Sunil's correspondence with The Mother

Personal Letters

About The Mother, his Music & his sadhana

On His Birthday, Days Before the Mother's Departure [3 November 1973]

To Clifford Gibson:

For us, here, the birthday was always a very special day, the day when She used to come close to us as a physical mother comes to her child. On this day you were very special to Her, you were not in a crowd trying to get Her touch or Her Darshan, She gave Herself exclusively to you and you were happy to find how much your welfare meant to Her. So, this year there will be an emptiness around me on my birthday at least physically. But Her Presence is there always within me and there She is exclusively mine.

The Night of the Mother's Departure [17 November 1973]

To Gambelon, the same day:

What was least expected happened. The Mother left her body on the 17th evening at 7:25 pm. The blessing packet I send for you was given to me earlier in the day. I am too perplexed now to think clearly. I will write to you again later on.

The Account of Her Passing [22 November 1973]

To Gambelon:

So it is all over now. The Mother's body has been laid to rest in another chamber inside Sri Aurobindo's Samadhi. Sri Aurobindo lies in the lower vault, the Mother in the upper…

When I went to the Ashram at about 4:15, She was already brought down on Her bed and kept in the meditation hall near Amrita's room. The volunteers were already standing everywhere directing the crowd that slowly grew. They had been informed earlier, these volunteers. All this orderliness in the face of such a calamity came as a rude shock to me, I never expected to have Her last look in this way…

On the 17th evening, Pranab came down at 6.30. The Mother suddenly became restless and asked Coumoude to lift Her up. Coumoude raised Her head a little, kept it in that position for a little while and then put it back on the pillow. And then the Mother started to cough — Coumoude told the Mother that she would prepare a little glucose water. Then Coumoude heard a noise from Her throat, she looked at Her, and then ran and asked someone to call Pranab and the doctor. When Dr. Sanyal came he did not find any pulse. He tried to stimulate respiration artificially. No success.

This event is momentous in my life as well as in others' — may She continue to hold us in Her hands and choose for us our paths.

On the Inner Presence That Remains [22 January 1974]

To Jatin Mahimtura in Bombay:

I see that you are still feeling the enormity of Her physical loss. I, too, I am more or less in the same boat, a feeling of emptiness clings to me, but this is understandable. So many years and such physical nearness is difficult to forget!

But, even in the darkest hours, I never had a crisis in confidence in Her. I knew it always and I believe it even now that She has done what was best for us and for Her mission. She is here to execute His Will, the will of the Supreme — and She has accomplished whatever was sanctioned from above. She will be here in this atmosphere fashioning in Her own way that which has to emerge.

As for us, the only help that we can render to Her work is to keep on having a complete trust in Her. Distrusts or doubt in any form will be a hindrance to Her. Find in your love the sign of Her eternal Presence.

"She Is Not the One Who Can Be Shut in the Heavens" [December 1973 — two versions]

To Solange de Marbaix in Brazil:

The initial movements of emptiness have passed and slowly we have woken up to Her secret presence within us, to Her with Her undying Powers, to Her who never can really cease.

To Jyotibose in West Bengal:

She was weary of Her body and She left it. But She is not the one who can be shut in the heavens. She is very much here. Her breath still loves to play on our beings and give a meaning to our frail hopes, She, still, loves to be here with us and live our lives, one with us. The initial gloom of emptiness that came within us has fallen and dissolved in the radiance of Her Love. May this Fire that She kindled in us continue to remain imperishable!

On the 1974 New Year Music — Written in the Three Days After Her Departure [18 March 1974]

To Clifford Gibson:

The major part of this music was written on the three days immediately after the passing away of the Mother, and composing this gave me much more than a creative pleasure. I am happy to know that much of what I felt, you could also feel as your own. In spite of sands shifting, doors of possibilities are opening, and slowly but surely you are drawing near to your god.

On Why He Resists Publishing His Music [April 1974]

To Jocelyne in Montreal:

To know that there is a growing interest in my music is heartening — this knowledge makes me feel a little less lonely in the path She has chosen for me. There is a meaning to whatever She has done through us, and I am certain that her hands will know how to use them according to Her secret intentions.

A day may come when I will have Her consent, and we will do just as you suggest, but that day has not as yet come. At the moment there is something within me which recoils from the idea of enlarged audiences and I will prefer giving copies of these musics only to our friends, only to persons who accept our ideals, our way of life.

On His Path as a Musician — The Most Intimate Self-Disclosure [to Georgette, undated]

My greatest joy in this life has been my success in discovering Her, who is my true Mother, as well as my attempts to express in my music my deepest feelings for Her.

Looking at these days now which have followed my undertaking of this music of Savitri, I have a growing feeling that I and my music are no longer strangers, and I discover that, after all, I and my music have much in common. Is it not wonderful to know oneself in one's own music?

"I Write My Musics As I Pray" [2 August 1975]

To Wanda in Brazil:

I write my musics as I pray. It is a matter of an inner satisfaction to me to know that what I do can bring help to someone somewhere.

On the Orbit She Chose for Him [1 April 1975]

To Rolf Gelewski — responding to Rolf's suggestion that the Mother in his music is still too personal and particular, that she has become something vaster and more impersonal in her post-mortem action:

You are again right when you point out that this Mother in my musics is a very personal mother, the Mother that was, the One whose presence within me was all that ever mattered to me in my life. There are certain experiences which can last a lifetime, and it is a vain exercise of mind if we try to switch over to others when the time is not just ripe. It has been given to me to seek Her Love and Her Compassion. My orbit lies there, and I am happy to live within the limits She chose to confer on me.

It will be no good for me if I try to feel Her in the infinite details of our infinite universe. That is not simply my path. I need a little ego for my work. Could a doll of salt take a plunge in the sea and seek to explore it with impunity? I wonder; at least, I am sure, there wouldn't be any more the Sunil that you have known, neither would you hear him any longer singing his songs.

When I was a kid, I was on the verge of an experience and I drew myself back because I became mortally afraid of losing myself completely.

On the New Year Music 1974 — Two Years Later [16 March 1976]

To Dominique and Klara in France — his most sustained reflection on the period after the Mother's departure:

When the Mother left her body, and I did my New Year Music 1974, many here raised their eyebrows. I saw that they were critical about the vacancy I felt within me, of the uncertainty of living upon the margins, of the feeling of my smallness in face of the disaster, of an unquiet search in me for Her, for Truth, and Self and Light…. All that I wanted to say in that music was that I loved Her, that She would be no more with me in the same way as She used to be, but somehow She was shining through a searching, the same face, the same light and whether or no I would still love Her and I would find Her. They said to me that the music was too personal! They said that the emphasis in this music on the significance of this physical event was painful and did not bring any help. They said that She was very much present here within us and around us and the work goes on. This complacency overtook us with its inescapable fatality.

A loss has to be felt before it can be made good. Minimizing the magnitude of our loss only misleads. The way I see it, this sorrow has a role to play in our heart and we should cherish it until we have learnt the secrets of Her designs.

As for me, my life goes on in a cycle which remains if not independent of the life in the Ashram, but sort of oblivious of it. I do certainly have news of what happens here, but as I can do nothing about it I concentrate more upon my progress.

Such ties become the motive force behind all spiritual growth. In that consciousness each step becomes an act of love, each joy becomes a magic of love and each suffering becomes the birth of a greater love.

On the Ashram as He First Found It [11 October 1975]

To Carlo:

The Ashram as I saw it when I came here was not made by man; it held a power beyond the strength of the humans, it had a light that never wore away. People with all sorts of hides lived here merrily together.

On Adjusting to Ashram Life After Her Departure [9 August 1975]

To Rolf:

People, here, are adjusting themselves slowly and falteringly to the newness of our present Ashram life accepting with resignation the absence of a physical Presence which dominated our lives for more than half a century. Surprising though, and almost simultaneously values are undergoing changes at a pace which is almost a steady slow crawl. However, the fragrance of Her nearness is overwhelmingly strong. I have to be told not to believe that she is on her chair in that lovely room upstairs.

Do you remember the day you first saw the Mother? You were on your knees and she smiling at you and the twisted glasses of the eastern window threw light on both of you and made the silhouette of a Mother and her child. I find it significant that this memory remains still vivid in me even though both of us have left a number of years and a number of experiences behind us.

On His Fullness and Completeness in Music and Her [to Solange, 30 April 1975]

I don't have a child, and even if I had one, I am not sure if he would be a musician. You may think that I am not in my senses if I tell you that I have still to learn why I have been chosen to do such a work as music by the Mother.

"The Only Fulfilment I Desire" [13 January 1976]

To Dominique and Klara:

My days of labour are over. The yearly instalment of Savitri and then the New Year Music are ready and I have now a few months of leisure. My health is excellent, and I feel more and more deeply how much I owe to Them. The only fulfilment that I desire is to belong to Them — totally.