To go to him to receive his touch — a wonderful moment of life. So when the wistful night ended and many got ready, I was on the way to the Darshan, somebody suddenly said, “There is no Darshan.”

Startled, I at once exclaimed in an acerb tone, “What is this nonsense you are talking?”

The shock I received shot forth these words. His face turned pale and grieved. He said, “Well, you can find out”, and departed with a bowed head.

I had recovered by that time and realised that I had been rude for nothing. As I was going to Nolini for the news, everybody I met wore a dark sad face. The Darshan visitors were struck dumb on hearing the news. I heard that when after finishing all the correspondence at midnight Sri Aurobindo had been going to the bathroom, he had stumbled against the tiger-skin lying spread out in his room and broken the bone of his right leg above the knee-joint. One can imagine the consternation and anxiety the Ashram inmates felt when they learnt the fact. A pall of darkness extinguished, as it were, the light of day. The whole day passed in a daze. In the evening the Mother alone gave us the Darshan, in the hall before Amrita’s room.

Her compassion flowing in a thousand streams washed away the worry and depression of our broken hearts. Her matchless bewitching smile filled the deep void with heavenly sweetness! Giving strength and inspiration, she lifted us up. Still, I must say that I could not bear for long the sight of her giving Darshan all alone in this manner. The next Darshan was to be on the 21st February 1939, but it was postponed till 24th April when we had Sri Aurobindo’s Darshan once more. From then this April Darshan continued.

The Ashram turned a new page and began a new chapter. All correspondence stopped as well as interviews with the Mother. She had to give up using her sitting room and her interview-room and move to another chamber on the other side where, due to lack of sufficient space, private interviews were not possible. One had to speak to her about various matters in the presence of other people. A little area was spaced off for her to have some rest and a short sleep at night.

Here I shall quote in translation a small letter of Sri Aurobindo written in Bengali in the margin of a letter by me:

“Ego doesn’t go all at once, but it can be gradually diminished and made weaker — especially as more and more the inner feeling increases, thinner and thinner becomes the small self.”

Now Dr. Manilal of Baroda, Becharlal, Nirodbaran, Purani, Satyendra and Mulshankar were kept in attendance on Sri Aurobindo. Champaklal had already been in his personal service. So he was automatically there. Later on, Dr. Prabhat Sanyal, when he used to pay occasional visits from Calcutta, had the opportunity to see Sri Aurobindo. Nirod, each time he came down from Sri Aurobindo’s room, would present himself at Dilip’s breakfast table and a number of people would crowd around him to hear of Sri Aurobindo’s talks with his attendants. We would wait eagerly for his arrival. So many things they talked with Sri Aurobindo, so many questions they asked and Sri Aurobindo freely gave them answers which now form a very precious and illuminating body of knowledge. They have recorded these talks and published them in book-form. Purani has named them Evening Talks, and Nirodbaran Talks with Sri Aurobindo. There are Bengali translations of some of them. What we enjoyed most in these talks was Sri Aurobindo’s exceptional sense of humour and wit. Stories, anecdotes, unknown incidents of his life with his brothers in England, etc. — a rich and delectable fund of conversation giving us a new experience of many aspects of the Master. Sri Aurobindo’s attendants also helped us by bringing oral answers from Sri Aurobindo whenever we had some difficulties.

I do not recollect in which year the ‘Balcony’ Darshan started. Very probably, it began after Sri Aurobindo’s accident. The Mother used to come out in the early mornings and, standing on Pavitra’s balcony, look steadily at the sky or towards the sea in a mood of concentration. A few sadhaks noticed her first and stood in the street watching her. Gradually others came to know about it, and a crowd began to gather which led to the regular Darshan. The Mother used to meditate for about ten minutes, and take in everybody with a sweeping glance. At the break of dawn we would mend our way to the balcony and wait for her Darshan and blessings. We had this gracious boon for years till it stopped on 16th March 1962 when she fell ill. She would also come down at night for collective meditation. Sitting in a straight posture in a chair near the staircase in the Meditation Hall in front of Amrita’s room, she meditated for nearly half an hour. We never saw her leaning her back except when she was resting. However, making a line, one by one we went to receive her blessings after the meditation. Very often she was in a trance and people stood before her after their pranam, waiting for blessings, or else she kept her hand upon that of the disciple in front of her and went into a trance, the person standing still until she woke up. This meditation ended sometimes at midnight or even after. For some days she continued giving Darshan through the window-shutters, which was called “Window Darshan”. There was also a “Terrace Darshan” when at about 10 a.m. she went to the terrace.

In this way at various times we had the Mother’s Darshan in her different moods. I cannot now recollect when these darshans started or when they stopped. Very probably they ceased after Sri Aurobindo’s accident. There was another interesting incident which I liked much. On the eve of the Darshan at 9.30 p.m. and on the morning of it at 5 a.m., the Mother used to come down to the meditation hall, where she took her seat on a low platform and gave us her blessings. It was a wonderful moment of the morning to come to her when everything was so quiet and soothing. What ecstatic days these were and how all of us lived wrapped in one consciousness — that of the Mother!

Dilip’s book on music — Gitashri Part One — was getting published. He asked me to compose and prepare musical notations of some of the classical songs. I agreed. I knew little of the laws and methods that are the technique of classical music. I had heard much but had no training in them, though I might recognise perhaps the different tunes when I heard them. But which scale was needed, which tune was to be left out of different ones and what were their various technical terms — all this was unknown to me. I had heard many of these things but not to the extent of remembering them. I could even sing some of them but all through the sense of hearing without any knowledge of the technique.

I started the work. I approached Dilip in difficulties and the notations I had prepared got confirmed by him. He always encouraged me and said, “Go ahead. Everything is all right.” Some common tunes like Bilawal and Alhaiya were unfamiliar. Dilip would sing them, and then I would sit down with books on classical music such as Gitasutrasar by K. D. Banerji and Pandit Bhatkhande’s manual of notations. Of course I kept the Mother and Sri Aurobindo informed of my work. The result came gradually, the technique was getting to be less difficult and more and more confidence followed.

The joy of creation and the help of the Mother gave the feeling that an inner work was going on. When the entire work was coming to an end, I saw that there was clear evidence of my ignorance of it. After some time, one day I began to sing some of my compositions to see how they had fared. I was astonished to find that these songs appeared very unfamiliar to me, as if they had been composed by another person. I felt very uneasy. It seemed like someone singing new songs following recorded notations and not quite sure of himself. What I knew was no longer a thing known. The composition I had started with was not there. What was very clear and distinct when I had started the notations ended not only in obscurity; there was no sign even of the original composition. I wondered how a known thing could become so strangely unknown. So I wrote about it to Sri Aurobindo and he replied:

“...As you have opened yourself to the Force and made yourself a channel for the energy of work, it is quite natural that when you wanted to do this musical work the Force should flow and act in the way that is wanted or the way that is needed and for the effect that is needed. When one has made oneself a channel, the Force is not necessarily bound by the limitations or disabilities of the instrument; it can disregard them and act in its own power. In doing so it may use the instrument simply as a medium and leave him as soon as the work is finished just what he was before, incapable in his own ordinary moments of doing such good work; but also it may by its action set the instrument right, accustom it to the necessary intuitive knowledge and movements so that it can at will command the action of the Force. As for the technique, there are two different things, the intellectual knowledge which one applies, the intuitive cognition which acts in its own right, even if it is not actually possessed by the worker. Many poets for instance have little knowledge of metrical or linguistic technique and cannot explain how they write or what are the qualities and elements of their success, but they write all the same things that are perfect in rhythm and language. Intellectual knowledge helps of course, provided one does not make of it a mere device or a rigid fetter. There are some arts that cannot be done well without some technical knowledge, e.g., painting and sculpture.

“What you write is your own in the sense that you have been the instrument of its manifestation — that is so with every artist or worker. You need have no scruple about putting your name, though of course for sadhana it is necessary to recognise that the real power was not yourself and you were simply the instrument on which it played its tune.

“The Ananda of creation is not the pleasure of the ego in having personally done well and being somebody; that is something extraneous which attaches itself to the joy of work and creation. The Ananda comes from the inrush of a greater Power, or the perfection that is being created. How far one feels it depends on the condition of the consciousness at that time, the thrill of being possessed and used by it, the āveś, the exultation of the uplifting of the consciousness, its illumination and its greatened heightened action and also the joy of the beauty, power or perfection that is being created.

“How far one feels it depends on the condition of the consciousness at that time, the temperature, the activity of the vital. The yogi of course (even certain strong and calm minds) is not carried away by the Ananda he holds and watches it and there is no more excitement mixed with the flow of it through the mind, vital or body. Naturally the Ananda of samarpaṇ or spiritual realisation or divine love is something far greater, but the Ananda of creation has its place.”

As the consciousness gets gradually awakened because of our stay here, all of us can to a certain extent understand, if we are sincere, why we can do some things, why we cannot do other things and why, where and when we fail, though the help and force given by the Mother and Sri Aurobindo are always standing behind all our effort and work like wakeful sentinels.

When one can throw oneself in the stream which the force of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo has set going in order to take us in a certain direction and is constantly striving to do so, strange things are found to take place. Firstly, life moves in another rhythm, it has another taste and one enters into another kind of existence. Falling in that current, one loses one’s identity. All that is to be done, shunned or accepted is achieved spontaneously. No effort, no question troubles and no pain is felt in rejection nor even joy in becoming something. One has grown a different person, is living in another world and seeing things in a new way from a new place. Everything holds an endless interest and towards all one feels an affection, a love is born whose very character and quality are different. All this is a natural movement and law and aspect of that consciousness which has been received from the original source of Consciousness. And what is most wonderful is that the ‘I’ no longer stalks about with a superior air. One perceives clearly the truth that when the trial comes the mind cannot keep to the right attitude, and the result is failure and confusion. We realise that we have in fact lost our inner connection with the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. Hence we fall down into the bottomless waters from the bridge we had come to cross. The intensity, alertness and awareness are forgotten; everything gets clouded and we slip back into that domain where the ego is the lord, where the vision is muddy and from where starts all pain and suffering.

Regarding this condition, Sri Aurobindo wrote to me the following letter:

“The automatic tendency is a good sign as it shows that it is the inner being opening to the Truth which is pressing forward the necessary changes.

“The attitude you describe (in regard to your going to X’s) is quite the right one, — also in regard to Y’s affair.

“As you say, it is the failure of the right attitude that comes in the way of passing through ordeals to a change of nature. The pressure is becoming greater now for this change of character even more than for decisive Yoga experience — for if the experience comes it fails to be decisive because of the want of the requisite change of nature. The mind for instance gets the experience of the one in all, but the vital cannot follow because it is dominated by ego-reaction and ego-nature or the habits of the outer nature keep up a way of thinking, feeling, acting, living which is quite out of harmony with the experience. For the psychic and part of the mind and emotional being feel frequently the closeness of the Mother, but the rest of the nature is unoffered and goes its own way prolonging division from her nearness, creating distance. It is because the sadhaks have never even tried to have the Yogic attitude in all things — they have been contented with the common ideas, common view of things, common motives of life, only varied by inner experiences and transferred to the framework of the Ashram instead of that of the world outside. It is not enough and there is great need that it should change.

“No, what I have written should not be sent to Z; for it was not meant for her. I am not her Guru and she has a right to her ignorance. I objected only to her trying to force it on one who has taken up the spiritual life.”

(9 September 1936)

From all these letters and their answers one can have some idea of our mode of life; some aspects of it may also be grasped. What we usually write about are the events of the outer existence which may not give any true picture of the basic character of our life. Still, many hints regarding the inner life can be seen in the incidents of the outer existence. However, to write about sadhana is not my object. What I want to do is to write about the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. So let me present them through their own letters which will give a better knowledge of our sadhana. Our hearts get filled up when we write about those blessed events — in them we feel their touch, their presence; we get an opportunity, while writing about their measureless grace, to recognise our gratitude to them and feel a new taste in it.

Now I shall speak about the Mother through some of her letters. She writes:

It is very good to have recovered the calm. It is in the calm that the body can increase its receptivity and gain the power to continue.

With my love and blessings.

Sahana,

I fully approve of your singing in your room and see no necessity to stop it.

As for the change in the vital, it will come by itself when you will take the habit of remaining in your higher consciousness where all these petty things and movements are tasteless.

With love and blessings.

(17 April 1939)

Sadhana is always difficult and everybody has conflicting elements in his nature and it is difficult to make the vital give up its ingrained habits.

That is no reason for giving up Sadhana. One has to keep up the central aspiration which is always sincere, and go on steadily in spite of temporary failures and it is then inevitable that the change will come.

Our help is always with you.

With my love and blessings.

Sahana, my dear child,

For your own sake, I must tell you that you are bound to receive shocks and hard blows too so long as you indulge in such false ideas as “my taking sides” with one or another etc. This is completely wrong and baseless and you must get rid of this way of thinking altogether if you wish to be close to the Divine.

With my love and blessings.

Sahana,

I am very glad to hear of this new opening and fine experience. Always when one faces difficulties and overcomes them it brings a new spiritual opening and victory.

Our love and blessings.

Sahana,

I shall be waiting for you at 9:30 and expect you to come. I accept none of your excuses which surely do not come from any psychic source.

(17 May 1933)

Love and special blessings to my dear child Sahana.

Let this day be for you the day of a new birth and a new start in your sadhana. (17.5.39)

Sahana, my dear child,

You have indeed passed from one life to another, but it is in your body that this new birth took place, and now the road is wide open before you for a new progress.

With my love and blessings.

(19 April 1960)

It was perhaps in 1940 that the Mother and Sri Aurobindo decided to turn our sadhana into a distinctly collective activity. I am quoting here a portion of a letter of the Mother in which she has spoken in general about collective sadhana:

“Truly speaking, this is the first question that arose when I met Sri Aurobindo. Should we do an intensive individual sadhana withdrawing from the world, that is to say, having no contact with others any more, and arrive at the goal: then, thereafter, deal with others. Or should one allow all those others to come who have the same aspiration, let the group form itself in a natural and spontaneous way and march all together towards the goal? The two possibilities were there.

“The decision was not a mental choice, not at all. Quite naturally, spontaneously the group formed and asserted itself as an imperative necessity. There was no choice to be made.

“And once you start that way, it is done, you have to go right through to the end.

“If you want to do the work all alone, it is absolutely impossible to do it in a total way, for the entire physical being, however complete it may be, even if it is of an altogether higher quality, even if it had been created for a very special work, can never be but partial and limited. It represents only one truth, one law of the world; it may be a very complex law, but it is only one law — what is called Dharma in India — and the totality of transformation cannot be done through that alone, through one single body.

“That is why spontaneously the multiplicity has been created.

“You can attain all alone your own perfection. You can become in your consciousness infinite and perfect. The inner realisation has no limits. But the external realisation, on the contrary, is necessarily limited and therefore if you want to have a general action a minimum number of persons are required.”⁷

Although collective sadhana had been there in principle, 1940 began a special new chapter in our Ashram life. Before this, we were a small group of sadhaks, occupied with our individual sadhana in a quiet and comparatively secluded manner. Now, we began to move forward hand in hand along with all others on the wide open royal road. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo, after they had taken this decision, flung open the door of the Ashram to all seekers, and the number of pilgrims went on increasing. I could perceive very clearly that a vast and varied new world was being created, a new life with a new consciousness.

“Whatever you have said, will happen, because it is
true – it will be realised in time,
Every word of it will come true, the whole world
Will see on that day – your promise is not a mere word,
A vain utterance; Time will prove its prophetic truth.”

The life that we lead here is not for seeing the truth; it is a life of becoming the truth. So one has to become to some extent in order to be able to see.

After paying my homage and pranam at the feet of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo let me now conclude the reminiscence-part of the old days of my Ashram life with a description of my first Darshan-experience of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo when I arrived in Pondicherry.

I started by the noon-train from Bangalore to Pondicherry on 21st November, 1928. At Bangalore I met Dilip who was also coming on the same day and he accompanied me. Reaching Madras, I passed the remaining few hours at the Egmore Station. My mind was in a terrible turmoil. On the one hand it was ecstatic, swayed by the buoyant hope of having the Darshan of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo; on the other hand a sense of mixed excitement and anxiety in the extreme eagerness to come in close contact with such a great Power; on the one hand the dream of taking up an entirely unknown life, on the other the anxiety of falling into a quite different milieu. All these created a kind of pressure under which I found myself living. At 9:30 p.m. the train left for Pondicherry. Somehow my being became collected and the night passed in a sort of meditative trance. Next morning at 5 a.m. we arrived at the Pondicherry station. It was still dark — the morning star was shining bright. Some few lights were dimly burning in the station.

The way to Pondicherry came to an end — leaving behind the past life. I got down. It was 22nd November. In tune with the first awakening steps of the dawn, my dawning life too in Pondicherry stepped forward towards the Ashram. Two sadhaks from the Ashram had come to receive me; one of them had long hair running down his back. Putting me in an unusual-looking carriage, they themselves walked by my side. Such carriages were called “Push-push” (French “Pousse-pousse”) because they were pushed from behind by the driver. They had some resemblance to the old phaeton carriages of Calcutta, which were perhaps a little higher and wider. The Push-push rode on two wheels under it and had one smaller wheel in front, connected with an iron rod which extended into a handle for the passenger to turn according to the direction he wanted to follow.

The two sadhaks left me at my lodging and said that Nolini would come to see me at 7:30 a.m. I was given the front room facing the street in the present Embroidery department of the Mother. On the other side, was the “Main Building” where the Mother and Sri Aurobindo used to live. I could see the windows of the Mother’s house through my window. The house gave me a great surprise, for I had expected that I would have to live in a thatched cottage and practise severe austerities. Instead, I found a fine pucca building open on all sides, a room furnished with a cot, table, chair and glass-almirah and a carpet spread on the cot. It seemed the Mother had sent that carpet from her own place. I was deeply touched by this unusual consideration on her part and I felt I had received something indefinable from her. I was quietly thinking of her when Nolini came with another person having long hair, a moustache and beard, a cheerful face and kind sweet eyes. His talk at once gave me the impression of a witty person — humour was as it were his natural manner of expression. There was not much talk, but it was very pleasant. He was introduced to me as “Amrita”. I had already heard of Nolini, especially as a famous writer of essays. But his appearance was quite unlike what I had imagined. I had thought he would be a man of impressive appearance with a well-developed body and a grave poise, but what I saw was a slim and quiet man; his forehead was broad, eyes deep and uncommon. He said at once, “Mother will see you at 9:30 a.m. come a little earlier, I shall wait for you at the main gate.” I perceived that he was a man of few words.

“The Mother had called me, she would see me and I would go and see her.” I was entirely possessed by this thought. Within I was as quiet as a cloudless sky. I was sitting with my doors closed and did not want to see anyone. But there was a knock and I opened. It was about 8:30 a.m. A female servant had brought my breakfast in a covered enamel dish. The quantity of food was staggering. A large bowl of “phoscao” — a kind of French beverage, more tasty than cocoa — 6 or 7 slices of toasted bread and one banana. It seemed too much for one person’s breakfast. There was a water-jug and a tumbler in the room — everything appeared to be well-ordered. The servant left after doing her work of sweeping and cleaning.

It had never occurred to my mind that I would have to do my sadhana in such comfort and ease. There was a deep satisfaction in seeing everything neat and clean. Even the brass knob of the door was shining.

As soon as I stepped into the Ashram, I felt that the atmosphere there was pervaded with some other element. The difference was palpable. There was such a calm silence everywhere that the mind of itself turned inward. Though at the first glance one could see nothing beyond the common, yet behind it an imprint of uncommonness could be perceived by a seeing eye. The inmates seemed to be quite contentedly busy with something or other as if they did not belong to this world and their dealing was with some invisible domain.

A little before 9:30 a.m. I arrived at the house where the Mother and Sri Aurobindo were living. Nolini met us at the main gate where I found Dilip waiting and led me to the room on the first floor to meet the Mother. As we were quietly climbing these steps, in the surrounding stillness even a slight noise startled me. We entered a room on the right-hand side and saw at the end a small room somewhat dark owing to a hanging curtain. The Mother was indistinctly seen sitting on a sofa in a cross-legged posture. Her face was slightly turned to one side and the right hand held a veil over her head. As I stood in front my eyes fell upon her and at once I could feel that though she had a human body she was not human. I was seeing a figured Divinity. My two hands folded by themselves and I, in that attitude, stood looking at that divine image with an enchanted gaze. She smiled and lifted her eyes towards me. What a smile, what a look! That it could not be of any human being was clear to me. I bowed down at her feet; she laid her hand on my head. Her touch poured into my heart something that acted like a soothing balm, it seemed to melt my whole being into a cool delight. When she took off her hand, I sat near her feet. Again she touched my head and my eyes closed of themselves. Then the consciousness began to rise above; at the same time a power descended, and passing through the head it spread itself in all the chakras of the body, in all the nerves. I felt that the body was a vessel which was getting so filled up that it began to swell and become hard; the body went on expanding — that was my feeling. The Mother was touching my head from time to time. Perhaps she wanted me to open my eyes, but I could not. Every touch of hers made me go deeper. At last she put one of her fingers for a while on the middle of my brow and I opened my eyes. Still I was under a spell and my eyes were closing. Suddenly I saw that she was steadily looking at them. Her look seemed to penetrate into the very depths of me, she was transfusing something into my very core. A frail body, yet what eyes — as if a source of all power! Since then I have witnessed many varieties of her eyes’ expression. She now asked us if we had anything to say. Dilip told her on my behalf several things of my life and as if with rapt attention she heard them. At the end she drew me with her two hands towards her bosom and kissed my head. Words are impotent to express that touch. After a while she lifted my face and gazed at me — a divine smile on her face, a supreme assurance in her look. She had accepted me. My eyes were overflowing with tears.

As I descended the stairs to go back to my home, a few unknown faces were curious to know my impression of the Mother. But I was in no mood to speak, and without giving any reply I walked to my room and locked it from inside. Tears started pouring, a flood of tears. God knows where they came from and my whole body began to shake with this flood. All the time I felt I saw the Mother — her look, her smile floated before my eyes, giving an intense sensation in the heart and evoking a cry from it. I did not know why the cry had arisen, I only knew there was a hitherto unsavoured satisfaction in it.

Next day at 5 p.m. the Mother came to my room, having already given previous notice of it. I had kept for her a chair beautifully arranged, in which she sat. I bowed at her feet. She asked me to sing. I sang a devotional song of Mirabai: “Lord, keep me as thy servant.” She wanted to hear a second song and I sang about four of Mirabai’s “bhajans”. Before the Mother departed, I again did pranam. She told me very affectionately that I should not hesitate to inform her in case there was any discomfort or if I needed anything. She seemed the very embodiment of Grace and my entire being was full to the brim with love and gratitude.

The next day was 24th November, the day when the Ashram would have Sri Aurobindo’s Darshan. From our very childhood we had heard his name and since then was born in our hearts a spontaneous love and devotion for him. In our life he had taken his seat. We learnt to adore him and offer our soul’s deepest homage. We had heard that he was a very great man, a friend and benefactor of mankind. His uncommon qualities of character, his supreme intellect and unparalleled love and self-sacrifice for the country — all these had been like fairy tales which had filled the air and which we children used to hear with avid attention and rapture. Now he came into my life as my Guru.

The atmosphere of the Ashram had changed. A good number of people had come from outside for the Darshan. The inmates were all a picture of brightness and their faces shone with an intense glow.

The Darshan was to take place at 7 a.m. in the same room where the Mother used to meet people. In front of the staircase was a board on which the names of the pilgrims and their Darshan-times were written. A carpet had been spread in the adjacent hall for people to sit and meditate and await their turn for the Darshan. Complete silence reigned everywhere. Incense and flower-fragrance helped to kindle the flame of aspiration. The pilgrims with flowers and garlands in their hands were silently going up to the temple to have their Darshan of the Deity, and were returning with an inexpressible radiance on their faces. Then came my turn.

It was the rule that one had to wait on the last step of the staircase until the preceding man had come back after the Darshan. As soon as Dilip entered inside, I took my stand on the highest step and glimpsed Sri Aurobindo sitting majestically on a sofa slightly leaning against it — bright and immobile like the Himalaya. He was of a fair complexion and wore a white silk dhoti and chaddar; the bust was half covered and the hair and beard mixed together hung down to the chest. As I came near what a serene, collected and eye-enrapturing figure it was that I saw! All luminous, the Mother was sitting on his right side. As I bowed down to her, she placed her two hands on my head and poured her ineffable honeyed smile as her blessings, as I found when I looked up. Then my eyes turned to the feet of Sri Aurobindo. How beautiful they were! I laid my head on them and did not want to get up at all! My whole being prostrated itself in a complete and secure reliance. I marked a strange thing: when I was coming up for Darshan, my heart was palpitating with an unknown excitement, as if someone was striking it with a hammer, but the moment I saw him from a distance and stood before him and put my head on his feet, a totally different experience took place instead. Slightly leaning forward, he put his right hand on my head. Oh, how soft was the touch! I could not say what magic was in the touch or what I expected from it, but the fact was that I received something inconceivable which I had not received anywhere else, and that touch awoke an intense eagerness to give myself without the least reserve, free from all bondage. As I looked at his eyes, I could not turn away from his gaze, and the very bottom of some immeasurable sea was, as it were exposed to my vision. He then lowered his sight and I got up and turned to go. As to how I found myself back in my room or how the whole day passed, I had no idea. That image of eye-entrancing beauty filled my entire being.

At last, I had had his Darshan for which I had craved and brooded nights and days. I decided that if I could not take up his yoga, life would not be worth carrying on. To reach him alone, I had launched on a perilous voyage across a shoreless ocean. Whenever I thought of God, it was Sri Aurobindo’s face that came to the front again and again. And now at last I had obtained his Darshan.

Was it as a guru?

“No,” my soul assured me, “Sri Aurobindo is more than a guru.”

Was it as a great seer or a great yogi?

“No,” was the reply, “Sri Aurobindo is not even that.”

As a creator of Purna Yoga?

“Even if it be so he is not that alone.”

As what then?

“Only as Sri Aurobindo.”

Sri Aurobindo is Sri Aurobindo. He does not fall into any category. He is one without a second. He is only Sri Aurobindo.

And Sri Aurobindo is my only refuge.