An audio recording and a transcript of a talk.
At the Feet of The Mother
Nolini da
"There is another cause of the general inability to change which at present afflicts the sadhak. It is because the sadhana, as a general fact, has now and for a long time past come down to the Inconscient..."
The second part of Nolini-da's recollections about early days in Pondicherry.
"Sri Aurobindo came to Pondicherry and took shelter here. We might say of course from another point of view that it was he who gave shelter to Pondicherry within his own consciousness. But why this city in particular?"
"There is no rule of complete forgetfulness in the return of the soul to rebirth. There are, especially in childhood, many impressions of the past life which can be strong and vivid enough, but the materialising education and influence of the environments prevent their true nature from being recognised."
A Rishi is characterised by his seer-vision. Whatever he writes or states is like something seen before the very eyes and described in toto with minute precision right to the inmost depths. Such is Nolini Kanta, our Nolinida, as he is revealed through his writings.
"In golden moments of creation, great souls descend to earth surrounding the Avatar. These forerunners of superhumanity come to help in hewing the ways of immortality as the playmates, servants, comrades and the true children of the Lord. Surely one such was our Nolini-da."
"Speaking of Maheshwari, Sri Aurobindo writes: "To the wise she gives a greater and more luminous wisdom; those that have vision she admits to her counsels." Nolini Kanta Gupta was perhaps the first of the few whom the Mother so admitted to her counsels."
When the love goes towards the Divine, there is still this ordinary human element in it. There is the call for a return and if the return does not seem to come, the love may sink; there is the self-interest, the demand for the Divine as a giver of all that the human being wants [...] But the true love for the Divine is in its fundamental nature not of this kind, but psychic and spiritual.
"The psychic being at the time of death chooses what it will work out in the next birth and determines the character and conditions of the new personality. Life is for the evolutionary growth by experience in the conditions of the Ignorance till one is ready for the higher light."
"Quiet and economical in words and action, as he always was, he was able to dispose of a great deal of business of the Ashram and yet save a lot of time for his varied studies and writings. He looked so leisurely in the midst of all this."
A short composition, based on photographs of The Mother, a vision of Nolini Kanta Gupta, music by Sunil Bhattacharya, and paintings by Priti Ghosh. Produced on occasion of The Mother's Darshan of February 21, 2017, in Pondicherry.
"Nolini Kanta is a name to reckon with in the history of man’s spiritual evolution. In spite of being an amazingly versatile talent bordering on genius, he was first and foremost a seeker of the spiritual life. Under the luminous and effective guidance of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother he blossomed into a yogi of high stature and all-round spiritual growth. "
"... when the crisis has a spiritual seed or intention, then a complete or a partial manifestation of the God-consciousness in a human mind and soul comes as its originator or leader. That is the Avatar."
The transformation to which we aspire is too vast and complex to come at one stroke; it must be allowed to come by stages. The physical change is the last of these stages [...] Till then at least the body and its supporting energies have to be maintained in part by the ordinary means, food, sleep, etc. Food has to be taken in the right spirit, with the right consciousness..."
"... none can serve as a third Guru in the domain of so rare a reach of Divine Consciousness. Neither did Nolini ever claim to be such. But nobody deserved as richly as he to be a potent helper on the way... He has also figured admirably as a guardian of the Ashram by his wide reputation for deep mystical experience and a many-sided wisdom."
33 years ago, on 7th February 1984, Nolini Kanta Gupta, a foremost disciple of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, left his body. In the following weeks we will share several tributes to Nolini-da's life, which we find to be very inspiring and touching. We start with an article by Nirod-da.
