LIFE- POETRY-YOGA
Life - Poetry -Yoga
PERSONAL LETTERS
by
AMAL KIRAN (K.D. SETHNA)
Vol.3
The Integral Life Foundation
P.O. Box 239
Waterford CT. 06385
USA
First published 1997
(Typeset in 10.5/13 Palatino)
© Amal Kiran (K.D. Sethna)
Published by
The Integral Life Foundation, U.S.A.
Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, pondicherry
PRINTED IN INDIA
The "personal letters" which started appearing sixteen years ago in Mother India, Monthly Review of Culture, published from the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, have proved to be a popular feature. A large number of readers from all over the country and even some from abroad have expressed their gratitude for helpful treatment of a lot of problems which aspirants to the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother meet on their way. Repeated suggestions have also come to collect the series of "Life-Poetry-Yoga" in book-form so that it may be easily available for consultation.
These suggestions have now been taken up and the project is to divide the letters into a row of volumes of convenient length brought out from time to time at convenient prices. The initiative for the project is due to a group of well-wishers from the U.S.A. belonging to an organisation which they title "The Integra] Life Foundation." I am deeply indebted to these splendid friends.
The dates of the letters do not follow any fixed order. They jump back and forth through months and years. They were collected according to the occasions on which their copies were found in old or recent files. This vagary does not matter because the questions dealt with have no special chronological relevance. The dates could have been omitted, but certain allusions in the letters called, now and then, for accurate time-pointers to give them definite significance.
The letters which appear in the present volume ran.from 1945 to 1995. Some changes have been introduced to clarify certain points. A few omissions have been made to avoid repetitions which did not matter much when they appeared at long intervals and not in serial reading such as a book provides. Some omissions are due to the fact that the writing has found its slot in another book of correspondence, the exchanges that took place between Miss Kathleen Raine and me over nearly three years and has now been published under the caption, Indian Poets and English Poetry in succession
to the earlier exchanges which have come out as The English Language and the Indian Spirit.
It is hoped that the third volume of Life-Poetry-Yoga will prove welcome not only to old readers but also to new ones into whose hands it may chance to fall - fellow-souls who are on a path of the inner life in the midst of worldly concerns and literary interests.
1996
Amal Kiran (K. D. Sethna)
1
You are a very brave and generous woman. Few people would undergo so cheerfully the trouble to which you have been put - and in the thick of it feel concerned about other people's needs. I am proud to have you as my friend - and I am proud also of your life's partner, who is inseparable from you in my thoughts, and who would not be so, either in my thoughts or in real life, if he did not respond in every fibre to the same ideals of courage and generosity.
Courage and generosity - these have been my own guiding stars too, though I cannot say I have succeeded so well in living according to their light. Of course, when I use these words I mean much more than physical courage and material generosity. The latter are great and rare things - but they are most precious when they are reflections of qualities which hold on many planes. Courage involves the readiness to face criticism for one's principles - to stand solitary on a dangerous height - to sacrifice comfort, reputation, happiness for the sake of one's friends. The last-named movement shades courage off into generosity. And, after all, the two qualities cannot really be separated. For courage necessarily implies the capacity of self-giving - and all giving is generosity, I would add that generosity means also the capacity to understand others, put oneself in their shoes and in their minds, make room for their viewpoints and claims, see even their case against oneself. Ultimately, the highest courage and generosity are to live for the Unknown, to love the Invisible, to launch out on an unchartered quest for the Infinite, the Divine, to lay the whole of one's time-existence at the service of the Eternal.
My friend who has come to you - as well as all who are intimately connected with him - is a devotee too of courage and generosity. I am happy that his stay has been indefinitely prolonged. The American Government can have no objection to his continued stay: they take no adverse account except of
Page 1
crime - and my friend is guilty only of what the Younger Pitt, in his maiden speech in Parliament, called "the atrocious crime of being a very young man". But he is a young man belonging to the rare category described by R.L. Stevenson (another adherent to the ideals of courage and generosity): "We want young men who have brains enough to make fools of themselves!" Evidently, he means those who possess not only enthusiasm and energy but also the intoxicating vision of something new that is true beyond the fixed ways of the world - something for which they are ready to look rash and unwise in the view of the safely-settled rut-followers. Here we may have in mind those who go
Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone -
no less than such as fare forth in quest of a new passage to the Indies across the untravelled Atlantic.
(3.2.1970)
It is most interesting that in my letter of the 4th I referred to the need for you to be in harmonious relationship with all around you, whether at the hospital or at home, besides feeling the Mother's presence all the time within you. A radiation of that presence towards whoever you work with, whoever you live with is very necessary for one who aspires to be the Mother's true child. Your letter of the 1st is accompanied by a prayer to her in which occurs the appeal: "Correct still more my attitude towards work, studies, towards my parents and other people." It is clear that our minds and hearts are interlinked with each other through the Mother's gathering of both of us into her single light.
Ups and downs of the sadhak in us are natural. Don't worry about them. The progress towards perfection is never uniform until the whole of our being has been unified. The unification takes long but it is certain if the central self, the innermost psyche, grows more and more active in all our
Page 2
movements. It has the master-key to open every part of us to feel what Wordsworth calls
A greatness in the beatings of our heart.
To aim at this unification is our immediate concern - the pervasive sense of the Divine within us. And as we move towards such pervasion an automatic concord gets created with our surroundings. But we must be patient. It takes long for the grand finale to be struck. With as much equanimity as we can muster we have to meet whatever wrong notes ring inwardly or outwardly. If we do this, they turn into stepping-stones towards the ultimate harmony. Of course, our equanimity has to be, as a phrase in Savitri goes,
A heart of silence in the hands of joy.
For we are offering our unwounded poise to the Holy Feet that are leading our pilgrimage to the satyam-ritam-brihal - the True, the Right, the Vast, the ideal set before the world from the beginning of our history by the Rigvedic Rishis. And we are doing the offering with a rush of rapture born of love -"hands of joy". Our equanimity is not of an intellectual Stoic: it is that of a spiritual Epicurean. An Eternal Face whose eyes are depths of immutable bliss and whose mouth is a moulder of ever-new beauty is our goal.
Don't tax yourself with the problem whether bodily divinisation will take place in this very life. Let all your inner self be a constant remembrance of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and let that remembrance shape your outer life to a consecrated strength which is at the same time a dedicated sweetness. Thus you will lay the foundation of a future, whether in this life or another, of a divinised body.
(9.10.1991)
Last evening I told you: "While corning home from the
Page 3
Samadhi I looked at the clear blue sky and the rich green trees and knew how much I loved them and I thought of all the people who were dear to me. There was no dryness within me, no bare aloofness. And yet I was aware that all ties had been cut: no lingering attachment to anything or anyone remained: I felt completely free, ready to leave all behind without the slightest regret. If I had to die that very minute, I would do it with a quiet happiness." You remarked: "This should mean almost oneness with the Divine Mother." I answered: "No, it may imply getting nearer to her, but in itself it was just a glad freedom from earth and life." I have more than once quoted to you the Upanishadic rending of the knot of the heartstrings, by which the mortal enjoys immortality even in this body. My state was nothing so grand. There was no sense of liberation into the Supreme Self above both birth and death -the eternal One beyond space and time. Not the realisation of immortality, the entry into the Unborn and the Undying, but simply a smiling aloofness from the affairs of the world, an utterly painless readiness to give up everything. There was no desire left even to finish a number of literary schemes I had in hand. Not that they seemed worthless but the sense that they could fulfil anything in me was absent.
I may say I needed no fulfilment. No matter how many loose ends may quiver before my eyes, I was not conscious of any need in me to bind them together. A tranquil completeness, independent of any call of the world, pervaded my mind and heart. It was as if everything had already been accomplished somewhere and as if those whom I loved and valued could never be really lost to me but were essentially treasured up in some unknown depth of being. Would these people miss me? There was so much peace in me that I thought I would leave a mass of it behind to fill whatever gap might be caused by my departure. I had the expectation that they would calmly take my absence. In any case I am standing at a distance from all concerns while at the same time stretching my arms across the intervening vacancy to touch gently everything far away to show that I am not pushing anything
Page 4
off: only living with no hold upon me of any hope or fear of what is to come in the course of the world's wayfaring. But I have the feeling of waiting for my painless death-in-life to fill - one day - with some felicity that will be a permanent poise in Sri Aurobindo's eternity which is all-transcending yet denies nothing, the Divine Mother's infinity which is all-accepting yet with nothing binding it.
(24.4.1992)
Nirodbaran has shown me your latest letter to him, raising a point which you consider legitimate apropos of some statements by the Mother whose drift had not struck home to you earlier. The point in general is whether one could do Yoga without a Guru: it becomes particularly acute when her discussion "goes on to specifically include even the ultimate experience, 'le yoga du corps' - 'the yoga of the body'."
According to you, the Mother's position may be summed up as follows. She does not deny that doing Yoga, including the Yoga of divinising the body, is possible without a Guru but her own experience has been always with a Guru and she can give only her own experience. She repeats that it is possible and when conceding others the possibility of even the culminating experience - physical divinisation - without a Guru she adds that if such an experience comes "as a necessity" it is "all right" ("c'est bien").
In your view, this conversation of May 26, 1971 - which you quote to me from the Agenda - with "M, a young disciple, professor of Mathematics at the Centre of Education" (evidently Manoj Dasgupta) entitles you to tell Nirod to think of a supplementary comment on what was to be concluded from his correspondence with Sri Aurobindo on April 11, 1937 -namely, that physical transformation would not be possible except in the physical presence of himself and the Mother -that is, under the direct bodily guidance by the Gurus of the Integral Yoga. You are asking Nirod: "Could something new have intervened since the Master's departure to make the
Page 5
Mother - especially in consideration of" her September 1973 decision to withdraw, as reported by her son Andre - leave things more open than before?"
I am inclined to think that you are mistaken in putting this question to Nirod - mistaken because of two reasons. First, the Mother's decision to leave her body was taken nearly two and a half years after the talk with M; so it is not proper to see any relation between it and that talk. She cannot be seen as weighing so much in advance the possibility of others doing what she herself would decide to leave uncompleted. Secondly, this very talk has shades which are not marked by you and which give on the whole a rather negative slant to her words. When she first says that it is possible, she adds: "But 1 don't know under what conditions" ("Mais dans quelles conditions, je ne sais pas"). This implies that the conditions for the possibility are hardly imaginable by her. "It is possible" seems to be merely theoretical - not anything coming as a real concession by her. And such a situation is confirmed by her later declaration: "I don't know, I can't say, since I can speak only from personal experience - all else has no value" ("je ne sais pas, je ne peux pas dire parce que je ne peux que parler d'experience personnelle - ca n'a pas de valeur"). Finally, we have to be sensitive to the note almost of irony when she says: "I ought to say that if it comes to you like that, like a necessity, it is all right, but one must not seek to do it... It is not very pleasant!" ("Je dois dire que si cela vient sur vous comme cela, comme une necessite, c'est bien, mais il ne faut pas chercher a le faire... Ce n'est pas tres agreable!"). The sense here is: "This work of physical transformation is extremely difficult and very far from being enjoyable. Don't be so foolish as to go in for it - it's not something that all can do or should think of doing. But if it gets just imposed on you by any chance, if it comes as a sheer unavoidable necessity, as though willy-nilly you were chosen to do so nasty a job, then of course it's OK, it's destiny."
It strikes me that the Mother is here suggesting two things. The original question was whether one can do the Integral
Page 6
Yoga without a Guru - a Yoga which goes so far as to include the body's divinisation. The Mother's words towards the end bring in the suggestion that the work of divinising the body is not anybody's job. Elsewhere she has told us in effect: "This work has never been done before. I am attempting it for the first time because my body has been marked out for the experiment - Sri Aurobindo has asked me to undertake it. And it is not something I would encourage anyone to take up, for it can hardly be called pleasant." In short, the Mother does not believe that anyone except herself is meant to try this terribly hard experiment for the first time. And as for doing, without an embodied Guru, anything in the Integral Yoga -most of all physical transformation - her own experience tells her that it can't be done. What worth is there in going outside her experience and granting the bare possibility of such an achievement and granting even this without being able to conceive of any conditions under which the possibility would arise?
To my mind, when everything is properly probed, the passages you have cited do not alter the situation envisaged in Nirod's correspondence.
I am showing this tetter to Nirod before posting it.
(26.4.1992)
I am glad that you have been moving further and further on the razor's edge which is the traditional description of the path of Yoga. Your steady eye on the two essentials I had marked out - equanimity and "Remember and Offer" - is bound to carry you far. Their special advantage is that they involve (or evolve) both the heart and the head. The offering is surely a movement as if of handing the Mother
...a red, red rose
That's newly blown in June -
the rose of one's love-thrilled devotion-dyed surrender-
Page 7
kindled heart every time the circumstances of one's life are laid at her feet. But remembering is bound to be - at least to an extent - a stirring of the head which brings up before one an image of the beatific face belonging to the figure at whose other end are those heaven-missioned earth-blessing feet. Similarly, equanimity is not only - as one of my favourite Savitri-lines has it -
A wide unshaken look on Time's unrest -
a calm controlled attitude of detached impersonality ruling out all individual reactions of thought and judgment. Equanimity is also a seeing of one's inner agitations which are as much part of "Time's unrest" as are the ups and downs of the outer world. Here the changing history of the heart is to be faced with unaltered peace and an even tenor sought to be infused into it. The emotions no less than the thinking processes have to remain unruffled.
There is another point to be noted. Equanimity is gained in two ways. First, by a stepping back into some tranquil Vast that is ever there behind our throbbing human smallness. Secondly, by catching all hurtful disturbing touches from the common world upon our heart before they pierce the surface and, without any attempt to think how to meet them, remembering the Mother and offering them to her. Thus at once we get free from them and some smiling Vast beyond us takes them up. This Vast and that tranquil Vast are two aspects of the same luminous Liberty that sets the stage for our self-transcendence into spirituality. But they don't coalesce in our experience from the start. The one seems to represent at its extreme realisation what the ancient seers called the Self of selves, an impersonal immobile common background to the varied flux of phenomena, the diverse play of personal lives. The other is a remote-appearing yet intimate creatrix of our souls, a super-Person from whom all personality emanates, a goddess-greatness immune to "the troubles of our proud and angry dust" but still concerned about them, quietly eager to
Page 8
help and resolve them. To the Self of selves the world is a sort of aching illusion; to this goddess-greatness whom we may designate the Soul of souls the world is a struggling evolution with deific possibilities of a manifold perfection. By constant reference to both by the Yogic formula I have suggested -which is really a putting together of Sri Aurobindo's recipes at work in most cases - the two super-realities enfold our lives as what I may dub a unified Power of Peace, a joint divine environment, as it were, calling forth, from behind, beyond, within us, a new superhuman manifestation. Gradually we are re-created by a distant yet receptive Silence and a transcendent yet responsive Vigilance alert to the rhythm of our human cry - serving by their combined or rather fused influences the cause of our sadhana.
(5.5.1992)
Thank you for your donation to Mother India. A regular generous feeding like that is good for a 43-year-old journal.
I am glad my latest letter has proved a source of increasing guidance after each further reading. On my part I have tried to bring out a sense of the spiritual passive-active truth behind the poise of equanimity as well as the active-passive truth permeating the gesture of "Remember and Offer". The two are really complementary. The one involves a vast withdrawal into a background peace which when brought face to face with the common world becomes a spread-out of silent power whose very presence is a pressure on things to become harmonious or to disappear. The other involves a constant catching hold of things because its practitioner has to confront life and actively seek to change world-values, but by separating them from their common context and by lifting each event and its significance towards the Divine Mother who watches all and secretly pervades all. Thus one dynamically dissociates events from the run of daily time and refuses to deal with them from the human source of life-manipulation. Into the invisible hands of the ever-unforgot-
Page 9
ten Supreme Creatrix they are delivered with one's whole heart and then one stops worrying about them.
This shade of surrender is not usually read in the offering that is to go with remembering. Just the attitude of consecration is advised, bringing the feeling that every bit of work is done for the Mother. Then every bit grows a pleasure and one goes nearer and nearer to her and the work itself turns more efficient because her hidden omnipotence is tacitly invoked. What I have added to the meaning of the Auro-bindonian formula is the action of offering in order to lead to one's own inaction and to put all the initiative in the Divine's court, so to speak, so that both the decidedly more luminous judgment and the undoubtedly more competent power of the Divine are brought to bear upon life's vicissitudes. My addition too is Aurobindonian in essence but from another context of the Integral Yoga. Here one has deliberately to cease planning and shaping the course of things. Especially when an acute problem gets posed and hurtful circumstances tend to shake one's nerves, one has to stop figuring out one's response and, to save one from perplexity as well as from the possibility of wrong choice, one not only consecrates what is before one but also abdicates as thinker and doer. Thus a peaceful passivity results from the dynamic drive at the start.
(27.5.1992)
I have promised to tell you the inner story during the last phase of my recent illness. I had a hacking cough and along with it a daily rise in temperature during the afternoon and evening - generally 100 and once 101. This did not deter me from my usual typing work at home and my daily wheelchair-visit to the Samadhi from 4.30 to 5.30 p.m., during which hour the cough was surprisingly quiet, except for a slight outburst on rare occasions. Every third day I used to drop in at our Ashram dispensary which is on my way to the Samadhi. There Dr. Datta would solicitously examine my chest and lungs, put the thermometer in my mouth and give me the
Page 10
needed treatment for whatever bacterial complication accompanied the virus infection he had diagnosed. We have no remedy against viruses: they come and go at their own sweet will.
The illness went on for nearly four weeks. The repeating fever made the body rather uneasy and there seemed no definite end to it. One afternoon I suddenly had the feeling that what I needed was mountain-air to set me right. But how was I to get that refreshing atmosphere which, as I remembered, had once got rid of a troublesome fever. I was in Poona (now Pune) and had planned to go to the high plateau of Panchgani. Half way up in the bus I felt the changed air sweep the fever out and I was perfectly well thenceforward. After my fracture-accident I was in no state to catch any bus winding anywhere upward. Besides, I disliked the idea of leaving Pondicherry. What was then to be done?
A voice within commanded: "Read Savitri." Immediately I took hold of the volume, concentrated a little and opened it at random. I read two pages at a stretch, audibly, getting the full impact of the rhythm. At the end I realised that something had gradually stood back from the feverish Amal. The fever had not gone but the real I was free from it. Then 1 recalled Sri Aurobindo writing that mountains were a symbol of the Universal Consciousness. It also struck me that what he had called the "overhead" planes - planes of consciousness above the mind-level - would surely be inner heights in a spiritual wideness, from where Sri Aurobindo drew the inspiration of his Yogic poetry, especially of his epic Savitri. This immense creation was meant to have again and again the Mantric vibration of the top overhead plane, the Overmind which had been the source of the supreme moments in the Rigveda, the Upanishads and the Gita. The breath of inspiration blowing through Savitri was indeed the archetypal mountain-air.
Every morning, day after day, I listened to my lips spelling out Savitri, For a couple of days, while I stood inwardly aloof, the fever continued though at a lower pitch. Then it vanished completely and I inhaled the atmosphere of
Page 11
a super-Panchgani all the time. I informed Dr. Datta that I was quite well but I did not tell him how the virus infection had left me and the cough too had started subsiding. I was afraid he might think me too imaginative. If he happens to read this detailed account I am certain he will not shake his head. He is too much of a Yogi to do it and too trustful of "respected elders" to doubt them.
(25.6.1992)
Page 12
2
Your letter suggests to me that somewhere in your being there is a born "Pilgrim of Pondicherry" as well as "Initiate of Poetry" - and perhaps the former will fully emerge through the development of the latter. It is remarkable that the reading of my sonnet "Mukti" should have left so deep an impression on you. The fact that not just the sense but also the sound of it means so much proves to me that my second description of the potential you is quite correct. For, contrary to the general notion, it is the sound that is the soul of poetry and it is the sense that is the body. By "sound" I mean the inner subtle life-throb of the vision or experience that articulates itself through the intelligible words. The poet's depths swim up in the rhythm. And the finer the poetry the more crucial are the details of the rhythmic interrelations of a line. This involves a quick response to the word-order and its suggestive concords. Thus there is a world of difference in inner suggestion between the form:
The mute unshadowed spaces of her mind -
and the possible alternative:
The spaces of her mind, unshadowed, mute.
It is not only the changing of places by the two adjectives that counts: the termination of the line by the adjective "mute" lays a special stress on muteness, as if that were the critical quality above everything else. Besides, one is left a little unsure whether the two epithets refer to "spaces" or to "mind". Finally, the freely sweeping sound of the earlier form has yielded place to one Which has a staccato movement and a sort of added-on effect at the close. Even without all these alterations an unnatural effect would be there if one wrote:
Page 13
The spaces, mute, unshadowed, of her mind.
The line would lack the touch of inevitability which gives the original version an extraordinary spontaneous profundity making our being vibrate in some visionary dimension beyond the thinking brain's noises and ingenuities - vibrate to a reality far other than our life's usual tenor. Even a phrase like
Mute and unshadowed spaces of her mind,
which should theoretically not make any difference that matters is yet a definite a peu pres. Again an unnecessary emphasis is laid on muteness, all the more because of the marked trochaic rhythm of the word-order at the start. Perhaps a still more delicate yet equally decisive shift of inevitable profundity in the suggestion comes if a couple of words stand in the same order at the end rather than in the middle of a certain line. Here is the line in its latter avatar:
A cry to clasp in all the one God-hush.
There is a well-rounded mystical effect of a fairly high order. But compare it to the strange sense of an interminable passage into wideness after inner spiritual wideness if we read:
A cry to clasp the one God-hush in all.
Though the verbal significance may be taken to be the same as before, the overall resonance confers on it a greater authenticity, an ultimate authority. Possibly we may go a step further in regard to the significance itself.
Examined sensitively, this version seems to impart even a different shade by its variation of sound fused with another word-order. Now the one God-hush is not to be discovered with an effort at the close of a search. It is to be realised in a
Page 14
natural way as a secret wonder which is self-revealed everywhere to the intense ardour of a rapt inwardness.
I am glad you have invested in my Talks on Poetry. The book is meant not only to make poetry come alive but also to make life catch something of poetry's perfection of revelatory rhythm on the diverse planes of our consciousness.
(28.4.1990)
The exchange of calm and unrest is nothing peculiar to you: it is part of the general human condition. What you have to do is to let the spells of calm outnumber the moments of agitation. You will ask: "How?" The sole fully effective mode is Yoga. In the practice of Yoga we try to vivify in ourselves the sense of the Infinite, the Eternal and we turn constantly towards the Divine and increase more and more our intuition of His imperturbable Presence. Then at the moment of agitation something will touch us from within and draw us away from the ruffled surface of our being. There won't be success each time, but failures will grow less and less.
"Things like anger, resentment, etc." are difficult moods to manage - even people who have lived in the Ashram for many years are not free from their occasional visits. But the right course is always to reject the suggestion that you are justified in having them. On the other hand, you must not indulge in too much remorse. Don't brood over your past but be ready for the future. Just catch these moods whenever they come and, without thinking anything more, offer them to the Mother and keep offering them until you feel clear and calm. You must also learn to look at the cause of them - which is, in your own words, "not having things the way I had wanted" -as carrying secret messages to you from the Divine. I have always held that we can let the Divine reach us through everything. And if we look for the Hand of Grace in even adverse circumstances it will extend to us and bring us benefits we have never dreamt of. I don't say that we must never want circumstances to be other than they are. We may
Page 15
work towards a different denouement and yet reap profit from a situation that seems to cut across our plan. Everything becomes a gift of God in one manner or another when we offer it to Him and await in our heart His contact through it. This is one of the great lessons I have learnt and it is one of the paths to permanent peace. You have a deep sincere aspiration to live quietly and joyously as the Mother's child. It will carry you safely through all the ups and downs of earthly days. Have faith in your destiny of inward light.
(5.11.1988)
Your letter brought excellent news. We are happy that the Ticker is pretty sound or makes a pretty sound and the period of the little cacophony has passed, proving the little caco to be phoney.
Your friend's second note has reached me. Yes, she is a fine rare person. To my mind a person is more than a mere individual. An individual tends to be locked in his own unity. A person is an individual flowering out - because he has also flowered inly beyond himself, reaching or at least touching the spontaneous sweetness and light of the soul - the soul which is never bound to its own oneness.
(24.10.1990)
I was simply delighted to see what was inside the packet. What love and care have gone into collecting and preserving all that I have written to you! Even the insignificant notes scribbled in haste have found a cherished place in the file. The file itself is of an outstanding quality. Nothing but the best for your friend. Precious indeed is your heart to me for such a "crimson-throbbing glow" it has at the slightest touch of affection from me. It is as if Amal could say: "Am-all to my hand-in-hand aspirant companion on the inward and upward Path."
Glancing through the contents of the file, I am amazed at
Page 16
the amount of my correspondence and at the variety of topics it deals with - or, rather, the various ways in which it approaches one sole Topic - better still, the one Soul-topic -the discovery of our true self which is a child of the Divine Mother, implicitly, intrinsically, inherently. Ever since I came here I have tried to find that self whose love for the Divine is spontaneous and unconditional. I don't remember whether 1 have quoted to you the letter I wrote to the Mother after some years in the Ashram. Here it is, along with the answer it got from our Gurus:
Pardon my writing to you without any specific reason; but 1 felt like telling you that you are my darling. In spite of my thousand and three imperfections, this one sense remains in me - that you are my Mother, that I am born from your heart. It is the only truth I seem to have realised in all these years. A very unfortunate thing, perhaps, that I have realised no other truth; but I deeply thank you that I have been enabled to feel this much at least.
Sri Aurobindo replied: "It is an excellent foundation for the other truths that are to come - for they all result from it."
The Mother added: "My blessings are always with you."
I am sure something in you will respond at once to the expression in that old letter; for I feel you to be unmistakably a psychic personality. There are several people whose psychic beings came out in relationship to the Mother - I have watched this happening time and again. But I have also known that these same people could be rude and crude'in their daily behaviour - some were even quite pestiferous to their neighbours. There was no persisting undercurrent of the psyche in their day-to-day life. It is the presence of this undercurrent in all one's doings that makes one a psychic personality. A psychic personality feels not only the Divine in oneself but also the Divine in others.
Apropos of your file of my letters, your "Treasure" as you have called it, I would like to cite three lines from Savitri
Page 17
(Centenary Edition) for you to fancy in what sense, if at all, you can be taken to have used this term:
The treasure was found of a supernal Day... (4:34)
A treasure of honey in the combs of God... (49:8)
A growing treasure in the mystic heart... (674:33)
The third lint- breathes of some sweet and luminous inferiority gradually unfolding, the second catches sight of a secret fullness of delight, the first conveys the thrill of entering a rapt vastness of God's glory. Of course, I am taking the lines more by themselves than in their actual contexts. All of them have a consummate rhythm running through words that are rich with spiritual significance. Each line, speaking of a wonderful wealth of experience or realisation, is in its own individual manner a poetic treasure.
(12.12.1988)
The dream, which you have recounted in your letter of 12.10.89, was quite prophetic. What I was showing you while taking you round was really there - my flat was in a bad state, needing repairs. And now repairing has started. It's been going on for the last four days, reducing the flat to even a worse state - temporarily. Things are being knocked down, things have been shifted, and after 8.30 a.m. I can't go to the back of the flat, or shall I commit the Indianism of saying the flat's "backside"? I well might, for the prohibited area contains conveniences for my daily relief. Only at 5.30 p.m., after returning from the Samadhi can I find relief possible with the pre-repairs ease and comfort. Till then it's best for my spiritual life to be true, in a most physical mode, to the last word in King Manu's apostrophe to an exalted personage in a poem of Sri Aurobindo's:
Rishi who trance-held on the mountains old
Art slumbering, void
Of sense or motion...
Page 18
You write: "I felt that you had an impression that I had something to do with the repairs." Well, although I had applied for repairs, nothing was being done. Only after your dream - almost immediately after - did the people appear with their tools and materials. On a subtle plane your realisation that my flat seriously needed a new look seems to have awakened the powers-that-be to take action.
Your "looking for a book" in my fiat is, of course, most appropriate. The first thing one notices on approaching my front room is two book-packed cupboards - one a huge double-winged structure given me by the Mother and the other a comparatively smaller piece left by an American woman who had visited the Ashram in the '50s. Quite like a miniature public library the room looks. And actually the fellow who comes every month to read my electric meter reported once to the authorities that my place was not a private residence but a public library! His impression was all the stronger for seeing me every time reading. So to my surprise my electric bill mounted up. I questioned the meter-reader and he said, "We have to charge this place more because this is a public library." I I had to take him round the flat, show him my bedroom and my dining room to convince him that I was residing here and very privately re-living the life of Robert Southey:
My days among the dead are passed;
Around me I behold,
Where'er these casual eyes are cast,
The mighty minds of old.
My never-failing friends are they,
With whom I converse day by day.
Yes, books have been a major part of my life - and as if there were not enough of them in the world I have been destined to increase their number. Perhaps by the time my 18 still unpublished books see the light of day I may have to my credit or discredit about 36 in all since already 18 or so have
Page 19
come out,1 And if by any chance I go on to the year 1998 which Sri Aurobindo clearly inscribed at the head of an early letter to me I may add to this tally before the fumbling being whom Sri Aurobindo wanted to be "The Clear Ray" ("Amal Kiran") and who has aspired, however vainly, to make true his master's vision -
A ray of the timeless Glory stooped awhile -
and to be
A ray revealing unseen Presences
feels that his time is up and, living in the sense of the "up"-ness, becomes
A ray returning to its parent Sun,
The parallel case you cite to the suggestion of my 1998 -the Mother telling you, apropos of your "difficulties of dreams on the vital plane", "You are not alone. There are hundreds like you. Try, try for one hundred years if necessary" - this parallel case makes me very happy, especially as after your prayer "Please bless me, Mother" she gave you her blessing and later looked intently into your eyes. All this seems to me to presage most graciously as well as forcefully a very long life for my bosom-friend. Both of us may have our life's length, but what about our life's depth? I believe it will be easier to have it if we have each other's enkindling company.
Now to your dream of September 28. The date is very likely to have been one of those nights when I was typing away till nearly 3 a.m., the hour at which you went to sleep again after a brief awaking. The "countryside" in which "we were moving about intimately" is rather apt,for my thoughts
1. Editor's Note: At the present moment (October 1992), 23 published and 22 unpublished.
Page 20
often fly to scenes of mountains and greenery and winding rivers,but your finding that the countryside's "path was uneven, broken at places" and that "there were pits and holes here and there" shows in a small symbolic form our general field of endeavour - as put by a Savitri-line -
In the green wonderful and perilous earth.
Your trying to take care of me even in your sleep points to the psychic profundity in which your relationship with me has birth. And I seem to be wanting to be thus taken care of because it is indeed fine to feel the helping hand of a warm friendship. Actually, as you found out, I could walk "with ease", needing no "Canadian canes". For, from a figuration of the earth's beauty and bale, we had passed into a domain beyond the body's hold. Properly speaking, I should say "the physical body", for there is an embodiment on all the planes, but the stuff is not physical. Even on the subtle-physical plane something of the earth's characteristics linger. There I may not be tottering, yet I would limp a little. Though no sticks might be necessary I would still have a halting gait. We must have been in a dimension which I would call the mental-psychic. All our inner and outer movements were charged with the soul's spontaneity of sweetness and light, but it was at play through an atmosphere of mind. The hint of this atmosphere comes through your telling me in your letter that you handed a dictionary to me because I wanted to look up a word. In the sheer psychic, I should think words have no raison d'etre - hearts mingle and know each other directly. In the mental-psychic, the mingling of hearts also takes place, but the joy is not complete without an exchange of lyric language and sometimes the mot juste, the felicitous expression, has to be sought out in a super-Chambers' colourful lexicon instead of the consciousness living, silently fulfilled, in
White chambers of dalliance with eternity.1
1. Savitri, SABCL, Vol. 28, p. 91.
Page 21
The little incident you recount of you offering me some snacks and I proposing that you should share them with me and you doing so - all this suggests the intimacy between us deriving from our inner recesses and not floating merely on the day-to-day surface. The fact which you mention, that you "took a piece of sweet" from me, indicates not only our intimacy but also the quality of the substance, as it were, of all interchanges in that inner plane: sweetness in addition to light.
'Your dream was indeed a many-aspected pointer to the basis of the happy communication, both written and thought-wafted, going on between us within the enfolding presence of the Divine Mother.
(21.10.1989)
Speech is the usual mode of communication and togetherness. But silence need not be self-enclosed and separative. When it is full of memories and anticipations it is no more than a formative pause between past utterance and future word, an active potentiality of communication, a warm preparation for being together again. Such has been my state when no letter passed from me to you. Last night the call suddenly came to write to you and the subject is one of the strangest that can be associated with me.
A number of nights back I had a dream in which I exclaimed: "Oh I am so unhappy, so unhappy!" It was a surprise and yet a tinge of recognition mixed with it. At once - in the dream itself - there was a quiet pressure on the inner being to divulge the reason for this cry from some depth of discontent. And the answer arose like a far phantom trying to take shape. When I looked into the distance I read the words: "There is some coldness between you and the Mother" - and behind this immediate disclosure I discerned a vast tract of the still unrealised dimensions of the Divine.
My aim through day after day has been for years a quiet joy emanating from the heart because of a constant contact
Page 22
with the Mother's presence within - a contact which brings about a radiant sense of her presence all around. A glory and a greatness and a grace wake in the inmost to meet the light, the power, the love that are, as the Mundaka Upanishad says of Brahman, "before us and behind us, to the north and to the south of us and above and below and extended everywhere". But after the dream-discovery a few nights ago I see at the same time the need to repair the slight sinking of the Motherward flame and to widen the receptivity to her manifold mystery. The living touch with her is so important - so much the all-in-all - that even a slight slackening of it makes all life dust and ashes and wrings from the whole being a note of utter tragedy. What the slight slackening brought about along with this note is the accentuation of something I have felt for a long period. I remember writing to my sister many years ago and I have repeated it to friends intermittently that 1 have been waiting eagerly for a certain breakthrough. The fire of loving and self-giving aspiration has often burned intensely and yet failed to pierce some barrier that hangs between the luminous yet limited Here of God-intimacy and a multi-layered Beyond of plenary God-realisation.
When both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were physically with us this hunger for the Infinite was never so acutely felt -or rather it was not felt as an ardent ache. Their presence and their ambience gave, as it were, a constant promise of that Fullness. Perhaps it is more true to say that the Fullness itself appeared to come towards us on their earth-treading feet and with their earth-illumining faces. Even when Sri Aurobindo withdrew from his body the Mother's incarnate divinity was an assurance that the entire infinite would be ours and that to look into her eyes and receive her smile and be made by them her own thrice-blessed children was to be brimmed with a bliss that seemed to encompass everything. The sense of what Nirodbaran in a poem has termed with a felicity of revelatory expression
Life that is deep and wonder-vast
Page 23
is still with us as a legacy of the Mother's light and love from her physical past amongst us. Indeed that physical past is still with us in a subtle enveloping form, but the unrealised dimensions of the Divine which were not acutely felt when to see and touch her was to feel that nothing was lacking have haunted me ever since her departure from her body. It is not as though the vivid conjuring up of her subtle reality were not sweet and sublime enough: what is wanting is the surety of receiving those dimensions as a straight gift from her some time or other. This may be due to my own shortcoming in receptivity. Others may not yearn as I do for the immense Unexplored. They may be content with having arrived through
an aureate opening in Time
Where stillness listening felt the unspoken word
And the hours forgot to pass towards grief and change,
at
A spot for the Eternal's tread on earth.1
The dream of my secret extreme unhappiness has made me keenly aware of chasms within me that long to be appeased with more and more of the Mother's empyreans. Not that I disvalue the precious opening and widening my Gurus have made in me. I cannot be sufficiently grateful for the freedom and the joy and the release from self that they have given the thought-hemmed desire-ridden groper after spiritual silence and psychic purity that I was. But oh so happy, so happy indeed will I be if I can break into the endlessness of Sri Aurobindo's Truth, the boundlessness of the Mother's Beauty!
(3.7.1992)
I have your two letters - of 13 and 16 August. The former date is the Rakhi day and the beautiful golden chain you had sent in advance was put on my wrist. As I looked at it I had the
1. Savitri, SABCL, Vol. 28, p.
Page 24
feeling that this shining band was symbolic of a deeply delicate bond between us. I say "delicate" because there is not the slightest compulsion in it nor any gross element. I might even say it is airy-fairy, but in no vapid sense. The lack of heaviness is due to the source of its delicacy - the depth of being from which it derives its exquisite loveliness. Nothing short of the true soul in us forms the link between a fifty-seven-year old who is still a spontaneous child wrapped in heaven-touched dreams and one who is nearing his eighty-eighth year and yet has the joyousness and impetus of seeking endlessly the Perfect, the Ideal, the Eternal Beauty that never ages.
Yes, I am a seeker of the Supreme but am personally very far from attaining anywhere near Him. So your phrase in connection with your projected visit to Pondicherry in mid-October - "I will take prasad by your holy hand" - is rather puzzling, all the more because it implies on my part some proficiency in cooking. I think I once recounted to you my only feat of cookery. Let me refresh your memory by referring to this feat again. A bag of flour had come and my wife and her sister made chapartis. I said, "Why not give me a little flour?" They gave it and I made a chapatti on the table where I had been working on an article for Mother India. This table was a big round one and served many purposes. So it had an assortment of bottles or cans on it. I got the brilliant idea to add to my chapatti a drop from whatever stood there. So I put on it a drop each of ink, eau de cologne, machine oil and a cough mixture. My wife and her sister were simply aghast at my conception. When cooked, it was sure to be wonderful, something never created before, compared to which what they had prepared would be absolutely insipid. So if I give prasad of my own making, you will have to face it with a hero's heart and not only the heart of a devotee.
(22.8.92)
Page 25
3
Perhaps the most momentous utterance of the Mother in my memory is one which was no more than a brief passing whisper - a short unfinished phrase, spoken as if to herself and caught almost accidentally by me to make what I could of it.
The occasion was one of those afternoons when I was the only disciple left at the end of her morning's meeting first with the secretaries and then a few others who somehow had happened to be upstairs between the time she came down from her second-floor rooms and the time she sat down for her lunch with Pranab on the first floor behind a screen. At about 12 everyone went home. Only I was left behind, sitting in the small passage between the staircase door and the bathroom. How I came into this exceptional role I can't recollect. But, as I have recounted elsewhere, I sat by myself through her lunch - within earshot of her varied talk with Pranab. Usually I would leave a note under a paper-weight on a small table by which she passed after lunch on her way to the bathroom through another door from a passage beyond the room where we used to do pranam to her and sit while she would give interviews in the Meditation Hall.
On this particular morning I had left no note and she came out towards me from the bathroom without any oral or written reply to my questions. I got up from the mat, knelt at her feet as she stood for a moment before passing on to her siesta in the lunch-comer. After blessing me she just let fall the five words: "To keep one body going..."
As they sank into my mind they got enveloped with a soft light yielding several successive shades of meaning. Evi-dendy the body was her own. Also, it was a body all by itself: one. Further, its singleness was special. Not only was it special but also unique. And it was unique by being more than strikingly different from other bodies. Clearly, it was a body holding a consciousness immeasurably greater than any in
Page 26
the world. But it was a body too which Sri Aurobindo, some months before leaving his own body, had charged with a mighty mission: "You have to fulfil our Yoga of Supramental Descent and Transformation." The Mother has herself given a more distinct depth of significance to this charge: she has declared that hers was a body in which for the first time in human history the experiment of physical divinisation was being tried - a most difficult and outwardly a most distressing experiment, entailing a lot of suffering under the tremendous pressure of a divine Power of immortality which had never before brought its unrelenting all-transformative light into a stuff of flesh and bone deliberately accepted to be like our own in essence so that whatever would be achieved in it could represent a general human possibility. Finally, the suggestion of her words was that this body should be able to continue its work on earth and for that it was necessary to do everything which could help. Most pointedly the words implied not only help from herself but from others as well - and the second kind of assistance was rather crucial because sufficient realisation of its need might not come to us. So her whisper connoted what she would never openly insist on: "You, my dear disciples, should see to it that you do nothing to hinder the going on of my body which Sri Aurobindo has marked out for his work and on which the whole future of the world depends."
How have we lived up to the duty to help her? Should we have taxed her less in the way of wanting to be with her? In fact she herself wanted to be with us as much as possible(To. put her divinely developing body in touch with our bodies was the raison d'etre of her incarnation.; Especially as Sri Aurobindo had withdrawn from us into physical seclusion in 1926, she felt the need to give herself more and more to our aspiration for spirituality. This feeling must have increased tenfold after he had given tip his own body on December 5, 1950. And though she appreciated the attitude of those who did not wish to encroach on her time, she was very far from pushing away those who yearned to be in her physical
Page 27
ambience. To a backward Yogi like me, being near her was half the sadhana and she never grudged the gracious gift of her bodily proximity. What was wrong at times was to consider our petty needs more than her convenience. Thus some of us unduly prolonged the pranam she daily allowed us to make or unnecessarily lengthened out our periodical interviews with her. On occasion we overlooked some physical needs of hers.
I distinctly remember one incident. She had come to a house where several people were lodged. The occasion was the birthday of one of them. She had granted him an interview in his own room. When the interview was over she came out to the veranda on her way to the Playground. The inmates of the house offered flowers to her. One of them said: "Mother, I want to tell you something important. Will you please come into my room?" The Mother answered: "If I come, I shall be late at the Playground and have no time to take a little refreshment in my room there before attending to the Playground activities." The person addressed just kept weakly smiling and would not say: "All right, Mother. I shan't keep you." Obviously, there was a persistent wish to have the Mother in for a special talk. Seeing the disinclination to let her go, the Mother quietly went into the room as desired. She remained there quite a time and came out smiling as usual after the grace shown to one of her children. But she must have missed the refreshment and rest of which her over-taxed body was in need.
She never let us know whatever strain she underwent. She used to stand for over an hour at times in the early morning in the passage-room I have spoken of, receiving pranams and giving blessings. And as she could draw endless energy from the Universal Consciousness she could compel her body to carry on to please her children. But at the time I heard that whisper, her body had already reached the age of eighty years.
Even more of a strain than physical exertion was the non-receptivity of people or else their carrying undesirable states of consciousness to her. It was the most natural movement for
Page 28
the Mother to open herself completely to her children and quite a lot of psychological "dirt" would get into her and affect her body. There was also the classical case of her falling ill because of the Soup Distribution. She used to put something of her subtle-physical substance into the soup when she sipped it before giving the cup to the disciple who was kneeling in front of her. The cumulative strain was so great that she fell seriously ill. That was the end of the period of Soup Distribution in the Ashram's history. Some sort of reciprocal energy-flow between the Mother and the sadhaks was expected, but evidently there was too little response from us to her and the giving was markedly one-sided. Hence the physical breakdown on her part. Another kind of attack on her was the despatch of ill-tempered letters. Her son Andre once remarked that they affected her body. Even Sri Aurobindo was said to have suffered from such letters. Once a nasty epistie affected his eyes for a while. Our Gurus' attitude to their spiritual children was so trustingly open that they were often caught off their guard, as it were, and had to exert special powers to get back to normal.
In a number of ways I must have been a considerable drag on the Mother, Was that why she let out that unfinished sentence in my presence? I have not heard of anybody else reporting such a hint. Or was she confiding in me a secret as a result of something having happened independently of me, which was more of a drag on her than other occasions? I shall never know. But since that afternoon I have tried not to forget ever how precious, how invaluable, how packed with super-destiny, how centrally significant in the career of our evolutionary cosmos was that one body that held so much sweetness and so much strength for baffled benighted souls -
A body like a parable of dawn
That seemed a niche for veiled divinity
Or golden temple-door to things beyond.1
(26.7.1992)
1. Savitri, SABCL, Vol. 28, p. 15.
Page 29
You have written: "26th June 1969 is the day when the Mother came to save me on the operation table when the operating staff had declared that the patient was dead." The same date -26th June - but in 1938 - is one when according to what the Mother has said, my heart should have stopped by all normal standards yet kept beating because, as she explained in a talk, the habit of remembering and invoking her had been constant - had become second nature -Jin this complicated fellow whose first nature was rather reckless and who had taken 48 times the normal dose of a stimulant drug! It was a mistake bound to cause death but there was, as Sri Aurobindo put it, a divine intervention and the rash disciple's heart is still beating and will complete its eighty-eighth year on November 25.
Don't ever think I have forgotten you. The Samadhi-offering continues and when the offering is made I instinctively turn my head to my left as if you were sitting there in your wheelchair. Now that I too am wheelchaired, we shall make a pretty pair when you next come here and the hearts of both of us go forth to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
You have asked me about my first darshan. My first sight of the Mother was on the very day I reached Pondicherry on December 16, 1927. 1 had been taken by Pujalal, who had received my wife and me at the station, to Purani's room -previously Sri Aurobindo's for 6 years and afterwards mine for 9. Looking out of the north window I saw the Mother walking on the roof-terrace of her house, drying in the sun her just-shampooed hair. This was a most enchanting vision and my heart leapt out to her and since then has kept leaping. The word "leap" is very appropriate to my response to her as compared to my answer to the Divine Call through Sri Aurobindo. I do not leap but sweep towards Sri Aurobindo. A warm deeply reverent continuity of movement is experienced in regard to him, whereas in regard to the Mother there is always a swift and sudden movement of exultation. If I may pick up a clue from this last word, I may say that face to face with the Mother I feel my heart intensely exultant. Fronting
Page 30
Sri Aurobindo I know my heart to be immensely exalted. The heart is concerned and dynamised in either case - profound love is astir, but on the one side it is tugged by a dazzle of beauty and bliss while on the other it is drawn by a tranquil glow of compassionate grandeur.
You have referred to a poem of mine, after reading which the Mother had asked everyone present at the time to read. Here it is:
PRANAM TO THE DIVINE MOTHER .
There are two ways of bowing
To you, O Splendour sweet!
One craves the boon of blessedness.
One gives the soul to your feet.
Pulling your touch to ourselves we feel
Holy and happy - we think huge heaven
Comes close with you that we may pluck
A redder dawn, a purpler even.
This is but rapturous robbery
Deaf to infinity's call
That we should leap and plunge in you
Our aching empty all
And, in the surge of being your own,
Grow blind and quite forget
Whether our day be a richer rose,
A wealthier violet.
Precious each moment laid in your hands,
Whatever the hue it bear -
A flame and a fragrance just because
Your fingers hold it dear.
Make me your nothing, my whole life
I would drown in your vastnesses -
Page 31
A cry to be ruled by your flawless touch,
Your will alone my peace.
I was interested to read your account of the Champaklal-episode at Puri. I wonder what exactly was the relation conceived between Champaklal and the Jagannath temple. Evidently a high value was set on this temple and especially on the special prasad cooked there, which was proposed to be brought to him. But I don't think Champaklal was considered to be blessed by the projected visit by him to the temple or by the sanctified food from it. It must have been the other way around; his value was deemed so high that what was regarded as the highest according to the Hindu religious sense was to be set before him. You say you opposed the plan; you must have done so because you saw in it an undue premium put on traditional Hinduism and an unnecessary link made between traditional Hinduism and Sri Aurobindo's supra-mental spirituality which goes beyond the reign of the Overmind godheads that has prevailed so far in India as in the West. I consider your insight to be deeper than that of the Reception Committee,The Mother did not want any sadhak to be drawn to any past religious institution or ceremony. The seer-knowledge enshrined in the Rigveda, the Upanishads and the Gita is indeed precious and forms an antechamber to the Aurobindonian revelation, but the popular cults and the temples in which they are perpetuated were never encouraged by the Mother. The same holds for the churches of the Western religions. Most followers of Sri Aurobindo's philosophy do not quite realise the line he and the Mother draw between the old Hindu scriptures and the popular practices. Perhaps the personal figure of Champaklal did not encourage the Puri-receptionists to mark such a line. For he throughout his life in the Ashram and in the exemplary service of his Gurus retained on his body the traditional "sacred thread". The Gurus never objected to this thread: they never went out of their way to criticise any old-world foibles of their disciples. They never made it a point to frown on Champaklal's tradi-
Page 32
tional sign of his brahmin caste any more than to show disapproval of Dilip's attachment to the sannyasi's ochre-coloured robe.
Not that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother consider temples and churches and mosques superfluous. Ordinary life needs such supports and they have a place in the evolution of consciousness. And the religious instinct of prayer, worship and self-offering is very valuable. In its essence - shorn of egoistic and materialistic motives - it has a place even in the highest Yoga when the being is turned towards a personal Supreme and seeks His manifestation in one's active life.
(15.6.1992)
Thank you for appreciating my poem "Pranam to the Divine Mother". Only one phrase in it you have fallen foul of: the four opening words of the last stanza:
You object: "Is it possible any time or anywhere - in whatever state of consciousness we may be - that we are not in Her lap, not portions of Her? Above all, when She has recognised us as Her children, when She is with us so concretely, when She is doing even the necessary preparations or even the sadhana for us, how can we say or even think or imagine that we are nothing of Hers?"
I am afraid you have not seized my drift - especially in the context of the rest of the stanza. My plea to the Mother is: "Take away from me all selfhood separate from you. Let it be a nothing on its own so that it belongs altogether to you." This is the import conveyed compactly by the words: "Make me your nothing". The next phrase elucidates them by expressing the wish that I may be drowned - lost - in Her
Page 33
immensity - with no existence as myself, no activity on my own initiative, no will I can call mine. Only Her will should prevail and its prevailing is the sole fact that can give me peace, filling me with all which would be needed by me, granting me complete fulfilment.
Some earlier lines add another shade to the last stanza. At the beginning of the poem I differentiate between those who try to aggrandise themselves by taking the Mother's grace and those who come to her to surrender their souls. About the action of the former I say:
This is but rapturous robbery,
Our aching empty all.
The suggestion here is that really we are a zero with a painful yearning for self-consummation and that we can have it only by losing ourselves in the infinity of the Divine. The phrases prepare us for the idea that, instead of being our own zero with delusive egoistic hopes of becoming big by falsely assumed riches of the godhead, we should become that godhead's total possession: the Supreme Mother's zero, Her "nothing".
On p. 3 of your letter you have the statement: "I am insincere, so suffering." This implies on the one hand that we suffer because we are insincere and on the other that because we suffer we are proved to be insincere. Our world is a complex and often enigmatic phenomenon. Not only do bad people suffer: the good also do it. Sincerity by itself is no armour against suffering and just by their suffering men are not shown to be examples of insincerity. All of us suffer through the general condition of Ignorance - our lack of the Divine's luminous consciousness. There is also the seeming paradox that even the Avatar or the enlightened soul suffers. The latter has elements of humanity that are still open to dark forces. Our body, for instance, lives under laws that have not
Page 34
yet been changed by the spiritual power. The Avatar has similar infirmities and he may even undertake labours for the world that are bound to cause suffering to him. Of course, one should always question whether one is sincere, but merely on the basis of one's suffering one should not sit in sackcloth and ashes bemoaning "Oh, I am such a putrid fellow, shot through and through with pretence and falsehood!" If one can lay one's finger on the cause of one's suffering, well and good: one should then set about removing the cause if possible. Otherwise what is to be done is to offer the suffering to the Divine and implore Him to reveal the cause and in any case to make even the suffering a passage to some good of the soul because the pain is inwardly put in His transmuting hands.
To balance, as it were, your erroneous judgment in two instances, you have a very insightful pronouncement in the course of the touching prayer you have formulated:
Day by day,
Hour by hour,
Your longing
For my perfection
Quickens in my body
New Divine Strength.
I submit to Your
Wonderful purity,
O Supreme and Blissful Lord.
Lines 3-6 struck me at once as inspired and intuitive ihna special way. They point us to a truth not often realised. In the first place, it is that the "Supreme and Blissful Lord" has a heart full of intense concern for our spiritual progress, a keen desire that you and I, stumbling pilgrims towards that heart, may outgrow all our shortcomings and turn perfect and satisfy this heart's boundless love for us. In the second place, the truth is: it is by the Lord's "ache", as it were, for our perfection that we come to have in our embodied human
Page 35
existence the renewed surprise of strength after strength of a divine nature. The gracious warmth of Him for us kindles in our aspiring bodies the force fit to take us towards Him. On our own we could never acquire the power to reach the Lord's beatific height.
You have hit upon a side of the Aurobindonian Yoga of self-surrender which divulges the key to its success. We are asked by our Gurus to divest ourselves of all "I" and "Mine" and lay our whole being at the Divine's feet. A childlike helplessness is called for. Why? Surely not simply to make us love the Highest, though that is a grand aim by which we can grow into instruments of Him in our lives. There is a greater reason. By becoming a helpless child in the hands of the Supreme we render it possible for the Supreme to enter our sadhana and tackle our difficulties by means of His more-than-human strength. In other words, by our self-surrender His "longing for our perfection", His love which seeks ever our absolute good and yearns to give our littleness His utter infinite of light and joy and beauty will have a chance for expression. He will take up the problems of our composite being and solve them. Sri Aurobindo has said that the secret of success in sadhana is to know how to let the Divine attend to our weaknesses and deal with them in His magical masterful way. By offering to Him all our troubles, by laying at His mercy our whole defect-ridden self, by our self-surrender we clear a passage for His love to act, we get Him to put Himself at our disposal and we set Him to unravel the numberless knots of our nature. This is a work He is most eager to do and it is a work He alone can do, but He cannot do it unless we abandon ourselves to Him as a child to its mother. Sri Aurobindo's Yoga wants our self-surrender to the Divine so that the Divine may take away from us the whole load of our imperfection, lay His all-transformative love at our service and save us the Herculean labour of cleaning the Augean stable of our condition humaine.
In the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo the Divine's love is all agog to shoulder such a job because this Yoga is of what he desig-
Page 36
nates as the Supermind whose purpose is to manifest in the long run a life on earth perfected in every respect, whereas all the other Yogas, no matter what stress they might have put on quotidian objects, trained their sights ultimately on the Beyond. There is a profound reason for the radical difference. The vision of the Beyond as the goal, instead of its being a glorious mid-term for the aim of changing earth root and branch with the splendid powers of the unearthly, is due to a certain lack in what so far was discovered in the Beyond. Convinced that earth-life could not be just a stepping-stone, a mere passage, from the Beyond back to it, Sri Aurobindo could not rest in his supra-terrestrial explorations until he had reached the plane where the archetypes of our whole being wait not merely to be reached but to be invoked for manifestation here below after having been attained. This plane is the Supermind as distinguished from the top of spiritual realisation up to now, which he has named the Overmind.
The distinction between the Divine who is "over" and the Divine who is "super" brings me to your request to me to say "something about our attitude towards divinities such as Krishna, Shiva, Durga and Ganesh". You ask: "In what way do they carry on or participate in the process of Supramental transformation?" You add that your question has no bearing on your own life which is devoted and dedicated to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother: you have posed it just "to know and let others know".
Your inclusion of Krishna in the list you have given is not quite proper. According to Sri Aurobindo, Krishna is the Supreme Divine who incarnated as the Avatar on earth through the Overmind formulation of his manifold being. He thus stands apart in one sense from the other deities you mention, who are typical Overmind personages and no more. He may be taken as summing up in his active self the whole Overmind Consciousness while being in his essential self above it. He has a special place in Sri Aurobindo's life and work. We also consider him to have been the greatest form Sri
Page 37
Aurobindo took in his series of past lives upon earth. Sri Aurobindo has also said that Krishna's work is being done in the Ashram - not, of course, a mere repetition of this Avatar's earthly activity but a carrying forward of his multiform Overmind drive to a supramental manifestation. That is why so much importance has been accorded to the spiritual event of November 24,1926 which has been called by Sri Aurobindo the descent of the Krishna Consciousness, the mightily luminous Overmind-divinity, into his physical being. This descent opened the way to the descent of the Supermind, towards which Sri Aurobindo set his face when he put the Ashram in the Mother's hands after November 24 and withdrew into seclusion for a dynamic meditation to hasten the supramental advent. However, the special place given to Krishna does not justify any separate cult set up in his name. Krishna has to be seen as merged in Sri Aurobindo.
As for deities like Shiva, Durga, Ganesh, we have to keep an appreciative attitude towards them as part of the general Overmind Puissance which has been helpful to the Ashram. The Mother was on very amicable terms with them and they must have served her purposes at various times. She has made several smiling references to her relations with Ganesh, one of whose functions is the deployment of money. The Mother has said that he had promised to bring money to her for her work but he is rather lazy and she had to prod him again and again. Durga is surely subsumed in her highest aspect in the play of those four goddess-personalities which, according to Sri Aurobindo, have been put forward by the Mother in her world-work down the ages: Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, Mahasaraswati. Those who have served Sri Aurobindo have often been struck with a detached contemplative grandeur holding at the same time a tremendous reserve of power and felt in this combination the presence of the traditional Shiva. Just as Krishna figures in a number of Sri Aurobindo's poems, so too Shiva has had his role in at least three: the series of twenty couplets titled Epiphany, the sonnet Shiva and that experiment in quantita-
Page 38
tive metre Shiva the Inconscient Creator, The Mother has spoken of Shiva sometimes walking with her and also of his having declared that he would take part in her new creation only when the Supermind has completely descended.
Yes, the Overmind deities are accepted in the Aurobindo-nian vision of heaven and earth. But in the practice of our Yoga they are never presented as objects of worship. Specific worship of them is definitely ruled out for a follower of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. The Mother has also said in connection with February 29,1956, marking the manifestation of the supramental Light, Consciousness and Force in the subtle-physical layer of the earth that the age-old reign of the Gods is over. We do not rule out their further activity in the world; but it is by a push from the past and not by a pull from the future. For those who are attached to them with a sincere fervour and faith, their effects can be quite beneficent and even be unwittingly preparatory for a Greatness beyond them. So we should never look down upon people's ways of worship,(but we as Aurobindonians can take no part in any cult of the old Gods and Goddesses. To do so would be a retrograde step and an act of unfaithfulness to our Gurus. To visit temple-ceremonies (or for that matter Christian Church-rites or Muslim mosque-rituals) would be to lay ourselves open to atmospheres and influences which grossly or subtly tend to lure us away from the path of spiritual evolution along which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have sought to lead us.
But I may put a footnote to my exposition. The Mother has said that most places of public worship dedicated to traditional deities are really controlled by hostile forces eager to suck up, as it were, and feed upon the adoring ardours of the congregation. They, however, cannot prevent a genuine God-lover from piercing his way to the divinity to whom he has come to offer his prayers; But such a person is not common and most cultists get very small benefit and may even get harmed. Whenever the Mother has found a good spirit presiding over a house of worship and showing some affinity to
Page 39
her she has appreciated the phenomenon and even encouraged in one or two cases a sadhak or sadhika to go in and show thereby our friendly attitude. 1 am referring in particular to the Ganesh temple in the neighbourhood of the Ashram. But generally speaking a visit to such a place would be inadvisable because of the rather low psychological atmosphere of the bulk of the devotees. This atmosphere is not necessarily linked to the poverty of the folks. Even where well-off and apparently cultured people congregate, the level of 'their psychology may be just as low: that is, superficial in devotion, thick with worldly desires and ambitions, lacking in true goodwill towards their fellows.
Now to more personal topics. I am indeed grieved that you have to pass through physical troubles which upset your whole system. Of course my good wishes are always there -good wishes in the form of appeals to the Mother to help her physically unfortunate child who is so sincere in his aspiration to be inwardly moulded by her. 1 am glad that time and again you are saved because, as you say, she wants you to continue your journey towards her.
Your keen response to both the world's beauty and the world's misery is certainly creditable. You have yourself had a beautiful past up to your fifteenth year and known subsequent years of acute misery in spite of which you have not lost the ability to smile with the dream of the Mother always in your eyes. Your being moved by the present painful circumstances of the person who has brought in the last few years a good deal of trouble to your life is indeed noble. If there is any way you can be of assistance, take the chance, but unless there has been a change in the mentality of this person don't get involved in her affairs. Leave her to the Mother's wise will.
(30.7.1992)
Page 40
4
What you write about Sri Aurobindo's poem, "The Death of a God" (p. 598 of Collected Poems), calls for serious consideration. You say:
"Am I allowed to ask from you a 'Clear Ray' {'Amal Kiran') to bring some light into a dull corner of my heart? See, every time I read 'The Death of a God' I cannot avoid the feeling of listening to the voice of someone who is not only recognising his own defeat but even his own giving up the fight. Of course, I know that all this is by nature strange to Sri Aurobindo, but I fail to find in the poem something deeper, even something different. When did Sri Aurobindo write this piece full of pain and greyness in which one misses so much his natural joy and azure? What kind of tremendous crisis was he going through when he wrote it? And, finally, what does it mean? Is it the song of the hopelessness of this earth 'abandoned in the hollow gulfs'... for ever? Your Ray will be really a remedy for this broken corner of my heart."
The suggestions you are prompted to read in the poem appear to be most unlikely, if at all ever possible, at the date at which it was composed. As far as I can make out, the time was somewhere in the late 'thirties or early 'forties when the veriest shadow of failure seemed out of the question. Here I think we have to bear in mind that poetry - even lyrical poetry - can be "dramatic", the working out of a theme without any implication for the author's life. Of course, the way the theme is worked out depends on the author's temperament and style of imagination: they determine what particular note is stressed. Somebody wanted to trace biographical details in the love-poems in Sri Aurobindo's earliest collection, Songs to Myrtitla, which contained compositions during his stay in England. The love-poems mention two specific girl-names: "Edith" and "Estelle". But he remarked that a poet does not write always from his Life-experience: his imagination can act creatively. In fact, even poems based on
Page 41
actual occasions have a play of the imagination taking the theme further in significance or adding new particulars to complete the posture of reality. I recollect that I myself, while looking at some of these early poems in the course of my first article on Sri Aurobindo's poetical work, "Sri Aurobindo - the Poet", read in two or three pieces the poet's depression and sense of frustration. Sri Aurobindo pulled me up, warning me against believing that everything a poet writes points to his own life-situation instead of a state it took his fancy to conjure up, develop and express. The expression should not be regarded as "false". To avoid "falseness" in poetry, one requires not truth of personal experience but what may be termed "artistic sincerity". The imagination may be aroused by something happening yet not necessarily to the writer himself. "Artistic sincerity" consists in putting one's mind sympathetically in tune with the theme in hand and drawing upon one's inner intuitive self who is in touch with the sources of inspiration so that the theme is treated with the right rhythmic response of vision and feeling and thought, which gathers what I may call associative lights on the subject. The archetypal practitioner of such sincerity is Shakespeare the "myriad-minded" dramatist, the creator par excellence of varied character and mood and attitude and circumstance by an ever alert sensitive imagination, Sri Aurobindo himself has been an able playwright with at least three productions which rank rather high in their own genres: the richly dynamic Perseus the Deliverer, the many-shaded complex of romance and comedy that is The Viziers of Bassora and the psychologically subtle Eric with its shifting interaction of hidden motives.
So it is possible that Sri Aurobindo was not writing prophetically in "The Death of a God" - or, if any streak of prophecy was there, it bore only on what might take place in a certain context of world-conditions. I believe that this poem is an intense dramatic creation in three vivid stanzas. Balancing it but with a more real life-contact and personal immediacy is "A Strong Son of Lightning" (p. 595 of Collected Poems) with
Page 42
again three stanzas. Here is an exultant and not a despondent picture. A play not exactly of despondency but of a painful fortitude answering to an actual life-situation is to be seen in the sonnet "In the Battle" which ends:
All around me now the Titan forces press;
This world is theirs, they hold its days in fee;
I am full of wounds and the fight merciless.
Is it not yet Thy hour of victory?
Even as Thou wilt! What still to Fate Thou owest,
OAncient of the worlds, Thou knowest, Thou knowest.
A corresponding statement of experience faces us in part of "A God's Labour":
My gaping wounds are a thousand and one
And the Titan kings assail, But I cannot rest till my task is done
And wrought the eternal will.
How they mock and sneer, both devils and men!
"Thy hope is Chimera's head Painting the sky with its fiery stain;
Thou shalt fall and thy work lie dead"....
But the god is there in my mortal breast
Who wrestles with error and fate And tramples a road through mire and waste
For the nameless Immaculate.
The last four lines remind us of the sonnet "The Pilgrim of the Night", whose beginning and ending run:
Imade an assignation with the Night;
In the abyss was fixed our rendezvous:
In my breast carrying God's deathless light
I came her dark and dangerous heart to woo....
Page 43
I walk by the chill wave through the dull slime
And still that weary journeying knows no end;
Lost is the lustrous godhead beyond Time,
There comes no voice of the celestial Friend,
And yet I know my footprints' track shall be
A pathway towards Immortality.
In this sonnet and in "A God's Labour" the note of hope is struck in spite of the difficulties envisaged. Though in the latter there is the hint that the labouring God's work would fail if death occurred, this bit of wishful thinking by the hostile forces is not openly accepted and we get the impression that anyhow the task undertaken will be fulfilled: physical death need not bar the final victory, but the expectation is that after a little while - "a little more" - "the new life" will be initiated. Nowhere except in "The Death of a God" is the prospect of failure entertained.
The poem which the Mother declared to be "very sad" is "Is This the End?", written on 3.6.1945. Barring "Silence is All", which is dated 14.1.1946, this is the last short piece from Sri Aurobindo's pen which is securely dated. The sonnet "The Inner Fields" is given a later date - 14.3.1947 - but there is a question-mark against these figures. Why did the Mother call "Is This the End?" an expression of sadness? No doubt, up to stanza 6, everything is said to terminate - even the finest and most lovable features of life dissolve. Then in this stanza comes the culminating point:
One in the mind who planned and willed and thought,
Worked to reshape earth's fate,
One in the heart who loved and yearned and hoped,
Does he too end?
The next two stanzas which take up the question are somewhat of a paradox:
The Immortal in the mortal is his Name;
An artist Godhead here
Page 44
Ever remoulds himself in diviner shapes,
Unwilling to cease
Till all is done for which the stars were made,
Till the heart discovers God
And the soul knows itself. And even then
There is no end.
What is the exact import of the concluding phrase? Evidently, for "The Immortal", there can be no termination. And the word "cease" in line 4 cannot mean the "end" bemoaned in the preceding five stanzas. It has the sense of "stop". And here the implication is that this "artist Godhead" will achieve his aim - the aim "for which the stars were made", namely, the heart's discovery of God and the soul's knowledge of itself, and as a result there will be an "end" but on a note of triumph and not with a cry of despair. So we have a paradox in me theme or. ending. However, a futher shade unflods in the concluding phrase. The very paradox is turned topsy turvy. The spiritual achievement spoken of as a consummating and not a frustrating end is now denied. Can we read sadness here as if a sense of still further labour were conveyed like a regret - like a lament that still more and more light has to be toiled after? I am inclined to read exultation - Sri Aurobindo laughing at the old compelled terminations and victoriously declaring that "the Immortal in the mortal" is not bound to halt anywhere - not even where the apparent goal of the cosmic scheme has been reached: peak beyond peak shines out for a further manifesto of mastery,
For the Divine is no fixed paradise
But truth beyond great truth,
as Amal Kiran says in a sonnet.
I hope you are not tired out by my own endless-seeming reflections apropos of your remarks on "The Death of a God". Looking at the theme of the Divine's disappearance in this poem and at the theme of
Page 45
Light was born in a womb and thunder's force filled a
human frame,
which animates "A Strong Son of Lightning", I am tempted to quote a little piece of mine which is not in any grand style yet has a quality of its own and is relevant to the subject of a divine being's advent and departure. It weaves both the events into one whole of spiritual effectiveness. Here it is:
A SON OF GOD
From heaven you came -
Your soul a word
Of airy flame,
As though the white
Wings of a bird
No man had seen brought rumour of strange light.
Mortal you went;
Your passage grew
Within life's veil a rent
Where suddenly broke
The gold sun through -
And out of every heart a god awoke!
(5.8.1937)
Sri Aurobindo's comment was: "An admirable poem with a very strong point or double point of significance."
(9.2.1991) .
A Corrective Letter to Amal Kiran
Apropos your comments in "Life - Poetry - Yoga" on Sri Aurobindo's poem "Is this the end?" in Mother India (December '92) I have not understood why you have called the last two stanzas a paradox. To me it appears that the poem rises from stanza to stanza until it declares in the last one that
Page 46
even after the 'heart discovers God and the soul knows itself there is no end; that is to say, then begin the splendours of divine manifestation ("Our Yoga starts where others end").
I do not think that even up to stanza 6 'everything is said to terminate' as you have put it. Sri Aurobindo of course describes the external fact of death vividly, but his very question "Is this the end?" appearing in every stanza is rhetorical, in the sense that the answer to the question is implied in the question itself, namely "this is not the end". So even in the first four stanzas I cannot find sadness but exultation, because of the hidden indication that what appears as death is not truly the end. This idea-substance becomes clearer and clearer as the poem proceeds and reaches its climax in the last stanza, where even the purpose of creation is hinted at.
How are we then to take the Mother's remark 'very sad' (as quoted by you) on this poem? Perhaps we forget too often the Mother's injunction: "Beware of what is repeated to you in my name - the spirit in which it is said is lost!"
*
As regards "The Death of a God" I agree with you that what is described need not be the poet's own inner state. This, however, is not a solitary example among Sri Aurobindo's poems. The poem "The Dream Boat" which is also written in a similar vein gives a poetic account of an inner tragedy, which I am told is quite common among seekers.
5.11.92
AG. Savardekar
Amal Kiran's Comment
Thank you for your fine letter. You have opened a prospect which I now consider to be the right one. Congratulations! But the "exultation" you speak of is rather subtle in the four
Page 47
opening stanzas. Only from the fifth onward the real mood can be seen to show itself increasingly, and the closing words of the poem
and even then
There is no end -
reveal clearly the leitmotif, the positive theme present in some form or other throughout.
On August 8 when a friend who had wheelchaired me to the beach-road was bringing me back home at about 6.30 p.m., we narrowly escaped a very serious accident. True, we were on the wrong side of the road, but that need not implicate us justifiably in a mishap. Besides, we were very close to the kerb and therefore comparatively safe. A taxi came from the opposite direction and seemed to bear down upon us. Just by a hair's breadth it missed us. It went past almost grazing my wheelchair. My friend shouted and the car stopped a few yards behind us. He rushed to the driver and caught him by the arm. In the meantime several people, including some Ashramites, rushed to the spot. I turned my wheelchair round to see what was going on. A man came out of the car and said to me a number of times, "Excuse us," and shook my hand. I said, "All right."
If the taxi had not narrowly missed me, it would have caught me in an absolutely defenceless position. What chance had a wheelchair against a moving car? The wheelchair would have been violently knocked off and I with it. My friend too would have been flung away. I, because of my inability to move and instinctively manoeuvre as would an able-bodied person, would have been helplessly thrown down or aside with sufficient force to break my limbs and possibly kill me. Both my friend and I would have had to be hospitalised. The only good feature of the situation was that the Ashram Nursing Home was close by on the other side of the road.
Page 48
One of the Ashramites who had rushed to our help said to me the next day that he had witnessed the whole affair and surely it was the Mother's Grace that had made the car miss me by the fraction of an inch. No doubt he is right, but I have been asking myself why the terrible danger had at all come about and what might be the condition under which the Grace worked so successfully. Two points have struck me.
One is a strange soliloquy I had in the course of that very day. I had said to myself: "Inner things are not moving to my satisfaction. I am not able to give myself to the Divine as much as I would wish. What then is the use of hanging on to life? Better to pass away than prolong an inadequate sadhana." The discontent was deep. But after a minute or two something within told me: "Carry on in whatever way is possible. The inner flame will shoot up as before. In the meantime occupy yourself with various side-interests. Are you sure you are in a state of lack? Be humble. Do not scorn small mercies. What you term 'small mercies' may be torrential downpours for others. Let no form of death-wish persist." I replied to the voice: "I agree. I want to go on living."
What took place the same day in the evening seems to be a play of the opposite forces of death and life. The strong negative element in my consciousness gave a chance to such circumstances as would put me in deadly peril. But the positive end to the soliloquy appears to have been responsible for the narrow escape. It created the condition for the Mother's power to act in the nick of time.
My introspection has laid bare another factor too which would make for that power's spectacular success. I remembered that I was completely calm in the face of the danger. Not the slightest tremor was there. With unperturbed eyes I watched the car about to bear down on me and in the fraction of an instant miss me by a sort of miracle. Against the rushing monster was pitted a mass of utter peace. Even the flicker of an idea that there was going to be an accident was not present. I did not consciously appeal to the Divine for help, but I know that at all times something deep down in me is always open
Page 49
and the presence of the Divine is never far. Of course, in spite of the luminous proximity in some degree or other, one's spells of outer unconsciousness could let in the harmful agencies. That is why I had my femur-fracture on October 15 last year and yet under the peculiar circumstance that the ill-luck came at an hour when immediate assistance could be had. The friend who was coming every day to look after me, help me in my work and manage my food was on the spot. There could not have been a more auspicious time for the ill-omened event! Simultaneously with my failure to keep my wits about me was the action of the Grace. But now on August 8, though a wrong condition during the morning gave ground to the Hostile Forces to attack, there was along with the morning's ultimate stand against them the most naturally cooperative condition - absolute tranquillity - under which the Mother's protection could have most effect.
Perhaps a stricter analysis of the event would conclude that the actual prevention of the accident was due to the total peace. The positive attitude at the end of the morning's soliloquy could not have prevented the accident: it could only have ensured that the accident would not prove fatal. I would certainly live but with some damage - probably a good deal of it because of the heavy odds against me. At most we might say that the positive attitude helped the total peace to be so entirely an instrument of the Mother's saviour action.
I have always felt that peace is also a secret power, a silent incognito pressure on things. Furthermore, it could be a wide receptor, an unmoving holder and a smooth transmitter of the Divine's descending riches of light, knowledge, bliss, love and that charming omnipotence we call Grace.
(11.8.1992)
Page 50
5
Please forgive my inordinate delay in replying to your earnest letter asking for my interpretation of two verbal problems in Sri Aurobindo's early poetry.
In the lines (p. 7 of Collected Poems) -
Perfect thy motion ever within me,
Master of mind -
it is possible to take "Perfect" as either a semi-exclamatory frontally projected adjective or as a verb in the imperative mood. The choice has to be guided by the suggestion, if any, in the succeeding lines. What follows is:
Grey of the brain, flash of the lightning.
Brilliant and blind,
These thou linkest, the world to mould,
Writing the thought in a scroll of gold,
Violet-lined.
A sense of wonder is felt here. The second stanza too breathes a similar sense:
Tablet of brain thou hast made for thy writing,
Master divine.
Calmly thou writest or full of thy grandeur
Flushed as with wine,
Then with a laugh thou erasest the scroll,
Bringing another, like waves that roll
And sink supine.
The astonishing skill of the "master divine" is delineated in telling strokes. Can we take the poet to be marvelling at the highest effects of inspiration brought about by the "Master of mind"? Surely it is not possible to think of the poet as
Page 51
considering everything he writes to be perfect? But the general tone does allow this possibility. If we fight shy of such an interpretation we are led to look on "Perfect" as your friend does, so that the poem becomes "Primarily a prayer of the poet".
The adverb "ever" in the opening line is dually significant. The Master may have been admiringly told that his "motion" is always "perfect" - or else the poet appeals to him to keep on perfecting "within me" this "motion". But if the "motion" is at all times what it is portrayed in the poem, there seems hardly any room left for further inspired proficiency: it appears to be already "perfect". So, unwilling to understand the poet to be telling us that he is always a marvellous writer under the ruling hand of the "Master", I am inclined to make the poem refer to his inspiration only at its highest pitch. I must confess, though, that such a reference is not explicit. Perhaps we may aver the poem to mean that when the "Master divine" takes charge, all is flawless at every moment. Then the unexpressed implication would be that there are occasions when the "Master of mind" is not directly present and active with the result that the work is not impeccable.
The poem is indeed complex and a final meaning cannot be completely disentangled.
Your other query is more easily answered. To get that answer into focus it is advisable to look at the whole last stanza of "To a Hero-Worshipper" (pp. 8-9):
No herald of the Sun am I,
But in a moon-lit veil
A russet nightingale
Who pours sweet song, he knows not why,
Who pours like a wine a gurgling note
Paining with sound his swarthy throat.
Who pours sweet song, he recks not why,
Nor hushes ever lest he die.
Your comment on the last line is: "If the word Test' is taken
Page 52
as per the ordinary meaning 'for fear that' it does not sound appropriate, I feel the meaning should be taken as 'for reason less than' as per the old English usage, from which the word 'lest' has been derived. In that case the meaning of the phrase would be - 'the nightingale does not ever hush for reason less than that of his death'. Another meaning suggested is that the nightingale does not ever hush because it would indicate his death. Which of these two is appropriate?"
I am afraid you are being unnecessarily puzzled. Both of your two meanings are far-fetched, the first especially so. The significance you reject is the only one possible in a straightforward reading. In modern English the last line can only mean that to the nightingale the act of singing is very life so that to stop singing would be to risk death. All the preceding lines picture this bird as song embodied - there is no for-mulable reason for his singing - it is just his mode of being alive. If he "hushes ever", he would run the danger of being dead.
The only question possible to raise apropos of the stanza is in regard to the word "veil" in line 2. Could it be a misreading for "vale"? Or is "veil" used to suggest that the nightingale sings from a hidden place, shielded from eyes by thick foliage made bright by moonlight? We may remember Milton:
the wakeful bird
Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid
Tunes her nocturnal note.1
By the way, it is interesting from the literary point of view that Keats, writing his "Ode to a Nightingale" two hundred years after Milton's day, brings in the same somewhat unusual usage: "darkling". While Milton applied the adjective meaning "in the dark" to the bird, Keats refers to himself: "Darkling I listen."
(14.6.1992)
1. Paradise Lost, Book III lines 38-40.
Page 53
As always, I was very glad to hear from you. But the news you give of yourself is hardly comforting. What is of comfort is that you are holding on with undiminished courage and even turning your troubles into occasions for going closer to our Divine Mother. About one trouble in the future I can assure you that you can take it quite lightly. I mean the cataract operation. I have had both my eyes operated on for cataracts -of course, not at the same time - and from the very next day 1 was reading the press-proofs of Mother India with the other non-bandaged eye. People keep frightening one about movement. I was told: "Once somebody shook his head and everything got spoiled. So do take care." Very solemnly I said "Yes" again and again and kept nodding in support of that strong affirmative! Nothing untoward happened, though my adviser was shocked and feared the worst. At the end of the six days you can go home. And when the treated eye first opens again on the world, there is a wonderful revelation. The whole world appears bathed in a most clear white light, such as you haven't seen ever in your life. And when the glasses come, the contours of earth's manifold existence and mobility are so keenly etched that you feel you are on the verge of being told some secret beyond them - those sharp lines seem to tear some veil and give a glimpse of the Ineffable.
The use you are making of your body's sufferings renders those sufferings worthwhile. Not that you have invoked them - they have come of themselves but you have not let them go waste. They have served as spurs to the inmost being - they have called it forth not only to surmount them but also to let their poignancy become a call to the Divine Grace, the Saviour Love which draws the eternal child in you close to the radiance of the Infinite Mother. The sharper the pain, the intenser the cry for the supreme all-soothing Presence. The pain turns into a short cut - a sharply swift passage to a sacred Sweetness which helps the hidden soul to overflow, as it were, and permeate more and more the outer consciousness, even the bodily consciousness. Thus you have had both the inspired wit and the intuitive wisdom to create out of your
Page 54
hardships stepping-stones for a two-way traffic between you and your Masters.
(1.7.1992)
Almost daily I have been receiving your SOSs and I would like very much to serve - in whatever small way possible - as our Gurus' channel to help you. Let me make certain points clear.
One who has been touched by the light of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother cannot ever close his eyes to it. So it is no use thinking of making such a person give up sadhana. But this light carries with it a great peace and if it does not establish that peace, there is something wrong in the recipient. Perhaps he is pulling at it too much. Perhaps he is too frantic and wishes to achieve the highest at one leap. I have advised equanimity as the basis of sadhana, but it is necessary to acquire a poise even with regard to the spiritual force. Do not be over-enthusiastic, over-zealous. Proceed calmly, slowly. You seem sometimes to be in a sort of fever for Yoga. This is not advisable - especially for a disposition which is liable to be unstable. The notion that spiritual practice is in itself an upsetter is a mistake, but if proper conditions for it are not observed, there can be temporary upheavals. A beginner should not forget that he is a beginner and must learn to accept small gains with gratitude. Earnest prayer for progress is good, but if progress is slow don't force yourself to big efforts. Be as normal as you can, have normal relations with your family and friends. Don't consider yourself as someone special who needs to stand aloof.
The "fear-complex" that has again gripped you is partly due to your not feeling at home with your surroundings, not feeling yourself to be a natural part of the people you are with. If you have a spiritual ideal, keep it steady yet without drawing a line dividing you from general humanity. A change of attitude will be to some extent a help towards getting rid of the "fear-complex". And as an aid to acquiring
Page 55
normalcy continue with the psychiatrist's prescriptions. Try also to realise that you are in the saving gracious hands of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. No ultimate harm can come to you. There is no reason for any fear. Can you put your finger on any particular occasion or incident that sparked off this resurgence of an old complaint which, according to all signs, had substantially disappeared? I say "substantially" with a purpose. For, even when the substance of a thing vanishes, a shadow of it can linger in the subconscious and rise up under some unusual circumstances. Offer it to your divine Gurus without any agitation and be sure that it will vanish. Do not give it unnecessary strength by imagining that the very substance has come back. At this moment of writing to you I feel a great peace enveloping me and emanating from me and wafting towards you. It is the peace that comes from feeling constantly the presence of our two Masters, the one as if descending from a freedom above the mind and settling sweetly in the deep heart, the other as if emerging from the deep heart's sweetness and enveloping us with the vast serenities of the "overhead".
(17.7.1992)
There has been quite a flood of letters from you. Let me respond with at least a respectable trickle. The one which interested me most was that which gives an account of your daily programme of sadhana and work. It is good that in the midst of your work you snatch moments of inwardness during which you re-establish equanimity and strengthen the attitude of "remember and offer". But there should not be too big a division between these moments and the work in hand. During the work itself there should be a growing background-consciousness of calm and self-giving. Or, if such a background is not easy to develop at present, let there be small pauses during which you do the dedication. Thus work itself will be a part of sadhana in a more direct manner than now. Then, if you have the enthusiasm to practise Yoga, work will
Page 56
be a mode of moving towards the Mother and therefore a most welcome thing. I believe that the best procedure for you is to conceive your studies as well as your daily medical activity as your central sadhana. You have not yet properly woven them into your role as the Mother's child. Once you see and accept them as your main path of Yoga, you will develop your true relationship with the Divine. You have made too sharp a distinction between two dimensions of your life.
When I read of your morning programme before going to work, I had a strong impression of the cleavage you seem to make between the sadhak in you and the evolving medico. An hour and a half of walking with a book of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother in your hand and doing Yoga in a supposedly concentrated manner is to my mind a somewhat artificial strain on your nerves. Half an hour of absorption in Yoga with or without a book in the morning is sufficient for you at present. And when you come out of your absorption, there should be a kind of soft halo of equanimity and self-consecration going with you which will serve as a protective presence of the Mother and suffuse whatever you do - study or work - with her sweetly intense nearness which is yet "distance-haunted" by all the depth beyond depth of Soul and Spirit which she keeps waiting for you. At the end of the day you may again have a half-hour of inner absorption. In the meantime you should be more relaxed in your being, with an easy poise affably in touch with the outer world. The outer world begins with your own family with whom you should cultivate cordial relationship as a part of your Yoga.
The "fear-complex" will not recur if you have a greater relaxation in your inner-outer consciousness. You have a keen sense of insecurity - especially with regard to your future. There is also an uncertainty about your spiritual status. You have to proceed in your sadhana without too much self-concern, too much asking, "Am I progressing adequately? Will I be a first-rate follower of Sri Aurobindo, a full-fledged child of the Mother?" Perhaps there is a streak of
Page 57
unacknowledged ambition - a jealousy of Nolini and Champaklal and Pavitra and Dyuman, possibly even of stumbling, fumbling and still onward-rumbling Amal Kiran! On the other hand, you underrate your own powers of intelligence and application and industry, your own possibilities of being a proficient M.D. All sorts of contradictory movements have got entwined in your subconscious. Stop worrying and brooding - make a clear peaceful space within you for your true soul with its outward as well as inward radiance, its happy humility and its confidence in God's grace. If any vague "fear" hovers around you, think of it as absolutely a force external to you and instead of fighting with it head-on, turn away and distract or divert your mind to reading or talking or going out for a stroll, and at the same time calmly live in the Mother's presence and invoke its grace.
(7.7.1992)
About the readings made by the Shuka Nadi Foundation of Bangalore, my information is that the so-called "Bhrigu Leaves" are not always right. Experience has shown them to be a mixed bag, quite frequently off the mark. Of course, the most important question for you is whether they are right in saying that you will have God-realisation. You have put me the question about this most anxiously. If I give some sort of answer, please don't think I am a seer or saint. I can answer from my own inner experiments.
It is not possible to say prophetically that you will have God-realisation but you certainly can have it in one particular sense. God-realisation is of various kinds. Briefly, three kinds have been indicated by Sri Aurobindo: the psychic, the spiritual, the supramental. The supramental is all-transformative, divinising every part of us, including the very body. The spiritual comprises the universal Self of selves as well as light, peace, power, knowledge and Ananda descending from "overhead". The psychic is the discovery of our true soul which is hidden in the depths of the heart-centre and which is
Page 58
perpetually in the presence of the Individual Personal Divine because it is itself put forth by the Divine as a centre of individual, personal yet non-egoistic manifestation in the evolutionary process on earth. As the psychic being is within ourselves it can surely be realised and with its realisation you will live constantly in the presence of divinity, an object of worship, a source of bliss, a shaft of illumined feeling guiding you at all times in all circumstances.
The way to this realisation is, according to me, twofold: "Equanimity, immune to hurt and mishap, which tends to carry one towards a reflection within us of the vast silent Self which is ever free - and the persistent undisturbed remembrance of the Personal Divine (who, for me, is Sri Aurobindo and the Mother) and the sincere offering of all our movements and all happenings to this'God-figure, a gesture which will eventually bring you a deep delightful dynamism full of the concrete experience of God within and without."
(7.6.1991)
I am jotting down for you - as you want - the names of a few works of fiction just as they come to my mind. The first is the one I looked for in my cupboard after telling you about Agatha Christie's pen-name before she invented Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple as arch-detectives and became a celebrity. For sheer literary creativeness and penetrating psychological finesse, I believe the future will remember her for that early book, Absent in the Spring (a phrase from a line in Shakespeare's sonnets) published under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. The book is a Dell paperback. I find that on the title-page I have written on 8 August 1967: "I think it is the deepest and subtlest book Agatha Christie has written. Definitely worth reading - it has the making of a great book or rather it is a great book caught in a miniature glimpse, as it were."
My opinion on somewhat similar lines is about the work of that most popular writer, Edgar Wallace. Unlike Christie's
Page 59
"whodunits", none of his potboilers will survive, but future critics may chance upon one novel of his unlike anything else he wrote. It is called Masters of Souls, an original and powerful work. As I don't have a copy I can't tell you the publisher's name.
Galsworthy is a writer of a higher calibre on the whole and his Forsythe Saga has become world-famous. Surely it is worth reading, especially the very first in the series: A Man of Property. But, according to me, the two best things he has done are the novel Fraternity and the drama Strife. The former creates a character, an old man, who might have walked out of the Upanishads in a modern dress and suggested the play of the Atman, the infinite Self of selves, in disguise among a present-day set of circumstances. Strife has two levels of interaction - one is the outer on which employer is pitted against employees with an obstinate will, the other is the inner where the employer's heart is at work in a secret league with the poor employees' wives and children who must suffer because of the conflict. They receive anonymous food-packets all during their trying days.
Two novels I remember having enjoyed in the far past for their sensitive perceptions are The City of Beautiful Nonsense by E. Temple Thurston, and Richard Aldington's All Men are Enemies. Aldington is known most for his war-books, but this is a most charmingly yet most unostentatiously written document of the inmost heart of young love. It is indeed an exquisite piece of insight. Another book of rare insight matched with style is A Well Full of Leaves by Elizabeth Myers and so too is Gone to Earth by Mary Webb (both in the Penguin Paperbacks).
A couple on a still finer and deeper level are The Fountain by Charles Morgan and A Many-splendoured Thing by Han Suyin (the latter in the Penguin Series). Both are indubitable masterpieces by their psychological penetration and literary art.
If you care for a high-class detective thriller, a book well written with a well organised plot, I offer The Hound of the
Page 60
Baskervilles by Conan Doyle. His next best story-telling in matter of grip and surprise is the second part of his later book, The Valley of Fear. The title of The Hound... reminds me of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Ubervilles. Hardy is a great short-story writer too and in the same genre I would recommend Somerset Maugham's collection under the title, The Casuarina Tree. Here I would put in a word for Daphne du Maurier's collection. Kiss me Again, Stranger. The story which gives the book its title didn't appeal to me, but among the rest there are four or five which are perfect. Conan Doyle's short tales in The Adventures of Brigadier Gerard are extremely enjoyable and the Gallic touch in them adds to the relish.
Turning directly to France I I must speak up for one of the mightiest no less than finest creations in world literature, Les Miserables of Victor Hugo. A contemporary of Hugo's, equally famous as he, was Balzac who is the most prolific creator of living characters after Shakespeare. So intense is the life-force in his characters that someone has said that even his scullions have genius. To my mind his masterpiece is not the popular Old Goriot or Eugenie Grandet but Cousin Betty, an extremely subtle study in jealousy. Here, in passing, I must not forget Anatole France's The Gods are Athirst.
Among recent English fiction on a grand scale I am enthusiastic about Anthony Adverse. I forget the author's name. It is a work of prodigious talent verging on genius, a more vivid and deeper novel than the spectacularly popular Gone with the Wind. As with the latter, a film has been made of it, but in black-and-white and with many cuts in the story. Anthony Adverse amply deserves a full-length technicolour production. Talking of films I must never forget Billy Budd based on Melville's tale. The chief character in the film is the truest representation I have witnessed of a youth ruled by what we Aurobindonians have come to call the Psychic Being. Innocence, sincerity, purest love and natural bravery have hardly ever been acted out as in that short film. The plot is tragic but the tears will not be only for the tragedy but also for the piercing expression of the true soul in one at every step. I
Page 61
must get hold of the written original of Melville and see whether the psychic is disclosed in action there too. An emergence of the psychic, though in a conventional mode, is part also of Wassermann's huge many-layered picture of the human condition in his novel The World's Illusion. So much for fiction for now.
(1990)
Page 62
6
I have been much interested by your comment:
"Apropos your 'Life - Poetry - Yoga' in the May Mother India, where you have quoted St. Augustine's well-known sentence 'Thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee', I remember to have read it originally in German which runs thus:
" 'Du hast uns zu Dir hin geschaffen, und ruhelos ist unser Herz bis es Ruhe findet in Dir.'
"Here the words 'zu Dir hin' meaning 'towards Thee' ('hin' conveys movement) make the statement profounder still, as they indicate the Divine's intention in creating us. The whole meaning then reads: 'Thou hast created us towards Thyself and restless is our heart until it finds peace in Thee.'
"Thinking that you might perhaps enjoy this rendering I have given it."
The German translation "zu Dir hin" - "towards Thyself" - is a literal rendering of the Latin original. The whole statement in Latin reads: "Fecisti nos ad Te et inquietum est cor nostrum donee requiescat in Te." The "ad Te" means "towards Thee". But however it may sound in German, the phrase is awkward in English. In Latin it easily suggests direction without any awkwardness, and it conveys the purpose of the creation. A full explication would go thus: "Thou hast made us such that we may move towards Thee." The best and natural englishing of the suggestion of God's Godward-directed creation - summing up His purpose - is the preposition "for". A more Biblical mode of putting the matter would be: "Thou hast made us unto Thyself". Though somewhat archaic, this is better English than "Towards Thee". Certain compact Latin expressions give a lot of trouble to the English translator if he is after literalness.
Thus a bone of contention has been Virgil's concentrated "Sunt lacrimae rerum", literally "There are tears of things" or "Tears are of things". Some scholars have seen nothing extra-
Page 63
ordinary here and argued that at times in Latin the genitive is used in place of the dative so that Virgil meant "There are tears for things" suggesting that there are occasions which naturally draw tears from us or, rather, tears are naturally drawn from us by certain occasions. The world-cry which Virgil has succinctly packed into his brief phrase is entirely lost in such a commonplace interpretation.
C. Day Lewis has rightly taken Virgil to connote "Tears in the nature of things". Virgil's whole line -
Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt -
has been quintessenced by Sri Aurobindo in the second of the two lines among many which he puts in the mouth of Savitri's mother:
We have sorrow for a greatness passed away
And feel the touch of tears in mortal things.
(Cent. Ed., p. 429)
Lewis's full English version runs:
Tears in the nature of things, hearts touched by human transience.
I have put Virgil's significance in a more extended way and with what Sri Aurobindo calls "more colour" in the hexameter:
Haunted by tears is the world and our hearts by the touch of things mortal.
My letter has made quite a digression. My point is that what is pregnant in Latin cannot always be conveyed by a literal translation in English without its sounding a little artificial.
Now a word about the literary qualities of the original Augustine and the English and German versions. The German "until it finds peace in Thee" is not satisfactory. Besides departing from the conciseness of the Latin and bringing in
Page 64
the indirect "finds peace" instead of a straight verbal turn like "requiescat", it introduces a tinge of separateness between soul and God, as if the soul sought peace and would discover it as a quality of God's nature and enjoy it while remaining its own self: the sheer plunging into God's being and getting completely enfolded and suffused and fulfilled by it seems missed. There is no "finds" in Augustine. The English version answers exactly to the direct thrust of the Latin. The German "ruhelos" and "Ruhe" strike me as more explicit echoes than the Latin "inquietum" and "requiescat", though the latter's sound does have a subtle harking back within it to the former's. On a level with the German are the correspondences of the English "restless" and "rest". The sense is better driven home thus. But the Latin has the edge on the English by the repetition of "Te" in the two expressions "ad Te" and "in Te". The German also has it by its repeated "Dir". But in English it would be most gauche to say "for Thee" in order to anticipate "in Thee". We cannot avoid "Thyself" and I feel that the variations "Thou", "Thyself" and "Thee" make a very pleasing music which the German narrowly misses and the Latin cannot help doing so because "Te" (Thou in Latin) cannot stand apart from the verb "Fecisti" without a loss in style: it has to be implicit in it. Augustine could have rung changes by saying "Teipsum" ("Thyself") rather than anticipating his final "Te", but when "Te", like the German "Dir", could suffice he would have spoiled the austere beauty carrying the thrilled insight of his sentence.
(14.5.1992)
You have raised the question of sincerity. In its essence sincerity means to me to find your central self, your soul, and let its luminous guidance determine every turn of your life. Before the psychic being is discovered, sincerity consists in so ordering your life - its actions and reactions - that everything may conduce to the opening of the inner heart-centre. The psychic element in the mind and in the vital force should be
Page 65
your teacher. Here my master-formula is to be applied: equanimity plus "Remember and offer." Whoever takes to the spiritual ideal has been led to it either by a direct explosion of the secret dweller in the heart-centre or by this "divine dwarf" 's fingers of light extended above into the vibrant brain and below into the quivering guts no less than straight into the sensitive fibres of the outer heart of emotion.Of course, even after the soul has been found and its presence felt at all moments, one has to be vigilant, for it is for a long time a shy godhead and one has to guard it like a small flame between one's hands against the rude winds of the world. At a later stage not only its sweetness and light but also its strength will emerge and then it can defend itself against the rudest gust. The "divine dwarf" will then tower up and open your being to all the shining vastitudes of the "overhead" Spirit.
You want me to share with you whatever gifts of grace I may have received. Surely all such gifts are to be shared, though not always before they are firmly set within one. I have never stored them up, never stinted letting my friends be touched by them. But I have no personal desire to be considered a good sadhak or a spiritual helper. All I do is to remain to the best of my ability in a concentrated condition and let Sri Aurobindo radiate his peace and the Mother diffuse her love.
The concentrated condition means that I am concerned only with keeping myself plunged in that peace and bathed in that love - without any open attempt to be their channels. All I do with people is to inwardly offer them to our Gurus, Of course 1 don't keep majestically "mum", impressing people with my concentration. I talk with them on an equal footing and often I find them more knowledgeable and better personalities than myself. In my talk I try to let the depths speak - not necessarily deliberate "words of wisdom" but common speech emerging as far as possible out of the treasured silence of those depths.
(31.5.1992)
Page 66
Your cries for help have been reaching me for quite a time. I am offering you into the hands of our Divine Mother. The answer I get is: "Patient endurance." You have to stop being frantic. The fear-complex has come before and it has gone. Now too it will be on its way out. You must be certain of this. In the meantime you have to look at it calmly or rather look away from it with the certainty that it will pass. If something in you remains undisturbed and takes it as a temporary aberration which the Mother's gracious hands will surely sweep out of you, the free future is already there in a hidden form in the obsessive present. Along with this attitude or posture, continue with your medication. Go to the psychiatrist and state your symptoms from time to time. The Mother's force can work also through the drugs. The Supreme Grace is many-moded. But the central mode for you is "Patient endurance."
Your father is indeed very considerate and he is right in suggesting that you can take your degree 6 months later. Acceptance of his suggestion will take away the sense in you that you are falling back in the competition with your fellow-workers. Following your father's advice you will withdraw from the competition and will escape the inferiority complex you are developing. But I won't induce you to be a home-keeper. Go to your work as regularly as you can. Something must occupy your mind and body. Staying at home, what will you do? Read and sleep? Perhaps more sleep may help, but for that you don't have to flee altogether from the hospital. You have only to get up later in the morning and go to bed earlier at night.
You have quoted some Mantras of the Mother. The first is: "Let each suffering pave the way to transformation." But surely suffering by itself is no way to either transformation or anything else except perhaps inner toughness. AH depends on how you manage the Suffering - how calm you are, how patient you are, how much you appeal to the Divine to take you nearer him through this trial. The second Mantra is: "Grace will never fail us - such is the faith we must keep
Page 67
constantly in our hearts." But do you expect the Grace to be always swift? Of course it can be swift as a lightning-shaft but there would be no need for the words "faith" and "constantly" if such were the case on all occasions. People pass through various ordeals in Yoga. Some conditions persist for long. Sri Aurobindo even speaks of his own sadhana stopping at times for months in spite of his being under a Supreme Guidance! What did he do? He kept faith and practised patient endurance and kept up a quiet aspiration.
(2.8.1992)
Your letter No. 1 (7.8.92) has made me very happy. I have always wished you to be on the way to normalcy, and finding you so because of a letter of mine is quite a fulfilling experience. Keep the new state going by means of a calm confidence in the Mother's power. This power is always at work but receptivity and faith not only increase its effect in general: they also draw it into the most outer being and sustain its lustrous streaming into all the various parts of our waking outwardness.
Now for your "posers". The first is: "How to do the right thing in the right way at the right time?" Try to detach yourself from the situation so that the personal heat may not dictate the course of action. This amounts to what the Mother has called "stepping back" for a moment. A sudden silence will be felt and out of it a guidance will emerge. Lift this guidance towards the Mother and let the consecrated decision go out into the world. The movement may not be very positive at the start but gradually it will be quietly clear-cut and leave you sure that the Divine in the depth of you has acted.
Your next question is: "The Mother says, 'A day without a good action is a day without soul.' What does this good action amount to?" I remember the Mother saying that the Divine gives more value to a truly disinterested deed than to formal religious worship - going to a temple or carrying out a set ritual. The word "soul" in your quotation is a pointer to the Mother's meaning. For the soul in us is free of the narrow ego-
Page 68
motivated turn and it acts with an intuitive feeling of the Divine's secret will. The small self, demarcated from other small selves, is overpassed and one acts out of a wide impersonal space in which the soul, though an individual, is never cut off from other souls but lives and functions in a sweet luminous sympathy which is an aspect of the omnipresence of God.
You have asked: "What to do about the acute lack of confidence, at work or otherwise?" The sense that one has to compete with others whom one considers superior is the basis of this lack and behind that sense is the belief that one's own self is the only factor concerned. When one offers one's work to the Divine and cares only for the effective transmission of the Divine's force, one does not bother how one ordinarily compares with others in capacity. The Divine can not only make the most of whatever little capacity one has but also improve and expand such capacity. The main thing is to get over one's preoccupation with oneself and work as a dedicated sadhak.
The "jealousy" and the "inferiority-complex" of which you complain have the same root as "the acute lack of confidence". You have to drop making comparisons of one ego with another. Your aim must be service of the Divine in the way the Divine wants you to serve Him. By putting your personality at the Divine's feet you will bring the Divine's hands into action for whatever goal the Divine's eyes have chosen. Sometimes a certain imbalance in the nerves adds to one's psychological attitude. Here the psychiatrist with his potent pharmacopoea may come in as an additional help to you. That is why I drew your attention to him.
You say: "I am still doubting my intelligence as I find my mentation to be a bit hazy and vague and sluggish." 1 think that your impression is due to the disturbance which you suffered some time ago and the disuse of your mental powers which followed. Knowing what a fine show your mind made in the MBBS exam and appreciating also the keenness with which you are able often to analyse yourself and the felicity with which you frequently express your condition, I can
Page 69
vouch that you have a fine intelligence indeed. You have only to quiet your being and invoke the Mother's light to get the ability to see your own mind properly. Neither undervaluing nor overvaluing it, stop bothering about it and place it at the Mother's disposal.
You want to know "how to distinguish between the 'tranquil Vast throbbing behind our human smallness' and the consciousness of calm and self-giving that is developing." I would advise you to concern yourself with the consciousness you speak of. Its development will set you in touch with that tranquil yet throbbing Vast. The calm you experience is a foretaste of this Vast's tranquillity and the self-giving is a prefigure of its throbbing.
Your last question - "How to know the Divine Will and get the strength for carrying out that Will?" - is answered by pointing out to you what you are already doing; the development of calm and self-giving. Like a flame burning in a windless place, straight up and without a quiver, your practice will pierce into the mystery of the Divine Dynamism and you will know that the Dynamism contacted is Divine by the further peace you will enjoy along with a sense of further magnetic movement towards the Mother. In this condition her Will is bound to get revealed and start reshaping things.
(19.8.1992)
Of all the mantras given by the Mother my favourite is Sri Aurobindo sharanam mama - "Sri Aurobindo is my refuge." I have found it extremely powerful and at the same time deeply restful. It cuts through the hardest obstacle and carries the heart as if to its eternal home. I almost sense an aura forming with its utterance, within which I move protected from all inner forces of harm and on occasion even from all outer attacks. Originally, I believe, the Mother gave it to the sadhak whose job it was to take the Ashram's dead for cremation. She said that no ceremonies were to be performed but only this mantra was to be repeated a hundred and twenty
Page 70
times. It must have provided to the soul parted from the body a new body of subtle vibrations building, as it were, an Aurobindonian embrace shielding it from whatever adversary would come out of the unknown. Then nothing would obstruct it from reaching its place of divine repose before the next embodied entry into life's battle on earth.
I have heard of Vipasana meditation and I dare say it is an interesting practice - attending to one's inhalation and exhalation - but what about the content of the consciousness at the time? Is only one-pointedness of the mind the aim? Japa, with which you want me to compare or contrast it, would mean concentration on the chosen deity whose name is being repeated. Naturally it would start a movement of bhakti, devotion. I don't suppose any deity-name is associated with the act of breathing in and breathing out.
In Sri Aurobindo's Yoga there is no specific place for breath-practice or name-repetition, though nothing that may help a particular individual is ruled out. No special posture of the body is recommended, either. In the early days Sri Aurobindo used to do his sadhana walking 7 or 8 hours a day! We start straight with the consciousness. Just yesterday I read the Mother's answer to a question put by a very young man many years ago. He asked: "What is real meditation?" She replied: "It is an active and deliberate concentration on the Divine Presence and a sustained, alert contemplation of that Sublime Reality."
To me personally, meditation in its essence and at its best means a state of unforced inwardness, with eyes open or shut, in which, against a background of wide tranquillity, there is a flow of consciousness from the depth of the heart towards the Divine Presence whose visible form was Sri Aurobindo or the Mother - a flow from a Divine Presence itself hidden in that depth. Its effect is felt in the whole being, including the body, as a warm, pervasive, quiet, consecrated happiness ready to receive whatever gift of Grace comes from within, around or beyond.
(25.8.1992)
Page 71
7
You have written: "Am I right in thinking that given the defects of timidity, vanity, jealousy, shyness, possessiveness 1 am supposed to represent the exact opposite of these in my spiritual life? If it is so, I can draw some solace from the fact." I suppose by "solace" you mean not being in the dumps, overwhelmed by one's defects. It must never imply complacence, saying: "I have a great saintly future to be reached despite these shortcomings. Let me not mind them too much." What is required is the refusal to be upset by them. Look at them steadily, without moaning and groaning -rather seeing through their thick hides the future glory which exemplifies the conquest of them instead of feeling them to be the devil's indelible hallmark (hellmark). The devil would like you to regard them as a dark terminus: the Divine reveals them to be nothing more than a tunnel and across them the Divine shows courage and judgment and poise and generosity waiting to be realised in forms that are superlative by being the absolute reverse of these deficiencies. How are the superlative forms to be reached? The first thing to do is to step back for a moment when the troublesome movements occur so that their headlong course is broken. Then offer them to the Mother, while exercising some control over them. It is because of the offering act that through the tunnel the distant splendours make their presences felt. For you are appealing to the ultimate creative and transformative power to bring forth the truths that have got misshaped in the jumble and tumble of ordinary life.
You have raised the question of the ego and what you call the ego's tangled weft. The ego-nature is so clever that one can be fooled into an illusion of unselfishness while remaining subtly in that nature. Thus the urge to help people may have behind it the desire to appear good in their eyes or else a sense of one's special capacity to benefit them. Not that the urge is always to be avoided, but a deep quiet self-conse-
Page 72
oration is to go along with it and the prayer to be the Divine's instrument. Here my favourite formula - "Remember and Offer" - is very appropriate. So too is my emphasis on Equanimity. Neither blame nor praise should bring either down-heartedness or euphoria. Sensitiveness is another form of the ego's activity. It will often create an impression that people are inconsiderate when really they are inattentive. Again, one's constant criticism of people would be a sign of the egoistic feeling that one is superior to them. The Mother never supported passing judgment on people's actions or motives, though a clear calm perception of what goes on was never discouraged: what was discouraged was getting excited over the faults of others. We must try to get into the minds of people before putting them into an unfavourable category. The best thing is to have no reaction. When it is pointed out to you how mean towards you somebody has been, you should feel nothing. If any protective step needs to be taken, take it without the least upset or resentment. Your equipoise should remain unbroken. Absence of emotional reaction does not necessarily imply inertia or inefficiency in you. Emotion is not the sole motive-power. Man's characteristic in general is the intelligent will. And the intelligent will makes a dispassionate inquiry before taking whatever step may be required. Sri Aurobindo puts a stress on this part of our psychology when he wants us to practise "equality" and avoid the inner disturbance that stems from "desire". He says that people think we shall be inert if desire is lacking. This, to him, is a mistake; for desire is not the sole source of dynamism: man is a mental being and his typical activity is the buddhi, the intelligent will. Buddhi looks around, is far-visioned, tries to be impersonal, just and fair. Of course, beyond the buddhi is the immanent Divine, the ideal guide to be consulted and followed. But the intelligent will is one of the two passages towards that guide: the other passage is the devotional heart. Combined, they best carry you past the ego.
You have asked me whether you should consciously try to feel "vast", like the sky with its immense multitude of stars
Page 73
and its space beyond space without end. Certainly the practice of imaginatively widening yourself thins the sense of ego - if at the same time you can feel how infinitesimal you are at the imagined feet of the Divine. Or else your wideness itself should be pictured as offered to those feet. Perhaps the immediate need is to let your imagination break the usual sense we have of being confined within our skull, our rib-box, our pelvic cavity. Think that you stretch beyond your body and hold it in a subtle spreadout of consciousness rather than that you function consciously within its boundaries. Naturally, then, the all-too-personal reactions and responses will diminish. The idea that your mental capacity is poor will also fade away, for your mind will lose its identification with your brain and its supposed weakness and lumpishness. I say "supposed", because I have never had the impression that you are intellectually a minus quantity. You have a penetrative mind with a profusion of ideas and an expressive ability beyond the common. What seems lacking at times is a driving power, a vital self-confidence. Give up the feeling that others are better equipped than you and that you can't cope with the call to be a good M.D. in pediatrics. Besides, you have invoked the Mother's Grace and thus opened yourself to potentialities beyond your own: you are in contact with reservoirs of ultra-human forces and can tap them much more than those who are not doing constant sadhana.
You don't appear to realise this edge you have over the general run of your fellows: you only wonder why people "more sattwic, balanced, intelligent and dynamic" than you have not been chosen for Yoga. Here is a question we can never answer. The Divine does not act haphazardly, but our reason can't fathom His ways in this matter as in so many others. It is best to rest deeply grateful and set yourself in quiet rhythm with the movements of the Grace. It is also unwise to ask yourself anxiously what would happen if what you take as another stroke of God-given good luck for you gets withdrawn: namely, my popping off suddenly one day as Dyuman did recently. In the September Mother India (p. 613)
Page 74
you must have seen how I inwardly stand vis-a-vis the possibility of my exit from the earth-scene: free from attachment yet never cut off from affectionate and helpful sympathy with those who hold me dear. Nor does the detachment involve any death-wish. I am glad to live trying to be Sri Aurobindo's disciple and the Mother's child and the odds don't seem to be against my going on for an appreciable length of time." In any case you should allow no anxiety to enter your mind. One who has a background of the "fear-complex" must avoid any greying of his look ahead. Continue happily and confidently to fare forward.
(15.9.1992)
In the life here one rarely has the sense of wasting one's time. Even if one does practically nothing, there is the feeling that something momentous is happening. For there is no end to the inner work which goes on - the Mother's refining, deepening and widening of one's consciousness. In a transfigured version I can repeat Mark Twain's famous joke: "O I love work, I can sit for hours watching it being done!"
Of course the super-Twainian state can be practised anywhere - its secret name is "meditation" - but here the atmosphere is conducive to it in the most natural way. One does not have to strain for spirituality: spirituality comes to one on its own. The only place where something of this Grace I have found is the hill-station of Mather an in Bombay's vicinity. My grandmother had a cottage there, almost on the verge of a precipice, and day in day out I had before me the spectacle of Matheran's sister hill - Purbal - with the valley stretching for miles and miles beyond with little villages dotting it and rivulets crossing it. At night, at the farthest end, I could see the lights of Bombay's suburb Punvale twinkling. At Matheran a vastness seemed to invade our being whether we asked for it or not. In Pondicherry there is the possibility of an inner Matheran all the time in a superlative degree.
It has been of great personal interest to me that the view of
Page 75
Purbal presented a long straight expanse of basalt rock terminating in a dip from which rose two companion peaks. had the sense of an endless infinite presence projecting for our sake a pair of communicative summits which we know as Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
What I have written above is of life here at its best and as it should be. There are difficulties and dry spells, but with a little inner opening, my picture tends to be realised.
(3.10.1992)
My mention of some messages I feel I have received from the Mother should supply concrete ground for your compliment to me: "One thing 1 admire about you is that nowhere have you relied on messages received by X, Y or Z from Mother and Sri Aurobindo regarding treatment, etc. I wonder how far one can rely on such messages." Here is not a very simple situation. There have been cases where misguiding messages have been heard by people. I have come across some rather fantastic instances. A visiting sadhak who was very fond of eating ghee and who bore a striking resemblance on a slightly . fat scale to H.G. Wells and whom I had nicknamed H. Ghee Wells was found missing one evening at the Mother's Soup Distribution. His friends were worried and after the Distribution they went to the house where he was staying. On entering it they heard faint cries for help from him. After looking up and down they realised that H. Ghee Wells's voice was coming (appropriately I may say) from a well in the compound! With some difficulty they managed to haul him up. On asking him why he had jumped into the well, they got the answer: "I heard Sri Aurobindo telling me to do so, and I instantly obeyed." Although Sri Aurobindo was surely aware of the saying, "Truth is to be found at the bottom of a well", I can't believe he could have played such a joke on my friend.
A still more queer case is of another sadhak in the early days of Sri Aurobindo's life in Pondicherry. He used to see a black Sri Aurobindo in his visions and get commands from
Page 76
him. When he reported them to the physically visible and not occultly visioned Sri Aurobindo, he was clearly told that he was being misguided. But he was so lured by the black Sri Aurobindo that he refused to believe what his not-so-black master told him. His strange conclusion was that the Master was jealous of the disciple because the latter was receiving direct messages from his Master and out of jealousy Sri Aurobindo was forbidding him to have extraordinary inner experiences of Sri Aurobindo!
Apart from such aberrancies, it is not always easy to decide whether to depend or not on one's messages, leave aside other people's messages. But with a bit of sincerity and humility one can distinguish between genuine stuff and stuff which is simply wishful. As for other people's voices bearing on one's problems, there could be occasions when something meaningful may come through, especially if somebody is genuinely concerned about one or about some acute situation of one's life. By and large, one should prefer to go by the guide in one's heart. When no guidance is found from there, one may seek the advice of whoever one trusts the most.
What Nirod meant in his article by referring to the occult significance of physical problems affecting the older sadhaks - problems like my fall and femur-fracture and his own operation for an enlarged prostate - I have no precise idea .(I may guess that the hostile forces are eager to get rid of the sadhaks who had a direct prolonged contact with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and so carry some of their light more substantially into the present period than those who did not enjoy such Grace. These forces perhaps believe that the removal of the old-timers would affect the Ashram's future. But they overlook the fact that several of those who were children in the past had significant contact with our Gurus and carry the aroma of the Divine Presence into their adult life today. After their generation has passed, what would happen? I would say that the Gurus have charged the Ashram's atmosphere in such a way that they subsist subtly amongst us - especially with their double Samadhi serving as an occult radiating
Page 77
centre. I have also the conviction that even beyond the Ashram there is a strong magnetic Aurobindonian milieu. After all, the Supramental Manifestation of February 29, 1956 is a universal phenomenon and is now ineradicable part of the earth's future evolution. We need have no fundamental fear of our Gurus' work fizzling out under any circumstances.
The question of anybody getting physically supramen-talised in our own time is a different matter. In one of the recent issues of Mother India I have amassed sufficient pronouncements of Sri Aurobindo to show that such an extreme change cannot take place in the absence of his physical presence or the Mother's, in our midst. The revolutionary transformation of individuals once hoped-for in our own day is now out of the question, but bodily supramen-talisation is assured in general for the race in the course of its evolution through the coming centuries.
The experience I record on p. 613 of the September Mother India and which you admire and envy so much is a settled affair. Although it seemed to come suddenly I am sure it was prepared in a subtle manner over a space of time. The habit of as much equanimity as possible and of continual "remember and offer" laid the ground for the wonderful freedom it brought in the individual life-sense. Mind you, there is no death-wish associated with it nor is there a docile contentment with things as they are. It may have something to do with the "hiatus" in my life which I declared the moment I had the fall on October 15, 1991. It snapped some inner attachment but it has not curbed the old adventurous spirit.
I am extremely sorry to read your list of bodily troubles. The sleeplessness on top of everything must indeed have been awful. Perhaps the nausea came as a side-effect of the sleeping pills not taking effect. We don't know why all these troubles occur. I am glad you pray to Sri Aurobindo, irrespective of whether your troubles lessen or not. To keep in touch with his divine glory is its own reward. We may also remember what the Mother has recorded on his Samadhi - the suffering he underwent for the world's sake. He has himself
Page 78
written to Dilip that it was only divine love that made him go on and on working for the world without weeping and lamenting - so great was the suffering because of his struggle with what he called the Abyss. Without the suffering being less real, it is the inner consciousness that keeps one's life sweet. And we have to find the Aurobindonian glory somewhere in us and carry on as best we can.
I am glad your Eco-cardiogram finds your heart in good condition. But as it also shows a past silent attack you can't be quite nonchalant about the ticker.
You are asking me how I "cope up" with my infirmities. Well, first of all 1 simply "cope" without the "up". "Coping up" is an Indianism we must avoid. Mention of Indianism reminds me that at the end of the para before the last you must have raised your eyebrows on reading my "as best we can". You may have muttered: "The old fogey is slipping up. He has forgotten the necessary 'as' after 'best'." The "old fogey" is not yet too "foggy". That "as" would have been an Indianism. If I had written "as well" instead of "as best", an "as" would certainly have been necessary if Nesfield was not to get shocked. But with "as best" nothing more is called for. It is equal to "in the best way". Another Indianism universally prevalent is to take "vouchsafe" as equal to "vouch". Actually, it means "condescend to give or to do". Finally, I have heard even Oxford-educated Indians say: "May I take your leave now?" It is the person about to go who is leaving. He can take his leave and not that of the person who is sitting at home. I believe the mind here mixes up two locutions: "May I have your leave for me to leave?" or else it means "May I take leave of you?" Let me end with a final shot. Everyone here says, "I'll go to your house." If the owner of the house is expected to be elsewhere than at his own place, you can "go" there, but if he will be at home you can only "come" to him, to receive his "welcome".
Now to my infirmities. My existence now is in either wheelchair or bed. I practise a bit of walking with the help of a "walker" (unfortunately not "Johnny Walker") but it is a
Page 79
caricature, what with my right leg's lower half at a slight angle to its upper and my right shoe's sole two inches thicker than my left one's. An operation is said to give hope of righting the right leg's wrongness so that no disparity with the left leg may be left. Don't feel anxious about me. I am well taken care of and I both eat and sleep normally. And at the Samadhi I shall appeal to our Lord and the Divine Mother to help my deeply cherished friend.
(23.10.1992)
As regards a photo of you which I have requested, it is all right if you have shunned being snapped for several years lest a picture should show the fulfilment of the poet's prophecy:
Beauty is a flower
Which wrinkles will devour.
But I am sure that a beauty such as you would have, a beauty which is not skin-deep, cannot be destroyed. Can anything touch eyes that have dreamed of Arch-images, a nose waiting to catch a whiff of some lost Eden, a mouth about which one can say.
The name of God, no more a name,
Sat, a heaven-taste, upon my lip?
The beauty which has come in a face from loving St. Augustine's Pulchritudo antiqua sed semper nova - "Beauty of ancient days .yet ever new" - cannot be eaten up by any wrinkles.
From where I am sitting - at my typing table - I look up every now and again at a window from which a prospect of the outside world enters my room. Through the well-spaced bars and the thin netting I see a tree with slim branches and a spread of green-gold leaves dancing gently in the breeze and letting small spangles of sunlight fall upon my table. Beyond its slender swaying is the far-away sky, soft blue crossed by little
Page 80
clouds. A great peace seems to send out its message to me across a translucent distance, carried at the last stage as if by hundreds of tiny leaf-hands softly and intimately to my little human self dreaming of a divine destiny, Remembrances of all my dear friends hover in this reverie and just now you are very much in the forefront.
(2.11.1992)
The memory of the warm sweetness of you and your brother during your stay here is still fresh and will remain vibrant always. Now comes a massive reminder of the deep friendship in the form of a birthday present flown by courier service - a swift flight bearing a recorder of irresistibly flying Time: a beautiful wall-clock! It is something realty necessary in my room. My chums have been thinking of getting one for me for long and they no less than myself are very glad to see it hung up in front of me.
There cannot be a finer calling of my attention to the truth that the relentless run of Time is meant to give us an opportunity to make the most of our lives. Its running without end in contrast to the end awaiting our careers on earth should make us aware not only of the need to hurry up to build a worthwhile structure of our thoughts, feelings, desires, energies but also of the need to charge this structure with the sense of something beyond its brevity. The very fact of Time's endlessness from past through present to future should awake in us the consciousness of an everlasting phenomenon pulsing across the brevity of our existence. We have a natural instinct to fight against this brevity: we seek to perpetuate ourselves through our children, hoping to win thus an indirect immortality. But such an instinct should point to something hidden within us which we commonly miss, a secret Reality waiting to be found as our deepest self. The Rigveda named it "Agni", hymning it as "the immortal in the mortal", a being of fire leaping always upward, towards some eternal Vast, an entity of light revealing our own
Page 81
mysterious continuity from a far past to a remote future and disclosing in us a gradually unfolding godhead. The Rishis also designated Agni as jatavedas, "knower of births". By "births" they indicated two things: (1) a series of life after life upon earth with a "soul", a divine spark, growing through them wider and brighter by means of various experiences undergone by assuming diverse personalities across the ages; (2) a process of realising our existence on plane after plane beyond the earth, a higher and still higher self of our own in superhuman regions culminating in the world of a supreme "Surya", a divine Sun of Knowledge and Bliss where all things are unified and harmonised.
See what your big and beautiful clock has driven home to my heart and evoked from my mind! It has been a good stimulus. Thank you for your timely gift.
(11.11.1992)
You have written with sincerity of your puzzlement and pain. 1 have given due consideration to the problem you have posed. An Englishwoman who comes from the Quaker group of Christians and is now residing in Pondicherry with a dear mutual friend in relation with the Sri Aurobindo Ashram has written for me what strikes me as the best answer possible to your query.
Before 1 quote her I may point out that in the Hindu scriptures food like meat is not labelled as "tamasic", as you say, but classed as "rajasic". Even certain vegetarian items are so classed: e.g. onions.
Now to the central topic of your letter: "The Mother whom we see as the Mother of the universe - how could she give permission to the late Bhai Dyuman to prepare chicken soup on the doctor's advice? Was that poor animal not a child of hers?" I may add that in the article Dyumanbhai is quoted as saying that he himself tasted the soup before giving it to the Mother - as was his custom for the sake of the Mother's safety.
Page 82
My English friend has written:
"There are four factors/participants in this situation for the puzzled soul of your correspondent:
(1)The Mother
(2)The chicken
(3) Dyuman
(4) The correspondent himself,
and the law of respect for life as expressed in Vegetarianism.
(1) and (2): The Mother was not ignoring or flouting the law, but had moved through and beyond that law to a higher law. As it is clear that she was in tune and contact with all living things, it is probable that she was in contact and harmony with the world and spirit of chickens and they were agreeable to nourishing her body.
(3) Dyuman: In tasting the chicken soup, as in the other things he experienced as recounted in the article (brandy, etc.) he was also obeying a higher law - the law of total love and self-surrender.
(4) The correspondent himself: There is no suggestion that he should give up vegetarianism. Vegetarianism may well be contributing to his sadhana if it leads him towards reverence for and harmony with all created things and so to greater realisation of the Divine."
(23.11.1992)
Page 83
8
I am deeply touched by the agony of your whole being at the murder of one who was markedly a devotee of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. The bewildered cry that has arisen from your heart and mind repeats a question that has been flung at the heavens century after century - a question all the more acute because we have had a living sense of the light and love with which the Divine has met us again and again.
I have been asked by many from Orissa: "Why has the Mother's Grace not saved this Oriya child of hers? Why was he not protected by her from those dacoits?" No perfect answer has ever been given to such perplexities. So you can't expect me to outshine the great doctors of theology. 1 can only put down some thoughts that do not seem to be skimmed from the mere surface consciousness.
First of all, service of the Mother's cause has not to be done with the hope that one will be always immune to what a poet has called "crass casualty" - the uncertain and apparently unheeding process of events in the natural world where either a hidden determinism or else utter chance could be at play. We must carry out our work without expectation of rewards. To serve the Divine is a joy sufficient in itself if the soul is behind the service. Even otherwise one can be happy through the action of the idealistic mind to devote oneself to a great cause. Of course, it is hardly unnatural to expect the Divine's Grace again and again during the execution of the Divine's work, and indeed its intervention is seen quite often, but one cannot count on one's safety and security being assured just because of one's devotion to the Divine. In a deep sense the Divine's true servitor always gets the Divine's Grace, but it is not possible to sit in judgment on the mode in which this Grace comes. It may come in a most paradoxical form for the sake of some future good - even good in a future birth! Even death by murder may prove to be such a form.
There is the further fact that we live in a world of Ignorance and none of us is cut off from the general drift of world-
Page 84
happenings. There is a collective Karma no less than an individual Karma. As a part of a common humanity, along with being a part of the Divine's followers, we have to be ready for failures and mishaps along with successes and windfalls. The universe we live in is too complex for cut-and-dried solutions of the problems it poses to each individual. What we have to do is to keep the firm faith that the Divine's servitor will never be without the Divine's Grace, but we must not prejudge how this Grace will show itself. Until the Supramental Force which Sri Aurobindo has invoked is in full sway, there is bound to be the play of untoward possibilities getting realised. However, our confidence should remain intact that whatever the look of things the Divine Mother will never fail to use it for the benefit of her devotee-children.
At the same time we must bear in mind her statement that her blessings are basically for the soul's good, the soul's progress through prosperity or adversity. They are not for worldly success as such, though success in the world's affairs is never ruled out where it serves the soul's good or is not detrimental to it.
Ultimately, either we accept the Divine to be by very definition above the human intellect's power to understand the ways of Supernature and yet hold them to be more truly good than this intellect can conceive - or else we turn away from the Divine and take the world's course to be a witless dance, haphazardly destructive or constructive, of Democri-tus's or Rutherford's atoms. But how can we adopt the negative attitude, we who have looked at Sri Aurobindo's eyes of All-Knowledge and upon the Mother's smile of All-Love?
I'll close with some lines from Savitri:
Whatever the appearances we must bear,
Whatever our strong His and present fate,
When nothing we can see but drift and bale,
A mighty Guidance leads us still through all.1
(22.1.1993)
1. SABCL, Vol. 28, p. 59.
Page 85
It is only last evening that I heard of the accident. I felt extremely concerned. Has any diagnosis been made, enlightening us about the cause of the sudden black-out? A blackout means the blotting of the ordinary outward-looking consciousness. Such a blotting is not undesirable in itself, but there have to be the proper time and place. Besides, what should bring it about is not a sudden blackness but a surprising whiteness as in Aswapati's experiences: .
Caught by a voiceless white epiphany...
He neared the still consciousness sustaining all -
or
A skyward being nourishing its roots
On sustenance from occult spiritual founts
Climbed through white rays to meet an unseen Sun.
Here are glimpses of an ascent, a rising, but Sri Aurobindo also visions an advantageous downward movement. He tells us that our "dim being" must
Look up to God and round at the universe.
And learn by failure and progress by fall.
There is also his line about "the supreme Diplomat":
He makes our fall a means for a greater rise.
Finally, we get the picture of an extreme possibility:
A god come down and greater by the fall.
Of course, all these are not physical tumbles, but a physical tumble due to a black-out can be symbolic of a plunge of the Yoga-power into the subconscious, preliminary to a penetration of the utter abysm of the Inconscient to realise the state of existence at the very beginning of things, the buried God-state spoken of at the start of the Rigveda's Hymn of Creation and at the end of Sri Aurobindo's poem "Who":
Page 86
When darkness was blind and engulfed within darkness,
He was seated within it immense and alone.
My latest news about you is that your injuries - particularly those on the face - are fast healing. I am very happy to hear this.
(20.12.1992)
You have asked me to write out for you what I told you briefly this evening after returning from the Ashram. I shall try to set it down in as much detail as I can.
I was sitting quietly facing the joint Samadhi of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Suddenly a voice within me addressed it: "All of me belongs to you." The voice seemed to pervade the whole being and express every part of me. But was every part of me really speaking? I did not feel sure because 1 knew that much of me remained which could not be considered to have made a total surrender.
When I concentrated on my condition I discovered that the voice had a centre from which it radiated. The centre was the inmost heart. The true soul, the psychic being, was spontaneously making that statement. It was its natural joyous cry. The rest of the being was evidently fully conscious of its soul. To put it otherwise: the soul was completely aware of being a child of the Divine and its awareness flowed out and flooded every corner of the composite creature that I was. But every corner was essentially a medium for the soul's self-giving gesture, the soul's self-given existence. Something of every corner vibrated in unison while serving as a channel. But it was not saying, on its own, as an inherent law of itself, the simple yet wonderful words with which it was filled.
I felt somewhat concerned that this should be so - but I soon realised that concern was out of place: I should just sit calmly without any thought and feel blessed with the soul's awakening and allow its sweetness to keep streaming forth up and down and on all sides of the bodily life.
Page 87
If such a state could go on at all hours in an utter intensity of what I can only call a serene strength of love, at once soft and irresistible, the future would indeed be an unperishing thousand-petalled "Rose of God."
(2.1.1993)
Your short note of yesterday about a dream in which we made contact has sent me looking for the envelope in which I had preserved the letters from you I had been answering before my fracturing fall on October 15, 1991. 1 find that I stopped short of your dream of 8.5.91.
This dream is indeed queer. Not that my appearing again when you had prayed for a meeting with Nolini has anything strange about it: now he and I seem to have made a composite personality in your consciousness and I wouldn't be surprised if on your calling for me he showed himself. What is odd is your riding a bicycle stark naked in search of the house in which I was staying - a house specifically understood to be not my present residence but quite another place. This place, when pointed out to you, "was a huge structure but built of clay with a thatched roof". The time was evening when 1 usually return from my visit to the Samadhi. You were quite alert that you might meet me on the way and you did not bother at all about your lack of clothes. At long last you decided to go back home and put on some clothes. But again you lost your way. Then suddenly you woke up from the dream. Your concluding words are: "I felt quite care-free and there was no heaviness in my mind and heart."
.
Your being in your birthday-suit suggests that in all your dealings with me you cast off every outer barrier and come in your "naked truth". There is no attempt to put on any appearances: there is a soul-to-soul meeting. The bicycle symbolises a swift yet simple mode of sadhana-locomotion and at the same time an eager as well as unassuming movement of the sadhak in you towards me. The building which is taken to be my residence has two striking aspects.
Page 88
One is its imposing hugeness and the other the primitiveness shown by its clay-substance and its thatched roof. I can read its symbolism only by saying that it represents what Sri Aurobindo has made out of the poor stuff that I am: a figure of some literary greatness expressive of the spiritual heights and breadths that are Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's, a greatness born of their Grace but not covering up the fact that this figure has still feet of clay and a head not yet radically changed from its common all-too-human nature. Within this variously composite structure is, of course, the soul that has chosen to be a child of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, a basic primal entity away from all that greatness no less than away from all that weakness and infirmity. It is the entity which is in close touch with you, and I am sure that if you had found me in the strange structure you would have seen Amal in his birthday-suit matching your own. And it is because these two birthday-suit-wallahs are basically dealing with each other that you woke up without any care, a mind and heart free of
the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world.
Your letter of 29.5.91 is both practical and poetic or rather poetically practical. It says:
"Does any Ashramite suffer from insomnia? Then I have a prescription - let him sing in chorus with Savitri's Satyavan:
The moonbeam's silver ecstasy at night
Kissed my dim lids to sleep....
Let him also repeat in his inmost heart that Mantra from the same poem:
He is silence watching in the stars at night.
Your apt quotations put me in mind of a snatch from Wordsworth which could also serve to transport one to an
Page 89
inner state which would be at once slumber and spiritual upliftment:
The silence that is in the starry sky.
The sleep that is among the lonely hills.
A double mystery is evoked here - at the same time far above and near at hand below. Not only are the two locations linked by the in-drawing words "silence" and "sleep". What is below is also affined to what is above by the image of upward rising earth: "hills". But the double mystery remains unresolved, unidentified. To whom does the twofold state belong? The first mode of it -
The silence that is in the starry sky -
gets a revelatory answer in Sri Aurobindo's suggestion of a supreme Being in the nocturnal darkness with the line:
Immediately we are led to intuit that the entrancing Anon here of Wordsworth is the same "Presence" who is elsewhere said by him to be "interfused" with all things and
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns.
Your last letter - 8.9.91 - of the old bunch ends with the words: "I am going to finish 'Savitri'." Well, can we ever do such a thing? There are various senses in which Savitri can never be finished. My mind harks back to Sri Aurobindo's letter to Nirodbaran (29.3.36): "Savitri has not been regarded by me as a poem to be written and finished, but as a field of experimentation to see how far poetry could be written from one's own Yogic consciousness and how that could be made creative." Before this statement we read: "I used Savitri as a means of ascension. I began with it on a certain mental level,
Page 90
each time I could reach a higher level I rewrote from that level. Moreover 1 was particular - if part seemed to me to come from any lower levels I was not satisfied to leave it because it was good poetry. All had to be as far as possible of the same mint." I am sure that if Sri Aurobindo had not left his body on December 5, 1950, he would have gone on revising his epic or at least adding to it. Both procedures would have been followed in regard to the part with which you will be finishing your reading of Savitri - namely, "Epilogue: The Return to Earth." A good portion of it comes from an early draft. And a few things in it pose problems which I would like to set before you.
But first let me dwell a little on the fact that we are driven by the very nature of Savitri to read it again and again, never getting finished with it. Sri Aurobindo sought to make it a creation of the highest plane of inspiration available to man: what he termed the Overmind, home of the poetry that embodies a seeing and a hearing which, whatever be the subject, reveals in all images and rhythms subtly or openly a sense of the Infinite, the Eternal, the Divine. To share in this sense the reader has to develop his consciousness. The practice of Yoga is, of course, the most direct means, but it is also a rather difficult process. We Aurobindonians have to essay the difficulties. Still, it is not necessary to complete our Yogic careers before we can take advantage of a literary Yogic masterpiece like Savitri. Savitri offers the chance for a course of what I may call "aesthetic Yoga". If we hush the ordinary noises of our brains, imagine that we have no top to our heads but are open to a vastness above them, and then read the epic audibly so as to allow its sound to aid what our sight takes in from the printed page, then we shall be on the way to doing "aesthetic Yoga". The spiritual visions and vibrations caught by Sri Aurobindo in his pentameters which seek to bring
A gate of dreams ajar on mystery's verge
or convey
Page 91
A wisdom-cry from rapt transcendences
refine, deepen, widen our beings more and more with each new reading of
The lines that tear the veil from Deity's face.
Now to the Epilogue's problems. A dictated passage - a speech of Savitri to Satyavan - has the verses:
Look round thee and behold, glad and unchanged
Our home, this forest, with its thousand cries
And the whisper of the wind among the leaves
And, through rifts in emerald scene, the evening sky,
God's canopy of blue sheltering our lives.... (pp. 717-18)
It is possible that what has been taken as a noun - "scene" - is the past participle "seen" mis-heard during the dictation. Then the sense would be: "the evening sky seen through rifts in emerald." The noun "emerald" would stand for "greenness" (here the "leaves" which form a network with "rifts" in it). Interestingly, Sri Aurobindo has such a usage elsewhere in Savitri. On p. 390 he speaks of the various moods in which "Earth" shows herself. One of them is her woodland aspect -
The shaggy emerald of her centaur mane -
followed by her aspect of sky:
The gold and sapphire of her warmth and blaze.
The poem has also another instance of "emerald" as a noun in a context of woods and grasses. Satyavan cries to Savitri on their first meeting:
Come nearer to me from thy car of light
On this green sward disdaining not our soil.
Page 92
For here are secret spaces made for thee
Whose caves of emerald long to screen thy form...
Led by my hushed desire into my woods
Let the dim rustling arches over thee lean... (p. 408)
The likelihood of "seen" rather than "scene" seems enhanced by some lines at the very start of the Epilogue where the word "Peering" suggests an equivalent of the former reading:
Peering through an emerald lattice-window of leaves
In indolent skies reclined, the thinning day
Turned to its slow fall into evening's peace, (p. 715)
But, admittedly, here the adjectival "emerald" lends some credence to the alternative reading.
A little before the "scene/seen" passage we have another bit of ambivalence. Look at the end of this passage, spoken by Satyavan:
"Whence hast thou brought me captive back,
love-chained,...
For surely I have travelled in strange worlds
By thee companioned, a pursuing spirit,
Together we have disdained the gates of night;
I have turned away from the celestial's joy
And heaven's insufficient without thee."
As these lines too were dictated, it is, in the first place, doubtful whether the apostrophe in "celestial's" is properly put. Shouldn't it be after the s, thus: "celestials' joy"? The change would be easily granted, but a real crux comes with the next apostrophe - in "heaven's". With the apostrophe retained, we have two possible readings. One would take "joy" as understood after the word, giving us the meaning: "I have turned away from the celestials' joy and heaven's joy (which is/are) insufficient without thee." But this seems rather forced and far-fetched. The alternative reading would
Page 93
make "heaven's" a contraction for "heaven is". This would make the expression extremely romantic. One would hesitate to see anything possibly replacing it. But two points face the romantic interpretation. The entire passage before the last line has the present perfect tense: "Whence hast thou brought me" - "I have travelled" - "We have disdained" - "I have turned away". Grammatically, the present tense is not out of accord with it. But there is in our context a sense of completed action in the present perfect, so that the pure present after it is a bit of an intrusion. Add to this small "jerk", as it were, in the situation the rather odd "And". At the beginning of the line it is surely loose and inconsequential. As a summing up of Satyavan's mind and heart after his turning away from "the celestials' joy" we would expect "For". What may seem romantically felicitous may not be dramatically so. To endow the line with dramatic relevance we would have to drop the apostrophe altogether and make the line a continuation of what has gone before, thus:
And heavens insufficient without thee.
Then there is a turning away by Satyavan from all celestials' joy and all paradisal states which are insufficient without Savitri. Essentially, this does not negate the romantic touch but, instead of letting it stand forth, it weaves it as a natural element into the general trend of the discourse. That way the mind has more satisfaction because of a sense of consistency, but to the heart there is a loss and the sheer poetic thrill of love gets subdued.
On p. 719 comes a challenge in dictation which most readers of Savitri would try to avoid. We have the lines, addressed by Savitri to Satyavan:
"Heaven's touch fulfils but cancels not our earth:
Our bodies need each other in the same last;
Still in our breasts repeat heavenly secret rhythm
Our human heart-beats passionately close."
Page 94
The "last" has no meaning in this context. The only possible correction is "lust". The general support is in the next two lines which, by the way, are to be construed with an eye to the plural verb "repeat": "Still our human heart-beats passionately close repeat in our breasts heavenly secret rhythm." But how shall we reconcile ourselves to that word which occurs fifteen times before in Savitri and everywhere with a vicious meaning? I believe we have to remember what Sri Aurobindo replied to Dilip Kumar Roy when the latter asked how Rama couid be an Avatar when Valmiki attributes kama (lust) to him. Sri Aurobindo pointed out that an Avatar need not come as a Yogi. Rama was an exemplar of the enlightened ethical mind and he functioned as an ideal son, an ideal brother, an ideal husband, an ideal warrior and finally an ideal king. As an ideal husband he must necessarily have kama, for no sexual relationship between him and his wife would be possible without it. Just because in their relevant contexts the word "lust" occurring fifteen times earlier had evil associations, it is not inevitable that the identical word in relation to Savitri and Satyavan should have the same bearing. They being physical wife and husband with passionately close human heart-beats would naturally experience lust but with new associations proper to the wonderful woman and the marvellous man that they were.
Now I come to a challenge in verbal construction on p. 722. Satyavan's parents have arrived with a royal retinue in search of the missing son and daughter-in-law. They rush first to the former:
And the swift parents hurrying to their child, -
Their cause of life now who had given him breath, -
Possessed him with their arms....
How would you explicate the second line? What does the relative pronoun "who" refer to? Here is a Latinised construction. "Their"="Of them". The relative pronoun "who" goes with the understood "them". And the sense is, in
Page 95
reference to Satyavan, that the thought of him as dead had drained life out of his mother and father but the discovery of him as not dead has saved them from their death-like condition. And the complicated line - "He is now the cause of the life of them who once gave him life's breath."
One more question and I am done. Before the whole party wend their way home from the forest, one who seemed a priest and sage wants to draw from Savitri, for the good of the world's future, some guide-lines won by her from her wonderful experiences. She, longing to mother all souls by uniting their life with her own, replies:
"Awakened to the meaning of my heart,
That to feel love and oneness is to live
And this the magic of our golden change
Is all the truth I know or seek, O sage."
What does the past participle "Awakened" go with? Who has had the awakening? Surely the "I" of the last line and surely the truth known or sought is couched in the second line. So I am inclined to reduce the statement thus to prose order: "All the truth that I, awakened to the meaning of my heart, know or seek, O sage, is that to feel love and oneness is to live and this (is) the magic of our golden change."
Perhaps I should terminate my letter by telling you that you have come to the termination of Savitri in the Centenary Edition by having read 23,803 lines.
(30.9.1992)
Page 96
9
I have quite a pile of your letters - with quite a host of questions. I shall try to answer them not in a chronological order but as they come up in the order in which the pile has put them.
The first to hand reminds me of the Biblical war-horse neighing "Ha! Ha!" as its nostrils breathe the smell of the battlefield. You are in a regular frenzy facing the field of human knowledge as laid out by encyclopaedias and dictionaries. Here comes your aspiration to be a polymath, master of a hundred disciplines. Ever since my middle teens I have thrilled to the same lure. Except for mathematics, which don't daunt you, I have felt competent to tackle all the ranges of intellectual inquiry but I can't say I am anywhere being in full control of most of them - poetry alone I have scoured from end to end to the extent my extreme familiarity with English allows. Beyond poetry what has most drawn me is literary criticism, philosophical speculation, scientific thought, historical research. I believe I have contributed a bit of original work to each of these branches of knowledge, even though not of an outstanding quality everywhere. The desire to pursue various lines further even now persists, but here some words of the Mother to me keep ringing. In effect their import ran: "The plane of the mind is infinite. One can go on and on there, in fascinated pursuit of knowledge. No time will be left for the spiritual life. One can have a glorious time, mastering arts and sciences and making discovery after discovery. A wide surface satisfaction can be yours but, having seen beyond the mind and obtained a taste of spirituality, glimpsed a ray of the direct light of the Divine, too much preoccupation with mental knowledge will be a waste of your life." Ever since I gathered this grace of "wisdom from the Mother, I have moderated my acquisition of mental knowledge. Though every new vista of intellectual research pulls me towards it, there is a profound sense in the heart that truth lies elsewhere
Page 97
and that my main concentration should be on what hides behind the endless variety of the mind's offerings.
We are beings in whom the evolutionary impulse is accompanied by strong whiffs from the typal worlds. There is a world of the mind-energy just as there is a world of the life-force where these powers of consciousness are fulfilled and no need is left then to aspire beyond them. In them one is lapped in ever-unfolding immensities of felicitous ideas and theories or of sensuous-emotional enjoyments. All is revelation on revelation of horizontal adventure: no vertical thrust towards an uncertain and hazardous Unknown, no gamble for a Godhead surpassing vitality and mentality have any part in the typal planes. These are the pleasures and perils of the evolutionary plane. Evolution is a difficult process whereas it is easy to let ourselves drift on the typal tide and if we yield to this tide the vertical thrust weakens. So it is necessary to be careful in our ambition to be polymaths. How to move in the direction of polymathy without sacrificing that thrust: this is the problem for people like us who are intoxicated with encyclopaedias and dictionaries,.
In the wake of your hunger to know everything within man's range, you are led to "an epistemological inquiry -what exactly is knowledge and what is the raison d'etre of man's insatiable urge to search for it?" Over and above or rather behind and beyond the push of the typal mental plane to pursue ideas and theories for their own sake, there is one aspect of the Divine Nature, the Divine Existence, responsible for this urge. The ultimate reality is Omniscience (All-Knowledge) along with Omnipotence (All-Power) and Omnipresence (All-Pervasion), to which we may add Omnifelicity and Omniexpression. Omniscience has two sides: what the Vedanta calls the Higher Knowledge and the Lower Knowledge. The latter covers the world of phenomena, of outer objects and processes. In Vedantic terms, the Play of the Many as distinguished from the Work of the One. When it is contrasted instead of being merely distinguished, it is dubbed Ignorance - avidya in opposition to vidya. The knowledge that
Page 98
is ignorance consists in being aware of the Many to the exclusion of the One. The sense of the One is never quite lost but it remains merely a notion and is not perceived as an actuality in the way the various objects are perceived. For those who want to be seers and not only thinkers, the quest for the One as the Infinite, the Eternal, the Divine is of prime importance and they must see (being "seers"!) that this quest does not suffer by the lure of the Many getting excessive. However, the voice of the Isha Upanishad in tune with that of Sri Aurobindo has to be heard, insisting on a due regard for the apparently finite, temporal, non-divine. According to this voice, exclusive knowledge of the One is, in the final perspective, as much Ignorance as exclusive knowledge of the Many. The integral aim of life is manifestation (many-festa-tion?) of the Single, the Unitary, in a double awareness of both the Unique and the Multiple. So I wouldn't pour cold water altogether on your desire to be an expert in the subjects whose very mention thrills you: "Mathematics, computer science, architecture, poetry, painting, music (singing, instruments and composition), literature, nuclear physics, plant science (botany, horticulture, floriculture), mythology, philosophy, 'holopediatrics', geography, astronomy, finance, political sciences, linguistics, grammar, etc."
Now to another question you have raised:
"There is this apparent divergence between two of the Mother's statements:
(1)It is not what one does that is the most important thing but what one is.
(2)In work one progresses ten times more than in empty contemplation (this statement is from memory, so might be slightly inaccurate in wording)." Your puzzlement arises from misconstruing the non-emphasis on "what one does" as putting a premium on inactivity. There are actually two shades in the Mother's intention. One is discouragement of getting impressed by big-looking activity as such. One may win name and fame by grandiose achievements and still remain a poor specimen of a man - selfish, censorious,
Page 99
greedy, ambitious. Secondly, one may be busy all the time but with one's consciousness on the surface. The true measure of a man is the quality of his consciousness. One may even do next to nothing outwardly and yet be the acme of humanity. What did Ramakrishna or Ramana" Maharshi do by way of physical productivity? But this does not imply that doing things is set at a discount. It is assumed that one is doing something: only, we do not get the true measure of a man thereby. Whether it is big work or small work, what fundamentally counts is the wideness of one's mind, the depth of one's heart, the height from which one's will operates.
If you keep in view my exposition of the Mother's statement you will not find it to be at odds with her other pronouncement where she encourages work as a means of spiritual progress, preferring it to passive and therefore empty contemplation. Not that she quite discourages contemplation. Everything has its proper place in her many-sided vision. But the contemplative capacity is rather rare, and mostly people flatter their egos by stretching out hours with eyes closed. It is better to occupy oneself in work which one inwardly dedicates to the Divine and during which one keeps one's consciousness high-uplifted. One thus advances further on the Aurobindonian path - especially as this path insists on a new mode of living, a new manner of activity, a creative expression of the inner being's surrender to the Mother's light and love.
You have raised the issue of the Mother and her Grace: "Is the aspiration for the intervention of the Grace the same as aspiring to the Mother? If the two were inseparable, there should not be any need for aspiring for the Grace in particular, because appealing to the Mother would in any case bring forth a reply in the form of Grace's action." Indeed, basically speaking, the Mother and the Grace are identical and everything that comes from the Mother is an act of Grace. But we can speak of Grace's general action and its particular action. The latter is what we commonly refer to when we talk of Grace. It consists in a keen response of help from above to a
Page 100
piercing cry of the heart from below. The general action is the showering of knowledge and peace and power and bliss on our deep dissatisfaction with ourselves, the gift of vastitude and altitude to the sincere smallness and surrendering littleness that we are in our best movements. Perhaps we can suggest with a fine feeling the shade of difference between the general Grace and the particular while not forgetting the common basis of both by quoting some lines from a well-known hymn. Here the general Grace is movingly touched off:
Change and decay in all around 1 see.
O Thou who changest not, abide with me!
Here is the lighting up of the Grace in its acute particularity:
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me!
In this context I may try to hint an answer to your query: "What is the difference between prayer and aspiration? Which is superior? Or does the question of superiority not arise here?" To aspire means etymologically to breathe towards something and figuratively to rise high for something. The aspirant has in view, as it were, luminous heights and his inner movement is towards them. He who prays finds within his sight, so to speak, shadowy depths surrounding him and his inner movement is to ache for their diminishing and disappearing. He too is aware of a luminosity overhead, but his call is for it to come down while the aspirant feels called by it upward. The latter is not unconscious of his own low state but his concentration is on getting elsewhere. The prayerful soul is more concerned with getting his deplorable plight changed. I may add that his appeal is, more specifically than the aspirant's, to a personal Divinity and is more than the aspirant's in tune with the Grace in its particular aspect. Aspiration and prayer are both of value in the spiritual life and sometimes it is difficult to distinguish them. How would
Page 101
one characterise the famous cry of the Brihadaranyaka Upa-nishad?-
From the unreal lead us to the Real,
From the darkness lead us to the Light,
From death lead us to Immortality.
As in most of the Upanishadic verses the fundamental drift here is in the direction of the never-born ever-undying single infinite Self of selves, the Atman who is one with the secret universal Presence, Brahman. But in these three lines we have not only an immense aspiration for the inmost Knowledge: we have also an intense prayer as if to some Supreme Other to make us know that Other as our own essential being. It is as though Brahman were invoked to let us experience Him as Atman. An aspiration finds voice in the accents of a prayer.
A question which must be fairly common is: "Isn't never having seen the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and not living in the Ashram a bit of a spiritual handicap? Or can the Integral Yoga be done with the same intensity without the above-named factor as it is in my case?" Actually you have fused two points: doing the Integral Yoga without having come in physical contact with the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and doing this Yoga outside the Ashram. There have been people who knew the two Gurus physically yet did not continue to stay in the Ashram while doing the Integral Yoga just as there are people who are staying in the Ashram though they have never stood physically face to face with their two Gurus. In the complex situation you posit, the main thing is to feel in one's own heart the presence of the beings who physically manifested as the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. Even during their physical manifestation the main thing was the same. Of course there were many spiritual advantages in coming into contact with that manifestation, but none would have been of fundamental value without the heart's awaking inwardly to a glorious sunlight called Sri Aurobindo and an enchanting moonlight named the Mother. And once the awaking was
Page 102
there, the golden epiphany and the silver secrecy could be living realities anywhere and they could be such even when their outer double embodiment had ceased. No doubt, there were special possibilities of spiritual experience for those whom the Divine had willed to be bodily with them, but no essential realisation is debarred to those whom the Divine has willed to be not so. The central point is the inward touch the Divine has given to a seeking soul. All who have become disciples and children of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother under any circumstances have had their touch - and to have received that touch is the only thing we should be concerned with, for it guarantees to us the entire riches of the Divine Existence in proportion to our capacity. As for the opportunity to stay in the Ashram, it depends on a number of things. When Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were in our midst they themselves on several occasions decided that this or that person should do Yoga outside the Ashram in spite of the parties wanting to be Ashramites. When the Mother was there, she in the light of her inner perception decided the issue. At present the Trustees have to ponder many conditions over and above their own inner sense. We may say that broadly the issue is whether one should come to Pondicherry and practise Yoga or stay where one is and do it. As far as I direction of permanent residence in Pondicherry. So do not fret. Make the best of what is possible. Content yourself with occasional visits. To make your sadhana fruitful lies in your hands. If there are difficulties in your milieu, they are not at all likely to disappear if you are in Pondicherry. They are not such that merely a change of place can resolve them.
Now to another problem you have posed: "The Mother says: 'Be aware of the Presence within you.' It gives me an impression as if it can be a conscious willed act instead of being the spontaneous result of the Grace where the Presence 'happens' to you. Please bring some illumination as I direly need a concrete sense of the Presence within me." You seem to forget that Yoga is a twofold affair: the Divine's Grace and
Page 103
one's own effort. One has to fulfil certain conditions, create a certain attitude, extend a happy co-operation to the Guru. Man is a mental being, he stands in consciousness a little apart from the stream of what the Vedanta terms the play of Nature in him. He is to some extent a witness and a giver of sanction and has the possibility of becoming ultimately the master of Nature's play. Being thus constituted he cannot simply be pushed into anything. He cannot evolve without conscious collaboration with the Divine Force. And the collaboration is made easy because the same Force which acts as Grace is already within your own being as what the Mother calls "the Presence". To be aware of it you have to quiet yourself, turn your thoughts towards the Mother, make as much as you can an offering of all your movements to her. In this way you will help her to open you up, you will render her Grace more effective, achieve a fusion of the One whom we outwardly adore with the One who shines at all times inwardly adorable and casts a transforming and unifying smile on all that fumbling many-mooded multitude which is our common self.
A few minor questions remain. One is: "What should be my sleep-requirements? 6-61/2 hours or more?" Let me quote you an authority: Napoleon. I label him as an authority because he had complete control over his sleep. He could go into the land of Nod any time. Even in the midst of a battle, with cannonading all around, he could snatch some minutes of sleep. His formula is: "6 hours for men, 7 for women, 8 for children and 9 for idiots."
Next: "Is it advisable or worth it to maintain a spiritual diary viz, a booklet which will serve the purpose of chronicling the course of my odyssey towards the Supreme Goal?" As you are a born writer, it won't be a bad idea to record your day-to-day observations on your own spiritual wanderings, which may hopefully mean at times the noting down of
Those thoughts that wander through Eternity.
Page 104
Your choice of the word "odyssey" is apt. For this "man many-counselled", as Homer designates him, passed through quite a number of perils and temptations during his nine-year tossing on the high seas. Will you be able to resist the song of the Sirens or the lure of Circe? Perhaps if you put down everything in cold ink you will acquire an objective view of things and may stop short of complications. Already you have been jotting down your inner and outer vicissitudes in the shape of an epistolary plethora directed towards me. Diary-keeping won't be anything quite strange. But you will have the chance of looking back at all you have passed through and taking stock of all your forwards and backwards and sidewards and the final upshot of all the movements during a year.
You have asked: "What happens to those sadhaks who pass away? Is it inevitable that in their next life they will be spiritually oriented?" Ordinarily it would be difficult to chart out a course. But when we know that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are residing in the earth's subtle-physical layer in an embodied form in order to carry on their work, the future of dead sadhaks would lie entirely in the hands of our Gurus and I believe that they would be helped to pursue their sadhana in whatever way is deemed helpful by the Gurus. I have also the notion that, since a sincere sadhak has his mind and vital no less than his soul set to one note of devotion to the work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the same mental and vital beings and not only the psychic being which naturally persists from life to life may return in a new body in the next birth. After death they may stick together or they may serve different functions but they continue. My motion is suggested by what the Mother said about my friend A.B. Purani who passed away on 11 December 1965: "His higher intellectual part went to Sri Aurobindo and united with him. His psychic is with me and he is very happy and in peace. His vital is still helping those who seek his help." When the time of the next embodiment arrives, all these members that
Page 105
are still intact may come together and continue in a spiritually oriented way under the conditions the new physical form will create. Don't take my notion as Gospel truth. It may be just a spark of fancy.
(16.10.1992)
Page 106
10
I have brought out from my drawer a regular heap of letters from you calling out for answers. All are vibrant with affectionate warmth and each has its own particular spark of inner light, showing that my friend has really been living with a sense of Sri Aurobindo tingling in his mind and a feeling of the Mother a-throb in his heart and, along with these Divine Ones, a few humans are also at home in his sincere aspiring life. I am sure nobody can say about you what my late friend Anil Kumar once told me people were saying about him. His words have stuck in my memory because of both their quaint imagery and their Anil-Kumarish English: "People think Anil Kumar has no backbone and no legs. He is simply sitting and digesting foods."
Let me try to take up your notes chronologically. I was surprised to find one as early in the year as 31.3.91. It is one of the shortest but packed with sweetness as well as an imaginative thrill. It has also a Biblical ring by a repeated use of the conjunction "And". It runs:
My dear Amal,
And then "Savitri" again!
And a Sunday of rest, relaxation and peace!
And when I come across the lines:
And Will is a conscious chariot of the Gods,
And Life, a splendour-stream of musing Force,
Carries the voices of the mystic Suns...
as a sequel there appears before my mind's eye Sri A
urobindo's "The Clear Ray" - my dear and rare friend
"Amal Kiran". My feeling is too evident to elucidate.
I feel deeply moved, nor can I be happier than when I am associated with lines from Savitri. In my whole life in the Ashram I have made only two impassioned dramatic statements to the Mother. The first was a little ridiculous. It
Page 107
couched the very first declaration I made to her. I said with a sort of sweeping gesture: "I have seen everything of life. Now I want only God." You may remember that the Mother coolly asked me: "How old are you?" I replied: "Twenty-three." She gave what I may term a serious smile and remarked: "At twenty-three you have seen everything of life? Don't be in a hurry to make any decision. Stay here for some time and look around. If the life here suits you, join the Ashram." As I have always commented, the Mother's response was like ice-water dashed on my enthusiasm, but I realised that she was a Guru who was not avid to have disciples and this was definitely in her favour in my eyes. I stayed on - for good! And it was many years later that I made my other impassioned pronouncement. I had worked almost single-handed for the Ashram to bring out the first one-volume edition of the complete Savitri along with the copious letters Sri Aurobindo had written to me apropos of his epic - the 1954 "University" publication. While preparing it I had several occasions to talk with the Mother on various points and she was quite aware of my labour of love. Still, it so happened that when the book was out she did not give me a copy. After a few days I drew her attention to the fact and declared what Savitri meant to me. I made the resounding statement: "I would give my heart's blood for Savitri." She at once asked Champaklal for a copy and, writing my name on it and signing, presented it to me.
Yes, I would give my heart's blood because it is as if it were itself given to me by Savitri Ever since, apropos of a certain spiritual situation suggested by a poem of mine, Sri Aurobindo quoted two lines telling of a Ray from the Transcendent coming through the silent Brahman -
Piercing the limitless Unknowable,
Breaking the vacancy and voiceless peace -
ever since he quoted them and, in answer to my question where these profoundly reverberating lines had hailed from.
Page 108
wrote the single word "Savitri" - ever since that mystery-packed moment I have felt my very heart to be a rhythm of life wakened by the grace of the Power which could create such poetry and whose Ray from the Transcendent was the ultimate source of whatever little light was sought to be evoked in me by the Aurobindonian gift of my new name "Amal Kiran" meaning "The Clear Ray".
You write as though my life were already carrying "the voices of the mystic Suns". I wish that were true. But what is true is that indeed from far-away those golden accents have raised as an echo in my depths the constant prayer:
Voice of Infinity, sound in my heart, -
Call of the One!
Stamp there thy radiance, never to part,
O living Sun.
Your next "missive" is of 13.4.91. It has many interesting facets of your inner and outer life. I pick out a few. You have conjured up the picture of some of you sitting around Nolini after his dinner and before putting him to bed. The talk turns on past births. Somebody asks N who you were in the Ramayana epoch (Yuga). You write: "He did not answer, kept quiet. When pressed again, he replied very softly: 'He was a friend of mine.' " No wonder you were "overjoyed", thinking: "being his friend I was not far away from the Divine, - he being with the Divine." I am glad to mark that for all your devotion to N the topmost concern in you was the Divine and you did not stop short with whatever was noteworthily Nolinian and that to you the most noteworthy part in him was the one turned Divineward. The next point that strikes me is the natural way in which "the Ramayana epoch" figures in the talk.It is taken for granted that it was a genuine historical age and not a mytho-legendary one. Sri Aurobindo has affirmed that in the cultural process of the ages the Rama-figure stands for the establishment of the dharmic (ethical) mind over the mental titanism on the one hand and on the
Page 109
other the animal mentality, two trends in the path of human evolution.) Sri Aurobindo also declares that in the Rama depicted by Valmiki he can feel the afflatus of Avatarhood, the movements of a consciousness beyond the personal, a consciousness that has a cosmic character.) How far back in time may Rama be considered to have existed? My new chronology dates Krishna at the time of the Bharata War to c. 1482 or 1452 B.C. The recent underwater archaeological finds at Dwaraka put Krishna's submerged Dwaraka at about the same time. In the traditional table of royal genealogies, starting with Manu Vaivasvata, Krishna's number is 94 and Rama's 65 - a difference of 30 generations. Taking a generation to be roughly 30 years we get about 900 years. This would carry Rama to around 900 years before the Bharata War: that is, c. 2382 or 2352 B.C.
Here I may clear a possible misunderstanding. In chapter X, verse 31 of the Gita, Krishna speaking of his Vibhutis (manifesting human instruments) tells us: "I am Rama among warriors." We must remember that Indian tradition knows of two Ramas: Rama Jamadagnya and Rama Dasarathi. The former is also called Parasurama, "Rama of the Axe". This designation distinguishes him as a warrior. It is to him that Krishna refers.
You have quaintly wondered, before Nolini's reply, whether your "evolution" had reached the "human level by that period". According to archaeology, man in some form or other is about two million years old. The modern form was approached at least 20,000 years ago. Surely, there had been time enough for each of us to attain the human level by the Ramayana epoch. The Tantra calculates that three lakhs of lives had to be passed through before the soul could have a human embodiment. Earth's long history amply allows time for our pre-human past. You and I are certain to have been real Manu-man (mental being) and not something like Hanu-man when Rama flourished and Nolini was in his train.(In fact, I believe that most disciples of Sri Aurobindo were with Sri Aurobindo each time he manifested in human history,
Page 110
especially when he must have taken an Avataric form to establish a new level of consciousness.
A prominent feature of your letter is the "vision" you had of Mahakali in the state of a semi-sleep into which you had entered after reading those beautiful words of the Mother to Huta published by Huta in White Roses: "Behind the sorrow and loneliness, behind the emptiness and the feeling of incapacity, there is the golden light of the Divine Presence shining soft and warm." You write about the Mahakali you saw: "She was not terrible-looking, she looked affectionate and soothing..." Your pair of adjectives answer well to the Mother's "soft and warm". Of course, Mahakali too, as Sri Aurobindo has said, "is the Mother..." And her motherliness, her affectionate and soothing aspect is natural for those who invoke her to remove their defects with rapidity, those who are on her side and not stuck in their follies and obscurities. The dreadful aspect is only for those who are enemies of the Divine within and without. "Terrible," writes Sri Aurobindo, "is her face to the Asura."
(10.9.1991)
According to the ancient Indian wisdom, our non-spiritual condition, our delusive ignorance consists essentially in being locked up in ourselves, being exclusive of our true reality which includes everyone and everything, an inner vastness which rules out the feeling of the other, the alien that can oppose and injure one. Do you remember the Chhandogya Upanishad's glorious utterance: "There is no happiness in the small: immensity alone is felicity"? The Veda always associates brihat (the Vast) with its satyam (the True) as well as its ritam (the Right) in describing the supreme world of the soul's fulfilment.
I say "world" because the Rishis employ the term loka or its equivalents which do not cut off the Beyond from the Here; it is not into a worldlessness that one enters when one is "fear-free", the term the Rigveda uses for the highest spiritual
Page 111
realisation: one enters an ideal world high above, which has no divisiveness and fulfils our multiple earthly existence by providing the basic unity weaving everything together instead of setting one part over against the others as here below. And the correspondence of the higher with the lower in being no void, no worldlessness, leads to the compatibility of the Here and the Beyond so that the Seers, once they have realised the underlying unity of things by constant contact with the Beyond, do not fly away from the Here but remain to work towards a finer and greater life: there is no "refusal of the ascetic" as in later ages.
The compatibility persists as a vital element in the Upanishads where often there is talk of Brahmaloka and not just Brahman. The context in which Yajnavalkya and Janaka figure with their "That which is free from fear" (a Rigvedic echo) is, I think, particularly rich in reference to Brahmaloka. Indeed Yajnavalkya is a denizen par excellence of both the Here and the Yonder: with one hand he keeps a hold on the earth and with the other reaches out to the empyrean. In a most exalted way he settles for "All this and Heaven too". He seems to have anticipated Sri Aurobindo in a more flamboyant manner than would suit our Master's nature.
Your letter of 23.5.91 relates two dreams, both on a Tuesday. Your dreams of Nolini used to occur mostly on this day - but now, in answer to your call to him, a lesser sadhak made his appearance as though he were an envoy from him. What you saw seems to add one more chapter to Amal Kiran's visits to the Press in the old days to carry out some alterations and corrections. Such a move by him is characteristic. He is a typical case of the ache for perfection in both poetry and prose. Some ideality ever haunts him and he goes on chiselling until the vague vision he has discerned in his depths looks out at him from his literary work in a splendid clarity suddenly emerging from his stroke on shaping stroke on the challenging material before him. If not in anything else, his copious alterations and corrections show him to be a true disciple of the creator of Savitri who made nearly a dozen
Page 112
transcripts of it in order not merely to make it as poetic as possible but also to charge it with the utmost power of spiritual illumination. Apropos of your dream I may add that along with typifying the ever-aspiring Amal the writer, what you dreamt of typifies the never-tiring helper in you. You have recorded your response to my proposal for alterations and corrections: "My attitude was - these must be done: we must oblige him."
You have written: "Yesterday a friend of mine asked a question to which I would like to have an answer. I can't find it. She was telling me how shockingly dirty and noisy and smelly Pondicherry is felt in contrast to the U.S.A. I said that this feeling would wear off, that she would get used to Pondicherry. Then she said: 'Yes, I know I'll get used to it, but why do I have to get used to all this dirt and disturbance when 1 can live in a beautiful place?' So that's the question. Of course to be in Pondicherry in the Ashram is the apparent answer. But what is the spiritual reason for her having to be in an environment which is unpleasant and distasteful?"
I think the problem goes beyond Pondicherry though Pondicherry is a significant focus in the spiritual reason for vour friend having to be in an environment comparatively repulsive. The problem touches on India as a whole in contrast to the U.S.A. And, as your friend is in Pondicherry for the Ashram, we have to ask why of all countries India, which Pondicherry with its Ashram represents, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother chose for their spiritual work.
I believe India was chosen for what I regard as the supreme divine manifestation for two reasons. The inner being of what historically and geographically has come to be known as the Indian subcontinent is spiritually charged beyond that of any other country. From the time of the ancient Rigveda to our own day the soul-search for the Eternal and the Infinite has been more intense here than
Page 113
anywhere else, India has the greatest potentiality for the work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. This is the first reason.
The second reason is that at present India's outer being is very deeply sunk in dirt and noise and stench reflecting a marked imperfection in life-style. Such an excessive condition calls out for a change. Hence the Divine's response by physically carrying on its work in the midst of all this disagreeable environment. The extraordinary inner spiritual potentiality has to come forth and set right the marked exterior imbalance. Especially fitting is it for Sri Aurobindo and the Mother to be here because their Integral Yoga is meant not for a glorious flight to a perfect Beyond but for a splendid all-round manifestation of a Divine Life on earth. That manifestation has to be through a power of the Spirit mostly unexplored hitherto and never really mobilised for terrestrial use, a power of the supreme Personal Godhead which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother call Supermind or Truth-Consciousness. The power's transformative no less than creative fullness is not only high above, waiting to descend, but also hidden below in Matter itself to be evoked for evolution by its free counterpart in co-operation with the aspiring and self-surrendering human soul.
Of course we need not seek out as much as possible the marked exterior imbalance of the Indian scene. All Pondicherry is not haunted by it. But if it falls to our lot and we try to escape instead of dealing with it, we shall fail to be followers of the Aurobindonian mission which has selected India very deliberately for its field. That mission aims ultimately to alter the ugly surroundings it is set in and, in the meantime, it has given us the ability to rise above the surrounding ugliness by an inner equanimity while outwardly doing our best to change it with whatever means we possess. The Mother, who was put forward by Sri Aurobindo as the Shakti of his dynamic world-vision, exemplified at the same time the bringing forth of the highest spiritual consciousness and the most refined artistic taste which would help transfigure the extremely deficient Indian scene.
Page 114
Out of all improvable places in India Pondicherry has become Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's centre of action because it has most suited their mission. By an adesh, an inner command, by Sri Krishna, Sri Aurobindo left his political life and went first to Chandernagore in French India and then to Pondicherry. If he had remained in British India he would have never been free from the harassment a nationalist leader, who had set his sights on his country's complete independence, would have suffered. As for the Mother, Sri Aurobindo's being in the capital of French India was just right for her who was a French citizen and had heard of him from her husband who had gone there four years earlier and returned now in connection with the programme of a political party in the town.
Hence, as Aurobindonians, we have to be in India's Pondicherry in order to help to the furthest extent the greatest spiritual mission on earth and calmly bear whatever physical conditions in it we cannot change in spite of our best efforts. These conditions are not accidental on the whole: they are bound up with a divine destiny.
(10.1,1993)
A friend thought it a good idea to make me recite the whole of Savitri as well as several short poems of Sri Aurobindo. Twice a week the recording was done. It took a long time for all this verse to combine with Amal's voice - come out "amalgamated", we may say.
The first principle of good recitation is that the words should stand forth clearly. One may put emotion in, but not by blurring the words.)! once heard a passage from the book The Mother declaimed at the Playground by one of our boys when Jawaharlal Nehru had visited the Ashram. It was a powerful passage - 1 think about the action of Mahakali - but the declaimer was so carried away and spoke so vehemently with all his passion poured into the meaning that I could hardly recognise the words. I have also listened to taped
Page 115
readings by eminent English poets - T.S. Eliot, for instance. Although Eliot made each word clear-cut one was sent to sleep after a time by the utterly neutral tone. This was the other extreme. To get the right mean, one must realise a few facts. I know that in good poetry the emotion is in-built, the words are so arranged by inspiration that they carry home the heart-thrill meant to be communicated. But surely to adopt a monotone is not to do justice to the varied cunning of felicitous phrase and rhythm that constitutes true poetry. Some change of pitch and volume and speed is called for, not overwhelming the words but helping them to take off properly towards the hearer. The in-built heart-thrill is such that it can be caught by reading silently with the eye, but when it has to be transferred audibly to the non-reader, the voice has to wing it just a little. For, the hearer is not always able to concentrate on the felicities of art: they need to be brought out by the play of the reciter's tone. Some judicious "emoting" with the voice is in order. But the emoting must have behind it a genuine steeping of the declaimer in both the content and the form of the verse. He must be careful of stresses, the quantities (that is, the long and short vowels), the pauses, not to mention the pronunciation, no less than receptive of the inner thrust of the poet's vision. In other words, the emoting has to do nothing more than convey the poem's own emotion by an echo in one's heart and a reflex in one's mind. As little as possible of one's private feeling should be added. The moment this feeling intervenes substantially the language is apt to get fuzzy. The moment the fuzziness starts, the very first principle of good recitation is violated: the correct conveyance of the verbal shape, the verbal structure.
(29.7.1983)
Page 116
11
I am very happy that you have taken yourself thoroughly in hand and are doing your best to combine normal natural behaviour with the Yogic aspiration. What often stands in the way of both is what I have called "too much preoccupation with oneself". A relaxation away from the ego is indicated in an outward direction by cordial and friendly and co-operative relations with those among whom one lives or works: the same is indicated in an inward direction by getting in touch with the deeper layer of the mind which looks up to a light beyond the mere thinker and with the depth behind the mere "feeler" to a love for some ideality of existence towards which our sense of the good, the true and the beautiful keeps pointing. The cause of the tightness, the narrowness, the tiring anxiety of common life is our being centred in the "habitual self".
You speak of your "proclivity to observe and hold aloft the negative aspect of people's personality", a proclivity which "mars the budding warmth and growing closeness of a relationship". This means you have a hypercritical temper. And perhaps such a temper inclines you to see also the negative aspects of your own personality. The Delphic command - "Know thyself" - is ever valid: we must perceive our abysms, our level lands, our heights: I should add "our depths" as distinguished from "our abysms". But the stress should be on perfecting all our positives. Here there should be no egoistic preening ourselves on our merits and virtues just as there should be no urge to sit in sackcloth and ashes because of our defects and depravities. What is required is an offering of the whole composite self to the Divine and an appeal to help the positives prevail over the negatives and ultimately dissolve them. Sri Aurobindo has said that the Mother never makes much of a sadhak's shortcomings: her concentration is always on his good points, his openings to the Divine Light and Love: no matter how often he may fall.
Page 117
she never emphasises his downward tendency but hurries to pick him up and set him once more on the right course. Our attitude to fellow-creatures should be similar. Their minuses must not loom large in our eyes: their pluses have to be appreciated in such a way that each person may feel like doing his best to live up to our happy evaluation of his pluses and hope to lessen the minuses as much as possible.
In another letter you have asked for the correct method of meditation and the correct idea or movement on which to meditate. Then you say that you follow my method of meditation as given in the February (1993) issue of Mother India, namely, to concentrate on the Presence of the Mother in the heart and offer all the movements as quietly as possible to the Presence. Then you put the question: "Can it also be done that one concentrates in a movement of aspiration to the Grace or one concentrates in a state of equanimity, i.e. in a state of having stepped back in the Vast throbbing behind us?" There is no single way to meditate. I believe that the alternatives you have mentioned have figured in some letter or other of mine in the past. Whatever comes naturally to one is the right mode at any particular time. At this moment my meditative mood may be summarised as follows: I feel myself stationed at the back of my heart in a wideness not quite throbbing but quietly vibrating to a far-off rhythm which seems like a universal humming with small ups and downs of tone and, while this large peacefully listening poise is enjoyed, some sort of warm "aroma" of self-offering wafts towards the Divine Mother present everywhere yet wearing the face and form of the human-looking Mother we have known in the Ashram as our Guru and this "aroma" emanates from a small centre which is myself deep within, a centre held in the arms, as it were, of the same human-divine being - at once infinite and finite - towards whom and into whom the self-offering flows. I think what is happening covers all the alternatives you draw my attention to, including the movement of aspiration to the Grace.
You may ask: "How can you talk of meditating when you
Page 118
are typing this letter?" Although I do not claim to be an adept in meditative practice I may reply: "Meditation has two aspects - background and foreground. There can. be a detached, dedicated, offered, aspiring state continuing from moment to moment without any effort - undisturbed by whatever one may be doing, a constant background to all one's doings, of which one becomes distinctly aware only when one looks within at any instant, withdrawing from the work in hand for a second. When one returns to the work one knows that the background meditation goes on but instead of the distinct awareness there is in the foreground just a vague sense of something within carrying on the Integral Yoga while one is busy with typing or reading or even talking. Such a double state is possible most when the Yoga is done by the heart rather than by the mind. While the mind is occupied with various activities, the heart stands apart, alone with the Divine. Surely a link exists between the two, for it is the mind that on ceasing from its activities at any point realises that what it was conscious of as a far-away yet persisting divine support is a many-featured condition of blessedness, a participation both ample and profound in some sort of inner divineness.
The background Yoga can be of diverse kinds. People may feel an action from above, illumining both mind and heart and opening an inner eye to strange glorious scenes or to a play of forces seeming to affect the very body although actually the occult or spiritual phenomena have the subtle-physical part of us as their field and the gross-physical form experiences no more than a mirror-effect. The mirror-effect can be productive of happy results in our nerves and even organs but essentially there is no transformation of them towards establishing a new more-than-human body. I have spoken of the foreground and background of meditation in terms of my own general none-too-spectacular transitions from the old "I" to the new Aurobindonian "me".
You are right in deciding not to compare yourself with anyone, superior or inferior. The tendency to pat ourselves on
Page 119
the back when we find someone below our self-assessment or to hang our jaw down face to face with a person evidently better-gifted - this tendency is natural and proves helpful at times, but on the whole it is mistaken, for each of us is unique and has to develop according to a "pattern inherent in our nature. This does not mean that we should turn a deaf ear to people's ideas about us. It simply means that we have to be humble enough to consider whatever criticism is made of us and clever enough to see through flattering estimates. Sri Aurobindo once forbade me to run any rivalry with poets already "arrived" or famous but to cultivate my own individual line of inspiration, recognise my defects and, without caring for fame, intensify whatever successful vein I had struck. I was lucky to have Sri Aurobindo to set the proper measure for me, but his aim was to guide me as long as he thought I needed guidance and then leave me to find my own way with the instinct he had implanted in me. In sadhana too one was expected to discern the bent of one's disposition and not put up any scale of more advanced or less advanced sadhaks. Of course a wise practitioner of Yoga would be ready to learn from the example of others, catch the particular line along which a fellow-Ashramite had come inwardly close to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother or avoid the trend by which he or she seemed to grow distant.
"How will the division in me heal? What would be the mechanism of the healing?" - this question of yours gets an answer which is a little complex. The first step is to take your stand as firmly as you can in the part you want to regard as your normal self. The sense of identity must not waver. A detachment has to be practised from the less normal, less Yogic personality - a detachment which tends to forget that there is anything of such a character. The less one is preoccupied with something to be avoided, the firmer gets one's sense of the right self. There is also the need to recognise that actually you are neither the right self nor the wrong. You become whatever your "consciousness" gets fixed on. Each of us is essentially a consciousness moving from one shade to
Page 120
another of what we ordinarily regard as our self. The general nature we take to be our own is the ego-formation which demarcates each of us from his fellows and stamps on certain shades of mental, vital and physical being the sense that we are those shades. Then when we turn inward and realise a finer being as our own we have the impression that the ego has made the choice. And we may ask why Sri Aurobindo wants us to get away from such a spiritually inclined chap as the ego. But in fact we have got beyond the ego by the consciousness fixing itself on another psychological state than the ego-bound outer one. And what has guided the consciousness is a projection of the true soul, the psychic being, into the mental-vital-physical complex accompanied by the ego-sense. While the ego directs this complex into the common ways of individual existence with its barbaric or polished self-regard and possessiveness, the psychic projection throbs in sympathy with all creatures as if they were its own self in spite of differences of mould and manner. Furthermore, it has the urge always towards some perfection of thought, expression, conduct and, through it, feels the call of some Unthinkable, Inexpressible, Uncodifiable and, at the same time, in its relation to the cosmic scene of manifestaion, some Infallible. It is this psychic projection that turns towards Yoga and the more you are conscious of it in a direct mode rather than by a reflection of it, as it were, in the mental side of your personality, the easier becomes the process of feeling alien to the "persona" you wish to banish. As there is an intense sincerity in your desire to annul whatever bit of deviation occurred, you are sure to succeed in your Yogic career. All who Have experienced the touch of Sri Aurobindo's finger on the core of their being must expel all doubt about their ultimate destination: the Divine. Everybody has his weak spells, his sudden falls, but when one's direction has been set by a Higher Power they do not matter in the long run. What I am saying has a living force and is not mere book-knowledge, because my deviations have been legion and yet the Mother's hold on me has never failed. I had once asked and obtained the boon:
Page 121
"Even if I want to get away from you, never let me go." My deviations included at times rash ventures, the taking of risks. There the Mother had warned me against being too cocksure of her saviour grace. She said: "We have saved you again and again. But do not exploit our protection. Try to be a little more prudent."
(15.3.1993)
It has always been a pleasure to hear from you. And I realise that for a long time I have not been alert enough to give you a corresponding (apt epithet!) pleasure on hearing from me. Your latest sheaf of matter has stirred me from my long lethargy.
It is indeed interesting that Swami Vivekananda was a Freemason. The evidence is well presented. But I cannot subscribe to the idea that his memorable "Sisters and Brothers of America" at the Parliament of Religions at Chicago was inspired by his freemasonry or that it would be "a fortuitous choice of words" without the Masonic underpinning.
To begin with: if, as you claim, Vedanta and Freemasonry have similar attitudes, the former is sufficient to account for that mode of address. Secondly, and basically, the term "Sisters" could never come from Freemasonry, There are no "Sisters" in it: it is exclusively a Brotherhood. Sisterhood is excluded because sisters can't keep secrets, according to these brothers. Both logically and psychologically, Vivekananda's thrilling opening phrase need have nothing to do with his having been a Freemason. In fact, to trace it to his having been initiated in "Anchor and Hope Lodge" is to rob it of its spontaneous inspired splendour, its essentially spiritual aura, its roots in the living sense of the One Self in all and the ancient Indian vision of the whole world being a single family. Besides, Freemasonry, in spite of its "three Grand Principles" - "brotherly love, relief (charity) and truth" - is a secret enclosed limited group conscious of a difference between itself and the world at large: it stresses a special
Page 122
relationship among its initiates in distinction from the rest of humanity. There is a touch of the sectarian mind - as in the Semitic religions (judaism, Christianity, Mohammedanism) - in contrast to the world-wide attitude of Hinduism and Buddhism.
I have nothing against Freemasonry. My father was a master mason of the Lodge "Rising Star" and I would have been initiated if my father had not died at the age of 44. I do not share the prejudice of the Roman Catholic Church against Freemasons, though I may admit that certain sections of them had political interests as part of their work and had even an anti-clerical shade in their outlook on life, as in France at one time. My refusal to reduce Vivekananda's grand phrase to his freemasonry is not due to any bias against his membership of any lodge.
(12.12.1992)
In your recent letter you speak of two sides of your being: one which wants to give itself in affection and sympathy to the whole world without any expectation of reward and the other which wants everybody to make much of you and which looks upon itself as specially important. But you regret this side of your disposition and wish to outgrow it. I gather from your self-portrayal that the soul in you is in full bloom of sweetness and light but does not yet have fully the fire of Agni, the all-conquering strength to overwhelm the egoistic urge. However, the fact that you pray to the Mother to take away all ambition, all self-regarding movement, is a clear sign that the sweetness is no mere heavenly sugar but the precursor of a powerful purifying nectar and that the light is more than the shedding of happiness on people: it is also a force turned inward to expose and eliminate every petty egoistic impulse. Agni's- fire is surely in the making and the Mother will respond to your prayer and make you completely her spiritual child who will bring much joy and wisdom in your physical period of "second childhood"!
Page 123
The passing away of Madhav Pandit has given you much food for thought. When you so seriously think of mutability in general and even of your own death in some far future, why do you go at me hammer and tongs because I used the word "survive" about myself? At my age it is natural that now and then the idea of the great transition should occur. As I once before told you, Einstein felt himself to be so much a part of the universal flow that he had no particular self-regard in the face of possible death: I feel utterly a part of Sri Aurobindo's world-vision and world-work so that I am certain he will arrange my life according to his will: I have no concern over how long I shall live. I am ready to go tomorrow as well as prepared to continue for years and years, savouring the immortal ambrosia of their inner presence and striving to let something of its rapture and radiance touch the hearts of all who are in contact with me. At my age I cannot have absolute confidence that I shall definitely continue: so it is natural for me to have said to you: "I hope to survive till you return." Along with a streak of jocularity, a teasing tinge, there is bound to be a vein of seriousness here. I understand and appreciate your pain at the word "survive", your anxiety that I should not pop off soon and your deeply held wish for me to go on and on to help people remember and act on Sri Krishna's great words: "You who have come into this transient and unhappy world, love and worship Me." Yes, I cannot blame you for chiding me: your affection is perceived to be warm and vibrant behind your protest, but neither should you take me to task for being realistic. All the same, let me tell you what I have already written to a friend earlier. Your anxiety calls for its repetition. My heart is ever young, my mind is always ready for new ventures and although my legs are not very co-operative these days they are out of tune with a face which - if I am to believe my friends - has no pouches below the eyes and no marked wrinkles and has, even at the age of 88 years and 5 months, all its own front teeth (9 lower and 10 upper). If my head has lost most of its hair, can't the condition be regarded as symbolic of the spirit
Page 124
of youth caught in the slang expression "Go baldheaded" (for things), meaning "proceed regardless of consequences"? I hope this picture of me makes you happy.
(15.4.1993)
Long ago I read a letter of Sri Aurobindo's to the effect that it is the lesson of life that everything in this world fails a man except the Divine if he turns entirely to the Divine. I had wondered whether there was any reference here to outer circumstances and events taking a favourable shape by one's adherence to the Divine by means of faith or prayer.
Of course external things could change to some extent, but the non-failure of the Divine in this sense struck me as too superficial and having little bearing on the progress of one's sadhana.
Yesterday there was an incident as if something important were failing me radically, a solid support abruptly giving way. I kept offering the painful occasion to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. All of a sudden, at the Samadhi, I felt an intense inward opening to them in the heart-centre. Behind my own self in that centre supporting me, sustaining my being was a wide warm Presence perpetually transfusing into me a deep peace, a profound happiness, the sense of a personified eternal smile holding me up and passing its strength of unending sweetness into my inner poise.
All external features at the Samadhi vanished. My eyes kept closing and as if drowning in the vast surge of that blissful love which was fully unveiled to my heart because this heart had turned to no support except its mighty mystery. The pain that was there was enveloped by the powerful warmth which was tending all the time to erase it with a joy capable of blotting out everything.
I understood most vividly what Sri Aurobindo had meant by those words - the modus operandi grew clear of the one unfailing factor possible to realise amidst the vicissitudes of "this transient and unhappy world" into which we have come
Page 125
yet within which Sri Krishna points to an unchanging support when he gives the call: "Love and worship Me."
A little later an external circumstance came to my help. I received an assurance making me see that the hurtful situation had arisen out of an utter misunderstanding.
(28.4.1993)
Page 126
12
AN OLD CORRESPONDENCE ON SRI AUROBINDO
BETWEEN K.M. MUNSHI AND K.D. SETHNA
Hamilton Villa, Nepean Sea Road, Bombay
7-9-51
Dear Mr. Munshi,
Thanks for sending me your speech on Sri Aurobindo. It is a good tribute, with genuine feeling and admiration behind it, and has some memorable phrases.
In one or two places there seems to have been a little hurry and therefore some carelessness. What you say about his poetry is perfectly true and well put, but by some mistake the quotations you have made are not from Sri Aurobindo's work but from mine! I feel very flattered by the unconscious compliment you have paid me.
I can't agree that even for a student of philosophy the philosophic works of Sri Aurobindo are too difficult. Compared to Kant, for instance, he is smooth sailing. It is his comprehensiveness and integrality that challenge the reader accustomed to the intense but one-sided philosophical treatment that our own thinkers have given to basic problems. Yet, with a grounding in the Upanishads and the Gita, one should be able to follow Sri Aurobindo in his multifarious original extensions of spiritual thought. The trouble is, I believe, that students of philosophy in India lack somewhat in suppleness of mind and are also under the obsession of India's own great spiritual past which they consider to be unsurpassable even by India's own spiritual present and future. We should be ashamed that while Stanford and Cornell Universities in America have made Sri Aurobindo a graduate and postgraduate course the country of his birth can see little further than Radhakrishnan and Bhartacharya who for all their Indian thinking are still philosophers in the Western sense
Page 127
and do not project their thought-systems from the illumined harmony of the God-realised soul.
You say in connection with India's fight for freedom: "He prophesied that after him will come someone who will achieve what he could not." I suppose you have Gandhiji in mind. But I don't think Sri Aurobindo exactly said that he himself could not have achieved India's independence. He did what was creatively possible in the short period he allowed himself and he left politics not because of any sense of inability but because of a greater and deeper call. Without answering that call he could not have even really done for India's independence what was necessary. Political independence without a spiritual new life ready to be drawn upon would hardly be freedom in the genuine Indian sense. Besides, the spiritual power that Sri Aurobindo won was actually the hidden sustaining energy of the nationalist movement; because it was occult the outer eye could not appreciate it but a flash of its presence is given even to this eye by the strange fact that our Independence Day falls not on Gandhiji's or Nehru's or Patel's or even Tilak's birthday but on Sri Aurobindo's.
I believe it was Sri Aurobindo's idea that the two men who had the authentic creative and coherent and consistent power to lead India to political independence were Tilak and, after him, Chitta Ranjan Das. With their passing, politics in India lacked the full dynamic for quick and complete results. There were brilliant spurts and a host of concurrent and sometimes colliding movements but not the massive one-pointed vitality. Of course, all sincere and forceful workers helped the cause of freedom but it cannot be said that any one man had the gift to achieve the ultimate result. For one thing, none had the Tilakian and Dasian combination of fundamental vision with tact of the moment and there were a whole series of blunders which hindered rather than helped our cause. We have somehow stumbled into independence and one proof of our lack of authentic sight or constructiveness is that we achieved a fissured independence and brought to birth with it
Page 128
two monsters on either side of us.
One last point. Your distinction between a Yogi and an Avatar does not go to the root of the matter. You say: "A Yogi is one who attempts an ascent to Divine Consciousness. An Avatar is one who is born in Divine Consciousness." An Avatar is surely born and not made, in the sense that anybody and everybody can't be an Avatar, but whether the Divine Consciousness shows itself openly through the Avatar to the world from the very beginning depends on the purpose with which one or another birth of the Avatar takes place. No Avatar before Rama showed specifically the Divine Consciousness either from birth or during life. Even Rama, whatever he may have inwardly known himself to be, never quite showed the Divine Consciousness; he was there to establish the dharma of the ethical man and acted out a moral ideal in a manner that suggested to everyone the superhuman. He never asked people to transcend the human consciousness and unite with the Divine. The Divine Consciousness as such formed no direct part of what Rama exemplified or sought to manifest. And yet he was undeniably an Avatar. Secondly, it is not necessary that an Avatar, when his business is to manifest the Divine Consciousness as such, should show it from the very start. Even Krishna, as the Chhandogya Upanishad says, became a disciple of Rishi Ghora (if I don't mistake the name) before growing aware of the Divine Consciousness in full: the awareness came almost at a touch, but the incident of discipleship is significant. Then take Chaitanya. The Krishna-being manifested here in an intensely recognisable way - but intermittently, as it were. In certain periods Chaitanya was a supreme Bhakta and nothing more, and he was certainly not born in Divine Consciousness. I don't argue that no Avatar was or could be born like that, but no surface tests can be applied. Again, an Avatar too has an instrumental Nature-being like any of us and develops a series of births; if he did not, he would be just a miraculous freak and hold no lesson or hope for evolving earth. An Avatar is especially a leader and exemplar of the evolution, and for this he need not be born in
Page 129
Divine Consciousness in any overt way; to be an exemplar as well as a leader he may have to look quite human for a long time, or at intervals, as happened with Chaitanya. The Avatar's function is to come and put forth a great power at critical and crucial points of history - and particularly when a transition from one stage to another is to be made. That is why we have in the traditional Hindu account, a fish Avatar, an amphibious tortoise Avatar, a land-animal boar Avatar, a man-lion Avatar, a dwarf-man Avatar, a rajasic human Avatar (Parashurama), then a sattwic human Avatar (Rama) and then a guna-transcending superhuman "global" Overmind Avatar (Krishna). If we count Buddha as an Avatar too, he would represent on earth the clean break bypassing the Overmind into the Transcendent, but only the Transcendent's negative aspect and not Its positive Truth-Consciousness integral and creative and dynamic. After him, in between, there could be an Avatar (Chaitanya) intensely establishing in the human emotional-vital the possibility of an absolute love and surrender which might be the basis for calling down and receiving the power from above of a divine life. That Truth-Consciousness above the Overmind would be what the next Avatar would exemplify. And when he exemplifies it he would take into himself the whole human being and nature, represent all the sides and tendencies of evolving man, assume even the agnostic aspect of the modern mind and show ultimately how all Nature is to be taken into Super-nature and how by the latter's descent an integral transformation is to be accomplished in terms of the Truth-Consciousness. The final Avatar who would bring God to earth and establish Him here was called Kalki by Hindu tradition and to identify Kalki we have to look for a figure whose goal is integral earth-transformation with the force of the supreme dynamic divinity of a Supermind which manifests the next stage after the Overmind by compassing not only the Transcendent's formlessness and absolute peace but also Its sovereign creativity of form and Its
Force one with unimaginable rest.
Page 130
Can you find anyone who does these things better and more clearly than Sri Aurobindo? Do you think any mere Yogi can come to effect so revolutionarily evolutionary a change on earth as the ascent to and descent of the Supermind - and that too for the collectivity and not only for a few individuals?
Of course, most disciples of every spiritual figure in India claim their master to be an Avatar. But I am not proposing an apotheosis of Sri Aurobindo on a mere impulse of bhakti. I am presenting to you in outline a consistent vision of Avatarhood and its functions and methods and pointing out how logically and inevitably Sri Aurobindo fits into the scheme.
Appreciating once more the fine spirit behind your speech,
I remain,
Yours sincerely,
K D. Sethna
No. C 187/51/PAM
1, Queen Victoria Road, New Delhi
The 16th September 1951
My dear Sethna,
Your letter dated the 7th September to hand.
I am glad you like my tribute to Sri Aurobindo. Most of my speeches have to be prepared in a hurry and with the scanty materials at my disposal for the moment.
I understand Advent is going to publish it. Perhaps you might also like to do it; if you do, substitute any good quotations from Sri Aurobindo rather than from yourself.
If Kant is difficult, Sri Aurobindo may be difficult too. I take the normal philosophical student as one who is able to understand John Stuart Mill or Radhakrishnan easily, but 'The Life Divine' is rather difficult to follow even for such a student unless he has a" grounding not merely of the Upani-shads and the Gita but of some of the easier works of Sri Aurobindo.
I do realize that Sri Aurobindo's works ought to be prescribed in our University courses. Our University Profes-
Page 131
sors of Philosophy, however, following western Professors, are intellectuals; they are not creative artists of higher life, as those interested in philosophy and yoga should be. Still we must not forget that quite a large number of intellectuals in our country have begun to appreciate the position of Sri Aurobindo as the prophet of Indian renaissance and the architect of an advanced philosophy and yoga.
As regards your next point - there I am again speaking from memory - Sri Aurobindo did say somewhere in the beginning of the century that someone will come who will achieve the purpose for which he was working, I have a distinct recollection of it and if I get hold of that passage, I will let you have it. A thing 'creatively possible' is different from 'actually realized'. Therefore, I cannot over-emphasize the services of Sri Aurobindo in disregard of those of Gandhiji.
You refer to the coincidence of 15th August. Does Sri Aurobindo need an adventitious importance of accidental coincidence of dates? You are a devotee and naturally prefer to surround him with a supernatural halo, but in doing so perhaps you convert the prophet of the new age into the head of a mystic sect.
I read your theory of Avatara with great interest. I will not try to combat it, for it expresses again the faith of a devotee. I can only give you my views on the matter. "Avatara" is the descent of God on earth in human form. The aspirant can only become first an aspirant, then a Siddha or Mukta or to use the language of Gita a Brahma Bhuta; and later on, can become merged in God, "enter Me". This is the basic idea of Aryan culture as developed in India. God descends on earth as a man and a man can merge himself into Him by complete surrender. This is the line of demarcation between Aryan and Semitic cultures. The latter does not envisage the descent of God on earth but only of his son or prophet. The Aryan idea is at the root of integration of personality differently called 'Samsiddhi' or self-realization by Gita, 'Mukti' or freedom by Upanishads, 'Nirvana' or liberation by Buddhism and 'Kai-valyd or integration by Yoga and Jainism.
Page 132
With our national weakness for easy apotheosis, we have been multiplying Avataras. Even Swami Narayana {early XIX century) claimed to be Sri Krishna come again and is worshipped as an Avatara by his sect. The other day a Sadhu came to me and, throughout a forty-minute conversation, referred to himself as Bhagwan. The basic concept of Avatara, however, is that he is very much more than a Brahma Bhuta, Siddha or Mukta. The line of demarcation appears to me to be at the point which separates an elaborate effort at self-discipline and the sudden unveiling of Divine Consciousness, leaving no trace of human weakness to conquer.
Where then, you will naturally ask me, do I place Sri Aurobindo? There is first Aurobindo the great speculative thinker, the intellect who postulated the mind; then the Overmind; and then the Super-mind. The Siddha transcends his samsiddhi; becomes completely absorbed in God or call it Divine Consciousness, and then brings it down not only in himself but through himself to mind and matter in order to elevate them. To put it concretely - I may be wrong - Arjuna surrenders himself to Sri Krishna and becomes ''God-minded'', raises himself higher and merges into Vasudev-hood; (then comes the Aurobindonian thought) Vasudev-hood descends into Arjuna and through him uplifts the universe.
This is a sweeping advance on self-realization but this is speculative thought, not individual evolution.
As regards the latter, Sri Aurobindo's life was a tremendous effort up to say 1928 for realizing the Divine. Assuming he reached 'Vasudev-hood' in 1928, and brought it down as you believe it, it is a question of faith. But this effort is scarcely consistent with the concept of Avatara. It may be stealing the thunders of Jove; but it is not the descent of Jove himself. But I am afraid I have no right to discuss this matter.
Whether he reached a stage of Siddhi or Vasudev-hood, whether he became a transmitting agency of God or was merged in Him, are matters beyond the reach of the ordinary mind. They are more within the sphere of faith. As Buddha says about God -
Page 133
Om Amitaya! Measure not with words the immeasurable;
Nor sink the string of thought into the fathomless;
Who asks doth err: Who answers errs. S
ay naught.
To me Sri Aurobindo has been a prophet, both of Indian nationalism and Indian renaissance; one who attained sam-siddhi and transcended human limitations of fear, attachment and wrath and gave a fresh validity to the destiny of man as Indian culture envisaged it. That is enough for me.
As I am too near him and I am not gifted with the higher faith of a devotee which you possess, perhaps we are destined not to agree.
With kind regards,
K.M. Munshi
19.9.51
My dear Munshi,
It was a pleasure to get your letter. Two or three points mentioned by you call for a short comment. I hope you'll forgive a little forthrightness on my part.
You think that to be a devotee is to overrate a man's greatness. But every devotee is not a brainless emotionalist seeing in a super-rosy light everything connected with the object of devotion. Besides, devotion is of various kinds; at its best it is only the opening of the deep heart-centre by which an ideal becomes dynamically operative in the emotions and in the life-impulses instead of remaining a high and dry intellectual light; it makes one's very bodily being respond to the ideal because it responds not just to a fine idea but also to its embodiment in a man, in the personality of him who gives us that ideal. Here there is nothing to unbalance the mind
Page 134
proper and distort the view and value of things.
On the contrary, I may say that if at times devotion runs the risk of exaggerating the truth it is yet the only power that can at its finest give one a perfect insight into the truth. Even God cannot be known truly unless he is deeply loved; love or devotion puts one en rapport with the inmost reality of a thing, or person, and, provided it is not the only power at work and one's consciousness is developed all round, it is the master-key to correct vision and appreciation. Besides, without it a great man is simply wasted. If Sri Aurobindo was great, what is the use of his greatness if we do not go to him as his devotees so that he may move us from the centre of us and make us his instruments? I am sure that Sri Aurobindo was on earth mainly for those who in some way or other could be his devotees, for they alone can make his mission a fruitful force on the largest scale.
Further, may I ask what is wrong with giving Sri Aurobindo "a supernatural halo"? Was he not a master of the spiritual consciousness and therefore one who has risen above Nature though never disdainful of Nature and ever wanting to transform and fulfil Nature? Without a supernatural halo he would be no Yogi at all and would be of little use in bringing about a radical change of human consciousness. He did have a supernatural halo and to recognise it cannot lead, as you fear, to a mystic sectarianism but rather to a proper appreciation of and response to his extraordinarily wide and non-sectarian spirituality.
As regards Avatarhood I remember Sri Aurobindo saying that he didn't care a damn whether he was called an Avatar or not. He was interested in making the Supermind a permanent state of wide-awake consciousness in the embodied human and in converting every part of human nature into a form of its own divine perfection which pre-exists archetypally in the Supermind. He was interested also in establishing the Supermind as not only an individual consciousness but as a part of earth's collective being. Provided he did these things he never bothered whether the doing of them made people look at him
Page 135
as at an Avatar or as at only a Brahma Bhuta or Siddha or Mukta. But one saying of his is very suggestive; "I am not doing anything for myself, as I have no personal need of anything, neither of salvation (Moksha) nor supramentalisa-tion. If I am seeking after supramentalisation, it is because it is a thing that has to be done for the earth-consciousness and if it is not done in myself, it cannot be done in others." It reminds me strongly of Sri Krishna's words in the Gita to the effect that, having everything, he has no need to do anything and yet he is all the time at work because that is how the universe goes on and progresses.
My view of Avatarhood is, as I have specifically stated, not a product of a muddled or fuddled devotionalism. It is too systematic for that. Also, I may say that it is not my own invention. It is a paraphrase of Sri Aurobindo's own view of the process and purpose of Avatarhood as not a mere divine freak but a divine demonstration to man of how evolution is to be accomplished and human difficulties overcome and human nature divinised. Of course every Yogi cannot be an Avatar by the mere fact of his demonstrating something or other of the process of spiritual growth. But the Avatar, for all his special position, is a sort of primus inter pares closely connected with the evolutionary endeavour. Does not Sri Krishna speak of many lives of himself in the past and not only of a few supreme ones? This means that in many lives he played the role of a human Vibhuti and did not look like an Avatar in the conventional sense, although inwardly he was always the Supreme Divine Person. This means, to follow Sri Aurobindo's words, that in Avatarhood there is a Consciousness behind which is that of the Godhead and a frontal consciousness, human or apparently human or at any rate with all the appearances of terrestriality, which is the instrumental personality. Very naturally, therefore, there could be a phenomenon in which, instead of a withholding of the inward divinity so that only a Vibhuti manifestation is made or also what you call "a sudden unveiling of Divine Consciousness, leaving no trace of human weakness to conquer", the Avatar
Page 136
couid keep his inward divinity back for a time and make his instrumental personality go through human-looking labours, what you call "an elaborate effort at discipline", for the sake of teaching humanity how all difficulties can be accepted and transcended.1 Such a manifestation would be precisely in tune with the modern age, the age in which the evolutionary idea is most active and a visible practical example of a process of divinisation through an overcoming of the typical modern difficulties would be the most helpful. If you won't mind my saying so, your notion of an Avatar is too popularly "flashy", too rigid and traditional and one-sided.
But, of course, as I said before, the attaching of a certain label was something Sri Aurobindo never cared a tuppence for and the most important point is to understand Sri Aurobindo's mission and help the undeniable grandeur and immensity of it; the descent and establishment of the Supermind on earth, with the nucleus of the supramental race shining out from this dear India of ours. If we agree on this, all disagreements elsewhere can have no importance.
K. D. Sethna
P.S. Have you seen the latest issue of Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual? It contains an early essay of Sri Aurobindo's, entitled Vyasa: Some Characteristics and part of his Notes on the Mahabharata proposing to disengage almost in its entirety the original epic of Vyasa in about 24,000 slokas from the present mass of 100,000.
1, The phrase "no trace of human weakness to conquer" is rather ambiguous. Unless the "supramentalisation" of all our nature-parts, including the body, is done as envisaged by Sri Aurobindo, certain fundamentals of human weakness, however subdued, are bound to be left. There never was any Avatar in the past completely supramentalised or even envisaging the supramentalisation of every nature-part.
Page 137
3.10.51
You must have received my letter of 19.9.51 replying to yours of 16.9.51. In it I touched upon a few points which stood out in my mind as of immediate importance. But on rereading your letter I find that there are some other points which call for a short comment because they are based on insufficient information about Sri Aurobindo's spiritual life. As you are an admirer of Sri Aurobindo, I think you will be glad to have the correct facts.
You have written: "There is first Aurobindo the great speculative thinker, the intellect who postulated the mind; then the Over-mind; and then the Super-mind." A little later, after giving what you consider to be "the Aurobindonian thought", you say: "This is a sweeping advance on self-realisation."
Now this is a capital mistake. The Arya in which, from 1914 to 1921, the Aurobindonian thought was first embodied in a comprehensive way was not a journal of philosophical postulation. At the end of an editorial note written by Sri Aurobindo in the Arya of July, 1918 he makes this quite clear. Here is the whole passage:
We had not in view at any time a review or magazine in the ordinary sense of the word, that is to say, a popular presentation or criticism of current information and current thought on philosophical questions. Nor was it, as in some philosophical and religious magazines in India, the restatement of an existing school or position of philosophical thought cut out in its lines and needing only to be popularised and supported. Our idea was the thinking out of a synthetic philosophy which might be a contribution to the thought of the new age that is coming upon us. We start from the idea that humanity is moving to a great change of its life which will even lead to a new life of the
Page 138
race, - in all countries where men think, there is now in various forms that idea and hope, - and our aim has been to search for the spiritual, religious and other truths which can enlighten and guide the race in this movement and endeavour. The spiritual experience and the general truths on which such an attempt could be based were already present to us, otherwise we should have had no right to make this endeavour at all; but the complete intellectual statement of them and their results and issues had to be found.
The concluding sentence leaves absolutely no doubt that when Sri Aurobindo wrote of all the major spiritual realisations and the special supramental realisation he was not acting the speculative philosopher; he was only putting into philosophical terms the body of a direct and concrete experience that was his already in 1914 when the Arya began publication.
This point being disposed of, the other point of yours -namely, that "as regards individual evolution, Sri Aurobindo's life was a tremendous effort up to 1928 for realising the Divine" - has no meaning. On the strength of the statement I have quoted from Sri Aurobindo, the Divine had been most richly realised by the middle of 1914.1 wonder what gave you the idea that right up to 1928 there was a tremendous effort only. If we examine the published facts of Sri Aurobindo's life and draw upon his own published letters (of which 4 volumes are already out), we find the realisation of the Divine dating even much further back than 1914. At one place in the Letters are the words: "Durgam pathastat may be generally true and certainly the path of Laya or Nirvana is difficult in the extreme to most although in my case I walked into Nirvana without intending it or rather Nirvana walked casually into me not so far from the beginning of my yogic career without asking my leave." In another place he says, in a letter meant for Aldous Huxley, that the realisations of Nirvana and, soon after, of the Ishwara and "others which followed upon them, such as that of the Self in all and all in the Self, the Divine in all and all in the Divine" presented to him "no long or obsti-
Page 139
nate difficulty." So, long before even 1914, Sri Aurobindo was at home in God-realisation.
Turning to the booklet Sri Aurobindo and his Ashram, in which is given a sketch of his life based on authentic data, we read: "Sri Aurobindo began his Yoga in 1904. Even before this he had already some spiritual experiences and that before he knew anything about Yoga or even what Yoga was. For example, a vast calm descended upon him at the moment when he stepped first on Indian soil after his long absence, in fact'with his first step on the Apollo Bunder in Bombay. This calm surrounded him and remained for long months afterwards. There was also a realisation of the vacant Infinite while walking on the ridge of the Takht-i-Suleman in Kashmir, the living presence of Kali in a shrine on the banks of the Narmada, the vision of the Godhead surging up from within when in danger of a carriage accident in Baroda in the first year of his stay. But these were inner experiences coming of themselves and with a sudden unexpectedness, not part of a sadhana."
The first great experience that was part of a sadhana was the one of Nirvana I have already spoken of. About this the booklet says: "Meditating only for three days with Lele, he {Sri Aurobindo) followed his instructions for silencing the mind and freeing it from the constant pressure of thought; he entered into an absolute and complete silence of the mind and indeed of the whole consciousness and in that silence had suddenly the enduring realisation of the indefinable Brahman, Tat, in which the whole universe seemed to be unreal and only That existed." This silence remained with him ever since and when activity returned it was not broken by the necessity of any conceptual thought or personal volition. All the mental workings, speech, writing, thought, will and other kindred activities came from above the brain-mind. Sri Aurobindo had entered into what he afterwards called the overhead consciousness. And the entry was permanent.
This was in 1908 - full twenty years before the date 1928 when, according to you, he was still making a tremendous effort at God-realisation. And the mention of the fact that all
Page 140
his speech and writing have come ever since 1908 from above the brain-mind shows how different from speculative thinking was the philosophical expression of the Arya. To continue quoting from the booklet: "Before coming to Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo had already realised in full two of the four great realisations on which his Yoga and his spiritual philosophy are founded. The first... in January 1908... was the realisation of the silent spaceless and timeless Brahman gained after a complete and abiding stillness of the whole consciousness and attended at first by the overwhelming feeling and perception of the total unreality of the world, though this feeling disappeared after his second realisation which was that of the cosmic consciousness and of the Divine as all beings and all that is, which happened in the Alipore Jail. To the other two realisations, that of the supreme Reality with the static and dynamic Brahman as its two aspects and that of the higher planes of consciousness leading up to the Supermind, he was already on his way in his meditations in the Alipore Jail."
This means that by 1910 - the year in which he came to Pondicherry - he could have rested on his spiritual laurels, for, in matters of God-realisation as traditionally envisaged he had nothing more to achieve. I don't know where you have picked up the utterly apocryphal story that up to 1928 he was still making efforts at realising the Divine. What Sri Aurobindo has made tremendous efforts for was not God-realisation, We must not mix up God-realisation with the descent of the Supermind into the whole of embodied nature, down to the very physical cells. As said in the letter for Huxley, God-realisation of the completest kind presented to Sri Aurobindo no long or obstinate difficulty. "The only real difficulty," the letter continues, "which took decades of spiritual effort to work out towards completeness was to apply the spiritual knowledge utterly to the world and to the surface psychological and outer life and to effect its transformation both on the higher levels of Nature and on the ordinary mental, vital and physical levels down to the subconscience and the basic Inconscience and up to the supreme Truth-consciousness or
Page 141
Supermind in which alone the dynamic transformation could be entirely integral and absolute."
The reason of the difficulty is stated by Sri Aurobindo in a letter to Dilip: "As for the Mother and myself, we have had to try all ways, follow all methods, to surmount mountains of difficulties. A far heavier burden to bear than you or anybody else in the Ashram or outside, far more difficult conditions, battles to fight, wounds to endure, ways to cleave through impenetrable morass and desert and forest, hostile masses to conquer - a work such as, I am certain, none else had to do before us. For the leader of the way in a work like ours has not only to bring down or represent and embody the Divine, but to represent too the ascending element in humanity and to bear the burden of humanity to the full and experience, not in a mere play or Lila but in grim earnest, all the obstruction, difficulty, opposition, hampered and only slowly victorious labour which are possible on the path,"
In other words, the difficulty arises not so much because the work is so radically new as because Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have to give their work a significance for all humanity and not make it a glorious isolated triumph open perhaps at most to a few gifted individuals. And we may add that by the very difficulty they have accepted for us our own path becomes easier.
I hope this letter will dispel the mistaken picture of Sri Aurobindo's spiritual life that you have somehow formed.
I shall be happy to hear from you again.
6th October, 1951
Your letter to hand. 1 feel myself incompetent to enter into a controversy with you. You had close personal touch with Sri
Page 142
Aurobindo. You have read his works thoroughly. To me, since 1909, Sri Aurobindo has been a distant star. The only light I received was the casual reading of his writings and glowing brilliant vision for a few fleeting moments.
I was no doubt observing and intermittently contacting him from 1901 to 1909 - more particularly in 1907 at the time of the Surat Congress; I was never in his circle. I drew the inspiration from Bande Mataram and from one or two friends who were in close contact with him. I knew Lele, and Pandya who was in close touch with him. We heard about Sri Aurobindo's yogic developments only from 1904 onwards. But in his outer aspects, it would not be right to say that he had developed that 'wide calm' which later on became the principal characteristic of his personality. His Uttarpara speech, which, for many years, became my annual swadhyaya, also gave me the same impression.
Anyway, we need not measure the measureless, as I said before. He had, as I have said of late, one of the most mature and wide-visioned minds that I have known or read of both in insight and individual evolution. He, in my opinion, was one of the greatest of philosophers and Yogis that I have read of; and he has presented to the world a mighty and successful achievement of integration of personality giving thereby a message to the modern world and to Indian culture a fresh validity. That is quite enough for my purpose.
I have been reading of late Sri Aurobindo's criticism of Savitri1 in 'Mother India'. I wish Srsi Aurobindo's comments on literary criticism may be collected in book-form.
Who is Rishabh Chand? His exposition is masterly.
More when we meet. With kind regards,
K. M. Munshi
1. Editor's Note: What is meant is critical comments in answer to questions put by K.D. Sethna on Savitri.
Page 143
13
I am always very pleased to read of your meditative experience: "At will 1 am able to step back and offer myself to the Mother and consequently I feel a kind of presence around my head." You also write apropos of your Physics examination: "This time while taking the test I feel as if all this is happening outside me." In tune with these words are the later ones: "I seem to be always a bit lost. All the activities appear to be happening outside me. I don't feel interested in anything; everywhere around I find things so obstinate, rigid. The sole solace I get is to watch the gentle sway of tall trees in the breeze, to watch the movements of small leaves as if giggling with joy, to sit in my room alone with the lights off and listen to the Mother's music, and dream..."
The presence around your head is the two hands of Sri Aurobindo on either side of it, blessing you in response to your stepping back at will and offering yourself to the Mother. Sri Aurobindo has blessed me like that. It was a way of his when he saw that one had moved close to the Mother in one's heart.
You have also passed beyond your outer self: hence the feeling that everything is happening outside yourself. There is a detachment from the mundane routine, and there is a lack of interest in common affairs and a pull only towards Nature's beauty and the beauty of the new world the Mother is striving to manifest - a new world whose rhythm of being is caught in the mystic depth and magic movement of her music. A little more inward development and you will cross from the stance of non-interestedness to the attitude of disinterestedness. In that stance you have separated yourself from the flow of time, feeling that flow to be insignificant and even misdirected. The attitude towards which you will move is one in which the importance of your very self will be lost and you will turn to the flow of time in order to help it in its difficult passages without any thought of how things will
Page 144
affect you. You will act with an impersonality, but this impersonality will not be cold: it will be warm with the soul's love of the divinity that dwells in all things. Indeed, the Divine beyond one's own small self will act for the Divine who lives in others, though unknown to them. Disinterestedness does not always have this spiritual awareness, but it tends towards it and ultimately discovers its source in that secret splendour.
(10.5.1993)
The sight of your epistolary diarrhoea (at least one letter every day) makes my present constipation in the same line a little ashamed. So I am letting myself go just a little.
You ask me: "Should I do something specific to ensure and hasten my walking on the sunlit path? For that matter, is it at all in my hands even in a small measure?"
All Yoga is a transaction between God in quest of man and man in search of God or, if you like a somewhat paradoxical turn, God from beyond man pulling him and God from behind and within man pushing him. Perhaps the most Chestertonian way of putting the matter would be: the archetypal Man who is God is at hide-and-seek with the evolving God who is Man. The long and short of the Yogic situation in your context is that you have to make a movement towards the Divine at the same time that you appeal to the Supreme Grace to move in your direction faster than you find it doing.
What should be your movement? The cultivation of an even temper in relation not only to the various personalities you meet but also to the various personalities in yourself. The central you who has to be poised in peace has to face undisturbed the peripheral entities whom you also accept as parts of your being. The central you is the one who wants to do Yoga as well as to raise to its finest pitch the career you have chosen. Perhaps the vague urge to be a polymath, mastering many fields of knowledge, is also organic to the centre but belongs to what I may dub the periphery internal
Page 145
to the centre itself. Try to bring the several 'you's of the real periphery, who hover round the Yogic you, into harmonious affinity with the latter. Let them not tug you this way and that but turn to wherever they are drawn in a condition of tranquil strength. The Yogic you should have a hold on them, not complete at the moment yet proceeding towards completeness. And when there is an increasing tendency not to run away from the centre, the aspiration that is in you to give yourself to the Mother will light little candles, as it were, in all your peripheral parts and in the midst of that ring of soft illumination the Yogic you will break into a finer, an intenser flame. This will be the signal of your entering the sunlit path.
You complain and regret that "Remember and Offer" is not as frequent an act as it should be. Perhaps you are making it too mental an affair. Of course to stop at times and talk to the Mother, "Here I am offering to you what I am doing so that you may turn it into a further step closer to you," is a good practice. Especially good it is when something hurtful impinges on you and, instead of directly reacting to it in a personal manner, you divert it in the Mother's direction so that it gets lost in her all-transmuting vastness and becomes for you a blessing in disguise at a near or distant point in the future. But one is not at all times in a state of leisure, as it were, to receive such unpleasant guests: one is often at work. Then the question is: how, after initially offering the affair in hand to the Mother, is one to keep up the offering-gesture while the mind is occupied? Of course one can stop the work now and again and repeat the offering. But I am thinking of a long-term solution. And this solution can come only by practising the presence of God - an interiorisation of the consciousness until the deep heart opens and one grows aware of oneself as a being that has been put forth by the Divine - and this Divinity is a constant Presence by the side of that being and the very essence of oneself is love and worship of the Greatness and the Grace ever before one in the deep heart's temple.The best way I know of in order to enter this temple is to visualise Sri Aurobindo and the Mother as they
Page 146
used to sit together on the Darshan days or else to visualise one or the other of them and imagine one's head bowed to him or her for the touch of their benediction. As a result of this practice of their presence, all one's moments will be a flow of one's depths towards them without any effort no matter what one may be doing. Then there is no call for deliberate dedication or consecration. No room is left for praying or praising. Just to breathe is to remember the Mother: just for the heart to beat is to offer everything to her.
Broadly appropriate here is the feeling in a passage from Wordsworth which has been one of my favourites though it is not as well known as some others of a like tenor from the Tintern-Abbey poem or from The Excursion or The Prelude. I am referring to the lines that close the description of "the growing Youth" watching from the naked top of a bold headland the sun rise and bathe the world in light:
... Far and wide the clouds were touched,
And in their silent faces could be read
Unutterable love. Sound needed none.
Nor any voice of joy; his spirit drank
The spectacle: sensation, soul and form,
All melted into him; they swallowed up
His animal being; in them did he live.
And by them did he live; they were his life.
In such access of mind, in such high hour
Of visitation from the living God,
Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired.
No thanks he breathed, he proffered no request;
Rapt into still communion that transcends
The imperfect offices of prayer and praise,
His mind was a thanksgiving to the powers
That made him; it was blessedness and love!
One of your questions is: "What must be our attitude towards devotional songs outside the purview of Aurobindonian music, songs and other devotional music?"Behind all
Page 147
such expression, there are the Godward heart and mind of humanity, the religio-spiritual aspiration for a supreme Purity and Power and Perfection which has taken various names and forms in the life of mankind. If we pierce through the diversity and particularity to the basic Eternal and Infinite and Divine sinning through them, we need have no sense of differing or sidetracking from the Aurobindonian Presence. It is when we get the oppressive atmosphere of attitudes like "No salvation outside the Church" or "There is no god except Allah" that we have to be on guard. A single-tracked intolerance, deeming all creeds other than the one espoused to be false and pernicious, a fanatical religiosity whose motto is "Convert or kill or at least strike dumb" - a strain of this is what we have to fight clear of All religio-spiritual movements have their own particular emphasis. The Aurobindonian movement keeps in view a Divine Consciousness which holds the original models of mind, life-force and body, an ideal or archetypal mentality, vitality and physicality - a Supramental Consciousness which is not only a manifested Perfection beyond the mind-level but also a hidden Perfection in the very depths of Matter, gradually releasing by an evolutionary process life-force and mind and heading towards Supermind partly by its own push and partly by the pressure and pull of the veil-less glories beyond, with the result that the climax of world-existence will be in that existence itself, a fully transfigured terrestrial life in the end. Here is a radical divergence from the usual spiritual formula which takes the earth-scene to be merely an interim stage with possibilities of nothing else than attractive variations on the same theme of longing reveries at play around deplorably unchanging realities "Not here but otherwhere" - these words from a poem of Tagore sum up all past religion and spirituality's vision of soul-fulfilment. If there is a strong vein of this vision in the music you speak of, you have to guard against falling under its spell. But I must confess that any kind of music which reaches an acme of inspiration - however otherworldly its ostensible thrust -can serve us as a tremendous drive into the inner being, and to be drawn inward with such an extreme of felicitous force is
Page 148
a great gain to the soul practising any Yoga. Even if the motive of the music is not directly religious or spiritual, there could be a self-transcending ecstasy of human love in which the heart of insatiable desire loses its identity in a super-sleep, as it were, of a nameless night. I am thinking of both the prelude and the grand finale of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, exquisite with now poignant now defunctive music. To avoid yielding to such grandeurs and sonorities of artistic creation simply on the doctrinaire grounds that Sri Aurobindo is not for such romantic escapism would mean missing a mighty though indirect upliftment to the Yoga of Bhakti, of Devotion, seeking to merge the human spirit in the unknown Beloved. ;
I'll deal with one more question of yours today: "How does one manage to give one's composite self to the Mother? Gather all the movements in one large peaceful upward offering, or offer separately one's awareness of each of the movements and parts and traits - negative and positive - at the feet of the Mother? How does one prevent the consciousness from slipping off to one's old weak humdrum self?"
In self-offering, there seem to me to be two attitudes. In one we are a composite bundle, a whole of consciousness holding numerous movements and offering them as all being ourselves. In the other we take separately our defects and put each at the Mother's feet while dissociating it from our identity as the giver. The second way strikes me as being more systematic and also as involving in its very act a helpful detachment from the troublesome part or trait - for at least the time during which the offering takes place. We become the witness, free from the offending movement though 'still aware that this movement is our own. If the witness-poise is sustained for long and repeated often, the sense of ownership will weaken and even when the trait falls back into our nature it will seem to be not a member of the family but an unwelcome guest somehow lodging in our house. No doubt, there will be occasions when the undesirable part is too vehemently active to be pushed outward as an offering: on such occasions we should try to offer it along with ourselves as one whole. When the part is not so assertive and is just an
Page 149
unpleasant presence with no more than a threat to become assertive, we should make it a frequent practice to pull it out and hold it at arm's length as an object for the Mother to manage. I presume she would take away the particular stain of the movement while returning to us the energy as such which is behind it.
I remember consulting the Mother as to how to throw the undesirable qualities in me into the soul's purifying fire. Should I try to feel this fire to be within me or see it as an upward-rising glow in front of me? My aversion to seeing it inside was due to my feeling that the very defects I wanted to be free from were still being thrown back within me in the very process of my wanting to be rid of them! If I visualise Agni, the Fire-god, in his role of all-refiner as a splendour in front of me, I thrust my dross out of my body and feel liberated from it. As a Parsi, dubbed "fire-worshipper" in religious classification, I had been accustomed to face in temple or at home the urn bearing the golden bouquet of flames flying up, sustained by logs of fragrant sandalwood. This fire, addressed as "Son of God" in the Avesta, the Zoroastrian scripture, symbolised the Divine Presence in the midst of the world, in the midst of each living creature, an "objective correlative" of the ineffable secrecy in the human heart. The sandalwood signified the concentrated prayer-perfumed dedication of the soul in us.) This dedication would cover every kind of matter we may set before God and give it a sanctified air in spite of some materials being our baser characteristics. It would be natural to the Parsi in me to project the process of purification instead of introjecting it. The Mother said to me that it was all the same whether I acted one way or the other. I took her answer to be on a par to what she would have said if I had asked her: "Should I think of the Divine as within my heart or as standing before me?" The Divine as an omnipresence could be situated anywhere. Indeed, the very fact of our two Gurus living as Divinity incarnate outside us and satisfying our urge to worship what is greater than we are, an Other reminding us of our need to outgrow our own smallness and yet figuring what is hidden
Page 150
deep within us as our own true reality - verily, the existence of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother as Avatars amongst us to whom we daily related our little selves, laying both our virtues and vices at their feet, would justify my disposition to see the soul-fire without rather than within as the all-purifying Power.
As regards the danger of the consciousness slipping down, it is often there as long as the Yoga is done principally by the mind. If the deep heart is awakened, a spontaneity comes into play and one is not called upon to make an effort. The mind too can get into a habit of keeping itself uplifted, but some slight strain will be experienced now and again, whereas the heart's turning of the consciousness towards the Divine can go on as effortlessly as its own beating. I know that the Yogic heart too can get veiled by what are termed "lower vital movements", but these can stand also in the way of the Yogic mind. The difference is that as soon as they cease the Yogic heart's spontaneity breaks forth easily whereas the Yogic mind takes time to set its course again. This advantage of the former should not lead us to take those upsurges of the lower vital lightly. A habitual recurrence of them can seriously block our psychic depths.
Among these upsurges I include, as Sri Aurobindo himself has done, not only the drive towards the sex-act but also the itch to masturbate. In contrast to the grim warnings by the old school of doctors, the modern medical view is pretty lenient about that itch. And 1 dare say that for somebody striving to do Yoga outside the Ashram masturbation may not assume a particularly grave aspect any more than would the normal sex-act, since the Yoga is not necessarily whole-hearted. But, from the strict viewpoint of Ashram life as well as of a wholehearted Yoga outside, it cannot be looked upon with the levity of the modern-minded medico. Let me quote a correspondence I had with Sri Aurobindo.' It was in connection with a visiting aspirant who was an extreme and chronic mastur-bator. He was a good man but with a terrible twist in his vital
1. Life-Literature-Yoga; Some Letters of Sri Aurobindo. Revised and Enlarged Edition (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1967), pp. 27-28.
Page 151
nature. A number of times he had come to my room for a chat and each time I had got a severe headache by his very presence. Though his visits to the Ashram were well-meant they could not be sustained for long. I wrote to Sri Aurobindo: "For my work I had to go to X's room after one of his flights from here and I found several scraps of writing by him scattered all over. Out of curiosity I read some of them. They were desperate cries of one caught in the masturbation-complex. I felt very uncomfortable later as if the imp or imps responsible for his aberrancy had clung on to me or come close on my heels." Sri Aurobindo replied: "Evidently it must have been like that, for with the masturbation there is always some clinging influence of this kind which can become a sort of possession as in X's case who is hagridden by this thing and helpless to shake it off. The only thing is to give it no hold at all by an immediate refusal and turning away of the mind from the suggestions which usually come with the impulse."
This was written on 27,4.1937. It was soon followed by another note from Sri Aurobindo: "Never yield to that. It would mean allowing a possession of certain centres or movements by a very low kind of elementals and a serious detraquement in your sadhana hereafter."
Almost everybody at one time or another has slid into the practice of what used to be called "self-abuse". And I have learned that the impulse to it is naturally accompanied by a vague erotic imagination. If one stops this imagination from becoming particularised, if one fends off its tendency to acquire concrete name and form, one can shove the impulse aside. Up to a certain point the impulse is not irresistible. One must have the wish and the will not to overstep that point. And, along with them, one must seek some kind of diversion. Of course, for those who are on the spiritual path the best way is to superimpose on the incipient erotic imagination the remembrance of the compassionate face of our Lord Sri Aurobindo and the affectionate countenance of our Divine Mother,
(18.5.1993)
Page 152
14
I found your letter very enjoyable. I am never tired of reading whatever expresses sincere deeply-felt convictions - especially when the writer realises that feeling should never be gush and that one must be deep without being ponderous. You have put many things eloquently - but you have imagined me standing up for ideas and attitudes which are not truly mine. Having stayed for years in Sri Aurobindo's Ashram and known intimately the ways of the Mother and the mind of the Master, how could I ever make a fetish of the cleavage some yogis drive between the normal consciousness and the aloof Atman?
The intransigent leap into the Atman is not Sri Aurobindo's Yoga and I do not for a moment countenance the view that to withdraw or escape into the Atman and regard the world as meaningless and untransformable is the solution of life's problem. No doubt, for genuine Yogic attainment, the peace of the Atman can never be dispensed with - it has to form a sort of bedrock, but there are many other things of immense value, without which the bedrock would remain bare and onesided. The inner withdrawal towards the still spirit is an important part of yoga, but so also is the opening of the heart and the mind and the bodily consciousness to the soothing calm of the Divine Grace, the tranquillising tenderness of the Divine Love. The gradual natural evolving method lit up by the truth-instinct of that spontaneous sweetness and light and strength within us which is our individual soul - this is for us who follow Sri Aurobindo and the Mother the most desirable and fruitful yoga. We must join with it the pressing inward towards the still infinity of the Atman and the surging upward towards the opulent and dynamic immensity of the Overhead Divine, but our daily staple has to be the soul's bliss-radiating, all-purifying, one-pointed aspiration. In fact, such an aspiration will of itself bring in the long run the liberating largeness of the Atman, though a conscious urge
Page 153
for the latter would establish it in us sooner. The sine qua non of the Integral Yoga is that aspiration. And I surely cannot pit Buddha's path or the old Vedantin way against the Aurobindonian ideal: I should be not only going against the vision I have had of Truth but also contradicting whatever little experience I might have had of Yoga.
The psychic peace beautifully flowering in us and slowly lifting our whole nature to the Divine is not something I depreciate in favour of the sudden chasm which the Atman magnificently creates between the Divine and the undivine. What I could not regard as of lasting worth was the ordinary sense of calm and repose which is got often from Nature and at other times from a temporary feeling of self-fulfilment through "what men call love", as Shelley puts it, or through some fine work accomplished. This sense can be a preparation for higher things, but one can't put a crown on its head and bend down at its feet, as certain poets and idealists do. The direct touch of the Divine is the sole experience capable of giving basic satisfaction, radical peace - and what best constitutes that touch is the process of Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga with its blend of the psychic, the spiritual and the supramental, and its special insistence on the whole being moving forward by degrees, in an intimate rapture which is at the same time intense and calm.
I should be the last one to run down human love. I see with clear eyes its insufficiency, but, when deep and sincere, it has an idealism which breaks open many closed chambers of our being. Let me plod on to my realisation of this truth.
In my late teens and early twenties I experienced a great upsurge of intellectual power and vital energy, which swept into my consciousness various aspects of life - I felt numerous personalities coalescing within me and a capacity to deal like a master with the common vicissitudes of time. Please don't suspect I am boasting. Allow me to set down some surprising personal facts as accurately as I can. In those early days, there was nothing I could not take by the throat, so to speak, and subdue to my mind and zest. Weariness, disap-
Page 154
pointment, confusion seemed alien to me - I had a crystalline clear-headedness, the courage to face everything and a bounding vitality which was like laughter. Having a lame leg, I was not physically very strong, but my nerves were like tempered steel and, where physically stronger men got exhausted, I still felt on top of the world. I accomplished feats of intellectual activity and nervous endurance and sexual stamina. For five years I moved in a crescendo of keenness and power, until in my twenty-third year I acquired a sense of completion at the centre: that is to say, I found my individuality possessed of a roundness, a crystallised many-sidedness, an assured versatility. The mind was able always to bring a teeming wideness to a brilliant penetrating point, the life-force knew a gusto that could taste and swallow and assimilate a throbbing multitude of experiences both pleasurable and painful, voluptuous and ascetic. I felt that, as the years rolled on, I would enrich my individuality but its essential form would remain the same - a work of art whose main outlines were already chiselled out though details could be added everywhere. Thus I stood in the pride of a precocious youth..
Suddenly a force I had never met made its assault on me. I had known and enjoyed the wrestle of sexual desire and the poetry of the loins caught up in imaginative passion - but I had never been in love. For the first time the heart was flung open. And together with it there arose a hunger for the magnitudes with which my mind had so far only juggled as ideas. A poignant idealism took hold of the heart, I yearned for an inconceivable perfection through the beauty of one woman's face, I built up a whole mystical inner world whose vastness I sought to enter through the doorway of one intensely loved body, that body itself became subtilised by a certain direct intimacy with the emotional and mental personality behind it, and- in that personality I contacted a glimmer of the true psyche. All this happened because the woman 1 loved had passed once through a psychic phase and still bore its after-glow. The mystic in me awoke to the mystic
Page 155
in her - and the whole glittering universe I had constructed for myself and of which I had felt the master shook and tumbled and broke into irreparable ruins.
In the void thus created I experienced a huge capacity of self-surrender, an outrush of the heart helplessly towards a Perfection intuited as half-human half-divine. God who had been just a phosphorescent shadow in my philosophical mind turned real, stretched strange hands to grip me, drew me on and on across vistas I had never imagined, plunged me at moments into seas where thought foundered, raised me for a flash into ethers where sex dissolved into nothing. Not that the intellect and the sex-desire failed to return - they were too urgent to be set aside for long, they often made counterattacks and obscured the inner world; but something in me had got out of them and stood in glorious defeat in the presence of the Divine. There were many false strains in my mysticism, innumerable defects and blind spots, an army of romantic perversions. These brought upon me acute suffering and depression, and a sharp feeling of failure. But the trend towards the spiritual was set and through long labyrinths of darkness shot with flashes of hurting ecstasy I came at last to the feet of Sri Aurobindo.
Love worked this miracle. It was indeed an unusual passage through love, since the psyche was so strongly involved. It seems to me that here love was just a mask worn by the psyche to carry out the Divine's decree that I should be drawn to the Truth. Most love-experiences are very far from what happened to me. Yet the fact that love was chosen as the best instrument to prepare me for Yoga shows that there is something akin in it, no matter how crudely, to the spiritual urge. I cannot, therefore, undervalue the idealistic help true love can give to the soul.
However, there is one element of love which is the most tremendous obstacle to Yoga: vital attachment. To say that true love is devoid of vital attachment is to talk of abstractions: in actual practice there is no true love without the entangling of the entrails. The beloved's fascination holds us
Page 156
by innumerable ties, not always openly sexual - and sometimes one acutely agonizes under its pull Two powers alone can snap the bonds - a common, ideal of Yoga kept by both the parties and the constant personal contact of a Guru. Of course the faithlessness of a lover is like a sword cutting the Gordian knot and at times turning one sharply to the Divine -but this help cannot be ascribed to any merit in human love -it is a stroke of fate manipulated secretly by the Divine. Love's merit lies only in making delightfully devastating inroads on the ego's hard self-sufficiency - it makes the being leap out of itself; but in escaping one prison it gets trapped in another: the being of the beloved. And really I don't know which is the more formidable. Vital attachment is not blind to the beloved's defects, it often sees them and yet cannot rise above the glamour that camouflages them. A hundred voices within one rise and justify the attachment - they sing of tenderness, constancy, guardianship, completion of personality, soul-affinity. Beautiful and poetic are these voices and by themselves they make life for brief snatches a garden of wonders. Suffering and misfortune only increase at times the sharp sense of love's preciousness and poetry and the transfiguring light it casts on the earth. Yet, beheld from a Yogic standpoint, there is behind all that inspiration the black magic of vital attachment; love's spell prefigures spiritual light but can block its authentic arrival. Nothing except the combined discipleship of the lovers to a genuine Guru can gradually dissolve the spell. It is rarely that one, after plumbing the deeps of passionate tenderness in human relationship, is strong enough to track to its true home'the radiance that on occasion plays about the beloved's visage. When this is done, the experience one has passed through will serve as a great impetus inward and upward: the self-giving emotions will come to the fore most easily and sweep one into the core of the Mystery -
Rapt thoughtless, wordless into the Eternal's breast.
(23.4.1942)
Page 157
Your card of good wishes from far America and the concrete expression of your helpfulness and your delightful picture and, above all, your deeply moving letter are the best things I have received to start off a happy new year. Thanks for all these gifts. Mother India also appreciates your gesture of assistance to it.
Your picture tells me a great deal. First of all, there is the charming resemblance between you and your little cousin, whom you are carrying in your arms. Even the expression on the two faces is essentially the same - an innocent wisdom smiling in the one case and a wise innocence a trifle mischievous in the other. This is a photograph as if of one Soul in two phases or at two stages. Could it be that by some chance your cousin is about six years old - the very age at which, as your letter says, you knew yourself as at once vanishing point and infinity?
I have called your letter "deeply moving". I say "deeply" because what comes through is from far beyond the merely human surfaces that usually communicate with each other. And I say "moving" because the touch of depth on depth is a living one and brings some fundamental Reality home to the heart of our passionate palpable smallness and gives it an ultimate value and a golden hope. This hope I may best express by saying that in the experience you have recounted there is the promise that one day each of our tiny lives may be like a star
Tingling with rumours of the infinite.
Having had that experience in your childhood, you figure in my fancy, during all your years of a mail-man, as just such a star though in disguise, carrying news from everywhere to each place. Hardly could these places have realised that letters from far away passing through your hands came with a breath of unknown distances - no matter if these hands made no claim and were those of a simple person always aware of
Page 158
our common humanity.
I am so glad that you are just what you are - never thinking of yourself as anything other than a retired mailman. This proves to me that your child hood-experience came to you through the right channel - the channel of the inmost heart, the true centre of our being. Perhaps it could not be otherwise since you were so very young and the parts in us that get puffed up with knowledge or with power had no time yet to develop and all that was there was but the soul's simplicity and spontaneity and self-forgetfulness. When extraordinary experiences pass through the mind or the life-force, there is always the danger of what the Greeks called hubris (towering pride) or of what the French term "la folie de grandeur" (delusion of greatness). Our superficial being is on the alert to catch hold of all divine largesse and divert it to egoistic uses. Not that the superficial being is to be thrown away: it has also a high destiny but it has to let itself be seized by the Spirit instead of seizing it. And it can take the right turn only if the inmost heart, the soul-centre in us, takes the lead in all our self-exceeding ventures. When what Sri Aurobindo names our "psychic being" is in the forefront, the surface man ceases to be a grasper and becomes a serene messenger, a smiling mail-man, of the Spirit's sweetness and light and strength.
You write that you are unable to have a repeat of your experience, but the very fact that it is "what makes life bearable or unbearable, whatever way you look at it", shows that it is still a reality every moment or rather it is at all times a subtle presence by being a tremendous haunting Absence. I am sure everything has taken a value for you, gained a fullness, by your memory of that illimitable Emptiness which was yet a strange all-sufficiency and the sole existence. What you went through on that first school-day of yours, sparked off by the words of the first chapter of Genesis, was an experience older than the Bible. The atmosphere of the ancient Upani-shads enveloped you, setting apart the child that you were as
Page 159
the child that you would be of one who fulfilled and out-Upanishaded all the Upanishads: Sri Aurobindo. In the profoundest sense of the word, Sri Aurobindo has made you his child - and I cannot be grateful enough to him for letting me come to know you and love you.
(29.1,1975)
Page 160
15
You have asked me: "How to reach my heart-centre? Any practical method for concentration, etc.?"
I have rarely concentrated on any point in the body. There is the advice to concentrate in the middle of the chest or the middle of the brows or on the top of the head. I have known Yogic work carried on inside my head but 1 have had no awareness of any particular point. In the early days I was told to imagine an open book inside my chest to encourage and promote a heart-opening. But as I wanted to get away from my old bookish life I did not fancy the advice very much. It must be in consideration of that life that the Mother suggested this practice when I, contrary to what may be expected of a supposed intellectual, asked the Mother insistently for a heart-opening. Whatever opening came in the heart was not due to concentrating on that region but due to a worshipful and devotional approach to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo in the 6-month period between February 21,1928 and August 15 in the same year. That something was going on in the heart-region was clear from the fact that every time I sat down to meditate I felt a pain within my chest. I complained to the Mother about this obstruction. She said: "I know what it is. Don't worry. It will go." One day, suddenly a wall, as it were, broke down and a clear space was experienced, within which there was an outburst of what I can only call a flaming and flowering ecstasy - an almost unbearable self-existent bliss.
Such a psychic opening in full force is not my constant experience, yet an access to the source of the nectar in some form or other has become possible again and again. Here too there is no specific dwelling on any centre: there is only a sense of turning devotedly towards our Gurus and a call to them to shed their grace once more.
Your second question runs: "If possible attend to the lines on p. 59 of Savitri (Birth Centenary Ed.):
Page 161
A date is fixed in the calendar of the Unknown,
An anniversary of the Birth sublime:
Our soul shall justify its chequered walk,
All will come near that now is naught or far.
What is the significance of fate for us?"
As far as 1 can see, "the Birth sublime" joins up with the reference to "the Incarnate" in the next few lines:
These calm and distant Mights shall act at last. Immovably ready for their distant task, The ever-wise compassionate Brilliances Await the sound of the Incarnate's voice To leap and bridge the chasms of Ignorance And heal the hollow yearning gulfs of Life And fill the abyss that is the universe.
Light is thrown on the date in the Unknown's calendar by some phrases on p. 705:
But when the hour of the Divine draws near,
The Mighty Mother shall take birth in Time...
The incarnate dual Power shall open God's door,
Eternal supermind touch earthly Time.
Surely here are prophecies of the Avatarhood of Sri Aurobindo and of his Shakti, his world-manifesting companion, both of them constituting the "incarnate dual Power" by whom the hitherto hidden Supermind becomes a reality in the spatio-temporal terms of our earth.
I don't know what exactly "anniversary" signifies. It should mean some occurrence of either August 15 or February 21 which would mark a decisive point in the history of the Aurobindonian work in the world. What you term "fate for us" is ultimately linked with that "date".
(3.6.1993)
Page 162
You have spoken of your persistent and obsessive fears. You must imagine a great distance and project yourself there to the call of a vast universal sound. Then all fears and anxieties clinging to you will get thinned out and disappear and at the same time be as if offered to the Divine. In a short while what seems enormously afar will start drawing close to you from all directions and enring you with what I can only term a mighty tenderness of touch. You will feel held in the embrace - at once infinite and intimate - of the Divine Mother. A profound peace which will also be vibrant with a deep quiet love will be your sense of your own true self. You will be free from all fluttering of the small human heart and convey a helpful tranquillity to whoever you meet.
Let me add to this spiritual advice a practical piece of common sense: "Fear never robbed tomorrow of its sorrow. It only robs today of its strength." The Mother once wrote to me that fear, rather than being of any help, tends to attract just the trouble we seek to escape.
(7.6.1993)
As regards the life here, what 1 have noticed in particular at present is what I may specify as "A Call from Afar". I hear a faint sound, slightly modulated in its notes, like a wide ring of mysterious enchantment at a great distance which is both of space and of time. There is awakened by it a sense not only reminding me of a question in an early poem of mine -
What visionary urge
Has stolen from horizons watched alone? -
but also bringing to my mind a great phrase from one of Shakespeare's sonnets:
The prophetic soul Of the wide world dreaming on things to come.
I feel in the life here the promise of a fabulous future on
Page 163
this very earth if we can live at present up to the summons by a vastness of being and a subtlety of spirit waiting to be realised, wanting to be welcomed by the In-dweller and Out-seeker in us who is never satisfied by all that is still left gross and misfeatured around us from a past which has not learned to be completely blessed by Sri Aurobindo, not allowed itself to be entirely caressed by the Divine Mother. When I look at the life within me and at the life without, I am struck by so much that has lingered from my pre-Yogic past in the midst of the thinking and feeling and willing and doing that have known the alchemic touch of the two radiant Presences who have pulled us near them from many a distant darkness. Now there is a distant light that is calling, a circle of glorious days yet to be. When I turn my attention outward I hear the beckoning, at once soft and grand, as if from the ends of the earth. When I turn inward, I discern depth beyond depth crying to me for recognition. It is the same mystic OM inducing us to fulfil it wholly in ourselves, leaving no remnant out - fulfil it in our external existence as well as in our internal being. I am aware of how much I fall short of this Totality, this eternally peaceful, infinitely vibrant Perfection. But as long as I am also aware of its constant "Call from Afar", there is hope of God's grace for aspiring me.
(14.6.1993)
It is afternoon now - 3.17 p.m. - and there is utter quiet in my room as I sit at my typewriter and every now and then look up a little and watch through my window the big bunch of leaves just outside it, either hanging entirely still or very softly moving to the most secret whisper possible of what I may call the dazed air - the air through which the high glow of the sun passes with its full gold to me like a warm blessing from a love intense yet gently modulated to my little human heart. And this heart responds as if in a half-drowse, unquestioning, totally confident that I shall be taken care of to the minutest need of the soul.
Page 164
The mystic mood is always the same but the mode of its experience varies with the time of the day. In the morning its response is a happy crescendo. A silent self-dedication keeps rising from the eyes as they resume their intimacy with the surrounding scene and then grow into a pair of exploring wings on which the soul lifts itself up into the wide disclosure of the sky through my window. First there is a pale shine, next a faint pink gleam which lays a carpet, as it were, over which a World-Mother's presence sweeps royally towards me to raise me into my highest possibility of inner and outer godhead. My visionary up-soar feels harmonious with what Coleridge in a familiar strain calls the birds' "sweet jargoning" and Meredith in an insightful accent hails as
A voice seraphically free
Of taint of personality.
Going backward, how shall I catch in words the mystic mood at night? It is summed up in that line of Wordsworth:
There is the feeling of an immense height and this height is seen as communicating with us by means of innumerable vibrating spots of light but everything is filled with an absolute unbreakable silence, at the same time aloof from us and brooding over the little lives that come and go, unlike its own everlasting scintillations. The mystic in me, responding to a distant yet ever-watchful divinity, feels more and more in-drawn as if to get attuned to that godlike farness without by some superhuman farness within until all my heartbeats seem to count the star-thrilled moments of an endless inexpressible Mystery.
Preceding the Yoga of night is the evening's Yoga evoked by the subtle universal Power of which again Wordsworth speaks, the Presence who is interfused with all things but whose interfusion is brought home to us most profoundly by
Page 165
the poet when he particularises it by speaking of the secret Being
One may ask: "Why did the poet refer to setting and not rising suns when the hidden Power is everywhere?" It must be a deep instinct in Wordsworth that made the choice, for here the passage of light is from splendour into secrecy, the bright visible is the guide to the fathomless invisible which is to Wordsworth the trance-goal of all conscious seeking for the divinity pervading the world of the senses. My Yoga at the time of the day's departure is a kind of meditative suspension between the waking state and a state of drowse. Facing a glory-burst before a final fading away I am apt to experience a vivid summons from the Supreme to feel intensely His presence and then pursue it gradually into a recess of the inmost self while still carrying in my eyes a clinging worship of Sri Aurobindo's resplendence and the Divine Mother's radiance.
Please excuse this prolonged discourse on my own mysticism in relation to the passage of the hours in their daily cycle. I just got swept away by the theme of the afternoon's special effect on the mystic in me fused with the poet.
(4.8.1993)
Your latest letter has been received. Thanks for the deep love you have for me. I am sure my old heart is sustained from day to day not only by its own urge to love the Divine and the Divine's family but also by the warmth that comes from the Divine's family as well as the Divine's own self.
Last evening a close friend took me by surprise by saying that I am known for the love and peace constantly emanating from my presence. The remark set me looking into myself. Do I really deserve such a compliment? I have spoken of my own urge to love, but 1 don't remember ever cultivating such an
Page 166
urge, making an ideal of it. If it has come - and come in some abundance if I am to believe my friend - it has arisen from the state of peace to which my whole being has aspired. But how?
I always had some intellectual detachment. In old controversies I recollect having the sense that I could have put my opponent's point of view better than he had done. There was also the sense that he could not be altogether wrong: there must be a modicum of truth in his stand though he had deviated it in the development of his attitude. To give it full play even while convinced that what I had to say had a greater and wider truth: such was my hope when I pitied him for not putting his case as completely as possible. Along with my own conviction went a sympathy with its opposite and a sort of tenderness towards this opposite's mistaken upholder. Thus the heart came secretly into play together with the mind's open confrontation. And they worked in tandem because my controversy, however forceful, arose from a being in me who stood a little away from the surface launching the argumentative attack. The intellectual detachment of that being was a kind of poised peace with a hidden warmth towards all with whom 1 matched my wits.
When I attempted to practise Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga this special detachment of the intellect began to deepen into an equanimity of the whole nature. The slings of general adverse fortune and the arrows of particular outrages by individuals missed their target. What others might feel as mean acts, movements to hurt or overlook one, produced no effect on me. So there was never any antagonism to anybody. On the contrary there was an endeavour to stand in the shoes of people and extend a friendliness to their troubled minds in order to touch the roots of their cold or angry reactions to me. More than ever before, a calm consideration, a tranquil kindness towards all with whom I came in contact, grew out of my equanimity. When the inmost heart opened to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and began to feel a warm stream of self-giving and a happy glow of devotion, the distance, the standing back, from the surface consciousness, which equa-
Page 167
nimity entailed, began to diminish and the hidden presence of the Divine in all came to be caught with a certain vividness which brought a natural insight into their deepest selves and an understanding of the complexes of their personalities. The equanimity now permeated even the outer being and along with it went the touch on others without my getting disturbed, a kind of aerial touch spreading on all sides and carrying an intimacy which at the same time infused peace. Or rather it was the ever-continuing peace which, drawing close to people, passed over them and invisibly caressed them into a condition of echoing peace.
This is how, to the best of my ability, I see myself if 1 am to accept in any degree my friend's description of me. I must, however, add that there have been persons who have disliked me. It is surely necessary for me to look sharply into myself and honestly decide whether there is a substantial source of deliberate nastiness within me or my critics have a streak of perversity in them. Maybe the truth lies in between. In any case the Aurobindonian equanimity demands that I should look on them with peaceful if not also gentle eyes.
Please forgive me for all this long digression. I have noted all the news conveyed in your letter of 27.6.93. There is nothing foolish in your wanting letters from me. Your eagerness only shows how much you value my words, my regard for you. I am so glad my writings in Mother India help to clear away whatever depression comes to you.
(6.7.1993)
You have never been absent from my thoughts. Not only at the Samadhi where you in your wheelchair next to mine are vividly present to my mind, but even at my own flat I often feel you with that brave soft gleam of a smile on your face.
I feel very concerned to read: "Day by day my pains are increasing whereas my tolerance is not able to cope with them." The inconveniences of your life are always before me and I know that you try your utmost to be a true child of our
Page 168
Divine Mother in spite of the obstacles in your way which may tend to bring down the consciousness. Our Gurus are aware of your troubles and the hurdles in the way of your spiritual life: they judge not just by what is actually achieved but by the intention and aspiration behind the thing done, however small may seem the achievement. If the prayer to be a perfect child is intense at the back of all actions, they go by that prayer and understand why the apparent result is sometimes small. Their response is proportional to the ideal sincerely aimed at.
Your dream seems to be located in a mixture of planes - a plane close to the physical at times so that your disability is carried over and a plane more inward where your soul takes charge and its powerful draw towards the Lord is independently active, taking you irresistibly into the aura of the Divine Presence. On that inward plane you are not a defective body with a struggling soul but a sheer soul with its own subtle responsive body free of all embarrassments of the material life. The dream begins on this plane, then shifts to the other where you need help, but even the help is a sufficient minimum and it can be dropped at the earliest opportunity. From that moment you are soul-powered and your contact with the Lord is so deep and strong and continuous that it overflows into the outer waking consciousness and you had those marvellous five minutes of utter soul-life in the wakeful state on the physical plane just after the dream. What happened is the promise of a more luminous future than ever before. Try to evoke the atmosphere and the feel of those five minutes and even a faint breath of them will serve to carry you across all the obstacles you may have to meet because of your disability.
Your request for something which has been touched by the Mother or Sri Aurobindo is nothing fantastic or whimsical. And if I can find something 1 shall surely send it. But you must not make a fetish of such things. They shouldn't make you lax about the indispensable inner Presence. Your request makes me recollect an incident connected with
Page 169
Champaklal. A devotee from outside the Ashram once asked him if he could be given something touched by the Mother, which he could keep permanently with himself, Champaklal answered: "What about your own head? Hasn't the Mother touched it and isn't it always with you?" He might have punningly added: "Have you lost your head that you give so much importance to outer reminders of the Divine?"
One point I should like to emphasise. Whenever anything goes wrong with your health, don't neglect it. Ask a doctor to see you as soon as possible.
The prayer you have sent me for August 15 is excellent and should be everybody's prayer:
O Supreme Lord Sri Aurobindo!
O Unique and Unsurpassable Mother!
Pranam at Your lotus feet!
Take away, if You like to do so, anything or everything from me but take not or shake not my faith and devotion. I may be a fallen angel but I have fallen at Your Divine Feet. Prick me not further but pick me up and make me live a worthy life, worthy of Your Great Name and the Greatness of Your work.
At this very moment when everything in and around me seems to go from bad to worse, it is then I beg Your Grace and Light to manifest their glory in my whole being!
(10.8.1993)
Page 170
16
I was greatly impressed by your "Golden Vision". It reveals the Mother in her full reality - not only the Universal Form of her but also the Individual Being. People often say that now that the Mother has left her body she is a Universal Form - as if the bodily shape alone constituted her individuality. What you saw shows not only the cosmic power set to greater use by her departure from the Body. It shows also how closely and organically the Universal and the Individual in her were related and how naturally they interplay.
It would seem that her individuality no less than her universality can now come home more vividly. Her individual aspect acted on you in the very way the embodied Mother used to do: she put her hands over your eyes just as she often did when she was tangible on the earth. But she repeated the old gesture with a luminosity and a meaning-fulness which exceeded the old personal relationship.
This meaningfulness, disclosed by your vision, acquires a plenitude by her bringing in one hand a lotus and in the other a hammer. The lotus would point to a power of effecting a spontaneous opening of our being to the Divine, especially to the Divine as Avatar. The hammer suggests a forceful action of swift grace. And what she did with the hammer to you personally is for me the climax - the most momentous part -of the vision. You do not say much of the change brought about in you, but from your few hints I conclude as follows.
The Mother has broken open your normal individuality and made something of you spread its consciousness in the universal existence. This change has come about by at once a profound interiorisation, a further plunging into the inner self and, as a result of this new deepening, a new widening.
How would I understand this new widening? I would say that it modifies the whole aspect of your future movements to distant places. I am sure that you did not go on travelling here and there merelv because you needed an outing. There was an
Page 171
inner call to meet the outside world for the sake of that world's good. Now, according to me, there will be an answer from you not simply to whatever possibility of good there may be for the world's sake. If only the world were concerned, you could sit at home and not go out at all and, without going out, get some work done. At present, there will be a going out purely because the Divine shall call you for purposes that you may not even know. The thinking mind will have no part in the motive of your travels. The thinking mind has been hit open and' something more inward has been set free - something inward beyond all your previous depth. Deriving from that suddenly revealed centre, your movements are bound to be a sheer motiveless response to the Divine Will - the individual Mother within you going forth ecstatically into the Universal Mother which is your highest being outside the body that is the visible Champaklal.
(14.5.1979)
I'll start with the end of your letter of 26th May. The R. C. Zaehner who met me years ago is certainly not whoever has come to Madras recently under the name Zaehner. My fellow emigrated to the Christian heaven (or so at least he must have thought he was doing) even before I completed my review of his book, a review ten times longer than his book. By the way, this heaven seems to be a queer place. St. Thomas Aquinas says that one of the experiences there of blessedness is a full view of all the tortures and sufferings going on in hell far below and so luckily escaped by the saved ones.
Hell, of course, is full of gnashing of teeth, and the topic of Nashe raised in your letter is quite appropriate as the next one. Ogden Nashe is, I think, connected with Basic English. Oh pardon me, ( am blundering awfully. The Basic-English-walla is simply Ogden. But in any case my Nashe is not the author of the modern poem you refer to. He lived soon after the Elizabethan age. The line I once quoted to you and its two successors -
Page 172
Brightness falls from the air,
Queens have died young and fair.
Dust hath closed Helen's eye -
are some of the most delicately magical in the English language. But it is reported that the opening verse which has a psychic pathos has come to us accidentally in its present form! Nashe is supposed to have actually written:
Brightness falls from the hair...
This would be quite consistent with the thought-sense of the next two phrases, but how far away from their soul-sense! Indeed it would take much off from that romantic world-cry which we hear in them in continuation with the other version of the opening words.
I didn't know that the flower going by the name "Passionflower" in English is called "Krishna-Kamal" in Maharashtra. The suggestions are quite opposite - divine suffering in one case and divine delight in the other. I don't think Sri Aurobindo had either symbolism in mind. Nor could he have attended to the significance given by the Mother to Passiflora caerulea: "Silence" - although "Silence" chimes very well with Sri Aurobindo's "Nameless" representing itself in his poem "Rose of God" as "Passion-flower":
"Passion-flower of the nameless, bud of the mystical
name."
You have asked: "What is psychic other than laughter and delight and love of the Divine?" The answer is: "luminous strength." If it were no more than what you have mentioned, it could never bring about the Divine's Victory in earthly evolution. Remember that the god of the psyche is Agni who in the Rigveda is named "Son of Force". Sri Aurobindo has spoken of the psychic being not only in terms of Matthew Arnold's well-known "sweetness and light": he has also
Page 173
ascribed strength to it, the power to conquer, the power to bear, the power not only to stand four-square against mortality but also to establish what Agni is in his cosmic function, "the Immortal in the mortal". And the psyche's strength is accompanied, as Sri Aurobindo says, by "light" no less than "sweetness". Your formula compasses only the latter in its threefold aspect: I have used the epithet "luminous" for "strength" - thus answering to Sri Aurobindo's "light". This light is at the same time sunniness and illumination, although the illumination is not of truth-know ledge but of truth-feeling, an inward turn spontaneously sensing what is God's Will rather than instantly visioning the plan and purpose of the Supreme as does the intuitive spiritual consciousness.
Yes, the Rigveda has a multiple numerology. One of its most expressive numbers is "thousand", meaning "completeness". A 100 is explained by Sri Aurobindo as perhaps suggesting the 7 planes multiplied by themselves in their interaction and the 49 thus arrived at to be added to another 49 so as to signify by 98 not only descent but also ascent - and then number 1 added at the top for the supreme Unknown and number 1 added at the bottom for the same at the other pole, the result coming to a century.
My personal number, as decided by the Mother, is 15 which also reduces itself to 1 +5=6, the number of what she has called "The New Creation", something which I am very much in need of in both my inner and outer being. The flower symbolising "New Creation" is the tuberose, a flower which used to be a favourite of mine before I knew my number was 15. But what the Mother considered to be my flower was the one she named "Krishna's Light in the Mind".
(25.6.1983)
I have promised to tell you why I cancelled the operation on my right thigh which was to counter the defect that had resulted from the serious thigh-fracture I had suffered. Let me
Page 174
first sketch the background of this final negative after all the positives that had set me on a course which almost everybody had disapproved of.
First was a general message from the Mother when I was thinking of the possible dangers in moving about after the period in the Nursing Home: "Fear nothing." Then, at a time of rather depressive uncertainty, revolving the theme of an operation: "I shall see you through." Again, in the night of 20.3.92, after hearing from a doctor friend, himself an orthopaedic surgeon, that the operation would mean three days of acute pain and seven days of constant pain: "Leave everything in my hands." Finally, at the Samadhi on 22.3.92 I figured myself as kneeling to the Mother as I used to do every afternoon when, on finishing her lunch with Pranab, she would go to her bathroom by an inner door and come out by an outer one leading to where I would be sitting and waiting for her. When I told her of my difficulties and perplexities I heard her say: "I'm with you." These words took away all doubts and fears.
My doctor nephew came to Pondy from the USA for a few days in November 1992. He raised a question which had never been considered before. He spoke of the formidable risk of infection in the case of a bone-operation done in India where the extreme precaution taken in the USA was unavoidably absent. Naturally this was serious food for thought. If the infection proved refractory as it very well might, the leg would have to be cut off from mid-thigh. As usual I put the matter to the Mother. Nearly two months passed but there was no reply. On the 16th of January this year at night I again pressed her for an answer. I said: "I don't want to suggest anything favourable. I leave it to you to say whatever you wish." In the morning, as if out of the blue, I got the words: "Yes, there is the danger, but keep your faith intact."
I discerned no positive assurance here as in the previous instances. Though no negation faced me, the statement was ambiguous. It seemed to imply that there would be a real test for my faith: the danger might be such that my faith would be
Page 175
strained to the utmost. On the other hand, if I could retain my faith in spite of everything looking awful I would come through. Perhaps the statement implied that I should not lose my faith even if the danger proved such as to render the operation a failure? My nephew had told me: "When bones are joined by metal screws and plates the combination is often liable to an infection which can resist all antibiotics," A great seriousness came over me after the Mother's message. I felt I had to gather as much strength as 1 could to face the uncertain future. In the afternoon at the Samadhi I had the sensation of the wide-spreading sturdy Service Tree merging with my being and creating a solid steady strength in my limbs. I was sure I could bear whatever complications might arise at the site of the surgery.
Two or three days afterwards, the doctor friend, who had earlier warned me about pain and whom I had not yet told of the Mother's pronouncement, asked me what I hoped to do with my leg made straight by an operation. I said: "With the help of my 'walker' 1 shall be able to move a little on my own in my rooms and go more easily than now to the bathroom. Of course, I shall never be able to move out of the house on my 'Canadian Canes' (hand-crutches). Even to make a round of my rooms with them would be out of the question. The possibility of falling again would be too great." Then my friend remarked: "The advantages of the surgery are marginal compared with the suffering, the inconvenience and the risks involved." At this, a wavering vision of my own about the smallness of the advantages even if the operation was a perfect success became vivid and clear. Still I refrained from making any decision by mere thought. My friend's words were submitted to a deeper realm of consciousness, a wide silence beyond human hopes and fears. Soon there was a waft from it, shaking somewhat the old firm resolution. But I wanted a quick definite decision as my nephew was to be informed as soon as possible whether, as planned by him, he should come to Pondicherry to attend the operation. A resolve crystallised, with the Mother's ambiguous message
Page 176
colouring it, that the operation should be cancelled. This was at about 7.45 a.m. the next day. 1 prepared a note for the Ashram doctor who is in charge of the Nursing Home where the operation was to be carried out. He wrote back:
"I received your note with a sense of relief truly. Somehow my own feeling was not very happy about this - but once you and Dr. Bhattacharya decided between yourselves I had to pursue it dutifully. Good that it is over now."
(24.3.1993)
I am glad The Problem of Aryan Origins has reached you. I am sorry to hear from you that it has oversights as well as insights. But hopefully it has dealt with the central issues in an adequate way and would administer a salutary knock on the wooden head of Jan Gonda whose latest "authoritative" pronouncements you have sent me. 1 had never thought he could be so sweepingly supercilious in his judgments. As regards the symbolic-spiritual interpretation of the Rigveda in Sri Aurobindo's Hymns to the Mystic Fire to which he has given a passing footnote, he should have offered a reason for rejecting it so out of hand. But I notice that he has left -inevitably like all other non-Aurobindonian interpreters - a definite joint in his own glittering armour.
Take the phrase on p. 24 of his "Introduction to the Veda in general and the Rgveda in particular" about "the indigenous inhabitants (dasa or dasyu)" with whom the Rigvedics fought: "Against these enemies, not always distinguishable from demoniac enemies...." The moment this admission is made, Gonda lies vulnerable to Sri Aurobindo's argument apropos of the dasa-dasyu.
We may put the argument as follows. Instead of looking at the Rigveda piecemeal we should cast a glance at it as a whole. Then we make a striking discovery. There are passages in which the spiritual-symbolic interpretation is the sole one possible and all others are completely excluded. There are no passages in which we lack a choice either between this inter-
Page 177
pretation and a nature-poetry - e.g., the supp Ian ration of night by sunrise, with cows and rain-rivers and sky disclosed -or between the spiritual-symbolic exegesis and the reading of human enemies. So neither such a reading nor the nature-poetry is indispensable, and the spiritual-symbolic vision which is absolutely imperative in several hymns and, unlike both of the other alternatives, is never completely excluded but always remains possible in all the rest of the cases, stands out as the most logical, the single consistent and sufficient explanation of the dasa-dasyu.
In an earlier instalment sent by you of Gonda's writings I come across the statement: "Natural phenomena and their mythological, symbolical or esoterical interpretation are often interwoven: the luminous phenomena connected with dawn appear like - no, as - cows..." (p. 242). What, then, is "absurd" and "unfounded" about interpreting, as Sri Aurobindo does, the proper name "Gotama" of a Rishi as "most radiant" (fn. 47, p. 244) because of the relations between cows (go) and morning-light, relations which Gonda himself admits in that very footnote on Hymns to the Mystic Fire? Besides, Gonda goes so far as to state on p, 245: "There is, in general, almost universal agreement about the poets' intentions to convey, by the symbols and images of cows, another and deeper meaning than the surface one in passages such as 4, 41, 5 stating that the big cow - i.e. poetic art - which with her milk gives a thousand gushes is expected to yield now also as if she had gone through the pasture..." What Gonda disputes is that such a meaning is to be seen everywhere. On a second look I observe that even that footnote does not run down Sri Aurobindo altogether. It says that "some modern mystics and philosophers - among them Aurobindo, e.g. in Hymns to the Mystic Fire, Pondicherry 1952 - go decidedly too far in assuming symbolism and allegories." Mark the expression: "too far." Here again is a joint in the armour. If we can show that in a good number of instances - as Gonda himself admits
-"symbolism and allegories" can be assumed and that nowhere are they completely ruled out in spite of a natural-
Page 178
istic or realistic appearance of the expressions, then Gonda's indignation at the Aurobindonian sense of "Gotama" can be exposed as unwarranted.
The one point at which he is likely to be a great stickler is his obsession by the theory of an Aryan invasion. But here too I see the armour carrying a bit of a joint. On p. 23 I read almost what Keith wrote in 1922: "It is generally assumed that the Aryan invaders entered by the western passes of the Hindu Kush and proceeded thence through the Punjab to the east. That advance itself - which in all probability covered some centuries - is not reflected in the hymns, most of which seem to have been composed in the country round the Sarasvati river, in the hilly and best parts of the Punjab." It is expected by Indologists like Gonda that the "advance" assumed would be reflected in the Rigveda. If, against such an expectation, it is not reflected, what is the ground for taking it for granted? Analogically, if the entry itself into India, which we would most expect to be reflected, finds not the slightest reflection, what reason have we to assume it?
Once the invasion-obsession can be lifted off, the chronology - c. 1500 B.C. - appears quite arbitrary. Do we have any grounds to believe that the Rigveda is subsequent to the Harappa Culture, the Indus Valley Civilisation, which is now said to have ended in c. 1700 B.C.? The only argument possible is that its story of destroying a large number of fortified towns, mighty strongholds, seems to point in the direction of the numerous citadels of the Indus Valley Civilisation. But Gonda does not see his Aryan invaders as destroyers of cities like Mohenjodaro and Harappa. He even has the phrase about the enemies of the Rigvedics: "The indigenous inhabitants (dasa or dasyu) - often but without sufficient evidence identified with the survivors of the Indus culture" (p. 24). In no way does Gonda show us any link between the Indus Valley Civilisation and his Aryan invaders. How then can he argue that they arrived after its downfall? No ground remains to stick to c. 1500 B.C. or any post-Harappan date. If so, why talk even of an invasion at any time?
Page 179
All in all, the historical tactics of Gonda are illegitimate. To put it in jocular terms, they are as if those of a sophistical Goonda!
(24.6.1992)
I cannot help addressing you familiarly by your first name because your "Offering in Celebration of 'Life-Poetry-Yoga' with love" has gone straight to the core of my heart where all formalities drop in the light of a spontaneous inner relationship as of soul to comrade soul.
It is the first time a Parsi has responded warmly and happily to my monthly series in Mother India and with such an originality of expression. The word "celebration" brings a gesture both of rejoicing and of honouring - it carries an air of festivity on the one hand and on the other an aura of reverence. My series seems to make you smile and laugh intimately at the same time that it brings to your eyes the vision of an ideal distance where one's finest hopes are fulfilled. A stylist like Flaubert would have been thrilled at your mot juste, though I doubt if he could have entered, for all his insight into complex character, the inner world of Aurobindonian reveries and realities in which we so closely meet in spite of being outwardly strangers.
My aim in "Life - Poetry - Yoga" has been to write not just from book-knowledge but from the stuff of my own experience or, if you like, book-knowledge as felt on my own pulses. All the problems that come to me have a family-relationship with the highways and byways of difficulty and solution that I myself have traversed.
(19.8.1993)
You have posed a number of points which call for discriminate consideration. You write: "One of the biggest reasons which gives rise to the fear of defeat in me is the urge for perfection. Nothing short of it satisfies me, and consequently
Page 180
I'm ever dissatisfied. I may be ahead of people of my age, but 1 have a sense of know-nothing-at-all. Though I am at the top in my class, I'm not really happy because I want to be as good as the professor, if not better!"
Well, to be satisfied is to stop progressing - there must be a "beyond" - but the beyond is to be seen as a happy prospect for progress, we must be elated by it instead of being miserable with our present condition. Dissatisfaction without depression: this must be our motto.
You have referred to "defeat" and later say: "That lurking sense of possible defeat - the question 'What will happen if I don't reach the highest I aim at?' - balks my efforts." It is the sincere attempt to surpass oneself that counts. If circumstances thwart your success, you must not think there has been a waste of effort and time. An inner development has come by the very attempt to reach out to a greater goal. Even a lifelong failure to realise one's highest objective should not cause a feeling of frustration. The inner development on the way to a seeming nowhere is the criterion of success. I remember a Chinese saying: "Better to be a crystal and be broken than to lie a mere tile intact for ever on a roof-top."
Keep in mind what Sri Aurobindo has said about his own work. After referring to the terrific difficulties he has faced in the new earth-transforming Yoga he has toiled at - difficulties greater than any encountered by any spiritual aspirant in the past - and after mentioning his faith in the ultimate fruition of his colossal labour, he adds: "But even if I still saw the chance that it might come to nothing..., I would go on unperturbed, because I would still have done to the best' of my power the work that I had to do, and what is so done always counts in the economy of the universe."
Mark the words: "so done." It spotlights the inner spirit, the self-dedication, the sense of being the instrument of the Supreme Will. To whatever small extent we can, we must be Aurobindonian in our attitude to the job in hand and calmly move apace.
You have written: "I experience a greater joy in doing
Page 181
work with full involvement than in exclusive meditation. During meditation I feel peaceful and concentrated no doubt, but the joy of progressing comes only while working with dedication and sincerity even if I don't remember the Mother continuously during work but only occasionally. But again if I work keeping some immediate result in mind I feel restless and tortured. I feel happy and fulfilled only when 1 work peacefully and persistently, free from the thought of result, because then I automatically get into a meditating poise.... I am "such a mixture of quirks and idiosyncrasies. 1 want you to help me go right."
Exclusive meditation is not to be ruled out. We don't have to regard it as inaction. There are occasions in the soul's life for rapt inwardness. But, by and large, to carry on, with the face turned to the Mother's light, whatever work falls to our lot is more creative in terms of the spirituality Sri Aurobindo has revealed, for this spirituality aims at a radical change of the outer being and at a new wakeful world of interrelations. At first we may not remember the Mother all the time, but a self-consecration at the start of a work and a self-consecration at the end are sufficient in the early stages of Yoga, When the inmost soul becomes a conscious flame in our days and a living mystery in our nights, then a kind of automatic offering of the work to the Divine all the time takes place. We carry the aura of the inner around the outer and are effortlessly guided to do everything in consonance with the inner's intimacy with the Divine - an atmosphere of humble holiness working out things envelops all our activity. Along with the urge to be perfect in every venture and be more and more productively dynamic, there has to be the aspiration to be perfectly in the hands of the Supreme. Those lines of Shelley's, which you recall me as quoting to you -
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow -
point you precisely to the state towards which I am asking
Page 182
you to aspire. At first glance it may appear to strike a note of escapism, but actually Shelley was not only a fervent idealist but also an ardent reformist. He yearned to liberate the world from the obscurantism of priests and the despotism of kings. Mind and body clear of shackles - such was the visionary drive behind his great lyrical drama, Prometheus Unbound. From that "something afar" where there is freedom from our sorrowful sphere he longed to bring a new light, love and liberty to that sphere. For what was initially seen at a distance was the true self, the hidden reality of what is found here and now. It has to be invoked as if it were a perfection to be evoked from our depths. The wonderful Beyond is like a mirror of a marvellous Within - or rather a realised form prefiguring the beauty and bliss waiting to emerge from the secret recesses of the Unknown behind man's reverie-rhythmed heart. Sri Aurobindo has vividly flashed on our eyes the ultimate result on earth of "the desire of the moth for the star" that is the Shelleyan cry:
It comes at last, the day foreseen of old,
What John in Patmos saw, what Shelley dreamed,
Vision and vain imagination deemed,
The City of Delight, the Age of Gold.
We have to keep the sense of this waiting City and that emergent Age alive in our thoughts and feelings. I see from your response to Nature from your roof-top that a frequent glimmer of this sense is a part of your life. And your ache for perfection is in its root a recurring echo of it.
(9.9.1993)
Page 183
17
Your experience of being transported to another time or life seems to be a happy mixture of present and past, the reminiscence of a contact with the Mother in a bygone life mingling with the memories and hopes relating to her Ashram of today. Your red sari in the vision is symbolic of the living expression you are seeking of your inmost heart - that "crimson-throbbing glow" (your fellow-Catholic Coventry Patmore's words) in which dreams of the Ideal bum and beat. Your meeting your brother William in this vision is not surprising, for behind his physical and mental limitations in the present life is his evolving soul which must have grown not only in spite of but also because of the unusual state in which it outwardly found itself. The soul's ways are strange and often inscrutable. Before it leaves a body it chooses its own next incarnation, the nature of which would answer to the need felt by the departing soul for a certain kind of new experience. Of course there are Karmic effects too of one's doings, but the ordinary idea that good fortune now means reward for past good deeds and current misfortune spells punishment for old wickedness is too schoolmasterly and superficial. At times the soul accepts difficulties to serve as a short-cut to its progress.
I saw the film Gandhi. It was extremely well acted and produced, driving home very vividly the extraordinary moral force of the man. Some telling incidents of his life were somehow left out. Some blunders of his, too, didn't figure, the greatest being the rejection of the Cripps Proposals which, according to Sri Aurobindo, had come on a wave of divine inspiration and on behalf of which Sri Aurobindo sent a special message to Cripps and a personal emissary to the Indian Congress. If accepted, they would have brought about a united front by the Hindus and the Muslims and, by a firm co-operative experience in government, tended to prevent the fissure which led to the tragic break-up of the country into
Page 184
Bharat and Pakistan some years later.
What you write about yourself and me is full of inner truths. That "beautiful white glow or flame" in the centre of your forehead each time I was in your thought images the true Amal who has to manifest some day the reality caught in those two verses in a poem of his -
Flickering no longer with the cry of clay,
The distance-haunted fire of mystic mind -
the reality at which Sri Aurobindo hinted when he gave me my Ashram name "Amal Kiran" meaning "The Clear Ray". I picture this ray to be something like that streak of all-penetrating white light which Indian spiritual mythology sees issuing from Shiva's "third eye" in the centre of his forehead. It is natural that you should feel the Mother smiling, for surely it is the true Amal that the Mother kept always in gracious sight, overlooking all the obscurities which were present in me but which I never sought to hide from her and tried my best to submit to her for dispersal.
I am glad you have qualified for intenser care as well as for greater understanding of the ailing who come to the emergency department. Most probably your new job reveals a field for which your new name - "Kripa" - has acted like an "Open Sesame". "Kripa" in place of the old "Catherine" is what has come through me from the Mother's overflowing love and compassion not only to kindle in you her true child but also to act through you to spread her warm wide being to the world you live in and kindle everywhere happiness and harmony and health and holiness.
These four h's are things that are modes of the Mother's "warm wide being" already present in the world's depths. The Divinity high above in the Transcendent is also there within us and within the universal existence. That is what is implied by the phrase you have quoted from Sri Aurobindo: "... this consciousness, this supreme reality which is behind all existence, which is the source and the substance of all." To
Page 185
bring forward the Wonder which is "behind'' - the stuff of the Spirit from which all has come and of which all is secretly made: that is the great task, and the metaphysical basis of the vision inspiring such a task is what you "don't so readily find in Christianity" or rather in your "history of religious pursuit". Teilhard de Chardin was born with an intuition of Indian spirituality that he called "pantheism" and grossly misunderstood because of the Western pantheistic philosophy that excludes the Transcendent. He always fought with himself because of conventional Catholic scruples and never achieved the synthesis of the true Indian spirituality which, from the time of the Rigveda, held that the Supreme Being kept three-fourths of Himself above and sent one-fourth below to make the cosmos. Conventional Catholicism makes out the cosmic one-fourth to be merely a creation "out of nothing", a product which does not have the very substance of the Supreme Being in a temporarily covered and gradually manifesting form: there is a rather confused understanding of the Pauline affirmation of Him "in whom we live and move and have our being".
(14.9.1983)
From the tone as well as the contents of your letter I can judge that you and your wife are going on steadily forward. There is a poise full of a quiet happy receptivity - a sure sign of a touch on you from both the infinite Self of all and the true individual soul, the Divine Immense and the Divine Intense, the peace of the Beyond and the joy of the Within. The Beyond tends to put an end to what Sri Aurobindo calls "time's unrest" and to bring an unshakable freedom as if one stood out of the universe in a vast background. The Within does not break away from the heart's pulsations: it counts, as it were, the moments of time but through them it listens to the magically changing rhythm of a secret flute and echoes the ever-nearing footsteps of some Perfect Form whose beauty does not belong to us yet but still gives us the feeling that we
Page 186
have always belonged to it.
Your dream-experience carries the stamp of this Within. The car of a special type which you never saw before and which was coloured blue and white is the movement of Yoga assimilating the passage of time and representing by its colour Krishna's light which Sri Aurobindo has also termed his own light - a whitish blue. No wonder the "heart-stirring music" that came out of it bore the mantra "Rama...Krishna" and, by that soul-intimate sound, cut you away from your ordinary relationships and through a snatch of trance brought you the sense of your being's truth, your most real You-ness which is dedicated to the Perfect Form I have spoken of and by this self-giving shares in its blissful beauty.
(15.9.1983)
As soon as I received your letter I fished out the issue of Mother India in which I had published from the Times Literary Supplement an article just right for soothing your wife's nerves and yours. As the book reviewed in it has been published from the States I would advise you to buy it to get a fuller treatment of the viewpoint sketched in the article. Nostradamus has become a sensational theme, just as the Revelation of St. John has been. All kinds of terrifying prophecies are sought to be read in the latter, especially in America. One of the most fantastic interpretations is about the Anti-Christ. Poor John Carlos of Spain is cast in that role by one school of interpreters. The whole scheme is connected with the biblical vision of the Second Coming of Christ. I have studied this question very closely and can prove that Jesus prophesied his own return to take place fairly soon after his death. In the Gospels as well as in the Epistles of Paul we have the suggestion that in the first century A.D. itself the Second Coming will be experienced and the resurrection of all the believers will occur. Paul adds that those who are alive from the generation contemporary with him will also be transformed in the twinkle of an eye and be lifted up into the
Page 187
heavens in the wake of the dead who will arise in new spiritual bodies. Paul at first believed that the great event would be witnessed in his own lifetime: later, owing perhaps to a decline in his health, he held that it might happen soon after his death. No doubt, Jesus says in the Gospels that nobody, not even he, knows the exact day and hour: only God the Father knows them. But this in no way contradicts the declaration on several occasions that they would be in the very near future.In the latest book in the New Testament - II Peter - which assuredly belongs to the first half of the second century A.D. there is a lament that the unbelievers mock the believers because the prophecy has not yet come true. And a defence is attempted with an Old-Testament saying that to God a day can be like a thousand years and a thousand years like a day, implying that any delay cannot be used to give the lie to the prediction. But there is no going back on the prediction in its essence - namely, that the Second Coming will be soon. The delay is surmised to be giving the unbelievers the full chance to voice their derision triumphantly and thus be wholly ripe for the punitive divine wrath. Thus there is not a shred of scriptural support for the various modern scenarios of doomsday. People who have not unprejudicedly studied the New Testament indulge in all those semi-science-fiction predictions. Similar seems to have been the case with the students of Nostradamus. The author of the book reviewed in the article "Oracle to the Cock of France" has given the most dispassionate and penetrating look at the verses of Nostradamus and made them applicable only to his own time.
What is said about the west coast of America by Nostra-damus's interpreters is not quite inaccurate in general. This part of America rests on a geological "fault" and the possibility of an earthquake at some time in the future is there but the utterly catastrophic view which has been put forth Nostradamusly is, without doubt, sensation-mongering. The same holds for the prediction of a 27-year war in the near future. I would attach no importance to this bit of futurology.
Page 188
I don't say the future is bound to be all smooth, but no passage of time throughout history has ever been such What we have to cling to and what should give us an optimistic vision is the Mother's assurance that a luminous spiritual age awaits us and all that happens before it will be turned in the best way possible towards its arrival. Now that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are not in their physical forms, the age spoken of may be far, but it will certainly come and nothing like a Third World War will be able to prevent it. I even question the possibility of such a war. The most dangerous time, according to the Mother, for a world-wide conflagration was before what she has called the Supramental Manifestation in the earth's subtle-physical layer came about on the 29th February 1956. After this manifestation the history of the world underwent a change and the direction was set for a grand progression towards the evolution of the Superman. Perhaps the Mother has to be reborn in order to accelerate things, but her work and Sri Aurobindo's will go on in any case. The very fact that nobody has read in Nostradamus any hint of this work shows that he could not be a genuine prophet - and even if there be frightening prospects in a world which has acquired nuclear power without a deepening or heightening of consciousness, it is perfectly true, as said in Savitri, that
One man's perfection still can save the world.
Your wife and you should live calmly and courageously, have whatever children you want without the fear that you would be ushering them into a disastrous world, choose whatever location suits you and keep your faith in Sri Aurobindo and the Mother ever bright and inwardly dedicate to them all that you do.
The dream you had in early August this year figures the dangers of an inwardly "unprepared mankind possessing - in words again from Savitri -
The riven invisible atom's omnipotent force
Page 189
and at the same time discloses the knowledge-illumined saviour Shakti of the Mother. The dreamer in you has been more like the Nostradamus pictured by his commentators than the real 16th-century chap whose predictive eyes did not in fact range beyond the circumstances of the France of his day.
At your mention of "the learned Parsi Behramji Pitha-walla" I could not help smiling. Where has this person picked up something from the Parsi scriptures relating to Bombay? These scriptures date from the B,C-period and can have no reference to any modern city unless fanciful conversions are made, as in Nostradamus's text, of old terms into new significances. Even the latest traditional glosses on the scriptures like the Dinkard, go back to the early centuries of the Christian era, the Arsacidian or Sassanian times. Behramji Pithawalla's information seems to have flowed out of a Pitha (wine-shop) rather than from the Avesta.
You may address me by any affectionate form you like. I don't mind being "uncle". But along with it use my original name or my Ashram appellation without any honorific suffix: please don't append "ji" or "da". Don't let my ripe old age misguide you into making me ridiculously venerable. Rather than be considered venerable with "ji" or "da", I wouldn't mind the invariable malapropism of my erstwhile Bombay landlord, the late Ardaser Dubash - as when with a spontaneous consistency of verbal misapplication he referred to an honoured guest at one of his parties - Father Sola, the St. Xavier's College's Rector (Head) - as "That venereal old gentleman who is the rectum of St. Xavier's College."
(16.9.1983)
My inordinate delay in replying to you must have engendered all kinds of thoughts in your mind: "Amal is ill - or even gone permanently out of his body - or else he does not want to have any relation with me or, again, he is absolutely stumped by the dynamic doctor's arguments which I have relayed from here."
Page 190
In a general way the last idea is near the mark. Though "stumped" is not the mot juste, what the doctor has dynamically dosed you with is connected with a subject on which the wisest thing to do is to be driven into silence. Arguing will be of little use. Different points of view are possible - and the best resort is to take refuge in the words of somebody much more illumined than ourselves. If Sri Aurobindo and the Mother direct us or permit us to eat this or that kind of food, we must accept their guidance. Along with that guidance goes their advice not to be rigidly bound to any idea or develop doctrinaire fanaticism.
The general rule for the Ashram is vegetarianism as practised in our Dining Room. But the Mother freely allows eggs and even some meat at times, not to mention fish. We follow her wisdom and do not enter into controversies over these matters any more than over that other issue: service to society. We serve society to the extent that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother wish. Surely they do not want us to live only for our own egos. While ultimately concentrating on self-dedication to the Divine by both an inner life and an outer one, we do works in the world involving benefiting our fellow-beings. Most of these fellow-beings are our fellow-sadhaks and working for their good is certainly tantamount to a kind of social service. The Mother always appreciated unselfish behaviour as well as the doing of a job for others as perfectly as possible. Those who practise slapdash work just because what they do is apparently for the egos of fellow-sadhaks forget the central truth of work here, the truth for which the Mother encouraged an active life, the truth that we serve' the Divine in a person and must therefore do our job for him or her sincerely and efficiently.
Our basic aim is not social service as such but to be more and more in contact with the Divine by Yoga. Since Sri Aurobindo's Yoga is integral, it must lead to living harmoniously and creatively in the midst of the world. In the manner and in the measure the Divine wants us to do so we must carry on and not bother about general theories of what
Page 191
man is born for. Similarly, in our eating modes we must attempt to live as the founder of the Integral Yoga ordains, and desist from discussing general attitudes such as the single-tracked mind of your medical disputant pushes upon you.
If somebody does not wish to follow Sri Aurobindo and the Mother because of some general attitude, leave him alone. Just say that you have offered your life to them and you will do as they direct, irrespective of whether your doings conform' to one or another position taken up by people. Only those who believe that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother possess a greater light than the mental consciousness will be real followers and they will not argue their heads off about subjects your friend is fond of fighting over. We are not there to make converts by entering into all sorts of controversies. We are willing to discuss broad philosophical issues but we must not get entangled in faddist problems.
(14.1.1984)
Quite a number of notes you have struck in the three letters I have with me. But three in particular are felt as tones and undertones and overtones. There are light and joy on the surface - that is the poet responding to the magic and mystery of the world, the touch of bright nearnesses, the call of hazy distances. All these are what I name "tones", the varied spectrum of waking life. But at one end of the spectrum is the infra-red and at the other the ultra-violet. The former I point to as "undertones", the hidden cries and gropings, the restlessnesses of a dream-life which glimpses elusive idealities. You have caught a sense of it with impressive originality in the poem entitled "Lonely Restlessness". Usually the sea is described as full of turmoil and agitation on its surface and the depths are said to be calm. You have reversed the scene. A happy laughing movement rather than unrest is your sea's outer being, a kind of calm that is sun-shot and a-glimmer. Below is the great unease, the ever-
Page 192
searching solitariness. Not that pleasure is absent, not that the thrill of beauty is lacking. The Divine is felt here at diverse play no less than in the many-coloured outer appearance, but here are subtle and secret ways that do not lead to tangible goals. The lurings of these ways you designate "the touch that hurts and delights", the more-than-human which is not easy to bear because of its strange enrapturing excess of loveliness. You get scattered sips of nectar which set you always seeking, the full sweetness cannot be drained. The only solution is to go from the dreaming inner to the tranced inmost, where hides .
the petalled fire
Rooted in godlike rest.
What I have labelled as "overtones" is, in my spectrum-image, the ultra-violet. It is not the Divine below or behind or within: it is the Divine beyond - to us a superconscient sleep, not just the sweet essence of things that is found in the soul but the vast heaven of honey overflowing to infinity. Perhaps none of us has made his home there but all of us have known vague drippings, through some tremulous opening in our heads, from the golden charity pouring at all times out of the spiritual empyrean whose physical image is - a la Fitzgerald's Omar - "that inverted bowl we call the sky".
(3.6.1986)
Page 193
18
Two letters of yours have been lying before me, constantly crying to be answered. They carry something of your magical presence and have tried hard to lift the heavy hand of indolence that has recently been weighing down the "man of letters" in me. I say "magical" about your presence because that is what I have always felt in all the years I have known you. One aspect of you seemed always to be looking out of "magic casements", so that there is an expression in your eyes at once of reverie and wonder as if they reached forth from a strange inwardness to some enchanted secret behind the commonplaces and familiarities of the outward world. And what is that secret? Here 1 am reminded of seven lines from Savitri which have been your favourites:
A magic leverage suddenly is caught
That moves the veiled Ineffable's timeless will:
A prayer, a master act, a king idea
Can link man's strength to a transcendent Force.
Then miracle is made the common rule,
One mighty deed can change the course of things;
A lonely thought becomes omnipotent.
The enchanted secret you are ever looking for is this "magic leverage" and the anticipation of it brings a light into your being and a lightness in your body, making you a magical presence all the more.
Now let me come down to earth. When D'Annunzio was introduced to Eleonara Duse, he stepped back a little and looking at her exclaimed: "Splendid! Magnificent! D'Annun-zian!" Then he said: "Madame, how do you do?" Having uttered my little panegyric on you, I'll deal with your request whether you could freely quote me and even reproduce whole articles of mine. Of course! I
Page 194
Most happy too am I to learn that The Adventure of the Apocalypse especially appeals to you from among all my collections of poems. The piece you like very much - "Words" - is also one of my own pets. I still remember the thrill that ran through my whole body when I wrote the end of its concluding paragraph. Here is the paragraph:
Words are the shadows of enhaloed hawks:
The shadows cling to clay and seem clay-born,
But he who marks their moving mystery
Feels how a strange spontaneous quiver wings
Their passage here and how intangible
They float for all their close and massive shapes.
Alone the poet looks up to the Inane,
Sees the gold wanderers of the boundless blue,
Catches the radiant rhythms each burning heart
Puts forth in every line of the wide form
Spanning the silences with pinion-song.
Thus in his scheme of shades from the vast throng
Haunting the earth-mind he shows across brief thought
Glimmers immortal, throbbings of the bliss
That reels through heaven a drunkard of Truth's sun.
Or, in rare moments quick with dawn and noon
And eve at once, our little human dreams
Love with such far-flung eyes the undying birds
That the large lust comes swooping down for prey
And, where the shadows mystically shone,
Falls - crushing, piercing, ravishing every sense -
The Living body and beauty and blaze of God!
Now to your main problem. You write:
"A question has arisen, that I would like your help with. I've been asked to speak - one of five people representing different organisations — on the subject of 'gurus'. Not a subject I would have chosen for myself! However, I do not want to misrepresent Sri Aurobindo's teaching. What did he say about the need for - the desirability of - a guru? I have
Page 195
always had the impression that he himself did not want to be anyone's Guru, in the traditional Indian sense. At the same time I remember reading somewhere that he had said that 'at a certain stage of a Yoga, the presence of a living Guru is indispensable' (not in those exact words, but something along those lines). If this is so, how are we who came to Sri Aurobindo's Yoga after the Mother had left her body to pass that 'certain stage'? Can anyone be sure that he has been accepted? (For myself, the answer to the latter question - the only answer I shall ever have! - came to me in a dream, but I don't feel I can offer dreams to my audience, they will surely look for something more substantial!) Can you help?"
I should say that, according to Sri Aurobindo, in his Yoga as in all Indian spiritual disciplines it is advisable to have a Guru in physical form. Behind this general advice there is the fact that people who claim to be inwardly guided at all times and don't care for a physical Guru are frequently lured by the unacknowledged realisation that such a Guru can be a damned nuisance - ready to contradict the often convenient deliverances of the exclusively inward guide! I know from experience what a wonderful help, both prescriptive and restrictive, the embodied Guru can be. But, of course, Yoga can go on in the absence of a living Guru, though it is best to put oneself as much as possible in touch inwardly with a Guru who has once lived. Outwardly one would do well to avail oneself of whatever help a sincere disciple of such a Guru can offer when asked. The stage at which, in Sri Aurobindo's view, an embodied Guru is indispensable is when the bodily supramentalisation, which is the ultimate crown of his Yoga, has begun. At that stage there are extremely grave dangers which only the physically present Guru can save one from. Such a stage is indeed a far cry for all of us - and it is my conviction no less than it was Nolini's that bodily supramentalisation has been postponed now. I have written somewhere about man reaching this condition either in a revolutionary or in an evolutionary way. The revolutionary way was envisaged originally for Sri Aurobindo and the
Page 196
Mother in the first place and for their close disciples in the second. Even I was once told by the Mother orally - and my report of her statement was confirmed by Sri Aurobindo in writing - that I would undergo "the Great Transformation", meaning bodily supramentalisation, in this very life. Knowing my own weaknesses I found this double assurance breathtaking, but there it was. When both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother gave up - for reasons of their own - the grand experiment with their own bodies, the hope of any of their disciples doing it faded. But what is called "the Supramental Manifestation" on February 29, 1956 has made the evolutionary achievement by mankind in some future age certain, for now the Supermind's "light, force and consciousness" which manifested are a part of the earth's future history and from their subtle-physical presence as of today they will become more and more directly physical in the course of time, helped by the action of both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother who have taken their station as concrete beings on the subtle-physical plane for their divine work to continue on earth. As for acceptance by them of people as disciples now, there can be no doubt if the aspirants are sincere and turned towards them. One's sincerity is the sign that they have put their golden seal upon one.
(17.7.1993)
Your friend's observation is unusual and worth pondering. It is true that people living in great comfort and with money in full flow tend to be drawn outward. But, with so much natural beauty around, it is hard to think that one would tend to lose touch with one's inner being. What your friend is driving at is something like the following. The utterly beautiful forests and gardens and hills with a clean finely appointed cottage nestling among them make one content and happy to spend one's days in such a setting and keep away from physically poor and noisy Pondicherry. The urge to go back to the Ashram which is located in this town gets extremely weakened
Page 197
and one is apt to lose touch with what is at present the soul's material home. One inclines to lose sight of the intense inwardness one has experienced in the Pondicherry-surrounded Ashram-atmosphere and one is satisfied with whatever comfortable in-feeling one gets amidst the scenic beauty before one's outer eyes.
I remember the joy I used to experience on the "hill-station" of Matheran where I felt that, instead of my having to move towards Yoga, Yoga was coming on its own towards me in sight of the mountains and the thick woods and with fresh unpolluted air steeped in silence all about me. Pondicherry was almost forgotten.
But when I compare the in-feeling there with that which was mine in the proximity of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother I realise that the master-point of inner intensity was absent. Of course this holds only for those who have deeply breathed the Ashram-atmosphere. For those who live outside, places like Matheran would mean the ne plus ultra of spiritual encouragement. A response or reaction has to be considered in this light.
(6.8.1993)
I haven't written to you for a long while, nor have you been deluging me with letters as before. In one of your wisely spaced-out trickles an apparent contradiction between two statements by the Mother was posed to me for a solution. In one you report the Mother as saying that when difficulties come we may be sure that the Grace is present to act. In the other she is said to declare that the Grace is present and active all the time.
I don't think the first statement negates the ever-active play of Grace. It draws attention to the truth which is liable to get ignored that difficulties are not a sign of the Grace's withdrawal. They may simply have been inevitable, as some things are bound to be in a world which lives in the reign of Ignorance - a cosmic phenomenon. Even so, the Grace is
Page 198
ready to tackle them: it does not give one up. Possibly the difficulties are themselves an act of Grace, a secret spur to the soul in us to emerge and take charge of the outer life which may be threatening to get out of hand. We are asked by the Mother not to fall under the shadow of the suspicion that the Divine has forsaken us.
The other statement serves to assure us that even if we withdraw from the Divine, the Grace will never leave us -only it is often obstructed by our denials from acting. The Mother also forewarns us that adverse circumstances do not mean that the Grace has bidden us adieu. The Divine is always there to pull us out of the deepest hole as well as to lift us up from height to greater height. Especially a Yoga like ours which calls for self-surrender because its sights are trained on super-Himalayan realisations which no human power on its own can attain, the Grace has automatically to be there to clap wings on to our sagging shoulders.
(27.9.1993)
Here are your questions and my answers
1.What is the unifying relation between the Supermind and Divine Grace?
The Divine Mother who is the Supermind's eternal gesture of Light and Love to our fumbling and stumbling world,
2.What should be our attitude towards the Supermind?
Self-offering to Sri Aurobindo who has offered the Supermind to us.
3.How do I live in the Supreme Consciousness? Before you
4.If all is Grace-ordained, where can be any cause for delay in our sadhana?
Your question seems to be just clever words meant to do away with some inconvenient uneasiness about your own role as a sadhak.
5.Should 1 at times invoke Mother Mahakali?
Page 199
Better not at present. You are not God's Warrior enough.
6.Of the two - an ardent desire for one's personal progress and not having any concern for it - which is better?
The former - with no special sense of self-importance.
7.Should I adopt a mantra ? And which ?
If the heart's cry is for a mantra in the times when a deep silence is not speech enough to join you to the Supreme Beloved, you may adopt what has appealed to me the most: Ma-Sri Aurobindo sharanam mama ("Mother-Sri Aurobindo are my refuge").
8.Can I be of any help to you ?
Join me in a poised intensity of aspiration for the Divine - and let your handwriting be less nervously twisted. In Q.6 I could read "progress" only by intuition (a sign of my own progress?). The same holds for "between" in Q.l. To scribble like this is no help to me - nor, I am afraid, will it be to you in your coming M.D. examination. You must prepare yourself all round to consummate your professional career by becoming M(other's) D(octor).
(7.10.1993)
Believe it or not, the shock of the recent earthquake in Maharashtra was felt by many people in Pondicherry. My own experience was rather queer. All of a sudden, a big hard pillow which I keep as a support to my right knee near the site of the fracture moved forward on its own! I looked around to see if anybody had shifted it. The young man who was in my room as a possible help at night was fast asleep. The pillow's autonomous movement would have remained a mystery, a miracle, if I had not heard the news of the far-off earthquake in the morning.
During the last two days I have been feeling - more than before - a deep inadequacy in the course of my sadhana, a kind of quaking of my settled earth. So much seems still unrealised! An act of warm self-giving, bringing a sense of mingling with the hushed heaven, as it were, of the ever-near
Page 200
presence of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is there hour after hour. It lends a meaning to all activities beyond their immediate and apparent usefulness, a meaning that seems to point both inward and upward to some everlasting Perfection, This Perfection, which is at the same time far away and plays like an aura around the sublime yet intimate closeness that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are through the earthly hours, serves as a reminder that an infinity of more-and-more is beckoning us and that the sweet proximity of Grace brought by our two Gurus is a call to experience even in the midst of a profound happiness an immense dissatisfaction. Along with being like a home of fulfilling rest for the soul's long search for the Divine through the True, the Good, the Beautiful, they reveal themselves as doorways for that soul to pass beyond its own ken, so to speak, and reach some endless mystery and magnificence of its own existence in harmony with our Gurus' transcendent counterparts. The difficult task to plunge into those doorways is before me, a challenge that sets an ache of aspiring uncertainty behind all the joy of "the Immortal in the mortal" the long years of the integral Yoga have managed to gather bit by bit.
(13.10.1993)
What pleased me greatly in your letter is your feeling that I am helping to maintain you in your inmost aspiration. Perhaps you are upheld in your own quest of spiritual fulfilment by the thought that the person who is so close to your soul is one who has pledged his whole life to the great Beyond and the deep Within and longed to live in the wide Without with the ego-swamping light from on high and the ego-refining warmth from the secret psyche. I have said "longed to live", for the goal is still far ahead. What has been done is no more than- the taking of a few toddling steps towards it - even if those steps never halt, much less turn backward. The progress is rather slow, but I have the conviction that I am in omnipotent hands which at any moment will
Page 201
lift me out of myself and carry me where Time neighbours Eternity.
(22.10.1993)
How shall I repay your love and generosity? All I can do is to keep you in the very core of my heart.
Perhaps you will want to know what sort of place this core is. Here the feeling of time is charged with a secret transcendence of the hours. Being within the complex of body, life-force and mind, it is necessarily aware of the passage of the moments, and the pains no less than the pleasures, the travails as well as the triumphs of that passage are experienced. They are steadily held in this mysterious domain but along with their earthly character a strange essence of them is distilled like a divine nectar which invigorates and delights, as if I were a warrior who would exult in all the vicissitudes of a battle under the banner of some great cause. Every movement of this warrior is a strain in both the senses of that term. There is an exertion, an expenditure of arduous energy and simultaneously the to-and-fro, the rise and fall of musical notes, the fluent building of poetic stanzas, the silent singing that is woven by varied dance-rhythms. The meeting and parting of earth's ways are reflected here, but all of them bear like an inner light the trend towards a single goal: either a deathless face of utter peace with infinite pity in its eyes or an immortal face of bliss whose eyes brim with love unending -twin aspects of one divinity with arms offering eternal rest and feet tracing for us an enchanted pilgrimage. The part of me that lives in the depth of this magical world is at once aloof from all my friends and yet intimate with their own depths and through these profundities gives the joys and sorrows of their surface selves an intense warmth of sympathy which still leaves him free from the shallowness of those feelings on the surface and unshadowed by their transiency.
Aside from the small bit of Amal Kiran that, by the
Page 202
compassion of Sri Aurobindo and by the grace of the Mother, is held by them in this ever-sunlit realm which is constituted by their presence and whose similitude is hidden within each human being - barring the tiny portion of Amal Kiran which inhabits this blessedness all of him is one in substance with common humanity though always aspiring that that sparkling Seed within him, that wonderful Much-in-little, may sprout and flower in the outer self with its fragrance of the Infinite and its flame of the Unerring.
I have written in terms of images. The being's core is not known immediately in a burst of imagery. But there is no beatific blankness, either. Everything is concretely experienced just as one grows aware of the outer world by sight and sound and touch. The only difference is that here this sense-knowledge is not always explicit. When one dwells on what is present in this inmost dimension of one's being, a self-created picture forms in consonance with the way one's imagination is usually apt to work. An inspiration seems to guide its activity so that spontaneously the Real gets a revelation in terms of the visible, the audible, the tangible, and "unknown modes of being" take strange yet convincing shapes.
(16.11.1993)
Page 203
19
On November 25,1993, my eighty-ninth birthday, I visited Sri Aurobindo's room after nearly fourteen years. My physical disability had deterred me from becoming a burden to friends who would have had to carry me in a chair. They said it would be a pleasure, but I had no heart to impose on them such pleasure. Now my young friend Saurav, who is one of a small group of youngsters most willing to help me and who often goes out of his way to make life easy and interesting for me, pleaded that I should go to the Room of rooms. I just could not disappoint him. So he took me in my wheelchair to the Ashram's ground-floor-space outside Nolini's room. Then he and others helped me transfer myself to an ordinary chair. This chair was carried upstairs and put in Sri Aurobindo's room near the door which is close to Nirodbaran's office "den".
When I reached the Holy of Holies, there was a rush of delightful memories. This was the unforgettable room whose every aspect had been so familiar to me in those days when, along with a few other people, 1 would spend my time from nearly 8.30 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. in its proximity. From 12.30 to 1,40 I would be alone nearby waiting for the Mother to finish her lunch with Pranab and go to her bathroom and then meet me before going for her short siesta.
As soon as my chair was placed in the sanctum I became keenly aware of the Presence that had lived there in an embodied form for twenty-three years. Again and again during those years I had touched his feet in the darshan-room while he would be sitting on a couch with the Mother on it to his right - the beautiful executive and manifesting Tight of him, armed with his full powervIt is worth noting that in all sacred sculpture of India, Ishwari, "the Eternal Feminine", is shown always to the Ishwara's left. Even in the grandiose representation where the God and the Goddess are fused as one supreme Entity in a single form - ardhanariivara - the left
Page 204
half expresses her. But Sri Aurobindo has created a new age of spiritual dynamism in which the Divine Mother shines forth with the total force of the Lord. Symbolic indeed is her position in a world-work which is figured not only as an aeonic many-featured sustainment of her original creative activity but also as the source of a novel era in which the foundation is laid of an ultimate all-round divinisation of the human being, down to the very body. In that era the final salvation is not a rapturous resort to the Beyond: it is an ecstatic establishment here on earth of the entire contents of that glorious Otherwhere. In that superb Secrecy awaits, according to Sri Aurobindo, the godlike original of every part of us. Not merely are an ideal mind and life-force there, ready to descend, but a perfect body exists as well - a super-physicality which will transfigure the present "vesture of decay" in which the soul has had to play its role on the terrestrial stage in life after life for millennia.
While I sat-in Sri Aurobindo's room, the Master of the Integral Yoga was an intense presence all around me, a large enfolding power which seemed to surround me and permeate me and - wonder of wonders! - have its most living centre in my own heart. It was as if he were filling-the room with a starting-point deep within me. It must have been a supreme act of Grace that gave me this feeling, a special boon to one who had come as a sort of prodigal son after a long exile. Or was it a lesson brought home to me that, after all, the real place of Sri Aurobindo at his most Avataric was not in any particular physical spot but in the profundity of love in a devotee's being?
On one side of me was Saurav and on the other my friend Ruth who had asked for the favour of accompanying me as a permitted associate. At first we three were alone. After a while the whole room filled up. At the end of the time allotted for meditation I asked to be ' taken to the other parts of the first floor with which I had been familiar in the past. My chair was carried into the room where the Mother used to sit every morning with her secretaries in a semicircle in front of her,
Page 205
discussing matters of the day before or of the day ahead. At one end of this room was the easy-chair in which the Mother used to sit every afternoon to eat her lunch. Here Kumud now put some special blessing-packets for me on the cushion of the chair along with some flowers. I took them all with happy gratitude.
At the other end of this room was the entrance facing across a little space the room which at one time had served as the Mother's dressing-room. Here every afternoon she would be seated in a chair and sip her glass of fruit-juice. Those who were to meet her would be squatting opposite her in the room from which I was now viewing her dressing-room. On rare occasions I would come up in the afternoon to have a few words with her on some urgent matters. I well remember how once I, kneeling before her, reported the latest news I had heard from "home". Sharply the Mother said: "I have caught you out. Where is what you call 'home'? Is it still in Bombay or is it here?" I was shamefaced and blurted out: "I am sorry, Mother. Of course my home is with you." She made a glad forgiving gesture with her eyes and lips.
As now I looked around, the old days were getting revived in my mind. Now the presence of the Mother began to fill the space upstairs with a smiling centre in my heart.
What most struck me was that there was no sense of emptiness anywhere - no sense of departure by Sri Aurobindo or the Mother. They have left their own luminous atmosphere as a living legacy to the Ashram.
(24.12.1993)
Your present state has only one solution. Of course, it is, as you say, "Offer, offer everything, every act, every thought as soon as possible." But there is a slight slip in the last phrase. "As soon as possible" is not soon enough. No talk of possibility should be there. You must not wait a single fraction of a second. You must not start thinking about your thought and wondering whether you can sweep it away
Page 206
towards the Mother quickly enough.
I am glad your son has been watching sunrises. To get a spur for a better day there is nothing to match this act. What you say about the Gayatri is very true. The sun spoken of in it is the Supermind, the Creator, the Re-creator, the Transformer, whose representative symbol in the physical universe is the luminary that makes our day. The Gayatri may be considered the key to "the Secret of the Veda", for clearly the sun addressed is not just this luminary. The power that can impel our thoughts must be something psychological and spiritual which the sun we behold shadows forth. "Shadows" must strike you as a peculiar word to use about the brightest thing we know. But it is appropriate, as a line by a poet well known to you reminds us by addressing the Supreme Light:
Lustre whose vanishing point we call the sun,
or again:
Truth-pulsing gold to which the sun were black.
(21.9.1982)
I know that the day of Sri Aurobindo's Savitri hasn't yet come. The Symbol Dawn in which its truth and beauty will be seen by all hasn't broken in people's consciousness. But here and there we shall find inner wakers. They have to be people with a wide sense of poetry and not sticklers after one kind or another and they must be ready to feel and see and hear even when they can't quite grasp. By sensitive feeling, penetrative seeing and sympathetic hearing they will begin to make out the substance and realise the traffic of the gods both as they move in their own empyrean and as they cast their shining shadows on the earth. A profound aesthetic approach is demanded by all poetry, for here is an art and, although art should not be cut off from life nor meaning be a matter of indifference, it is by a receptivity to form, a response to the
Page 207
gesture made to the sensuous heart by the suggestive way the words are linked, the images interplay, the sounds get woven together to evoke by the vivid expression a sense of the inexpressible, that poetry is meant to go home to us. The epithet I have prefixed to "aesthetic approach" is important: the approach, for all its aestheticism, has to avoid being superficial - else we have only a preoccupation with the technique. I have spoken of "the sensuous heart" and my epithet "profound" points to it. What I am trying to say with regard to Savitri is that if one searches the art of it with no fixed ideas as to what a poem should convey and how it should do so, one is bound to be touched by it.
I cannot pronounce anything definite on the line you have quoted from Rilke:
Da stieg ein Baum, O reine Ubersteigung,
for I am almost at sea in German. What Stephen Spender seems to have tried by his translation which you quote from memory -
A tree arose, O pure transcension -
is to get a polysyllable word at the end in English to match the original's "Ubersteigung". His "transcension" is rather abstract: its sole merit is its being a coinage of his own on the analogy of "ascension". Your observation strikes me as appropriate: "A tree cannot transcend anything. And 'reine' has more of 'clear' ('it got clear away') or 'clean' (in the sense of something coming away clean), than 'pure'." From what I have heard, "reine" translates most commonly "pure", but ultimately the significance would depend on the particular drift of the poetic vision and emotion. Do you think "sheer" would go beyond Spender's sense sufficiently to catch yours without straining the general usage? I agree that non-Latin words would be best in rendering Rilke, for a German polysyllable is quite likely to be concrete in its evocation and
Page 208
need not be echoed by a similar vocable in English from a Latin origin which would lack concreteness. If I may take Spender as a point de depart, I may venture on something like:
A tree rose up, O sheer soar-away.
Perhaps my ignorance is flying away with me?
I know there comes a turning-point in life when some mystery pressing obscurely from within has to be given a face and a form in day-to-day movements. I can only guess in rather vague terms at your predicament.{Of course I'll pray for you to choose the right path or, like Rilke's up-soaring tree, get clear away into a new dimension instead of wrestling with problems within the old. This would be a peaceful outlet following a peaceful "inlet", a smiling contact with that intrinsic freedom which is your soul. To help the contacting, just pull out "the perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart" and, without trying to resolve it with the mind, offer it to the Mother. Don't offer it in a horizontal line but in a vertical one so as to pass the gesture through the mind and, clearing it of its perplexity, its tangle of thoughts, push everything towards the Divine with a silent plea to Her to make your problem Hers. When you have done this, it is very important that you don't dwell upon it any more. Be as if the question didn't exist. Let the Great Presence deal with it in Its own mystical masterly manner. Once this offering is done, the soul's innate liberty will be felt. The gesture I have spoken of may have to be repeated many times. Whenever the impulse to start thinking out your difficulty comes up, do again the heart-cleansing mind-numbing handing over of your situation to the All-knower, the All-lover, whose glance can pierce through every knot and work out the Will in which alone is our peace, as Dante knew long ago. 1 am telling you this method not merely out of any wise book but out of my own life which has realised on its pulses that
All can be done if the God-touch is there.
Page 209
Now a side-glance at your missionary friend Poh San, St. Paul and the question of translating him. I don't see how she can escape the literal rendering of Galatians 2:19: "Through the Law I die to the Law..." What she has to do is to make a comment on the paradox. The key is supplied in brief by what follows. I am quoting the Jerusalem Bible: "... so that now I can live for God. I have been crucified with Christ, and I live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me. The life I now live in this body I live in faith: faith in the Son'of God who loved me and who sacrificed himself for my sake." Yes, the key is here but it rightly deserves to be called a skeleton key. It needs to be fleshed out with the help of other passages in Galatians: "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law by being cursed for our sake, since scripture says: Cursed be everyone who is hanged on a tree" (3:13) - "God sent his Son, bom of a woman, born a subject to the Law, to redeem the subjects of the Law and to enable us to be adopted as sons" (4:4-5). I may add a passage from 2 Corinthians (5:21): "For our sake God made the sinless one unto sin, so that in him we might become the goodness of God."
If Poh San would like me to elucidate the paradox in my own words, I would say: "We are all sinners and according to the Law of Moses we deserve to be punished, but Jesus got born like one of us and paid the full penalty on our behalf of a Law-transgressor, the penalty of the lowest of deaths, the death of a 'felon' who is crucified ('hanged on a tree'). Thus he brought it about that we can escape the rigour of the Law by means of faith in him which makes us one with him and hence die to the Law by sharing the sense of the utmost Lawful punishment that he underwent - the crucifixion - and, by so dying, be reborn as God's sons, filled with God's goodness and win salvation."
(4.12.1987)
Since you entered the Ashram atmosphere as a teenager and paid your respects to the Samadhi of Sri Aurobindo and the
Page 210
Mother at that early period of your life - presumably your first contact with a spiritual power - the influence of these two Masters of Yoga is bound to have been basic. If afterwards you dabbled in other supposedly spiritual or occult influences, what can you expect other than a confusion in your being? Especially Krishnamurti, with his intellectual seductiveness, must have been a contra influence - he strives to strike at the very root of Indian spirituality which lays a stress on guidance by and devotion to a Gum.The Integral Yoga is a very positive power and the personal presence of its teachers, whether physical or subtle, has to be felt all the time with a consistent single-minded fervour.Also, you must plunge as much as possible into their writings. Read the Mother's Talks and Sri Aurobindo's Letters on Yoga.I would advise you to keep with you as a constant companion Sri Aurobindo's small book, The Mother and the Mother's Prayers and Meditations. I am enclosing a blessing-packet. By turning to the Mother you will surely get out of the mental and physical deterioration you have marked, particularly after taking a mantra from someone who has nothing to do with our Ashram.
(29.9.1993)
You say you are torn between two pulls. On the one side you are "career-minded" and on the other you feel "the intense need to give myself away to something higher and bigger than myself". You ask me to steady you and help you "to have a single orientation in life". I am sure that basically you are cut out for the spiritual life or rather for a self-dedication to the Divine which will yet leave room for a deeply idealistic love-relationship with a fellow-aspirant. But the push in you towards careerism is also an undeniable element of your nature and it is all the more strong because you have a sharp intelligence and an amiable disposition which easily makes friends and wins people over. I don't think it will ever do to suppress this element. It is common sense to equip yourself, as you are doing at present, to carry it to success. And there is
Page 211
no reason why you should not go ahead nor is there any reason why at the same time you should fail to practise genuine spirituality. The conflict in you arises because you are under the impression that genuine spirituality can be practised only within the confines of the Ashram at Pondicherry. But remember that the Ashram too is a hive of activity. We are not reclusive navel-gazers or preoccupied with "sacred" ceremonies. We work in the Ashram variously as non-Ashramites do in the outside world: the only difference is that our activities are geared to help the Ashram become the centre of a new humanity. What, however, may prove missing for you if you settle down here and seek some sort of scope for your special skills is "rising in life", moving to a more and more effective position, a greater managerial post or a field in which a wider influence and power can be exercised. If this is your aim when you call yourself "career-minded", the Ashram is not the place for you to opt for your future. Besides, not all workers for the Ashram can become officially Ashramites - that is, get supported wholly by the Ashram Trust. One may require to have the wherewithal for one's day-to-day sustenance.
If one does not have the necessary means, what is one to do if one longs to lead the spiritual life? First of all, one must get over the idea that while pursuing a career one gets debarred from spirituality. Essentially, if one can practise spirituality in the midst of the work all Ashramites do, why can't one do the same along with one's activity outside? To attempt such a venture is no chase of a mere will-o'-the-wisp. I know of several cases in which the Mother has asked aspiring Aurobindonians to keep working outside and help the Ashram in any capacity open to them. So there can very well be a class of authentic aspirants who carry on their Yoga with the Mother's own approval in Madras or Bombay or Calcutta or even in England, France, Switzerland or the USA. With the Mother quitting her body, this line of Yoga approved by her does not cease to be eligible. Whether it is meant for one or not has now to be decided by one's inmost
Page 212
instinct. But even if one decides to be an outsider Ashramite, so to speak, one must now and again come into the in-drawing atmosphere that plays about the Samadhi of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Those who live outside India can't do it often. Those who live within our country should drop in as frequently as they can to drink at the fountain-head.
(1993)
The question you have put me is based on silly ideas about Yoga in general and Sri Aurobindo's Yoga in particular. You think that to be a yogi means to neglect everybody and attend only to one's own good. Yoga essentially means giving oneself wholly to the Divine. All pampering of one's ego, all selfish absorption in oneself is taboo. One has to stop thinking of one's own self and one's ordinary habits and indulgences. God should be all in all to one, in preference to one's attachment to ways conducive to one's egoistic interests. It is true that a good part of one's ego-serving life is attachment to "family, parents, friends, companions" (to employ your own list). This attachment has to go but its going is purely an internal affair: one is not asked to be harsh to anyone. In the old world-renouncing Yogas, there had to be a breaking of ties in a very external way, because one became a sannyasin or at least a kind of recluse. Yet even there the separation or aloofness was done in order to give oneself wholly to God. Surely the old-time life of the sannyasin or the recluse was a difficult life devoid of comforts and conveniences. How could such sacrifice of the props of ordinary existence be dubbed selfish? In Sri Aurobindo's Yoga one does not resort to a forest or a cave or break away altogether from relatives or friends. This Yoga is also a collective process. One does not plough a lonely furrow. One has to work co-operatively with people and there has to be mutual consideration. Naturally if one's family is far from Pondicherry, one lives separately here, but there is no bar to the family and friends coming
Page 213
here. This Ashram is also an international centre of education. Hence a lot of youngsters are present. We are one big family. However, there is a good deal of freedom for the individual. Ordinary social norms and constraints fall away. But in the midst of all individual or social life the central concentration is on the Divine, never on oneself as you imagine.
Picking out lines at random from Savitri and applying them to your own situation is not wise. When it is said, "Pain is the signature of the Ignorance", you can't take it as an indirect message for you, dubbing you an ignorant fool because you have been suffering. Sri Aurobindo means that as long as one lives without God-realisation - that is, without transcending the state of Ignorance in which people ordinarily live - they are bound to undergo pain in one form or another. Sri Aurobindo's term - "the Ignorance" - denotes the common consciousness in which the majority of people live: it does not cover only you and your heart-aches.
(27.8.1993)
Page 214
20
The Gods and Goddesses are emanations of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. So their connections in some way or other with the work of our Gurus, according to the choice of our Gurus, are natural. But the question is whether the disciples are encouraged to have connections with the Gods and Goddesses. Here, as elsewhere in the Integral Yoga, there are no hard-and-fast rules and several things are not objected to if they serve as temperamental aids. Yet the general stand is clear. Has not the Mother emphatically said that those who want to worship Gods and Goddesses may do so but such worship has nothing to do with the Supramental Yoga of Sri Aurobindo?
You make much of Sri Aurobindo's "sending his blessings on the occasion of 'Upanayanam' (Investiture of Sacred Thread as a symbol of spiritual initiation) and on one occasion blessing the person concerned as well as the whole world with his 'Gayatri Mantra' ".
The fact that Sri Aurobindo has given a new Gayatri replacing the famous old one is quite meaningful in the context we are discussing, its divergence from the latter shows the novel dynamic world-transforming drive of the Aurobindonian Yoga as distinguished from the Rigvedic drive which had as its goal - its very grand goal, no doubt -the impelling of our thoughts by the light of the Divine Sun of Truth, the deity Surya-Savitri. Surely the Vedic revelation is not rejected, its Gods and Goddesses can serve Sri Aurobindo's ends but we are not encouraged to move directly in their great ranges. "We do not belong to the dawns of the past but to the noons of the future." Surya-Savitri as representing the godhead of what Sri Aurobindo has termed Supermind, Truth-Consciousness, Gnosis, Vijnana is indeed the presiding Power and Presence of the Yoga whose guides are Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, but with an orientation beyond the vision, far-flung though it was, of Vishwamitra, the seer of the old Gayatri.
Page 215
The moment we see the new core of spirituality in the message of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother we shall gain the right perspective of all their gestures. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother did not refuse to bless various functions in the lives of their disciples, especially those living outside the Ashram. I say "especially" because even within the Ashram they have blessed a few marriages. In the instance of my niece, an Ashramite, the Mother not only blessed her marriage with an Ashram boy in the sense of companionship but also at one stage wrote wanting the boy, in view of the girl's psychological need, to give her a child: the sole proviso made was that the child should be conceived and given birth elsewhere than in the Ashram. All this does not signify that investitures of the sacred thread among non-Ashramites or even an Ashram-marriage like the one to which I have alluded can be made a rule of the spiritual life according to the Integral Yoga. The Aurobindonian spirituality, in the Ashram version, goes fundamentally beyond sacred threads and procreative marriages and indeed looks upon such things as what I have dubbed "old-world foibles".
As for your allegation of my partiality for the Parsis, the relevant point is whether 1 am a practitioner of the Parsi religion or linked with it by any representative sign. 1 am sure you know that the Parsis too have a sacred thread (kusti): it is worn around the waist over a sacred shirt (sudra). Even before I joined the Ashram I had given up wearing the sacred thread no less than the sacred shirt of the Parsis. Both these characteristics are more a sign of the Zoroastrian religion as distinct from the Aurobindonian path than the Hindu sacred thread which Champaklal kept wearing. For the latter is exclusive to the Brahmins among the Hindus and does not have the universal sweep of the pre-Aurobindonian as does my long-discarded Parsi symbols of religious commitment. As for the Parsi religion, I gave it up long ago and the pursuit of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga has rendered any return to it impossible.
My so-called partiality for the Parsis can only be considered "communal" in an innocuous sense and no more de-
Page 216
Indianises me than any resident of India who would find it pertinent or piquant to describe himself as a Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Tamil or Telugu with no desire to be regarded as provincial rather than national. We must not make all-obscuring mountains out of mole-hills meant for specific harmless purposes.
(12.6.1993)
Thanks for wanting to send whatever I may like to have. But surely you will be here in person soon enough? At that time you may bring whatever occurs to you as necessary to my rather unusual mode of life - confined to a wheelchair, facing a chaos of papers on my writing table, with bookcases around packed with information on a variety of subjects "from cabbages to kings" and challenging the mind on the one hand with expositions of the world's teeming manifold quest across the labyrinths of time and on the other hand with
Sitting in the midst of profuse reading-matter and absorbed in the craft of endless writing and turned as much as his numerous human weaknesses allow towards the all-healing and all-fulfilling infinity of that dual divine presence: Sri Aurobindo and the Mother - such is Amal Kiran to whom you are stretching friendly hands which he is willing to clasp. What gifts these hands should bring is quite a problem. But I may add that there is a more approachable side to this fellow. He can smile and laugh and respond to warm touches and has an appreciative eye for exquisite or piquant faces and gracefully moving or strikingly stepping bodies. For, within the scholar, the scribbler and the sadhak, there is the poet and there is the artist and perhaps there lingers also the ghost of the lover.
It is not always easy to know my attitude towards things. Thus I feel misrepresented when you write: "X tells me that
Page 217
you do not like people who are undecisive and sit on the fence." First of all, there is a difference between not liking the act of sitting on the fence and not liking the people who do the fence-sitting. Up to now, you, according to yourself, have been a sitter on the fence. Can you tell me that I haven't liked you? I am sure my liking you has been splashed all over my letters. If I have wished you to get off the fence, it is not in order to make you more likable: it is simply in order to make you more happy - to save you from useless prolonged hurt to your beautiful bottom - I mean the bottom of your heart from which you have loved X.
Even if you continued in that uncomfortable posture you would not cease to be congenial and delectable to me. I have no partiality for "strong silent" people of radical decisions as against frail ones asking themselves, "Shall I or shall I not?" In most if not all matters I have a free mind. Like the Roman poet Terence I can say: "Humanus sum et nihil humani a me alienum puto" - "I am human and nothing human do I consider alien to me," Not only is there in me a link of common humanity in general, I have also gone through a large variety of human experiences. All the follies and failings, miseries and sufferings of the race have been part of my life, just as, on the other hand, all the powers and splendours and felicities have been. I have known exultation and heartbreak equally.
In the ordinary round of life I have as close friends those who are eminent in intelligence and those who are quite simple-minded, men and women with shining eyes along with men who are dull and women who are drab. No doubt some people are dearer to me than others, but I shut out none as despicable, or perhaps I should make a small exception: I have a special admiration for and affinity with living vessels of courage and generosity. Broadly speaking, what appeals to me is not this or that characteristic but the basic substance of which a person is constituted. I remember the Mother saying something like: "I don't care for a person's ideas and opinions, intellectual convictions or conventional beliefs. Even if
Page 218
someone was an atheist and a materialist in his mental outlook but was made of really fine stuff, capable of disinterested action and sensitive to life's beautiful movements, I would find him akin to my work and I could do something with him." On a much inferior scale, my natural turn is like the Mother's.
(6.10.1993)
You want to know what exactly is meant by "fine stuff" and how you could be a person possessing it. I have given two examples of the proof of such stuff: disinterested action and sensitiveness to life's beautiful movements. You want me to clarify what is meant by these two characteristics, so that you may bring yourself nearer to what the Mother can work upon. Not to be locked up in one's own interests and satisfactions but to be able to give oneself to activities that are undertaken without the desire for fame or power and people's admiration
-at the same time to keep away from being caught too much in outward occupation and develop the capacity of being alone with one's own depths and with the widenesses of the universe, so to speak, as well as with the heights of literature and art and far-ranging thought and still not grow too serious and solemn but have the appetite for laughter and fun and perhaps even a bit of frivolity, remembering that
A little nonsense now and then Is relished by the wisest men.
-such in general and in a broad connotation I would picture the "fine stuff" come alive. This stuff can be met with on a less comprehensive scale too. A person essentially good-natured and generous and forbearing - with a courageous outlook and a humble inlook - can be designated as being fine in stuff.
(3.11.1993)
Page 219
How far have you gone on the Inner Path? Krishna Prem (Ronald Nixon) has written: "For the Great Ones no obstruction can exist. Christ appeared suddenly in the midst of closed doors. Apollonius of Tyana removed his limbs from chains to show a doubting disciple that it was but his own will that kept him in Domitian's prison, and similar events have been recorded even in recent times, - e.g., Trailanga Swami of Benares within living memory. Those who have gone far enough on the Inner Path know with a certainty beyond all cavil that this 'too too solid earth' can and does 'thaw and resolve itself into a dew' and that nothing in it can obstruct even for an instant the passage of the free soul."
I am travelling on this Inner Path myself. Hence the query: "How far have you, my dear friend, gone on it?" Sri Aurobindo also has written:
"These things are impossible without an inward living...."
"This movement of going inward is a difficult task to lay upon the normal consciousness of the human being; yet there is no other way of self-finding."
I have great respect for Krishna Prem's spirituality and intuitive insight, but here is not one of his most felicitous moments. First of all, his eloquent passage is based on plausible legends, not unmistakable history. Don't you know that the "resurrection" of Jesus is still a controversial topic among biblical scholars? We need not dispute what are called his "appearances" after death, but St. Paul, the earliest writer in the New Testament and the only writer affirming first-hand experience of the "raised" or "risen" Jesus, has drawn so sharp a contrast between what he terms the "physical body" and the "spiritual body" of the "resurrection", that a critical student may well ask: "Can the sudden appearance of Jesus in the midst of closed doors which two out of the four later-written Gospels report on hearsay be attributed, as these Gospels claim, to his physical body?" An occult phenomenon may strike one as the most likely event, a powerful materialisation of a non-physical form after death for a short time.
Page 220
What is said about Apollonius of Tyana dates to over a hundred years after his death, even a longer period than that between the crucifixion of Jesus and the composition of the Gospels ascribed to Luke and John, and thus has no historical force. I don't know what to say about Trailanga Swami, but the report about him could be on a par with several reports current about Sri Aurobindo during his very lifetime - for example, that he used to go out bodily through the ceiling of his room every night to visit various places. The Mother has referred to them and laughed, saying that Sri Aurobindo himself told her of the ceiling-report and informed her of its having been actually put in writing by someone. (By the way, Krishna Prem's quotation from Hamlet is slightly off the mark: Shakespeare uses the word "flesh" and not "earth" in the first part of it.
Secondly, the phrase Krishna Prem employs and you endorse - "Those who have gone far enough on the Inner Path" - mixes up with the true spiritual progress certain abnormal phenomena which, even if authentic, have essentially nothing to do with spirituality. What he recounts are, if historical, feats of "siddhis", operations of special miraculous powers. The Mother, when referring to the ceiling-story, was speaking in the context of similar tales of miracles, including the one about the South-Indian saint Ramahngam's bodily disappearance from the earth. Here two observations by the Mother are to be noted.
One is that, though these phenomena are not impossible, she personally was not inclined to believe the stories in question to be true: all sorts of legends grow up around prominent spiritual figures. The other is that merely miraculous acts are no indications of a spiritual state. She cites a phenomenon said by her to have been attested under strict conditions - a phenomenon, I may say, more wonderful than anything related about past or present masters of spirituality - namely, the feat of dematerialisation and rematerialisation by "mediums" in our own day. Her comment is to the effect that the "mediums" concerned had nothing spiritual about
Page 221
them - in fact, they were people of a fairly undeveloped character.
Please disabuse your mind of the delusion that "the Inner Path" consists of or is proved by such spectacular and sensational achievements. As I have "no comparable feats to my credit I should be, by the suggested criterion, outside this Path altogether and I may add that even if I perform them in the future I may still be as little spiritual as those "mediums". Of course, these feats can go along with spiritual development too, but they are not necessarily spirituality.
Sri Aurobindo never meant such wonders to be our objective when he wrote of "an inward living" or of "going inward". As your second quotation from him shows, he was pointing to "self-finding".
Let us devote our time to the quiet business of living in the sweetness and light and strength of the inmost psychic being, to the secret task of experiencing the peace and wideness and force of the one universal Self of selves, to the absorbed labour of invoking the nature-transformative power of the transcendent Divine which Sri Aurobindo calls "Supermind" or "Truth-Consciousness".
(1992)
Page 222
21
Now we are nearing the birthday of the Mother: 21 February. There will be a special force at work on and around that date. 1 take it to be a force that may surprise us by saying:
"Why do you worry whether you are strong enough or worthy enough to do Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga? Just keep visualising me constantly. Those of you who have seen me should try to revive memories of me as you saw my face and form in one activity or another. Whoever has not seen me in person has still my various photographs to go by. The photographs of either Sri Aurobindo or me are not mere pictures. They automatically carry by their very representations of us our consciousness. In the absence of the direct recollection of our physical presence in a body, our photographs can well serve as projections of ourselves. Let there be your soul's focus on them, either with eyes open or with shut eyes holding an image of the portrayal. By whatever means a vivid sense of us as we were in our recent incarnations on earth is called for - an incarnation carrying the supreme Truth-Consciousness with its all-penetrating light and its all-enfolding love. Concentratedly, devotedly, silently conjure up our image or, if silence does not come naturally, let the heart whisper: 'Ma-Sri Aurobindo sharanam mama' ('Mother-Sri Aurobindo are my refuge'). To dwell on that image as intensely as you can with a deep unwavering movement of self-giving - that is all the Yoga I want of you. This Yoga has to be practised not only in the hours when you are alone or unoccupied. Even in the midst of people and even while work is being done by you, let a feeling of our presence, accompanied as far as possible by an inner visual touch, prevail. I expect that by its prevalence there will be at the same time a profound quiet and a shining joy. With those around you you will experience a happy camaraderie without losing by one whit your poise in us. Indeed the friendliness you feel will be directed by a seeking within their diverse selves as a reflection
Page 223
of serene Sri Aurobindo and smiling Me. What else can there be when, whether those selves know it or not, we carry all creation as our child and when your Yoga consists in keeping before your inner eyes a vision of us? One further word I shall utter of initiation. By means of the Yoga I have outlined, you will realise vividly for yourself the reality I have suggested to you as lying behind the people with whom you come into contact. You will find yourself perpetually in our arms and guided at all hours by a divine creative Parenthood. From us will "Spring every moment of your life - a shaft of Truth's sunshine from depth beyond depth of eternal Delight."
(?.2.1994)
Here is the comparison you wanted from me of the two "Autumns" - Hood's and Keats's.
(1)Keats's style is more objective. There is no mention of "I". Where Hood says "I saw old Autumn in the misty morn", Keats simply apostrophises "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness". Even when the motif of "seeing" comes in, he uses the third person: "Who hath not seen thee...?" The personal subjective element is completely absent. Hood not only begins with "I" but also ends with a reference to a mental condition: "In the hushed mind's mysterious far away,..," Keats's utter objectivity makes his picture more vivid, while Hood brings towards the close, in the phrase I have just quoted, a profound note beyond anything in Keats's picture -a note which may legitimately be called the Romantic Age's anticipation of the Aurobindonian style.
(2)Keats packs his lines with richer details: every phrase is laden with descriptive matter: there is much more poetic information. Only one is laxly built: "Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find". Hood's style does not so "load every rift with ore" (Keats's advice to Shelley): he is occasionally content with more or less conventional language. Compare
"The sweets of summer in their luscious cells" with "For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells", or "Shaking
Page 224
her languid locks all dewy bright" with "Her hair soft lifted by the winnowing wind". But in places Hood equals Keats in the richly packed and carefully chosen phrase: e.g., "The squirrel gloats on his accomplished hoard", or "With the last leaves for a love-rosary", or "Like a dim picture of the drowned past", and the line I have already quoted about the hushed mind. This line exceeds the range Keats has accepted here but it is not something alien to his own imagination, as he shows in that snatch in the Ode to Pan woven into his early Endymion:
... solitary thinkings such as dodge
Conception to the very bourn of heaven,
Then leave the naked brain...
Hood has a weak moment which is almost unforgivable: "Alone, alone upon a mossy stone". This phrase is like a snatch from a ballad, quite out of tune with even the rest of Hood's piece.
(3) Hood makes one mood-tone predominate: vague melancholy. Each of the three stanzas brings it in. Stanza 1: "Old Autumn... shadowless like Silence... listening to silence... lonely bird... hollow ear... woods forlorn". Stanza 4: "autumn melancholy dwells,/And sighs her tearful spells... sunless shadows"... "alone, alone... dead and gone... withered world looks drearily... dim picture... drowned past... ghostly thing... grey upon the grey". Keats brings many lights and shades of mood - the melancholy touch is only in "Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn". His picture is composite, more true to objective Nature, while Hood has approached his subject with an already made-up mind, as it were.
(1994)
You say your little son Jeraz is enamoured of the sign for OM. This sign is a powerful symbol of a very significant sound. The sound is really composed of three strains: A,U, M. When you utter them, there is first an open movement of the lips
Page 225
with A, then with U a round contraction of them on the way to a closing of them which takes place at the end of the utterance with M, The A sound signifies the outer world and its consciousness. The U symbolises the inner reality. The M points to the innermost. The total word, towards which the three sounds take us and which transcends all of them, indicates the sheer ultimate Existence. The Sanskrit terms for the three are, respectively, Vaishwanara, Taijasa and Prajna -corresponding to the waking state, the dream-state and the sleep-state. The sleep-state, in which the consciousness is most in-drawn, represents the Divine Being, creator of both the dream-state and the waking one from its own depth of omnipotent vision.
What is beyond is simply called Turiya, meaning "Fourth". It is the final ground of all and at the same time overarches all. As such, this utter Absolute, this basic stuff of Being, may be considered a universal consciousness in all the planes, founding everything as well as pervading and containing everything. It is called the Self and this Self is called "fourfold". Through a widened awareness in response to its universality on the physical plane we can prepare ourselves to penetrate the inner and innermost worlds and reflect something of "Turiya".
To take to the OM-symbol is good, but it must not become a mere light-hearted game, a formal gesture towards the Divine, mostly for the sake of good luck to ourselves. Of course, a longing for good luck is nothing wrong, but a sense of the profundity of this symbol should come also. Your son's writing it on your palms will be no more than a game. If you fancy it, you may indulge him. By itself it means hardly anything. The true thing to do is to understand what this symbol stands for and be inwardly in tune with it.
Jeraz's wanting to be a superman should be an aspiration and not an ambition. His feeling for the more-than-human is not to be discouraged but a finer tone should come into it. The true Superman is not just a master of men but a servant of the Divine.
Page 226
All this is perhaps too much for the little fellow to grasp in full. Still, a general awakening to the spiritual responsibility of being a Superman may be tried.
Your account of your pregnancy and delivery is fascinating. You were certainly in the right frame of mind all through. 1 don't believe you were indulging in mere imagination. There was an unborn soul inspiring you. You were feeling Sri Aurobindo's presence more than the Mother's because a male child was on the way. But, finally, the creative power is the Mother's - and therefore your dream of the delivery was permeated by her presence. What you were told in your dream was correct as to the gender of the newcomer but not accurate as to the time of the delivery because several factors come into play in the time-field. But the darshan-day need not be taken as a fixed thing. It has "fringes", as it were, extending before and after. To be born 2 hours before the 24th of April 1984 is as likely as to be born 2 hours after that date -that is, at 2 a.m, on the 25th. In either case the child would be within the glow of the 64th anniversay of the Mother's final settlement by the side of Sri Aurobindo to bring into birth a New Age of spiritual evolution. It is also significant that, on the glimmering edge of an anniversary of a day with such a sign of the fabulous future, exquisite aspiring Yasmin brought into the world a boy like Jeraz joyously jumping with a dream of supermanhood.
You have written: "The mental is too active, I must learn to silence my mind. Any suggestion?" In Sri Aurobindo's Savitri we have the verse:
The breathless might and calm of silent mind.
if you will excuse the digression, I would like to quote to you a short passage from Wordsworth which the general cast of this verse calls up from my poetry-packed memory:
It is a beauteous evening, calm and free; The holy time is quiet as a Nun
Page 227
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquillity.
The passage seems to become somewhat relevant because of the adjective "breathless" no less than the epithet "calm" common to it and to Sri Aurobindo's line. But here it is "adoration" which creates the rapt in-drawn hushed state answering, as it were, subjectively to the outer scene of sunset in a calm sky free of obstructing clouds. Here is a state of the heart rather than of the mind but I have found that the adoring heart with its deep absorption in the Divine tends automatically to save the mind from random wandering and imparts to it, even when it is busy planning, a certain poise charged with confidence in the Power and Beauty that have entranced the inner self of Godward feeling. No doubt, a silent mind would be an ideal preparation for receiving the "overhead" splendours of the infinite and eternal Spirit, yet a mind quieted to a marked degree by the heart's devoted plunge into a blissful sense of the Personal Divinity is not an achievement to be sneezed at. Also, into whatever measure of mental quietude has been induced by any approach to being "breathless with adoration" the revelatory light from above the mind is likely to enter, even if one fails to realise the condition reflected in that magnificent mantric phrase of Sri Aurobindo's;
Our minds hush to a bright Omniscient.
Ultimately, this is how our minds have to be. In the meantime the path to this grand finale is easier and quicker through the consecration of the emotion-centre in us, touched by the secret soul behind it, than by a direct grappling with the centre of thought. The sustained experience of dedicated love for the Mother emanates an aura of tranquillity to smooth out the repetitive ruffles of the brain. That has been my observation. And such smoothing out prepares for the silence you desire. So let there be, as a result of your bhakti, a deep happy
Page 228
stir of serene longing for the Mother or Sri Aurobindo and gradually in consequence there will come about the reality figured by that stanza of Sri Aurobindo:
My mind is awake in stirless trance,
Hushed my heart, a burden of delight;
Dispelled is the senses' flicker-dance.
Mute my body aureate with light.
(24.2.1994)
I am honoured by your following in my stumbling footsteps and imitating my career of many a fall on the way, but please refrain from considering me an exemplary "uncle" in this matter. Uncle in such matters is worse than carbuncle! I am really sorry you have hurt your left upper ribs. 1 shall surely try my best to invoke the Mother's Light, as I feel it, on their behalf, particularly when I face the Samadhi. In fact as soon as I knew of your pain I appealed to the Mother to relieve you. Nowadays my appeal has a double movement. One movement is to hand over the pain or whatever else is the trouble to the Mother whom I feel to be standing in front of me. The second movement is to lift the trouble far above my head to some transcendent region of light and love. Of course, along with the trouble, I offer to the Mother the person who is suffering or has the problem. In both cases the offering is sustained for a time and is repeated a number of times during the day. And both the movements are made not only with a keen mental concentration but also with the heart's intense consecration.
When I look at the picture on the card you have sent, I find it symbolising the very movement upwards of which I have written. The white vase on the white square pedestal seems to be intently raising up" a bouquet of yellow roses to a mysterious beyond. The flowers are on long stems with a throng of delicate green leaves springing out of them. These leaves represent the life-force touched with tenderness carry-
Page 229
ing aloft the rose-bunch. I notice that the yellow flowers bear a light on their petals, an answer of Divine Grace to their sincere human plea.
Glancing downward at the picture I mark that it is not quite confined to reflecting the upward movement of my call for help. At the foot of the white vase there is one yellow rose, accompanied by a few green leaves, offering, as it were, a horizontal prayer to a secret Presence in front. So I see both sides of my inner response to you depicted in advance - the token of your love foreshadowing the answer of my mind and heart to the cry from your depths.
(13.1.1994)
On the phone 1 told you - or was it during our tete-a-tete in my room? - that I would be replying to your long letter of January 20. It was a very special letter bringing quite a number of fine topics and thoughts together. To you the centre-piece is of course the birth of your grand-daughter "Kishaya", that 'Tittle-in-much" that has just come into your family. Her date of birth rings a bell in my mind: January 6 is known in Christian history as the "epiphany", the day on which baby Jesus is said in legend to have manifested his divine light to the three magi (pronounced "mayjai") who had come from afar, led by a stellar sign. The relevance of this legend to Parsis is not generally known, though the word "magi" is the plural of the old Persian word "magus" which denotes a member of an ancient Persian priestly caste. The magi were Zoroastrian priests and the earliest tradition1 about the three "wise men", as the English Bible translates the term "magi", is that their names were typically Parsi-sounding: Hormiz-dah, Yazdegerd and Perozadh.2 Later, the names Balthazar, Melchior and Gaspar came into vogue.3 So the Epiphany-day,
1.The Birth of the Messiah by Raymond E. Brown, S.S. (Image books. Garden City, New York, 1979), p. 198.
2.Ibid.
3.Ibid.
Page 230
January 6, is radiantly connected with the wisdom of the Parsis' ancestors turned towards the Divine Light.
The name which Rashmi got, as you say, "out of the blue, without a thought", strikes me as very euphonious and the meaning found of "Rishaya" is indeed auspicious: "Ri" for "abundance" in Persian and "shaya" for "protection" in Sanskrit, as the research of Behram and Jehangir has discovered. How it stands numerologically - having number 9 thrice - is not clear to me. Will you send me, at your convenience, an explanation? Is numerology applied to the name as spelt in English or as spelt in Gujarati? In English there are 7 letters, in Gujarati only 3 - or are there 4?
Your dream, whose memory came back to you in a flash while trying to read the alphabetical index of first lines in my Secret Splendour and coming at the very start upon the phrase -
A band of light is now the horizon's line -
your dream is very fascinating. I'll attempt to read its significance. You write: "In the dream I was in Pondicherry, on a big long beach with clean sand. On the left of me there were huts and on my right was a clear huge lovely quiet ocean." Here we have a division between a narrow impoverished existence and the vast beauty and freedom resulting from participation in a Universal Consciousness. The locale -Pondicherry - implies the choice offered by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram between the old human way of living - cooped within a small mentality - and the liberation into a superhuman state illustrating the truth of the old Upanishadic pronouncement: "Immensity alone is felicity." What you saw next was symbolic of the process going on in the Aurobindonian Yoga once we launch on an exceeding of the old restricted habitation within mental ignorance. You write: "At the horizon was one straight beam of light coming down like a thick pillar. Next to it, facing it, on its right was a ball-shaped structure of light." The horizon stands for the distance
Page 231
needed to be traversed by the consciousness when it has struck out beyond the accustomed human boundaries, before a superior mode of living is experienced. The luminous pillar from above is the descent of the transforming power of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. The lit-up ball-shaped structure is the earth-consciousness in a state of response to that power. The light coming out of both the structures is described by you as "bluish-white, whitish-blue". It is interesting that you have employed two expressions for the same phenomenon. They touch off the dual joint presence of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. The Mother's light is white, Sri Aurobindo's blue and together the one becomes bluish and the other whitish - a single grace-light, so to speak, with two shades of emphasis: all-transcending purity, all-suffusing richness, without the purity turning into a blank and the richness running into a riot.
The sequel, which you report, to the spectacle afar pleases me as much as the spectacle itself. You "just wanted to go to it" but you remembered that your husband Bertram was at Golconde and that you must somehow call him to share the glory you were witnessing. This shows the unselfishness of your nature.
Then there is the all-too-human struggle between the distant glory and the various material temptations at hand. You describe the latter: "I saw persons offering me lovely silk materials beautifully painted with orchids on one of them, lovely fruit and introducing me to some person from Australia and so on. I was telling myself that all these are beautiful but the real beauty is there at the horizon. I kept on being torn between my love for the light across the ocean and what the persons were offering - none of them I knew but all were very sweet. The beautiful bluish white tight I was trying to call for my protection so that I might not get enamoured of any of the material objects in preference to it."
There is no attempt to pose as being above temptation. There is only an earnest cry to the true splendour, as distinguished from the spurious one, to save you.
Page 232
All in all, the dream marks a highly significant stage in your soul's career. It is surely your soul and nothing less in you that is in evidence and in action. Not only is apparent the soul's spontaneous turn towards the great ultimate light of which it is a small yet true representative in our being - "a sun grown soft and small", as I have put it in a poem. Apparent also is the inherent sweetness of the psyche, on the one hand its natural leap of love towards the Highest and on the other its instinctive consideration of whoever is deeply linked with it. Finally apparent is the quiet strength of this inmost self - the way it is resolved to seek the Supreme Truth and nothing short of it. And in all these three characteristics it is at the same time the eternal child and the immortal sage: it has an in-born purity, simplicity, humility, gratitude along with a wideness of outlook which is accompanied by a sense of the importance of little things and a profound patience learnt from the experience of having passed through many lives and many deaths. A definite many-aspected symbol-stamp of the Inmost Dweller in you comes to me from your dream and in the days ahead you will feel increasingly the spreading of the influence of this unforgettable snatch from your night-hours.
It is stimulating news that the pain in your ribs disappeared almost instantaneously after you had written of it to me and I had made an intense inner gesture of offering it to the Mother for its removal. As you say, with lifting things up and with over-work you get some pain at the same spot but nothing like what it was formerly. This is because a sort of physical memory was left by the long experience of the pain and it gets a bit of reviving under abnormal circumstances. You have to avoid such circumstances and give the affected spot a little time to forget the subtle impressions and to live long enough in the experience of the sudden relief following the invocation of the Mother's grace by someone over a thousand miles away from you. Such a "miracle", as you call it, does not happen at all times but when a keen loving faith is at the receiving end an unusual result is quite probable. A
Page 233
number of similar instances have come my way. So I am not inclined to look upon the present event as being a freak. There seems to be some hidden logic behind the apparent magic.
You have, like me, an inquiring and questioning mind. Your legal training leads you to write: "I have yet to make proper research about the day the pain vanished and the day you prayed." You have also rightly asked yourself whether the Ayurvedic medicine you had been taking could have worked after so many days like a miracle. But something in you - the intuitive observer - refuses to get round the fact of the sudden relief after an act of appeal to the Divine Mother of both of us by a loving relative who is always close to your heart.
This relative sends his warmest love to you and your family, including the newly arrived Rishaya.
(12.3,1994)
Page 234
22
Sri Aurobindo has said: "Where other Yogas end, my Yoga begins." Will you please tell me briefly what this statement means?
This has not been said with any sense of depreciating other Yogas but simply as a matter of fact pointing out the difference of aims. The aim of the other Yogas is, in one way or another, liberation - the freeing of one's self from the workings of physical, vital, mental nature. No doubt, a degree of purification of one's nature was considered essential but no radical change of it was demanded. Sri Aurobindo's Yoga seeks to go beyond liberation and achieve what he terms transformation. For this he calls, on the one hand, upon what he designates as the "psychic being", the inmost soul-power and, on the other hand, upon the highest of a range of more-than-mental powers, which he names "Supermind". This range he terms "overhead" - that is, beyond the level at which the Yogas of liberation ended: the sahasrara chakra, "the thousand-petalled lotus", on the top of the head.
In Sri Aurobindo's Yoga, after reaching this level, one has to go further and get the light, consciousness, force and bliss of the highest "overhead" level to work in our mental-vital-physical levels with the collaboration of our psychic being in order to transform them into the Supermind-nature. Therefore Sri Aurobindo names his Yoga the Yoga of supramental descent and transformation. Thus, theoretically, it begins where the other Yogas end. In practical sadhana there could be an interplay of the other Yogas with the Aurobindonian and one may have several experiences of the latter before the liberation aimed at by the former is reached.
Sri Aurobindo aims at dynamising in our lives the Supramental Consciousness because he has seen that only in the Supermind there awaits the divine original of not only our mental and vital powers but also of our bodily existence. This
Page 235
would successfully counteract
the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,
just as it would counteract the mind's half-lit ignorance and the life-force's striving incapacity.
(1.4.1994)
Sri Aurobindo has written: "To look existence in the face is to look God in the face." Will you please interpret this statement?
To look in the face means to confront steadily. So to look existence in the face translates to approaching the world and life and their processes without any preconceptions and without any personal reactions but with the aim solely of coming into direct contact with the sheer fact of them as one interconnected whole. Doing this, one gets the feel of them as a challenging universal expression of some mystery that has its primal source and final aim beyond our mind's comprehension. I am reminded of a line in Nirodbaran's poetry which Sri Aurobindo has praised highly:
Life that is deep and wonder-vast.
Once such a sense is created in our consciousness about existence, we are in the presence of some ultimate Reality we have to come to terms with and be a part of. A wide calm, a quiet courage, a readiness to meet all contingencies, a faith in something or someone far greater than ourselves and yet not essentially alien to us who are included in "existence" - such are the result. This result is a new dimension in our attempt at a deeper self-realisation than our day-to-day experience.
(2.4.1994)
Page 236
I have to ask your forgiveness for not replying to the several letters you have sent over the last few months. But be assured that your wish that I should appeal to the Mother to help you has always been answered.
You speak of losing vitality through contact with people. You have to develop a zone of protection around you. You can do this by a constant act of offering yourself to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and invoking their will to intervene in your life. An atmosphere of peace and light will then be created, holding you safe within it. Then nothing of outside forces can reach you against your own wish. You will be able to observe things as if from a distance and to deal with them without getting involved.
Being an astrologer, you are naturally inclined to give attention to predictions. You have to put a check on your mind. Otherwise you create a state of consciousness in which the things feared from the supposed action of so-called "inauspicious stars" (Shakespeare's phrase) assume a con-creteness and a power to affect you. Carlyle once wrote: "Close your Byron and open your Goethe." He meant the putting aside of the sheer vitalistic urge and the romantic melancholy, and the developing of a mental detachment and an uplifted serenity which would see life as a whole -something of an Olympian temper patiently poised, rather than the Titan mood which runs to extremes. I advise you something similar - with the added touch of a devoted faith in the divine compassion and force with which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are ready to invest your days. 1 will certainly continue to pray to them at the Samadhi on your behalf. But you have to put yourself in a condition of receptivity to them.
I am glad you don't pander to the common superstitions of your astrological clients - propitiation of godlings. It makes me happy to see that you will do nothing that "goes against the basic teachings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, even though it may cause loss of money".
You have raised the question: "Is the Mother's grace available only to those who have taken to the practice of the
Page 237
Integral Yoga or does it go to all who may have devotion to her and Sri Aurobindo but are not sufficiently prepared to tread their path?" You have mentioned the Gita's Krishna as listing the four types of people who worship him: people who are in distress, people who want prosperity, people who want to know the truth of things and, finally, people who have realised the truth. Your feeling that the Mother's grace, just like Krishna's, answers to the needs of all seeking souls is right. Wherever there is earnestness, the sense of one's own poor show before the Infinite and the Divine, the capacity for gratitude to all that is beyond one's powers, the Mother's loving help responds. But one must understand what this grace aims at. No doubt, again and again it has saviour hands that turn the trend of adverse circumstances and bring a smile to faces that have looked with vacant eyes into the future. But one must guard against the sense one is liable to develop after the crisis is over that somehow it was one's own courageous and clever self that suddenly found a way out. The grace is not something one can substantially assess and prove: it does not leave footprints one can see as definite evidence. The ego in us is always ready to insinuate its own importance. It is essential that we keep our hearts aware of the help received and keep a deep "thank you" ringing after the fortunate turn to events that once foreboded disaster. Not that the Divine feasts on human thanks but the effacement of gratitude stands in the path of the next advent of succouring hands from the secrecies the mind cannot fathom but only the hidden soul suddenly feels. There is no set rule here. The grace may come in spite of recurring ingratitude, for here there is no businesslike balancing of accounts. A luminous wisdom that visions future possibilities and does not merely weigh past and present conditions is at work. Yet, by and large, we may say that we block the passage of the victor light with every complacent pat we give ourselves after we have come out delivered from hopeless-seeming situations. I would say that the grace, over and above pulling us out of such situations, aims at evoking a profound humility in us, ever sensitive to
Page 238
the contact of the superhuman with the human, so that we are mindful of the immensity of the unrealised and, in whatever mode possible, perceive the presence of some Perfection overarching our little days.
Yes, along with the outflow of its unexpected charity, the Mother means to draw us subtly towards a keener realisation of her blissful and life-refining nearness. However, this mysterious aim has a certain side to it which is liable at times to bewilder us. The Mother has said that her blessings are essentially intended to help the soul in us emerge more and more. And it is not always through success and prosperity and apparent fulfilment that the soul is served. Her blessings are ever benevolent but they may not in every instance bring about what our outer mind desires. Quite often this mind does not know what is good for it. The blessings may give it just the opposite of what it has prayed for. It must learn to receive with gratitude their action, no matter how contrary to its dreams be the appearance of their gifts. Generally we may aver that they have compassion for their recipient and, if one is not well on the way to the practice of spirituality, they may - as the colloquial idiom has it - pull their punches to a fair extent. But where an ardent pilgrim of Eternity is concerned they may serve occasionally to bring one's whole house crashing about one's ears. If one is sincere, one will understand on a back-look how a seeming disaster served to draw one closer to the Divine. It is not for nothing that even common parlance carries the phrase: "blessing in disguise." If one has wholeheartedly asked for the Divine's aid and discovers that a veritable thunder knocks one down, one should not want to "curse God and die", as the legendary Job thought of doing in the midst of his multitude of afflictions. One should offer inwardly even the blight to the Supreme and plead for a flash of light to open one's eyes to the concealed benefaction. Surely, if one's prayer is honest and humble, the revelation will not take long to be bestowed.
You have reported a rather frightening state of affairs: "Whenever I shut my eyes and go inward I see that a
Page 239
powerful force is trying to deflect my will (literally bending the will) making me incapable of doing the right thing and impelling me to all sorts of undesirable things. I do not know how to get rid of this force. I do not also know whether it is a force from outside which has taken possession of me or some Karmic influence from a previous life. Whatever be the case I would request you to pray to the Mother to drive out the force and give me health, strength and light and enable me to lead the life our Gurus want me to lead." After this paragraph you add:' "My father who is very old is at present suffering from a skin disease and depression. His horoscope indicates difficulties to his wife (my mother), his children {my two younger brothers) and the whole family." This statement suggests that a force from outside you is at work.
I can't help saying that you must get rid of your horos-copic obsession. When you take Sri Aurobindo and the Mother as your Gurus, you have to clear your consciousness of every preconception. Their influence tends to pull you out of all past circumstances and outside forces operating at present. Those who are not wholly dedicated to their Yoga may not easily get free of all such factors but some genuine cooperation is surely possible from you. Most probably the obstructing force you speak of has something to do with the imps that are behind the deplorable habit which has been your regret for years. Medical opinion today has changed much from the catastrophic outlook of the early twentieth century on masturbation but those who try to practise Yoga and take stock of subtle occult agencies cannot afford to take so light a view. Not that we should be overburdened with guilt. We are not like the old-time moralists. We think in terms of weaknesses and not of "sins" or "depravities". All the same, we must attempt to steer clear of aberrations.
Here the query you have raised about the idea of marriage becomes relevant. But such an idea has some complications when the prospective bridegroom is attempting to do Sri Aurobindo's Yoga in whatever form he can. You have mentioned the difficulty of finding a suitable mate in the
Page 240
spiritual sense. I suppose that if you are in a mind to get married you can't afford to be over-particular. If, on the other hand, you have no marked hankering for the married life it is better not to rush into it. In your latest letter you have spoken of the serious responsibility given you by your parents to find an appropriate match for one of your brothers. It's a difficult commission to carry out. Perhaps in the course of doing it you may stumble upon your own life's partner. But if you do, don't pas? her on to your brother who may appreciate a less ethereal-minded bedfellow!
Reverting to the force which prevents you from going inward in the right frame of mind I would propose a simple experiment. Put in front of you the photographs of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and keep opening your eyes to them now and again when you practise inward-going. When you shut your eyes let a mantra take shape - the best I can offer is: "Ma-Sri Aurobindo sharanam mama" ("Mother and Sri Aurobindo are my refuge"). I feel sure your way to the inner consciousness will be made smooth and the obstructing force take flight. Furthermore, during your meditation, let the image of Sri Aurobindo's face and that of the Mother's hang before you. with all the associations they bear for you of the Avatar's consciousness. Not only will the hostile influence disappear but there will be a deepening and widening of your being in spontaneous response to our Gurus' look of profound calm and universal compassion. Maybe the right mood will be induced more easily if you can enter into the spirit of the following eight lines, the first four of which revive the greatest aspiration of the past and the next four conjure" up the most comprehensive vision of man's spiritual future.
A PRAYER FOR PERFECTION
Out of our darkness lead us into light,
Out of false love to Your truth-piercing height,
Out of the clutch of death to immortal space,
O Perfect One with the all-forgiving face!
Page 241
From Your white lustre build the mind anew,
From Your unshadowed bliss draw the heart's hue,
From Your immense bring forth a godlike clay,
O Timeless One self-sought through night and day!
When I sent these lines to the Mother with the words: "May I realise all this one day!", she wrote back in red ink: "One day will surely come."
(8.3.1994)
It is stimulating to learn that you and your son have been to Kedarnath and seen the Himalayas. I too had a view of them from the hill of Mussourie where papa and mamma had taken their three kids. I rode on horseback the whole way up from Dehradoon along with my father, a most thrilling adventure, all the more memorable because my defective left leg, strapped to the horse's flank, could allow me only to gallop and the gallop had to skirt precipices throughout the rising 8000 feet of narrow bridle-path. The rest of the family came by the safe conveyance of a sort of palanquin carried on a man's shoulder at either end.
When one compares my free movements of those days, and even the movements which were mine through the later years, with the sort of life I lead now, confined to a wheelchair for nearly eighteen hours a day and able to be no more than a "horizontal champion" for the remaining six, the spectacle is most unpleasant from the objective point of view. Still I am gloriously happy and I think my happiness is quite visible. Let me recount a little incident at the Samadhi two days back, which may be somewhat relevant.
1was meditating with eyes half shut. I could see the legs of someone standing near me to my left. I opened my eyes and saw a stranger standing and smiling in a very friendly way. He asked me where I had originally come from and how long I had been here. I told him I had come from Bombay long ago. He asked: "Did you come in search of peace?" I answered:
Page 242
"No, I came searching for God." He inquired: "Have you found Him?" I simply said: "Yes." He was silent for a moment and then said: "Your face shows it." I was amazed and kept quiet. Then he asked: "How old are you?" I replied: "Nearing ninety." He remarked: "Your face does not show this." I felt quite flattered.
When I think why people don't find me looking nearly ninety, I remember an observation made by that grande dame, whose life spanned 1620-1705, Ninon de Lenclos. At eighty she was courted by grandfathers and grandsons alike. She was a beauty untouched by age. I am quite aware that I am fax from being any decorative piece but some non-superficial resemblance may be discerned. When asked what her secret was, Ninon replied: "Placidity of temperament."
With this precious mantra whispered in your ear I shall close.
(16.4.1994)
I am very sorry that your earnest plea for a reply has remained unanswered so long. I can see that you are in right earnest about doing Sri Aurobindo's Yoga, but are not clear enough about certain points of practice.
You ask what exactly is meant by "aspiration" and whether it is a feeling or a thought. I would define it as an inner reaching out, by whatever is the most prominent part of your being, towards the sense you have of the Divine. You may imagine the Divine to be in front of you or above you or both and then turn your mind or heart or the two together towards the sacred Presence. You may do this with some aim in view -for instance, getting rid of a particular difficulty in your nature - or else simply as a gesture of love and self-consecration. In this way you put your imperfect human nature into contact with a nature which is calm, pure, compassionate, unlimited, unerring, unegoistic. It is best for you to figure this superhuman Consciousness as a Perfect Supreme Person.
Next you inquire about the "psychic Agni": how does one
Page 243
kindle this soul-fire and throw one's defects and difficulties into it? You have to start by imagining a luminous Presence within you, a Light which can purify everything. Then into its living flame you throw your weaknesses and troubles. I would add that you must cast in it your strengths and capacities too. For none of our good points are really free of limitations and egoism. All of yourself should go repeatedly into that secret purifying Presence. This means a dedication and offering of the whole self to the true representative of the Divine that is hidden in our depths.
You are right in saying that the Mother has spoken of a zone of silence above the head. To be aware of it you have to turn your consciousness upward as if to reflect what is overhead. Imagine that you have no skull and that there is a free open space instead. Then the descent of the silence from above will be facilitated or you will feel more easily drawn up into it. A great sense of freedom from life's petty clinging cares and concerns will come. A preparation will be made for feeling that you are not a small limited individual but part of a wide existence. At its extreme, the experience will be of what a line from a poem of mine shadows forth:
Silence that, losing all, grows infinite Self.
Or else under the brooding silence the inmost soul in you, the psychic heart behind the emotional centre, finding that the common noises of the world have ceased, will emerge from its sacred solitude and make itself felt as
A Fire whose tongue has tasted paradise.
Another effect possible of the psychic being's awakening under the over-arching stillness is a growing intensity by which the bounds of our small separate individuality recede until finally there is that liberating phenomenon:
The tense heart broken into widenesses.
Page 244
Occasionally, as a result of experiencing the silence which the Mother speaks of, a command will be heard out of the seeming void at the top of the head or an urge will spell itself out from the deep heart - a heart not agitated but at peace. To get messages from these mysteries is a part of the Yogic process at its finest, a process of true self-discovery and true self-activation. The influence of such a play of hidden founts will refine and elevate your consciousness, making you a new and better person, a more genuine sadhika.
The sensations you have written about - a pressure in your chest and a tingling in your limbs - are not uncommon in the Yogic life. The former has been found to precede the opening of the heart-centre. Some time in the future you will feel as if a wall in your chest has broken down, setting free the wonder that is the psychic being, a source of self-existent bliss. The tingling may have something to do with the coming down of influences from overhead. I know of a case in which the face begins to tingle with the descent of a force and a joy from above. The most common result of overhead action is a pleasurable pain in the head, what a poet might call a heavenly headache. On occasion the Samadhi seems to start an action in several parts of the brain and through these apertures, as it were, a response is evoked from the heart's depth or else a pulling up of the consciousness can take place, detaching one from not only one's own body but also the very world to which that body belongs. There are people who feel a golden light pressing into them through the head. In the early days when I was a tyro and used to watch people doing meditation, I saw again and again my friend Purani's neck swelling on both sides as if to sustain the downward pressure of a tremendous force from overhead. The downward force can also be felt to enter the head like a bar of shining steel which could make one dizzy. But usually the divine power suits itself to the needs and capacities of the sadhak. In any case the Yoga proves to be a physical no less than a psychological working. But whether physical or psychological it will miss its aim if it does not bring about a change of one's
Page 245
common outer character as a consequence of a working on one's inner being. How much equarLimity, how much serenity are established in one's day-to-day living? - how much of disinterested action is one capable of as an outflow of one's self-offering to the Divine - how far can one spontaneously communicate Sri Aurobindo's Himalayan height of eternal guardianship or the Mother's ever-bright flow of many-featured grace like a golden Ganges carrying its multitudinous laughter over miles and miles of lowland? Such are the questions that really matter.
I hope you have forgiven me for my inexplicable delay.
(23.4.1994)
Page 246
23
Apropos of the topic of people doing pranams to sadhaks and receiving their blessings, a number of points have been raised for consideration. The most significant of them is: "A sadhak may not desire pranams, but if somebody on his own wants to do them, the sadhak does not interfere: he allows them. There is no desire or wish involved. Is there anything here to find fault with?"
The situation presented in the question is not quite as simple as it looks. The person who allows pranams on the terms mentioned may be perfectly honest and unassuming and have a genuine consideration for the psychological needs of those who want to do pranams to him. But what may start as a harmless and even benevolent affair may develop certain kinks and complexities. These may not always come to the surface in the consciousness of the sadhak concerned but may gradually go to the making of a particular constant attitude in him which may not be to his own good or other people's.
First of all, pranams repeated day after day are bound to set up a mechanism of expectation. They become a part of the sadhak's habitual relationship with others and there lies the danger of a desire or wish germinating. Here is a very natural psychological process. From this desire or wish a slowly and subtly gathering sense is likely to arise of what is due to one. And from that sense the step to a feeling of one's implicit superiority to others and of a general guruship is easy. The urge of benevolence and helpfulness to people could still be authentically there. But the movement of doing good may not now be from the same level as at the beginning; it may be from a slight self-elevation and this new poise may keep on increasing until one comes to have the established impression of an acknowledged guru's gadi under one.
Secondly, although one does not ask anybody to do pranams, one sets by accepting them an example to those who have not done them yet. These people may be wondering
Page 247
what they should do. They come with admiration and even reverence to whoever has been long in Yoga and is really in a position to give help both by his words and by his presence. They do not know what their approach as seekers should be and what outward relationship they should have with the object of their admiration and reverence. Especially in India, where a variety of approaches and relationships on the outer plane is possible, the question becomes more pointed. The point becomes still more keen when Westerners come here and' sincerely want to be Indianised in order to make the spiritual life more concrete and quick-moving. Seeing others easily go down on their knees and marking no reluctance at all in the one to whom this gesture is made, all these people get encouraged to respond with the same gesture. This effect on them amounts to their being tacitly invited to do pranams.
All the circumstances involved would tend to turn pra-nam-making into what, if we rightly interpret certain statements of Sri Aurobindo, would be disapproved by him -namely, a kind of cult and a shadow of the Mother's role vis-a-vis the sadhaks. Such a result cannot but be a hindrance to the Motherward development in both the sides concerned in this particular spiritual exchange. The receiver of the pranams would interfere in the continuity he has inwardly to maintain of surrender to the Mother and self-effacement before her. He may sincerely try to invoke her presence and offer up to her the gesture addressed to him; but if the latter has become part of a habitual, repeating, cultic process, such an attitude of consciousness is practically impossible and the element of personal self mostly replaces the sense of being a medium. As for the pranam-makers, the frequent recurrence of the gesture is bound to focus the consciousness on the pranam-receiver rather than on the Mother whose disciple they know him to be. As the physical act of going down on their knees concentrates and culminates the movement of devotion, the inner side-tracking and substitution run the risk of being firmly established. Not that they will derive no spiritual benefit from what they do, but they will not, on the whole, put themselves
Page 248
into the full direct contact with that unique creative fountain of the infinite supramental light that is the Mother.
Finally, there are certain dangers or at least challenges for the pranam-receiver, attendant on his getting into a cultic stream. By the momentum of this stream many movements in the beings of the pranam-makers begin naturally to flow out into him. Of course, something of him will flow out into them. This may mean their getting a strong touch of his qualities and his getting a strong touch of their defects. More probably what would happen is that a sort of mixture is created of the two consciousnesses and there will be again and again an activation of this ever-present pull in two directions with a little yet not very significant variation. After a while a stagnancy, merely surface-stirred, of spiritual life comes about - unless the pranam-receiver is able to make a great deal of inner progress by a supernormal self-purification in the intervals between the pranam-periods. Such a refreshing of one's being at the secret sources of light is not very likely because the cultic rhythm usually becomes dominant, and the melange produced by it will not allow an easy break-away towards those deeper springs. In order to remain unaffected by the haunting influence of that rhythm, one has to be very powerfully above the general psychological level of the people one accepts into one's consciousness.
All these, of course, are general observations. There is bound to be exceptional circumstances in certain respects and some modification may have to be made of my line of thought. But, by and large, the picture presented here is likely to stand and may serve as a broad guide to both the receiver and the maker of pranams.
(1976)
Your bringing up an old though very important spiritual issue for fresh discussion is welcome, for I have chanced upon a statement by Sri Aurobindo which clearly and conclusively reinforces the stand I have taken along with Nolini that bodily
Page 249
transformation is postponed, though not cancelled.
Before I exhibit my trouvaille let me touch on the old bones of contention you have dug up. There are four points here from my side:
(1)Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were to be the first to achieve bodily supramentalisation. Here Sri Aurobindo's declaration to me to the effect that if supramentalisation is not done in him it cannot be done in others is the central truth. Of course, we could substitute the Mother when Sri Aurobindo for reasons of his own pulled his body out of the transformative process.
(2)If the Mother also withdrew from her body the immediate individual process of transformation of the body came to a halt. No doubt, a lot of Yogic progress was still possible, but the final leap to the transformation of the gross-physical substance, ensuring freedom from disease, ageing and death, was rendered impossible at the present stage of mankind.
(3)Since the Supermind began to manifest on a universal scale on 29 February 1956 in the subtle-physical layer of the earth, the ultimate evolution of a new race at a future time when the Supermind would emerge into the earth's gross-physical stuff is a certainty. This future evolutionary certainty coupled with the present individual impossibility is what i mean when I support Nolini's dictum.
(4)The postponement is in force not only because Sri Aurobindo and the Mother left the transformative process uncompleted in their own bodies. It is in force also because of the fact driven home in several pronouncements to the effect that without the Guru's physical presence the advanced stages, the crucial and even dangerous turning-points in this process, cannot be achieved.
Against all this you trump up one phrase of the Mother's in a talk with Manoj Dasgupta, where on being asked whether bodily transformation could be done by oneself she does not deny the possibility but at once adds that in her experience the Guru's working has always been necessary for spiritual turning-points. You try to make out that such working where
Page 250
people other than the Mother are concerned has not been needed and you add that the silent mind came to the Mother from Sri Aurobindo whereas others have had it on their own. You are right in the one example you give - Sri Aurobindo's silent mind, though it followed his carrying out of Lele's instruction to feel thoughts as corning from outside and to repulse them, was not transmitted by Lele, unlike the Mother's complete silence of mind which was gifted at one sitting by Sri Aurobindo. From this you seem to conclude that, whatever be the Mother's outlook on gifts from the Guru, spiritual results like the silent mind can come without the Guru's direct agency. Ergo, Guruless bodily transformation must be possible.
This is a non-sequitur. First of all, silence of the mind cannot be put on a par with transformation of the body. What Sri Aurobindo calls in Savitri
The breathless might and calm of silent mind
is nothing supremely exceptional. Techniques to obtain it have existed in India and elsewhere from ancient times. The very first surra of Patanjali's Raja Yoga asks for it: chitta-imtti-nirodha ("subdue the quiverings of the consciousness"). The transformation of the body which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were after has never yet been done. The Mother said that hers was the first human body to undertake on Sri Aurobindo's command this radical experiment. May I request you to consider the implications of what the Mother's body was meant to be and to do? Let me remind you of my report of a half-whispered semi-soliloquy by the Mother as once she passed by me in the afternoon on her way to her brief siesta. Its gist was the supreme importance of keeping one body somehow going. Surely the implication was that everything hinged on what her body alone could or would do in the matter of physical supramentalisation. If everything depended on only her body, how could anyone else's be meant in the quote you offer of the Mother's declaration to Cham-
Page 251
paklal soon after the supramental manifestation on February 29, 1956, that "she was now free to go and to make way for another body to complete the transformation"? You argue that she meant someone else's body; I that she had in view a future body of her own on earth to complete the individual body's transformation within the context of the universal manifestation which was evidently a further step in the general history of earthly evolution. My argument is: "If everything hung on the unique body that was hers, the body that was to be kept going, 'another body' could only mean a body she would have to take up in the future by rebirth to replace the present one which might not prove adequate."
Perhaps we could validly ask here why the Mother suggested that she had done what had been necessary and her present body was no longer needed. Undoubtedly, both she and Sri Aurobindo had been working for the supramentalisation of their individual bodies and not just for the manifestation of a general supramental consciousness, light, force, etc. and that too in the earth's subtle-physical layer. Could she have felt or intuited that the full individual work would not be accomplished by her in this life of hers? Your reply, in spite of all that I have already urged, will be that, for whatever reason, she was ready to give up her body and had in mind the body of Nolini or Champaklal or Dyuman or Pavitra or Amrita or Satprem to fulfil the work Sri Aurobindo had assigned to her: namely, "our Yoga of supramental descent and transformation."
Now is the moment for me to set forth my discovery to drive home my long-held conviction that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother insisted that their bodily presence - or at least the presence of one of the two bodies - was a sine qua nort for the ultimate transformation of any disciple of theirs.
On p. 505 of Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother (1953 edition), I found the following:
Q, Is there any special effect of physical nearness to the Mother?
A. It is indispensable for the fullness of the sadhana on
Page 252
the physical plane. Transformation of the physical material being is not possible otherwise.
Sri Aurobindo's answer should put a finis to all talk of anyone undergoing the physical and material being's transformation on his own. Even by itself the talk appears to be no more than "sounding brass or tinkling cymbal" without the necessary background being perceived - in the person you refer to - of a supramentalised mind and vital force led by the inmost soul permeated by the supramental divinity. Is there any sign of such a background in this person whose claim for his body's progress you are inclined not to brush aside in spite of your saying: "Normally I have little sympathy for him and his often aggressive self-assertion"? I don't think there is any other claimant in the field. What you write seems to want a rival to him. You have a strangely prophetic paragraph, beginning:
"... there is a surprising further possibility. It is that of the extraordinary prediction concerning your own body..."
I may mention that neither Sri Aurobindo nor the Mother made "the extraordinary prediction" as an unconditional bonus, though the Mother always said it would anyhow be fulfilled. However, her departure renders its ultimate terms unfulfillable, while leaving the future open about the intermediate ones. Even the latter have to be set in the context of the extreme locomotive disabilities obtaining at present.
(29.4.1994)
I am glad we have reached agreement about the impossibility of physical transformation without the Guru's embodied presence guiding and guarding the process. In a tit for my tat of convicting you of a non-sequitur you have brought up my speaking in the same breath of the silent mind experienced by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and "the mind from thought released" achieved by several spiritual aspirants. Though my comparison was mistaken it was in the same universe of dis-
Page 253
course: your lumping together an almost initial thing like mental silence with a supreme and ultimate, hitherto-unaccomplished thing like bodily supramentalisation was like comparing "a Hyperion to a satyr", as your favourite store of quotations would say. However, I have no mind particularly to decide who should be chosen to wear the crown of a dunce's cap in the realm of irrelevance. There are more important matters to dwell upon.
The impression I get from your letter is that, according to you,' the most important matter is the prolongation of life at will. Since the final transformation cannot be done unless the Mother is again on the earth, the power of life-prolongation in a spiritually developing sadhak would enable him to wait, "perhaps for centuries, for the Mother's return to make possible the ultimate step". Here, I think, we have to distinguish between some sort of ability to carry on for a long time in a state of tolerable health and the confident mastery over the body's functions on the way to a change into a physical condition immune to disease, degeneration and death. I am afraid the latter is beyond any attainment short of physical supramentalisation. Sri Aurobindo has summed up the attainment in question: "Naturally, the release from subconscient ignorance and from disease, duration of life at will, and a change in the functionings of the body must be among the ultimate elements of a supramental change..." (Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother, 1953 ed„ p. 382). It seems that nothing short of the process of supramentalisation of the body can lead to "duration of life at will".
Since such duration hinges on immunity in the body, let me cite another passage: "As for the question about the illness, perfection in the physical plane is indeed part of the ideal of the Yoga, but it is the last item and, so long as the fundamental change has not been made in the material consciousness to which the body belongs, one may have a certain perfection on other planes without having immunity in the body. We have not sought perfection for our own separate sake, but as part of a general change - creating a
Page 254
possibility of perfection for others. That could not have been done without our accepting and facing the difficulties of the realisation and transformation and overcoming them for ourselves. It has been done to a sufficient degree on the other planes - but not yet on the most material part of the physical plane. Till it is done the fight continues and, though there may be and is a force of Yogic action and defence, there cannot be immunity. The Mother's difficulties are not her own; she bears the difficulties of others and those that are inherent in the general action and working for the transformation. If it had been otherwise, it would be a very different matter." (Ibid., pp. 390-91).
Here we have more than one issue involved. It is suggested that if the Mother were not loaded with others' impediments she could compass complete immunity - that is, easily acquire supramentalisation of the body. It is also suggested that none of her disciples has been or will be capable of going on in the transformative Yoga without her aid. The further suggestion is that, unlike the situation on the subtle planes, immunity to the full on the most material plane is still lacking. The overall suggestion we catch is that bodily sup ramentalisation alone canconfer total immunity.Soyouridea that one may spiritually continue immune for centuries until such supramentalisation is bestowed by the physical return of the Mother in a far future is Utopian: it is self-contradictory.
Evolutionary supramentalisation in the course of thousands of years, with the help of the supramental manifestation that has already laid its base in the earth's history through the earth's subtle-physical layer on 29 February 1956, seems now to be the only thing possible.
I say "now", meaning a point of time with an extensive vista ahead, in a distant part of which the Mother will make her presence physical again. You are sceptical of her comeback because you can't think of her starting life again under all the petty circumstances of childhood and school-life due to ignorant parents and silly tutors. According to me, rebirth
Page 255
need not be a degrading process. The Mother's own childhood and girlhood as well as her womanhood were fairly radiant. But for her to return to earth-life she need not go through all these stages. She has posed as a possibility her merger with a finely developed body already existing. A great, even radical change would then take place in the life of that body, along with its consciousness, and the Mother who has worked in Sri Aurobindo's Ashram in our day would stand before the world to carry on her mission of physical supramentalisation using fully the general influence of the universal Supermind that has already manifested as a background power. Because of this supporting light mankind would be more receptive and her toil towards total transformation of not only her own new embodiment but also, along with it, that of her followers' bodies would be like sun and rain bringing about the opening of flowers instead of the hard labour it has been during her recent life-span in our Ashram - our ''blooming'' Ashram as a sour critic might sav, keeping up the floral imagery.
In such a role she would prepare our own reborn selves as well as others for the time when, according to the promise given to her during the days Sri Aurobindo's body was lying in state, he would come back in a supramental body built in a supramental way. That hour would mark the two greatest victories of terrestrial history: the Mother sitting as the pioneer of the human supramentalised side by side with Sri Aurobindo as the initiator of the supramental humanised.
(28.5.1994)
Your vision of me is essentially the vision of the god hidden in man and waiting to be brought forth from behind the veil. It goes far beyond the day-to-day Amal with all his deficiencies. Somehow you have seen the luminous secrecy already in the midst of things mortal. No doubt, I aspire at all hours to manifest the divine truth which is the supreme ideal behind the evolving real. As a result, these all-too-fallible eyes reflect
Page 256
on occasion some lustre of the Impeccable. But oh so far still is the reflection from the actual splendour-source!
Yours is a peep into the future - and so forceful is the peep that I feel the future hastened. The dreamer in me is activated beyond his usual capacity and stirred to wake into the daylight of divinity as soon as possible. Thanks for your deep faith in my endeavour to draw within our hazy human formula the sheer purple of the Sovereign and the Perfect.
One must guard against getting puffed up with a dear friend's high estimate, but if humbly received, with an awareness of the Infinite which can never be compassed, no matter how lofty our climb, such an estimate can serve to pull one nearer
The joy that beckons from the impossible.
(18.5.1994)
I am sure you have a mind of a really good quality, with a capacity to enhance its natural talent with a golden touch from the Mother. Don't waste the gift the Divine has graced you with. With a calm, poised, inwardly dedicated attitude go ahead with your studies, so that your MD may mean at the same time Medicinae Doctor and "Mother's Devotee". If you neglect your talent, you won't be serving the Divine as the Divine wishes you to do. You'll finally stultify the light that has been placed in your brain: then you will achieve another sort of MD, standing for "Mentally Deficient".
It is an error to believe that true sadhana can't go on side" by side with solid work - intellectual or physical. Sri Aurobindo's Yoga is a dynamic one, not one whose object is omphaloskepsis, "navel-gazing". Channelling your mental energy into useful learning, with a consecrated temper which keeps Yoga running alongside one's studies: that seems to me the career marked out for you. Then even the hostile attacks will diminish. They find easy entry into your mind at present because it is not fruitfully directed and occupied.
Page 257
Thanks for occasionally praying for me. I am certain I'll benefit by every sincere and affectionate prayer on my behalf. I shall on my side make it a point to offer you to the Mother at the Samadhi.
(1989)
Page 258
24
What you have written about "International Spiritualism" is correct in essence. By the way I should like you to speak not of Spiritualism but of Spirituality. The former term has now popularly acquired a special meaning, referring to communication with the spirits of the dead through mediums. As for certain experiences being not exclusively Indian, the lines you have quoted from Wordsworth clearly show the truth of your contention. But Wordsworth's Prelude and other mystical poems are not typical of Western spirituality. The West is Christian, and to the bulk of Christians the universe is not something emanating from the Divine and ultimately God-stuff, with a "within" and a "without" to be realised as wonderfully balanced as Wordsworth perceives. The universe in the orthodox Christian view is a creation by a supra-cosmic deity "out of nothing" and substantially different from Himself. Christianity has a horror of pantheism - because it believes that pantheism would exclude Divine Transcendence and annul all moral values. European pantheism does tend to restrict the Divine to the universe. Indian pantheism does not, it is just one aspect of a complex and many-sided spirituality such as the West does not know except in a few scattered individuals. Even Wordsworth who knew it in his early life reacted against it later and became an orthodox Churchman just as in politics the revolutionary of his early days died and stiffened into an ultra-conservative. The Christian milieu was too strong for him and he could not himself bring his mind to be on comfortable terms with the Vedantic mysticism which ran through his best poetry. In one of my articles in Mother India ("A Poet's Sincerity"), I have mentioned that the best known stanza in the great Immortality Ode had no clear roots in Wordsworth's thought and he expressly denied believing in its contents when he was asked about the matter. How then can you suggest that Indian spirituality is not typically Indian but international?
Page 259
Of course, we do not wish to say that the West is incapable of such spirituality or that it has absolutely nothing of it. Hut on the whole there is certainly an absence in the West of what is common air and water to the Indian spiritual aspirant. Further, Indian spirituality is assimilative and progressive - it can take into itself all the finest and deepest of Christianity -but Christianity knows itself only by opposing itself to Indian spirituality, by which it mostly understands a Western-type pantheism or Shankarite Illusionism (without appreciating Shahkara's lifelong devotion to the Divine Mother). Illusionism itself is misunderstood as landing the mystic in material unconsciousness instead of in spiritual superconsciousness. Look at what the most progressive Christian - Teilhard de Chardin - has to say on Indian spirituality in general. He rejects it - for all its fascination through its sense of the cosmic - with horror and even tries to explain away his own pantheistic inclinations in terms of orthodox Roman Catholic theology!
We are not by any chance fanatics of Indianism but it should be clear that the future spirituality, multi-faceted, all-embracing, even science-coloured, can arise only from an Indian basis and with an Indian background. Has it not struck you that Sri Aurobindo, who calls the whole world to his Integral Yoga and who sets up no barrier to the claims and capacities of the true soul whether in the Occident or the Orient, goes back only to the Vedas and the Upanishads and the Gita and the Tantra for his spiritual antecedents? He was himself more Westernised than any Indian of a comparable calibre - but he came to see, as soon as he plunged into the ocean of spiritual realisation, that nowhere except in India could there be the basis of a world-spirituality. No doubt, he has gone beyond all that traditional India has taught, but the hints and glints of his integral spirituality could be traced by him only in neglected or forgotten parts of old Indian scriptures. We are Aurobindonians and thus belong to the future and are more than Indians, but the time has not come yet to put the world on a par with India in spirituality and we
Page 260
cannot set aside the background of India's illumined past in relation to the Aurobindonian future.
Sri Aurobindo's Ashram stands in India. It is to India that the world has to turn to become Aurobindonian - and this is because India is always more than Indian and holds the best promise of being Aurobindonian. In our modernism and our eclecticism and our universalism let us not underrate the role and the soul of Mother India. We shall be most modem, most eclectic, most universal if we remember what Mother India essentially is. You must have seen that in our monthly review of culture we deal with all sorts of topics and not merely Indian ones but we should not repudiate the vastly nourishing milieu of the Spirit that is our country, .
(3.10.1970)
I am sorry I have delayed replying to your kind and considerate letter of inquiry about certain subjects. As for the question of historicity of Rama and Krishna, Sri Aurobindo is positive about the actual existence of the latter. One of his most interesting statements about Krishna is to the effect that it is a great thing to know that at least once in human history the Divine has definitely touched the earth. In regard to Rama he has said that the Ramayana is a mingling of fact and fiction on the one hand and on the other of events of earth with events of other planes of being. Whether there existed a particular person whom we identify as Rama, son of Dasa-ratha, is not certain but someone who performed an evolutionary function - namely, of establishing in man the dharmic (moral-religious) mind and averting the strong alternative trend towards both the titan and the vital-animal consciousness - was a necessary part of the human past. Someone Rama-like was assuredly there and Valmiki has so projected him that all his actions bear the stamp of an Avatar's universal consciousness. Sri Aurobindo declared that he could clearly recognise the Avataric afflatus in all the decisions and deeds of Valmiki's Rama. I think that for all prac-
Page 261
tical purposes the basic Rama can be taken to be as historical as the Krishna of the Mahabharata.
You have mentioned Dr. Kanaiyalal Munshi as "calling the Ramayana a great literary work while expressing no opinion about the Mahabharata". When the archaeologist B.B. Lai excavated the various sites listed in the Mahabharata and, finding there the ceramic known as Painted Grey Ware, dated the sites to about 850 B.C. in accordance with the Indologist Pargiter's chronology, Munshi was exultant over the finds as indicating the life-style of the period depicted in that epic. Picturesquely he exclaimed that now we have in our hands "Duryodhana's feeding-bottle"! The historian and epigra-phist, D.C. Sircar, in a letter to me, poohpoohed the notion that the actual time and life-style of the Bharata-War period had been discovered: he was even sceptical whether there was ever such an event as the Bharata War. Most Indian historians don't share Sircar's scepticism, but, as you note, the datings differ. My dating of Krishna - either 1482 or 1452 B.C. - which involves that of the Bharata War has the support of S.R. Rao's recent marine excavation at Dwaraka: the drowned Dwaraka of roughly the fifteenth century B.C. which he has found tallying very well with the drowned Dwaraka of the Mahabharata story. Other researchers have postulated times different from mine, but I don't believe anybody has really suggested, as you say, 250 B.C. as the date. You draw my attention to the article "The Pandyas and the date of Kalidasa" in the March 1994 Mother India, p. 191. But you are mixing up the poem Mahabharata and the Bharata War whose story it recounts. The author of this article is talking of the poem and not of the War. Similarly he is talking of the poem Ramayana which he dates to the first century B.C. I have found no valid reason so far to doubt my chronology for Krishna.
I was impressed as well as amused by your following line of argument: "The existence of Rama and Krishna temples all over Asia cannot make them historical persons. They are such powerful personalities that people accepted them as true life figures. We have an example of a recent such incident. Some 10-15 years back a Hindi movie 'Jay Santoshima' was pro-
Page 262
duced and it became a great hit. Its impact was so great in the Hindi belt that people, particularly the village folks, started believing that 'Santoshima' was a real-life deity. As a result dozens of temples dedicated to 'Santoshima' cropped up in Bihar and U.P. and many of them even today have a good following and people believe that 'Ma' gives success to real believers. Rama and Krishna can be similar 'Santoshimas' of an earlier period."
You have very pointedly shown the possibility that Rama and Krishna were non-historical. But on behalf of Krishna we can put up a defence. In the second chapter of Essays on the Gita Sri Aurobindo tells us about him: "We meet the name first in the Chhandogya Upanishad where all we can gather about him is that he was well-known in spiritual tradition as a knower of the Brahman, so well-known indeed is his personality and the circumstances of his life that it was sufficient to refer to him by the name of his mother as Krishna son of Devaki for all to understand who was meant. In the same Upanishad we find mention of King Dhritarashtra son of Vichitravirya, and since tradition associated the two together so closely that they are both of them leading personages in the action of the Mahabharata, we may fairly conclude that they were actually contemporaries and that the epic is to a great extent dealing with historical characters and in the war of Kurukshetra with a historical occurrence imprinted on the memory of the race."
I appreciate the sympathetic picture you have conjured up of me and the instinctive sense you have of my temperament: "Sir, I know you are 89 and a virtual invalid. I also know that I should not be putting any additional load on your already overburdened life, and yet I have a feeling that you may like to clear the doubts from the minds of persons like me. There may be many."
This letter in reply to 'yours has been written very gladly and without any sense of strain. Although I am confined to a wheelchair I am extremely happy at heart and psychologically feel no sign of old age.
(17.4.1994)
Page 263
I was glad to read your letter. There is sincerity in your search for the Divine. But I would not advise you to be over-hasty in shunning your family life when your wife is eager to continue it. You may carry on its normal course. Then your wife will not feel that your attempt at spirituality is something against her. Don't let adverse vibrations be created from her side. But you should inwardly offer at the Mother's feet every part of your family life. Let the flame of "remembering and offering" burn steadily within you without its standing in the way of cordial relations with your partner.
Your wife's dream clearly shows she's a genuinely religious person. To be so naturally in touch with Shiva is rather rare. And her attempt to climb a gigantic hill to reach a Shiva-temple or Shiva-symbol at the top proves the strength of her devotion. The actual intercession by Shiva on her behalf by coming and catching her hands when she was at a dangerous height is proved by her getting so soon the boon she had asked of him. To get in a short time what she had failed to get for years - namely, a job - is a rare phenomenon. It is made rarer by the fact that the job was a very good one and that it was got without the usual practice of what you euphemistically call a "donation".
You may tell your wife that many people who have come in contact with Sri Aurobindo have felt a very strong element of the Shiva-poise and Shiva-peace in him: If we think of Sri Aurobindo as an Avatar, I would say that in traditional terms he could be considered as much an incarnation of Shiva as of Vishnu.
If you can very quietly open your wife's eyes to this vision, much if not all of the division she feels between her religious life and your Yogic practice will vanish.
I would wish your wife and you to live in as much harmony as possible. Neither you nor she should think that the inner paths which both of you are following are far apart. I don't see why essentially they should not be concordant - especially if, as I am inclined to believe, both of you love each other.
(22.4.1994)
Page 264
You have asked me what hearing Yoga could have on Industry. The importance of Yoga for Industry may be realised if we attend to a few facts.
Industry can flourish only when there is industrial peace, which depends largely on good behaviour and healthy relations between management and labour.
To behave rightly, one must have the qualities of tolerance, love, kindness and joyfulness. Good behaviour is only possible when people rise above narrow-mindedness and selfishness.
Of course, an attempt to observe ethical rules by willpower is always to be encouraged; but it cannot be effective at all times. The reason is that one is acting as if one's natural bent were in the opposite direction and as if one had always to control one's nature. The assumption appears to be that one is naturally narrow-minded and selfish.
Now, the ancient philosophy of Yoga tells us that there is a divine centre in each of us - a centre which is a spontaneous source of tolerance, love, kindness and joyfulness, because it holds in each individual a sense of the One Self of all who is also the Supreme Being, the Infinite, the Eternal, the Godhead, the Highest Truth and Goodness and Beauty and Power.
The philosophy of Yoga further tells us that if we quiet our minds and concentrate our hearts upon the divine reality within us as well as everywhere we shall become conscious of the centre of our being, which is naturally a representation of this reality. Thus we establish contact with what is intrinsically and effortlessly tolerant, loving, kind and joyful.
A little daily exercise in such quieting and concentrating will make us better members of society and help greatly the relationship between management and labour. A fine sense of co-operation and equality will also arise, and the background of inner peace which will be realised will go even to make the mind more imaginative and creative so that better means of promoting industry are likely to be found.
(1974)
Page 265
You want to know how to study The Life Divine first as a sadhak and secondly as one who intends to deliver lectures now and then at Sri Aurobindo Centres.
You have to understand what sort of book The Life Divine is. No doubt it is addressed to the intellect but it is at the same time, as Aldous Huxley wrote to Dilip Kumar Roy, an extraordinarily fine piece of literature and, chiefly, a mass of spiritual knowledge couched in intellectual and literary terms. This spiritual knowledge is from what Sri Aurobindo has called the Overmind. The Overmind has a vast massive universal vision and looks at quite a multitude of things, appreciating the characteristic of each yet holding the multiplicity together. And the entire ensemble comes alive because of the literary language which is not a grace superadded but an integral part of the Overmind's natural manifestation in words.
So, if you want to know The Life Divine in its true form you have to be receptive to it on a number of levels. And unless you know it in its true form you will not be a true channel of communication between it and your audience.
As you go on reading, mark the passages that appeal to you most as well as those which strike to your mind the greatest note of originality. Also tabulate in numerical order the various steps leading to "the height of the great argument", as Milton would have put it. You have both to enjoy and to absorb the splendid process - or rather the grand procession of Sri Aurobindo's illumined thought. If enjoyment has not been there, you will not be able to set the mind of your audience on fire. Of course, you have to avoid being superficially rhetorical or cutting dramatic capers. Expounding The Life Divine is a serious business, but if your experience of it has made you say to yourself in those words from a sonnet of Sri Aurobindo's
I have drunk the Infinite like a giant's wine
something of your profound pleasure will keep your audi-
Page 266
ence relishing all that you set forth. And in setting it forth try to bring out the difference between ordinary philosophical brain-work and "the titan winging of the thought" which is the natural movement of the "overhead" consciousness and especially the Overmind's comprehension of totalities and apprehension of details.
I may draw your attention particularly to one patch of super-excellence in this book, the shortest chapter in it and even more than the rest of the volume a blend of simplicity with grandeur. I mean the very first chapter: "The Human Aspiration". It is most direct in its exposition but backed by a many-sided survey of the whole of the universe. It lays out, step by step, the ground-plan in a sort of self-sufficient design which will later be seen to anticipate all the circlings of the Overmind vision, yet which at first sight looks rounded off in a clean-cut summary. Its thought stands all the time on the ground though always with an os sublime, a face turned upwards to
This seeming unattainable is shown with a sweet severity, as the only logical goal because
Earth's winged chimeras are Truth's steeds in heaven,
The impossible God's sign of things to be.
(6.6.1994)
Page 267
25
You have asked me only two questions, but they have set up quite a world of cerebral coruscation. You will have to be patient and tolerant with me, for I am answering in the manner of a wind which "bloweth where it listeth".
Your first question is: "How should one react to circumstances until the Psychic Being takes over? Should we live entirely within and ignore events, or observe all without evaluating?"
We certainly can't ignore events altogether. One may shut out some aspects of the outer world, but one shouldn't take the attitude of that line of Keats's - "Standing apart in giant ignorance". I for one actually stood thus in the early days of my stay in the Ashram. I would go to the Ashram's Reading Room every morning to pick up only the "Literary Supplements" of the Hindu or the Amrita Bazar Patrika. I used to see the race of the sadhaks, with Nolini generally first at the winning post, when the bag of dailies from the GPO was emptied on the mats. I was placidly unaware that Hitler had come to dangerous power and that Stalin was unleashing his reign of terror - until on October 12,1936, nine years after my arrival in Pondy, there was put on the Ashram library table a typed copy of a poem by Arjava (originally John Chadwick) entitled "Totalitarian", dated October 11 of the same year and accompanied by Sri Aurobindo's comment: "Exceedingly original and vivid - the description with its economy and felicity of phrase is very telling." The term "Totalitarian" was a prodigious poser to me and seemed to be such also to the librarian, my diminutive friend Premanand, Our situation was comparable in puzzlement more than in wonderment to that of Keats's "stout Cortez" and "all his men" when with "a wild surmise" they first gazed at the Pacific, standing
Silent upon a peak in Darien.
Page 268
Our stunned silence did not last long. We remembered Arjava's own admonition to one of his students face to face with an unknown word: "God may not have given you brains but surely He has given you a Dictionary!" We resorted to the "Concise Oxford" and its equivalents and found that "totalitarian" denoted a dictator who wanted everybody to be stamped with his own mind or a State perrmtting no rival loyalties or parties and demanding the entire subservience of the individual to it - a State headed by such a dictator. 1 took the poem to have a topical air and my inquiries brought to light for me for the first time the darknesses that were National Socialism in Germany and Marxist Communism in Russia.
Though my 9-year long ignorance was quite blissful, I cannot dangle before you my example. You have to keep abreast of events, both domestic and extramural (pedantic term, meaning "outside the walls", for happenings beyond the Ashram's "charmed circle"). Even Sri Aurobindo, in his roomy cave of tapasya, used to cast a glance at newspapers no less than at literary journals such as the New Statesman, which Arjava regularly sent him and which our Lalloobhai, born malapropist, called the New Testament. Arjava also sent the Manchester Guardian, apropos of which Premanand and I speculated a little lewdly about a companion weekly, Woman-breaster Guardian. So sustaining a touch with the current world-chaos along with the ups and downs of Ashram-life is quite de rigueur. But, as you rightly guess, it should be free of evaluation - that is, favourable or unfavourable personal judgment. I have put in the adjective "personal" because some kind of evaluation cannot be helped. We are not a scientific instrument of "pointer-readings": some implicit or explicit standard comes into play. However, I would say that an initial stage of "pointer-readings" has to be there: we have to get our facts right. After this stage an assessment is in order. But how shall we start assessing? If the Psychic Being is in action we shall automatically arrive at the correct evaluation. Here I may remark that the psychic evaluation - the sheer soul's estimate - is not in terms of truth-knowledge but
Page 269
in those of truth-feeling. Truth-knowledge is a gift of the planes of consciousness which Sri Aurobindo labels as "overhead": it is a knowledge reached not by discursive thinking but by illumination and intuition or at the least by a large spontaneous many-sided unifying play of ideas, the work of the overhead plane nearest to our intellect and named by Sri Aurobindo "Higher Mind". This knowledge percolates into our mind with a sudden sense of wideness and peace accompanying it. The soul's truth-feeling brings a sense of depth which at the same time holds delight and strength and a love which I can only describe as a quiet intensity or a passionate purity. Short of the Psychic Being's intervention, we have to go in for a detached mind which, for all its aloofness, is yet ever sympathetic, ready to understand all human movements without being caught up in any. I may add that the detached mind can be not only receptive, helpful to people who come in for advice: it can also be active on its own and, as you put it, "interfere in what is happening around one in the Ashram". Of course, there are limits to one's sphere of action and there are ways and ways of acting. Furthermore, every way of acting has to be first dedicated to the Mother and sought to be infused with her consciousness by being inwardly uplifted to her. One must also know where to stop acting. Beyond a certain point one's outspreading action is liable to slip into an enthusiastic egoism: one may develop the notion that one alone is right in every sphere.
By the way, it may be worth while to distinguish between egoism and egotism. In practical matters, egoism connotes selfishness whereas egotism signifies a too frequent use of "I" and "me", the practice of talking about oneself. I know people who are egotists while being the opposite of egoists. There can be a curious blend of the two: one may be naturally inclined to be unselfish, go out of one's way to help and serve others and at the same time be disposed to tomtom one's good deeds. People are complex, we must know how to sort out their intricacies. This can be best done when we stand aloof without getting wrapped up in ourselves.
Page 270
You write: "The more I step back, the more things I can laugh at. What does that mean? Logically, then, the Divine must be laughing at the entire universe. What is the significance of this entertainment? Surely the Divine does not need entertainment. So why put all that entertainment in? Is it just incidental or what?"
You have touched on a big theme here - I may dub it the Big Bang of philosophers, the problem of world-manifestation. The Big Bang of the physicists has always left me dissatisfied. Things within the universe have their start but to say that the universe itself started raises a host of questions. St. Augustine was once asked by a sceptic: "What was God doing before he made the world?" The Bishop of Hippo smiled off this hippopotamus of a query by saying: "Preparing hell for sceptics like you!" St. Aquinas in the course of his Summa Theologica (or was it Contra Gentiles?) answers that philosophically we can think of God the Creator as perpetually putting out his Will-force to manifest Nature: there need be no beginning and no end. The great Schoolman believed in a beginning only because scripture taught it. Stephen Hawking in his recent best-seller gloats over the idea that if science could show a perpetual cosmos there would be no call to introduce God. Of course, the argument for God's existence does not confine itself to this line of discourse, but narrowly speaking Hawking cannot be easily faulted. What he does not realise is that God is not incompatible with such a cosmos: as Aquinas reasoned, God's creative power is not tied down to projecting a universe with a starting-point. However, Hawking may pull out "Occam's Razor": Entia non sunt multiplicands ("Entities are not to be multiplied"). This means: why drag in God if science can do without Him by positing an ever-existing cosmic process? Hawking does not seem to have wakened up to the question: "How from a neutral purposeless cosmic process can -a figure like Hawking with a keen purposive intellect - even if it be anti-God by purpose -arise?" Surely there are paradoxes lurking about us? Even if we postulate a transmogrified divine Hawking ultimately
Page 271
behind the human specimen, we do not reach the end of the road. There has been throughout philosophical history the spectre of the problem of Evil in the world. It has led the human mind to spawn Hormuzd and Ahriman, Jehovah and Satan and, in less starkly ethical and more comprehensive terms, Brahman and Maya. The ingenious Indian mind got round the glaring antithesis further by declaring that Maya is really a non-existence that appears to exist. Sri Aurobindo does not gloss over the riddle of this world but says that the only answer that can be offered to the limited instrument of knowledge that is the human mind is, in effect: "In the endless range of possibilities of manifestation, the possibility had to come up of a world starting from the very opposite of the divine existence, consciousness-force and bliss and such a possibility was accepted as a challenge to this existence, consciousness-force and bliss to develop out of it with a rare richness the original perfection in the very milieu of this perfection's contrary." Here we might say that there is no escapism which would leave the earth-field ultimately unfulfilled in itself as it would be if it were merely a passage to something beyond it. Again, here the very perfection to be evolved is latent: the dark contrary is divinity's own self in disguise. Here alone the presence of Evil in the world gets, in both the initial and the final prospect, irradiated, as it were.
Now a halt to digression, however fruitful.
When Paul Richard was in Pondy during his second visit, accompanied by his wife who was then known as Mirra, an early bone of intellectual contention with Sri Aurobindo was: "Did the world originate in Ananda (Bliss) or in Desire?" Richard argued for Desire. This is in essence the view of Buddha. The Buddhist term is tanha, "thirst". As long as there is tanha in the world-stuff of which we are made, world-existence continues with its load of duhkha, "suffering". Buddha has struck upon a basic truth. Desire, in the Buddhist sense, implies an endless need, a perpetual emptiness calling to be filled, a movement of grabbing at things transitory and therefore never satisfying. The result of recurring dissatis-
Page 272
faction is suffering. To get beyond such a result we have to renounce the world, the time-process in which we are immersed and enter that indescribable illimitable void transcending all temporary being: Nirvana. In contrast, a world originating in Bliss is secretly sustained by Bliss and meant to attain Bliss across the trials and tragedies of common living. Well has Sri Aurobindo said in his Savitri: .
Bear: thou shalt find at last thy road to bliss:
Bliss is the secret stuff of all that lives.
Not that Sri Aurobindo was at any time an ever-chuckling optimist. He was Virgilianly sensitive enough to say:
We feel the touch of tears in mortal things.
Aware that terrestrial evolution starts from the "Inconscient", he must know the tremendous barriers through which the evolving soul has to break towards self-affirmation on earth. But cognisant also that the Inconscient is of the Supercon-scient's own making he has the certitude of its occult challenge -
The ultimate fulfilment of all the heart-broken cries of earthly life was the prospect that glowed always before Sri Aurobindo's eyes - a fulfilment on this earth itself, because there is nothing ultimately in the very nature of earthly reality which needs to be escaped from. And we may discern a further vista in the Aurobindonian vision. If all that lives has bliss as its secret stuff and if that secret stuff is meant to manifest, then there must be the possibility of a manifesting power in earth's history. No such power has been in sight, though the dream of it has persisted through the ages. Because of its absence we have had on one side "the denial of the materialist" and on the other "the refusal of the ascetic". Sri Aurobindo, with the throb of a mysterious world-bliss in
Page 273
his heart - say, his spiritual heart's systolic beat - intuited in its diastolic counterpart the presence of a hitherto-hidden plane of the Spirit which is not only an all-creative but also an all-transformative Consciousness-Force: what he has designated as Truth-Consciousness and Supermind. Only because the Supermind can transform into a many-sided perfection the Gita's anityam asukham lokam - "transient and unhappy world" - can the final affirmation be made of the old Upanishadic insight that from bliss the world was bom, by bliss it is supported and into bliss it shall merge. With the Supermind secretly haloing him Sri Aurobindo could oppose Richard.
So, to employ your term, the world is an "entertainment" for God, but not in any light-hearted way unless we understand "light-hearted" as meaning a way in which the heart is full of light. Perhaps the most telling word would be "delight" which can contain the suggestion of illumination within its significance of rapture. It is entertainment with a purpose and with an earth-fulfilling goal. Nor is it exclusive to the Supreme Consciousness in its aspect of unity which is usually in our mind. This Consciousness has to be viewed as multiple too. For it cannot be conceived to manifest the multiplicity that is our world unless there is a basis for it in its being. Each one of us has his or her celestial counterpart in that basis "high above". When the Supreme hid Himself as the Inconscient, forming the nether pole to His Supercon-science, not only His unity but also the haloed crowd of our counterparts in Him got precipitated with a myriad-rhythmed "Hurrah!" We have forgotten that heavenly hellward cry and are disposed again and again to bewail our lot and question or deny the Divine for projecting a world of transiences and tears. But let us not forget that deep within us dwells a memory of that "Hurrah!" and the moment we get into contact with our inmost self, our true soul, "the immortal in the mortal", we cannot help smiling psychically at all times until the day we can laugh supramentally for ever.
(28.7.1994)
Page 274
26
I am always glad to hear from you but feet sad that all the news is not happy. There are two components here: one is the actual weakness, trivial thoughts, lack of sleep - the other is the worry about these things. Take them for brute facts without thinking: "How long will they last? Will they be there for ever? What other troubles will come in their wake?" When you write, "My equipoise is gone", you touch the real mishap. But this is not an irrevocable affair. Call for Sri Aurobindo's peace which is invisibly there all the time above you and around you and deep within you. Once he has accepted you as his own, he never leaves you. The same with the Mother's sweet grace. She can never be far from you and both she and the Lord hold you always in their arms. Try to be conscious of this fact and do not allow your heart and mind to be troubled, no matter how many outward "ills" (as Hamlet would say) "the flesh is heir to". The Divine Presence has been established in your life: you have only to grow aware of it. Once you realise that it is ever accompanying you, all those "ills" will be held securely in an inner calm, kept within their proper limits - that is, the sheer physical sense - and not permitted to overflow into the rest of your psychology. I am not telling you all this out of a book of wisdom but reading out what is written on the pages of my own life. So many bodily inconveniences and even aches are part of my days -and nights - and yet my eyes are filled with glorious memories of Sri Aurobindo's serene greatness and the Mother's depths of love, and with those memories their actual beings are present with me from hour to hour and a far-away smile plays about my Ups - far-away because 1 am inwardly taken to a dreamful distance from those inconveniences and aches. From that distance" they look small, insignificant. The same can happen to your troubles, for surely you are as much a child of His imperturbable immensity and Her intensity of bliss as I am. Remember also that I invoke their help every
Page 275
afternoon at the Samadhi and seek to make you remember the help which is unfailingly with you.
You find it difficult to understand why Dyuman didn't look at Sri Aurobindo while working in his room, I can try to lessen your difficulty by recounting one incident. After the Soup Distribution in the old days I used to go ahead and wait in the courtyard of the main building for the Mother to pass on her way to the staircase leading upstairs. Once I saw the silhouette of Sri Aurobindo behind the shutters on the first floor. I felt very happy. When I told the Mother of it afterwards, she said: "It is better not to look at him." Evidently the work he was doing on his own body at that time was not to be interfered with by anyone looking at it. Some subtle vibrations touching it were to be avoided.
As for the operation on me in London, it was because of the attack of polio I had suffered when 3 years old. The heel of my left foot was pulled up so much that I had to walk with my hand on my left knee in order to press the heel down to floor-level. Walking like that, bent all the time, I would have developed a permanent spinal curvature. To save me from it and give me a fair deal in life, my father, along with my mother, took me to London. There were in fact two operations under a mask of ether. A famous surgeon, Dr. Tubby, did the job. My father took me from clinic to clinic in Harley Street, asking each doctor for his method. Dr. Tubby's struck papa as the best. All the others had offered to do the work free, papa being himself a doctor. Tubby was greedy and asked for a high fee. But papa accepted him. The operations made me a straight fellow and in course of time I could ride horses to my heart's content and in Pondy go cycling every day. I could cycle till quite late in my life - in the early part of my stay after the second home-coming in 1954, I wasn't so handicapped or rather "leggicapped" until about ten years back -more acutely from 1985 or so.
(7.4.1990)
Page 276
Your series of questions is frightening and causes a lot of worry to me about you. You must take yourself in hand with a quiet determination to get rid of the psychological difficulties. The root of them seems to me a deep-seated sense of loneliness. You appear to have no friends in tune with you - and you are not sufficiently in tune with your own soul. I have no doubt that your soul is awake and is near Sri Aurobindo but somehow does not realise how near Sri Aurobindo is to it. This reads like a paradox; actually it signifies that you are doubting whether Sri Aurobindo cares for you sufficiently in spite of your worshipping him and invoking him. I think you are setting up the test of a sign. It is as if you were asking: "If Sri Aurobindo cares for me, how is it that my troubles are continuing? Why doesn't he attend to my mental disturbances and my bodily ailments? How am I to know of his relationship to me if there are no concrete answers to my appeals?" On my side, I may tell you: "If there is somebody who loves you, would that person's attention to you and warmth towards you depend for proof only on his or her ability to get rid of some disorder, inner or outer, troubling you? Love is an absolute value independent of whether this or that action is possible. The very presence of the loving heart and face is a boon and must be felt in your own depths as divine grace. Then you will experience a wonderful solace. Strength and tranquillity will be yours, making you free in the centre of your being from all that burdens or hurts you. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' may still be all about you but something in you will be like the woman in the circus who stands intact while her husband throws knives at Her from a distance, knives that stick in the board behind her close to her ears and neck and arms stretched on either side yet never touch her anywhere! The real You will be that woman while your superficial self will be the board into which the knives plunge. Perhaps the intuition may come to you that even the knives are thrown by a love whom you haven't recognised and that, despite their seeming attack, you are preserved safe and that they have come for some reason you
Page 277
cannot as yet understand and are not a punishment or a sign of neglect: they are meant to make you go deeper into yourself and realise something within you which, as the Gita says, 'fire cannot burn nor water drown nor sword pierce.' Perhaps without the assault of fire and water and sword you are incapable of the desired realisation. Once that secret aim is fulfilled, at least the psychological troubles will disappear. The body's ills may continue according to the frailty of our mortal state, but all the fears and confusions and regrets and achings will vanish or linger only as harmless ghosts - fading memories and not living facts."
I have in my own life found that Sri Aurobindo approaches us in various manners. I may even say "in various disguises". At times the most inauspicious occasions have him strongest behind them. Or we may aver that if we look for him behind them we shall surely find him and he will help us to take a short-cut to our spiritual goal across what looks like - in T.S. Eliot's words -
A whole Thibet of broken stones
That lie, fang-up...
The difficulty appalling us has to evoke in our hearts an intense cry to see the Beloved's face through the terrifying mask and in response we shall discover tender arms stretching out to us to bear us towards that face and out of the hurting tract to a bliss beyond all our dreams - a great enfolding quietude of the Unknown in which moment after moment passes glimmering like star after gold star. It is shortsightedness that discerns always the Devil behind disasters. Of course, the Divine does not deliberately create catastrophes. They occur as part of our wandering through "this transient and unhappy world". But there is nothing that does not carry the Divine within it. Even the Devil can be a puppet in God's hands - provided we invoke God's presence and pray to Him to show Himself and reveal to us the secret benefit which always sits smiling in the core of every
Page 278
misfortune - hidden with its sweetness and light behind what Sri Aurobindo interpreting Virgil calls "the touch of tears in mortal things". I am telling you these paradoxical matters not by a flight of ingenious theological theory. It is my very pulses that are beating out truths to you. I have gone under the Shadow and met through it the Sun.
(27.4.1990)
Our way to the Divine will be the swiftest as well as the sweetest if its starting-point is the deep heart in us, "the crimson-throbbing glow" of spontaneous devotion to Him, for, it would be impelled and guided by the Supreme Beauty and Bliss from its own secret station in the embodied human being.
Of course a Power of all-unifying Eternity has to descend from above and there has to be the pull of a Power of varicoloured Infinity from around and one has to feel at the back of one a nameless Peace that is a Power to stand everything without personal reaction. But these greatnesses are likely to be drawn to us by the Divine Himself acting from our heart-centre, and not need our own exertion in the direct sense though some initiative on the part of creatures who are self-aware is always expected, an eager cry and a glad consent to the Deathless In-dweller to do everything for them.
(27.11.1986)
Your reference to drawing makes me aware that an old dream of mine is still to be fulfilled. From my earliest remembered years the re-creation of the visible world on paper has fascinated me. When my parents took me to England at the age of five and a half years I happened to be the only child on board the French ship in" which we sailed, who could trace recognisable shapes with a pencil. The French boys and girls would flock round me and look over my shoulders with jubilant cries of "Cheval! Cheval!" The drawing of horses
Page 279
used to be my favourite occupation. I have always loved these glorious animals. When the Mother once told me that she hoped to cure my defective leg one day, the first thought that came to me was: "I shall immediately get a beautiful white horse between my legs!" Ever since the operation in London set right the left leg whose heel had been pulled up by polio when I had been about three years old, riding has been a passion with me. I gave rein (literally) to this passion up to the time I came to the Ashram at the age of 23. It was on a "hill-station" near Bombay, where my grandmother had a cottage and where she and the family went during the hot months of May and October and in the Christmas season. In Pondicherry there was no chance for riding. But once after three years of horse-starved eyes I heard a clop-clop under my window. I looked out and saw a man atop a fine steed passing through the street. At once I ran down and followed the pair as far as I could and came back with an old dream revived. For days I longed for horses. I even wished I could have one staying with me in my room. I could understand the redeeming mania of that monster of cruelty, the Roman emperor Caligula. He had a horse which he adored. It was given the best apartment in the royal palace and was made to attend all the meetings of the Roman Senate, Whenever a law was to be passed, the stallion was told about it and all the grave toga'd elders had to watch for some sign from the animal - a turn of the head one way or another or a flick of the ears or a faint or emphatic neigh - to ascertain its vote for or against. Three of my best poems are about horses, I recall the beginning of the last one:
Who shall tame the tarpan,
Horse of wild Tartary?
No word of wisdom in his ear
Blows out the fire in his eye.
I am afraid the equestrian topic has galloped me far afield from the subject of drawing. At one time I had to make a
Page 280
choice between training to be an artist and practising to be an author. The latter activity came more easy. So I set aside my pencils and brushes. When I joined the Ashram, one day the Mother suddenly asked me whether I would take up the work of painting the various flowers she was giving to her disciples every morning. I asked her: "How do you know I can draw and paint?" She gave the enigmatic answer:" I can see it from your hands." I took up the work and did it for years. Later I had the idea of making a picture for each of my poems. I did two and then something made me set aside the project. But I kept it in mind and hoped that some day when I had more leisure I would depict the vision and symbol of every poem of mine. But that day of meaningful line and revelatory colour has not dawned yet. A poem touching on "overhead" worlds hasacouplet which will be a challenge to the artist in me:
Bodies of fire and ecstasies of line
Where passion's mortal music grows divine.
Sri Aurobindo considered this couplet one of the best things I had done and said it had the power of revelation.
(12.11.1987)
Yes, it's been a long time since we last corresponded, person to person, and not merely in the course of our press-work. But, of course, the inner communion has never been interrupted. You are an intrinsic part of my consciousness and your face comes up before me time and again and often' at odd moments. The other day it appeared quite vividly while I was taking my bath. Perhaps the occasion symbolises the presentation of the naked truth of Amal to his all-understanding all-pardoning friend.
Nolini was always open to correction if the pointer came from someone who had both goodwill and competence. More than once he has made changes on my prompting. Only once he did not comply. A certain statement of his was meant to be
Page 281
made public. He had signed it with "Nolini-da". I suggested that the "da" was out of place, I believed that it was appropriate when others spoke of one or quoted one and should not come from one's own self. Perhaps I am mistaken, and certain pronouncements may need to be given explicitly as by an "elder brother" in order to be impressive?
I personally have never cared about respectful address. An old friend of mine, now dead, Premanand, who used to be the Ashram librarian, would feel offended if anybody called him "Premanand-ji". I think he felt that the would-be respectful appurtenance spoiled the beauty of the name. At least it adds nothing significant to my mind and assimilates the name to the sphere of public relationship and thereby removes the attention from its meaningful sound. Of course, if the addition is made out of genuine affection and not merely deferential formality it has a sentimental value. In any case I don't expect anyone to "Amal-da" me, much less "Amal-ji" me. However, when the "da"-ing or "ji"-ing takes place, I don't frown or feel disgusted like Premanand.
As for the missing passages in Nolini's translation of Savitri, your two dreams seem to suggest that they are hiding somewhere. The vision of an exercise-book provides the clue most probably. I am reminded of a very important historical case. The last few cantos of Dante's Divina Commedia were missing. At least the very last is absolutely the ne plus ultra of poetry, I have made a translation or rather a transcreation of it. It is included in "Overhead Poetry": Poems with Sri Aurobindo's Comments (pp. 127-131). The loss of it would have been irreparable. The editors were in a quandary. Then a nephew of Dante's had a vivid dream in which the poet appeared and told the young man that he had kept the manuscript safe in a certain wall niche. On following the instructions as to where exactly the niche was, the cantos were found and the complete poem published to the immense benefit of the world's aesthetico-religious mind.
Before I came to know of this incident I had written a short story involving the manuscript of the Divina Commedia. There
Page 282
the pile of the poet's writing is saved from being destroyed by a fire. Around this point a dramatic sequence of events is woven, posing an intense moral-aesthetic problem. The story was seen by Sri Aurobindo and much appreciated. It is included, along with another short story, in my book: The Sun and the Rainbow. If at some time you feel interested to read the two stories I'll send you my copy of the book. This book was not printed at our press but at Raju's for the sake of coping with the limited money available from some friends in Hyderabad. My copy rather than any other is recommended because some needed corrections have been made in it. One of the stories is called "The Hero" and is based upon an anecdote told me by the Mother. The other, which concerns Dante, is titled: "A Mere Manuscript."
Strange things have been happening of late to me. I have written of them to two or three friends and at least one letter will appear in a future Mother India relating them. But I mustn't make you wait till then. Let me tell you my story.
For some time I was feeling as if the usual radiance that had seemed to pervade my mind and heart had diminished a good deal. In this clouded condition my heart began to play tricks. After every fourth or fifth beat there was a beat missed, causing a vague discomfort in my chest. The miss-beats were mostly at the Samadhi after my walk from the Ashram gate to my chair under the clock opposite the Samadhi. Dr. Raichura checked the pulse several times and felt quite concerned. Three cardiograms were taken, one immediately after my drive home in a rickshaw after the visit to the Ashram. They proved very disappointing - in the sense that all of them showed the heart beating regularly! Yet the irregularity went on at the Samadhi and even at home. I was put on Sorbitrate tablets, either swallowed or put under the tongue. They did not have the expected effect of stopping the irregularity by increasing the circulation'of the blood. All they did was to create a mild headache accompanied by a sense of unsteadiness in the head, lasting for several hours. Then suddenly one evening I felt as if a large shadow had been lifted off my head!
Page 283
At once I felt perfectly normal again and the mind and heart knew the old brightness. There are still occasional miss-beats - even at the Samadhi. But I am completely free from their effects on the whole system. They don't matter at all.
Towards the end of this period I made a discovery. The strain on the body during my weak-legged trudge in the Ashram tends to vanish into a strain of music within me if I go looking at the several pots of plants ranged all along my passage. The continuous green of the leaves wafts to me a sustained heart-ease while the many-coloured and many-shaped blossoms spring into my sight like little fillips of sudden joy instilling an energy that is both a light and a laugh.
I had never before realised such effects of flowers and foliage. What exactly must be happening? Do they communicate with us on their own?I suppose they do, but my intuition is that they are only aspects of a universal Presence -all Nature as a living being - which is ready to enter into a psychological exchange with us. It delivers various messages or rather states of consciousness through all its visible components: changing sky-pageantry, mountain-soars and valley-dips, winding rivers and rhythmic seas, stretches of tremulous greenery, sweeps of swaying blooms. Wordsworth was the first high-priest of this Nature-communion in English literature - an intimacy either by a vast single peaceful en-foldment or by a multiplicity of mood-touches soothing or stirring. You may remember his rapturous response to a field of dancing daffodils on the one hand and on the other his deep absorption in
The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills. .
(9.5.1990)
Page 284
27
Before I launch on the main issues raised in your letter, I should like to- say a word on what you have advised about guarding "against interference with the inspirational substance" of people's writings. 1 hold that we cannot have a proper sense of inspiration unless we are ready again and again to accept interference either by others or by oneself with what seems to be inspired. The common criterion of inspiration is: "It all came just like that in a rush!" There are numerous levels of being from which things can rush forth in one shape or another and there are also numerous connecting passages where various kinds of intrusions and interventions in what is rushing out can happen. It is only when the free flow is from a deep or high centre of being that we get what can be legitimately considered as inspired. The true spontaneity which should never be tampered with comes from there. But, just because something may arrive with a rush, it does not follow that whatever so arrives is truly spontaneous. Nor, I may add, does true spontaneity arrive always in a rush. "Poetic pains" are proverbial. The vagaries of the Muse are also well-known. A poem may be written all at once or it may come through by driblets. But, just because it is not bom fully formed and perfectly panoplied like Pallas Athena from the head of Zeus, we cannot say that the ultimate structure of it has nothing of Athena-shape or Zeus-substance. The process of a poem's birth may be slow, gradual, piecemeal. What we have to see at the end is whether the final product, which has come laboriously and over a period of time, looks as if it were born instantaneously with absolute ease. The real aim is to get by any means the authentic article from the depths or the heights. If a poet takes a long time and spends much sweat to write his piece he can still get the authentic article by taking care that whatever comes through has the touch of an eternal freshness on it. The labour he undergoes is really in connection not with what flows out but with the digging of a clear
Page 285
passage through his brain-mind so that the obstructions of the common prose-consciousness may be removed. It is because he has to dig this channel that he writes as if unspontaneously. However, the trouble he takes makes no odds to the nature and quality of "the Helicon-spring that leaps sparkling across the channel. Conversely, no amount of apparent spontaneity, no easy gushing forth as of a perennial stream, are a guarantee that true inspiration is present. The phantasmal subconscient, the frenzied vital, the amorphous emotional, the quick-witted but surfacy mental - all these can mimic inspiration, and woe betide the writer who is satisfied just because a power seemingly other than himself pours through him.
There is also the fact that quite often one is in contact with Castaly but between the point de depart and the point d'arrivee unexpected intrusions and unsuspected interventions take place. A spurious or at least not equally genuine impulsion may mix with the nectar-flow. One may not feel any change in the compulsiveness of the movement, and yet the poem will not be a pure product of Parnassus. There will be, superimposed on what we may call the archetype, a phenomenal form which, while seeming to reflect it, really refracts it in its agitated flux.
A sensitive self-criticism is always needed, unless you happen to be Shakespearean in your rapport with the sources of song, whether Apollonian or Dionysian. Often a very sharp slashing into shape is called for. By and large, one may maintain as a fecund truth the depiction of the creative process in the lines from one of my old poems:
Implacable, unmeltable,
On the sun-daze of the heart
Falls the chill mind like a crescent's edge -
And the smitten splendour is art.
Along with self-criticism, one needs, in order to progress on the artistic path, an alert openness to what honest qualified
Page 286
critics may have to say. Then alone, in the majority of cases, one can be a true mouthpiece of the Gods. You are certainly not shut to inspired founts, but I am afraid you have a too facile notion of mantric utterance and are over-touchy to corrective suggestions though your touchiness is not violent and egoistic but sweet and suffering and therefore with a promising turn towards a fairer future. It is because I know of this fine turn that I am bothering to write to you on the subject of inspiration at all this length.
Now to come to the theme proper of your letter. According to you, you feel at home in India because India is one palpitating mass of emotionalism and sendmentalism. India to me is various things, including emotionalism and senti-mentalism, but at its most exquisite and at its truest it is psychic and intuitive on the one hand and dhira on the other, calmly contemplative, seeing life with a steady eye and seeing it from all sides. This does not mean that all thought is abandoned: thought continues, yet not in its own right, it is charged with influences that deepen and heighten it. And if ever thought as such is not prominent and even seems absent, it is not sunk into the emotions and the sentiments but refined and rarefied into truth-feeling or truth-seeing, and the mind's brilliant convolutions are replaced by the state Sri Aurobindo describes of the liberated self:
He who from Time's dull motion escapes and thrills
Rapt thoughtless, wordless into the Eternal's breast,
Unrolls the form and sign of being,
Seated above in the omniscient silence.
Here you have both ecstasy and peace, thought-transcendence and knowledge-attainment. Here the emotional and the sentimental are not annulled but lifted out of their usual rhythm, in which they tend to be uncontrolled, into the spiritual truth of themselves, at once intense enough to fulfil their own distinctive nature and widened enough to be free from being narrowed by that nature, widened enough to
Page 287
harmonise and even fuse with other movements of the consciousness at their true pitch. Finally, the intense and the immense of all movements are caught up into a kind of supracosmic ineffable which is yet not a denial of them but a poise where one is their masterful source and not their helplessly drifting captive.
You have spoken of the bhakta and his mad illogical rapture of love for the Divine, amounting almost to mind-lessness. And you have asked: ''Shall we then disregard all the bhajans of India, the uttering of the Sufis of Persia, the rapturous love songs of Mira and countless others and cast them all aside into the wastepaper basket...?" Of course my answer is "No". But it is "No" because these creations are not exactly what you believe they are. Bhakti has two aspects - the psychic (or soul-charged) and the emotional-sentimental. Often the two sides interplay and then all is well. On occasion they fall apart. Then, if the sheer psychic is in action without any "truck" with the emotional-sentimental there is great beauty but a lack of life-power and life-sympathy - and, if the sheer emotional-sentimental is let loose, a colourful degradation takes place, either an excessive weeping and wailing in loneliness or else an all-too-human indulgence in a Radha-Krishna erotic gambit which has cast a blot on the history of Vaishnavism. The wonderful expressions of bhakti to which you refer embody a balance of the two aspects - and the embodiment is done in terms of perfect art. There is nothing of pure madness or illogic or mindlessness in the love-transport finding voice in them. We can feel and even discern a subtle method, a sensitive development, an exquisite rounding-off. There is what I may call a passionate control, a rich restraint: an essence of psychicised mentality suffuses the emotional-sentimental drive, and an instinctive-intuitive perception of the demand of art for "significant form" leads, in however delicate a functioning, to what John Chadwick (our Ashram's "Arjava") has powerfully dubbed "the chaos-ending chisel-smite". Endless effusiveness is the last thing we can find in these bhakti-impelled voices. If the sense of a shapely limit is
Page 288
not in operation along with the tender tumult of the soul, then, no matter how sincere the bhakta in his vision of the Beloved, there is bound to be an over-all impression of emotion and sentiment running riot to submerge thought in a negative "expense of spirit" rather than "God's plenty".
Your two "Open Letters" have nothing unreservedly wrong with them except that they prolong inordinately the matter and manner suitable for a short prose-poem. The impression of the first one, which I conveyed to you, was not, as you say, just a verdict: it was also a suggestion. For, I distinctly said that if condensed and concentrated the piece could be an acceptable poetic expression. Here I may add that the thought-element, which now is dispersed and thinned on account of the length of the emotional-sentimental outburst, would automatically surface into a recognisable component within a shortened span. I have to make the same remark in general about your other composition. Parts of it move me -even the final appeal "O Sri Aurobindo, come!", which has no particular art-impact, pierces to my heart's core because of my relationship with Sri Aurobindo and my perception of what he is. But, unless this appeal is woven into an art-structure and unless these other parts which have already a diffuse art-form are close-knit and some of the passages dropped or more crystallised, the piece cannot stand in a periodical like Mother India. Not that Mother India is always chockful of excellent things. It has several "planes" - high brow, middle brow, even low brow; but a certain minimum thought-building has to be there and the thrust of everything has to be towards something fine or cultured in the being, even if not something overtly spiritual at all times. Further, Mother India has a "heart" added to its "head", and I I accept many articles or poems which do not stir me to sheer admiration but which are good attempts by beginners or contain glimmers of greater inspiration to come. I like to encourage people and I am very strict only with those from whom I expect really striking stuff. I count you among these fortunate or unfortunate few - "unfortunate" if the hyper-
Page 289
critical attitude is resented. You have talents and gifts beyond the ordinary, but they have not found their full flowering for want of someone to take you in hand right seriously. I wish Sri Aurobindo were there to pass you through the wonderful creative discipline he so considerately yet so consistently imposed on his literary disciples. When he is not there, I try my best to go by his light - in regard both to myself and to my friends. Do you know how finicky he made us by his own high demands, so that Nirod could become depressed if a poem of his was adjudged "Very good" or "Very fine" but missed being labelled as "Exceedingly good" or "Extremely fine"? Do you know that scores of things written by me have either gone into the wastepaper basket or lie still hidden in my files in spite of Sri Aurobindo finding them acceptable? They have suffered this fate because they fell short of the best he considered me capable of.
I may add that Sri Aurobindo too had a large range of standards. He once wrote to me in answer to some questions of mine: "My judgment does differ with different writers and also with different kinds of writing. If I put 'very good' on a poem of Shailen's, it does not mean that it is on a par with Harin's or Arjava's or yours. It means that it is very good Shailen, but not that it is very good Harin or very good Arjava.... I may write 'good' or 'very good' on the work of a novice if I see that it has succeeded in being poetry and not mere verse however correct or well rhymed - but if Harin or Arjava or you were to produce work like that, I would not say 'very good' at all. There are poems of yours which I have slashed and pronounced unsatisfactory, but if certain others were to send me that, I would say, 'Well, you have been remarkably successful this time.' 1 am not giving comparative marks according to a fixed rule. I am using words flexibly according to the occasion and the individual. It would be the same with different kinds of writings. If 1 write 'very good' or 'excellent' on some verses of Dara about his chair, I am not giving it a certificate of equality with some poems of yours similarly appreciated - I am only saying that as humorous
Page 290
easy verse in the lightest vein it is very successful, an outstanding piece of work. Applied to your poems it would mean something different altogether." (14.11.1934)
With various people and with various types of composition Sri Aurobindo aimed at bringing out the best possible to those people and for those types. He did not aim at turning everything Aurobindonian - as if he had written it. I have learned this lesson from him too, And that is why Mother India has many levels of writing as well as many modes of expression. If I were doing what you paint me as doing - namely, wanting all poems and articles to be "Amalian" - there would hardly be such a diversity. Merely to want certain turns of speech to be corrected or just to deem certain sorts of writing to be defective or unsuitable for Mother India is not to insist on everybody being "Amalian". This is a non-sequitur whose equally mistaken converse would be that whatever finds room in Mother India is published because it seems as if it has come from Amal's pen!
The issue you raise about the Western psyche and the Eastern psyche and about their different ways of beautifully saying things appears also rather irrelevant. I am a very Westernised Eastern psyche and I should be the last person to have any prejudices against either the full Western psyche or the Western psyche Easternised. I suppose you are referring to yourself when you speak of the Western psyche, but this does not quite tally with what you say at the beginning of your letter: "...of course I am emotional, sentimental - how else would I feel so at home, so perfectly fitted amongst those others who, very much like myself, are made of a similar stuff? In fact, how else could I have come to live in India?" According to these words, you consider yourself a very Easternised Western psyche, perhaps even a typical Eastern psyche that has accidentally got born in the West.
Please, my dear young friend, don't think that in penning this letter I have given vent to any irritation with you or any dislike of you. I like you very much - indeed I have done so from the very first moment you presented yourself and there
Page 291
was an immediate recognition between us of the poetic soul in each. I have written for the sake of clarifying a number of points that have directly or indirectly risen in the course of my reading your letter - points of some moment for the writer as well as the sadhak. If you feel that in certain places I have misseen problems or misunderstood you, you are free to criticise me and set me right.
I am sorry I have delayed for nearly a week before replying to you. I needed time to do justice to the themes I wished to touch. Even when I got some time, there had to be interruptions. But now at last the letter has got written. In view of all that is said in it and in accord with my sending back to you your first piece and in consonance with your own sense of its inseparableness from the second, I am returning the latter. Before doing so, I have read it again. And I have marked the three opening paragraphs: I think they have genuine inspiration and, if continued a little further in the same strain, they can make a fine prose-poem. The rest, despite some telling phrases, is, in my opinion, romanticised fancy emotionally spun out and the true feeling with which you started fails to break through - except for a scatter of authentic vision-stirred heartbeats. This is harsh judgment, but I could deliver it only to a brave girl capable of profiting by it.
(4.10.1974)
Page 292
28
One of Amrita's nieces informed me that 1995 would mark his birth-centenary. This piece of news has prodded my memory. Here are some reminiscences of him, a little rambling, I am afraid, but as true to fact as I can make them. They are not selective with an eye to presenting him solely in a rosy light. He was a frank unpretentious friend and what I am writing is faithful to his own temper. Most of this sketch is based on his own report of things. Here and there that report has entailed some digressive but relevant passages on others.
I am starting with the day I reached Pondicherry: December 16,1927 - in my twenty-third year. When the metre-gauge train from Egmore touched its destination in the early morning, I and my wife Daulat (later renamed by Sri Aurobindo "Lalita", signifying, in his words, "beauty of harmony and refinement" and also pointing to "the name of one of Radha's companions") were not quite ready to get down from it. She was still in her night-gown. As we did not wish to keep waiting the member of the Ashram (named Pujalal, as I learnt later) who had come to receive us, we alighted just as we were attired. The news of my wife's informal dress reached Amrita's ears and he said to the Mother in a somewhat ironical vein: "The Parsi lady who has come to do Yoga here is in a European dress." The Mother replied: "What has any dress got to do with Yoga?" There was never any other superficial remark by Amrita to reach me. He always kept himself in tune with the Mother's judgments.
Amrita was one of those with whom I came into close contact right from my early days in the Ashram. After Lalita and I had voluntarily separated in the interests of Yoga, and I had been shifted, from the house where now the Embroidery Department functions, to the rooms in the then-called "Guest House" - rooms which Sri Aurobindo had once occupied for nearly six years and were later Purani's for about two and a half and went on being mine for over fourteen (1928-1942) -
Page 293
Amrita was a frequent visitor to them. It was on my typewriter that, day after day, he tried to master the touch-system with the help of Pitman's exercise-manual. He arrived with a silent smile but left with a stock-formula, seeming to be a translation from the Tamil: "And then I go."
Once, when he was typing, a funeral passed in the street. In a low voice he said: "I feel that such a thing won't happen to me." These words did not strike me as either vacuous or vainglorious. For, in the whole period of the allotment of those rooms to me, the general conviction in the Ashram was that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother would completely transform and divinise their bodies with their "Integral Yoga" and that those who had joined them whole-heartedly would do the same. Even after the fracture Sri Aurobindo sustained of his right thigh because of a fall in late 1938 the conviction did not seem to change, for his comment was reported to have been simply: "It's one more problem to be solved." Only at the beginning of 1950 is Sri Aurobindo said to have remarked to the Mother: "Our work may demand that one of us should leave and act from behind the scene." The Mother's response was: "I will leave." Sri Aurobindo decided: "No, you have to fulfil our Yoga of Supramental Descent and Transformation."
Only during Amrita's later days did I once hear him say apropos of some sadhak dying: "We all have to do the same one day." When his own death took place, the Mother remarked that in the ordinary course of things he would have died fairly earlier but she had prolonged his life-span. Some time after the departure of Pavitra (Philippe Barbier St.-Hilaire) the Mother said to a sadhak: "Amrita and Pavitra are both within me, but time and again Amrita comes out in his subtle body and sits in front of me along with whoever is having an interview with me whereas Pavitra remains inside and keeps looking out half-amusedly."
Right up to the time of his death, Amrita was a close companion of Nolini and they always had their meals together in Nolini's room. However, the comrades differed much in temperament. Nolini, unlike Amrita, was far from being a
Page 294
good mixer, though quite genial with his few chosen associates. There was also an element of shyness in his nature plus the scholar's distant air. I have heard the Mother say of him that he never spoke ill of anybody. At a certain period he appeared to be not close enough even to Amrita. Once 1 quoted to the latter my designation of Nolini after a phrase of Yeats's with a punning play on the first half of his name: "A green knoll apart." Amrita said: "Yes, and it is partly because of some aloofness by him now even from me that 1 am pressing closer to you. Nolini has a psychic knack to get over his problems and doesn't need much company," I told Amrita that he was always welcome to be my friend. I had observed that he had considerable reliance on my judgment in several matters. He valued especially my so-called artistic sense. Thus, in rearranging his office-room's furniture, he made it a point to consult me. He also trusted me to pluck out grey hairs skilfully from his moustache with a tweezer.
I was frequently in his room, often exchanging jokes. He was a witty chap, I recollect a quip of his when a woman, who often came to the Ashram in the company of a man, arrived accompanied by a child as well. Amrita said: "Formerly there were two of you. Now the two have become three!" He had a half joke about the word "nectar": "Is it a drink that tars the neck?" He was witty with the Mother too. I have heard that once the Mother gave him a small slap. He smiled and said: "Luckily I shaved before coming to you. Otherwise your palm might have got hurt by my bristles!"
On one of his visits to me we talked of subtle bodies. He said: "The Mother has a huge vital body. Anything even distantly approaching it is the vital body of Purani." Purani was another sadhak with whom I was in close touch. Indeed, with the exception of Pujalal, he was the first Ashramite I met. Pujalal had taken us to his room which, as I have said, had been Sri Aurobindo's earlier. Purani was out. He was in the main Ashram-complex where - as I soon learned - his job at the time was to prepare hot water for the Mother's early bath as well as to massage one of her legs which was not func-
Page 295
tioning in a fully normal way. I may mention in passing that for a long time Purani was to my wife and me the most impressive figure among the Ashram-members. In comparison to his energetic personality, both physically and psychologically, all the other Ashramites we met seemed rather colourless. I remember Nolini remarking after Purani's death many years later that his personality had such force that he could have caught hold of anybody on the road and turned him to carry out what he willed. Nolini also used at that time the term "mahapurusha" ("great being") for him. Purani had some occult powers and could go out in his super-forceful subtle body and act effectively. Once Vaun McPheeters, who with his wife Janet (renamed "Shantimayi" by the Mother) was the first American to settle in the Ashram, spoke a trifle lightly of India during a somewhat heated discussion with Purani. Purani, an arch-nationalist, could not stomach it. He told me that during the ensuing night he had found Vaun's subtle form worrying him during sleep and he had gone out in his own subtle form and given Vaun a thrashing. Almost immediately there was a notable change in Vaun's outer life. He went into retirement and was spiritually in a disturbed state. The Mother found her inner work on him getting difficult and did not know why until Purani narrated to her his encounter.
I may note here that though Purani's relationship with Sri Aurobindo was very deep and intimate it was not always steady and secure with the Mother. After Sri Aurobindo's departure he was often uneasy in the Ashram and once, when I happened to be in Bombay, wrote to me about feeling like leaving it. I earnestly advised him not to decide anything before having an interview with the Mother. He asked for an interview. During it, amidst other matters, the Mother said: "I am here only to do Sri Aurobindo's work. Won't you help me in it?" Purani burst into tears and pledged unfailing cooperation.
One visit of Amrita's to my room I particularly remember. For he had come on a "delicate" mission. Connected with the
Page 296
event is what is perhaps the only time I thought Nolini had made a complaint to the Mother. In the early days the Mother had put me in charge of the furniture department. I had to deliver tables and chairs and beds to the sadhaks' or visitors' rooms. I observed that quite often the visitors failed to come and the furnishing of their allotted rooms was in vain and involved unnecessary expenditure of the Mother's money in getting the goods delivered and then taken back. So I used to delay the delivery as much as possible. Now and then Nolini would inquire whether I had done the needful. I would say: "No." This negative answer seems to have been construed as inefficiency and most probably mentioned to the Mother who had earlier asked Nolini to tell me about the job to be done. She had also come to know that on rainy days I was put to considerable hardship in getting the furniture transported under my supervision. Suddenly I had a bad fall and my left knee swelled up like a balloon. I had to stay at home for a few days. Amrita visited me and wanted to deliver a message about my work but seemed to hem and haw for a while. I guessed that he was hesitating to break the news that henceforth furniture-moving would be done by somebody else. Obviously he was thinking I would take it badly. Noting his rather fumbling talk, 1 said: "Amrita, please come out with it." Then he softly said: "You know, now it will be hard for you to manage the furniture. We wonder how you will do it. I mean somebody else will take up your work." I said: "Certainly, why not? I'll be happy." He looked surprised. He went and reported to the Mother, as he admiringly told me afterwards: "Amal took the change like a real Yogi."
I think Amal took another incident too in a similar way. I had brought with me from Bombay a fine hunting-knife, whose length just fell short of a dagger which would require a Government licence. At one period of my stay in Pondy I hung it on the wall touching the inner side of my bed. Amrita saw it and evidently reported it to the Mother. At that time the Ashram was still under the eye of the British C.I.D. (Criminal Investigation Department) whose minions were
Page 297
daily on the watch, sitting where now the Ashram Post Office stands. So the Mother must have received Amrita's report with some concern. He took it upon himself to set it at rest, walked into my room one day and, though finding me not there, carried off the hunting-knife. I came to know of his visit and felt rather annoyed, but kept quiet, understanding my impulsive friend's intention and taking his unceremonious act as a test of my Yogic equanimity.
In the early days there was a good deal of talk about past births. The being who had been behind Jesus, Chaitanya and, most recently, Ramakrishna was said to be behind Pavitra now. St. Paul and Vivekananda were seen in the background of Anilbaran. In connection with Nolini we heard of Roman Virgil and the late-renaissance French poet Ronsard as well as the French-revolution poet Andre Chenier. As for Amrita himself, the forces in his past were Moses, Michelangelo and Victor Hugo, powerful personalities quite in contrast to his gentle, amiable present disposition. To help me in my historical researches I made sure from Amrita that the Egyptian princess mentioned in the Old Testament as getting her attendants to pick up baby Moses who had been left in a basket on the bank of the Nile was Hatshepsut before she became queen - Hatshepsut who was believed to be a past incarnation of the Mother. The only certainty announced about myself by both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother was that I had been an ancient Athenian. It is curious that I never inquired who the fellow had been. If, as reported, Sri Aurobindo had been Pericles and a little later Socrates (as declared by Nolini), I guess I must have belonged to the period of the one or the other. The two certainties about Sri Aurobindo's past, as deducible from his correspondence with me, were Augustus Caesar and Leonardo da Vinci. To Amrita he said he still felt the edge of the guillotine on his neck. This would indicate that his birth immediately before the present one was associated with the French Revolution. If he was a guillotined front-liner, we can think only of Danton and Robespierre. But the Mother has seen Debu, Pranab's brother, as having been
Page 298
the latter. So Danton has to be our choice. To me Sri Aurobindo wrote that he had "a psychic memory" of Dilip Kumar Roy as Horace, evidently a carry-over from the time he had been Augustus. The Mother, on one Pranam-occasion, saw two figures behind Dilip. When she described them to Sri Aurobindo he identified them as Horace and Hector. In the age of the siege of Troy Sri Aurobindo is taken to have been Paris, the Mother Helen and Nolini the husband of Helen, King Menelaus of Sparta from whom Trojan Paris seduced away Helen. On one occasion when I remarked to the Mother that the way she had poised her arm and hand a moment earlier reminded me of the depiction of Mona Lisa's in Leonardo's famous painting, she said that at times even physical characteristics were carried over from one life to another. I think Amrita told me that Doraiswamy, the well-known Madras advocate who was a staunch devotee of the Mother in those days, had been Francis I of France in whose arms Leonardo is said to have died.
Doraiswamy was as humorous and witty as Amrita. Once, soon after he had arrived from Madras in early morning, Amrita visited him in his room, saying he had hurried there before his own bath. Doraiswamy struck an attitude of awe and exclaimed: "What a privilege for us to see you in your unbathed grandeur!"
In the early days Amrita and Nolini served as emissaries from Sri Aurobindo to a prominent Indian political leader in the town, named David, who often asked for Sri Aurobindo's advice. At 7.30 or 8 p.m. they would cycle to his house with the message and had the pleasure of a non-vegetarian dinner with him. It was to this person that in the first years of Sri Aurobindo's stay in Pondicherry when British political agents were still at work against him, the manuscript of his English translation of Kalidasa's Meghaduta ("The Cloud-Messenger") was given for safe-keeping. The work was kept at the bottom of a trunk. Unfortunately, white ants got interested in it and finished it off before any human could start relishing it. It was Amrita who first told me that Sri Aurobindo had a private
Page 299
pamphlet prepared on simplified Sanskrit-learning but nobody has been able to trace it. Amrita told me also of Sri Aurobindo reading out to him portions of his play Eric which its author felt to be not at all badly created.
Referring to his earliest contact with Sri Aurobindo, Amrita mentioned how he used to come from school to Sri Aurobindo and at times lie on a mat, with Sri Aurobindo sitting by him and gently caressing his body with his hand. Amrita recollected a special odour coming from Sri Aurobindo's body. In later years the Mother has mentioned a faint lotus-like scent emanating from it. A recollection by Amrita at a somewhat subsequent but pre-yogic period figured a young girl who lived in a neighbouring house. Youthful Amrita grew fond of her and talked to Sri Aurobindo of his fervent friendship with her. Sri Aurobindo once asked him: "Have you kissed her?" When told "No", he said: "Why not? Be bold and go and kiss her." Evidently Sri Aurobindo felt his disciple needed a bit of life-experience. Some time afterwards, when a movement started among the youngsters around Sri Aurobindo for an experiment in Yoga, Sri Aurobindo told the romantic youngster to stop all intimacies. Amrita muttered to himself: "How cruel to pull me back now!" But he had to obey. It was also at the pre-Yoga time that he learned French from Sri Aurobindo. He told me how Sri Aurobindo taught him to pronounce the French "ou" meaning the English "or" and, when accented over the "u", "where". The teacher said: "Form your mouth into a small pout as if you were preparing to kiss a girl." Indeed a Frenchy way to teach French!
More serious lessons too were taught. Once Amrita was watching a spider's web in which some insects had been caught. He started amusing himself by throwing some ants into the web. Sri Aurobindo saw him and very forcefully forbade him to go on with the game. It was a warning against thoughtlessness and wanton cruelty towards lower creatures that Amrita never forgot.
From him as well as other early Ashramites I have heard of Sri Aurobindo's fast for about three weeks, during which he
Page 300
continued his daily routine of literary work and of walking across his rooms for six or seven hours. At the end of the fast he took a full normal meal instead of the usual orange juice and liquid food. Connected with Amrita is a special eating experiment by Sri Aurobindo - one with opium. Sri Aurobindo asked him to fetch from the bazaar a substantial lump of this stuff. Opium is usually eaten in small quantities as either a stimulant, intoxicant or narcotic. Sri Aurobindo ate the whole lump brought to him - with no perceptible harmful effect. I am reminded of a story by de Quincy, the author of the famous Confessions of an Opium-eater. He tells of a Malay who suddenly appeared at his quarters. As an act of hospitality de Quincy put before the Oriental a quantity of opium. The visitor ate up at one stroke the entire big piece and took his leave. De Quincy was horrified. Day after day he looked into the local newspapers to see if any foreigner had been found lying dead anywhere in the county. No trace of a laudanum-poisoned Malay was reported. Amrita saw Sri Aurobindo going merrily on in spite of the abnormal amount of the poppy-product consumed. No wonder the Mother, knowing of such feats, told me during an interview soon after Sri Aurobindo had passed away in the early hours of 5 December 1950: "Sri Aurobindo did not leave his body because of physical causes. He was not compelled to do it. He had complete control over the body." On my asking her what had made him go, she said: "It is quite clear to me, but I won't tell you anything. You have to find out the reason yourself." I requested: "Please give me the power to do it." She put her hand on my head to bless it. What lingered most in my memory was that, while countering the possible general impression that Sri Aurobindo had departed because of an illness, she had made the clear-cut assertion: "There was nothing mortal about Sri Aurobindo" - words uttered when I had read out the short note for the next issue of Mother India, in which I had employed the conventionally turned phrase: "the mortal remains of Sri Aurobindo." In this mind-boggling denial, which would apply just as well to Sri Aurobindo's
Page 301
partner in spiritual world-work - the Mother herself - lies the ultimate Avataric secret of the birth no less than the death of both of them.
It is one of my observations that Amrita as well as Nolini, for all their familiarity with the Mother, stood somewhat in fear of her. They would not venture to say anything appearing to be even a little critical of her pronouncements. So, to contradict her in any way was difficult for them. When the Mother gave an interview to the half monk half journalist Chamanlal, Nolini brought to us a cyclostyled report of it written by the interviewer and approved by the Mother as authentic. In it we read that she had visualised the danger of a world war in 1957. When this topic was touched upon some time later by young Manoj Dasgupta during one of the evening sessions at the Playground, the Mother was surprised and twice cried out: "Jamais dans ma vie!" ("Never at any time!") and added in French what in effect would run in English: "It is not there in what he has written, because I would never have let it pass. There was the possibility of a war but I did not say 1957, I haven't spoken about a crisis in 1957. There would be a fulfilment in that year. The crisis comes before." According to her, no world war could come about after 1956, the year meant for the Supramental Manifestation. When Nolini, Amrita and I were going together to the Ashram after the Mother's outburst, I reminded Nolini that the possibility decried by the Mother now was clearly spoken of in the supposedly authentic report he had brought down from the Mother's room to us. He said: "Oh, it was like that? I don't quite remember." I suggested he should draw the Mother's attention to the facts of the case and get a clarifying word from her. The next morning, after he had been to her as usual, I asked if he had done the needful. He said: "No." On two other days I questioned him again and got the same answer. I mentioned my quandary to Amrita. He at once exclaimed: "How can Nolini dare to ask the Mother after she had twice cried out, 'Jamais dans ma vie'?"
I had to take up the matter myself. I set Nolini's mind at
Page 302
rest by saying: "Now you won't be speaking anything on your own. You have only to read out my letter. All the responsibility will be mine." In my note I put the case as tactfully as I could. The same evening, at the Playground when the groundnuts were being distributed by the Mother, she pressed my hand, smiled and whispered: "The fellow has made a confusion."
Two personal opinions conveyed to me by Amrita may be cited. One was about Lalita. He said: "Lalita is like a part of the Mother herself." On a later occasion he reported to me with a smile: "On the pavement outside one of my windows Sahana and Rani, while waiting for the Mother's return from her car-drive, were discussing whom to consider the most good-looking sadhak. The double vote was in your favour,"I think I managed the required blush.
In spite of the little romance Sri Aurobindo had jocularly encouraged in Amrita's early days, Amrita was not considered by the Mother to have an experienced and seasoned "vital being" where sensual matters were concerned. Thus, while admiring Jules Romain's psychological acumen along with his style in his famous series of novels, Les Homines de la bonne volonte, she asked Udar to go through the books but did not advise Amrita to read them. Evidently he was considered as being still a bit of an "innocent".
Once he proved to be an "innocent" in social contacts too. He sent a letter to Madame Vigie in a folded form without an envelope. She expressed her surprise to the Mother about this impoliteness on his part. The Mother put him wise about social niceties.
During several years of the Ashram's early career the Mother put together as chums Amrita and the chief engineer of the Ashram at that time - Chandulal. Chandulal was quite a character both in physical appearance, which was a little deformed, and in working capacity: he could give himself to non-stop work almost the whole of the working day. He often called Amrita his brother and sometimes hugged him. Amrita always took the relationship with a twinkle of humour.
Page 303
What on the whole struck everybody about Amrita was not only his extreme devotion to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo but also his sweet nature. He was ever ready with sympathy for whoever brought him a tale of woe. And he would be glad to convey to the Mother her children's needs or grievances. I remember only one occasion on which not only Nolini but even he was unwilling to "bother" the Mother with a certain sadhika's message. Barred by them she came to me. I transmitted her plea. As a result the Mother gave her a chance to come up to the first floor and meet her for a few minutes. I remember Amrita was not pleased by what I had done.
There are two other instances of his displeasure. I used to be friends with a French family who had two outstandingly pretty daughters. When I went out for my evening stroll during which I might come across them, I sometimes wore the full English dress to which I had been accustomed in my pre-Pondy days. At the end of the stroll I would often come to Amrita's room and chat with him. After a few days I found his room padlocked and he gone out. This occurred a number of times and I deduced that he felt disturbed by the "atmosphere" I carried of that family. I wondered why he had not told me of it directly. My temperament is such that I would never take a communication of that kind amiss: I have no special high conceit of myself. Another time somebody's adverse view of the Mother had been reported. He said he took it to heart very much. I said: "I feel the same." He blurted out: "You don't!" The next day he told me: "I should not have made that remark. Mother didn't approve." I assured him I hadn't taken offence. At no time was there ever a rift between us.
When he died, all of us felt the loss. I believe his niece Kumuda, of whom he was very fond, felt it most acutely. I was told she had fainted on hearing the news. He had spent a good amount of time with her, part of it tutoring her in French. It is fitting that she should be prominent, together with her sister Saroja, in celebrating the centenary of his entry into this world to serve Sri Aurobindo and the Mother faithfully.
Page 304
The Mother's own words are: "He was a good servant of the Divine." She has revealed that his "natural" life was only 50 years long. The rest of his span of 73 was due to the Divine's intervention.
Connected with his death is a tribute paid him by the Ashram's employed workers. Along with Padmasini, he had been in charge of the department dealing with them. On hearing that he was to be cremated, they made the plea to the Trustees that they would like him to be buried so that they might be able to visit his grave and offer flowers to it. Hence his body lies in the Ashram's cemetery. His nearest neighbour there is Nolini who, before he passed away, expressed his wish to be laid to rest near his old-time friend.
(15.10.1994)
Page 305
29
As a certain theme has once again come up for discussion after a lapse of more than a dozen years and there is a degree of uncertainty in people's minds I am sending you a copy of a letter I wrote at the earlier time to a friend. Here it is, dated 7.3.1982:
You have declared yourself in full accord with the statement that the Ashram was for the Mother a mere scaffolding for bringing about the Supramental Manifestation of 29 February 1956 and that therefore it is now useless, especially as it has a fair number of faults like any non-Yogic institution.
I believe there are several reasons why the statement cannot be accepted.
(1)Sri Aurobindo and the Mother did not need an Ashram if their job was merely to bring the Supermind to the earth. They could very well have done it on their own. The Ashram was an organic part of the mission they explicitly set to themselves of taking the whole of common humanity along with them instead of doing their Integral Yoga all by themselves. Perhaps their Yoga could not even be called Integral if it did not integrate us with them?
(2)The Mother never thought of disbanding the Ashram after the Supramental Manifestation. She looked forward not only to the Ashram's continuation as a focal point of her work but also to the continuation of the Centre of Education - and this she did even when envisaging the possibility of her own departure, as can be seen from a passage in her Collected Works.
(3)The Supramental Manifestation was in the subtle-physical of the earth, in what the Mother called "the earth's atmosphere". Surely the aim of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother was not just the establishment of the Supermind there? They aimed at its manifestation in the gross-physical. Not to realise this is to mis-see their mission, or rather to see it
Page 306
in its incipience and not in its completion.
(4) Even in the subtle-physical of the earth the whole Supermind did not manifest. Only the Light, the Consciousness and the Force came. The Mother said that the Supramental Ananda had not come. Without the Supramental Ananda a new creation cannot take place, for Ananda is always the creative principle, using the organising principle -Supermind or Overmind - to put forth, or give birth to, a cosmos. As far as I can gather, the Supramental Ananda has not manifested up to now even in the subtle-physical. Besides, the very elements that have manifested there were said by the Mother to have been swallowed up by "dark blue waves of the Inconscient" - all the entrenched darkness of the ages - so that the new powers would have to fight their way through. Their future success is certain but the path to it may not be all smooth and to think that already the work is done is not to think far enough.
(5)Even if all of the Supermind had manifested in the subtle-physical and its action had been unimpeded, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother's purpose would not have been served without a collective Yoga going on under their inspiration. For, that manifestation by itself can do no more than ensure a future evolution beyond Mind in the long march of time. What Sri Aurobindo and the Mother wanted was not a slow evolution but a swift accelerated evolving movement by means of a direct Integral Yoga. If so, the Ashram had an inevitable part to play from the beginning - for, where else could such a Yoga be practised on the collective scale on which they insisted as much as they insisted on the individual scale?
(6)The assumed deterioration of the Ashram at present is certainly exaggerated. For one thing, there was plenty of deterioration even when the Mother was there. She was quite in the know of it but she did not consider it an ultimate bar; and she and Sri Aurobindo never thought that to take humanity forward with them - centrally in the shape of the Ashram - rather than to do the Yoga by themselves was a
Page 307
mistake. Defects and shortcomings were always expected by the Mother, and Sri Aurobindo has said that she never put any stress on them: positive qualities were her main concern -and I am sure they are to be found even now. To condemn the Ashram as hopeless because of certain errors and deviations is to lack sufficient insight into the very nature of such an experiment as the Mother dared - an experiment in which the outer life and its interrelations and its affairs (not necessarily in the sexual sense) pose a constant problem which the Mother was well aware of and quite patient with. The attitude needed in us is not to look upon the Ashram as hopeless but to regard it still as a promising field of the Mother's work. Her uplifting radiance definitely persists in concentrated power where her physical embodiment established the starting-point of a golden future. If complacence is out of place, so too is pessimism, and if one criticises, one would have the right to do it only if, instead of looking down on people, one feels that things are rotten not because others are rotten but because one is oneself such. Furthermore, who is ready to deem his own self irremediable? Why, then, indulge in a sense of hopelessness about others and about this collectivity of us and them, which we term the Ashram?
No doubt, physical transformation, in the way Sri Aurobindo and the Mother conceived it, is impossible without the Mother's physical presence. Hence the acute need of her return. All this talk, - fashionable with some deserters of the Ashram - of reprogramming the cells and bringing about their divinisation is, to my mind, bunkum and a wasteful sidetracking of our energies which should be concentrated on psychic and spiritual unfolding and calling, if possible, the Supramental Consciousness into our inner being and letting it have a general influence on the outer being. 1 know that some people believe that they are undergoing the Supramental change in their bodies. A professor at Kuruk-shetra University insists that his body is being supramental-ised, starting with his feet! I expressed scepticism because I
Page 308
saw no sign of his mind or vital receiving any illumination - a great sine qua non, I am sure, before something so stupendous can happen to the body. I share with Nolini the sense, to which he gave expression long ago, that physical transformation has been postponed. But that does not mean we have nothing to do now. A lot of leeway has to be made up and our sadhana can continue quite intensely and the Ashram has still a fine role to enact in the world. The idea that it is played out hits really not at "illusions" but at "realities" which are not always on the surface to see. Although self-censure at several points is certainly salutary, to say that the Ashram has already served its purpose and is now superfluous is to overlook the complex, many-sided, long-spanned vision within which the Integral Yoga was conceived.
Here is a brief answer to the philosophical points you have raised. First, "what is the value of diversity?" I don't think any philosophy of unity-in-multiplicity ever posits "repetitions of one original pattern". Naturally, there has to be an essential oneness within the many if unity in the true sense is to be present. But multiplicity in the true sense would be otiose if there was not to be diversity. On a diabolical plane I can imagine a single pattern repeating innumerably - a kind of regimented prolificity expressing a universal totalitarianism. On a divine plane the delight would be not only in being oneself but also in being the other - a kind of ideal democracy in which liberty goes hand in hand with equality and both are harmonised by a spontaneous and inherent fraternity. There has, of course, to be a centre around which the divine democracy revolves, but there is no monolithic government and the central one who is infinitely diversified no less than multiplied all around is primus inter pares, a leader of equals. Behind this plane of what we might call archetypal manifestation - Sri Aurobindo's Supermind seen in one aspect - there is the Being and Consciousness and Bliss which is what you have termed "some primary and ultimate Unity" but which actually can be no other than a state where the
Page 309
democratic Divine is not annulled or contradicted but subsists in a hidden form. It is not that the multiplicity and diversity are obliterated by absorption but that the whole democratic Divine is indrawn and self-absorbed and all the manifested differences and distinctions remain unprojected and stay latent. To the mere mind which proceeds by its own light of analytic understanding, this state would seem a sheer loss of individual selves. To the Supermind where the apparent contradictions and contraries are simultaneous faces of the Real, so that we have a truth of existence such as figured in an Aurobindonian phrase like
Force one with unimaginable rest -
to the Supermind the unmanifest unity is not a pure opposite of its own play: it is only the vari-coloured spectrum withdrawn into a repose of white light without any ontological self-loss of the former.
Even in the orthodox Vedanta the final condition of the liberated soul is called lay a - "a quiescent abiding" in the Brahman so deeply that the soul is as good as indiscernible in the Absolute, the Unmanifest. If there is ontological self-loss, who is liberated and who realises liberation? The Mayavadin tries to evade this question by a super-subtle metaphysical logomachy, but the original Upanishadic Vedantin had no need for such sophistry as: "Ultimately there is none to be liberated and what seems liberation is itself an illusion - there being nothing except the One without a second, featureless, changeless, immobile." What you label as "a matter of dispute between East and West" stems only from the Western belief that Shankara - or in another shape Buddha - is the sum and substance of the entire spiritual experience and thought compassed in India's three or four millennia.
The point you make about a Primordial Unity expressing itself in the many and then a Consequent Unity which brings in something quite new as a result of the many actively complexifying their functions - your point here is not quite
Page 310
clear to me. Certainly some genuine novelty is realised wherever there is the time-process, whether in an archetypal or a phenomenal dimension. But, when in the Consequent Unity "the oneness and the manyness of the whole imply one another and depend on one another for their being and their meaning", aren't they creatively unfolding a truth already present in another manner in the Primordial Unity? Without the Primordial Unity having the potentiality or secret pre-existence of the Consequent Unity, the latter would not at all become actual. And if that is so, what appears as the One holding concealed within itself the multiple and diverse play of its own rich being would be logically prior to the other Unity in which the One and the Many are equally balanced and act as if constitutive of each other: in other words the Primordial Unity would be presupposed, as it were, by the Consequent.
(8.4.1987)
You have written of the close prospect of the surgeons opening you up. But from your account of the months before this prospect I can see that you had a long retrospect of having been variously opened up by the Mother. The inner discoveries you made were due not only - as you write - to the Divine taking you as seriously as you had taken yourself as a sadhak. They were due also to your having taken the Divine more seriously than before. Something of the angel in you woke to the Divine in an exceptional way and the Divine - paradoxically - rewarded you by waking you in an extraordinary manner to something of the devil in you. God's grace lies as much in making the darkness within us visible as in making the potentiality of light in us more and more an actuality. And the darkness becomes visible because a greater light from God has been shed on our human condition. Recently I had the occasion to write to a friend about the Yogic consequences to us when the Supermind manifested in the earth's subtle-physical layer on February 29, 1956. At the same time that our sadhana got eagle-wings to soar nearer the Sun of
Page 311
Truth we developed eagle-eyes to look deeper into what-adopting Coleridgean phraseology - I may dub strange regions.
Where Alph the sacred river ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
All that we may consider our Godwardness seemed lost there and hideous appetites, distorted desires, perversely grinning Pishachas appeared as parts of ourselves. Many sadhaks were appalled by the sudden disclosure of unsuspected depravities. The Mother explained it as the work of the new illumination which was more penetrating than anything brought so far to bear on the double nature of man.
I have written of Pishachas no less than perversities. You too have mentioned "creatures... within us, hissing, squeaking, chirping, roaring, grunting or growling" - "creatures who had once crawled in the primeval slime" and "who continue to live" in our being because "we have emerged" from them. You are speaking metaphorically, but actually we have sub-beings in us with a semi-human form. In the days when I used to get out of my body and explore subtle non-material planes I once saw getting out at the same time a most silly-looking person with an awkward gait and literally "squeaking" voice. I felt so ashamed to know that he was a part of my complex make-up. Surely he was not the central Me but some identification with him must be taking place when a markedly silly impulse rises in me and luckily gets curbed and rejected before I make a fool of myself.
You have written of "a great love for Sri Aurobindo which unaccountably wells up apropos nothing at all and brings tears to my eyes". And you add: " I don't know what is happening to me." Further you express your wonder whether the "psychic" has anything to do with it. This "emotion" which has come "on a number of occasions" and leaves you "surprised" marks in my view the supreme seal on your
Page 312
sadhana. The true, the quintessential "You" has not only made his presence felt but also recognised himself for ever as linked in deepest love to Sri Aurobindo the Source of your soul, the Lord of your life. You have unmistakably found your destiny and the discovery has expressed itself in what a poem of mine has called.
The longing of ecstatic tears
From infinite to infinite.
It is true, as you say, "that the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother was, truly speaking, the Yoga of the world" and indeed there is "an entire universe of sadhana contained in seven simple words of Sri Aurobindo: 'Nobody is saved unless all are saved.'" It is this truth at work in the dream and the deed of our Gurus that makes their Ashram so different from the other Ashrams in India. The latter welcome choice seekers: the former throws its doors wide open to seekers of diverse kinds. Once the Mother was asked if she would accept a scoundrel in the Ashram. She said "Yes" - and meant that if a particular scoundrel had a tiny bit of turning towards Sri Aurobindo and her, she could work through that slit for the inner being to peer out, not only for his good but also upon the whole world of scoundrelism and create slit after slit in that multitudinous darkness. Sri Aurobindo has said too that if he accepted none save developed souls the entire purpose of his mission would be foiled, for his work is universal and every type of human being is needed for such a work Just as he and the Mother were not content to embody the Supramental Consciousness in themselves but wanted it embodied in others as well, so too they did not envisage a limited circle of disciples: they were set on creating a new race out of the stuff which all humanity is made of. And this venture had its spiritual logic in their realisation that the Supermind was at the bottom of the cosmos no less than at its top: there is an evolution towards the top because there is an involution at the bottom and it is inevitable for Nature to grow into
Page 313
Supernature. To put it another way: spiritual attairvment represents not a pulling down of superior powers to hold the lower faculties in abeyance but an evoking of a divine light inherent, though deeply hidden, in what seems an intractable undivineness. God is the secret dharma, intrinsic law, of Matter and not merely a siddhi, a spiritual acquisition foreign to Matter to be imposed on it. In harmony with this basic truth the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother moves towards its fulfilment, taking into its scope the involved universal Godhead calling out to be set free in every man.
In response to this movement of the Integral Yoga each of us who is devoted to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother should give himself up to them as a centre of manifestation at the same time that he is a centre of concentration. Of course, ambition to be a divine instrument must be completely avoided: we are not meant to be Guruhngs under our Gurus, What is to be developed in us centrally is that Presence which, while being given whole-heartedly to the Divine, is a portion of the Divine come down as part of the evolving cosmos, as the head and front of the cosmic evolutionary process. The adverb I have used - namely, "whole-heartedly" - is not just a literary sign for "complete self-giving": it is also a psychological pointer suggesting what in us is to be the principal motive-power of our sadhana: the heart in its wholeness - the heart which in its innermost recess knows itself to be a child of the Divine Mother and in its outermost aperture feels a spontaneous affinity to all the other children of the same Supreme Creatrix. This twofold heart, with its rapturous root within and its felicitous flower without, is to be the chief guide in the Aurobindonian Yoga - at once luminously individual and radiantly communal - surrendered altogether in the first place to the One above all and, because this One is also all, surrendered unambitiously in the second place to the One's multiple self-expression of collective movement.
Thus the heart with its twofold function - more accurately its double unfoldment - is what had a sudden quickening in
Page 314
that experience of yours. No doubt it was always behind your devotion to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, but now it appears to be corning into the forefront to move you rapidly forward after moving you to tears of dedicated love. Lucky guy to have the Rose of God blooming so close even in far-off Bloomington, U.S.A.!
(7.11.1990)
Page 315
30
Evidently I have survived the celebration of my debut as a nonagenarian on 25 November 1994!"It was a bit of a hectic time, what with a large gathering in the spacious Dining Room of the Park Guest House and a wheelchaired Me being - as old-fashioned reporters would have put it - the cynosure of all eyes. My friends Nirodbaran and Deshpande had arranged the celebration. Nirod was asked to make an introductory speech and I had to follow up with one which might have gone on and on if I hadn't remembered that people might be waiting for nice things to fill their mouths as soon as I stopped wagging mine. There was a lot of cordiality and appreciation and I am really grateful to my "fans" - especially those who got ready on time the beautiful festschrift titled "Amal-Kiran: Poet and Critic", which was meant to be accompanied by a supplement with a caption which could cause me a lifelong blush: "The Wonder that is KDS".
From the viewpoint not only of timeliness but also of appraising insight, my gratitude goes amply to the contributors of articles as well as to the enterprising editors and the lavish-handed finance-providers, whose hearts and minds moved to make memorable my ninetieth birthday.
Your article with the epigraph from Horace has well touched the core of my poetic life with the words "musarum sacerdos" and taken them far beyond the priesthood of the Muses practised in the Augustan Age of Rome. It is thought-provoking that Caesar Octavius, renamed Augustus, was, as we have come to know, an early manifestation of Sri Aurobindo not as an Avatar, a direct conscious expression of the Divine, but as a Vibhuti, a leader of the age in whom the Divine works from the background. No wonder the two greatest bards Augustus had patronised were born again -Virgil as Nolini and Horace as Dilip - to be patronised by Sri Aurobindo. I, who as a poet was patronised by him even more than they, am still a question-mark in connection with the
Page 316
time of the first Roman emperor. I feel a strong affinity to Catullus with his commingling of the erotic and the wistful, and very interestingly the early verse of Sri Aurobindo himself is most reminiscent of this lyrist. Save for the jar of the girl-friend's name as compared to the dulcet appellations on Catullus's lips, what could be more in his vein than those lines in "Night by the Sea", a poem of Sri Aurobindo's Cambridge days? -
With thy kisses chase this gloom: -
Thoughts, the children of the tomb.
Kiss me, Edith. Soon the night
Comes and hides the happy light....
Love's sweet debts are standing, sweet;
Honied payment to complete
Haste - a million is to pay -
Lest too soon the allotted day
End and we oblivious keep
Darkness and eternal sleep.
We at once hark back to those unforgettable hendecasyllables:
Soles occidere et redire possunt,
Nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux
Nox est perpetua una dormienda.
Da mi basia mille.
Sri Aurobindo renders the three opening lines literally:
Suns may set and come again;
For us, when once our brief light has set.
There is one perpetual night to be slept.
The fourth line would run:
Give me a thousand kisses.
Ordinarily we would be tempted to see Catullus redivivus
Page 317
in the early Sri Aurobindo, but knowing better the personality of his past we can only say that he carried over to our time a close kinship to that poet which would tend to draw to himself whoever happened to be a new manifestation of him. Catullus died before Octavius became emperor, but part of their lives coincided in time and it is a guess worth hazarding that Lydia's victim with his passionately pathetic "Amo et odi" ("I love and I hate") was as much a literary influence on him as the master of the epic and the expert of the odes.
(3.12.1994)
I suggested to my warm-hearted admiring friends who wanted to celebrate my ninetieth birthday that a laudatory hullaballoo would be more fit for the hundredth year. But nobody seemed confident about my hitting a century. No Ashramite had done it so far by way of encouragement. So Nirod and Deshpande couldn't cross their fingers and bide time. My grandfather bade adieu at the age of 99 years and 9 months. This record could be encouraging if we forgot that my father had taken leave of us at a mere 44. The total of the two life-spans is 143 years and 9 months. The average comes to a wee bit under 72. I have exceeded it by 18 years. How much further is probable? A clue seems to come from a very early letter of Sri Aurobindo's whose facsimile is published in the souvenir volume presented to me by Nirod and Deshpande. The letter appears on pp. 7-8. At its end is the date in unmistakable figures: 28.2.98. Does this slip of the pen suggest that Sri Aurobindo foresaw me still alive in 1998? As the letter was written very near the beginning of my stay in the Ashram, could we surmise that 1998 is not the terminal of my experience of earth but some sort of starting-point? In that case I would have ahead of me at least as many years as have elapsed from 1928 to now: that is, 66 years! Imagine me as a (90+66=) 156 years old museum-piece.
What frightens me about deductions from the letter is: Would I have from 1998 onwards the same weaknesses and
Page 318
shortcomings that I have had to face from 1928 up till today? If Oscar Wilde's antinomian mind is to be followed, the only way to keep young is to go on repeating the follies of our youth! So are those weaknesses and shortcomings the sole means of saving myself from becoming a prize dotard? But we are not a prolongation of the Aesthetic Movement, in which Wilde participated, of the last century's closing quarter. We may be considered aspirants to what Sri Aurobindo has described to me as "the Overmind aesthesis" which sees and feels the world as the manifold play of a single divine Delight, revealing beauty everywhere - even in the most unlikely forms - and inspiring vision and word and deed shot with a significance as if gods and goddesses were playing variations of eternal things upon themes that at present spell out passages of what the Gita calls "this transient and unhappy world".
(8.12.1994)
My letter to all of you was meant to reach not only all your minds but also the heart and soul of each of you. For, I try to write - no matter how small the subject - from my own depths and strive to find a try sting-place in others' inmost being. The thoughts may wear an ordinary look and the words sound casual, but always the intent is from the Divine Mother in me to the same shining secret in my correspondent.
The celebration planned and executed by Nirodbaran and Deshpande took me by surprise and the substantial souvenir with its accompanying supplement multum in parvo ("much in little") projected the small helpless wheelchaired fellow into the figure of a colossus striding across history! Both the souvenir and the supplement must be in your hands now. The photos in the former will interest you. There is the tiny tot Amal ("Kekoo" in those days) in a sailor-suit standing between his father in an English costume including the waistcoat and the inevitable umbrella for the English weather - and his mother in a stylish London-attire topped by a wide-
Page 319
brimmed hat bright with artificial flowers and stuck to her hair with various pins. This picture dates back to 1910, when my parents took me to London for polio-operations on my left leg. Another picture has the same sailor-suited boy charcoal-sketched to a remarkable nicety" by a pavement-artist in Hyde Park within five minutes. The next illustration catches two poets standing side by side - Harindranath Chattopa-dhyaya, already famous, and Amal Kiran still in the world's background but with Sri Aurobindo's grand certificate in his pocket. Harindranath looks sweetly satisfied, with a calm smile on his handsome clean-shaven front-face, a sense of extraordinary achievement happily tracing it, whereas his companion, rather lanky and somewhat taller, with a tiny moustache and a close-cut fringe of a beard, appears to strain his gaze towards a future
which lends
A yonder to all ends.
Indeed, to make both life and Yoga an endless movement of ever-new discovery is the message of Sri Aurobindo to his followers. I add the word "life" to the word "Yoga" because to an Aurobindonian the two are inseparable. Yoga to him is not a special practice set apart from the outer consciousness: an inward air has to pervade whatever he thinks, feels, says, does - and he has never to stop at any point as though there were nothing further to achieve. This look ahead is no gesture of discontent. How can one be discontented when one is exploring the Divine? But the Divine is a constant enrichment of each point reached and a constant step onward, the onwardness not a forsaking of anything but a carrying of everything into a wider disclosure of its sense in what lies beyond it.
(21.12.1994)
Savitri has been for all of us a beautiful series of stepping-
Page 320
stones from our common human moods to a mind-state of glorious vision and a heart-state of intense aspiration. When puzzled over some problem of inner or outer life, we have followed the Mother's advice to concentrate on the Divine for a moment and then open Savitri wherever we are instinctively led to do so and read the passage which our eyes first light upon. My own mode of consulting this massive magnificent oracle is to conjure up the face of Sri Aurobindo and appeal for his guidance through this poem with which I have the most intimate link because I happen to be the disciple to whom it was first revealed in secret in its version of 1936. Morning after morning, hand-written passages used to come to me. I would type them out and make my response in the form of appreciative comments, critical questions, requests for elucidation. Even when Savitri became public property originally by being quoted in my essay "A New Age of Spiritual Inspiration" in the annual "Sri Aurobindo Bombay Circle" of 1948, edited by my friend and fellow-sadhak Kishor Gandhi - even when certain parts of the poem came out in fascicles from the Ashram Press, new matter was sent to me beforehand. One of the last letters about the poem said:
"You will see when you get the full typescript [of the first three books] that Savitri has grown to an enormous length... In the new form it will be a sort of poetic philosophy of the Spirit and of Life much profounder in its substance and vaster in its scope than was intended in the original poem..."
It is this "new form" that has become for us a guide-book in times of indecision. What is even more important is that it is a magnet to draw for us further spiritual experience. What could be more vivifying to an urge to see a subtle mystical presence in Nature at the break of dawn than the lines? -
All grew a consecration and a rite.
Air was a vibrant link between earth and heaven;
The wide-winged hymn of a great priestly wind
Arose and failed upon the altar hills;
The high boughs prayed in a revealing sky.
Page 321
When we feel as too heavy the sense of a long road to the Divine, the Eternal, we can get the assurance that all can change with a touch from our hidden spiritual potencies:
That moves the veiled Ineffable's timeless will.
Then miracle is made the common rule.
A great push can be received towards a surpassing of our present scene of incessant turmoil within and without by the passage on Aswapati's breakthrough from his human state to an all-enveloping Beyond from where a new life could derive:
Across a wide retreating sky he glimpsed
Through a last glimmer and drift of vanishing stars
The superconscient realms of motionless Peace
Where judgment ceases and the word is mute
And the Unconceived lies pathless and alone....
Out of that stillness mind new-bom arose
And woke to truths once inexpressible....
We are helped towards a wonderful change for which we have always aspired but without much success:
We hear what mortal ears have never heard,
We feel what earthly sense has never felt,
We love what common hearts repel and dread,
At times a deep depression enshrouds us and we wonder whether there is any hidden meaning in what seems a succession of barren days and empty nights. Then Savitri comes with a huge assurance which strengthens our failing limbs and forlorn thoughts:
Page 322
We whirl not here upon a casual globe
Abandoned to a task beyond our force;
Even through the tangled anarchy called Fate
And through the bitterness of death and fall
An outstretched Hand is felt upon our lives....
One who has shaped this world is ever its lord;...
Whatever the appearance we must bear.
Whatever our strong ills and present fate,
A mighty Guidance leads us still through all.
Yes, Savitri can be and has been a many-sided support to us and a godlike goad towards
A Silence overhead, a Voice within,
a ladder of light along which our beings can move from perception after keen perception of the spiritual vita nuova to which we have to ascend.
It has lately been asked in some quarters: "What was it to Sri Aurobindo himself?" And a strange answer was given, based on a statement of his to Nirodbaran in 1936. The opening of the statement was: "I used Savitri as a means of ascension." Here the meaning was seriously taken to be that Sri Aurobindo made use of his composition of Savitri to rise to ever higher spiritual experiences. I was amazed at such an interpretation, an impossible one if we go beyond the opening to the sentences that follow, for the word "ascension" connotes only the lifting of the poetic expression from height to greater height, from plane to loftier plane, "towards a possible Overmind poetry", as he wrote to me long ago. The true point of the letter whose start has been misunderstood by being cited in isolation should come through from the very question Nirodbaran posed: "We have been wondering why you should have to write and rewrite your poetry - for instance, Savitri ten or twelve times - when you have all the inspiration at your command and do not have to receive it
Page 323
with the difficulty that faces budding Yogis like us." Sri Aurobindo's reply runs:
"That is very simple. I used Savitri as a means of ascension. I began with it on a certain mental level, each time I could reach a higher level I rewrote from that level. Moreover I was particular - if part seemed to me to come from any lower levels I was not satisfied because it was good poetry. All had to be as far as possible of the same mint. In fact Savitri has not been regarded by me as a poem to be written and finished, but as a field of experimentation to see how far poetry could be written from one's own Yogic consciousness and how that could be made creative. I did not rewrite Rose of God or the sonnets except for two or three verbal alterations made at the moment."
One issue touched upon here gives us to believe that if Sri Aurobindo had not left his body at the end of 1950 he would have gone on revising his poem in the matter of expression, rendering the speech even more uniformly of the Overmind mint. And with the coming of the Overmind further into play there would have been a more voluminous no less than more luminous utterance. A provisional limit had been set long ago when Sri Aurobindo conceived of his epic as being "a minor Ramayana". The Ramayana, as it is, is about 50,000 lines long. And actually this possible length was mentioned by me for Savitri in my book, The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo. When it was read out to Sri Aurobindo he did not demur. In a note scribbled by him apropos of my friend Mendonca's criticism of Savitri and published in Mother India in August 1991 he refers to the same number as being presumed for Savitri.
Nor would Savitri have been only longer: it would have been recast whenever necessary in the forge of the greater consciousness which would have been at play. In one of his last letters to me (1948) Sri Aurobindo mentioned one part of his current spiritual work to be the supramentalisation of the Overmind more and more. With the Overmind completely
Page 324
supramentalised, a grander poetry would have come. Perhaps that too would not have been a ne plus ultra. Did not Sri Aurobindo write to me in 1936: "As for expressing the supramental inspiration, that is a matter of the future"? Would not this "future" have materialised if Sri Aurobindo had continued to. compose Savitri beyond December 5,1950?
(13.9.1994)
I am pleased to hear from you. Your name "Monika" rings a very melodious bell, being the same as that of St. Augustine's mother who was a partner with him in the spiritual quest. And Augustine himself was, according to our Divine Mother, a man very much like me. This pronouncement confirms my own sense of affinity with the young aspirant to monkhood who appealed to God: "Give me chastity - but not yet!"
Your very first response to Sri Aurobindo clearly shows that you spontaneously know him from the very inside of him, so to speak. It is as if you were made out of his substance. That is why you are moved to feel not only that he will lead you to the Divine but also that this Divine will be his own self. And the sense that you have known him for ages proves that you are touching him not merely with your mind which varies with each rebirth but with your soul which has had a long history going from birth to birth across centuries. Nor is the soul's experience of its existence confined to the long passage of time along which your inmost being has moved. This experience is as well of a contact with a reality that is outside the run of the years - an unchanging splendour of fullness that can exist even if time stopped. Actually this splendour is a state in which there is no starting of time and no stopping of it. It is distinguished by that mysterious term: "eternal".
What I have discerned as your relationship with Sri Aurobindo solves immediately your first problem. Indeed the way you have commented on the problem shows that it is in fact no problem at all. For you say: "All the years before, I had
Page 325
many problems in trying to feel an intense love and longing for God but towards Sri Aurobindo I feel this love and a spontaneous will to surrender."
When such is the whole trend of your being, why bother about what your past religious condition has been? I was educated at a Roman Catholic school and college and knew several fine European Jesuits, particularly Swiss German Fathers, one of whom influenced me greatly. I am a Parsi by birth, belonging to a community which follows the religion called Zoroastrianism. Zoroaster ranks with the greatest religious figures of the past. But the moment I was touched by Sri Aurobindo both Zoroastrianism and the influence of Roman Catholicism vanished. I could not even rank Sri Aurobindo as just the latest representative of the spirituality that shone out from bygone ages. He fell outside that category, for I perceived a radical difference. Those figures founding the various religions - one and all - taught that our fulfilling end is beyond the earth. Earth-life can be radiant with God-realisation, but it cannot itself be completely divinised. Even Krishna who is the most dynamic no less than the most many-sided in his divine manifestation has still a final wistful note in speaking of the earth-scene - "this transient and unhappy world". Sri Aurobindo alone looks on Matter as potentially divine and provides a cosmic picture in which resides this potentiality because the total Divine is concealed or "involved" in Matter prior to His evolution into the plenary Spirit on earth itself. Here is a picture of a future fulfilment utterly lacking in the vision of all past leaders of spirituality. Only that seer who is in the ultimate "know" of things can talk of a complete "transformation" in which the body itself can stand forth one day as an expression of godhead in its own right.
(In short, you are perfectly justified in the absoluteness of your attitude to Sri Aurobindo. If that is so, how can you raise your second question - your doubt whether Sri Aurobindo will accept you as his disciple? You are already a part of his vast being. Your very worship of him to the ultimate degree
Page 326
makes you nestle in his heart for ever. You feel towards him as you do because he has already taken you up as his beloved child. And he does not make any credal conditions; he does not insist that you should first pay homage to his philosophy. Neither he nor the Mother has cared for mental beliefs as preconditions. They are for a direct personal interchange. If you are moved by them, they are satisfied about your discipleship. Even if you are stuffed full with past religious dogmas they welcome your heart's leap and deem it sufficient for you to deserve and receive all their love. It is the resonance of your substance to their substance that counts primarily with them. Whether or not your mind - packed with one religion or another - says "Yes" to their luminous presence at once is a secondary question. Do you feel like prostrating yourself or else bowing your head or at least yearning in your heart for their nearness? This is what weighs in the relationship between them and you. All your "strict Roman Catholic education" will drop away if you listen to your soul's cry. You were "taught to pray only to Jesus Christ" - but now you are not being just "taught" something else as a rival confession of faith. You are helplessly pulled towards Sri Aurobindo because, looking at his photograph, you see, as a poem of mine puts it,
All heaven's secrecy lit to one face
Crowning with calm the body's blinded cry -
A soul of upright splendour like the noon!
Now to your last question, which poses really no puzzle at all. You ask: "What is the difference between the two names: Sri Aurobindo and Sri Aravinda?" The former is the name as written by the bearer of it himself. The latter is the Sanskrit original of the former's Bengali version. I suppose that, logically, in a Sanskrit mantra "Aravinda" would figure. But, as far as I know, the Mother said: "Sri Aurobindo sharanam mama" - "Sri Aurobindo is my refuge." Psychologically it is best to put into a mantra the name we are familiar with. A
Page 327
pedant may not be pleased, but our aim is to please the Divine Presence in our hearts and I am disposed to believe that he will prefer the name that has been ringing in his disciples' ears.
You wrote as a sort of apology for your pressing inquiries: "Clearness on my sadhana is so important to me." Well, I hope I have not failed the name Sri Aurobindo gave me: "Amal Kiran", meaning "The Clear Ray", and I hope I have also not failed the wise saying: "Be clear, be clear, be not too clear." This I understand to convey: "By your clarity do not deprive the hearer of the intuition that there is always a Beyond to all knowledge."
(29.8.1994)
Page 328
31
You have quoted from Savitri (Centenary Ed., p. 61) the lines -
The universe is an endless masquerade:
For nothing here is utterly what it seems,
It is a dream-fact vision of a truth
Which but for the dream would not be wholly true,
You have asked:
"Do lines 3 and 4 mean:
'It is a vision of a veridical fact seen as in a dream, which but for the dream would not be quite true'
or:
'it is a vision of a veridical fact such as happens in a dream'
'it is a vision of a dream-happening that appears as a true fact'?"
Here is my answer:
The meaning seems to me rather complex, and all the interpretations you have suggested have their own shades to contribute to it. I should attempt something like the following as a total explanation.
The appearance of everything in our world is at the same time a covering up of the truth and a disclosure of it and also an ultimate enrichment of its substance. The disclosure intended is through the very terms of the covering up. It is as a phenomenon that the world is to be understood and completed. There is an eternal reality behind it, which is to be expressed here. But this reality is figured forth under condi-
Page 329
tions of space-time. These conditions make the figuring forth such as to be different from the original but this difference is exactly what should be there. The expression would not be authentic, would not conform to the divine purpose without that difference. Nor even would the original be totally fulfilled unless this phenomenon came out from it as its self-expression.
It is all as though a veridical fact would appear in a dream with a certain change in its reality, so that it became a dream-happening looking like a true fact while it is not so, and yet what appears is no mere phantom, no sheer falsehood, but on the contrary the veridical fact itself getting realised in the form meant for it if the medium of its realisation is to be the dream-state, the form which alone answers to the Divine's plan for His own truth and which is in addition a necessary mode for that truth's fullest and richest sense of its own non-phenomenal being.
(14.1.1975)
Yesterday I received six letters from you in 24 hours and each envelope contained more than two communications. For quite a long time you have been indulging in this occupation and much of it strikes me as unhealthy.
You seem to be dredging treacherous depths by harping upon your deficiencies and your doubts about your own aspiration to become the child of the Divine. I advise you to check this flood of letters that appear to take pleasure in making concrete to yourself the anxieties and uncertainties that flit across your heart now and then. Keep as quiet as you can your monkeying mind and write only when the soul in you commands.
There is danger here of slithering into a depression that will lead to a darkness through these endless uncontrollable self-scourings.
Some questions like "Who is Sri Aurobindo? Who is the Mother?" are puerile at the stage where you are; they are
Page 330
just due to the itch to scribble.
Letting your pen run loose is dangerously akin to automatic writing, giving charge of yourself to some imp within you or haunting you. This indulgence is likely to cover up your awareness of the Divine Presence in you. Attend to your studies and your medical work and to the calm sadhana to which I have always called you. The Hostiles are digging for you a path to their obscurities through these bouts of what I would term "logorrhoea".
Aren't you becoming too introvert? Introversion is quite different from inwardness. Inwardness is a going towards one's depths - a movement away from one's ego in the direction of one's soul. Introversion preoccupies itself with the concerns of the ego - its various moods, its complexities, its predominant interests, its differences from other egos. It can also turn into a pseudo-inwardness.
(17.8.1993)
You have mentioned two things bothering you. But one of them is due to an over-conscientious heart (Very few people can keep up a steady remembrance of Sri Aurobindo. Such remembrance calls for a condition of being in which one does not need to conjure up his presence by a conscious act, A constant flow from some deep inexhaustible source of devotion has to be found. When the Mother once put the question "What is Yoga?" to the small group which used to be with her before the Soup-distribution would take place, various interesting answers were given. Some replies were intellectual though life-experience lay behind them. For example, Nolini's definition; "To divinise life." Lalita's was an ideal deeply desired and pursued: "To live as if nobody and nothing existed except the Mother." Mine was based on a feeling which used to recur often: "A warmth and a glow in the heart when seeing or even remembering Sri Aurobindo and the Mother." As a result of long practice this warmth and glow becomes constant or else one experiences a spontaneous flow
Page 331
from the middle of one's chest when one turns one's consciousness towards our Gurusf This flow can grow a permanent sensation and even when one is busy with or attentive to any activity it goes on and one feels it like a soft but concentrated background music. Whenever I am asked how to cultivate and preserve this movement of the being I suggest two lines of sadhana. A wide equanimity facing alt situations. Along with it a seizing of every event and offering it to the Mother.
"These two lines of sadhana have to be followed in the instance of the financial loss you have suffered because of the irresponsible action of the share sub-broker. It is unlikely that she will return the money she has lost. I can well sympathise with your violent reaction. But this reaction can do nothing except sour your days. Here is a fine chance to develop and deepen your relationship with the Divine.
After writing all this I have concentrated on you and inwardly tried to lift you high up towards the Mother and to set you within her tight and love. I feel as if something opened up on the height and made room for you.
(10.12.1994)
I liked your talk very well. The idea of accompanying it with slides is rather original. Your audience must have greatly appreciated it. I look forward to seeing the script of your next lecture - the one on the life of Zarathustra. By the way, mention of Zarathustra sets me asking what the expert Mary Boyce thinks is the true significance of the name. The one connected with Old Camels is the present favourite with scholars, but the one bringing in a Golden Star appeals to me more. It has a poetic justice about it when one hears of the three Magi - Persian priests - guided by a star to the cradle of the infant Jesus - Jesus who was to start a religion so very much in tune with the doctrines of Zarathustrianism.
The only fault I can find in your paper is the practice of writing the Avestan for "Lie" as "Drug". One's mind at once
Page 332
goes to "pot" and "acid". I remember a similar side-tracking when Egyptian archaeologists spoke of having discovered a temple to Sin. "Sin" happens to be the Egyptian Moon-Goddess; but in English the name suggests all kinds of lascivious ritualism. My preference is for "Druj". I noticed also a slightly irregular construction on p. 13 when you present the slide "Priest offering wood to fire". I see the phrase: "...the fact that Asa - 'Truth' and 'Righteousness' are the highest ideals of the Zoroastrian." What is the subject of the verb "are"? It can only be Asa as the sentence stands.I would suggest a slight modification: "...the fact that 'Truth' and 'Righteousness', which are what Asa means, are the highest ideals of the Zoroastrian."
Your exposition of the Parsi religion is both simple and systematic. But I wish you would in the future pierce to the esoteric sense, the mystic kernel, which has been overlaid, though finely, by the ethical aspect accompanied by the formal or ritualistic procedures. Sri Aurobindo's seizing of "the Secret of the Veda" should be a guide to a similar grasping of the inner significance of what is plainly a similar religion, both the Vedic cult and Zoroastrianism being based on the symbolism of Fire and Sun, the sacred drink Soma or Haoma, the importance of the Cow as a sign of Rita or Arta (Asa), the fight between Truth and Falsehood, the Gods and the Demons. Even the shift of sense in the Vedic word Asura came, as you know, in the later hymns. In the earlier ones, the word is not the privative of "sura": it comes from the root as implying "force". The Gods in their aspect of power rather than of light or knowledge were Asuras rather than Dev'as. The supreme divinity, the One who manifests as the Many, is both Asura and Deva. There is an interesting mixture of senses in that phrase about the Angirasas, bringing them before us not merely as deified human fathers but also as heavenly seers, sons of the Gods, sons of heaven and heroes or powers of the Asura, the mighty Lord, devas putraso asurasva virah (III..53.7). Zoroastrianism has throughout a demonic meaning for Deva and a deitic significance for
Page 333
Ahura (=Asura). But all the rest of the Vedic cult continues in it and should be susceptible of elucidation if one applies to it the clues laid bare by Sri Aurobindo for reinterpreting the Rigveda.
Sri Aurobindo himself seems to suggest the possibility of such an application. He writes in his Essays on the Gita: "The fundamental idea of the Rig-veda is a struggle between the gods and their dark opponents, between masters of Light, sons of Infinity, and the children of Division and Night, a battle in which man takes part and which is reflected in all his inner life and action. This was also a fundamental principle of the religion of Zoroaster."
Again, in The Secret of the Veda, while referring to the contending powers on both sides, the gods and their enemies the demons, he says: "They represent the struggle between the powers of the higher Good and the lower desire, and this conception of the Rig-veda and the same opposition of good and evil otherwise expressed, with less psychological subtlety, with more ethical directness in the scriptures of the Zoroastrians, our ancient neighbours and kindred, proceeded probably from a common original discipline of the Aryan culture."
I may mention, in passing, that a certain quotation you have made from the Gathas reminds me directly of the Rigvedic vision. Yasna 43,16 reads: "Mazda inhabits in Paradise the Sun-beholding dominion Khsathra." The Rishis speak of the ideal end of their spiritual aspiration as the heavenly dominion Swar which lives forever under the light of the supreme Gnosis, Surya, the field or Kshetra of divinity. Of course, Swar in the outward or non-mystical connotation is only the highest part of the physical sky.
(1.10.1977)
Page 334
32
As to Christianity and your antipathy to it in general, I would advise you not to subject Jesus to any mud-slinging. You may criticise the historical religion which takes his name, and criticise its pretensions, persecutions and political manoeuvres. But you are mistaken in thinking that it started with a backing of force. St. Paul, whose epistles are our earliest Christian documents, was not the initiator of any "jihad". The backing of force came only with the arrival of Constantine, the first Roman emperor to be converted. Till then the Christians were at the wrong end of the stick, though the Roman persecution has been considerably exaggerated. This persecution was not on the ground of any doctrine special to Christianity. There was quite a clutch of religio-philosophical sects in the Roman empire, including the Jews who lived side by side with the followers of Jesus at Rome. The Christians were in bad odour because they refused to make a god of the Roman emperor. They were considered dangerous traitors.
Jesus is to me a genuine avatar but a limited one with an emphasis mostly on emotional love for the Divine and a broad-based philanthropy. Though he lived in an age which had, as our Mother once told me, a somewhat obscure religious atmosphere, the Divine's touch on him should not be ignored, nor the genuine religious spirit he brought into the Near-Eastern world, a spirit which has inspired down the ages quite a number of spiritual aspirants as well as truth-seeking minds. In the midst of all the superstitions and fanaticisms that have come in his wake, two lights have shone out from Christianity: the discernment of God's love and grace on the one hand and on the other the necessity of brotherly love and service. There have been many cloudings of these lights, but here is the essence of what Jesus gave the world.
I don't say that India is devoid of these lights: we have everything that spirituality can give, but various emphases
Page 335
are typical of various religious experiences and these two are typical of true Christianity. This does not mean that we must not expose the numerous falsehoods that have encrusted the Christian religion and on the strength of which its followers claim a unique historicity for it as well as an historical uniqueness. The dogmas of the virginal conception and of Jesus' bodily resurrection and of his being God's only Son have to be exploded and I have set myself that task in one of my unpublished books no less than the task of showing Christianity to have been originally a short-term religion, expecting Jesus' return and the world's end within a generation or two of the crucifixion. Jesus announced that some of those present before him would be there to see his return at the world's end. He never thought of a long-lasting Church on earth.
St. Paul is very clear in his early epistles (Thessatonians, Corinthians I) that he is living in the end of time and will be there when the angel Gabriel blows his announcing trumpet. Later, when his health began to fail, he feared he might die before that event. Christianity can't compare with the wideness and height and profundity of basic Hinduism and whatever dynamism and sense of world-value it claims in our own day are but a candle-flame before the all-illuminating, all-embracing, all-fulfilling vision and work of Sri Aurobindo who may be said to lead Hinduism not only to transcend every other religio-spiritual path more strikingly than ever before but also to transcend even Hinduism's own past glories and powers.
(26.5.1986)
The priest-palaeontologist Teilhard de Chardin's last written note which you have quoted to me - "The universe is centred evolutionarily on the Still-to-come" - is indeed the keynote of all true spirituality of our time - a this-worldly spirituality in which the Still-to-come is no heavenly hereafter but a fulfilment of soul and body on earth in an all-integrating super-
Page 336
consciousness in an all-harmonising super-organism. Teil-hard's futurism cannot quite be equated with Sri Aurobindo's, though both are "evolutive". A high mental development with a cosmic sense is his goal: the descent of the Supermind into the psychicised and spiritualised being and the gradual transformation of the body itself in the long run (perhaps of several lives) were beyond his ken. Ultimately, even his this-worldliness met a check because a final rupture between earth and heaven had to be postulated by Christian thought. Teil-hard modified the concept of it by taking it in evolutive terms and not as if it might occur any moment as tradition has it.
I believe the Catholic Church has begun to think along Teilhard's lines wherever the old doctrines could be slanted differently, but I am afraid the original thrust of his "ultra-Christianity" has been blunted in many respects or else subtly shunted to suit traditional needs. Apart from all teachings, one way or another, what strikes me most in Teilhard is that he is a man with a vivid vision. His conceptual system is just a working out, in semi-scientific semi-philosophic language, of his persistent intuition of the divinity in "les choses": material things were to him charged with God and to bring forth the hidden splendour in the course of evolution was the constant concern of his visionary genius. He said that he had been born with a pantheistic soul, but he was afraid of European pantheism which excluded the individuality of the human soul and the transcendental aspect of God. Indian pantheism, which he misjudged, includes them or rather is itself included in a vaster many-sided synthesis of the Divine Nature. However, in the end this synthesis too looks towards a Beyond. Such a looking is due, I hold, to a past prehistoric failure to do something like what Sri Aurobindo has attempted and has, in essence, founded. As an Aurobindonian you can whole-heartedly and single-mindedly strive to capture "I" etonnante musique des choses".
My own half-feeling half-perception of this "astonishing music" is hinted at on p. vii of "A Personal Preface" to The Adventure of the Apocalypse. In the first para I write: "... Two
Page 337
nights back I had kept awake similarly; but there had been no poetic inspiration. I had, however, been making inward contact again and again with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and hearing what I hear in my best and calmest moods, a low universal croon, a far-away rhythm with a deep monotone overlaid with small variations; even the variations play on one and the same softly trembling theme; some ultimate Mother Spirit seems to be gently singing to her child the cosmos..."
Perhaps all such music resolves itself into the mantra OM, the basic Word-Brahman creative of the universe and upholding it by its secret vibration in all matter. Evidently something in Teilhard responded to it.
(28.6.1989)
Your letter has warmed our hearts no end and set them beating more boldly and dreamfully towards the stars. Such spontaneous appreciation as you have expressed of Mother India has brought a deeper sense of the Divine Grace at work in this venture to which we have pledged ourselves.
May I tell you what happened at the very start of our periodical's career? Perhaps you know the story already, but it may be inspiring to hear it again. Mother India was to be launched as a fortnightly. We had planned to bring out the first issue in accord with February 21, the date of the Mother's birthday. In that year - 1949 - the birthday was due on a Sunday. We chose Friday rather than Saturday as the most opportune starting-point. Just three weeks were there to go. Various experienced journalists dropped in at our office, which was then in Bombay. They kept asking me how many months' matter we had in stock to accompany whatever had to be penned freshly in view of current occasions. They said that we should have matter for at least six months, which meant twelve issues. When I told them that I had stuff only for two issues they raised their hands in horror and said, "By all the laws of journalism you are doomed." They advised us
Page 338
to postpone publication for two or three months until we were well-stocked.
I wrote to the Mother about their warnings. I said my own attitude was like that of Marshall Foch at the Battle of the Marne in World War I. Asked by Headquarters for a report of affairs at the front he wrote back: "My left wing is broken. My centre is crumbling. The situation is excellent. I am attacking." I wrote also that the Mother's force was making me feel as if I could write the whole issue single-handed each time. But could 1 trust this "delusion of grandeur" against the sage warning of veterans? I asked the Mother for her decision. A telegram came from her: "Stick to the date. Live on faith." We went into action with a whoop. And we have lived on faith for decade on decade.
(21.5.1975)
Yes, I was in Paris, but at the age of about six years. If my grandfather, who was in charge of my future after my father's untimely death, had let me go to Oxford after my B.A., I would surely have visited Paris again and physically known the Left Bank of the Seine, to which I temperamentally belong. During my stay in the Ashram I had several offers from friends to visit England and the U.S.A. and once Israel. But I never accepted any of them. Now, of course, my deteriorated legs make even trips to nearby places almost impossible. The Samadhi is the Ultima Thule at present. Recently, connected with the physical strain of plodding from the Ashram gate to my place opposite the Samadhi, my heart started missing beats at very close intervals. Dr. Raichura, who visits the Samadhi at the same time, was quite concerned. But, strangely, the cardiogram he took soon after showed an absolutely regular heart! There was a discomfort in my chest accompanying the missed beats and I was in a semi-puzzled state. The usual medicine (Sorbitol) did not work at all. Then suddenly one evening I distinctly felt as if a shadow had been lifted off my head. From the next moment I felt completely
Page 339
cured. Occasionally the heart still misses beats but I have not a care in the world about it. There is neither physical discomfort nor psychological reaction of any kind. In a way I am reminded of the time 17 years back in Bombay when I had a peculiar fever with a most unpleasant sensation in the stomach. No medicine worked. After a week during which there was just a passive waiting on the Mother, all of a sudden I inwardly saw a fist come down with force somewhere at the back of me and immediately it was as if an ogre had jumped out of my belly and I was perfectly normal. The same night I had a most vivid meeting with the Mother in a dream. The Mother was still in her body at that time, though incommunicado - towards late October 1973.
(23.5.1990)
Your first question is: "While meditating, is it essential to concentrate on any centre? Without concentrating on any centre I am finding it easy to push back the thoughts."
The advice to concentrate on either the head-centre or the heart-centre is for those who have to learn to meditate. To focus their consciousness where thinking or feeling takes place serves to activate the meditative state. Meditation in the Yogic sense seems to me to be a flow of one's conscious being towards the Divine. My natural tendency at the beginning of my Yogic life was to turn mentally towards Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, but the real urge within me was to open my emotional self to them. I did not know how to make this urge active. Knowing that I was an intellectual, the Mother told me to imagine an open book in my heart-centre. I was a little disappointed, "What? Again a book? Do I nor want to get away from books?" I grumbled to myself. But having faith in the Mother's wisdom I followed her advice for some time.
The heart did not easily open. What actually happened was that every time I concentrated in the middle of my chest I felt a pain there. This was rather upsetting, for I could not carry on the concentration. When I complained of it to the
Page 340
Mother she just smiled and said: "Don't worry about it. I know what's going on. The pain will disappear after a while." And it did disappear. When it did, I had the feeling that a wall had crumbled down, leaving in its absence an intense aspiration - absolutely spontaneous - towards the Divine.
There was a short period - lasting a few months - when the heart flowed and flowed, as it were, to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. And its flow sent up a warm current to the head, sweeping all over it and concentrating the thoughts upon them. Later there were blockages of the heart time and again. I would appeal to the Mother to open me up, ask her to put her hand upon my chest. She did whatever I wanted and managed the opening repeatedly - until a time came when there was a non-stop flow, delightfully effortless, and one could say that it was a flow from the Divine within to the Divine without, the Divine present before one and around one and extending everywhere. When things are like that, one does not have to concentrate at any spot. Are they thus with you? From what you write, I conjecture that a meditation is going on spontaneously in your head, pushing thoughts easily out. It is a welcome state. But you don't say whether you are mentally in contact with our Gurus. You appear to be in-drawn - in touch with your own inner being.
Your second question - "Concentrating on any particular centre: what exactly does it mean and what exactly should we do?" - indicates that you have a natural turn inwards and have not attempted any set fixing of consciousness anywhere.
Your third question - "What is meant by 'going deep within' while meditating?" - shows that though an inward turn is natural to you you do not penetrate far enough. All meditation is inward-going but there are in general two stages beyond this preliminary penetration. The first stage takes one to the inner mind, the inner vital, the inner subtle-physical. The second stage is the- innermost soul, the psychic being. Usually to go deep within is in our Yoga to reach this direct emanation of the Personal Divine. In a special sense we may speak of a third stage: the sheer impersonal unbounded Self
Page 341
of selves, which is the same in everyone. But it cannot be strictly spoken of as part of our composite individual existence. We may designate it as not within but behind or beyond. I may add a further aspect of inwardness: the Purusha who is the spiritual truth on the individual scale of our common experience of self-consciousness. As distinct from the animals we are not only conscious: we are also conscious that we are conscious. We have the power to stand back as the one who is conscious. When this power is raised to its final limit without transcending the individual scale we have the Purusha, the detached untouched witness who in his greater profundity is the sanction-giver to Nature's movements in us and at his profound est the lord of these movements. On every level of our existence there is the Purusha. I believe the Purusha is called in the Aurobindonian terminology our true mental, our true vital, our true subtle-physical. It is wide and calm and clear, unlike our superficial individuality. I believe it is the terminus of our inner mind, vital and subtle-physical.
Your final question is on quite a different plane: "In the spiritual map of India Burma is included. When and how long was Burma a part of ancient India?" I have the impression that in the times of Asoka and of the Gupta emperors India had suzerainty over Burma just as over Ceylon, at least Samudragupta speaks of all the islands acknowledging his authority. In any case, the Mother does not seem to have gone by old history. She visioned spiritual India to be what had come to be included under recent British rule, which covered present Pakistan too. The very configuration thus formed has an air of beautiful completeness. The Mother has said that whatever the politicians may have done, this is the true India and we shall stick to the truth and wait for its realisation.
As for the dream or vision which you recount, in which a dark man comes and cuts off with a knife the black rope with which your legs were tied, I can't say anything with certainty. I would hazard the interpretation that the black rope symbolises the restricting ignorance in which our outermost or
Page 342
lowest physical consciousness, more than any other part of us, lives. The legs stand for this extreme physicality or outwardness. The dark man would, at first blush, suggest ignorance too, but as you have made a distinction between "dark" and "black" I would propose a meaning which "ignorance" would not give. The "dark man" conjures up to my mind a being of mystery, an agency from some secret and therefore to us an obscure dimension of existence. The dimension is of your own being: hence the figure of a "man". The dream or vision may portend a subtle change in your attitude towards and dealings with material circumstances in the near future.
(24.3.1992)
You have asked: "How to be prepared for February 21?" Paradoxically I may say: "Feel that February 21 is not at all a special occasion." For, the Divine Mother came to the earth to evoke in us the eternity and infinity that are at the heart of all the pulses of time, all passing moments and moods. If February 21 is something utterly unusual and exceptional, we have not gauged enough the Divine Mother's ultimate mission.
If I may adapt a line from Sri Aurobindo's Savitri to my purpose, this day is meant to be
A gate of dreams ajar on mystery's verge.
It is in secret continuity with the whole year. The whole year is packed with the Supreme Presence, and February 21, like August 15 (Sri Aurobindo's birthday) is intended to strike us attentive to this subtle reality, this profound mystery. Neither Sri Aurobindo nor the Mother aims to stand as a dazzling exception in the midst of the earth's multiplicity. They collect and concentrate and express in themselves what is hidden everywhere. Because we have forgotten our root in them, our true nature which carries (in Wordsworth's phrase)
Page 343
A greatness in the beatings of the heart,
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother make us conscious of our real self by summing up in an unmistakable way its golden essence.
(5.2.1995)
Page 344
33
'
It gratifies me indeed that you have given so fine a response to my poetry at even the first reading.
Poetry of the sort I write - seeking to be in tune with the Aurobindonian Muse - is not always easy to enjoy immediately: one has to live with it for a while, listen to it intently with the inner ear, brood on it with a hushed mind, before it yields fully both its meaning and its vision. One must do these things in reading it because I have done them in writing it. Not that it has not flowed through, spontaneously and rapidly - some of it has come with a rapturous rush while some came slowly, bit by ecstatic bit, but even when there was a rush I have had to do what I may call aesthetic Yoga in order to get it, for there are various types of spontaneity or, rather, various levels of spontaneity and the levels that give birth to mystical poetry are not easy of access - especially mystical poetry that is not content to mentalise the inner or higher light. To mentalise is not to lessen the poetic quality - it is not the same as intellectualising; it is only to give the substance a particular atmosphere. There can be a great glory of wings in the mental air; however, though the pure poetic quality may be extreme, the spiritual quality is not equal to what is caught direct from the atmosphere where the spiritual reality has its natural home. To draw straight from this ether one has to practise a discipline of "aesthetic trance".
The "aesthetic trance" does not make one a Yogi in the full sense of the word: what it does is to turn the face of the artist in a man towards the Yogic realms by a sort of intense and sustained sympathetic imagination. It does not enable so much the poet to acquire a spiritual halo as the poem to get drenched concretely in
The light that never was on sea or land.
(27.3.1945)
Page 345
From what you write I feel that you have a receptivity not only to the poetic afflatus but also to the mystical breath. Your enjoyment of my poems is so intense because you respond to the state of soul that is in each of them and not just to their aesthetic posture.
It would indeed be a pity to take mystical poems in no other way than aesthetically, though it would be also a pity to take them mystically without getting the aesthetic delight of them. Most readers fail to combine the two ways. In thus failing, they fail as well to get the most out of either, since in art - as we have often been told - the matter and the manner are indissolubly one and to miss the aesthetic - the "beauty-taste" - is also to miss certain subtle shades of mysticism which cannot be expressed except through certain nuances of aesthesis. It is possible perhaps to give mystical "ideas" in plain language, but the shades I speak of are not merely "ideas": they are states of soul - intuitions, experiences, realisations - and they cannot be expressed without aesthetic modes: that is, modes creating vision, emotion and rhythm. So, if the vision, the emotion, the rhythm do not go home to one, the matter too, as living stuff, remains outside one's consciousness. Similarly, to be dense to mystical nuances is to be at the same time dense to many aesthetic shades of soul-poetry. Consider these two lines of mine, which are some of my best according to Sri Aurobindo:
The distance-haunted fire of mystic mind...
The whole mystic-ram-aesthetic effect here depends on a few special points. Perhaps the most telling is the present participle "Flickering" rather than any possible equivalent like "Quivering" or "Wavering" being used and made to stand at the very start of the first line. A most vivid note is struck, almost making us hear the disturbing effect which "the cry of clay" might have had. The anticipation and preparation of the hard double c are perfectly achieved and the crackling
Page 346
sound which a fire would make is introduced at an impressive length before it is immediately counteracted by "no longer". This living suggestion would be absent if the line commenced with these two words:
No longer flickering with the cry of clay.
Even more would the suggestive life go out on our transferring the present participle to the line's end, and beginning the phrase with the last three words:
With the cry of clay no longer flickering.
Thus not only the original words but their original order too cannot bear to be touched. Without them we would fail to see, feel and hear the mystic phenomenon to the full extent in terms of poetic beauty. Conversely, nothing short of the deep sense of that phenomenon would call forth the precise form of expressive aesthesis. Here the second line is of prime importance. For it is the "distance-haunted" character of the mystic mind - the inner consciousness's straining ever beyond the apparent and the immediate - that tends to free it from disturbance by the bodily life's claims and clamours.
In the creative field of art with which I am dealing, there is one important thing to remember: every level of consciousness has its own pitch to confer on the aesthetic faculty. And if the soul is not awake, the reader will not be able to have aesthetic appreciation at the soul's pitch. The art will be perceived with just a mental-vital sensitivity instead of a spiritual or "soulful" one. I am sure a man who has lived with poetry of all kinds and is alert to various types of vision, emotion and rhythm will get a pretty keen perception of beauty from the two lines I have quoted without his having an awakened mystical sensitivity. All the same I am sure too that, since the lines are spiritual or "soulful" to an extreme degree, the sense of beauty will be much keener if the soul acts directly rather than from behind the veil and confers on
Page 347
the aesthetic elements the pitch necessary to make them yield their full value to our consciousness. Their full value consists in their being an intense poetic embodiment of the mystical intuition, experience or realisation present in the lines. Only when the aesthetic faculty works at the soul-pitch will the elements I have exhibited in some detail burn within our perception as such an embodiment. Till then they will attain for us diverse degrees of heat, so to speak - heat enough to make us recognise high poetic quality - but the sheer incandescence will not take place. And without that incandescence we shall never know how high exactly this quality is.
I wonder if I have made myself understood, and I wonder if I have seemed to digress unnecessarily if not boringly from the job of answering the questions you had asked me.
You want to know if being an "unclogged medium" of inspiration does away with the necessity of the intellect's supplying any materials and tools for inspiration to work upon and work with. Well, often one thinks of writing a poem on this or that subject that has held one's attention or stirred one's feeling and then proceeds to explore intellectually the depths of its implications as well as its associations round about until the actual rush of inspiration comes and picks up the prepared material and fills it out with shining surprises and sweeps into triumphant harmony all that one has laboured at. At other times, inspiration comes on a sudden, without one's consciously thinking of writing a poem and then various bits, lying in one's mind, of thought and imagery and reminiscence and velleity are attracted to the creative process and used through a sort of swift thinking that beats and burns instead of moving barely, slowly and laboriously. In both the cases there is a supplying of materials by the intellect - but it is not the same as the work one puts in when one is not a clear medium: there is no pained pausing in the midst of the creative process, there is no anxious fumbling for the right suggestion and the right word while the poem is being composed. Nor is always a supplying of materials, such as I have described, indispensable to the clear or unclogged
Page 348
medium: occasionally, everything seems to drop from the blue or emerge from the subliminal either in a form which the habitual intellect can grasp or in a form that is occult, cryptic, "surrealistic".
As for the tools, no exact technical knowledge is required if one is swiftly "spontaneous". What one requires is a general sense of poetic form. I almost believe that this sense is something innate in us and that, even if we knew absolutely nothing about the form of poetry, inspiration could rush through in metrical rhythm. Metrical rhythm, in its origin, is the natural body of expression when that expression is at a certain intensity, an intensity of the heart of things, the central fount of things. That is why the mantras of the Rigveda were supposed to be not the Divine Spirit clothed in a form invented by human prosodists but that Spirit clothed in a form native to it and intrinsically connected with its act of manifestation. No doubt, prosody is there in all verse and we do count syllables and dispose stresses or measure quantities and we can metricise a piece of inspiration that has come without the correct metre. The essential fact still is that metrical rhythm is part and parcel of the direct word from our intuitive depths, the depths that are in close touch with the creative process giving birth to the cosmos: the cosmos is a play of diversity on a basis of uniformity, a sort of metrical base of being upon which various modulations take shape, introducing a significant individuality which saves the dance of being from monotony without destroying the foundational pattern. Where the modulation and the base are both intensely active, there results a phenomenon which is the most revelatory of the creative force behind - and what is metrical rhythm except the base and the modulation reaching their acmes of intensity? In the domain of speech, therefore, metrical rhythm is the nearest to the creative centre of being -and the innermost utterance of that centre is naturally cast in it.
If we were ideal mediums, poetry would pour through in perfect metrical rhythm, even though we knew no jot about
Page 349
iamb and trochee and anapaest and what not! Of course, metrical rhythm is not of only one fixed type: a number of types are possible and some are adapted to one language, some to another. The amount of modulation varies, the foundational fact varies. But the essence of metrical rhythm is the same - and this essence is discovered by man not invented by him: it belongs to the beyond-human, it belongs to the very core of cosmic creativity. That is the reason why not only the Vedic Rishis but all ancient peoples used to regard poetry as the expression of the Gods. Such a belief, however, did not debar them from making a science of prosody: in fact, it was just because a Godlike character was felt in poetry that a certain difficulty too was felt in receiving the message of the deific regions and the need arose for helping out the message when it got hindered: the better one knows prosody the better one can help "the music of the spheres" to get through if that music is likely to be interfered with by one's clogged condition. Since one is more liable to be clogged than clear, it is advisable to have sharp technical tools at hand. But they only aid the Master Craftsman that is Inspiration to deal more easily with our minds: they prove our own disability and not the Master Craftsman's lack of power to use his fiery fingers more skilfully than our tools.
(6.5.1945)
Thanks for your letter which is so warm and revealing -revealing because it is the deep heart speaking and warm because the revelation came from that heart straight, untouched by the circumspect mind. Not that the mind has no role to play in matters of the depths. Sometimes what hails from them is interfered with by the dramatising vital being so that the psychic form does not emerge in all its truth. Then the mind, if it has been well trained, gets the authentic sense of that form and cuts away the excrescences. Occasionally, even the emergent from the depths arrives a little nebulous, the supernormal feeling surges up slightly unfocused, as it
Page 350
were, and the trained mind discerns the hidden outlines and releases the secret shape. We can see what role the Rigveda allots to the mind. It speaks of the luminous word arising at the same time from the satyam rtam brhat - "the True, the Right, the Vast" - which is above and from the hrdaya samudra - the "heart-ocean" - which is the profundity within, and then passing through the silent mind of the seer to be rid of all ambiguity and be disclosed in the original contours so as to become a golden chariot for the Gods to ride forth into the common world of men.
What you say about our relationship is perfectly true. From the start there has been an inner intimacy which no distance can diminish. For we have met in the aura of a Presence which is not affected by space and time, an aura which is to either of us no goal laboriously to be reached but as natural as the very air we breathe. We are born Aurobindo-nians and on top of that there is a special soul-rhythm in common: our pursuit of the Eternal Beauty. The Divine comes to people in various aspects - glorious Wisdom, supreme Power, master Skill, transcendent Loveliness. I feel that both of us have been caught up in an ineffable enchantment. No doubt, the other aspects are also there, and one or another of them comes close on the heels of that enchantment: master Skill, for instance, is very much of a goddess in your nature. But the main magnet for both of us appears to be what St. Augustine hailed as the Beauty of ancient days that is ever new, with its summoning up from our depths the flow of wonder, the surge of love. Perhaps what I have called "glorious Wisdom" is in my being the nearest attendant to the forefront deity of Loveliness transcendent. And this you may have felt as your subtle "guide", a special grace from Sri Aurobindo. The dream-vision you have recounted seems to me a very concrete contact between us on the subtle-physical plane, the one immediately behind our world. Some of our physical characteristics tend to continue there. My slight "limping" is a sure sign of our meeting on that plane. And to meet there is to have a very keen sense of reality and if our
Page 351
inmost selves carry on their friendship on this plane, it is no wonder that there is always so vivid an interchange of mind and heart. In the context of your dream-vision you have spoken of Krishna guiding you. Of course there can be no comparison between that incarnate Lord and tiny and puny Amal, a poor pallid mortal. But do you know that the flower the Mother chose as representing me happens to carry in her vision the significance: "Krishna's Light in the Mind"?
To be more precise, there was once a scheme set for me by the Mother to paint flower-pictures for the rooms of the sadhaks, suggesting the spiritual forces specially at work on them. The couple of rooms given to me in what was called the Guest House, which I occupied for nine and a half years, were those which Sri Aurobindo had occupied for over six years before he moved first to the "Library House" and then to the quarters he stayed in till the end of his life. Before 1 came to them, Purani had lived in them for a time. During my stay the flower representing them was, according to the Mother, what is botanically labelled "Thunbergia kirkii", a small lavender-blue salverform flower with a cream-yellow throat. The Mother's felicitous gloss on its meaning ("Krishna's Light in the Mind") was: "A charming way of being intelligent." The epithet "charming" is apt in view of the winsome personality traditionally attributed to Krishna. Sri Aurobindo has characterised Krishna as the Avatar who came from the plane of Divine Ananda and manifested through the Overmind, the top cosmic consciousness just next to the Supermind, the transcendent arch-creator. That is to say he was the Divinity of Bliss, who gave the world a manifold vision - the vision typical of the Gita in which Sri Aurobindo has discerned several interwoven strands - a Yoga of Works (Karma), a Yoga of Knowledge (Jnana), a Yoga of Devotion (Bhakti) and a final hint of something that would include all of them by going beyond them to an abandoning of all set dharmas (life-rules) and surrendering oneself to the Supreme Beloved who is also the Supreme Teacher and the Supreme Leader.
(24.1.1991)
Page 352
You have asked me what my meditation was between 10 and 10.30 a.m. on February 21. A general account would be: "It was all joy." But it was not just a state of being deeply happy during those thirty minutes. It was a happiness shot through and through with the Mother's Presence. Rather, it was her Presence that made up the happiness. And that is why the happiness was so special. For, her Presence was at once most intimately near and most alluringly far. It seemed to reach depth after depth within me and simultaneously drew me on and on into mysterious distances. An all-giving love tended to envelop and permeate my whole being, while something in me was called out incalculably afar to meet, as it were, the still unmanifested truth of my being - a divinity which was as yet a wondrous dream. But strangely somewhere within the dreamer the dreamer was himself the dream. And the Divine Presence, when posed in front of me, seemed to wear my own face in a fusion with the face of the Mother or the face of Sri Aurobindo or else with an etherealised combination of their faces.
(28.2.1995)
The point you have raised is not really concerned with a living issue but rather a verbally technical one. You say: "We meet again and again with these words of Sri Aurobindo: 'Always behave as if the Mother was looking at you because she is, indeed, always present.' Now, why did Sri Aurobindo choose to use 'as if instead of saying: 'with the Mother felt as looking at you'? There must be some significance in it."
The answer is very simple. Sri Aurobindo is employing the grammatical form classed as "the subjunctive mood", the mood of a verb used especially to denote what is imagined or wished or possible. Here the "imagined" is in function -though afterwards the "imagined" is said to be a reflection of the real. No opposition is intended between imagination and reality. We sadhaks do not always have the inner eye to see the Mother in a concrete though subtle form everywhere: that
Page 353
is why we are not told: "Always behave with the Mother felt as looking at you."
The Mother has told us that when she comes into contact with a follower of Sri Aurobindo and her she does two things. One - she builds a bridge between his outer self and his inmost being. Two - she makes an emanation of herself to go with the follower at all times. This emanation answers all his needs and acts as his guardian angel. Only in moments of extreme crisis it harks back to headquarters, so to speak, and consults the central Presence. Often we ourselves get into touch with this Presence. That is when we most intensely call her to our aid or desire to have her decision for us. Thus, when I was in Bombay in 1939 she wrote to me on April 24: "Just received your letter of 21st, it came to me directly (without the written words) three days ago, probably when you were writing it, and my silent answer was categorical: 'remain there until the necessity of being here will become so imperative that all else will completely lose all value for you.' My answer now is exactly the same. I want only to assure you that we are not abandoning you and that you will always have our help and protection."
(3.3.1995)
Before trying to interpret your vision, let me set your letter forth as briefly as possible: "A desert-like place. While running in it for some time I saw floods of river-water coming towards me. With increasing fear I ran in another direction. To my surprise, this time I saw in front of me floods of sea-water coming. With great fear I began to run in a new direction. On my way I saw a sturdy white horse. I sat on it and started riding it. After some time I saw a hut from which light was emerging, making the surroundings full of light. When I saw this light a torchlike light emerged immediately from my forehead. I rode up to the hut and got down from the horse and went into the hut. There 1 saw a Divine Mother
Page 354
sitting in the lotus-pose. She was full of light. 1 offered my pranam to her and she blessed me and advised me to study medicine. After more than twelve years I came to Pondicherry and had darshan of the Ashram's Mother. She had an aura of light surrounding her head. I came to the conclusion that our Mother was the same Mother who had appeared in my dream. Will you please explain my dream?"
The river-floods and the sea-floods seem to symbolise difficulties from the "vital" plane, the unspiritual "desires" sweeping over it. But the vital plane has also features that can be of help to spirituality. Such is the "sturdy white horse" that meets you while you are running away from the floods. Here is a representation of the purified vital force. Your mounting it proves that you are not a helpless being but have a will-power which can bring about a change in your life. In the dream the resultant change draws you near that part of your being which has come to be impoverished and unpromi-nent, a hut, but which is really the secret source of guidance. That is why light is streaming out from it. In response to this sudden call or pull from a hidden and neglected depth in you, your mind catches fire, as it were, and you discover an illumination in the conscious part of you: a torchlight emerges from your forehead. Urged by it, led by it you reach your soul's "cave", as the Upanishads would designate your inmost and there in what has seemed an obscure place you come upon the Divine Mother, formed of light and the source of all radiance. She is waiting for you and at once accepts you with her gesture of blessing.
Thus long before you came to the Ashram, you had been chosen for the spiritual life. And the reality of the choice was confirmed when the Ashram Mother whom you met twelve years later gave you a signal of the old light by manifesting to you "the aura surrounding her head".
Your other dream brings in the horse too. Evidently you live very much in your vital nature, but even in this domain where there are the greatest number of occasions for deviation
Page 355
from spirituality you have a Saving Grace present always.
So I see no cause for you to despair. Light can always come up. Keep appealing to the Divine Mother and she will give you the boon of her blessing. And he who has that boon must carry ever a smile on his lips.
(13.3.1995)
Page 356
34
You have asked how lines 5 and 6 are to be interpreted in the following passage in Savitri, pp. 34-35:
This too the supreme Diplomat can use,
He makes our fall a means for greater rise.
For into the ignorant nature's gusty field,
Into the half-ordered chaos of mortal life
The formless Power, the Self of eternal light
Follow in the shadow of the spirit's descent;
The twin duality for ever one
Chooses its home mid the tumults of the sense.
You have quoted Madhav Pandit's Readings in "Savitri" as saying:
"In the very process of its descent from the heights of the Spirit, the Divine has followed and involved itself in the movement in two poises that are necessary for working out its intention in Creation.... This is the dual status taken by the Divine in the Creation - Soul and Nature, Purusha and Prakriti - in order to build it in the full figure of the Truth to be manifested."
Here it would appear that "the spirit's descent" is interpreted as the descent of the Spirit during the process of creation by the Divine and the "twin duality" to mean the dual status of Soul and Nature. You comment: "I beg to submit that in view of the lines that precede and follow the passage quoted, 'the spirit's descent' would mean the pulling down of the individual soul by the 'subconscient cords' or the 'dull gravitation' and the formless Power following in the shadow is the supreme Diplomat coming down in the wake of our fall - the individual fall - to convert it into a means for 'greater rise'. In other words, the whole passage relates to the happenings in an individual mould and cannot therefore refer, just in a couple of lines in the middle, to the universal mould or
Page 357
Creation. It is significant that Shri Pandit also, except for the lines under consideration, interprets the whole passage as relating to Man and not to creation in general. I shall be highly obliged if you will send your illumined comments to clarify the whole thing."
In my opinion, the passage refers only to the individual's rise and relapse in the course of his spiritual experience. The "descent" here is the opposite of the individual being's ascent, spoken of earlier, to the "heights" of "heavenlier states". And the "twin duality for ever one" does not refer to Purusha and Prakriti in the usual sense but to
The formless Power, the Self of eternal Light.
A reference to the original creation, the primal descent into the Inconscient, would be an anomaly, a sudden unprepared intrusion in this context. Also, the mention of "the twin duality" choosing its home amid "the tumults of the sense" would be pointless because "the tumults of the sense" are surely part of Prakriti. We can't speak of Purusha and Prakriti descending into Prakriti itself! Again, the mention of "He" in the line just following our passage -
He comes unseen into our darker parts -
would be impossible to account for. In the ordinary Purusha-Prakriti universe of discourse it would signify Purusha alone. Where then would Prakriti be gone? Here "He" covers "the twin duality" and harks back to "the supreme Diplomat". It is the supreme Diplomat who is "the twin duality". We may equate this duality to Ishwara identical with his own Shakti.
(1954)
As far as I know, it is indeed "a new feature" - the opening of the chakras by the Force from above, as in our Yoga, instead of the Kundalini rising from below to open them. The divine
Page 358
"overhead" Force will do the opening job far more safely, far more fruitfully. But I may add that quite an amount of creative spiritual development can take place - a good deal of psychlcisation and spiritualisation can occur - without the chakras being felt opening in any concrete sense.
1 remember two secrets of success in Yoga mentioned by Sri Aurobindo. One is to regard Yoga not as a part of life but as the whole of life. I understand this to mean that we do not just set aside certain hours of meditation or japa or whatever else but practise at all times remembering the Mother and offering our activities to her and preserving under all circumstances an inner poise, a sense of tranquil wideness in our being. The second secret is to surrender oneself to her and appeal to her to take up our defects and by her Force free us progressively from them. The core of this movement is devotion and love on our part, invoking and drawing her love and grace, instead of relying on our own supposed strength, our capacity of tapasya, of intense concentrated effort. But, as you rightly say, we must not believe that no effort is called for on our side. Some aspiration and rejection by us have to accompany our surrender. What is undesirable is a violent fight with our weaknesses. A patient persuasion of them to disappear is required, along with a quietly persistent cry from the heart to the Mother to intervene with her light and chase them away. If things do not happen soon, we must avoid depression like poison. The Mother is well aware that human weaknesses don't vanish like morning mist. She expects us to keep confident and cheerful - confident because her power is limitless, and cheerful because she is always with us.
As for the "overhead" Force, we can't say that it was never at work before in the history of Yoga. But we can say that there was no fully realised embodiment of it to channel it to us before the Avatarhood of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
The "chronological puzzle" about the date of the great
Page 359
Shankara, over which many scholars have pondered, can be much simplified if we approach it through a less complicated time-problem: the date of Kumarila Bhatta, a notable contemporary of Shanikara's, with whom that eminent Adwaitin had a famous debate.
Kumarila Bhatta is known to have quoted in his Tantra-vartika a verse from Kalidasa's Abhijnana Sakuntalam: Satam hi sandehapadesu vastusu pramanam antahkaranapravrttayah. So he must be later than the great playwright whose time is invariably taken to be associated with a King Vikramaditya. Indian tradition puts him in the reign of the legendary founder of the Vikram Samvat of 57 B.C. Modern scholars mostly connect him with the third of the Imperial Guptas -Chandragupta II, titled Vikramaditya, who is generally dated to 380-414 A.D. R. C. Majumdar admits that there is no decisive reason why Kalidasa should be at the end of the fourth century A.D. rather than in the first century B.C. Thus we get a fixed span of about four hundred years within which or after which to place Kumarila Bhatta and hence Shankara.
On this view the frequent contention that Shankara who is said to have brought about the decline of Buddhism could not have come after the reign of Chandragupta II which historians acclaim as "the Golden Age of Hinduism" cannot stand. Besides, the Imperial Guptas, true to the typically tolerant spirit of the Hindu religion, are known to have partly patronised both the Buddhist and the Jain faiths. Perhaps we should give up the role popularly ascribed to Shankara as one who effectively uprooted Buddhism from India. It seems more true to hold that the tide of Muslim invasion submerged Buddhism. Such an opinion would untie our hands a good deal and what would be ruled out is the earliest date mentioned by some traditional-minded Indian scholars - 509508 B.C. - and just as radically any period preceding 367-368 B.C., the date given in A Short History of Kashmir by P. Gwashalal who observes that Copaditya (the seventeenth king of Kashmir) built the temple of Shankara on the Takht-i-Suleiman hill in this year.
Page 360
If we are to pass beyond the first century B.C. for Kalidasa, we would have to entertain the theory sometimes submitted that the Indian adventurer named by the Greek historians Sandrocottus, who was a contemporary of Alexander the Great and flourished as a king in the immediate post-Alexandrine epoch was not Chandragupta Maurya but Chandragupta I, founder of the Imperial Gupta dynasty. Then Chandragupta II Vikramaditya would mount the throne around 260 B.C. and Shankara, along with Kumarila Bhatta, might have lived not long after that monarch's contemporary Kalidasa. This would extend Shankara's possible antiquity but it would still exclude any time before c. 260 B.C.
Whatever the historical framework we may adopt, the "chronological puzzle" would be comparatively simplified by our approach through Kumarila Bhatta in the sense that a too ancient Shankara would necessarily fade out.
(15.6.88)
I have just received your present for my birthday. There had to be a Herculean struggle with the tight cloth-wrapping and the wooden box before I could get on to the cardboard box and, opening it, face the beauty and wonder of a most elegant wristwatch. I can well believe that, as you say, you personally went to the bazaar and chose it, for it shows the true poetic taste or rather the authentic spiritual vision inspiring that taste. With the black dial and bright hour-points, the vision is of a deep mystery out of which twelve stars prick their way into our ken. Here is a symbolisation of varied multiple Time emerging from a single Secrecy beyond in which all count is lost and an unfathomable silence reigns. Looking at the chain, 1 might intuitively take that silence to be golden, carrying the possibility of an expressive unfoldment of supreme value.
By now the operation -on your right eye for the cataract must have been successfully over. Do drop me a line whenever convenient. I am sure an intra-ocular lens has been implanted. I wish such a technique had been available when
Page 361
my cataracts were removed; then my "beauty" might not have been spoiled by these focussing appurtenances from outside! But I must remember that they suggest the wisdom of God if some philosophers of the Middle Ages are to be believed. For surely in anticipation of the need of specs God created the bridge of the human nose! The pantheist thinker Spinoza may have been particularly struck with this wisdom, for he was by profession a grinder of lenses for spectacles and even had a name whose last half (...noza) may serve to suggest to us what a "Nosey Parker" of speculative thought he must have been to poke as he did into the secret of the world's basic substance and make sweeping postulates about it.
Please forgive me for straying into recondite realms and making you strain not only your eyes but also your brain.
Before I close I am tempted to one more gymnastic with words. May the cataract-removal usher in for you an era in which there will be no cause for any cataract in the sense of waterfall in your life, no reason for tears to drop!
(14.11.1994)
You have been most efficient. The Bio-zincs reached me as if transmitted instantaneously from Singapore by sheer thought-power. Now no fear of any surgery in a delicate region. Our play on "prostate" and "prostrate" reminds me of a line in Savitri which brings in an antonym of "prostrate" and reads a bit oddly. It's in the passage (p. 392, lines 16-18):
And slowly a supine inconstant breeze
Ran like a fleeting sigh of happiness
Over slumberous grasses pranked with green and gold.
should I take " supine" to mean " low, close to earth, nearly level with the ground" or to signify'' indolent, lethargic'' ?
What makes you suspect Nirod and I were likely not to be pleased with your choosing to admire a poem which Sri
Page 362
Aurobindo had not directly praised? I mean "Seated Above", the opening piece in The Adventure of the Apocalypse. I think you have exaggerated to yourself the somewhat humorous remarks Sri Aurobindo has made. What he means to illustrate is the most probable reaction of "some critics". He says that he mentions the likely reaction "without supporting it" and begins by calling the poem "striking".
I like your stand for your supposedly heretical liking for the poem and the spirited way you have brought in Luther. But you have got a trifle mixed up as regards the doings of that founder of Protestantism. He did not utter those words you cite - "I could do no other" - when "nailing his fateful thesis to the door". What door? His own house's? Surely not. It was of the church in Wittenberg and the words came out of him at the funny-sounding Diet of Worms where he had been summoned to recant or, to use a more appropriate phrase, "eat his own words".
Your implied admiration for Luther shows very pleasantly to my mind that official Roman Catholicism sits lightly on you. One of my tutors - Father Gense (a Dutchman) at St. Xavier's School - called Luther "a pig". I was happy to read Chesterton styling him "a great man". Maybe this compliment was possible to G.K.C. because he was a convert and not a born Catholic. You, in spite of being a Catholic by birth, have emerged into
An ampler ether, a diviner air
and found in our Ashram's Mother a living culmination of the most precious and profound truth of the Roman Church -the vision and worship of the Divine Mother through the figure of the Virgin Mary. Of course, this is not the only source of soul-fulfilment for you. The Himalayan presence of Sri Aurobindo has given you the sense of reaching the end of all journeys. Your inmost being catches him saying (in words from a poem of mine where the Himalaya is vocal):
Page 363
Here centuries lay down their pilgrim cry,
Drowsed with the power in me to press my whole
Bulk of unchanging peace upon the eye
And weigh that vision deep into the soul.
(30.12.1994)
The topic of Dante is very welcome to me. I have only a smattering of Italian but my keen interest in all things Dantesque Has made me feel conversant with his many-sided nature and art. Sri Aurobindo's greater knowledge has helped me considerably. There is no doubt that Dante belongs to the top class of poets, but here we have to mark gradations and see how a poet stands with regard to the several abilities we should expect in the top class. According to Sri Aurobindo, they cover "supreme imaginative originality, supreme poetic gift, widest scope and supreme creative genius". These factors should include what I would call "quantity of quality", the abundance of the work. Thus Sri Aurobindo has said about Shelley, Keats and Wordsworth: "their best work is as fine poetry as any written, but they have written nothing on a larger scale which would place them among the greatest creators." Among the latter, Sri Aurobindo makes three rows:
First row - Homer, Shakespeare, Valmiki, Vyasa.
Second row - Dante, Kalidasa, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Virgil, Milton.
Third row - Goethe.
In Sri Aurobindo's view, Dante and Kalidasa would rank beside those in the first row except that they do not have enough of "a kind of elemental demiurgic power". Each of the others "has created a world of his own. Dante's triple world beyond is more constructed by the poetic seeing mind" than by such power.
Coming to "style", Sri Aurobindo distinguishes five kinds: the adequate, the effective, the illumined, the inspired, the inevitable. The last has to be understood in a special way. All the four preceding it can attain their inevitability but there
Page 364
is a category which falls outside all classification: one may dub it poetry in its sheer essence: this style is inevitability par excellence. When I once asked Sri Aurobindo how he would define Dante's style and I suggested the description "forceful adequate" because of "a certain simplicity mixed with power", he replied: "The 'forceful adequate' might apply to much of Dante's writing, but much else is pure inevitable; elsewhere it is the inspired style as in that reference to the result of Marsia's competition with Apollo:
Si come quando Marsia traesti
Delia vagina delle membre sue.1
I would not call the other line -
E venni del martirio a questa pace -2
merely adequate; it is much more than that. Dante's simplicity comes from a penetrating directness of poetic vision, it is not the simplicity of an adequate style."
Discussing poetic austerity and exuberance, Sri Aurobindo sets Dante between the two extremes of stringent bareness and colourful sumptuosity - extremes that also are capable of yielding first-rate poetry. Poised midway, Dante combines "the most sustained severity of expression with a precise power and fullness in the language which gives the sense of packed riches - no mere bareness anywhere".
You may be interested to know that I have translated into English terza rima the whole last canto of Paradiso as well as part of the fifth canto of Inferno telling the story of Francesca of Rirruni, and a passage from Canto XXX of Purgatorio recounting Dante's meeting Beatrice. About the Francesca-rendering Sri Aurobindo wrote: "The translation is very good - though not Dantesque at all points." His comment on the last canto of Paradiso, as couched in a note to Dilip Kumar Roy,
1.As when he plucked Marsias out of the sheath of his limbs.
2.And came from that martyrdom into this peace.
Page 365
ran: "Amal in his translation of Dante has let himself go in the direction of eloquence more than Dante who is too succinct for eloquence and he has used also a mystical turn of phrase which is not Dante's - yet he has got something of the spirit in the language, something of Dante's concentrated force of expression into his lines."
A word now on Beatrice. We all are inclined to rave romantically about her and Dante. I wrote to Sri Aurobindo long ago: "I am drawn to Dante especially by his conception of Beatrice which seems to me to give him his excellence. How would you define that conception?" The answer was: "Outwardly it was an idealisation, probably due to a psychic connection of the past which could not fulfil itself in that life. But I do not see how his conception of Beatrice gives him his excellence - it was only one element in a very powerful and complex nature." I remember the Mother once telling me that what Dante wrote in connection with Beatrice in La Vita Nuova struck her as an imaginative reconstruction of his experience rather than a direct transcript of it. On the other hand, her impression of his account of Inferno was that there was much accuracy in the general vision of it.
I'll close with a remark apropos of the line which forms the grand finale of the Divine Comedy:
L'amore che move il sole e l'altre stelle.
Translated into English -
The love that moves the sun and the other stars -
it sounds like a medieval anticipation of Shelley's insight into the universal movement while poring over the death of Keats and feeling the dead young poet to have been "made one with Nature":
He is a presence to be felt and known
In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,
Page 366
Spreading itself where'er that Power may move
Which has withdrawn his being to its own,
Which wields the world with never-wearied love,
Sustains it from below and kindles it above.
A Shelleyan understanding of Dante's line may make its "amor" akin to
the one Spirit's plastic stress
which
Sweeps through the dull dense world...
Here we have the intimation of a Divine Power and Love overarching the world and at the same time looking after it and guiding it onward. In Dante we have the Aristotelian notion transmitted by Thomas Aquinas to the Middle Ages that all creation moves towards its Creator - who is Himself unmoving - by a love born in all things because of His transcendent Beauty. Dante is not figuring God's love as urging onward the sun and the rest of the stellar world - the whole universe with all its living and non-living contents: he . is imaging the whole universe as being attracted towards the Divine Reality by a spontaneous love in its heart for that Supernal Perfection.
(29.10.1994)
You have asked me to say a few words on the subject of "friendship". Just the other day I myself got a spurt to reflect on it. A friend of mine whom I value greatly and who is staunch at heart had a half-minute argument with me on a certain minor theme while I was at my dining-table. Before I could realise what followed, the person disappeared from my sight. I thought there was only a walk-out into the front room towards which I had my back. After a minute or two 1 called
Page 367
out the name of my friend. As there was no answer I took my wheelchair to the front room. To my surprise I found that my friend had simply walked away!
It has been part of my Yogic practice neither to be disappointed nor to pass judgment. So I sat quietly facing the blank friendless-seeming space in front of me and let a "vision", as it were, of the nature of true friendship take shape. What should I expect a friend to be like? The immediate answer was: "Nothing." To make a formation and then try to fit people into it is folly. Human affairs are all the time in a flux because human nature itself is a constant movement, changing from minute to minute. However, there is a background of continuity, uniformity, constancy - the feeling that the same person persists behind all the variations of psychological weather - all the whims and moods and temperamental reactions rising and falling, turning this way and that, taking one colour or another. This feeling implies some measure of standing apart, an opportunity to weigh and decide, give a directive touch to the flying moment. Herein lies, I believe, what we sense to be our "freewill", from which arises our sense of responsibility for our actions. And it is the influence of the watcher hovering, as it were, over the surface of the heaving and plunging career of our fluctuant human nature, that made my friend behave the next day with the usual warm intimacy as if nothing had happened the night earlier. It was a case of the thoughtful "\" getting the better of the impulsive "ego". Of course I received the return of the usual warmth with a happy glow which had actually undergone no dimming, for I knew that my friend's heart was as genuinely drawn into relationship as my own. But I knew also that the future might hold other brief erratic turns basically signifying nothing yet capable of leaving a slightly unpleasant taste in the mouth of anyone who was not calmly prepared for small zigzags.
Unpreparedness on one's part and zigzagging on the other's would both be due to their not going past the usual experience of the hovering watcher. Friendship - or, for that
Page 368
matter, the experience of being in love - cannot do what my fellow-scribbler Srinivasa Iyengar would neologistically dub "beyonding" unless there is an inward penetration through that watcher to a self of peace which is not linked to the general flux of our life. No doubt, it is hardly felt at first as standing quite aloof, but there comes gradually the realisation of a depth and a silence within. There the usual motivations drop away, the common responses and refusals are absent and in their place a calm compassionate smile, full of understanding and tolerance, pervades all outward-looking states of mind.
(28.11.1994)
Page 369
35
I welcome your warning against what you think to be "a growing trend of Mother India to devote more and more pages and attention to its Editor". I endorse your remark: "Self-praise is a slow poison that can kill a soul. Please shake up yourself and free yourself from this slow poison." Yet I must echo the old cry of Themistocles: "Strike, but hear!"
Your expression - "self-praise" - has to be understood, I suppose, in a special sense. Surely you cannot mean that there is any article by me praising myself? Perhaps you intend the expression to signify that I have let admiration of me by my friends find a place in the very journal I edit? Well, I have edited Mother India from February 1949. For nearly 46 years nobody has said a word about K. D. Sethna or Amal Kiran. Only the fact that he happened to be in the saddle even in the forty-fifth year of the journal's existence and that this year coincided with his own ninetieth which is considered rather a memorable milestone - only that fact has loosened the tongues of his friends in appreciation of his work and his own personal being. He had no control over them. What he could control were the pages of Mother India. But you have to understand the situation in which he got placed.
Two articles which had been meant for the souvenir volume generously edited almost behind my back by Nirodbaran and R. Y. Deshpande arrived too late either to be included in it or to go with the long article by Jugal Kishor Mukherjee which came out as a booklet soon after. Where were they to appear? Persuaded by the wish of my friends I made room for them in Mother India. Not by an act of planning but by a stroke of fate they happened to hit you in the eye and irritate your grey cells and turn them black with indignation at my supposed conspiracy with my friends to put me in the limelight.
There is also a subtle factor to be borne in mind. You have pictured me as gleefully swallowing the praise in spite of its
Page 370
being "a slow poison". I first came to Sri Aurobindo's Ashram on December 16,1927, spent nine and a half years at a stretch except for two short visits to Bombay. Later I was in Bombay for a number of years, but finally came to settle down here and have been in the Ashram for the last 41 years. Surely something of the normal ego has dropped off? Would you believe the fact that it's only now when you have brought the topic of my ego into my thought-range that 1 had the curiosity to look with some attention into the souvenir volume, wondering what might have been penned in praise of one who has never longed for praise except from Sri Aurobindo as critic of the poems sent up to him time and again? A few articles had been sent to me for a general "look-over" and possible correction and all made me wonder how whatever I had been or done could have struck anybody as extraordinary. However, I shall not try overmuch to convey to you what long years of Yoga may have tended to do to me. It is always salutary to be put on one's guard against complacency about one human frailty or another. Thank you.
(7.5.1995)
You have asked me to write in some detail on the "emptiness" which I recently felt on a wide scale. The feeling had more than one shade. It was not only that everything had lost its importance and vanished from the centre-stage of consciousness. This vanishing is significant enough: issues that once struck me as vital to the world's intellectual vision receded into a dim distance. Thus the historical question'of whether a Dravidian India was invaded by Aryan foreigners in a less civilised state in c. 1500 B.C., had loomed large to me at one time and drawn a voluminous treatment. Now I did not care a rap for it. The inner space stood completely clear of such "burning issues". Scientific controversies like the apparent incompatibility between point-events in the Einstei-nian Space-time continuum on one hand and, on the other, the discontinuous leaps of energy in quantum mechanics
Page 371
turned into will-o'-the wisps not worth pursuing. Even day-to-day affairs of practical interest - for instance, my work on future publications of Mother India - assumed a far-away look and I had to compel myself to keep them in near-focus, reminding myself that it was a responsibility given by Sri Aurobindo and continued by the Mother.
The sage-king Bhartrihari reduced life's many-sidedness to a single bifurcation by saying: "For a wise man there are only two choices worth considering - the ascetic's forest and a woman with large hips." This is a raising to the nth degree of simplification the typical possibilities of the Indian genius. India concentrated either on spiritual escapism, involving the shedding of all holds by earth on the adventuring soul, or on full vitalism keeping in sharp sight the pleasures of the senses and the fervours of the body, as evidenced by the famous Kamasutra. A mental existence, rejoicing in sheer philosophical castles in the air, does not seem to have ever been a great draw - in spite of such examples of elaborate logic-chopping as Shankara's argumentative thinning away, layer after layer, of the phenomenal world to reach the bedrock of the single Self of selves replacing every appearance of solid existence. Indeed Mayavada itself was meant to serve a purpose beyond philosophy: sheer spirit-consciousness. For me in my "empty" state, an all-swallowing vacuum appeared to be the sole lure. Not only substantial female hips but also the deep recesses of lonely woods as the milieu of an inward-going mind faded into insignificance and inconsequence. What then survived? Surely not mental pursuits - nor the explorations of inner spaces, the discovery of visionary worlds. Physical death could be a candidate - but that too was not satisfying enough. What seemed the master-attraction was, in the words of an old poem of mine, "The Kailas of Night", some supreme mystery, infinite and eternal, in which the obscuration and absence of all conceivable things and activities would lead to the emergence and presence of a plenitude from which, as the Upanishads say, all speech falls off as totally inadequate. My poem runs:
Page 372
A mount keeps vigil here beneath vague skies,
A throne of shadow: claim it with closed eyes.
Grow deaf to your heart, the brain's hot hunger still.
To catch the curbed omnipotence of this hill,
This sovereign height of sleep-intensity
Where the universe is lost without one sigh -
Secret of deathless self-do minion
Waiting for evermore yet calling none,
A vast withdrawal from our transient sun!
(20.12.1994)
To most people sexual pleasure is the intensest self-fulfilment. I have heard a highly cultured man - one deeply interested in the world of the mind - say: "If there was no sex-act, life would not be worth living." One may understand this "self-fulfilment" to consist in two things: first, a raising of the sense of bodily existence to a piercing pitch, as it were, of pleasure, and in its wake a dissolving of what Wordsworth would call the world's heavy and weary weight in a thought-escaping rest of the whole physical system. But Wordsworth's own experience of the lifting of this weight had a quite different source: an entry into an interior life beyond the senses. It was a state of trance in which one became a sort of bodiless soul. But in the waking state too one can get beyond the hold of the sensational nature and its attendant sex-clutch if one brings forward what Sri Aurobindo terms the psychic being - a condition of consciousness in which there emerges from some secret depth in the heart-region - from behind the middle of the chest - a quietly keen delight, a rarefied intensity of joy, entirely different from any pleasure one has known, yet holding an essence of all pleasure in a profound purity.
In the moment of that emergence one tells oneself: "How inadequate are all attempts by lyrical poets like Jayadeva to symbolise this mysterious inner intoxication by thrilling pictures of romantic sensuality!" The "feel" of the psychic experience is worlds apart from anything connected with sex.
Page 373
What has led poetry to see love of God through sexual spectacles is the failure to distinguish between the sensuous and the sensual: the sensuous comes to us through line and curve, texture and colour, form and movement, the sensual hears through these appeals a call to possess, devour, penetrate - a stirring of frenzy. The frenzy itself has two parts - we may style them public and private. The former covers eyes, lips, hands: the latter extends below the waist. The two parts can combine but can also exist and function independently. Yet even in what is above the waist there is a tinge of turbidity which is always liable to make one slip down. At times a sense of escape comes when somehow one is pulled, as it were, to the top of one's head by some radical stroke of circumstance demanding a resort to a haven of spiritual safety where one can hold aching thoughts at bay.
Thus I remember two years of complete rest from the pull of sex when I had to pass beyond the memory of the tragic way a dear one had died. Here was not the old control so much as a constant breathing of an air of freedom. However, the area of consciousness below was lit up by an alien light and not by its own inherent radiance. I have known an inherent radiance only once - for a few minutes. One evening, after the old soup-distribution by the Mother, I was going towards the main Ashram building. In those days a number of short tunnel-like passages connected the several buildings rented to form the Ashram. Crossing one such passage I suddenly found my body translucent, as it were, felt it crystalline and knew it inherently devoid of all sexual presence. The whole self of sex seemed thrown out, leaving the body in a state which I can best describe as ready to be uplifted into its own free unsullied original divinity which may be suggested by a phrase like Savitri's
A crystal of the ultimate Absolute... (38:21)
An alternative to the "crystal" imagery is the "diamond"-metaphor as in the Ilion-line:
Page 374
Ida rose with her god-haunted peaks into diamond lustres.
A body, liberated from all load of common life and awaking into its own higher self-sense just by being swept clear of sexuality in a radical manner, appears to be an important part of the vision of the human soul straining towards complete self-consummation -
Arms taking to a voiceless supreme delight,
Life that meets the Eternal with close breast,
An unwalled mind dissolved in the Infinite,
Force one with unimaginable rest....
(Collected Poems, 575: 45-48)
The first line assumes that an ineffable rapture awaits the experience of having a body and that this experience can be reached when there is an ultimate love-gesture by the body towards an ideal of itself - a full resort by the limbs to the greatest self-fulfilment possible by means of a quest to realise their own substance and shape in the Bliss of an archetypal existence - the karana sarira, the Causal Sheath, revealed by the seers of the Upanishads. The descent of this Causal Body and its merging with our own flesh which is heir to a thousand natural shocks, as Hamlet tells us, would be, to my understanding, the fullest form of what Sri Aurobindo calls physical transformation.
(24.1.1995)
While there is universal condemnation of terrorism, a good deal of confusion exists regarding its essential nature, the means to meet it, and its implications as between State and State. A cool and clear look is required.
First of all, terrorism is not a matter of stray murders: it is systematised killing. Nor is it to be equated with guerilla warfare. A body of opponents to a regime is a military organisation with military targets. Though it may at times
Page 375
attack officials directly upholding that regime, it does not deliberately and indiscriminately kill civilians, including women and children. The terrorists do so.
Secondly, they cannot be met by an attitude which pictures them as wronged parties whose cause justifies the means adopted. The means are too blind and brutal to help the cause: even those who have some sympathy with it do not excuse them and the professed goal will never be achieved by the chosen means unless civilised countries lose their nerve. Terrorists cannot be taken as fighting for any cause conceived as legitimate. They must be seen as bent simply on destabilising civilised life - and it may be noted that their activities are directed against such life in democracies and grossly misuse the freedom of individual movement permitted there.
On recognition of the true nature of terrorism, fitting steps have to follow. There cannot be any accommodating parley with people who hold innocent lives to ransom - as in the cases of "hostages" - in order to collect inordinate sums of money for their activities and, as part of the bargain, to free fellow-criminals from legal custody. With the needed skill and strategy they have to be attacked, the attackers taking as much care as possible not to endanger the lives of the hostages, but refusing to be handicapped by some risk being involved. If this risk is shirked, greater peril is invited in the future: more lives will be put at the mercy of the terrorists because hesitation now will encourage them to go on playing the game of hostage-taking. The choice of right action against this game is a delicate and difficult and sometimes heart-searing matter, but the general principle of no intimidated concession has to be observed.
Apart from the concern to save lives, there is the commercial motive. A country may have trade-relations with a country whose nationals happen to be the terrorists requiring to be countered. It is a base argument that if a fair amount of trade is going on with a country secretly supporting these nationals we must be restrained. Under no circumstances
Page 376
should commercial considerations hinder firm treatment of terrorists.
Finally comes up the question of the direct ways to deal with terrorism-supporting countries. Economic sanctions on a concerted scale against them is one way. It is, however, a slow process and never leak-proof. While the sanctions are being tried out, terrorist acts may continue and innocent lives be lost. More stringent measures may be called for, and here the issue of a suspected State's sovereignty has to be faced.
Can any State's sovereignty be regarded as absolute and unconditional? Take the famous case of Israel's "Operation Jonathan" to rescue over a hundred hostages held in a hijacked plane which had landed in Idi Amin's Uganda. Idi Amin refused to free the hostages. Israel flew 2000 miles to take by surprise the airport at Entebbe, killed the terrorists concerned and freed the hostages, at the cost of one life of her own - unfortunately the heroic leader Jonathan himself. The whole world applauded Israel's enterprise: a daring humanitarian adventure had been carried out. But the sovereignty of Uganda had been violated.
Every civilised country accepted the violation as justified, thus granting that no sovereignty is absolute and unconditional. Even under circumstances other than those that spurred "Operation Jonathan" but sufficiently barbarous, restricted military action may prove to be legitimate. One could perhaps go so far as to argue: "After all, terrorism by one country's nationals or by its stooges is practised on several other countries' soil. Bombs and other weapons of war are repeatedly employed there without any heed to these countries' sovereignty. So a retaliatory violation of the offending State's sovereignty cannot be ruled out." Anyway, respect for the principle of sovereignty depends on circumstances. No doubt, the principle cannot be lightly set at nought. But if one has refrained for a long time from retaliation because incontrovertible evidence of guilt was lacking and if at last such evidence comes to hand, there is no reason why punitive
Page 377
military measures within defined limits should not be undertaken against terrorist headquarters or training camps on foreign soil. Some civilian casualties may occur, but they will be accidental and unavoidable, quite unlike those which are intentionally brought about by the machinations of the terrorist organisation on soil over which other countries are normally sovereign.
Whether or not the retaliatory act is to be committed hangs on many factors: every wronged country may not be in a position to exercise its right. What should not be denied with pious platitudes is the right itself.
Page 378
36
Did I misquote Hopkins when I recalled his line on Oxford as
Towery city and branchy between towers?
You have written "leafy between towers". I thought of "leafy" but somehow could not feel it to be as apt, visually no less than rhythmically, as "branchy". The largeness, the grandeur evoked by "towery" fails to get support enough from the former. Something soft and sweet and huddled together comes in, where the requirement is of something strong that springs out at the same time that it makes a crowd. I wish you or I could check the phrase.
Your picture of the new skyline of Oxford horrifies me. Not that I am wedded to the past in all its forms, but when our Mother sees the Lord as going always ahead she does not reject everything of the past. On the contrary, all that is fine in times gone is quintessenced by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and carried over into a new revelation. I might aver poetically that their work answers to that superb phrase of St. Augustine about God: "O Pulchritudo antiqua et semper nova!" - "O Beauty of ancient days yet ever new!"
(21.8.1982)
I have looked up Hopkins. The line we were concerned with occurs in the poem, "Duns Scotus's Oxford" and the first two lines don't bring in boughs, as you thought, but branches as I did. They run in typical Hopkinsian:
Towery city and branchy between towers;
Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmed, lark-charmed,
rook-racked, river-rounded...
You are right about the Shakespeare-reference, except that
Page 379
it doesn't have the word "branches" but its synonym which is not in the Hopkins-phrase:
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold
Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
Perhaps these lines have strongly associated a "branchy" tree with' bareness, a late-autumnal near-leailessness, in your mind, but poetically there is no reason for the association in general. Take Keats in his Hyperion:
As when, upon a tranced summer-night
Those green-robed senators of mighty woods,
Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars,
Dream, and so dream all night without a stir,
Save from one gradual solitary gust
Which comes upon the silence, and dies off,
As if the ebbing air had but one wave;
So came these words and went...
Here greenness, summer and branchiness are all figured together.
Your story of chancing upon The Synthesis of Yoga in a public library moves me very much. It has the unmistakable stamp of Sri Aurobindo finding his childf Whoever is born to collaborate with him in working towards a new humanity he reaches out to in one way or another.) I can very well understand how amazed you must have felt on discovering -as some phrase of Sri Aurobindo puts it - the ultimate Face that is our own. When a Voice Supreme comes to us as if out of a depth in ourselves, we may be sure that we have met our destiny.
(31.8.1982)
Page 380
My replying on March 8 this year (1984) to your letter of November 18,1983 carries on - with greater gusto than your answering on July 14, 1982 my letter of June 12 in the same year and your subsequent "inordinate delay" - the habit we have established of being "a little laggard" in correspondence.
I have read with great interest the xeroxed matter you have enclosed. Isaac Asimov has always gripped me. His account of how the year 0 got neglected in the current dating system is quite credible - in fact, it is the only one that offers an explanation of the widely accepted silliness of Dionysus Exiguous - Dionysus the Shorty - in the Dark Ages. The zero of Hindu mathematics had not come as yet to the West. Hence the Shorty's anomaly of 1 A.D. being preceded by 1 B.C. But why was the natural mistake accepted later on? The torch of the Hindu mathematical enlightenment with its inclusion of the zero, carried by the Arabs, should have made modern chronologists sit up and cry, "O what an O-versight!"
Yes, the attraction Asimov has for "coincidences" may prove for him an opening into the dimension of ultra-scientific reality, for they seem to be relatives to what Jung has dubbed a-causal synchronicity - two similar events occurring at the same time without any related antecedents. For example, I may mention so-and-so and at once the phone rings, with so-and-so on the line. Or I may be discussing a problem and, on opening a book, see the key-word of it leap to the eye.
I wonder whether in any valid sense your getting your copy of The Life Divine on November 25, 1950, one of my birthdays, is another of Asimovian coincidences. Of course, if I have been lucky enough to be your '"favourite" among those disciples of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother whom you "knew about", we have a psycho-spiritual basis already for it. But possibly a numerological association between the event and me may be traced, 25+11+1950=1986 which can be dealt with in two ways. 1+9=10=1 and, with 8 added, yields 9 which, along with 6, makes 15. The other way is just to sum up the
Page 381
digits of 1986 and reach 24 which reduces to 6. Now the number given me by the Mother among those present in the Store-room for a special purpose was 15 which also equals 6. (6, by the way, signifies, according to the Mother, "New Creation", something I must be particularly in need of!)
Apart from all this, The Life Divine happens to be my favourite among the books of Sri Aurobindo, side by side with Savitri which is a poetic analogue to it in sheer spiritual knowledge. I have even declared that on finishing The Life Divine one can't help thanking that the author of this book must be the author of the universe! And it is my conviction that the first chapter of The Life Divine, the shortest in the book, is the finest and profoundest and most comprehensive piece of condensed philosophical writing in the world.
The Rossetti literature you have sent me has made very good reading. The translation of Villon's Ballad of Dead Ladies has been one of my favourites too. The original French of that haunting line you have quoted is -
Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan? -
Where are the snows of yesteryear?
Knowing me to be a Parsi, you have inquired about the Zoroastrian religion. The original sense of it is still a matter of controversy. The ancient Greeks who were nearest to it among foreigners took it as a dualism, the God of Light and Goodness, Ormuzd, pitted against Ahriman, the Devil of Darkness and Evil. Actually the Avestan Anramanyu, the Bad Spirit, is set over against Spentamanyu, the Good Spirit, but it seems as if Ahura Mazda, the Avestan for Ormuzd, who is separately mentioned in the earliest scripture, the Gathas or Songs of Zarathustra, is also shown in them to be identical with Spentamanyu. But, of course, the exhortation is always to accept one single deity, Ahura Mazda; in that sense we have a monotheism like the original Judaic monotheism which, while taking Yahweh as one of the many tribal gods of
Page 382
the Near East insists on the worship of none save him. The Zoroastrians have been devoted solely to Ahura Mazda, but ontologically Ahura Mazda and Anramanyu appear to be coeval, though the former has an edge on the latter in that at the end of the world he will be victorious over the other and imprison him in an everlasting hell.
As to the origin of the duality, there arose the "heresy" of Zarvanism. Zarvan-akarna is the Avestan for "Endless Time". This mysterious entity is taken to be the progenitor of the ever-opposed twins, Ahura Mazda and Anramanyu (or Ahriman). The modern understanding, after the scholar Martin Haug, among the Zoroastrians is that Ahura Mazda, the one and only deity, an aspect of whom may be considered "Endless Time", gave birth to the Good Spirit and the Bad Spirit. But such a view creates the problem of God being the cause of both Good and Evil, as appears also to have been Yahweh in the time of Isaiah. How and why the Bad Spirit, the Devil, was engendered has not been made clear. In the Christian world-view the being who is Satan was originally a divine being, an archangel, who misused the "freewill" granted to all the creations of God and became the Prince of Darkness from having earlier been Lucifer, Son of the Morning. In Zoroastrianism, as in Christianity, human beings are endowed with freewill and always called upon to choose the good and reject the bad. By extension the superhumans may or must be visioned as enjoying freedom of will. Then Ahriman becomes a fallen angel. But his fallenness from angelhood is nowhere made explicit in Zoroastrian metaphysics.
(8.3.1984)
What a pleasure it will be if you can drop in at my new place as you did at my old one. I very clearly remember you appearing out of the blue. I think the last four words are most appropriate because in spite of your small sweet charming solidity you had something ethereal about you, and this
Page 383
something has kept wafting to me throughout the years across all your correspondence. The ancient physicists spoke of five elements - earth, water, air, fire and ether. Most people have two or three of the first four, very few have even a touch of the fifth. In my view you have ail the first four - a rare enough thing - but they are all wrapped in the transfiguring last, which makes for quite a rarity and a great delight.
However, I have been expecting something more from you than the ethereal wrapping the intensely imaginative, the light-heartedly floating, the many-motioned and the common-sensically balanced. This something more is the permeation of the four elements by the fifth. It is when one element or another - out of fire, air, water and earth - is permeated by ether that suddenly a person turns towards the spiritual life with a direct cry. The cry puts the person in contact with what Bergson's teacher called the "Within-Beyond" but since only one element has been etherealised there is either a shooting off into that intimate unknown to the neglect of this element's companions or a kind of see-saw and zigzag because of pulls in several directions. When the permeation follows what I have termed the wrapping of the fiery, the airy, the watery, the earthy by the ethereal the natural result would be
The golden smile of the one Self everywhere
and a happy harmonious holiness would run through the blood and light up the flesh - with no spectacular effect but with a constant simple suggestion of being blessed and able to bless.
I think a beginning of fruitful total permeation is taking place in your life. Your letter from Singapore leaves me in no doubt. And I am glad that the urge in you not only to read, not merely to know with the mind but to be what Sri Aurobindo revealed as Reality by his life no less than his writing, is a quiet spontaneity rather than a fretful uncontrollable force. 1 can see you growing like your own English garden - a greenery speckled yellow with daffodils, primroses
Page 384
and celandine, the fruit trees ready to be covered with blossom. Though your return to Singapore prevented you from viewing the fullness of the English spring, you will not miss what will come to flower and fruit in your new inner life, for this garden will be your own true self discovering naturally its own supernature. Whatever help I am capable of giving will surely be given most happily.
(10.5.1984)
It is interesting that when you remember me you always see me smiling. I have used the word "remember" as if you had met me and were carrying a memory of me. It is certain that your inner being has established a concrete contact with me -no wonder it has the impression of a smile playing perpetually on my mouth, for indeed there is a quiet happiness in me all the time - yes, all the time precisely because it comes from something that does not begin with one life or finish with it but runs like a golden thread on which life after life is hung - some lives bright, others dark and most of them grey. This thread is not a straight line - it is a curve that is lit to a smile, and one end of it is suspended from a point in eternity whose name is Sri Aurobindo and the other from a similar point namable as the Mother. Their light and their bliss flow through it, however faintly. By their grace alone I have been able to discover this inner thread. I cannot say that every moment of mine is identified with it. A few moments are, but at least a shining shadow of it is caught by many.
I am sure you also feel within yourself the smile of the Immortal in the mortal, which the seers call the Soul. All of us who have been touched by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have wakened to it but the whole travail of Yoga lies in keeping alive the sense of that touch of theirs by which the inner is brought close to" the outer.
The soul's smile is also the best weapon against difficulties which the hostile forces raise in our path. To smile at their doings instead of raging at them or feeling depressed is to
Page 385
make them realise how little importance we give them. Failing in their attempt to upset us, they themselves are disappointed and get exhausted. The smile is, in addition, a secret message from us to what stands behind the apparent hostile forces. For behind them and under the mask of the Devil is the Divine, paradoxically helping us through the trials and troubles which bring up our weaknesses and challenge us to be strong. Of course this does not mean that we should look for difficulties. But when they come we must feel Sri Aurobindo manipulating what the hostile forces believe to be their own working. The Lord takes advantage of every crisis to create for us some short-cut towards our own fulfilment. And when we have the vision of the Supreme hidden within His seeming opposite we at once lose the sense of infirmity and hopelessness at being hard hit. Nothing in Yoga happens without the Mother's mysterious hand somewhere in it. And our smile speaks of our recognition of it and immediately draws the Grace towards us across the darkness. The moment we feel its presence at the back of everything, our hearts begin to sing in answer to trumpets of victory sounding from afar. The assurance comes to us that there is no abyss so deep that the Grace cannot lift us out of it sky-high.
So, dear friend, keep a smile playing on your lips in all circumstances. It will also help you, among other things, not to be upset if you don't hear from me for long. I have a lot of work - reading, writing, editing - and I may not be able to answer your sweet letters very frequently. But please have the smiling certainty that I have not forgotten you.
(7.10.1987)
Page 386
Home
Disciples
Amal Kiran
Books
Share your feedback. Help us improve. Or ask a question.