Santosh Gupta's recollections of her coming to the Ashram, inner contact with The Mother, her own sadhana & experiences.
2015
Narad: Santosh, welcome. The last interview with Santosh was so beautiful that people have passed the DVD around, and many, many have watched it, as she spoke about her life. Today we are going to cover different areas. Santosh, many people today are seeking. They don’t know about Mother and Sri Aurobindo, but they are seeking; they don’t want the old life. What do you recommend for these young people who are seeking something higher, something truer?
When any one of us comes to Mother and Sri Aurobindo, naturally some urge within is inspiring us, guiding us, urging us to come here; otherwise no one can come. When one doesn’t have the aptitude for this life, no one can turn up—the world is big enough for such people to live in. But when we come here, we come with a certain aspiration within. We may know it clearly, or we may know it only vaguely. When we enter this atmosphere, when we enter Pondicherry and feel it, and see our deities, Mother and Sri Aurobindo, there is some commotion inside, some awakening.
That was so, knowingly or unknowingly, even in Mother’s time, when She used to instil that aspiration in us through Her eyes, merely by looking at us. Some people felt it very clearly and could decide their future clearly; some were vague but still pulled—something from within was pulling them to join the Ashram. When they wished to stay, Mother already saw, and still more examined them inwardly, seeing our possibilities and potentialities even when we ourselves were not very clear about them, and accordingly She granted or refused permission to stay. In that way, I think, most of us are here.
Now it depends on what we do during our stay, whether it is lifelong or for some years: whether we have made use of it, whether we have developed our inner soul up to the level that is expected of us, or whether we have fallen back into the old rut of the old life. That is a very essential point for all of us. If we cannot progress, naturally we lag behind in everything. And what does progress mean? How do we keep this fire burning within? For that, Mother and Sri Aurobindo have given enough guidelines, in their letters and in their writings. I think it is not such a difficult thing if we are a little conscious and try to imbibe it from their literature, from their words, from our prayers, and with their grace. They are always there, ready to help us—I can say so with confidence. It is we who lack that confidence, that aspiration, that prayer, that fire; that constant burning should be there. We should not go astray thinking that once we are granted admission, our life’s mission is over. That is not the life here. When you are granted permission, the real work starts, isn’t it?
To keep that aspiration burning—Mother and Sri Aurobindo both said so many times, in so many letters—first there is prayer; aspiration is still another step. When we cannot know or decide our future, what to do and how, at least we should have that much of a link with Mother, to ask Her, to pray to Her about our difficulties. In the beginning it may be just a repetition of words, but ultimately it leads us to the soul, and then it becomes aspiration. What Mother used to do with Her eyes in a moment, we may take some months or years to reach, depending on the intensity of our prayer, our confidence and our faith—but it comes. Nobody stands before Her empty-handed. So I should say I was lucky to have that opening from the very beginning, from Mother.
Narad: Now, from prayer to aspiration—would you talk a bit about surrender?
After aspiration, think of what happens when you love somebody, when you aspire for somebody, when you have a yearning for anybody—even humanly. What do we feel? The first gesture of our being is to give ourselves. Whom we love, we are always thinking, “What is the best I can give to my lover, to my beloved?” In the same way, when that fire has burnt and that yearning has come, your being automatically starts flowing towards that, and that, I should say, is real surrender.
In words we can say, “You surrender everything to the Lord.” When you pray, you say, “All this, my being and everything, is yours.” Very well, that has to be done, but not only in words; in practice it comes when you really pine for the Lord. That burning fire within should be there. So aspiration leads to surrender automatically. We don’t have to ask ourselves, “How do I surrender?” That is, I should say, an extreme, ultimate step. Before that we have to employ the same method: prayer. We must at least start feeling that everything belongs to the Lord, not to me. My every action, my every thought, my every word, my every relation, every connection, whatever I do from morning to night, should be inspired by You and offered to You. That should be my gesture.
At first we can always pray, but then it comes automatically. She doesn’t care to listen to our words; She sees the flowing of our consciousness towards Her, which She is ready to accept every moment. Every moment She receives it.
Narad: And when problems come up, with others, or in oneself—disharmony, anger, desire, ego; we can go on and on…
The method of dissolution is the same for everything. When we approach Her, we try to become one with Her consciousness, and we enlarge our consciousness. Ego is the last thing to go, but it shows itself in everything—in whatever we do, whatever we think, whatever relationship we have; that supremacy of “I am something” is always there. To change the ego, we first have to know whether we are egoistic, and we don’t even realise it. That is the main hurdle: we go on justifying our actions and our thinking.
Take anger. When does anger come? When things happen contrary to our ideas, to our expectations, we get angry and irritated. We are thinking of doing one thing in a particular way; the person we work with may think otherwise, or may not act according to our instructions, even if we are in charge. These are small examples, but in life anger comes whenever anything displeasing comes to you and you are irritated beyond expectation. So the first thing is that we should always be above our own selves. We should not insist that the way we think and the way we do is right and that others are wrong. When we have a larger understanding of ourselves as well as of others, anger won’t come; you won’t react. You will be as peaceful within as before. You will try to understand the other person’s viewpoint, and then reconcile.
If you still find that you are right and he is wrong—because that happens; nobody is perfect—then you can arrive at a harmonious understanding. But we should not insist. That is the trouble with human nature: “What I think is right; he should do this.” No. You have expressed your view; let him think it over. If not at this moment, he may realise the next moment that he is not right. This holds if you are the head of a department, or in any situation where you are leading—even at home. When you feel “this is the correct way”, still we should not insist. First we should give the other person a little time, some space, and with love try to convince him—if you have to convince him—that you also care for him and understand him, so that he can come around. And inwardly we can always refer our difficulties to Mother.
Narad: Sri Aurobindo says that the first essential thing is peace.
Yes, and in that context let me mention that Sri Aurobindo once said, very jokingly, that when he talks of surrender, the first thing people surrender is their common sense. So what real surrender is—that is very necessary for our lives.
Narad: How do you bring in the peace?
Well, for me too this has been a great challenge till now—although, as I told you about my experience in the last talk, to some extent it is always in the background. Real peace comes with the inner contact. Then we don’t even have to invoke: as soon as She stands before you, you are in Her environment. She covers you with all that is Hers, and She has everything—whatever we ask for. Her mere presence, Her mere coming, is so peaceful, so blissful; even the memory of it is so blissful that peace comes automatically.
But in the present, in day-to-day life, when you are facing problems all the time—challenges, difficulties, some personal problem to solve—even then the stage of our consciousness should always be to stand back. That is the first fundamental rule of spiritual life, for Mother and Sri Aurobindo, and for the Gita and every scripture: to detach yourself is the first necessity. Now, how to stand back? That has to become the natural state of your consciousness; only then can you remain peaceful. Being peaceful doesn’t mean that we sit for meditation, close our eyes, remember for some time and are very peaceful, and the rest of the time are agitated. That is not peace. Real peace comes when we know that this outer self is not I. The Gita says this very beautifully, and I have experienced it by Mother’s grace. Then you don’t even need meditation; it comes automatically. You face any difficulty and just stay behind; you don’t get involved with the situation. Whatever comes will bring its solutions with it, because you are seeing from another level. That solves everything, and we remain peaceful.
But when we are involved, when we are attached—to persons, to situations, to our environment—we immediately take on those vibrations. A person is very agitated, he is angry with you, he has abused you; you also get irritated, isn’t it? You can retort in the same way. That is the first reaction, mostly. If you are sensible enough to control yourself, you may not utter the same abuses, but you will feel hurt. If, on the other hand, you are aloof, nothing touches you, and that aloofness itself pacifies all that agitation and anger—in the other person too, and in you.
Narad: In the person too?
Yes. But for that, we shouldn’t say from the mouth, “I am very peaceful”, while inside we are bubbling. That is not peace; that won’t have any influence.
Narad: How did you come to have the peace? You said it was a long journey until you developed it. Was it because of your nature?
Even now I feel I fail at times; it is not that I am always in that state. I do feel that many times.
Narad: But you spoke to me about experiences, and said they don’t take us very far unless we translate them into everyday life.
That is true. Both things are helping; both are means to advance. Without experience you may not have firm faith. What you have seen and experienced yourself, you naturally have more faith in than in anyone’s sayings or words, isn’t it? So experiences help in that way. But if we are just proud of them—“Oh, I am having so many beautiful experiences; I must be something within”—then everything is gone; it is of no use. It has only made you egoistic. So what I have seen and experienced should lead me, should tell me that I have to advance still further. It is not that you are something. By grace you are getting it, so invoke that grace: that I may go still further, come still nearer to you.
Experiences don’t come to everybody; that is also true. By sadhana some people may have that inner opening. Some people have it as in my case, I should say—as a God-given gift from very childhood. But it never made me mad with the idea that I am something. I used to see my question papers before my eyes before the examination. I could tell events beforehand. That was not my doing; I should say it was a God-given gift. But I developed it, in the sense that I took it in a very light way, took it as a milestone for my sadhana, and perceived it like that. Certain things God has given me in a very natural way: the opening to Mother, first the remembrance of Mother. There was an urge, without having seen Her—“I must go there, I must see Her”—and that was my only aim while I was staying outside. So probably all these experiences were helping me.
Narad: Preparing you.
Preparing me and bringing me to the true path. Because I was a little open, I was ready; I was aspiring that way, and Mother did not find any difficulty in going on opening me from within. So I say both things are helpful. But most of us don’t have experiences, and we should not be depressed—“Oh, that person is having so much, and I don’t; even after so many years I don’t see anything, I don’t find anything, I don’t feel anything!” You may get depressed when you hear somebody else’s experiences. I didn’t get anything after fifty years.
Narad: After how many years?
Fifty years, even—I didn’t get anything. I didn’t feel like that. But that is not the criterion. With the experiences we have to grow. The yoga of Mother and Sri Aurobindo is that we have to grow in consciousness, to change the consciousness, to establish God—establish that consciousness—in us, and to become that consciousness; we have to become as large as they are. Then every difficulty dissolves. It is our petty little closed rooms, in which we are living, that disturb us all through our lives. So experiences do not matter at all. They will come by their own accord, whenever the time comes, whenever God sees that you are ready. We are not to pine for experiences, but when they come, most welcome—as we take a more confident step towards the goal, towards our future.
Narad: You once told me, “Mother is bearing all.”
Yes. To say it in words, you may not believe it. Mother is bearing all; She is doing all; She is looking after us in every way. It will not influence you unless you have that experience—when you are in some difficult position or situation, and She comes all of a sudden, in a most unexpected way, and then you realise, “Oh, how She is with us.” But this becomes very natural when we are one with Her.
In sadhana there are always two steps. First, it may be hearing, it may be reading, it may be remembering, it may be prayer, whatever it is; but ultimately we have to be one with Her. And to be one with Her is the psychic soul. That is a mirror within ourselves which shows our real self as well as the deities seated within. And then we feel, at every step of life, at every moment, that it is not I who do anything—not this “I” which I call myself. We can see always that Mother is doing everything, the Lord is doing everything, God is doing everything, whatever you may call it. Only then do we have the psychic experience, that opening. The more the psychic governs our outer life, the more we are in that state.
For that, even our saints and rishis have spoken of sahaja samadhi, the spontaneous trance. You are always somewhere else, because you are seeing your Beloved before your eyes. And then you are full of Her thoughts—in our consciousness, in our doings, in our actions. When we feel Her everywhere, there is no area left without Mother, without the Lord, without God. Then it is a very, very natural and constant samadhi.
So She bears all—when we see it with our own eyes, when we feel Her working through our experience. Till then we have to believe what they have said and what we have read, and keep that faith at least: that one day we have to realise it. That should be our prayer, our aspiration, and She grants it. What else has She come into this world for?
Narad: Dealing with pain. So many people are in pain.
Physical pain, or…?
Narad: Yes, let’s talk about physical pain first.
I have also suffered; I am suffering already.
[Santosh breaks off to invite someone in the room to take a stool, saying it will be painful for them to sit on the floor, and adds that she herself cannot sit on the floor. She also asks a participant, whose name she does not know, to hold their questions for later.]
Narad: How do you work on your pain?
Well, both ways. The physical has to be treated physically, and medically too. It is not that we have that much mastery through our consciousness; we are not with God all the time, twenty-four hours. There are lapses; there are moments when we are separated. So for the physical, again, the process of prayer should continue, and physically, medically also, we have to treat.
And I really feel that God has given us a machine with which we work all the time, but we know nothing about its parts. When it gets stuck, we don’t know what to do. With other machines we can do the repair, but not with the body. We don’t know what is happening, so we rush to a doctor who knows, and he also may not know the whole thing. It goes on like that in the physical: we go stumbling and suffering, and with all the aids we take we may lessen the suffering a little.
But more and more we should become conscious about the body, as we are conscious about other things—our anger, our nature, our character, our mental thinking. As we are sorting things out here, offering things here, enlarging ourselves in every way, and sublimating our feelings and emotions, we should try the same physically as well, apart from the aids. What I found the most effective way of coming out of pain is to detach yourself. It is difficult and does not always happen, but it helps. And will power—will power in such a way that the body has to reject the pain and not accept it. Generally we say, “Ohh, it has to come; it will come; I can’t help it; you have to suffer.” No; that is not our yogic attitude. You have to fight—fight with will. If somebody stands before us terrorising us, wanting to fight, should we run away, or should we offer our face too, “All right, you slap”? We should all be able to slap [back]. That comes from inner will power. Detach yourself, call the Lord; the rest He will do. You may not find an immediate effect, but the next moment you may find, “Oh, everything is gone.” But it is not very practical for us, because we are very much tied down to the physical. It is not that the ways are not there; how much we succeed depends upon us. I also cannot boast, although I have gone through so much physical suffering, as I told you last time.
But those sufferings passed like nightmares. Really, I did not feel that part of the suffering, in proportion to what they were. It could have been much worse; they could have been fatal too.
Narad: Would you speak a little on humility and gratitude?
Humility doesn’t come merely from effacing yourself in words. When we say to somebody, “Oh, this is your grace, this is your doing, I am nothing”, and show ourselves meek, as if we feel we are nothing and can do nothing—that is not humility. Nor are we humble just because we don’t boast about what we are doing. Inside we may still be liking it: “People should admire me; people should know that I am something; I have achieved something.” If somebody behaves with you in an unusual or abnormal way, see how you react. That is not real humility. Outwardly you may say, “Oh, aap to bahut… you are so great,” but that is not humility.
A humble person, first of all, doesn’t pronounce “I am so-and-so, I am such-and-such.” Second, he has realised within himself that it is not he who is doing anything; even in his own life there is someone else over him who is doing everything. So how can he be egoistic? How can he be arrogant? How can he boast? In his heart of hearts he feels that it is not I who is moving my life, not I who is doing the actions; there is someone else. So all the credit goes to Him: “I am living because of Him; I am surviving because of Him; I am doing things because of Him.” Real humility comes then.
For our conduct and day-to-day life it is all right, of course: we shouldn’t be arrogant, and there are many little things that are also necessary. We should not confront anybody with everything; that is not how practical life is lived. But the person who is really in contact within will never fail. He is the truly humble person, and he won’t announce that he is humble. His very figure, his personality, his utterances, his face, the very influence of his personality, will emanate it when he sits with you. That is real humility; that is real peace. When you find peace in somebody’s presence—a saint, a sadhu, anybody—why do we feel peace in their presence? They don’t utter a word; at most they put a hand on you; you pass by them, you sit near them, and then you find peace emanating from that being. That is what every one of us is to be.
Gratitude also, I should say, is moment to moment: our deepest, most sublime feelings offered to the Divine. We always say that when somebody does something for you, you must feel grateful; you write, you reply, “I am very grateful to you.” That is one way. In our dealings with one another we should have at least that much gratefulness in our normal day-to-day life. Gratefulness is not only good for the other person or for your relations; it brings joy to you. All of you must have felt that gratefulness brings real joy in life. And that joy, that goodness, brings more goodness to you. That is the beauty.
And when we love the Divine, automatically, with every breath, we are constantly offering ourselves with gratefulness. It is not that “Mother has done something, so I must write to Her, I must tell Her that you have done so much for me and I am grateful.” She doesn’t expect that.
Narad: There is a line in Savitri, “A prayer upon his lips and the great Name”. Taking the Mother’s name—can you speak about that, and the necessity of it?
It is the same thing: when She is with you every time, in every breath, only that will come. That is what makes it effective. People say, “I also pray, but I don’t get the response I prayed for.” Every great soul will say: pray, pray—nama japa. Do we realise what it means? It is not verbal. You may not utter it at all, but something within goes on constantly, incessantly. That japa is japa. And even God cannot ignore that.
There is an episode in the Mahabharata. Krishna is sitting, and his wife Rukmini is pressing his feet. Some devotee is earnestly remembering him for help; it was Draupadi, when her garment was being pulled away. Krishna used to sit up and then lie down, sit up and then lie down. Rukmini asked, “What are you doing?” After doing this gesture many times, he left immediately. Then Rukmini asked, “What was the mischief behind this action?” He said, “Yes, Draupadi was calling me, but till then half-mindedly, half-heartedly. She was expecting, ‘I’ll call Yudhishthira, I’ll call Nakul, I’ll call Sahadev; he will help me, he will come, he will do this and that,’ and sometimes in between she was remembering me too. But when she was disappointed from every side and called me alone, then I could not stay.”
That is our condition, all of us. We say we call him, but do we call him wholeheartedly? We can ask ourselves. This is an infinite path we have to march on, with so many things to establish in ourselves. But the proper life and the proper guidelines should be there, and that too ultimately comes from within.
Narad: And within, we know it’s the only path for us to take.
Yes; it eludes us because we are not accustomed to it.
Narad: Alexei is asking about psychological pain.
Do you mean, again, difficulties in relationships—in contact with situations, with persons, or in work—or inner difficulties?
That happens, and it is a very sad thing: some hidden, dormant things come up, and people are led away by them. It happens at times—not very commonly, but it happens. In such cases, the physical presence of Mother and Sri Aurobindo was a very solid support, because they knew the future, the destiny, the potentiality, and they knew the way to bring that soul back. Sometimes they themselves used to send the person out. Sometimes a person would go out and have that experience, but They went on constantly working on him. Ultimately, after a year or two or three, whatever it was, the person would come back. So this is sometimes beyond individual control. The person has to be very, very vigilant about himself from the beginning and always pray in the right direction. The things which we cannot sort out or correct ourselves we should always refer to Her, and She will take care of them.
[Near the end of the recording Santosh asks whether time is up; Narad tells her to go ahead, as they can go on a little longer.]
Apart from all the other things you have asked about—our nature, anger, jealousy, humility and everything—one main hurdle for most of us, probably for every one of us, is sex, isn’t it?
Narad: Yes.
It leaves nobody. You cannot be an impostor in this yogic life; such things are not allowed in this life. So what to do? With age, with everybody, it comes. Some part of our life is eaten up by this unhealthy thing.
In the West, at least, it is taken in a very natural way, but in our Indian society it is still kept out of spiritual life. Can it remain out just by our saying so? It attacks anybody, and it does attack; as soon as you grow young, this thing shows its face. What to do? Mother tried so many things; at least She established in the consciousness that we could come out a little further, one step higher, so that we don’t have that particular feeling of indecency, or that indulgence in it. But it comes in many ways. Emotionally it may come: we feel attached to the opposite sex, attracted. For some years it may go on like anything else, with intensity and intimacy. But ultimately it may drop off, if you are sincere to your path.
Still, I am telling you my own experience—don’t think that I am somebody. When I came, I was so young, only twenty. Because, as I told you, I had an aptitude for spiritual life from childhood, when I came here I used to see young boys and girls moving about freely, making friendships and all that. One question used to be in my mind: living in Mother’s light and guidance and presence, how can they love human beings like that? Is Mother not enough? How can they divide that love among themselves? What is the need? Why do they feel that need? Don’t they get love from Mother? I was asking Her that in my prayers and in my meditations: “If this weakness has to occur in every life, what is the idea? Can’t we conquer it in any life, so that we are free in the next? Is there no way?” Really, it was disgusting for me at that age.
From the very beginning I had the idea that the children of the Supermind would be like that—free of it. So it was a real shock to me: why, living in Mother, do they feel the necessity of loving each other? Can any human being be perfect? Why should I get attracted? I can have friendship; I can have a love that is very pure and sublime, which you feel for some with whom you are congenial and not for others—that is very natural. But not to be tied down. This sex relation makes you absolutely helpless, and then so many things come: jealousy and everything comes with it.
Then I asked Her, “At least make me free—that is what I want to pray to you: that I should see you, feel you, think of you in every way—maybe as a husband, maybe as a friend, maybe as a father, maybe as a brother. In all relations, may I see you and not anyone else. That will solve the problem.”
Narad: Mother says it in Her prayers and meditations: to see only you.
And then one day I was sitting near the Samadhi after my dining-room work. She came with two garlands in Her hands. In our Indian marriages, at the time of the wedding, the boy brings a garland and the girl has one, and they put them on each other, so that they are now husband and wife—in the West, whatever your ways are. She came with two garlands; she put one around my neck, and I put one around Hers. What an experience it was, to feel God as your everything—your husband and everything! She explained it to me so beautifully, made me realise it, and printed the relation with Her in my heart. And I was free, really, from that nuisance.
So we all have a very long way to go, and we have to keep on perfecting, because it is an endless path. But I am sorry to share this very personal thing with you; I never told anybody.
Narad: May we ask you to come again?
For what? There is nothing else.
Narad: I am sure there is so much more to speak about Sri Aurobindo also.
When it is put into practical life, everything is beautiful. That is what I can say.
Narad: Thank you.
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