Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 4
In response to a letter received by Dilipda from Janak Kumari who said, “My dear Dada, I didn’t tell you but I was getting a little heart-trouble at Pondicherry the day I left. When I reached Nagpur yesterday I found the trouble getting worse. Unfortunately my car had gone back and I had to travel by bus. At about 2.30 p.m., sitting in the bus at the bus-stand I had one of the worst heart attacks in my life. It was attended with a violent nausea and I had an excruciating pain in the chest and I found myself losing consciousness. 
I was cold with perspiration. Just as I was about to slide off the bench I called out to Mother for help. I remember praying, «Please save me!» It could not have been more than five minutes that I had remained unconscious when I suddenly found myself awake as from sleep without the slightest trouble or pain or even a legacy of weakness. Since then I travelled all the way back home fit, strong and reassured as never before! I can’t tell you what a miracle the whole thing was and what a blessing! How can I tell you how grateful I am to Mother for helping me? I felt almost as if I wouldn’t have to worry about anything in future and that I should be taken care of everywhere. Please tell me, Dada, if I can be of any little service to the Ashram. I would love to do any work – anything. I would feel very grateful if Mother can give me something to do for her.”
Nirod has, no doubt, explained to you Mother’s answers to the points that arise in Janak Kumari’s letter and her reasons for them, so I confine this letter to two points, her request to be given some work to do for the Mother and her experience. On the first you must have heard from Nirod what is Mother’s difficulty in deciding and giving any concrete answer. But this does not mean that she would be at all unwilling if she had anything of the kind before her – on the contrary. My own idea is that if the demand in her is persistent, the work will come of itself or she will herself find it. If anything does occur to us we shall let her know at once.
As to the experience, certainly Janak Kumari’s call for help did reach the Mother, even though all the details she relates in her letter might not have been present to the Mother’s physical mind. Always calls of this kind are coming to the Mother, sometimes a hundred close upon each other and always the answer is given. The occasions are of all kinds, but whatever the need that occasions the call, the Force is there to answer it. That is the principle of this action on the occult plane. It is not of the same kind as an ordinary human action and does not need a written or oral communication on the one who calls; an interchange of psychic communication is quite sufficient to set the Force at work. At the same time it is not an impersonal Force and the suggestion of a divine energy that is there ready to answer and satisfy anybody who calls it is not at all relevant here.
It is something personal to the Mother and if she had not this power and this kind of action she would not be able to do her work; but this is quite different from the outside practical working on the material plane where the methods must necessarily be different although the occult working and the material working can and do join and the occult power gives to the material working its utmost efficacy. As for the one who is helped not feeling the force at work, his knowing might help very substantially the effective working, but it need not be indispensable; the effect can be there even if he does not know how the thing is done. For instance, in your work in Calcutta and elsewhere my help has been always with you and I don’t think it can be said that it was ineffective; but it was of the same occult nature and could have had the same effect even if you had not been conscious in some way that my help was with you.
Mother says that you can very well ask Janak Kumari plainly to give financial help to the Ashram if she is in a position to do so. The need of such assistance is very great and, with the financial and economic conditions in the world worsening all the time, it may be long before things right themselves.