Arjava

J.A.Chadwick was born in 1899. Nothing much is known about his parentage or early years. He was educated at Cambridge in Mathematical Philosophy where he was a ‘distinguished Don’. As a Professor of Philosophy (Mathematical Logic) and a Fellow of Trinity College Cambridge, he was looked upon with extreme reverence for his stupendous abilities in Mathematical Philosophy “of the specifically ‘Cambridge’ sort.”  While at Cambridge, he had joined a one of the groups of the Rosicrucians and the influence of Rosicrucianism made him face serious difficulties years later when he started practising the Integral Yoga.

Despite having a brilliant academic career, Chadwick’s heart yearned for something else. A profound spiritual aspiration made him seek the Truth ‘that beyonded all formal and conceptual knowledge’ of both Mathematics and Philosophy. He was also sick of the European civilization and felt depressed about the regrettable state the world was in due to the bankruptcy of spiritual wisdom. It was the fire of aspiration for the Truth which compelled him to leave his family, friends and home-country and come to India in the 1920s.

Chadwick joined Lucknow University as a lecturer in Philosophy. There he befriended Ronald Nixon (the Professor of English who later became well-known as Yogi Krishnaprem) and Dhurjati Prasad Mukherji, the Professor of Economy and Social Science. The latter could not have helped Chadwick in his spiritual quest as he himself was a staunch atheist but it was Krishnaprem who introduced him to the writings of Sri Aurobindo. In 1928, Krishnaprem gave up his lectureship at Lucknow University and went first to Benaras with his Guru Yashoda Ma and later to Almora where Yashoda ma had built a ‘temple-retreat’. His penultimate meeting with Chadwick took place at Benares where they sat together on the banks of the Ganges and talked ‘far into the night of dreams that lay close to our hearts, dreams that had brought us together as they had brought us both to India.’ They would meet again in a university bunglow at Lucknow—that was the last time they saw each other.

In the meantime, Chadwick had decided to resign from his job as a Professor in Lucknow University because, in his own words, “I came here to learn—not to teach!” Moreover, he was ‘tired of India’s Groves of Academe.” He had also made up his mind of going back to England when he decided to visit Pondicherry. Dhurjati Prasad gave him a letter of introduction addressed to Dilip Kumar Roy who was his friend since long. In 1930, Chadwick arrived at Pondicherry and met Dilip Kumar, who later wrote about him: “There was something striking in his face which drew me at once to him.” He told Dilip Kumar that though he had purchased some books of Sri Aurobindo but he had not read them. And then he said that it was not books that he was athirst for; he craved something more “concrete and living.” And he added: “I didn’t come here to stay where I am. For I came here to win a passport, if I could, to your time-old wisdom of the spirit—and that as a seeker, not as a critic.”

Dilip Kumar was deeply impressed by Chadwick’s thirst for Light and ‘the note of transcendent sincerity in his delicately-cadenced voice and strikingly-intellectual physiognomy.’ He went to the Mother and sought and received an appointment from her for Chadwick. The following day Chadwick was taken to the Mother by Dilip Kumar. The Mother asked Chadwick why was he seeking spiritual wisdom to which he replied that he sought so as he found life to be ‘void of meaning’ and only ‘spiritual wisdom can fill the void’ so with the purpose of attaining that wisdom he had come to India but in vain.

The Mother replied: “One receives in the measure of one’s receptivity.”

Chadwick asked: “How is one to grow in receptivity?”

The Mother answered: “By sincerity and trust. Sincerity in one’s seeking and trust in the Divine Grace…Sincerity you have. Only you must learn to accept that you can get the response you want in proportion to your trust in Grace.”

Chadwick left Pondicherry on that very day in the evening. He told Dilip Kumar, who had gone to see him off at the Railway Station, about the Mother that he had ‘never been so overwhelmed by anyone.” Though he left, his mind remained in Pondicherry. He realized that Pondicherry was the place where he would get the Light and Wisdom he aspired for.

He wrote to Dilip Kumar after a few months and asked whether the Mother would accept him as a disciple. The Mother accepted him and Chadwick came to India leaving England forever and joined the Ashram. He was then thirty-one years of age. A new life began for him who was one of the earliest sadhaks from the West to join the Ashram. To mark the beginning of his new life, Sri Aurobindo gave him a new name—“Arjavananda”—Arjava in brief, which meant the joy of simplicity and straightforwardness in Sanskrit.