Memories of First Darshan

A Radiant Personality

At that time I was athirst for light — especially light on his yoga. I was then on a musical tour gleaning data on different styles of our music in different provinces. But somehow my work didn't grip me although it still interested me. So I grew more and more eager to meet him once face to face.

At this time I was drawn and yet scared by the idea of yoga or rather by my fanciful conception of the conditions of yoga. This was partly because mine had been pre-eminently a social temperament exulting in the sunlit soil of travel, music, laughter and robust optimism which, in Sri Aurobindo's language, support the "vital egoistic life" of worldly activism. Be that as it might, it cannot be gainsaid that all I had stood for outwardly had been utterly out of tune with what the authentic yoga with its life of one-pointed aspiration and uncompromising self-surrender demanded. No wonder I was scared by what I then thought yoga had in store for its devotees: a life of awful austerities, desiccating discipline and withering solitude, all of which meant for me an utter stultification of life.

Yet I was so attracted by Sri Aurobindo's analysis of our world and his idea of evolution from the spiritual point of view, that I sincerely wished I could somehow practise his "integral yoga". I particularly liked his teaching arrogant reason its place, for I was deeply dissatisfied with the arid view of science that Life was an accident. I was growing sceptical of the learned ignorance of the reasoning mind which, in the end, led nowhere. . . .

. . .

So I wrote to him asking to see him. He consented. I made immediately for Pondicherry.

It was in January, 1924 that I saw him for the first time. I had the privilege of having a long talk with him on the 24th. The next day the duration of the talk was shorter. I kept an elaborate record of all that had passed and this report I sent him subsequently for revision. He approved of it substantially and made only a few minor corrections. But as these two interviews were not published then and as I received from him after I had come to live in his Asram permanently as his disciple in 1928 numerous letters throwing further light on his yoga, I have thought fit to add some extracts here and there from these letters written in answer to my deeper and more obstinate questionings. This device will, I hope, serve as a partial corrective to my own (necessarily) inadequate representation of his replies to which no penmanship can ever contrive to do justice. These subsequent explanatory notes, whether added to his talk or substituted for my original report of it, I have placed inside double brackets "( ( ) )"

It was about eight in the morning. Sri Aurobindo lived then in the house which stands at the main entrance to the Asram. He was seated in a chair in the front verandah. I made him my pranam, and took another chair in front. An oblong table stood between us.

"A radiant personality!" sang the very air about him. A deep aura of peace encircled him, an ineffable yet concrete peace that drew you almost at once into its magic orbit. But it was the eyes that fascinated me most — shining like beacons. His torso was bare except for a scarf thrown across.

"The greatest living yogi of India!" — my heart beat fast! Hitherto I had seen but a few sadhus and sannyasis but a real yogi, who lived thus for years in seclusion and yet took some interest in my doings.⁸ He appraised me with his soothing yet penetrative gaze. It would be impossible adequately to portray my reactions. . . . After a time I pulled myself together with an effort.

"I have come," I stammered out, "to know . . . to ascertain rather . . . if I can be initiated . . . I mean I want to practise your yoga to start with, if possible."

He simply said: "You must tell me clearly what it is exactly that you seek, and why you want to do my yoga."

I was lost. Why? Did I know myself? How then to put it all clearly and cogently. I strove hard to find some light in my bewilderment.

"Suppose," I found tongue at last, "I suggested — or rather suffer me to ask if you could help me in attaining, or shall we say discovering, the object of life?"

"That is not an easy question to answer," he said, "for I know of no one desideratum which is cherished equally by all, any more than I know of an object of life equally treasured by all. The object or aim of life cannot but vary with various people, and seekers, too, approach yoga with diverse aims. Some want to practise yoga to get away from life, like the (illusionist) mayavadi: these want to renounce life altogether, since, this phenomenal life, they contend, is an illusion, maya, which hides the ultimate reality. There are others who aspire after a supreme love or bliss. Yet others want from yoga power or knowledge or a tranquil poise impervious to the shocks of life. So you must first of all be definite as to what, precisely, you seek in yoga."

"I want to know," I proffered desperately, "if yoga could, in the last resort, lead to a solution of the anomalies of life with all its native sufferings and humiliations."

"You mean transcendent knowledge?"

"If you like — but then no — for I want bliss too, crowning this wisdom."

"You can certainly get either from yoga."

"May I then aspire to an initiation from you?"

"You may, provided you agree to its conditions and your call is strong."

"Couldn't you give me an idea about the nature of these conditions. . . and about this call you speak of . . . may I ask what you mean exactly?"

"I gathered from your booklet Yogic Sadhan," I pursued before he could reply to my question, "that you called yourself a Tantrik who believed in lila, and not a follower of Shankara believing in maya. You have written for instance: 'To fulfil God in life is man's manhood.' And if my memory doesn't fail me, you said in your Life Divine: 'We must accept the many-sidedness of the Manifestation even while we assert the unity of the Manifested.' "

"It is true that I am a believer in lila," he nodded. "But why exactly do you refer to that?"

"I wanted to make sure whether you really meant what you wrote in your Yogic Sadhan. I hope, too, that your yoga doesn't make it binding on one to live like a cave-dweller who disowns the many-mooded, active life or, shall we say, like a passive pensioner whose day is done? This hope, happily, has been fostered by your repudiation of mayavada."

"I see what you mean," he said, giving me an indulgent smile. "Well, yes, I am not a mayavadi, happily, for you as well as for me. But, incidentally, I am not the author of the book Yogic Sadhan."

"How do you mean?"

"Haven't you heard of automatic writing?"

"Planchette?"

"Not exactly. I merely held the pen while a disembodied being wrote off what he wished, using my pen and hand."

"May I ask why you lent yourself to such writing?"

(("At the time I was trying to find out how much of truth and how much of subliminal suggestion from submerged consciousness there might be in phenomena of this kind."))

"But let that pass," he added. "To return to your main question. You asked about the active life. Well, it isn't binding on you to renounce all that you value in your active life. What you must be ready to renounce is attachment to everything on that plane whether you live within or outside the wheel of karma, action. For if you keep these attachments, the Light from above will not be able to work unhampered to effect the radical transformation of your nature."

"Does that imply that I must forego, say, all human sympathy and true friendship, all joy of life and fellow-feeling?"

"It doesn't." (("Absence of love and fellow-feeling is not necessary to the Divine nearness, on the contrary a sense of closeness and oneness with others is a part of the Divine consciousness into which the Sadhaka enters by nearness to the Divine and the feeling of oneness with the Divine. An entire rejection of all relations is indeed the final aim of the Mayavadin and in the ascetic yoga an entire loss of all relations of friendship and affection and attachment to the world and its living beings would be regarded as a promising sign of advance towards liberation, moksha. But even there, I think a feeling of oneness and unattached spiritual sympathy for all is at least a penultimate stage, like the compassion of the Buddhist before turning to moksha or nirvana."))

THIS decided me: I wanted to draw him out further.

"I would ask you to bear with me a little," I made bold to say, "and give me a patient hearing. My difficulty is that I have lived and loved life amply and I believe, intensely. But in my boyhood I came under the influence of Sri Ramakrishna's mysticism. As a result this certitude germinated in my mind that he had touched the bedrock of Truth with the categorical assertion that 'the object of human living is to achieve Divine union.' Then, I went on to say, "I fell within the orbit of the Western this-worldiness with all its spell and glamour and romance, luxuriating in living and in making the most of life and nature. I did not stop to think that the wealth of sunshine might have a worthier message for us than that of goading us to make a few paltry pleasures of hay. I made haste to snatch what I could before the shadows closed in. In my own case, however, they crept in even before sunset, for my vital enthusiasm waned quickly and the old starry perception of my boyhood re-emerged. It said in clear accents: it isn't any of these — wealth or youth, fame or family, action or art — no, not even service to the community or country, but only the Divine, nothing but His unique touch that can impart significance to it all, since He is the sole reality, all the rest is a mimicry, a shadow-dance."

"On my return from Europe," I continued, "I became popular and made friends, numerous friends — thanks to my patrimony, musical gifts, social qualities and lastly the pathetic awe and esteem that people feel when you can talk glibly about continental culture in continental languages. But strangely enough, among my numerous friends I met none interested in God or things of the spirit unless diluted with big doses of coloured art and popular humanism, with the sole exception of Ronald Nixon, an English Professor of Lucknow. Thus it was a foreigner who discussed with me the wisdom of our authentic spirituality. It was he who first told me about your great yogic stature and made me read your books. Since meeting him my old nostalgia for the spiritual life has reasserted itself with redoubled force and I cannot rest in peace without the inner harmony which only the Spirit can give. In other words, I want to practise yoga. But then here I have the deepest misgivings as to my capacity. And I have had this persistent feeling that I can never succeed without a Guru and that Guru must be no other than yourself, even though I don't know whether you will accept me. That is my position. But the trouble is that Life, too, calls me with her coloured lanterns as you must have inferred yourself from my questions regarding social give-and-take, sympathy, love, friendship, etc., with all their attendant obligations and responsibilities. To stake all that for something that has not yet crystallised in my consciousness — or maybe that the dilemma lies in this that the satisfaction that these social pleasures give, though fast dwindling, are yet too tangible to be dismissed, out of hand? Anyhow the prospect of having to do without my chains causes a strange malaise. I say strange, because I can't quite account for the tug-o-war that is going on within me — a conflict which is quite concrete even when the forces seem so imponderable. But I don't know if I have been able to put it all clearly before you?"

I paused as he smiled kindly, his deep glance spraying a kind of peace upon me . . . giving me a feeling of his compassion . . . not a mere human compassion but something far more pervasive and soothing.

"I quite understand," he said reassuringly. "It is like this: Human society, human friendship, love, affection, fellow-feeling are mostly and usually — not entirely or in all cases — founded on a vital basis and are ego-held at their centre. It is because of the pleasure of being loved, the pleasure of enlarging the ego by contact and penetration with another, the exhilaration of the vital interchange which feeds their personality, that men usually love and there are also other and still more selfish motives that mix with this essential movement. There are of course higher spiritual, psychic, mental, vital elements that can come in; but the whole thing is very mixed even at its best. This is the reason why at a certain stage with or without apparent reason the world and life and human society and philanthropy — which is as ego-ridden as the rest — begin to pall.

"There is sometimes," he continued, "an ostensible reason — a disappointment of the surface-vital, the withdrawal of affection by others, the perception that those loved, or men generally, are not what one thought them to be and a host of other causes. But often the cause is a secret disappointment of some part of the inner being, not translated or not well translated into the mind, because it expected from these things something they cannot give. For some it takes the form of a vairagya, which drives them towards ascetic indifference and gives the urge towards moksha. For us what we hold to be necessary is that the mixture should disappear and that the consciousness should be established on a purer level."

"Till then," he went on after a pause, "love and affection and sympathy and friendship could not yield to us their full quota in significance and joy, because for that their basis has to be spiritual, their foundation pure. But for such a consummation there must be a transmutation of the very substance of our human nature. It is only then that the rhythm and mode of its self-expression can change when the lead will have been taken by the psychic self in us. When this self of ours comes to the forefront, it will express in the truest way the authentic movements of the deeper emotions which are of the psychic. This is, in a nutshell, the inner message of my yoga."¹

"Consequently," he added, "this must be the ideal, your ideal, that is, if you would practise yoga, bearing in mind that you mustn't be bound by anything that is irrelevant to your aspiration for the Divine. Nothing — no attachment however laudable — must be a rival to your aspiration for the Divine."

"But is that possible — I mean feasible, for me?"

"Not at the start: if it were, you would be a liberated being already. You can't achieve liberation overnight. What I wanted to stress was that if you cared for yoga you must always hold on to your vision, your ideal of inner liberation, so that you may be ready to comply whenever you are called upon to forego anything that militates against this ideal."

"But must I necessarily be called upon to forego — everything?"

"You may not be — outwardly, that is," he said. "But that won't make any very material difference, since your inner attitude has to be that of complete freedom all the same — the ideal must be nirliptata, non-attachment. If you can be truly non-attached within, you need not have to tear off the outward strappings of bondage. But remember that you must always be ready to shove aside anything that is incompatible with yoga, for that surely is one of its major conditions."

"Does that apply to things that do not, properly speaking, belong to the material plane, say music which I love so dearly? Must I renounce that too?"

"I haven't said you must," he smiled again indulgently, "only, if yoga were the central thing in your life you would not be so nervous at the prospect of having to give up music for its sake, would you?"

I hung my head discountenanced.

"I would not have you infer," I pleaded, "that I couldn't possibly give up music. Only I am not yet persuaded that yoga will make it up to me. My problem may be somewhat naive but it is a problem nonetheless. It is like this: I don't find it hard to give up a lower thing for a higher one provided I have some foretaste of the latter. But so long as I have no clear idea of what yoga has to give, why must I gamble away the tangible for the elusive? Before I burn my boats can't I legitimately claim even a glimpse of what the deep has in store for me?"

"Didn't I tell you just now that you need not necessarily give up your music or something just as tangible for that matter: what is obligatory is that should any activity or idea or habit or attachment or preconception prove an impediment on the way, you have to discard it when so required."

"But you haven't answered my question about the compensation. Or perhaps it is taboo to have such an intellectual curiosity or scepticism, if you will?"

"Not quite, only yoga, you must know, is not a matter of intellectual appraisement or recognition: it is essentially a matter of realisation through self-dedication. As for your other question, surely the compensations of yoga are deep as well as abiding. Only, you can't summon them to prove their validity before your mental dock. But let me tell you here that your difficulties aren't what you presume them to be: I mean they are not mental at bottom. The truth of the matter is this: so long as the joys which belong to the lower planes continue to be too vividly real and covetable you will find ready enough reasons why you shouldn't decline them. You can forego them only when you have had a call of the higher joys, when the lower ones begin to pall, sound hollow. The Promised Land of the Spirit begins from the frontier of worldly enjoyments, to start with."

"But why is it," I asked after a pause, "that one can't expect to have even a glimpse beforehand of this Land? Because of the thick walls of our worldly desires?"

"Your premise here is not quite correct," he objected. "For even when we live in the world of these desires the glimpse, the call, comes to us through chinks and rifts of dissatisfaction and surfeit. Only, it doesn't last long until you are somewhat purified, for then only do you really begin to be open to it. The darkness returns intermittently after the light because it takes long to get our whole being open to the light. That is why yoga pushes us urgently upwards to altitudes where the light can be shut out no more by clouds. And it is just because yoga is such an ascent of consciousness, that any attachment to or desire for lures and prizes on the lower planes, material, intellectual or aesthetic, must eventually prove a shackle."

"Why then do you write so appreciatively of materialism as also of the intellectual and aesthetic delights? And why are your own writings so illuminating intellectually? Why have you praised art? Why write at all: 'The highest aim of the aesthetic being is to find the Divine through Beauty?'"²

"Why not? Intellect, art, poetry, knowledge of matter, etc., can all help our progress appreciably provided you direct them properly. It is at bottom, a case of evolution. That is why I once wrote: 'Reason was the helper, Reason is the bar'; which means simply that our intellect can be a help in our evolution only a part of the way. But when it presumes to judge what is beyond its domain, it must be put in its place. Besides, different recipients are differently constituted for different disciplines — seeking different fulfilments, each approaching truth in the way of his nature, swabhava. To put it in other words, those who are best recipients for the light of the intellect are mentally more evolved than those who are not so gifted intellectually. But that doesn't mean that there are no realisations higher than the mental ones. Assuredly there are, as we can concretely verify as we open ourselves to the realisations of the Spirit, when we find the mental joys inadequate, the aesthetic joys no longer satisfying. With this opening we glimpse worlds higher than those we have been used to. Do you follow?"

"You mean that yoga enlarges our consciousness more and more?"

"That is my view of evolution," he nodded, "this gradual unfolding of the consciousness ascending to its higher reaches. And it is yoga which is to bring down further light and power in the next step of human evolution — the next stage of the evolution of human consciousness."

I reverted to my difficulty: "But what about my taking to yoga?"

"Everybody can practise some yoga or other, suited to his nature," he replied non-committally.

"But my question was about your Integral yoga — of self-surrender."

"Ah!" he said slowly as though weighing his words. "About that I can't pronounce here and now."

"But why?"

"Because the yoga that I have been pursuing of late — whose aim is the entire and radical transformation of the stuff and fabric of our consciousness and being including our physical nature — is a very arduous one, fraught with grave perils at every step. In fact so great are these dangers that I would not advise anybody to run them unless his call is so urgent that he is prepared to stake everything. In other words, I can accept only those with whom yoga has become such a necessity that nothing else seems worthwhile. In your case it hasn't yet become so urgent. Your seeking is for some sort of partial elucidation of life's mysteries. This is at best an intellectual seeking — not an urgent need of the central being."

"Allow me to explain a little further," I said with a keen sense of disappointment, "for I am afraid you haven't quite seen where the shoe pinches. I can assure you that mine is not merely a mental curiosity — "

"I said seeking, not curiosity," he corrected. "And I referred to the present only: I did not mean this could not develop later on into a real need of your central being."

"Let me make it more explicit all the same," I insisted. "From 1919 till 1922 I was in Europe meeting many thoughtful people including a few notable thinkers. Each of these I prodded with the one test-query: 'What is the truth of truths?' I have all along felt, with the Gita, that the truth-seeker must approach the Wise — the Tatwa-darshi — with 'homage, enquiry and service'. I have indeed gained a great deal through contacts of men like Bertrand Russell, Romain Rolland, Mahatma Gandhi, Tagore, Duhamel, and many others who are less celebrated but highly evolved personalities. To all of them I owe a debt of deep gratitude. But I have reached no solution of life's master problem — none could point me the way to it. I continued to be tormented by life's endless tragedies and sorrows and disharmonies; I was pained by the senseless wastefulness of Nature's ways and what chiefly troubled me was the persistent fact that mankind in the mass should go on preferring evil to good, falsehood to truth, darkness to light. Time and again have I asked myself if we must go on for ever groping in vain for a panacea to it all, if there was no real remedy to the 'ills our flesh is heir to'. If there was, how was it that we, the children of Immortality should never chance upon it through centuries of striving? And why should we still be clamouring and scrambling for the ephemeral — often, alas, even the infernal — instead of the everlasting good? Besides, I used to ask myself —" I pulled up suddenly, somewhat abashed for my effusion.

"Go on," he said in a very kind tone, "I am listening."

"I well remember," I resumed, encouraged, "how, whenever I came in contact with somebody out of the ordinary, I used to hear a distinct voice deep down within me: 'But has he achieved his poise in the ultimate Truth? Has he realised lasting peace?' And an answering voice returned with equal distinctness: 'No.' There was but one exception. I have told you I came early under the influence of Sri Ramakrishna. Whenever I used to meditate before his picture I used to have a deep certitude that he had attained yamm labdhvaa caaparamm laabhamm manyate naadhikamm tatahh — 'the boon of boons beside which all others look like baubles.' And this certitude came again with the same rhythm of deep joy when I saw you just now — but I'm afraid I am getting too autobiographical —"

"It is all right, go on."

"I used often to probe my soul with the questioning: how to attain that poise — yasmin sthito na duhhkhena gurunnaapi vicaalyate — which made one impervious to life's hardest blows — and gave one the unshakable foundation of eternal peace and bliss? Music gave me a brief foretaste — though even there by snatches — of such felicity, that is why I have loved music passionately since my childhood. With age this love grew; yet I was continually visited by an anxious questioning whether it was justifiable to seek refuge in the delightful retreats of art in a world where suffering was so widespread and tragically persistent? At times a sob came up: was there really no way of changing this — no way of release from these dark underworlds of pain and misery into radiant spheres of joy and happiness? If not, then what sense can there be in any human endeavour? Have we to accept, after all, the findings of the mayavadis as the ultimate verdict of human experience that no stable haven of fulfilment is attainable in the conditions to which we are born?" I stopped suddenly dead, somewhat abashed by my crescendo of rhetoric of which I had suddenly become conscious.

Sri Aurobindo fixed on me a long gaze. An ineffable radiance of compassionate sympathy suffused his face . . . his eyes gleamed like jewels shedding light without heat. I knew he had understood. Hasn't he written in a poem about his own yearning in face of human sorrows:

Rose of God, vermilion stain on the sapphires of heaven, Rose of Bliss, fire-sweet, seven-tinged with the ecstasies seven! Leap up in our heart of humanhood, O miracle, O flame, Passion-flower of the Nameless, bud of the mystical Name.

Rose of God, great wisdom-bloom on the summits of being, Rose of Light, immaculate core of the ultimate seeing! Live in the mind of our earthhood; O golden Mystery, flower, Sun on the head of the Timeless, guest of the marvellous Hour.

Rose of God, damask force of Infinity, red icon of might, Rose of power with thy diamond halo piercing the night! Ablaze in the will of the mortal, design the wonder of thy plan, Image of Immortality, outbreak of the Godhead in man.

Rose of God, smitten purple with the incarnate divine Desire, Rose of Life, crowded with petals, colour's lyre! Transform the body of the mortal like a sweet and magical rhyme; Bridge our earthhood and heavenhood, make deathless the children of Time.

Rose of God, like a blush of rapture on Eternity's face, Rose of Love, ruby depth of all being, fire-passion of Grace! Arise from the heart of the yearning that sobs in Nature's abyss: Make earth the home of the Wonderful and life beatitude's kiss.

"I quite see your difficulty," he said softly. "For I too wanted at one time to transform through my yoga the face of the world. My aim was to change the fundamental nature and movements of humanity, to exile all the evils which afflict helpless mortality."

I felt a heave within — in my very blood. For one like him to talk so intimately to a stranger! Gratitude surged within me and I hung upon his words, eager to imbibe the sweet cadences of his liquid voice.

"It was with this aspiration that I turned to yoga in the beginning," he added, "and I came to Pondicherry because I had been directed by the Voice to pursue my yoga here."

"I read in the famous letters you wrote to your wife that you had turned to yoga to save our country."

"That's right. I told Lele when agreeing to follow his instructions that I would do his yoga only on condition that it didn't interfere with my poetry and service to the country."

"And then?"

"Lele agreed and gave me initiation. But soon afterwards he left, bidding me turn solely to my inner guidance.

"Since then," he went on, "I have followed only this inner Voice which has led me to develop what I named the Integral yoga. It was then that my outlook changed with the knowledge born of my new yogic consciousness. But then I found, to my utter disillusionment, that it was only my ignorance which had led me to believe that the impossible was feasible here and now."

"Ignorance?"

He nodded. "Because I didn't realise then that in order to help humanity out it was not enough for an individual, however great, to achieve an ultimate solution individually: humanity has to be ripe for it too. For the crux of the difficulty is that even when the Light is ready to descend it cannot come to stay until the lower plane is also ready to bear the pressure of the Descent."

I was reminded of what he had written in his Essays on the Gita: "No real peace can be till the heart of man deserves peace; the law of Vishnu cannot prevail till the debt to Rudra is paid . . . Teachers of the land of love and Oneness there must be, for by that way must come the ultimate salvation, but not till the Time-Spirit in man is ready, can the inner and the ultimate prevail over the outer and immediate reality. Christ and Buddha have come and gone but it is Rudra who still holds the world in the hollow of his hand."

"Consequently," he went on, "the utmost you can do, here and now is to communicate only partially the light of your realisations in proportion as people are receptive. Even this is not very easy, mind you; for the fact of your having received something does not necessarily make you capable of making a free gift of it to others. You see, capacity to receive is one kind of aptitude, capacity to give — quite another. Indeed, the latter is a very special kind of gift. Some there are who can only imbibe but not communicate, because, for one thing, what you communicate, everybody cannot receive, even when they earnestly want to. To sum up, the number of those is very limited who are capable both of giving and receiving. So you can understand the problem is by no means a simple one. What is one to do? Everybody does not want bliss or enlightenment: men are at different stages of development and this makes any universal panacea for life's evils an impossibility as the history of human experience has proved again and again."

I was reminded of the story of the sceptic who asked the Buddha why he did not confer his gift of nirvana on all and sundry here and now if he was really convinced of its efficacy in this sorrow-ridden world. Buddha simply asked him to go round from door to door enquiring what they severally wanted. He came back and reported that the boons coveted were endless: money, power, fame, children, women, health, beauty, long life and so on. "But what about nirvana?" asked Buddha. "Did anybody want it?" — "Not one," he replied. "Well," Buddha smiled, "how can I force a boon on people who won't have it?"

"But what about the widespread misery and fear and suffering?" I said after a pause.

"How can you help that so long as men choose as they do to hug ignorance which is at the root of all suffering? As long as they cherish the darkness of attachment rather than the light of liberation and knowledge, how can they expect to see? How would you evade the inexorable law of karma?"

"What are you then striving for through your yoga?" I asked. "For your own liberation or fulfilment?"

"No," he said, "that wouldn't have taken so long. But," he added, "it is not possible to answer you more convincingly just now, for if I were to tell you why I am doing yoga, you would either not understand or misunderstand. Suffice it to say that I want to invoke here on earth the light of a higher world, to manifest a new power which will continue to exist as a new influence in the physical world and will be a direct manifestation of the Divine in our entire being and daily life."

"Is this what you have named the Supramental Divine?"

"That's right — though the name is immaterial. What matters is to remember that for a variety of reasons the direct action of the Supramental has never yet been brought to bear on our earth-nature and consciousness."

"Because the time was not favourable for such a descent?"

"Partly; but there were other reasons also which I can't go into as they cannot be communicated through mental language, and so, if attempted, may only lead to fresh mystification."

He wrote to me later, in 1933 about the functioning of the Supramental: "What the Supramental will do, the mind cannot foresee or lay down. The mind is Ignorance seeking for the Truth, the Supramental by its very definition is the Truth-consciousness: Truth in possession of itself and fulfilling itself by its own power. In a Supramental world imperfection and disharmony are bound to disappear. But what we propose just now is not to make the earth a Supramental world but to bring down the Supramental as a Power and established consciousness in the midst of the rest — to let it work there and fulfil itself as Mind descended into life and matter has worked as a Power there to fulfil itself in the midst of the rest. This will be enough to change the world and to change Nature by breaking down her present limits. But what, how, by what degrees it will do it is a thing that ought not to be said now — when the Light is there, the Light itself will do its work — when the Supramental Will stands on earth, that Will will decide."

"But tell me at least if the yogis of yore knew of this Power."

"Some did.³ But — how can I put the truth of the matter to you? — what happened was that they used to rise individually to this plane and stay there in union: they didn't bring it down to act upon our terrestrial consciousness. Perhaps they did not even attempt to. But I would rather not tell you more about this because, as I said, the mind cannot even glimpse the Supramental Truth, to say nothing of understanding it."

"But, forgive me, isn't the world going from bad to worse daily — nay, hourly? I am an unrepentant rationalist — realist — I hope you will pardon me for saying this?"

"I will," he said smiling. "For I myself have stressed repeatedly this desperate plight of the earth. And the conditions will become more desperate still. The usual idea of the occultists about it is that the worse they are the more probable is the coming of an intervention or a new revelation from above. The ordinary mind cannot know: it has either to believe or disbelieve — wait and see."

I was reminded of the Gita's message that whenever there is in this world a shipwreck of the spiritual values through the upsurge of rebel Darkness, the Divine incarnates himself again to restore the reign of victorious Light.

"But on whom and what will this Supramental work?" I asked.

"Why, on our life-material of course — down to matter and the physical."

"Didn't the ancient yogis attempt this either?"

"Not with the Supramental instrumentation. Their preoccupation was not so much with our basic material physical, because to transform it with the spiritual force is the most difficult of all achievements. But that is precisely why it must be achieved."

"But does the Divine seriously want some such big thing to be achieved?"

"Unquestionably. As to whether the Divine seriously means something to happen, I believe it is intended. I know with absolute certitude that the Supramental is a truth and that its advent is in the nature of things inevitable. The question is as to the when and the how. That also is decided and predestined from somewhere above; but it is here being fought out amid rather a grim clash of conflicting forces."

"Forgive me, I don't quite follow this."

"I know," he intervened. "For it is somewhat abstruse. It is like this. In the terrestrial world the predetermined result is hidden and what we see is a whirl of possibilities and forces attempting to achieve something with the destiny of it all concealed from human eyes. This is however certain that a number of souls have been sent to see that it shall be now. That is the situation. My faith and will are all for the now. I am speaking of course on the level of human intelligence — mystically — rationally, as one might put it."

"Please be a little more explicit."

"To say more would be going beyond the line."

"But tell me at least when the miracle will happen."

"You don't want me to start prophesying. As a rationalist, you can't."

So I pursued another line. "You have written in your Synthesis of Yoga," I said, "that we mustn't turn our back on the material world because it is so incurably recalcitrant to the light of the spirit."

I quote the passage below: "The obstacle which the physical presents to the spiritual is no argument for the rejection of the physical; for in the unseen providence of things our greatest difficulties are our best opportunities. A supreme difficulty is Nature's indication to us of a supreme conquest to be won and an ultimate problem to be solved; it is not a warning of an inexplicable snare to be shunned or of an enemy too strong for us from whom we must flee."

He smiled and nodded.

"But tell me one thing," I said, flying off at another tangent, "didn't any of your predecessors make this attempt — I mean what you call the integral transformation of the physical consciousness?"

"The attempt might have been made, it is not certain. But what is certain is that nothing decisive was achieved on the physical plane."

"How do you infer that?"

"Because all achievements leave some legacy of traces for posterity to follow up. A spiritual realisation once completely achieved could never be wholly obliterated afterwards."

"You must then realise it yourself first?"

"Obviously. Be it a new realisation or light or idea — it must first descend in one person from whom it radiates out in widening circles to others. Hasn't the Gita too said that the ways of the best of men act as models to the rest? In the Integral yoga, however, the work starts after the realisation, whereas in most other yogas it ends with the realisation. The reason is that I aim primarily at manifestation for which I must, obviously, reach the Supramental myself before I can bring it to bear on our earth-consciousness. For this, ascent has to be the first step — descent is the next."

"How will the descent work, to start with?"

"When the Supramental touches our being, our consciousness will overpass its twilit stage of the mental (where the divine Truth is distorted) into the upper regions where light has free play — that is, where there are no such distortions. This will in its turn bring about the transformation of mind, life and body as that will be one of the functions of the Force at its inception in the world of matter, generally, to usher in subsequently the new era in man's living.⁴ You must not misunderstand me. What I want to achieve is the bringing down of the Supramental to bear on this being of ours so as to raise it to a level higher than the mental and from there change and sublimate the workings of mind, life and body. But this is not to say that the Supramentalisation will be effectuated overnight so that all will be completely transformed. That is hardly feasible."

"Because we are not mature for such a transformation?"

"Not only that — there are other obstinate impediments and hostile forces to reckon with. This world of matter has been for ages the bulwark of darkness, falsehood's most redoubtable citadel where, hitherto, inertia has reigned supreme. To carry there the message of Truth, to make it responsive to the shock of Light is far from easy. Yet the Supramental power can work its way if once it can descend there, that is to say if once the earth-consciousness can bear it to start with."

"Suppose it does, on whom will the Force be dynamic in its inception?"

"On those who have acquired the power to be its medium or vehicle. Each of these will serve as an indicator of what humanity is potentially capable of becoming, once it is transformed.⁵ Do you follow?"

"After a fashion I suppose," I said. "But tell me please, if this power or influence will benefit many or only a handful of isolated individuals here and there."

"Many, certainly. My Integral yoga would be of little use if it were meant for one or two individuals. For you must remember that my object is not the abandonment of the physical-material life to drift by itself but to transform it fundamentally by the power of this higher light and seeing."⁶

"But I hope your followers and successors won't have to emulate you in your superhuman sadhana, if they are to arrive?"

"No," Sri Aurobindo smiled, "and that was what I really meant when I said some time back that my yoga was meant for humanity. The first that hews his way through a trackless jungle acts necessarily as the pathfinder clearing the way for his followers. He faces much to make it easier for the others."

I was reminded of a saying of the great yogi Sri Ramakrishna: "The man who makes a fire has to take a lot of trouble but, once lit, all who come near may safely reap the benefit of its warmth." As I pondered the significance of this simile, a deep sense of reverence pervaded my being in the ensuing silence. What I had heard had slowly infiltrated into the depths of my being. I wondered how few among us even imagined that such a man was living in our midst! But then hasn't it always been so from time immemorial? How many of us had truly appreciated the greatness of Sri Ramakrishna in his life-time? I felt suddenly a strong impulse to make him my pranam once more. I restrained myself with effort.

Sri Aurobindo's gaze was on me, unwaveringly. Suddenly I felt a curious upsurge of scepticism so utterly out of tune with my nascent adoration.

"But are you convinced it will be possible — really feasible?" I said.

"For a single individual I have seen it to be possible," he put an emphasis on 'seen'. "For I have seen the working of this tremendous victorious force annihilating at a sweep the force of darkness and inertia which conspire to keep the spirit under the thrall of matter and flesh. To give a concrete instance: a yogi could here and now achieve complete immunity from the forces of disease if he could isolate himself completely from his surroundings."

"But why does he fail when he reverts to the world?"

"Because of the universal suggestion of disease when he comes out of his seclusion."

My scepticism took yet another line. "But do you think this to be such a great achievement after all, seeing that even the great Buddha attached so little importance to the physical aspect of our suffering?"

"You forget Buddha had a different outlook on life, a different object. He wanted through nirvana a final exit from this phenomenal world of the senses. It may be that, at that stage of our human evolution man was not mature yet for a greater realisation. But whatever the reason, you cannot get away from the fact that Buddha wanted fulfilment by turning away from all play of expression which is Life's mode of self-manifestation, whereas I want its transformation, complete transformation. My aim is not to disown life but to transmute it through the alchemy of the light of the Spirit. In other words my aim is not to cast off the material life, but to conquer Matter for the Spirit: to make the body a conscious and perfect instrument instead of a limitation and an obstacle must therefore be an essential part of this aim."

For some time I did not know what to say next. Then a sort of curiosity — or shall I say eagerness — got the better of me in spite of my misgivings.

"But what about my yoga?" I brought myself to say apropos of nothing. The next moment I felt a strange self-questioning: was I really calling for an answer? I could not quite decide.

His glance cut into me like a knife. "Yours is still a mental seeking," he said. "For my yoga something more is needed. Why not wait till the time comes?"

"When it does, may I count on your help?" I asked anxiously.

He nodded and smiled.

At that time he had only about a dozen disciples in his Ashram. In point of fact, it had not yet grown into a proper Ashram. It was very different from the Ashram today with more than seven hundred initiates of both sexes within it. But even at that time the Guru gave the disciples all the help they needed. The few who were there spoke enthusiastically about his yoga, his elevating personal contact and loving help and wisdom born of his great realisation. Some of his beautiful letters were lent to me and I copied them out with eagerness. Among these there was his famous letter, written in November 1922, to the late Deshbhandu Chitta Ranjan Das, beloved of Bengal. I must quote a few lines:

Dear Chitta,

I think you know my present idea and the attitude towards life and work to which it has brought me. I see more and more manifestly that man cannot get out of the futile cycle the race is always treading, until he has raised himself on to a new foundation. I have become confirmed in a perception which I had always, less clearly and dynamically then, but which has now become more and more evident to me, that the true basis of work and life is the spiritual: that is to say, a new consciousness to be developed only by yoga. But what precisely was the nature of the dynamic power of this greater consciousness? What was the condition of its effective truth? How could it be brought down, mobilised, organised, turned upon life? How could our present instruments — intellect, life, mind, body — be made true and perfect channels for this great transformation? This was the problem I have been trying to work out in my own experience and I have now a sure basis, a wide knowledge and some mastery of the secret . . . I have still to remain in retirement. For I am determined not to work in the external field till I have the sure and complete possession of this new power of action — not to build except on a perfect foundation.

I shall never forget the cumulative effect of our first meeting nor the avidity with which I read those letters again and again that night. And the thrill, almost of romance! Sri Aurobindo's yoga and its message at first hand! I could not sleep that night — for sheer joy. How could one sleep after having seen his radiant face with eyes like stars!

- Dilip Kumar Roy

(Among the Great by Dilip Kumar Roy, Jaico Books, 1950, pp. 208–30)