Sri Parichand
A Pilgrim of the Spirit
A Tribute on His Birth Centenary;
Sri Parichand. A Pilgrim of the Spirit: A Tribute on His Birth Centenary.- Pondicherry, 2004.- 151 p.
Contents
1. Sri Parichand: A Biographical Sketch (1904-1991)
3. Sri Aurobindo Writes to Parichand
4. The Mother Writes to Parichand on Sadhana
5. The Mother Writes to Parichand on Gardening Work
6. Rishabhchand Writes to Parichand
7. Parichand Writes to Spiritual Aspirants
We are happy to bring out this slim volume to commemorate the birth centenary of our illustrious grandfather Sri Parichand Kothari. The aim is not to give publicity to the spiritual achievements of a person who scrupulously kept away from fame all his life, though all those who knew him will admit that he fully deserved it. Ours is a humble attempt to pay our reverential homage to one who renounced the worldly life in the prime of youth when he was still thirty, in 1934, to pursue Sri Aurobindo’s yoga with unflagging ardour for more than half a century till he passed away in 1991. His sadhana knew no deviation or distraction. It was for him not merely the first but the only thing in life.
Such a life, like the life of all yogis, is never lived on the surface for the man of the world to see. Outwardly it is even uneventful, since it is lived at the deepest levels of consciousness, and whatever happens, even the most significant events are seen only with the occult eye. Parichand was too modest to speak about his spiritual achievements and nobody except the all-seeing eyes of the Mother could have known them. This is the reason why we have deliberately refrained from publishing any articles on him.
Our aim is to bring out the essential Parichand — a dedicated disciple of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, whose every movement was guided by Their light, an untiring pilgrim of the spirit who was vigilant every moment, a man who radiated quiet cheerfulness and detached goodwill for all and seemed to live from a deeper spiritual consciousness than we ordinary mortals do. Last but not the least, he was a man of deep, spontaneous humility.
The present book could not have been published without the support of our many well-wishers. So we thankfully acknowledge the unstinted cooperation of Sri Manoj Das Gupta, the Managing Trustee of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, who gave the permission to use the material available with Research & Archives Department. We thank Sri Kishorilal Dhandhania, who knew Parichand intimately, for writing the foreword to the book. We are grateful to Bob Zwicker for generously permitting us to reprint his carefully edited correspondence of Parichand with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, to editors of The Golden Chain and specially to Raman Reddy who interviewed Parichand for that magazine — as it turned out it was to be his first and last interview — as also for writing a concise but comprehensive biographical note on Parichand for the book.
Finally we thank all those who gave us Parichand’s letters to them, but among them, special mention must be made of Shyam Kumari who was a recipient of perhaps the largest number of letters and served him with a daughter’s devotion during the last years of his life.
In the end we pray to the Mother, who was the inspiring source and guiding light to Parichand, to bless our effort of paying tribute to her distinguished son.
Pradip Jain
Parichand in Pondicherry (c. 1975)
When invitation came to share my experience with and perception of our dear Parichand, our intimate, inspiring and elevating contact of more than half a century came alive.
He was not a man given to sermonising but silently radiated the spirit and influence through living and reactions to situation. He was always calm and composed, whatever be the situation. I have never seen him losing the balance. Whenever a problem was discussed he straightaway came to the core of the issue and gave his enlightened views.
His work with flowers and nature also enmeshed with his sadhana, with its psychic atmosphere. For him to have the psychic contact was the sole aim. Some of the lines he often quoted to us were —
“In moments when the inner lamps are lit
And life’s cherished guests are left outside,
Our spirit sits alone and speaks to its gulfs,
A wider consciousness opens then its doors,
Invading from spiritual silences
A ray of the timeless glory stoops awhile
To commune with our seized illumined clay
And leaves its huge white stamp upon our lives.”
His relation with our whole family, particularly myself, Prabha, Sumitra, Uttama was unique and intimate and each one benefitted. Prabha is particularly grateful for the patient pains he took and unstinted support he extended to prepare her for understanding Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s writings, in spite of the fact that she hardly knew English.
We miss his physical presence very much. Of course he is with the Mother and the journey goes on uninterrupted. He is ever with us today for we remember in our daily life his mantra — “Sincerity is the key.”
Kishorilal Dhandhania
Parichand in Kolkata, c. 1929
Umirchand in Pondicherry, c. 1955
A prolific thinker, deeply devoted to studies, a great spiritualist and above all a great human being at heart, my great-grandfather Sri Parichand Kothari was undoubtedly an extraordinary person. He was a person with a clear mind and pious soul. He was a man more of deeds than of words.
I once had an opportunity to meet him when I was around four years old. I was privileged to receive his blessings. I came across a few of his letters which were addressed to my father and these letters have indeed played a great role in bringing me closer to him. He said that Indian religion and spirituality has such a great force which can remove frustration from people’s life. He always looked beyond the materialistic world into the heavens of truth and spirituality. In due course of my life I also came to know that he was the one who coined my name ‘Pragya’ for which I feel highly honoured. His example and influence remain as a living force to sustain and guide our whole family in the light and inspiration of the Mother in whose hands his soul rests now.
Being a great-grandson I feel highly privileged to pay my tributes on the eve of his centenary. Last but not the least I would like to quote one of his lines, “Richness of life must be found securely on the richness of the Spirit.”
Pragya Kothari
1. Sri Parichand: A Biographical Sketch (1904-1991)
The Mother once said to Parichand, “Yours is the straight path” as opposed to the “zigzag path” of another sadhak. Her words reflect the man who followed this straight path. Tall and erect, taking long strides on the beach road, his dhoti flapping in the wind, the kurta carelessly left unbuttoned, long white hair, big bushy eye-brows and deep creases of wisdom running across his face — that was Parichand as we saw him in the eighties, the sadhak in charge of the garden in the Ashram main building. He would go about his work with utmost seriousness — pruning the plants, arranging the flower pots, supervising the workers watering the garden. Outwardly, the work was unimportant, but the endeavour behind it was great and onerous. For the Yoga was not over and the work of transformation had begun after half a century of service to the Mother. When somebody claimed after a few years of stay in the Ashram that his psychic transformation was over, Parichand read out to him a passage on it from The Life Divine. “It is not so easy as people think,” he said to me. “It takes a long time.” He recounted how Sri Aurobindo had written in reply to his first letter in May 1931, “The sadhana is a difficult one and time should not be grudged.” Parichand never forgot those first instructions of the Master.
In the same letter, Sri Aurobindo wrote to Nolini about Parichand’s letter addressed to him,
“The letter is an extremely intelligent one and shows considerable justness of mind and discriminating observation both as to the nature of the sadhana and its obstacles and the movements in him. You had better correspond with him and encourage him....”
This intelligence and discrimination Parichand carried all through his long Ashram life as a gardener. The intellect was as if almost forcibly subdued to the more important work of physical sadhana. Once he complained to the Mother that he had no time to read Sri Aurobindo’s books because of his work during the day, followed by Group in the evening, after which he was too tired to concentrate on anything. Mother told him to snatch the intervals in between to read Sri Aurobindo instead of stopping Group activity as he had proposed. So that is how he followed his favourite pastime of reading Sri Aurobindo’s books.
Another principle which he strictly followed was never to talk about sadhana, especially his own. Sri Aurobindo had warned him in 1932 that it led to tapakshaya (loss of tapas or spiritual energy). It was only after the Mother’s passing away that he seems to have relaxed the rule and began informally answering questions on life and yoga to a few persons who enjoyed his confidence. There also, the guidance was impersonal though full of affection and concern, taking care not to attract public attention. Towards the end of his life, in the mid-eighties, he mellowed further and spoke even about his own sadhana. I recall Parichand coming to our house one day during this period. He was like a ripe mango, just sufficiently ripe to bestow the sweetness of his soul on others. He talked about the early part of his life and the days when the solid foundations of the Ashram were laid by the first generation of sadhaks to which he belonged. The words flowed naturally and every word rang true — his eloquence had at last been freed from years of self-imposed silence. When I asked if I could record him on tape, he flatly refused because that was forbidden. He had already crossed the bounds of spiritual discretion by speaking on himself. Later, he did concede an interview and allowed himself to be recorded but, by then, it was too late. He had suffered a stroke which impaired his speech. The mango had become over-ripe. After six months, he suffered another massive stroke which confined him to bed. During this period, his correspondence with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother was serialised in the Bulletin and people came to know his true worth. He spent about a year and a half at the Ashram Nursing Home, attended diligently by the nursing staff and Sumantra, his nephew, before passing away on 27 August 1991.
Here is a brief outline of his life.
Parichand Kothari was born on 30 October 1904 in Azimganj, Murshidabad, Bengal in a family observing strict Jain traditions which never really appealed to him. As a young boy, he loved to meditate in solitary places, but instinctively avoided the sadhus who camped on the banks of the Ganges, and weaned away boys to the path of renunciation. He enjoyed life, his studies, his family and “there was never any sense of frustration”. Inspired by Rishabhchand, his relative and mentor, he joined the non-cooperation movement in 1920 but went back to college after the movement fizzled out in six months. In January 1924, he received a nineteen page long letter from Rishabhchand who was recuperating in Shillong after a severe illness. The latter had been profoundly influenced by Sri Aurobindo and his letter expressed the new turn in his life. Parichand, deeply impressed by the letter, took an appointment with Rishabhchand as soon as the latter returned to Calcutta. He later recalled:
“I remember that day I crossed the Howrah bridge (he [Rishabhchand] was in Howrah and I was in Calcutta) to go to him. I spent my whole day there. I took food with him and he told me many things which I do not remember, because it was all new thinking for me. After spending about 7 to 8 hours, when I was about to return to Calcutta, he gave me The Yoga and its Objects [by Sri Aurobindo]. He said ‘Take this’ and I came away with it. My family members were all sleeping. I was awake and full of something new which I couldn’t understand. I shut the door and read the whole book in two hours. It opened another chapter in my life.”
Ironically, the enlightenment came nine days after he had been married. Had he received the book nine days earlier, Parichand said, he would never have got married. His interest in spiritual literature grew and soon he found his college textbooks dull and distasteful. He managed to secure good marks in B.A., but simply could not proceed further with his M.A. At this point, invited by Rishabhchand whose association he cherished, he joined the latter’s cloth business in Calcutta. Rishabhchand, who was in a similar state of spiritual incubation, had started The Indian Silk House in 1926. Several people connected with the shop eventually settled in the Ashram: Anilkumar, the painter; Rishabhchand, the writer; Umirchand of the Building Service; Parichand, the gardener and Raghunandan, of the Ashram Press. Parichand spent the next nine years serving his family and preparing himself inwardly to settle in the Ashram. When he came to the Ashram on 18 November 1934, he had made up his mind and knew he would not return. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother admitted him in the Ashram after a brief period of probation. His wife and one of his daughters came to Pondicherry to plead their case, but he remained unmoved, for a new phase of life had begun. His family — he had two daughters and a son — was soon taken care of by his relatives and the wherewithal arranged for their maintenance.
In the Ashram, Parichand was at first given gate duty and the work of cataloguing books in the Ashram Library under Premananda. He also took a few English classes for younger sadhaks such as Nagin Doshi and Deviprasad. His gardening career began with watering a few pots kept in the Cycle House under the charge of Benjamin. When Manubhai left the Ashram in 1938. Purushottam took over from him the charge of the garden in the Ashram main building and Parichand became his assistant. After Purushottam left in 1939, Parichand seems to have taken over the supervision himself. There were other gardens and gardeners in the Ashram because of which a centralised “Garden Service” was formed by the Mother around 1938. Parichand was its office-bearer and had to face the typical problems of maintaining harmony and co-ordination until the committee was dissolved. Meanwhile, as the gardening work increased, he devoted his full time to it and left all other work previously assigned to him. In 1965, the Maret garden along with Rassendren’s garden, came under his charge after the passing away of Atal Chaudhury, another old timer who had settled in the Ashram in 1928. Every other day, Parichand, dressed in sparkling white dhoti and kurta, royally cycled 5 km through the narrow backlanes of Colas Nagar to take a shortcut to the two gardens in Uppalam. Those were the days when there were few motorcycles and cars in the Ashram. Later, he had assistants with vehicular conveniences and even a small Mitsubishi tiller.
Parichand’s gardening career lasted a pretty long time — fifty years — from 1938 to 1988. The work was surprisingly mundane for those who expect the Mother to have taught occult action on plants to the sadhaks. His garden reports are full of Mother’s practical and down to earth instructions such as not to over-manure or over-water plants, or to keep them in sun or shade, according to the species to which they belonged. The information came from Mother’s own experience in France or from magazines on gardening. Seeds were regularly procured from outside Pondicherry with wonderful results. It was plain, solid and successful gardening which earned a lot of admiration for the Ashram. The deeper element of sadhana was a supporting matrix with the stress on the never-ending work of transformation with the help of the Mother’s force. The most occult of all Yogas along with the most physical aspect of material life. In both the fields, he grew flowers out of the mud.
Raman Reddy
Three close friends in Pondicherry
Rishabhchand (c. 1960)
Umirchand (c. 1960)
Parichand (c. 1946)
Parichand’s grandsons, Sanjib and Rajib
(seated back, left and right)
with other family members (Kokata)
Sunil Kothari, Umirchand’s eldest son (Kolkota)
Parichand with his daughter-in-law and granddaughter (Pondicherry, c 1968)
Parichand’s eldest daughter, Rani (seated right) and family (Kolkota)
[The following is the complete text together with an abridged introductory note, of the interview Parichand gave to Raman Reddy for “Golden Chain”, an Ashram journal. This interview was taken unfortunately after Parichand recovered from a cerebral stroke which impaired his speech. The fluency with which he formerly spoke was sadly absent. But perhaps it was because of that impaired condition that he finally agreed to be recorded and showed us his correspondence with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Otherwise, he was hardly the type to speak about himself however discreetly. It was a discipline he followed strictly, because of which he had turned down our former attempts to interview him.]
I was born in a Jain family1. I grew up in the atmosphere of a traditional Jain family, but, as far as I remember, I was not very enthusiastic about it because the Jain culture and customs did not appeal to me. There was no inner affinity with them. I was doing certain things against my wish. But by nature I was of a meditative disposition. I used to go to my room upstairs and find out some place where I could meditate. I used to go to a certain temple where there was generally a quiet place and meditate. It was as if I was born with it. It was not taught. I still remember, there were nine temples, and the farthest was a little out of the town. That place I selected for meditation. There was no one there except the pujari and I would spend an hour or two in the temple garden.
Another thing I want to note here is that I enjoyed all my activities. I was very much for further studies. I was very happy with my family. There was no sense of frustration. So much so that when I was invited by my colleagues to the banks of the Ganges to talk to some sadhus, sanyasis (every now and then they would come there), I don’t know, somehow, even at that time, when I was open to all sorts of influences, I refused to go. I told them “No, I am not at all interested to go. I enjoy my life, I enjoy all my activities and I have my family.” And scrupulously I avoided contact of any sort with the sadhus.
At that time something happened. I had a playmate, our cook’s son. One day our cook came and said that my playmate had been taken away by the sadhus. She took me there thinking that my playmate would come back on seeing me. I went with her. It was a little away from her place in a tent near the Ganges. The boy was attracted by them and had joined them. When he saw me he came out and told his mother, “Don’t worry, i am here voluntarily. I am not coming back.” I saw that this could have happened to me also, but that somehow I had been protected from the sadhus. It was as if no chance was given for any contact with them. Whenever my friends asked me to come with them I would say, “I am not going, you go. But I won’t.”
Then I got involved with the non-cooperation movement. I was very much attached to Rishabhchand2. It so happened that he had come to my place. He had left Calcutta. He was also born in Azimganj but he studied in Calcutta. I was in school and he was in college. It was in 1920. The non-cooperation movement had started in full force and he gave up his studies, and, under his influence, I too gave up my studies in school. He came and spoke about it and influenced me. I had respect for him, so I followed him. But I didn’t know what I was doing. I gave up my studies, so there was no activity left for me. I went to Calcutta for the non-cooperation movement. I went to a certain college they had started for further studies. But that was finished within six months. I went back to my place and I remember months went by with practically no activity, no studies. My guardian told me “What will you do? You are spoiling your career.” I was getting bored. My headmaster, who was very kind to me, told me one day, “Come back, I will take you into school. I will take you there. You just accompany me. But you should not hesitate.” I was tired of not doing anything, so I went with him. He took me there and told me nothing to discourage me in the class. And I was once again deep into studies. Then there was nothing. Life went on, I matriculated from school and I came to Calcutta to join College.
Rishabhchand was not well. He was asked by his guardian to take rest and he went to Shillong, the capital of Assam. I came to know about it and I wrote to him telling him to describe the life there. He was a good writer and his descriptions were very accurate and very interesting. I simply wrote to him to give a picture of life there and I received from Shillong a 19-page long letter. He described his life in Shillong for a page and a half and the rest dealt with all the changes that had come in him as a result of his life there. It was suddenly a sort of confession of his life. I was not ready for it. I simply expected some outer activity but this came! I wrote to him that I would like to meet him after his return to Calcutta. After two or three months, he came and I took an appointment with him. I remember that day I crossed the Howrah bridge (he was in Howrah and I was in Calcutta) to go to him. I spent my whole day there. I took food with him and he told me many things which I do not re-member, because it was all new thinking for me. After spending about 7 to 8 hours, when I was about to return to Calcutta, he gave me [Sri Aurobindo’s] The Yoga and Its Objects. He said “Take this”, and I came away with it. My family members were all sleeping. I was awake and full of something new which I couldn’t understand. I shut the door and read the whole book in two hours. It opened another chapter in my life. I understood why I did not go to the sadhus.
When I read Sri Aurobindo’s book I saw that I had been protected by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother from going to the path of renunciation. I saw that renunciation was not for me because Sri Aurobindo said that you didn’t have to change anything in life. You have simply to surrender the whole life to the Divine Mother and whatever She says you have to do. I understood that there was no immediate necessity of any change. I had already got married nine days before due to family pressure. I had consented because there was no other choice. I had to do my duty. Jainism had no prospects for me. It did not give me any inner push and there was no attraction for it. If another path had been shown to me I would have perhaps taken it, but there was none. So I had to do my duty — study, earn and maintain a family. Marriage was early during our times. Rishabhchand came to know about it. He wrote to me, “You have already got married. I thought you should not have.” But he had given me the book nine days after the marriage! And I repented. It-was too late but I felt that this was the path for me. This was very categoric and there was no hesitation about it. Sri Aurobindo’s yoga is such that you don’t have to do anything, you have simply to surrender to the Mother and do whatever She wants you to do. So there was no immediate change of programme (laughing) in the outer life. Marriage went on. Studies went on. Everything was going on. But the change came. I saw that slowly spiritual literature engrossed me and that I was losing interest in studies and secular literature. Whenever there was any chance I studied spiritual literature. There were only a few books of Sri Aurobindo at that time. Very little was published. I was going now almost daily to Rishabhchand. After the day’s activity we would spend an hour or two. We first started reading The Essays on the Gita. He read out the whole book to me. And then I told you, but that was later on, The Mother was published. He asked me to buy a copy and we went upstairs after dinner, at night. There was no one there apart from Rishabhchand and myself. From ten to one we read the whole book and slept at about half past one.
But I had to study for my college. So there was a tug-of-war: on one side the attraction for spiritual literature and, on the other side, the textbooks of college. Somehow I did very well in college. I got good marks and I took honours in B. A. I could have done even better had not my attention been divided. I joined M.A., the course was of two years, and as I studied for M. A., I saw that I was not meant for it. I lost all enthusiasm. Even so I tried to keep a balance to do my work but there was no push and life was becoming slowly dull. So I told Rishabhchand that if I tried to continue my studies I might even fail. I could proceed no farther. At that time he came to my help. He said, “Why don’t you join me?” He had already built up a sufficient business and there were prospects. That was what I needed. I needed his association. The question of money was also there. I had to maintain my family. So we started a sort of partnership business. He gave me some amount for the partnership....
Rishabhchand joined the Ashram in 1931. He didn’t tell his family about it. Neither me, though I anticipated it. At that time, he was not really prepared for it because his parents were there. He had to struggle a great deal to take up this life. He was very devoted to his father, very devoted. He used to massage him daily as in the olden days, and he was very dutiful even though he practised the yoga. I received a letter from Rishabhchand after he settled down here. He said it was a very painful experience to leave his father. I think he was not at all ready to take the decision then. But I was ready when my time came to go. Actually, he prepared me on this path. So for nine years, from 1926 to 1934, I struggled.
Rishabhchand came to the Ashram in 1931 and correspondence was going on between us. In 1934 I had almost decided to come here in spite of having a family. One thing I had decided that unless there was a drastic change in me, I didn’t need to go because this was not for sight-seeing. It was for the practice of yoga and unless something happened (I was thinking of a change of consciousness) there was no use going to Pondicherry. So I said, “I must prepare myself.” Certain other things happened very mysteriously. I had already two daughters and a son who was ten months old. I saw that the boy today or tomorrow would take up the burden of my family. Luckily there was no difficulty in finance; the family was not stranded on the street. I did not have to struggle for that. There was sufficient money and, in this, Udaysingh3 was of utmost help. Otherwise it would have been a little difficult. He was my elder brother-in-law. The day I took permission he said he would look after my family. He was also on the path and was preparing himself. But that’s another story.
I came here in 1934 on 18th November with Udaysingh, Chandradeep4 and Raghunandan. Five days later was the Darshan. Probably three or four days after the Darshan, I wrote to Sri Aurobindo about my decision to stay here in a five-page letter, explaining what were my responsibilities. Not only I had the responsibility of my own family but also of my brothers, Umirchand5 and Kesarichand. We were all staying together. I wrote saying that these were my responsibilities, that now I was giving up all connections and had decided to stay here. Nolini told me why not go there once or twice to settle matters. But I was not ready for that. I had already decided and there was no meaning in going back. So I wrote to Sri Aurobindo saying that my decision was final. He wrote to me saying that Mother had permitted me to stay on. Then I was admitted into the Ashram....
In the beginning I was given the work of gate duty for 3 hours and cataloguing the Library books under Premananda for an hour and a half daily. Then one day, I will tell you how the garden work started. I was put up in the filter water house called Cycle House. There were some pots there and the sadhak in charge of them was Benjamin6. He left the watering of the plants to the workers. At that time, I didn’t have sufficient work. So I asked Benjamin to allow me to water the pots because the worker under him was not doing it properly. And immediately he told me that I could write to Mother and take up the whole charge of the garden. I told him, “But I need your help. I have no experience.” He said, “I will guide you.” So he asked Mother’s permission and She gave me Her sanction. I was given charge of the whole garden and I began to grow some flowers with his and Jyotin’s help.
There were about 30 pots and I was sending flowers to the Mother and She would send back some flowers and there was the joy of sending and receiving them from Her. So it was going on and suddenly Manubhai left the Ashram and Purushottam7 took charge of the Ashram garden. He asked Mother to give him one helper for an hour. One day Mother told me in an interview (I used to have a weekly interview with the Mother), “You are doing some gardening work, isn’t it?” I said, “Yes.” “Could you give another hour to this garden? Purushottam needs help for an hour.” I said, “I have plenty of time.” So that’s how I started supervising the garden in the Ashram. Then, slowly, work increased, both theoretical and practical. Finally I had to give it all my time.
3. Sri Aurobindo Writes to Parichand
Gurudev,
I bow at your feet, I am a fellow-traveller on your path of Yoga, pursuing this path with the help of your method. Seven years of sadhana have resulted in inducing all the parts of darkness in me to surrender. But in this darkness, my vital is still weak and full of impurities. It continues to resist and does not want to surrender; due to this lack of submission, my sadhana is not dynamic.
Of late I have understood that Shakti is lacking in me and that for this reason the play of the Force has not yet started. Therefore I pray to God all the time to give me Power as well as Knowledge and Ananda, for otherwise I do not know whether I will be able to bear the darkness or not.
You know what is best for me and I surrender myself to you. Let your wish be carried out in my life.
Nolini
The letter8 is an extremely intelligent one and shows considerable justness of mind and discriminating observation both as to the nature of the sadhana and its obstacles and the movements in him. You had better correspond with him and encourage him.
Tell him that his observations are all very correct and there is little to add to them. If he perseveres with sincerity and the same discriminating correctness of vision he is sure to progress. The sadhana is a difficult one and time should not be grudged; it is only in the last stages that a very great and constant rapidity of progress can be confidently expected. As for Shakti, the descent of Shakti before the vital is pure and surrendered, has its dangers. It is better for him to pray for purification, knowledge, intensity of the heart’s aspiration and as much working of the Power as he can bear and assimilate.
Add anything else that the letter may suggest to you.
18 May 1931
*
Bhagavan,
As I felt the want of power in my adhara, I prayed for that to the Mother and She gave it. The power descended, seated itself in the vital and began its work from that centre. With the assent of the inner vital, my sadhana became dynamic and took on an entirely new shape. The arduousness, intellectual dryness and morbidity of the sadhana gave place to spontaneity, buoyancy and intensity. The descent of power with its natural concomitant Ananda led me deeper. At a certain point I began to feel such a rapturous and ecstatic joy in me and such a close communion with the Divine that I thought I was in the lap of the Mother. I intimated about it to X and he called it the “psychic consciousness”.
But the sadhana has also got its play of darkness and that is much more intense. The concealing of the Divine Consciousness means the rushing in of the hostile forces raging in fury, leaping, dancing, revelling and thus rendering the whole psycho-vital plane a pandemonium. These forces disturb the equilibrium of the mental being and try to shut up all the doors to light and knowledge.
Do you give your sanction to X’s assertion that this movement is the psychic consciousness?
No; it is the opening of the vital consciousness to the touch of the Divine which always brings with it either the Light, the Force or the Ananda. This opening of the vital is a great step forward, but as he has found, it does not preclude the entrance of the forces of the Darkness. Only the opening of the psychic consciousness can give a constant help against that.
This intermittent play of Light and darkness has given rise in my mind to a fear that the power playing in the vital is many times usurped by the hostile forces and made to serve their ends. This fear finds a justification in the fact that the occasional psychic touches of the Divine have not yet given birth to a single-minded, unswerving devotion towards the Divine, a constant and never-failing aspiration for Him. Why so?
Because the psychic being is not in front. It is only by the awakening of the psychic being that this kind of devotion can come. What he has now is the mental and vital bhakti.
One or two movements have drawn my attention these days:
1) An intense desire to hear discourses about sadhana and talk about it. I am so overwhelmed with joy while talking about sadhana and my realisation that sometimes I feel as if I were beyond myself. But such discourses, instead of deepening the Divine Consciousness, make the adhara empty and destitute — a blank.
This desire is vital and it is the nature of vital expansions to expend the power — tapakshaya.
2) A rise of ambition which many times goads me to talk. This flatters my ego, distorts my vision and makes me believe that such discourses may do immense benefit to somebody, alter his life’s course etc.
This again is vital — he must get over the vital desires and replace them by an aspiration to the Divine.
16 January 1932
*
Bhagavan,
Your reply to my previous letter rectified the wrong impression under which I had been acting. From that time on, there grew in me a determined will to sink deep into the Divine Being, reach the psychic consciousness and then bring that consciousness to the front. This led me to put an intense stress on meditation. The practice of meditation has led me only so far as to have a calm and serene condition, a sort of movementless pure state; from it I longed to take a plunge, get away from the physical mind and enter the realms of the Spirit; but I was debarred from getting entrance. Still, each time that I sit for meditation I am instantly transported into a state of quiescence in which I sometimes see flashes of light, almost impalpable. But I cannot go any further — it seems that the doors are still bolted from within.
His sadhana seems to be proceeding normally and on the whole very well. There are always difficulty and a hampered progress in the early stages and a delay in the opening of the inner doors until the adhara is ready. If he feels whenever he meditates the quiescence and the flashes of the inner Light and if the inward urge is growing so strong that the external hold is decreasing and the vital disturbances are losing their force, that is already a great progress. The road of Yoga is long, every inch of ground has to be won against much resistance and no quality is more needed by the sadhak than patience and single-minded perseverance with a faith that remains firm through all difficulties, delays and apparent failures.
9 March 1932
*
You can write to X that when vital difficulties assail a sadhak, he has not to identify his consciousness with them, but to stand back and remaining quiet in the observing part of his being call down persistently the Divine Force. The help will then come through this steady and silent part of the being.
27 December 1932
*
Gurudev,
In the past I committed one grand mistake — a total subordination of the consciousness of the Purusha to that of the Prakriti alone. Not that I gave myself up entirely to Prakriti, to the hands of the Mother, to be played upon by Her through the three modes of Nature; no, that calm, equal and detached attitude of the Purusha also remained at the back. But it was allowed to remain too far in the background; there was not that strong drive of the Will to make the Purusha consciousness dynamic and living.
I must say that sometimes when I feel the necessity of standing apart from the play of Prakriti, I also have the counteracting feeling that this would mean a belittlement of the Mother, that I would thereby shut out Her Grace and consequently Her Light, Power and Joy.
In spite of many movements of the Light, I feel a profound want of one thing — the want of this static, receptive equality of the Purusha becoming dynamic and possessive — and for this I pray for Your guidance.
In order to get the dynamic realisation it is not enough to rescue the Purusha from subjection to Prakriti; we must transfer the allegiance of the Purusha from the lower Prakriti with its play of ignorant Forces to the Supreme Divine Shakti, the Mother.
It is a mistake to identify the Mother with the lower Prakriti and its mechanism of forces. Prakriti is a mechanism only which has been put forth for the working of the evolutionary Ignorance. As the ignorant mental, vital or physical being is not the Divine, although it comes from the Divine — so the mechanism of Prakriti is not the Divine Mother. No doubt something of her is there behind this mechanism maintaining it for its evolutionary purpose — but what she is in herself is not a Shakti of Avidya, but the Divine Consciousness, Power, Light, Para Prakriti to whom we turn for the release and the divine fulfilment.
The realisation of the Purusha consciousness calm, free, observing the play of forces but not attached or involved in them is a means of liberation. The calm, the detachment, a peaceful strength and joy (atmaratih), must be brought down into the vital and physical as well as into the mind. If this is established, one is no longer a prey to the turmoil of the vital forces. But this calm, peace, silent strength and joy is only the first descent of the Power of the Mother into the Adhar. Beyond that is a Knowledge, an executive Power, a dynamic Ananda which is not that of the ordinary Prakriti even at its best and most sattwic, but divine in its nature.
First, however, the calm, the peace, the liberation is needed. To try to bring down the dynamic side too soon is not advisable — for then it would be a descent into a troubled and impure Nature unable to assimilate it and serious perturbations might be the consequence.
20 April 1933
*
(Regarding Sri Aurobindo’s poem, “The Bird of Fire”)
The Flame means the Bird of Flame and the Bird is the symbol of an inner Power that rises from the “sacrifice” i.e. the Yoga. The last lines mean that it has the power of going beyond mind and life to that which is beyond mind and life.
2 December 1933
*
Yesterday I went with X and Y to Oosteri Lake at noon by cycle. We stayed there for two hours and happened to eat plantains purchased from the market. After our return, I began to feel out of sorts and by the time of meditation the body appeared to be weak and a little feverish. There is an attack of cold and this cold has been troubling me all along since my coming to Pondicherry. In my college days and even after, my body could endure hardship, irregularities of diet and inclemencies of weather. But for a year and a half it has been very sensitive and delicate — it cannot undergo the same amount of physical labour and exertion as before, nor can it remain unaffected in the teeth of irregularities. I do not know why. There is a general belief that as sadhana progresses the body becomes more and more impregnable and endurance increases tenfold, but in my case the condition is quite different. Will you please let me know why? Also tell me whether my going to the Lake yesterday and the eating of plantains were inadvisable?
It is better to let the Mother know when you go far out like that so that it may be with her protection that you go. The eating of plantains from the bazaar (especially if it was Villenour bazaar) was indeed a mistake. Mother has several times warned against it and X knows that. The body often becomes sensitive at a certain stage of the Yoga, but there should at the same time be the development of a higher Force which will protect and push back all attacks upon it.
November or December 1934
*
The experiences you speak of are certainly signs of the psychic being awake and in action. There is a process of change and modification going on in your inner mental and vital and the subtler parts of the physical consciousness under the psychic influence. When they are fully permeated and ready, the outer consciousness can also be put under the psychic control which would bring about the psychicising of the whole being — the best condition for the descent.
4 December 1934
*
I cannot but draw your attention to some physical disturbances which became chronic in Calcutta and are also persisting here. Constipation, want of proper assimilation of food and a consequent heaviness of the body are of regular recurrence.
Please let met know how can I get over them. Is it by reducing food or by paying no attention to the disturbances even if they continue?
Diminishing food does not usually help. For each one the remedy is different — we shall have to find out which is the one for you.
7 December 1934
*
The Mother has already given you orally the answer to your letter and the directions you asked for. As she told you, your concentration should be in the heart centre and all the rest — the rising above the head etc. — should come of itself in the natural process of the sadhana. Through the heart you will get the closer and closer touch of the Mother and the working of her Force in the whole being.
9 December 1934
*
There is no doubt that the inner being and the psychic in you are opening and that the psychic is influencing all including the physical centre.
As to the centres — The psychic is placed behind the heart-lotus, the centre of the emotional being, the Anahata chakra — it is therefore the opening of the Anahata that is most important for the unveiling of the psychic. The Manipura (navel centre) and the Swadhisthana below it are the seats of the vital being, the Muladhara is the seat of the physical. The opening of the Manipura gives one the free play of the inner vital consciousness and it is very helpful, no doubt, for the influence of the psychic on the vital, but it is not the direct or first condition of the psychic opening itself. But so also the opening of the higher centres is helpful for the influence of the psychic on the mental being. All the centres have to open, because otherwise the inner consciousness is not opened out and liberated to its full working in all its parts.
There is however no invariable rule as to the order of the opening. By concentration on the heart centre that can open first liberating the psychic action, which is veiled by the emotional, into free play. In many there is first some opening of the vital centre and for a long time there is an abundant but unpurified play of experiences on the vital plane. In the Tantric discipline there is a process of opening all the centres from the Muladhara upward. In our Yoga very often the Power descends from above and opens the Ajnachakra first, then the others in order. But it is perhaps the safest to open by concentration the heart lotus first so as to have the psychic influence from the beginning.
The psychic cannot lose its consciousness in the enjoyment of experiences; when it is in free action, it has the unfailing discrimination of which you speak. It has besides no push to outward enjoyment, though it has Ananda. It is the vital that is carried away by enjoyment and carries away with it the mind and other lower parts — and it can also cover up the psychic; but then what happens is not that the psychic loses its own consciousness, which is impossible, but that the sadhak loses for the time being the full possession of the psychic consciousness. But it can always be recovered by a rectification of the wrong movement. But if one lives firmly in the psychic, there is not much danger of this aberration. What one must not do is to throw oneself out into the mind and vital; one. must live within and from there command one’s experience.
16 December 1934
*
I have received my brother’s letter today. He seems to have sympathy for my pursuit of Yoga, but as usual he raises the issue that if this pursuit takes years and necessitates an ashram life, away from life, how can it be held to be a Yoga in life and what is the difference between the old traditional ways of Yoga and Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga ? He questions me, “Why not call it a Yoga of renunciation?” This is the stock argument of people of the world because they never try to get at the psychology of the thing. Should I answer his question and if so, what answer shall I give ?
You can answer to your brother that Yoga life and the ordinary life cannot be the same thing — otherwise there would be no use in doing Yoga, if one lives just as others in the same way and with the same motives. The object of the Asram life is to prepare a new way of living based on a spiritual consciousness — it is the preparation of a new foundation of life in which all works have to be done not for the self but for the Divine.
31 December 1934
*
Two questions have arisen in the mind in connection with Sri Aurobindo’s poem “Rose of God”.
I) Does the rose, of all flowers, most perfectly and aptly express the divine ecstasies or has it got any symbolic allusion in the Veda or the Upanishad?
There were no roses in those times in India — roses came in with the Mahomedans from Persia. The rose is usually taken by us as the symbol of surrender, love etc. But here it is not used in that sense, but as the most intense of all flowers it is used as symbolic of the divine intensities — Bliss, Light, Love etc.
2) Are the seven ecstasies referred to there the following: Bliss, Light, Power, Immortality, Life, Love and Grace.
No, it is not seven kinds, but seven levels of Ananda that are meant by the seven Ecstasies.
2 January 1935
*
This cold does not want to leave me. It seems to have grown enamoured of me from its long habitation in my body. Is it not an outer expression of Tamas in the nature? How to part company with this cold, which resides likely an incubus?
Cold like that is usually due to constipation and bad functioning of the liver. If that is cured, the cold is likely to go.
5 January 1935
*
While reading Sri Aurobindo’s poem “Thought the Paraclete”, a question cropped up in my mind. What is this “Thought”? It is not a mental idea or a conceptual thought. It seems to me a rising up of the central consciousness — I mean the psychic consciousness — towards the Divine.
Also, please let me know what is meant by “pale-blue-lined of the hippogriff”.
The rising of the psychic consciousness cannot be called “Thought” — thought belongs to the mind. As thought rises in the scale, it ceases to be intellectual, becomes illumined, then intuitive, then overmental and finally disappears seeking the last Beyond. The poem does not express any philosophical thought, however, it is simply a perception of a certain movement, that is all. “Pale blue” is the colour of the higher ranges of mind up to the intuition. Above it begins to become golden with the supramental light.
14 January 1935
*
In the Chhandogya Upanishad it is said: “Now, that golden Person (Purusha) who is seen within the Sun has a golden beard and golden hair, all golden is he, even to the tips of his fingers.” (1.6.6) Does not this description refer to the Supramental Purusha, who, in the verse below, is said to be the Lord of all worlds beneath himself and also the Fulfiller of the desires of the gods?
It may very well be an imaged description of the Supramental Purusha.
“He is the Lord of all the worlds beneath this one, and the Lord of men’s desires.” (1.7.6) Does not this describe the psychic being who is said to be the Lord of all the worlds below and fulfiller of human desires?
The psychic being is not the fulfiller of desires — it is the spark of the Divine in all things manifested here that grows into the psychic being and supports the evolution. It is that which survives the dissolution of the vital and physical sheaths and returns to birth again.
January 1935
*
Whenever my meditation tends to be deep, sleep overcomes me. This tendency of sleepiness now proves to be a veteran antagonist and stubbornly opposes any inward opening. Even while meditating in the course of my pacing up and down in my room, this sleepiness hangs heavily on my eye-lids whenever I try to go deep down. Moreover, even after an undisturbed sleep of six or seven hours, I feel sleepy in the morning on rising from bed. Please enlighten me on the true nature of this physical inertia and let me know how to overcome it.
I think the sleepiness is a stage which everybody goes through — a sort of mechanical reaction of the physical to the pressure for including it in the concentration of the sadhana. It is best not to mind it; it will go of itself as the consciousness increases and takes the physical into its poise. It is better to let us know about any physical troubles.
1935
*
The movements of which you speak are not personal — they are general movements of the universal Nature which besiege the subconscient and, as the subconscient is being enlightened, you have become aware of them. It is good, but simply reject them and fix your main attention on the positive things of the psychic nature to which you aspire.
12 January 1936
*
To me it seems that 5 1/2 hours’ sleep is sufficient. If You sanction it, I shall try to bring it to that limit.
5 1/2 hours is quite insufficient. Six is the absolute minimum, it can go up to seven hours.
Early 1936
*
The subconscient is not the whole foundation of our nature; it is only the lower basis of the Ignorance and affects mostly the lower vital and physical exterior consciousness and these again affect the higher parts of the nature. While it is necessary to see what it is and how it acts, one must not be too preoccupied with this dark side or this apparent aspect of the instrumental being. One should rather regard it as something not oneself, a mask of false nature imposed on the true being by the Ignorance. The true being is the inner with all its vast possibilities of reaching and expressing the Divine and especially the inmost, the soul, the psychic Purusha which is always in its essence pure, divine, turned to all that is good and true and beautiful. The exterior being has to be taken hold of by the inner being and turned into an instrument no longer of the upsurgings of the ignorant subconscient Nature, but of the Divine. It is by remembering always that and opening the nature upwards that the Divine Consciousness can be reached and descend from above into the whole inner and outer existence, mental, vital, physical, the subconscient, the subliminal, all that we overtly and secretly are. This should be the main preoccupation. To dwell solely on the subconscient and the aspect of imperfection creates depression and should be avoided. One has to keep a right balance and stress on the positive side most, recognising the other but only to reject and change it. This and a constant faith and reliance on the Mother are what is needed for the transformation to come.
14 July 1936
*
Selfishness and the reaction of unselfishness of which you speak are both of them things that have to be put aside — both are obstacles or movements leading off from the true and straight path. For both these things belong to the mind and vital, they are different forms of the ego. The mind in its attempt to get away from the rajasic selfish ego tries to do just the opposite of what selfishness usually does and serve others, sacrifice itself for others, but in doing so it is only constructing another kind of egoism that prides itself on its own unselfishness and altruism and makes human service its mental ideal instead of spiritual service of the Divine. That it is a misguiding movement you saw yourself; for it wanted to sacrifice your sadhana, that is your seeking for the Divine to this new ego of altruistic self-righteousness; it was prepared to do things without permission of the Mother or rather avoiding asking for permission. One has to get rid of selfishness and ego, not in this way, but by selfless service of the Divine and by merging the ego in the Divine Consciousness, submitting the personal will to the Divine Will, calling into the being the Divine Peace, Purity, Oneness, Knowledge, Light, Ananda, replacing the ego by the psychic being devoted and surrendered to the Divine. It is the love of the Divine that saves, not a love turned towards human beings. When the Divine Consciousness is there, then there comes based on the love of the Divine a true love and oneness for all beings. But that does not act separately from the Divine, but only according to the Divine Mother’s will and in her service.
20 July 1936
*
The activity of mind is necessary so long as a higher activity cannot be reached; but if the spiritual consciousness becomes active with its direct power of perception, the mind must become more and more content and give place to spiritual perception, psychic intimations and discrimination, intuitions, a deeper knowledge from within, a higher knowledge from above.
Your way for the purification of the vital was a good method. The constant living in the psychic is necessary for that purification and the purification cannot be done without it. The other thing necessary is the opening of the spiritual consciousness above.
As for the method mentioned in the Bases of Yoga, it was the one by which I got silence and the disappearance of the separative consciousness in the Brahman, but it is not the right method for everybody. Yours is the one needed at present for you.
3 October 1936
*
When my sleep breaks at 4:30 a.m. I have ample time to finish my work, but sometimes I rise at 5:00 or 5:30 a.m. and then I can manage only to sweep the room and do certain essential things. But even if my sleep breaks at 4:30 (as the alarm-clock awakes me), I feel heavy and inclined to sleep again. Sometimes I struggle to keep awake and get to work, but sometimes I give in and then I am late to get up. Should I put a stronger will to control my sleep and limit it to the minimum of six hours, not more?
The feeling that you have in the morning proves that you need more sleep, so it is not wise to cut it short to the minimum as that in the end tells on the body. It is better to continue the sleep when you feel sleepy. 7 hours is not too much for sleep.
1936
*
X once asked me to take a book out of the library for him in my name. He required it, but as he had taken already two books from the library he could not get another. I did it but I felt some disturbance, I do not know why. Is there anything wrong in this act?
If you feel this disturbance, it is an indication that you should not do it.
1936
*
In one letter about work Sri Aurobindo says: “As for the dedication make the sankalpa always of offering it, remember and pray when you can.... This is to fix a certain attitude. Afterwards, the Force can take advantage of this key to open the deeper dedication within.”
May I know in what terms this deeper dedication can be expressed?
One begins to feel a double consciousness, one an inner being within which is always dedicated, spontaneously and silently full of the devotion to the Mother or aware of her Force working or of her presence or all these together and another the outer through which the work is done.
1936
*
Once in an interview the Mother told me, “Why do you make any difference between me and work?” I am not sure if I have been able to reproduce the exact words, but they are almost like that. I pray to You to make the idea a little more explicit.
As it stands, it has no meaning. What Mother must have said is “Why do you make any separation between me and work?” It is she who is doing the work, she is there in it, so it is a mistake to make a difference or opposition between concentration on her and the work. Her presence is there in both.
1936
*
Ill-will still predominates in my instrumental nature. Selfishness in innumerable disguises governs and influences its activities and movements. Tell me, please, how to get rid of these formidable adversaries of the efflorescence of love.
Detach yourself quietly from these things, do not be disturbed when you see them, but regard them quietly as a defective machinery to be changed and go on rejecting in a patient tranquil spirit and calling the Force to change them. Time is needed for the elimination of these things.
My constipation, cold and eczema are still continuing. I feel there are supports for them in the physical. I did not have the clear urge to apply the conscious will towards their elimination as I do towards the elimination of vital and mental impurities. If You instruct me to do so, I am ready to act accordingly.
It is good to apply the conscious will for this purpose, provided it is a quiet will, — not a restless or struggling or overeager will — for this kind of will action creates struggle and resistance in the being.
There is a constant upsurge of shocking perversions, but something tells me, “Do not be afraid if they come more and more into the limelight. Press on inward and upward with a silent and steady will and rely more and more upon the Mother’s guidance.” Is it a right voice?
Yes, — as I said, it is no use being disturbed or attending too much to these things. It is the positive side that must grow.
1936
*
This evening Y told me, “Fill the entire nature with the Mother’s power.” This brought into my mind the idea that it is power that I lack much in my nature. So far as I remember, in my past sadhana I have never consciously invoked power; the whole stress has been on purity and clarity. Something in me clearly has prevented me from praying for power. But if that is the need of my nature, I shall pray for it along with my prayer for other things.
It is not necessary to ask for Power. It is the Mother’s Force that must work in the being and if it is there, all necessary power will come.
1936
*
The disturbances that ensued from yesterday’s incident brought out in full relief three predominant formations of my ego. First, an excessive self-esteem. This self-esteem or amour-propre seems to have struck root in some fundamental part of my being and refuses eviction. Second, an enervating influence of public opinion and a resultant fear of calumny or disgrace, shame and timidity. Third, an inordinate deference to moral ideas of good and bad, right and wrong, virtue and vice, and a consequent shrinkage of the nerves in horror.
What is the right way of dealing with these constituents of my ego-personality and putting an end to them ?
These are habits of the physical mind and the vital physical which almost everybody has, small things that are yet almost instinctive and ingrained in the nature. That is why it is difficult to get them out. A quiet detached observation, looking at them not so much as personal things but as a machinery that has to be set right or changed is the best attitude — with that a correction of the movement whenever observed — that will eventually check, diminish and eliminate these habits. It does not matter if the elimination takes time.
c.1936
*
I am going to bed at 10:00 or 10:15 and rising at 5:00. In order to fix these hours of sleep I have to take recourse to the alarum-clock, otherwise I may lie sleeping up till 5:45. Do you sanction it?
Mother does not approve of the alarum — if you wake naturally, that is best.
I feel that there ought to be a certain regularity in my daily programme. But one thing I have noticed: the outer nature puts too great a premium on this regularity and tends to be rigid — so when the regularity cannot be maintained, it gets a little disturbed.
Too much rigidity is not good.
c. 1936
*
In one letter Sri Aurobindo writes: “For if the mind remains alert and clings to the truth, then the attack can only upheave the vital and, though this may be painful enough, yet the right attitude of the mind acts as a corrective.” In what terms can this “right attitude of the mind” be expressed?
The right attitude means what is described above: “remains alert and clings to the truth” — does not allow itself to be obscured by the attack and does not give assent or sanction to its suggestions.
In the same letter he says: “If the vital keeps its balance, then the attack touches the physical consciousness only with its suggestions.” What are the forms of these suggestions?
They are the same as in the mind and the vital — except that in the mind the push to doubt and denial is strongest, in the vital the push to satisfaction of the vital desires and impulses and the revolt against the law of Truth and the spiritual life, in the physical the push to inertia and tamasic yielding to the mechanical habits of the nature and the movements of the ordinary unspiritual life. But in the mass the suggestions are the same. When they cannot attack the thinking mind or vital, they attack the physical mind and vital physical. In the body however these may also come as suggestions of illness.
c.1936
*
I felt a tremendous resistance yesterday during the meditation and it lasted for a number of hours yesterday and today. I do not know which parts of my being are open to the adverse forces or what the defect in my attitude is. I am trying with all my might to keep the spiritual atmosphere, but the hostile forces slip in by invisible means.
These things come because of something in the nature that allows them to enter. If one is conscious what it is, one takes it as a warning to get rid of that element. If one is not aware, it is no use seeking with the mind. What has to be done is to make an act of faith and self-giving calling for the enlightenment and removal of whatever ought to disappear — the light can then fall upon that part and a spontaneous consciousness of it come.
c. 1936
*
I experience an attachment to food. Will an occasional fasting help to break the bondage of the habit?
No. It will make it worse.
c. 1936
*
I think you still give an exaggerated importance and attention to the ego and other elements that are interwoven in the nature of humanity and cannot be entirely got rid of except by the coming of a new consciousness which replaces them by higher movements. If one rejects centrally and with all sincerity the ego and rajas, their roots get loosened and sattwa can prevail in the nature, but the expulsion of all ego and rajas cannot be done by the will and its effort. After a certain stage of preparation therefore one must stress more on the positive side of the sadhana than on the negative side of rejection, — though this of course must remain to help the other. Still what is important is to develop the psychic within and bring down the higher consciousness from above. The psychic as it grows and manifests detects immediately all wrong movements or elements and at the same time supplies almost automatically the true element or movement which will replace them — this psychic process is much easier and more effective than that of a severe tapasya of purification. The higher consciousness in descending brings peace and purity into all the inner parts; the inner being separates itself from the imperfect outer consciousness and at the same time the peace that comes carries in it a power which can throw out what contradicts the peace and purity. Ego can then slowly or swiftly but surely disappear — rajas and tamas change into their divine substitutes.
19 March 1937
*
While we were reading something about kartavyam karma, X asked me if for us in the Ashram whatever is sanctioned by the Mother can be accepted unhesitatingly as our kartavyam karma. I replied, “Yes, if the sanction is asked for in the right spirit.” He said, “What do we know of the right or wrong spirit? If the Mother’s sanction is there, is it not enough?” I replied in the affirmative, but not with full conviction. Something was lurking in my mind suggesting that the Mother sometimes does sanction an act which may not be according to Her Will but for which a sadhaka may have a strong desire.
If the sadhak has a strong insistence or a strong desire, the Mother may say “Yes” or “Do as you wish” or give her sanction to the thing requested or demanded. That does not make it a kartavyam karma, but simply a thing which the sadhak can do. Again if a thing is indifferent or unobjectionable and the Mother is asked by somebody if he can do it, that does not exalt it into a kartavyam karma.
31 July 1937
4. The Mother Writes to Parichand on Sadhana
Sometimes the vegetables in the Dining Room have an unpleasant taste, but I am eating them in spite of it in order to break old formations and achieve an equality of taste. Is this what you wish me to do ?
Certainly it is indispensable to break down the narrowness and limitations of taste — the vegetables that taste bad to you others find excellent.
c. 1936
*
Mother,
In your prayer of 7 December 1912, there is the following sentence: “Thy Peace is in me, and in that Peace I see Thee alone present in everything, with the calm of eternity.” Does the phrase “the calm of eternity” refer to “I” or “Thee”?
It is not so clear-cut as that. It is the atmosphere in which the experience takes place.
In your prayer of 5 December 1912, there is the line “Thou, nothing but Thou, without any analysis or any objectivising.” What is the exact meaning of the world “objectivising”?
To consider nothing as being outside the Divine and oneself.
1936
*
Mother,
We are having some difficulty in understanding the true meaning of the following sentence in your prayer of 17 May 1914: “The first, as though the power of the prayer would not be complete unless it was traced on paper.” One makes one’s prayer with the help of words, but is a written prayer more powerful than a spoken one? Please clarify the meaning of this sentence.
One should never read this book as if it were giving general rules. Each experience recorded there is a particular case. Moreover, the very form of the sentence implies that it is a particular case, even an exceptional one. These are subtleties of form that no one with a good knowledge of French could mistake.
From the occult point of view:
1. Something formulated in words is more powerful than something only vaguely thought.
2. Something spoken aloud is more powerful than something formulated in words.
3. And lastly, something written is more powerful than something only spoken aloud. But this concerns an occult action exclusively.
c. 1937
Mother,
Half an hour, from 10:00 to 10:30, does not seem to be enough time for my work on the “Visions”. I can work until 11:00 if You permit it. But then I will not be able to join the meditation because I will be on gate duty.
I don’t think it would be good to give up the meditation, which is an opportunity to immerse oneself again in the true consciousness.
c. 1938
*
Meditation is a time of recollection during which one should renew one’s offering, one’s dedication, one’s surrender to the Divine. It is important for the poise of the day not to miss it.
c. 1938
*
Mother,
This evening during meditation I felt a sense of suffocation and dizziness on two occasions and I thought that I was going to faint. This sensation interrupted my meditation twice. I noticed that my trust in you was wavering; otherwise nothing could interrupt my meditation. I have felt a similar sensation in the past, especially in the midst of a large crowd or in a room too full of people.
Perhaps this dizziness comes precisely because the room is too full of people. Wouldn’t it be better for you to sit outside in the open air?
c. 1938
*
Mother,
When the outer nature becomes too restless and the spontaneous peace and concentration are lacking, any effort on my part to concentrate turns into a kind of tapasya. Various suggestions are coming to divert me from this effort, saying that this attitude of tapasya is not as effective as an effortless state. But it seems to me that this effort, this tapasya is necessary so long as the outer nature is not purified. Please give me some direction.
Both are necessary and each comes in its own time.
c. 1938
*
Mother,
Something in me says that You should not be disturbed by asking questions about unimportant things. Is this suggestion true?
It cannot be said that it is either false or true, for each case is different. A general mental rule cannot be true. It is only through the inner contact that one can be guided with a certain sureness. In any case, it is better to ask too many questions rather than too few.
c. 1938
*
Mother,
Questions in plenty have been cropping up about work and my inner attitude, some clearly and others vaguely. One part of me says, “Catch these questions as best you can, even the smallest ripples, and put them before the Mother.” But another part suggests, “That the Mother won’t like because she has very little time to spare. Wait until things become clearer from within.” But in following this latter suggestion, I have sometimes committed blunders which would not have been done if I had referred to You.
What attitude on my part will smoothen Your purifying work?
A general attitude of quiet opening to the Light and the Force is more important than to go into details. Always remember the will to surrender, the precision in details will surely come afterwards.
My love and blessings.
c. 1938
*
Mother,
You once told me that the impulses or suggestions which strike the mind first when one sets about doing something were the right and true ones. But so often the perverse forces of the mind and vital lie in wait and bring about a great confusion. As my discernment is not yet clear and sure, I feel I should refer these first intuitions to You physically, in writing, in order to do away with any chance of distorting the movement.
But will this not involve going into details, which You told me is not so important at present as a general attitude of quiet opening? How then can this going into details be avoided?
It is the inner attitude of surrender and consecration which is the most important and must be kept all through day and night, if possible.
The physical referring to me by writing must come only occasionally as a control of what has been received in the inner silence. That is to say, if you have asked a question and received an inner answer and you are not quite sure of the exactitude of your perception, you can write to know from me the truth about it.
My love and blessings.
1940
*
Mother,
While at work, unpleasant vibrations keep my mind and heart unsettled and perverse movements blind my vision. Sometimes I feel that I am pushed not by impulses coming from You but from undivine sources, and yet I cannot clearly discern the right from the wrong. Mother, because of the dark forces still reigning over my nature it will take time to turn it into Your instrument.
It is in the quietness of the mind that the discrimination between the forces can come. Keep you mind silent and most of the problems will be solved.
My love and blessings.
1940
*
Mother,
There is a growing tendency in me towards lessening rather than increasing work — doing less work but in a better and more careful way. Mother, is my attitude right or is some wrong idea actuating me?
Yes, it is all right, better do well than do much.
My love and blessings.
1940
*
Mother,
The constant push to activity after activity has now given place to a tendency to inaction. Exhaustion follows after a little work and the body sinks down forcefully. No zeal, no conquering will. How can I shake it off for good?
Most probably it is only a period and it may leave you soon. But do not worry about it and remain quiet. It is the best way to quicken its departure.
My love and blessings.
1940
*
Mother,
The day before yesterday I took tea and other preparations at X’s and just after lea I drank a glass of water. That night I could not sleep until 1:00 a.m. The next day and today I suffered from a dry cold, uneasiness, heaviness, feverishness and a slight headache. Are these not due to my accepting tea without Your permission?
No, not for that — most likely it is due to the cold water on the hot tea.
My love and blessings.
1940
*
Mother divine,
Although my mind says that even if the Mother gives no reply to my letters I should not despond in the least, still my vital shrinks and sinks a little. It craves for some stimulant and tries to cloud the mind. Today I have felt a sort of dryness and laxity.
I pray, O Mother, let me know inwardly or outwardly where I stand and let me fulfil Your intention. I want to be Yours, my Mother, take me up.
You must not worry — depression and anxiety are the result of a hostile influence; they must be rejected at once. It is not by a mental brooding on one’s own mistake or [sentence incomplete]
c. 1944
*
Mother,
Some parts of my nature are in turmoil. Is it due to some wrong attitude or to subconscient upsurgings? By Your grace my inner poise is intact, but my outer nature is still subject to heaviness, weakness and unrest. I aspire to know how to get over them.
Ignore them and turn your attention elsewhere.
24 December 1945
*
Mother divine,
In spite of enough physical movement, my constipation persists and there is a consequent lethargy in the body. Since my inner consciousness is still subjected to the body, there is often a depression in the vital and mental parts. If a purgative such as Milk of Magnesia is taken, this disturbance may be avoided. But that will mean dependence on an external aid. Moreover, I doubt whether You approve of taking purgatives.
Mother, I humbly and earnestly pray for Thy guidance and uplifting Grace so that I may be able to shake off these morbidities and become a strong, glad and illumined servitor of Thee.
Take the Milk of Magnesia at once and also the resolution to be (and not to become) “a strong, glad and illumined servitor”; there is no need of waiting any longer for that. My love and blessings.
9 September 1946
*
Mother,
The past failings and falterings of my nature, its insincerities and faithlessnesses, occasionally cut me to the quick. Should I pay any attention to them?
It is better not to brood over these things. A simple detachment is the first step towards liberation.
My love and blessings.
c. 1946
*
Mother divine,
Month after month, year after year pass away, yet no decisive opening is made in mv being, no definite change in my consciousness. Sometimes my heart shudders at the thought that there is something wrong in my attitude, that there are certain perverse habits in my nature which oppose a sweet, devotional, childlike psychic relation with you.
Today I feel a strong urge to approach Thee, O Mother, for enlightening me on the real nature of the opposition and showing me a rapid way out of this tangle.
The smallest change in the nature especially in the physical needs a very long time to be realised — so the first condition is to be very patient.
My love and blessings.
15 April 1947
*
My sweet Mother,
Should I also get my hair cut for marching in the Playground? If so, should I simply get it bobbed or clipped closer?
Bobbed is all right.
31 January 1949
*
Mother,
Dr. X proposes that on the day of Y’s operation (Friday) and one or two days after, Z and I should arrange to remain by turns in the Hospital both in the day-time and at night. He says You have permitted it. Should we act accordingly?
Y is very frightened by the perspective of the operation. Consequently I advised him not to get operated.
c. 1949
*
Mother,
These days I meet with a difficulty. Special food preparations are widely prevalent and occasionally I am requested to partake of them. Sometimes I refuse, sometimes I find it hard to do so. But whenever I accept I feel a prick of conscience. What should be my attitude?
It depends mostly on the people who invite you. I cannot give a general answer.
My blessings.
18 March 1950
*
Mother,
X and I were surprised to hear that Y wrote to you for work due to our pressure. I proposed his name to you because I was impressed by his words; I thought he had no objection to taking up the work. Now I hear that you are displeased with our moves. I am not quite conscious of my faults, but it seems I was wrong in my judgment. I pray to you for pardon for any wrong done unconsciously.
I have never shown or expressed the slightest displeasure for your moves. Beware of what people may say or express in my name because usually it is disfigured.
In any case do not worry. Everything will be all right.
With my love and blessings.
25 May 1961
Parichand at work tending flowers
in the Ashram compound (Pondicherry c. 1975)
5. The Mother Writes to Parichand on Gardening Work
In preparing the bed of the third plot, it may be found necessary to cut away some roots of the trees.
This is not possible. No roots of trees must be cut.
Apart from that — if the trees are respected, you can prepare these. Blessings.
1938
*
I explained the whole thing to Z today. Of course this poor Service tree has already suffered much by the last storm and I do not wish to inflict any more difficulty upon it — but in this case it is not the main point. The objection to putting the eucalyptus plant there is that as the Service tree has already grown roots there, especially when some fresh good soil is put, it will grow some new roots much stronger than those of the eucalyptus plant, suck all the nourishment out of the soil and leave the eucalyptus plant starving if not even crushed out of existence.
Hair roots can be cut if indispensable but in small quantity and not often.
Blessings.
1938
*
One “Engine” rose plant, received from Calcutta last November and transplanted early in January, was growing nicely, but now the leaves have crinkled and turned blackish. Liquid manure was twice applied within nine days.
I suspect the liquid manure to be the culprit in almost all cases. In France the first thing taught to those who look after rose plants is that liquid manure and in general all unfermented manure must never be used.
9 April 1938
*
In the summer many buds become weak, malformed and discoloured. Is it not good to nip them?
You may try on one and see the result.
Do You approve of restricting the number of buds, shoots and fruits so that the remaining ones may be more vigorous?
It is in the choice of those to keep and those to remove that lies the difficulty.
14 May 1938
*
In the summer we are accustomed to seeing the tips of branches drying, foliage losing its greenness, shoots lacking in vigour, leaves crinkling and plants presenting a weak and sickly appearance. The mind suggests that this is more or less inevitable in places like this where for almost six months the hot season prevails. But something in me counters this suggestion and says, “Plants can remain quite fresh and full of life throughout the year if one knows how to keep them. If proper precautionary measures are taken, climatic changes can have no influence on the plants and it is not indispensable for them to undergo such suffering. Certain plants may take rest in summer, growth may be held in check for that period, but no trace of suffering will be visible.”
Certainly, if the necessary care is given the plants need not suffer.
Blessings.
28 May 1938
*
... This incident has brought the following suggestion to me: “Put the umbrellas over the plants at 11 or 11:30 a.m. and take them off at 2 or 2:30 p.m. This will be enough protection from the sun. Let the watering also be regulated.” I pray for Your direction.
From the point of view of the rose-plants it would be evidently better — but what about you?
4 June 1938
*
In the pit unused croton compost is kept. Along the wall and behind the kitchen there is palm compost.
I hope all this is not smelling and making the house uncomfortable.
13 July 1938
*
These rose plants are under the shade of the mango tree and around them foliage plants have been put to provide shade and yet admit diffused light. I am keeping the soil of these plants always moist and on very hot days I am thinking of watering the plants in the afternoon and syringing them in the morning.
Take care not to water too much, the plants may get rotten.
29 July 1938
*
The rain is often so violent that it may be better if they [rose plants] do not receive it directly.
29 July 1938
*
Mother,
In X’s house, there is a bael-fruit tree. It is a thorny tree, with some branches at the bottom which are in the way. X suggests cutting the bottom branches and allowing the tree to spread at the top; it is now about ten feet high.
It seems always a pity to cut branches — will it not spoil the tree? — while the convenience cannot be very great.
Blessings.
1 September 1938
*
Mother,
The thirty rose plants in Red House present a most sickly appearance. Even those shifted there from Vigie House are worse than before. One reason for the sickliness of these plants may be their being too near the sea. The moist and saltish air constantly blowing from the sea may have an injurious effect upon them. But is this the real cause? If so, shall I remove them at once without waiting till they are gradually transplanted?
Surely it is the neighbourhood of the sea that is harmful. It is better to remove them as soon as possible.
12 September 1938
*
Mother,
While top-dressing the rose plants, we very often come across roots only an inch or so below the surface; the roots come practically to the surface. In such cases we cannot provide the plants with sufficient manure and soil unless we damage the roots.
I feel that I should not allow the roots to be cut, but the question of nourishment comes in. I am, of course, applying bonemeal to almost all the plants. What else can I do?
The roots must be coming at the surface because when pushing downward they meet with the obstacle of the pot. Is it good to bury the pot in the ground like that? I always heard it was not as it favours the growth of worms.
In this connection I should like to know if You approve of the use of chemicals such as sulphate of ammonia, sulphate of potash, super-phosphate of lime, etc. in the case of rose plants. I remember reading somewhere that such chemical manures should be used very cautiously, otherwise they may spell disaster. So I have refrained from applying them till now. But if You permit me to apply them, I shall inform You of the chemicals prescribed by the Rosarians and also the dose to be given.
It would be better to know first if these chemicals are at all recommended for the rose plants by the experts.
Blessings.
15 September 1938
*
Mother,
In Y’s proposal, which was submitted to You yesterday and which You have approved, we see that we shall start the work with our own supply of manure and that of a few private houses.
You gave us two alternatives. One was to arrange for the manure supply separately; the other was for the Garden Service to take the whole charge of the manure.
We should like to know which of the two You prefer.
I have no preference for any of the two solutions. It is the way in which it is worked out that is most important. Whatever can be done in good organisation and harmony, avoiding carefully all wastage and all quarrels, will have my full support.
Blessings.
17 September 1938
*
Mother,
Certain rose plants are apt to suffer from excessive moisture, either due to bad drainage or to the texture of the soil used in transplanting. It becomes necessary for such plants to be sheltered from the rain. This means shifting them to sheltered places each time it is raining or there is a chance of rain and bringing them back for sunning when the sky is clear. Do You like this?
I thought that plants did not like to be carried about too often...
17 September 1938
*
Mother,
Now and then the squirrels gnaw away mercilessly at the tender shoots of the rose plants on the Prosperity and Rosary terraces. Today I found a number of shoots lying on the pots and on the roof. How can I prevent the squirrels from this ravaging?
It seems impossible. Z tried all sorts of things and never succeeded. We are freely feeding these beasts to diminish their devastation, but without any result.
26 September 1938
*
Mother,
There is a general complaint against one of our gardeners, Adimoulam. Though young and healthy he is dull in intellect, lazy in habit, prone to idle away his time and apathetic in the work entrusted to him. Moreover, he has expressed his dissatisfaction with the pay he receives and is sometimes irreverent in his attitude towards us. How to mend his habits or effect a change in his nature?
This is perfectly impossible. For a sadhak it is already a big job to change his outward nature; how can you expect it from an ordinary uneducated man?
4 October 1938
*
Mother,
While X was taking rest after his mid-day meal, he saw two paid gardeners, Narayanswami and Mourougesh, proceeding towards the broken branch of the sandal tree. Mourougesh first tried to break a piece out of it but failed. Then Narayanswami began cutting the branch with his knife when X caught him red-handed. On cross-examining these gardeners and also Ramaswami, X came to know that Ramaswami and Narayanswami had tried to cut bits in the morning also. What do You advise us to do?
A good scolding from Amrita and a warning that if they begin doing again such things, they will be dismissed.
19 October 1938
*
Mother,
Some difficulty has arisen in connection with the heap of manure purchased yesterday. We settled the manure price at Rs. 7 mainly on the owner’s assurance than it will be at least seven carts of manure. We also thought that the heap would be seven carts, if not more; but now we find that the heap has come to four carts only.
The owner sent a bearer to collect Rs. 7 from us, but we have paid only Rs. 4 and have written to the owner. “We settled the price at Rs. 7 on your giving us the assurance of getting seven carts but as we got only four carts we hope you will have no objection to accept Rs. 4.”
We have taken a signed receipt of Rs. 4 from the bearer. If the owner comes or sends a man for the settlement, should we try to cut the price or give him Rs. 7 as settled with him?
If he insists on getting the Rs. 7 I do not see how you can refuse. When you arranged the bargain, instead of giving a lump sum for the heap, you ought to have said R. 1 per cart.
Blessings.
25 October 1938
*
Mother,
Today at noon two goats entered into Santal House and mercilessly ate away the tender leaves and shoots of four rose plants. It is a pitiful sight. A month’s labour spoilt in a few minutes. We shall henceforward try to keep the doors always shut and ask the inmates to do so. One of the doors has no bolt to lock it from outside. Can we ask Amrita to get it done?
Well, I have repeatedly said that gates must remain closed. You can ask Amrita about the locking arrangement.
28 October 1938
(Regarding differences of opinion among members of the Garden Service Committee)
My decision is that you should all give up your selfish egoistic reactions and face the problems in the spirit of true sadhaks, from the yogic point of view.
Especially Y seems to have made a point to contradict and discuss all what the others have decided. I do not approve of this attitude.
And I will repeat what I have said in the ‘Words’: When people quarrel all of them are wrong.
Blessings to all.
c. 1938
*
Mother,
You have asked us to stop discussing. Accordingly we have dissolved the daily evening meeting of the Garden Service from today. Is it all right?
Yes, at least for the moment — and until the minds have become quieter and the vital reactions are more under control.
Blessings.
29 June 1939
*
Mother,
We wish to inform You that although X had been looking after our Garden Service manure in the capacity of general supervisor, it seems that he has no special experience in this line. We therefore thought of giving charge of this section to X and Y together. But Y fears that there might remain some chance of disharmony in this combination, so we propose instead to entrust the charge to Y and Z.
I do not approve of this kind of fear. Each one’s duty is to abolish not only all quarrels but also the very idea that they can take place.
1939
*
Mother,
In submitting to You this shocking report I feel like writing something. My heart has borne without much shock the death of an appalling number of plants. This is due, I have often felt with pain, not to a settled calm and equality but a deep-rooted tamasic indifference, insensibility, callousness and apathy. If some day, by Your grace, O Mother, a drop of Your pure love gives a magic touch to my heart, the plants too will get back the elixir of life.
Time and labour have not been spared, but I fear that they have not been applied usefully and systematically. Daily twice or thrice I have paused beside these suffering plants and yet felt helpless in removing their suffering. What a pitiful state!
Among my inner defects are a confused atmosphere of mind and a lack of clear perception, conquering will, boldness in taking steps, sympathetic touch, and openness to the inner guidance. How can I get over these defects and be more perfect manifesting instrument of Yours?
It seems to me that what has happened is chiefly the result of lack of experience — if you persevere in your efforts you will succeed.
My love and blessings.
July 1939
*
Mother,
The condition of the rose plants in my charge pains my heart whenever I go near them. I am ready to spare no efforts for their betterment if only Your will itself manifests more and more clearly and shows me the right way of nursing them.
So many plants have died without giving me sufficient experience! Tell me, Mother, what I should do to fulfil Your will more perfectly.
From the spiritual point of view, in your work, there are two defects that are to be removed. One is a kind of restlessness which compels you to try always new things and to make too many experiments — and the other is a certain rigidity in the mind which prevents the true inspiration from being properly received. Once these obstacles are removed you will more easily feel my force and my consciousness working through you.
With my love and blessings.
1939
*
Mother,
My inner being fails to form any decision about how to help my roses, but an immediate decision is called for. One suggestion comes: “When a plant is suffering, meditate upon it. The mind will bring many ideas, but quietly wait. If not at once, eventually the real cause will become evident if you draw near the plant and meditate upon it now and then.” Is this a right suggestion?
You can try the meditation but unless you quiet your mind completely it will not be of much help.
In connection with the grubs eating the roots of the plants, I can do two things: either free the mind from fear and develop an inner quiet and confidence in Your grace, or take precautionary measures such as applying soot-water, permanganate of potash etc. In the latter solution I have little faith, but I can do so if that be Your will.
Why this or that? Can you not rely on the Grace always, whatever is the exterior step taken?
My love and blessings.
1940
*
Mother,
About two months back I prepared some compost for roses with one part activated compost and one part garden soil. But in that compost, too, I have come across grubs. Thus although I have been washing plant after plant to make them grub-free, the grubs may have introduced themselves through the compost.
Mother, is it because I am afraid of the grubs that they appear so often? What should I do to keep the plants and compost free from grubs? Should I not banish these apprehensions and be rather careless of such things?
It may indeed be that by your fear and apprehension you actually attract the difficulties. An attitude of quiet confidence is much more helpful.
My love and blessings.
1940
*
Mother,
The watering and sunning of washed plants and new plants from outside still perplexes me.
On 3rd October, we washed, thinned and watered one plant and put it under the shade of the mango tree. Six days later, it was watered again because the soil did not get sufficiently dry. It was brought a little out from the trunk and given three-fourths of an hour’s sun, but still under the tree. No eye opened, many leaves yellowed and fell.
From the 12th it began raining. The plant was brought farther out to get three hours’ sun, but from the 12th to the 23rd there was practically no sun, but on the contrary heavy showers. As a result of this rain about three-and-a-half dozen eyes opened almost at the same time, but many of them sent forth very tiny shoots. Thinking that the plant would not be able to nourish so many shoots, I nipped one dozen weak ones9.
On the 24th, the sun was once again bright and hot. I noticed at about 10:30 or 11:00 a.m. that some tender shoots had drooped. This I attributed to the sudden change of weather. I shifted the plant to a still sunnier position so that next day it got about four-and-a-half hours’ sun —from 7:30 to 12:00 a.m. I noticed that some shoots had drooped again, but I did not give the plant any shade for two reasons10: 1) The soil was still very wet and I feared root-rot if it rained again, and 2) I wanted to accustom the leaves to more sun and thought they would stand up. But what I saw at 1:30 was that some four shoots had wilted badly beyond any hope of {{0}}reviving[[Here also the Mother put five exclamation marks.]]?
Mother, I have given at length the after-treatment of one plant as an example, but I pray for Your direction applicable to all such plants because it is upon the after-treatment that their life and progress depend.
The above statements you make describe most clearly the mess that the mind can do when it interferes in plant life. How much I wish you could stop thinking! Then, I suppose, the plants will grow and be happy.
My love and blessings.
1940
*
Mother,
Your reply to my letter concerning the after-treatment of washed plants has come as a revelation to me. It is my mental formations and suggestions that have not been allowing me to hear the small inner voice and distorting and disfiguring the true inspirations and impulses coming from You.
Mother, when it is Your will that I stop thinking I must do so. I pray to Your grace to remove the obstacles standing in the way. For the purpose of work should I not quietly and constantly look up to You for inspirations and follow them boldly, lending a deaf ear to all counter-suggestions? I feel that these two things are lacking in me; boldness and inner certitude. It is by Your grace that they will grow.
It is in quietness of the mind that you can get the certitude and the consequent boldness to act.
But before and above all you must get this mental quietness; it is most important for both sadhana and work, inner growth and outer expression.
Aspire for silence and quietness.
The plant I referred to You has, I suppose, got sun-stroke. As a result, a few more tender shoots have collapsed and a few thin branches are dying in spite of my giving shade to the plant after only two-and-a-half or three hours’ early morning sun. How to counteract the anxiety this is causing me?
Do not worry — the plants also need quietness to live happily.
My love and blessings.
1940
*
Mother,
Now the roses cause anxiety to me whenever I draw near to them. Should I not throw away this anxiety? Should the least lowering of the consciousness be allowed in the presence of others because of this grave failure?
It is always better not to allow anxiety or depression to overcome you. A quiet, steady, confident will is the thing needed.
1940
*
Mother,
Remove all hindrances, accustom my being to commune more deeply with the plants and hear Your voice through them — otherwise I do not see any way to their improvement.
With much hesitation I am writing to You about roses. Suggestions of incapacity and egoistic persistence on my part have been coming now and then. If, due to my present state of non-receptivity in service to You, it is better that I hand over the charge of roses to X or anybody else, I shall gladly do so, even if the outer nature groans a little. Let the roses grow and be happy.
I do not want you to give up the work — but for the roses to grow happily you must not worry so much about them.
My love and blessings.
1940
*
Mother,
Some suggestion discourages me from watering the roses lightly three times a day as advised by You. This has not been found profitable by me for two reasons: (1) It has not been systematically done and not at regular intervals; (2) I have gone on watering even when it was not necessary and when a day’s withholding would have done good.
I have thought of watering all the new plants according to Your method, rejecting any counter-suggestion as false. Is it all right?
If the method has not proved successful, why continue? It was not my method as I have never tried it myself. It was only a suggestion.
Blessings.
1940
*
Mother,
In Arogya House there is a rose plant which is growing nicely. Y told Z to bring it to Santal House, pluck the flowers and send them to You. Z will keep the plant under his treatment. Is it all right?
I do not quite understand why the plant is to be removed if it is growing all right? It is not good to move plants like that.
My love and blessings.
1940
*
Mother,
We do this shifting of all kinds of plants — caladiums, maidenhair ferns, etc. —from Your garden without asking for Your permission, thinking that You will have no objection to this regular rotation. Is this idea in tune with Your will?
If the garden remains well decorated with ferns and other green plants I have no objection.
1940
*
Mother,
Out of fifteen mangoes kept by me for ripening in Cocotiers, two were found slightly eaten by cockroaches, thus rendering them unworthy of being offered to You. Another mango cracked when it fell from the tree and later got ripe. These three mangoes X and I tasted, following some impulse which was perhaps vital, for I felt some inner agitation when Y refused to share them with us. What ought we to do with such damaged or spotted fruits in future?
You can very well eat them, there is no harm.
With my love and blessings.
1940
*
Mother,
This evening I was shocked to hear from Z that You had expressed Your displeasure that none of us were present to supervise the work of the gardener who was found breaking off the dry branches of the Service tree and throwing them roguishly on the ferns below. But he was asked by me merely to remove nests of insects and inject “Agrisol” into their hiding holes. The day before yesterday, when I saw him throw a twig which almost hit a fern plant I rebuked him and directed him to throw such twigs on the concrete floor. X also checked him once. That he acted against our directions proves that he is a knave; he cared little for the plants and thought of stealthily collecting fuel for himself.
Mother, should I take any step against the gardener?
Do not give this work any more to that gardener and if he asks later on for some favour (loan or leave) you can refuse saying that these are reserved for the workmen who are honest, obedient and careful.
Blessings.
26 January 1945
*
Mother,
Y wants me to see that Z gets the flowers and leaves he needs daily for distribution. He does not like to have direct dealings with him on this matter because of some disharmony. I was not quite willing because of the existing pressure of work. But I pray to know Your will in this affair.
My will is that people should not quarrel.
Blessings.
5 January 1946
*
Mother,
There are a lot of dry branches on the service tree in the Ashram. Can I have them removed?
Just now it is not possible because one cannot distinguish between those which are truly dry and those that have lost their leaves.
For beauty’s sake do You approve of our painting with green solignum a few dozen stakes that we use for supporting plants? We could get it done by our workmen?
Who says that it will look more beautiful? Not I.
My love and blessings.
29 January 1946
*
Mother,
For plucking night flowers such as “Faithfulness” and “Peace in the Vital” from various houses, I would like to send some paid gardener. Do You approve of it?
No.
If you send servants to pluck flowers soon you will have no flowers at all.
My love and blessings.
27 March 1946
*
Mother,
The Renuka House garden seems overcrowded and is kept untidy. One papaya tree is enough for the small place, hut X is growing another. Then she has planted a branch of the tree “Psychological Perfection “, and this will soon grow big. Finally, she is, I suppose, growing more vegetable creepers than the place can accommodate.
Yes; and you warn her not to increase her garden any more because all the plants will suffer.
My love and blessings.
6 April 1946
*
Mother,
We have a small lawn-roller. Y wanted it for levelling the new playground, but I refused, saying that it was meant for lawns. He says he is going to make a lawn there. Should I issue the roller to him? I fear that it may get damaged by shifting, if carelessly done.
I do not advise you to lend the gardening tools to anyone.
My love and blessings.
2 May 1946
*
Mother,
Once I informed You of the regularly irregular attendance of a gardener named Arjun, and the unsatisfactory nature of his work with us. This gardener is about one year in our service. Should we take any steps to rectify his habits?
To rectify the habits of anybody is not an easy thing — but he can be threatened with dismissal if he continues.
13 June 1946
*
Mother,
Z spoke to me about the lawn-roller. He said, “I told the Mother that I needed the roller for a day only. The Mother then enquired if any written permission from Her was necessary. I replied I would speak to you orally.”
Should I issue the roller to him, or should I refuse it, saying it is reserved for the Model and the Ashram lawns?
In this connection it now occurs to me that I would have done better if I myself had refused flatly and not consented to Z’s suggestion to refer the case to You. But as I was not quite sure of Your will, I could not do it with strength. I humbly pray to know for future guidance how I should have behaved.
Evidently if you had at once refused it would have been easier — but it is difficult to get rid of Z. I fear that now we will have to compromise. You can say that it cannot be lent but some one of you will go and do the work himself.
29 July 1946
*
Mother,
Before writing to You I had a talk with Y about the roller affair. This morning I told him what You had written to me; sometimes I am free speaking with him. But I felt later that I ought to have kept to myself what You had written about Z. I pray to know if I acted on a wrong suggestion.
It is always better not to repeat to others what I tell or write to you.
My love and blessings.
30 July 1946
Parichand at work gardening in
the Ashram compound (Pondicherry c. 1950)
Jatin (left) and Parichand,
the two heads of the Ashram Garden Service
Mother,
About the garden inside the Ashram courtyard. May we temporarily arrange potted plants around the trunk of the Service tree for decoration till the last week of September?
No, it will not look nice, it is better as it is.
For beauty’s sake Dr. X once suggested covering with red earth the portion of the ground unoccupied by pots. Instead of red earth, I think red sand would be better. Do You approve of the idea?
No, it looks too artificial.
My love and blessings.
8 August 1946
*
Mother,
Under the Araucaria tree in front of X’s room, can we plant in its bed one row of “Generosity” plants and another row of “Caladium” leaves?
Is it not bad for the tree to plant these flowers below?
My love and blessings.
17 September 1946
*
Mother,
In dealing with our new young gardeners, who are somewhat arrogant and defiant, I experience a weak, timid and confused reaction in some parts of my nature. I have been opening these parts to Your force, praying for light and courage and strength.
It is in perfect calm that you can get unfailing strength.
With my love and blessings.
6 November 1946
*
Mother,
Yesterday there was a quarrel between X and Y. Desirous of harmony, Y wants me to convey some suggestions to X. He wants my mediation because a direct approach on his part may meet with a rebuff. I have been avoiding this because I find the task not only unpleasant and ineffective but in a way harmful. But I will refer Y’s suggestions to You if it be Your will that I should take part.
It is not, indeed, very good to interfere in these meaningless quarrels.
My love and blessings.
4 January 1947
*
Mother,
Yesterday when You came to the Cocotiers garden my mind was calm and glad, but later it was overshadowed for a certain reason. As the clouding effect still endures, I approach You for succour and guidance.
I heard from Z that his workmen were all present when You went to his farm. So also at Cazanove and Nanteuil. Thus when You came to Cocotiers and our workmen stayed on at the end of work, instead of going home, I did not object to their staying inside the garden.
After work, some of them went out to smoke without our notice and came back to foul the garden atmosphere. This incident caused trouble in me and then I felt that as the work was over I had better ask them to go home. But they remained, evidently in expectation of tips.
I pray to know the right procedure for future guidance. Also, will it be advisable now for me to tell them anything about the smoking affair?
There is nothing to say about the smoking provided they smoke outside the working hours and also outside the premises. For another time those who wish to stay may stay but they must not believe I will give them tips because I refuse to make this a habit.
My love and blessings.
8 February 1947
*
O Gracious Mother,
The number of workmen, permanent or temporary, is now sixteen. We can get satisfactory work from most of them only under strict supervision; otherwise they are prone to idle away their time, and the more the number of men the less the output. We need two more supervisors for better management.
For the moment I have nobody to give you.
The supervision of the workmen and the stores demands much of my time and attention. As a result the cultural and decorative side of gardening in the Ashram and Cocotiers does not get proper care and attention. A suggestion comes therefore to look for a sadhak to help me full-time, preferably a Tamil sadhak or Tamil-speaking one, and gradually entrusting him with responsibility.
Yes, if such a man can be found it is good; but for the moment I see nobody.
But there is another thing. Dealing with the workmen these days has increasingly helped to embolden my weak parts, to strengthen my nerves and to instil faith and courage in my vacillating heart. This seems to be a gain. So a counter-suggestion comes: “Continue till you find that no part shrinks or shudders even in the teeth of opposition.”
I ardently pray to know, Mother, which suggestion to accept in order that I may best fulfil Your will in life.
Do not plan in advance, do not decide beforehand, keep silent and do at each moment the thing that you can do while inside being concentrated on me.
8 May 1947
*
Mother,
Under the Araucaria tree in front of X’s room, may I plant “Sri Aurobindo’s compassion” plants? They are short-lived and surface-rooting and so will not be harmful to the tree, I believe.
I do not care much for plants and flowers under trees.
10 May 1947
*
Mother Divine,
There is something I should tell You in order to be free from all vibrations. Many of our 16 workmen, after the morning-work, take their bath and food inside the Cocotiers Garden, then lie down there till they are called for work. Taking advantage of my absence, they may let in outsiders and create noise and other disturbances.
You certainly cannot leave the workmen all alone in the garden.
12 May 1947
*
Mother,
This morning when Y went to call the gardeners at 6:30 a.m., he found them all absent, although we had seen some of them sitting and chatting outside before roll-call time. They appeared five minutes later, at 6:35 a.m. When Y informed them that they were late by five minutes, one gardener complained, “Five minutes in the morning — how can it be late ? “ Another gardener joined him and they grumbled a little.
They were late again today; I suspect it was intentional, and they may try to repeat it.
Z told me that in the Domestic Service five or ten minutes lateness is not so strictly noted, but if someone is persistently late then he is marked so. It occurred to me that if the lateness is occasional, we too might ignore it. If we dissatisfy the gardeners for a few minutes delay, we may not get good work from them during the day. Y, however, seems to be more strict about punctuality in attendance.
I pray for Your guidance, Mother. I confess that I felt weakness and uneasiness in this connection.
It is always better not to make a fuss about small things.
My love and blessings.
11 June 1947
*
Mother,
About two gardeners still on trial: Shyamsunder has been absent without authorisation for ten days and Munuswami for thirteen days. Both not satisfactory in their work. (They might be working elsewhere.) We propose that their names should be struck off the roll. Do You approve of it?
You must give them first 3 warnings and notices and finally give them one month’s pay.
As one of these two gardeners is comparatively better, do you permit us to keep an opening for him in our service if he turns up? We have an order from You not to fill up the vacancy. If he appears in a few days, then we could consider his case.
I advise always to keep people unless it is truly impossible to do so, because if you send one away you are never sure that the one you will get in exchange will truly be better.
My love and blessings.
20 June 1947
*
Mother,
About the gardener, Puttupatam. He is very irregular. He was dismissed last May, but our workmen went on strike, so he was taken back after he apologised, saying he would no more absent himself without authorisation.
This month he took two days of unauthorised absence. If I take him to Amrita, some drastic step will be taken against him, I believe. As this workman is very lethargic, we will not mind losing him. But I am not sure if You would approve of it.
It is no use dismissing servants and be obliged to take them back again.
27 June 1947
*
Mother,
Five gardeners of the same locality have been absenting themselves for the last three or four days without informing us. Only one of them, after two days’ absence, appeared yesterday to ask for three days’ further leave.
About this group we have a proposal to make. As they sometimes remain absent in a body, causing much inconvenience to our work, we would like to transfer two out of them to some other section — the two who are the most irregular and not always well-behaved. These gardeners will surely oppose this transfer and may even try to foment a strike, but that we are ready to face because our work suffers much when they remain absent together.
I pray to know Your will.
I am sure that not one out of ten of these workmen can be called honest and satisfactory, but it seems to me wiser to make the best out of the evil one knows rather than to run the risk of a worse combination.
With my love and blessings.
14 July 1947
*
Mother,
As you know two of our gardeners have remained absent from work since the 26th of last month without informing us. X got Your permission to send them away. One of them turned up for work this morning, after 18 days’ absence. Amrita has already given me his official letter of dismissal (referring there to an article in the Convention Collective), copies of which have been sent to the Labour Office and the President. This letter I will hand over to the man tomorrow.
This gardener, although he came from a communist quarter and belonged to a group of four other very undesirable gardeners, was not found by us unsatisfactory in respect to his conduct, work and attendance. So the suggestion comes: “Dismiss him and then after some days take him back on trial with a reduced pay.” But another suggestion says; “Do not take him back and give him no hope of further employment.”
I pray for Your decision.
If the man is a good worker why don’t you simply keep him in service?
My love and blessings.
13 September 1947
*
Mother,
A question has risen again in me. I pray for Your guidance. The gardener whom You have asked us to keep in service has already been given his official letter of dismissal. X had Your permission and Amrita had already informed the Labour Office and the President.
Now the dismissed man is again seeking work. May we safely and unhesitatingly take him back into service with his old roll-number and at the existing rate of pay, telling him: “As all of us have been satisfied with your work and conduct, we put your case before the Mother and got Her sanction for your re-employment?”
Yes, but you must add that henceforth he must prove that he is worthy of this treatment by remaining always very regular in his attendance and his work.
16 September 1947
*
Mother,
By Your grace, we have got rid of two undesirable workmen. But one still remains, the worst. He is a young but shrewd and mischievous boy. Other workmen soon may fall under his influence. I heard from Y that the man has even killed someone in a political party scuffle. Because of all this, sometimes when I want to curb his wrong movements, plainly expose his misdeeds, refuse him privileges or take steps against him, I feel a nervous shrinking and the suggestion comes: “Be careful. He may do harm to you, he may even resort to violence.”
So I open these weak parts in me to You, praying for courage, strength and enlightenment.
Quietness, calm, fearlessness.
My love and blessings.
2 October 1947
*
Mother,
The workman Natesan served as a gardener for about 7 1/2 months, then left the work due to illness. His work was satisfactory, his conduct was fairly good, but his attendance was very irregular. Recovered from illness, he now seeks re-employment. We do not want to engage him because he was very irregular and is not very hardy.
He says he can get work in some Government department if we give him a certificate, and he has been asked to bring one from the Ashram. Should we give him anything in writing?
Yes.
If so, can I write in English as follows: “The bearer, Natesan, worked as a gardener for about 7 1/2 months last year and then left the work on account of illness. His work was found by us satisfactory”?
Whenever a servant asks for a certificate, it must be given, unless the man has proved to be very unsatisfactory.
My love and blessings.
11 October 1947
*
Mother,
I approach You for the solution of a problem before me. Two gardeners were dismissed three or four months back. In spite of our repeated refusals, they persist in beseeching us for re-employment. On 1st December both appeared and, when refused employment, made an appeal for certificates saying, “Without certificates, we will not be given work by anybody.”
We did not issue them certificates when they left, because all of us found them unsatisfactory — at times very unsatisfactory — in respect to conduct, work and attendance. Should I tell them that it is not possible for us to give them certificates because none of us found them satisfactory?
Legally we have to give a certificate stating the kind of work they did (gardener for instance), the date’ of their entering the service, the date of their leaving the service. If you have nothing favourable to say, you write nothing, because you must not write anything that would prevent them from finding a job in another house. If you give me the required particulars I shall write down a sample of such certificates.
My love and blessings.
5 December 1947
*
Mother,
I have read some articles from the “Rose Annual” of 1925. But the idea came to me this morning that You would not like me to read the articles in the other issues and stuff my mind with a lot of information. If the idea is true, I shall see the pictures only and send the books back to You.
If you find some useful information in the book I do not see why you should not read.
1947
*
Mother,
Last year for Ayudha Puja, our workmen did not approach us for Sri Aurobindo’s and Your photos while doing the Puja. This year may we give them Your photos for worship, even if they do not of themselves ask us for them?
No.
Love and blessings.
9 October 1948
*
Mother,
The palm trees along Your windows are very dirty. Syringing them from below does not clean them properly. Will You permit me to syringe them from the roofs? The gardeners will supply me with water by ladder and I will carry the cans up to the top. Morning-time will be suitable. I pray for Your sanction.
I do not find it advisable with the present scarcity of water.
Moreover there is a risk of the water coming in the rooms through the windows. Let things stand as they are until the rain comes.
Love and blessings.
19 May 1950
*
Mother,
The gardener Perumal has been in our service about nine years. This year he has again started absenting himself now and then on some excuse or other. He seldom takes my permission. Each time he is absent like this, I ask him to give his reason in writing and show displeasure and deduct from his pay. But he seems not to care for all these deterrents. Sometimes I am prompted to refer his case to the Labour Office, but then a counter-suggestion comes: “There is a general unrest. So better wait for an opportune moment.”
I pray for Your guidance.
All depends on the quality of his work. If he works well, be patient. If the work he does is unsatisfactory, refer to the labour office.
Blessings.
6 April 1955
*
Mother,
I have to get three hundred pots made by Z for the winter season. He is busy making fancy pots and other things on a small scale. So I proposed to him to engage an extra potter for a few days and when the pots are ready, to fire them all at one time. Z is ready to do this, provided he gets money for the potter, fuel and clay — Rs. 25/- approximately. I pray for Your sanction.
What is this commercial spirit!
The whole of Z’s installation and work is paid by me — and his work must be useful to the Ashram. How can he ask for extra money for a work done for the Ashram? This is an intolerable attitude.
11 July 1955
Appendix
[Parichand’s Garden Service Notebook of 1938 contains the Mother’s replies to the questions of three other members of the Garden Service. The concluding text is a general note she wrote to the Garden Service.]
It might be better to keep me informed if you make important changes, especially in the entrance garden and the mango tree garden under our windows. But if you speak of the flowers with their significance rather than with their botanical name it will be easier for me.
11 July 1938
*
Mother,
Do you have any objection to our using sulphate of ammonia and other such chemicals in liquid form in the main Ashram Garden to accelerate the growth of the plants? They have neither any smell nor any colour.
I have no objection provided you use it moderately and with great care as it can destroy as well as accelerate.
11 July 1938
*
Can I remove the branches of shrubs which are overhanging and causing inconvenience to the inmates?
I cannot say yes or no, as all depends on the way it is done. It is not only the welfare of the inmates that must be taken in consideration but also the welfare of the shrubs.
18 July 1938
*
(Asked to choose between three methods of treating crotons, the Mother replied:)
It is by experimenting that one gets knowledge.
29 August 1938
*
Mother,
26 pots of caladium sent here by X are in a very unhealthy condition, due to being crowded together and kept in deep shade for too long. This has made their leafstalks too long; not being able to carry the weight of their own leaves, they have fallen and started rotting. To save the bulb and help new growth, I have cut all the damaged and fallen leaves and kept them in sunny shade, which they like. All the caladiums should be removed from there for some time and kept in a less crowded way and in semi-shade; otherwise they will all perish.
You must, by this time, have received my letter sent to the Garden Service and seen what impression all these poor cut leaves have made upon me. Some were evidently spoilt and faded but many were in perfect condition, fresh and strong, and surely did not need to be cut.
These caladium were brought purposely for the decoration of the N.S. garden. I like them very much as they are extremely decorative. It seems to me that they can be put in the N.S. courtyard at least for one month every darshan and also at the Christmas holidays and in between they can be kept in a more sunny place.
Blessings.
30 August 1938
*
Mother,
I am extremely sorry for having made this pruning mistake. It would not have happened if I had informed You beforehand and done it myself, instead of asking the paid gardener Murugesa to do this work.
Indeed it was a great mistake to give the work of cutting these leaves to a gardener. In future when such a work is to be done it is always better to do it yourself.
31 August 1938
*
Mother,
Here is a passage from Gopalswami regarding the cultivation of Supramental Guidance in Matter (Hamelia pateus): “It stands close clipping and trimming to any form; trimmed shrubs grown along side-walks or roads are of striking beauty. Hamelia makes a very good ornamental hedge, it is propagated from cuttings.” Shall I follow the advice?
I do not like clipped and trimmed plants, it looks too artificial.
3 September 1938
*
Fruits are better when they are plucked ripe. But this kind of fruit bursts very easily, so it may be better to pluck them a little sooner.
8 September 1938
*
In Deconzanet House the position is very sunny, but the atmosphere is stuffy and the cement floor gets heated.
It is no use putting anything there as the plants suffer.
13 September 1938
*
Mother,
Six palms and one “Purity in the mind” have come for repotting. They are potbound and their roots have enveloped the drainage materials. To take out the potsherd, charcoal etc. and put the plant in the next size pot, the lower portion of the roots will have to be cut. Do You allow me to do this?
Is it not possible to repot them without their roots being cut? With a little care and time it seems to me quite possible.
17 September 1938
*
Mother,
I could not start the transplanting of ferns as yet, but I should not wait any longer as the season is advancing. There are two methods for transplanting them. In both methods they recommend splitting up the fern clumps and planting them thinly, giving ample room for them to spread.
I have noticed that there are two kinds of growth, one like a bamboo clump and the other like the strawberry plant in which suckers are sent far off from the mother-plant. The ferns growing like a bamboo clump can be potted without entire removal of the old soil, but with the strawberry type I have found it impossible to do so. Last time I repotted a few of them by taking the plants out separately and trimming off all their dead stems, roots and broken leaves. Perhaps because of this they suffered a little longer, but after a few months they recoverd. The long recovery period may be due to untimely repotting and a little rough handling.
Do You allow me to follow the above method? Or do You suggest any other method?
The only thing I insist upon is care, gentleness, consideration as you would have for a living being — for plants are living and they feel and suffer.
Blessings.
26 September 1938
*
Mother,
Water-logged and droopy-leaved crotons, caladiums and other plants are coming here for repotting from the main compound. I have tried repotting a few of them, but they have died. So I am leaving them as they are, using just enough water to save them from being bone dry. If after a few days I find some new growth in them, I intend to top-dress them. Do You approve of the above procedure ?
Yes, when a plant is tired or sick give it rest for a few days, in a proper place, and it will recover. Repotting is always a blow and to give a blow to a sick plant is just the way of finishing it.
14 October 1938
*
Mother,
I find some difficulty in repotting without cutting the mould just a little. The mouths of almost all the pots are smaller than the middle, so cutting the sides of the moulds is necessary to bring them out easily. While doing this, some roots will necessarily be cut; to avoid this I have to break open nearly all the pots and also the tubs, because the mould in the tub sticks tightly to the sides and does not come out easily unless I cut this mould (with roots) from the sides just a little. Do You allow me to cut only that much in order to bring out the mould?
If there is no other way, I suppose you will have to do it — but I wish you would repot only those for which it is absolutely indispensable.
Blessings.
14 October 1938
*
Mother,
Y wanted some green mangoes from the Santal House garden and having got your permission he took some twice or thrice. But the other day, finding very few in the tree, he asked me whether I would like to send them directly to you — ripe or unripe. I answered, “Whatever the Mother wishes.” But I do not know which you like better, ripe or unripe mangoes. Z is telling us that the Mother never takes ripe mangoes. I pray for your direction.
Sri Aurobindo eats the ripe mangoes. So it is better to keep the mangoes on the tree and to send them to me when they are ripe.
Blessings.
24 October 1938
*
Mother,
Every year at this time, we used to make cuttings and layerings of shrubs, crotons and other plants which can be propagated. Fearing that the mother plants may not last long, we feel a need to do this. Shall we do it this year also ?
Yes, provided you have time to do it carefully. It is better to do a few with much care, than plenty in great haste.
29 October 1938
*
To the Garden Service
I have read X’s and Y’s letters of this day and take this opportunity to formulate two remarks that I have made since some time already.
When I founded the Garden Service it was to put an end to the old dictatorial regime of a single man at the head of the service with all its results of arbitrary decisions and fanciful rules. But I seem to have failed in my attempt, because instead of a single big state, there have been formed several small states each one under a ruler and all the rulers quarrelling among themselves. Indeed since the beginning of the Garden Service scarcely one day has passed without a quarrel being brought to my notice; constantly I was hearing of hot discussions and quarrels about the most insignificant matters, the smallest things, the most petty disagreements — and always these points of dissension could have been settled by themselves, without a word of discussion, if each one had done his work quietly, free from vanity, self-esteem and a domineering spirit.
As a result and in spite of much effort, work and labour the general standard of the gardens seems to have much gone down. At any rate the only garden 1 see physically — that of the main compound — is far from being what it used to be when at its best. For the past few days, when I walk on the roof, I am seeing with much regret the back garden of the Library House unkept, almost unwatered — as if nobody was supervising the gardeners’ work. This is said only as an instance and I am formulating no criticism of somebody in particular. It is the general spirit of the Garden Service that appears to be wrong and I fear that our attempt at democracy has been a failure. The remedy does not appear clearly, as yet. But as a transition it might be better to stop discussing, each one being busy with the portion of the work which is allotted to him and trying to carry it out as well as possible without attempting to impose his will on others. If in carrying out this programme some real problems arise they can be reported to me and I shall try to solve them.
Blessings.
28 June 1939
6. Rishabhchand Writes to Parichand
(Rishabhchand was not only a close friend but also his spiritual mentor before Parichand joined the Ashram in 1934. All the following letters were written before that year. The first letter, which shows remarkable intellectual maturity, had a decisive influence on his life. Rishabhchand was just twenty-four when he wrote it.)
“Uplands”
Shillong (Assam)
25.1.24
Dear Parichand,
I have received your letter. If I have to comply with your request fully, then I will have to write a Mahabharata; but neither have I the capacity for that nor have you the time to read it, therefore my answer will be as brief as possible.
What you want from me is a description of Shillong, a pen-picture. This is a photographer’s or a litterateur’s job — I would certainly fail if I venture to do it; because the essentials for this work are i) absolute fidelity to detail and, ii) range and minuteness of observation. I do not have either of these. You may say that I had — perhaps I had, but not any longer now.
Indeed the day I reached Shillong leaving the stuffy atmosphere of Calcutta, I heaved, as if, a sigh of relief. I saw Shillong the very next day. Since then, the idea of looking around in that sense did not occur to me till to-day. I saw open pale-blue sky above, everything green all around, and numerous pine-clad hills — big and small — leaning against the sky! The snow-silvered woods and pathways were sparkling brilliantly in the morning sunlight. The roads were very neat and clean — at some places they merged in the hills as in a total offering and again at some other places they spiralled up the hills as in an affectionate embrace. Here the sunrise and sunset were not like those in Puri.
It is difficult to know exactly when the sun rises here and when it sets — all of a sudden it will appear from behind a hill, again at the end of the day it will similarly disappear behind some other hill. The beauty of Puri has a limitless expanse, a calm infinitude — those are missing here; here you find a rugged massiveness, a motionless magnificence, a strength, a silence. This is the Shillong I saw. I only know that I liked it immensely, no poetry however came to my mind — my communion with poets ceased long time back, they remain packed in the almirahs at Shibpur. I am not writing about what I saw or intended to see since then as they will not be of much interest to you.
Now, a different topic. On reading your letter I remembered my Presidency College days. There I was also immersed in poetry like you. Whenever I read a poet, modern and ancient, I cherished him in the solitude of my heart. I entwined my thoughts with his thoughts, my imaginations with his and laughed and wept together. I had wept more because those were more prone to tears. For no reason, I used to feel morose all of a sudden — how many parallel passages came to my mind. While looking indifferently at the moon, I thought myself to be like Shelley — how beautifully he has depicted similar moods in his poems. Again suddenly my heart fluttered, tears streamed down, many fading memories started coming back with their ever fresh charm reminding me of those matchless lines of Keats,
“To know the change and feel it,
When there is none to heal it.”
I remembered the “Bright Star” of Keats looking at the evening star. Sometimes I rushed like mad after, “Alastor”, “Endymion”, again sometimes I slowly dissolved in the moonlit enchantment of “Kubla Khan”. This was my condition at that time. Studies seemed quite dry, the struggle in earthly life was something that never crossed my mind. But let go of those dreamlands — “woven only dreams in the air”. That wonderful scene depicted by Homer, the last farewell of Hector from Andromache — both of them outwardly evinced such hope, such enthusiasm yet in their hearts such deep sorrow — the speechless agony of a last farewell — the tearful sad look in the wide beautiful eyes of Andromache, her heaving heart and longing, lingering look after Hector was departed — there is no count as to how many times I have mentally enacted this scene on “bright moonlit enchanted nights” at the Outram Ghat. Then that startled look of Dante on ascending the “Third Sphere” — everything in the universe suddenly stopped for a moment, as if a gentle hand had all of a sudden covered up everything. Dante observed in spaceless wonder that he appeared to be no longer moving and his progress was arrested; deceived by the uniformity of everybody’s speed he thought he had arrived. Then he looked at Beatrice, the lovely divine Beatrice standing in front of him with her flower-like figure; that fascinating angel of light and love has grown more beautiful, he had never seen her so beautiful, so sweet! Then at once Dante understood that his progress was not suspended, he was proceeding. Such thoughts used to frequent my mind’s horizon all the time and their contact gave rise to so many ripples of which there was no limit.
Then I went to Berhampore to study B.A. At that time my poetry reading began to ebb. But I developed a strong inclination to teach poetry and assume a poet-like posture (one may say in common parlance “put up a poetic pose”). Have long hair parted in American style, keep the shirt buttons open in a carefully careless way, walk with a particular swaying gait stepping delicately that seemed to say, “Hold me dear, my body is quivering”, and a constant half-smiling, half-tearful look in the face (pronounced by competent judges as very poetic!). To look at others in an oblique manner, to talk to people in a spirit of indifferent condescension, to fall in love ten times a day and fret twenty times in unbearable pangs of estrangement — these unmanly, unholy, un-Indian attitudes hummed like bees in my mind. Nobody keeps any count as to how many young men of Bengal who came in contact of Byron, Shelley but being unable to imbibe their good qualities aped these weak points instead and undermined their golden adolescence and youth. I used to receive lot of praises — everybody said, “Rishabhbabu understands poetry very well”; I also used to whisper in my mind’s ears, “Yes, Rishabhbabu is a connoisseur of poetry”. At its time Browning suddenly appeared on the canvas of my mind. During my LA. course, I had a glimpse of Browning but not much acquaintance, now he arrived to dominate my life. He weaned me away substantially from Byron, Keats and Shelley.
My demeanour seemed to be getting chastened gradually and I seemed to be having some living conception of religion, purity and God. I felt as if Browning’s militant optimism, his clear insight into human nature, robust and severe conception of life were having a tonic effect on my mind. Yet I continued to languish almost in the same darkness as before.
Soon after this started the historic college boycott, I also left college. Then I could not understand that it would mean an altogether new turn in my life. There was then only a meaningless unaccountable indifferent attitude. I could not decide at all as to what I should do. Life held out no very bright prospect for me and literature failed to give me the calm I sought! I was in great trouble. The four years which I had spent in the company of poetry had a romantic element, even in its most acute sentimental sorrows there was a luxury. But those things did not seem to enthral me anymore — I no longer liked to run after shadows, as I wanted something tangible, substantial and real. I wanted to intensify that thing, of which I got just a hint from Browning, in all its plenitude and realise it in life. I was no longer satisfied to look at dreams as mere dreams, I wanted to actualise them, to materialise them in life. I had no truck with that dream that refuses to become real, I too refused to dally with it in fancy. This state continued for some time but not for long, however this time I am not writing about what happened thereafter.
You can easily find from this history of my life how terrible, how harmful is the consequence of having such an abnormal craze (this is in you also) for poetry!
Perhaps you will say, “Does it mean it is not right to read poetry?” Certainly it is right but one must know how to read and should read only proper poetry. Bathing in river water is definitely good for health but everybody knows that if one bathes in any river without any discrimination at all then one is bound to fall ill.
You see, it is time now for you to reflect what you will do in life. If you have decided to spend your life in dreaming then I have nothing much to say, because I know from my own experience that this illusion will not last long, you will have to wake up after a terrible jolt. If you are thinking of earning a name as a pleader or barrister and becoming a prominent “Babusahib” then also I have no comments because I have no experience at all in this matter; but if you have ever felt proud to be an Indian, if you have ever felt it an honour to be a follower of Mahabir Swami’s religion then I welcome you to a life diametrically different from the one you have been accustomed to live — a life in which there is abundant poetry and abundant dream, but a poetry and dream which is of the essence of truth, and which finds its only fulfilment in the unblighted blossom of life.
A poet (kavi) in his rarest moment of inspiration transcends the commonplace things of daily life and realises for once the true magnitude of his divine Self — standing on the sea-shore he can hear the music from “beyond the ocean” — gets a glimpse of the infinity, the immensity of the soul, — this is his greatest delight, his soul’s delight. According to Aristotle and Schopenhauer this is the spiritual and highest function of art. This delight a poet releases in versified form in the world. Whoever comes in contact with this delight feels exalted and tries to enrich his life on getting a hint of the True (Satyam), the Right (Ritam) and the Vast (Brihat). That is why what they understand by a ‘Poet’ is not the same as what the term ‘Kavi’ means to an Indian. Of all the definitions I have come across in English, the one by Pater is the best — “a poet is one who contemplates the spectacle of life with appropriate emotions”. But this definition also does not satisfy me. In the term “kavirmanishi” appearing in Isha Upanishad, the kavi (poet) has been accorded a status higher than that of the manishi (thinker). A kavi or a seer, in the words of Aurobindo Ghosh, “having the divine supra-intellectual knowledge which by direct vision and illumination sees the reality, the principles and the forms of things in their true relation.” Now the point is who can be a seer? Who can venture out on a love tryst with the ever-beautiful? Who is able to enjoy the “joy for ever” of “a thing of beauty”?
Byron? No, I admire the cyclonic spirit of Byron found in ‘Manfred’ or ‘Child Harold’, but when I look at his immoral, imbecile, wretched life I comprehend that I must dissociate myself after admiring, otherwise I will possibly fall under evil influence.
I admire the revolutionary spirit of Shelley even more, but here too there is a danger. Here there is no sunlight, only twilight, only haze, only mist, at times there is so much darkness that it is difficult to recognise even one’s own self. That is why Matthew Arnold’s criticism of Shelley is very apt: “an ineffectual angel fluttering his wings in the void”.
Coleridge is better; there was a spark, as if there was a man in the making but suddenly for some reason “was wrecked in a mist of opium” — yet it was quite beautiful.
Wordsworth is like an Indian to a great extent. There is a placidity of mind, a tolerable knowledge of good and evil, pure and impure, but very narrow, limited, ideas consistently poor.
How much more shall I write, you will see that you will never find a complete man in any Western poet. They deal only with intellectual and emotional matters. Only weaving nets, thought-weaving and word-weaving, hardly any depth within. Their ideas do not have any superconscious splendour. They are satisfied with the sensations of pleasure or pain, have no conception of bliss. (Of course do not conclude from the sweep of mine that I am flatly denouncing all the western poets, there are many honourable exceptions and these are not aimed at them.)
On the other hand look at Valmiki, look at Vedavyasa, which character is there in Ramayana that does not exalt you? Is there any woman in India who is not exalted even once by the character of Sita? Is there any man who is not charmed by the unearthly valour, nobility, sacrifice and magnanimity of Lakshman? How the mighty prowess, the titanic strength, the unlimited wealth of Ravana vanished in a moment like moving mist at the hands of Narayana in human form in the departure of ignorance on the advent of wisdom, the downfall of vice by the power of virtue — yet even after purging us with such a great tragedy “pity and terror” (functions of Greek tragedy), how it opens up in front of our eyes the panorama of a mortal world. We were left, as it were, face-to-face with the grand evolution of a certain moral law, gradual unfoldment of a fixed and immutable principle of God’s world.
You may say, “That is an idealistic picture. I want one which is true to life, realistic.” I would say that I have not seen anything more realistic than this. When I see before my eyes the picture of ancient India then I realise that the chastity of Sita may seem idealistic to the West but not to us. It is the most true representation of Indian womanhood, and not a distant overdrawn type. Judging by the criterion of the inferior culture of the West India calls its own glorious past a myth and wants to forget it — Indian women do not worship Sita any more and the consequence is the present state of India. Sita is now an anachronism, Ram-Lakshman, Vishnu, Yudhisthir are each a fantastic invention (!) and “Don Juan of Byron is very realistic”.
One must not forget that in order to worship beauty one must make oneself beautiful. The ugly does not ever know how to worship beauty. If you read Ruskin you will understand that the only important refrain of all his art criticism is, “You must be good men before you can either paint or sing.” To view nature through one’s own passing moods, soundly abusing pathetic fallacy to force out tears from nature’s eyes in one’s own sorrow or to make it laugh in one’s own joy is not the highest level of excellence in art. I do not call that person an artist if he has not accepted art as a Religion. And to me Religion means realisation, life, whole of life. I will be entitled to worship beauty only on that day when my interior and exterior are beautiful, pure and calm — one cannot create pure beauty with an impure heart. The beauty of Nature will truly enchant you on that day when you are bright like the moonlight, tender like a flower, gentle like the dew and again vast, wide, infinite like the sky. Instead of making Nature a companion in your ugly forms, instead of encumbering Nature with the dirty burden of your humdrum joys and sorrow, free yourself from the smallness of your habits and merge into the largeness, the sublimity of Nature, release yourself into the eternity of Nature, and you will find that you have an inseparable kinship with nature, that in every layer of your being Nature’s greatness and transcendental vastness are blooming like roses, the resonance of its joyous melody in your heart-strings is becoming clearer. Rise above all the sentimentality of your nature, throw away all the morbidity, become thoroughly filled with knowledge, love, health, beauty, and you will see that the whole world rests in marvellous bliss and is contained in eternal supreme knowledge. The more you come in contact with Nature, the more you are in touch with great human nature, the more all the smallness, all the vileness of your heart will disappear, all the darkness will be dispelled — your own beauty will be reflected in Nature’s beauty. Oscar Wilde has said, “Christ is just like a work of art.” Look at the life of Gandhi — how beautiful, how poetic! Forget that sickly slumbrous form of poetry which you are accustomed to — search out the hidden springs of everlasting poetry in the lives of Christ, Gandhi and Buddha, you will find that Byron and Shelley would have been gratified had they received even a drop of the undercurrent of poetry of love and beauty and delight that ceaselessly flowed in the lives of Christ, Gandhi and Buddha and continued to regenerate mankind. There is no cloud, no sunset, no ebbtide in their delight. So I say, try to unplug the fountain-head of that beauty of poetry that is within you, and you will notice that all the levels of creation are linked within you, all the mysteries of the universe are concealed within you.
I feel like saying with Keats, “Two things fill my spirit with ever fresh and increasing wonder and awe, the oftener and the more steadfastly my thoughts occupy themselves therewith — the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”
Maeterlinck understood after many attempts that neither creation of art nor appreciation of art is possible without the artist having inner moral beauty — “all that the mind has treasured must be bathed in the greatness of soul”. Perhaps you know about Tolstoy, to him art meant that which elevates, exalts, enlightens and glorifies human being — that which lifts man out of his immediate surrounding and causes him to experience spiritual magnitude momentarily, makes him perceive that, “We are greater than we know”, and that which debases, depresses is not art but a parody of art. In this context, bear in mind the following few lines of Browning:—
“And choose the pure;
And look where the healing waters run
And strive and strain to be good again,
And a place in the other world ensure,
All glass and gold, with God for its sun.”
I will not write more. I had started by saying that I will not write a Mahabharata, but in the end I find that Mahabharata is nothing, I have produced instead its huge forefather. But I would consider this labour worthwhile to the day I see that you have outgrown this morbidity. To-day India needs you, your own Society, your religion wants you. Now you do not have the time or the right to stay back as a weakling. The new age that is beginning in India calls for innumerable votaries like you and me. We have to again develop in the mould of Vyasa — Valmiki — Vashishtha — in all the ashrams of India the worship of ‘Satyam’, ‘Sivam’ and ‘Sundaram’ must start anew. Will you be able to do it?
Yours
Sri Rishabhchand Samsukha
(Translated from the Bengali by Ashish Majumdar)
*
My dear Parichand,
Out of several I shall mention only a few most important reasons that made me decide in favour of the Asram life:
The first and foremost reason was a call from within, urgent and imperative, which I had not the power to resist. The second was a growing attraction of the atmosphere which seems to me to be surcharged with spiritual power. In fact, to breathe in such an atmosphere is to progress in Yoga. The third was the somewhat amazing rapidity of my own spiritual progress wrung out of a miraculously accelerated struggle in the nature. I do not know what it was precisely due to, but I suspect the electric pressure of the atmosphere must have been one of the causes. And the fourth reason was the physical touch of the Mother every morning at Pranam time which, I have no doubt, is a positive transmission of power. These, together with some minor contributory reasons, drove me to the decision.
I sent your letter to Sri Aurobindo asking for his opinion on the point raised by you. I am sending herewith a copy of his reply which will very likely clear the issues, lighten your path and instil fresh hope and courage into your heart to enable you to pursue yoga through the normal round of your worldly activities. It is silly diffidence, unpardonable in a sadhaka, to think that where I have failed you cannot succeed. Indeed, I do not think I failed there; I had been plodding on and progressing all through in my own way, struggling and fighting often against heavy odds no doubt, but still marching on, even with bleeding wounds, undismayed and unbeaten. Yours, if I mistake not, is a stronger nature than mine, especially that part of it — I mean the vital — which has always to bear the brunt of the whole encounter. There is a progressive psychic opening in you and marked widening and clarification of the intellect. I see no reason why you should despair. Go on intensifying your aspiration, pray for Light and Power whenever difficulties arise and, believe me, you will not find the labour impossible for you. You may also write to Sri Aurobindo as often as you desire, seeking help and guidance and protection and you will not fail to get them.
May God be with you! May you be the master of the field where I had been but an ambitious fighter!
18.3.32
Rishabhchand
*
My dear Parichand,
Curiously, your letter came at a time when I was just rallying from a passing fit of depression, and it had a fine, bracing effect on my mind. It is a really beautiful letter — none more beautiful perhaps you have ever written — redolent of an exquisite sweetness, freshness and fragrance of a noble and sincere soul. I am delighted to find that you have made such a great progress. Let us always be pressing forward, not worrying over the falls, failures and even temporary set-backs. These things, you know, are inevitable. They have their purpose to serve in the economy of sadhaka’s life. They come and go, leaving the sadhaka all the wiser and stronger for their coming. Each fit of depression or a period of struggle is succeeded by a greater calm and a richer experience in the evolving nature.
It would be better if you could control your desire to communicate your yogic experiences to your friends and fellow sadhakas; but that is extremely difficult, if not well nigh impossible, at the present stage. You can, however, write to me, if you like; but, — always at the breaking point, when the experience is of an original and remarkable character and reticence seems almost impossible. My personal experience is that this desire to speak about our realisations, to help our friends and admirers with spiritual instructions, to engage in discussions on spiritual subjects, spring, more often than not, from egoism, and the sooner we detect and give it up the better for us. We must not allow any habit to stand in the way of our spiritual growth. Nothing, I think, is so much needed for an ordered inner progress as perfect silence. It is the sadhaka’s stronghold at once of security and strength. And all expression means expenditure until you get the Infinite to express itself through you. And when you get That, expression becomes a spontaneous outflow, an ever-developing, divine manifestation that knows no end or exhaustion. Helping others? — fancy the preposterous fun of a blind man’s righteous ardour to guide his blind comrades! Yet, we have all been doing that.
But there is one way in which we can help others — a very difficult way. It is to see the Divine in them and offer our help, when asked for, as a sacrifice to Him without the slightest taint of egoism in the mind. But we had rather not be overeager to attempt it now. All we can do at present when advice or help is sought by our friends to let the inner being speak in its characteristic measured accents, taking good care to keep the wily ego at an arm’s length. And as soon as the help is given, we should let the matter pass from our mind without creating any reactions. That is the safest course.
15.4.32
Rishabhchand
*
My dear Parichand,
“Even if the inner movements are quite encouraging and the whole atmosphere is calm and serene, the apprehension remains etc.”
The very nature of the movements and the unmistakable reign of peace and calm ought to disarm all doubts and dissipate all apprehension.
But there are certain things which need some elucidation. I prayed to Sri Aurobindo to let me know what to write in reply to your letter but he says that he has no time and has asked me to write as best as I can.
In our yoga which is at once an unprecedented fusion and transcendence of Tantra and Vedanta (I mean the Upanishads), we aim at an integral union with the Divine Personality who is the supreme Reality eternally manifest and beyond all manifestation. That is also the implied sense of the Yoga propounded in the Geeta. But what the Geeta, obviously in the absence of the crowning realisation as well as of any testimony in the spiritual heritage of the race, could not expound in all its ultimate bearings and profound significances but was content to leave only a distant shining goal for future explorers, what even the Vedas could not fulfil but only glimpsed in rare moments and realised more or less imperfectly in exceptional individuals, Sri Aurobindo is bringing down to the earth-consciousness and rivetting it there in all its luminous amplitude. We have, therefore, to set sail to the vast undiscovered realms of the Spirit, steering clear of all the lures of past traditions with our Master as the only Pilot and captain of our souls.
In this Yoga, until the very highest consummation, it is the Divine Mother who does all the sadhana and it is Her Power alone that transforms the frail human vessel into a marvellous radiating centre of divine magnificence. Surrender to Her, unflinching reliance on Her are, then, to be our sole aim and endeavour.
First, as soon as the egoistic being turns away from the blind rut and sheer fatuity of the mechanical nature and abandons itself to a higher ideal of a free and unbounded existence, the Mother’s Power comes down as shafts of fire to burn out all the filth and soils of past accretion and prepare the ground for an eventual deployment of Her higher energies. First, then in response to the call of the psychic being, the descent of the Shakti into the human adhara followed by a subtly graded action of purification mild or violent, short or prolonged according to the characteristic demand and previous preparation of the human nature and the progressive establishment of a transparent peace and purity. This is the decisive denouement, the final lifting of the midnight veil and the victorious emergence of the Purusha into the full blaze of his untrammelled existence. The Purusha stands out white and still, stark and sublime in its unconditioned self-delight, but if there is no stress in it for a further uprising and a more marvellous perfection, it stops short, becomes inevitably rapt in itself and, therefore lost to the plenitudes of the integral Divine.
This tendency, it seems to me, grows upon you fostered by the traditions of the past, specially by the quietistic elements of Jainism covertly active in the subconscious planes of your being. And that is why you tend to be absorbed with a spontaneous ease in the exclusive silence of the Purusha and lose the consciousness of the Mother.
But this has to be avoided, and the attraction of the absolute silence as the ultimate goal to be combated and replaced by a large and joyous assent to and enjoyment of the Mother’s working in you. The Mother releases her child from its age-long coils not to lose it in the void of the colourless Impersonal, but to lead it to a blissful union with Her in Her eternal double status of self-transcendence and self-manifestation. We must, therefore, always maintain the attitude of a child bare and naked of all earthly appendage and aspiring for an integral union with Her.
A lucid calm and peace in the beginning — that is also Her gift, an indispensable base She prepares for the rapturous unravelling of Her supernal mysteries. But this calm defeats its own object if it becomes an end in itself. The Purusha, even in the midst of the most luminous stillness of its free self-existence must be constantly concentrated on the highest Divine and will the highest transformation and perfectioning of the universal nature. It is this Will which is a reflex of the Will of the Transcendent Divine to manifest His divinity in the world and carries within it the seed of its fulfilment.
So far as I think, the best course for you to follow would be to reject all the obscure movements of the lower nature with an uncompromising thoroughness and steadily call down, watch and enjoy the working of the Mother’s Power in your instrumental nature. If it is followed with faith, patience, a wide vigilance and an unflagging sincerity, it is bound to lead to a double result — on one side a smiling peace and serenity in the whole consciousness and on the other a progressive transformation and a heightened activity in the whole nature. Persistence in it will dissolve the knots of the ego and the perception of the Mother as the sovereign mistress and ruler of the nature will crystallise into a solid and permanent realisation.
Another thing of importance that can be kept in view is this, that all insistences of the nature are to be completely silenced. Insistence on results, on certain mental formations of spiritual experiences, on Power and Vision as the ignorant mental being conceive them — this insistence, though an unavoidable and somewhat useful factor in the initial stages of the Yoga, becomes a great hindrance to any radical change. You must not ask but only give — this is surrender. No hope, no stipulation, no preference but a glad and devoted consecration of your entire being to the transforming Force of the Divine Mother and an unresting aspiration for the perfect fulfilment of Her Will.
You will find the philosophy of this yoga outlined in “The Essays on the Gita”, but not quite developed even there; for its philosophy, the revealing word of its supreme import and significance, can only be uttered when its highest objective has fully materialised. But for its science we can always turn to “The Mother” which gives in a pregnant brevity of form all the salient features of its evolution and a firm and sure direction on its many-runged ladder of ascent.
This, I hope, will help you to a certain extent to set your unmeaning doubts at rest. From what I feel in regard to your sadhana, I can very well assure you that you are making admirable progress in spite of the buffet of such uncongenial surrounding and even in spite of such recurrent attacks of mental misgivings. The Mother’s Power is always within you and the wide wings of Her protection are spread over you. You have only to be conscious of them to set them working with a sovereign effectivity.
Yours sincerely
Rishabhchand
7. Parichand Writes to Spiritual Aspirants
(Parichand, very fluent both in speech and writing, was extremely reticent when it concerned himself. He hardly spoke about his rich inner life. Partly it was for him a matter of principle, since Sri Aurobindo has told him during the earliest years of his sadhana that such a movement causes Tapakshaya; partly it was because of his innate humility. Only after the passing away of the Mother he relaxed a little in his attitude. But both in his personal talks and letters, his only purpose was to direct the aspirant to the Mother: he always scrupulously kept himself in the background. He advised more as an elder brother than a senior sadhak. He always emphasised the importance of opening the psychic to the Mother, for to him that was the core of Sri Aurobindo’s yoga and a key to solve all problems of spiritual life. We are publishing some of his letters below. While we have reproduced most of the letters in full, in some cases, for obvious reason, the personal portions have been omitted.)
3.7.73
Shyamkumari,
I fail to understand why illusionism at all flourished in the soils of India where beauty and delight are the very texture of human life. What beauty and majesty express themselves eloquently in material creations which Sri Aurobindo describes so poetically, in one letter as follows:
“What can be more perfect, greater or more beautiful than the glories and beauties of Matter, the golden splendour of the sun, the perpetual charm of the moon, the beauty and fragrance of the rose or the beauty of the lotus, the yellow mane of the Ganges or the blue waters of the Jamuna, forests and mountains, and the leap of the waterfall, the shimmering silence of the lake, the sapphire hue and mighty roll of the ocean and all the wonder and marvel there is on the earth and in the vastness of the material universes? ...Life and mind cannot surpass them; they are enough in themselves and to themselves; Brindavan would have been perfect even if Krishna had never trod there.”
Can Shankara’s Illusionism stand this onslaught of Sri Aurobindo’s affirmation of the All Beautiful even in Matter?
Conveying my thanks
Yours
Parichand
*
13.6.74
Shyamkumari,
The real health no doubt is a gift from the soul and the nearer our approach to it the greater its action on our body. There lies the true and most potent remedy of all maladies. “All is purified and set right; the whole nature harmonised, modulated in the psychic key, just in spiritual order.”
Parichand
*
26.2.75
Shyamkumari,
The extract about “psychic love” from C.V. 23 p. 764 is evidently the purest form of love between person and person. It is no doubt and can be pure and full of self-giving because it is psychic and yet it is human between person and person, and so liable to error and suffering.
If you read the beginning of the first paragraph in the same page you will note a clause “but it is not usually left pure in the attraction of human beings to one another.” This clause explains the epithet “human” and the possibility of error and suffering.
Now the moment this psychic love is turned towards the Divine and towards other souls through the Divine and the Divine alone, the more it is truly so, the less it is human. It then frees itself from human aberrations and gets back its inherent infallibility and constancy of joy. On page 144 of C.V. 20 at the end Sri Aurobindo says of the psychic being’s nature “... unerring in the essence of its will, it is obliged often under the pressure of its instruments to submit to mistakes of action, wrong placement of feeling, wrong choice of person...” It is clear here that it is by nature unerring. More when we meet.
Parichand
*
30.10.75
Shyamkumari,
We are trying all of us in our humble fluctuating way to mould our lives by the law of divine Love and to be radiating centres of Her Light and delight as best as possible for us mortals but Her demand is too great and our personality is too small, too imperfect to fulfil Her demand. If a little of this flawed expression through me has been of some help to you in your spiritual life I must offer my gratitude to Her for it and say that there was psychic affinity in our natures. If by the Mother’s grace we remain not only faithful to Her and be lit up with her knowledge but be examples of their Integral Yoga as best as we can be, then they will reign on earth and the Divine Life be established in the material world.
Much depends on our intensity and sincerity of attitude and effort. Let us pray for the Mother’s Light and strength for this stupendous work.
Yours ever
in the Mother
Parichand
*
20.11.75
Shyamkumari,
True experiences, experiences that bring us closer and closer to the Divine always come by surprise, when we least expect them, as a special gift from Him whom we always seek heart and soul. Our sincere effort must indeed be there to get united with Him but His grace will act in its own way and in its own time without any previous indication or information of its intention. Our effort, our sadhana shall go on unslackened, more and more zealously.
Parichand
*
9.12.75
Shyamkumari,
Spiritually speaking the outer way of living one’s life, however simple, pious and virtuous in appearance it may be, is no criterion for a true inner life, much less for a spiritual life. On the contrary, an outer life of ease, comfort, effortless outflowering may be nearer the spiritual goal than the former. If one has the eye to see one can detect in the former way of living a self-complacency in the vital, an attitude of compromise with a refined mental-vital life with a certain psychic influence, an absence of any strong effort to break away from this gilt-edged life. So this life is free from ups and downs, from night and light. It is a more or less smooth sailing.
The latter may have no ostensible personal effort towards the spiritual goal and yet may be open within to the psychic or spiritual force and tend itself to be kneaded, moulded and shaped into the image of a god or God as soft clay allows itself to given whatever shape the potter intends for it. Therefore the true judgment can base itself on the steady growth of consciousness which one must have the capacity to discern.
The life in the Ashram, whatever its outer appearance, holds in itself an immense, a unique potentiality of spiritual regeneration if one lets oneself be carried on and on in the powerful stream of spiritual life here. Specially for the persons of growing age, this is undeniably the place for the surest and swiftest voyage to the supreme destination. So the charms of the outer free life may mislead and delay our journey towards the Divine. This is my personal view.
Parichand
*
10.12.75
Shyamkumari,
The Mother’s message “The Inner Test” you sent me yesterday is revelatory and bring home to us in uneqivocal terms the truth that those who want to lead the Ashram life and remain here have to pass through a severe inner test, though not outwardly imposed, and also to go on perfectioning this surrender. The very fact of one’s being able to stay in the Ashram is a guarantee of one’s steady inner progress, whether clearly perceptible or not for time.
It goes without saying, however, that if one deliberately opens one’s mind and vital to other forces and ideas and feelings or if one cuts oneself off from the main current of Ashram life by trying to avoid as much as possible the Ashram work and getting more and more interested in the satisfaction of one’s mental and vital ego and desires or giving food to one’s ambition and the attraction of name and fame, one erects thereby a dam against the inflow of the Mother’s light and force and joy in oneself.
The test is indeed more severe now after the passing of the Mother because the physical presence gave us a constant strength and joy even to our outermost parts and also a luminous guidance even to our most physical mind. We are bereft of the physical nearness and closeness. So we are forced to sustain ourselves and grow on the sap and nourishment from the inner sources, specially the psychic source. But we have the greatest advantage and the clearest assurance that if we simply cling to Her and to Her alone, She will see to it that our spiritual progress gets achieved in the quickest possible time and our union with Her in all ways of our being, even the outermost, is realised so that our human instrument is transformed into a divine instrument.
Parichand
*
22.12.75
Shyamkumari,
I read your letter to Hari closely and was struck by certain truths it expresses and the clarity and force with which it expresses them. The truth about one’s own inner poise, superiority to the dualities of life, the truth about one’s inner state of equality and equanimity vis-a-vis the shocks and blows of life, a high calm and detached consciousness, the truth about the play of lower vital, impure rajasic forces in human beings, the Rakshasic elements in them, the great truth about the Dharma Yuddha, an interminable battle between the forces of Light and those of Darkness in which we must, like hero-warriors of the Divine, constantly side with the Forces of Truth as against the forces of Falsehood in all the spheres of our life’s activities, a courageous loyalty to the Divine heedless of any consequences and finally the truth that if man, more and more in number, clings to the Truth and moulds himself in an image, the Satyayuga will no doubt down on the earth, are all brought out in bold relief in principle.
Only in the application of these truths to one’s social, political and collective life one needs be cautious, careful, wise and clear-eyed so that each word one says, each step one takes, each act one does, is the right word, the just step and the true act, destructive of evil and creative of good at once. Here a true perfection and discrimination from within will be the surest guide.
Individually, inwardly, in one’s own life these truths can be safely held to firmly and followed whole-heartedly.
Parichand
*
25.2.76
Shyamkumari,
You might have read Sri Aurobindo’s compact but clear description of the characteristics of the “True Vital” as quite distinct from the “Inner Vital”, not to speak of the “Outer Vital”.
This “True Vital” is indeed a perfect instrument of the “Psychic Being” who is the master. It is by the closer and closer relation with Psychic Being and more and more steady stationing of the human consciousness in the psychic consciousness that the true mind, true vital and also the true physical can be liberated from their shackles and as the physical being will emerge and come progressively in the front, they too will emerge and come to the front and do their faultless works. So we must unite ourselves as fast as we can with our central being — the Psychic — and make that the Ruler. The other parts will then automatically be faithful and perfect ministers of the now veiled King.
Parichand
*
26.4.76
Shyamkumari,
Each one of us has a double soul, the Desire-Soul and the Delight-Soul. When the Mother accepts us and brings us close to Her not only physically but psychically Her whole concentration is naturally on the out-flowering of the Delight-Soul, the Psychic Being. She lavishes her love on us in order to remove all obstacles on the way by force of the Divine Love. She sees the infinite possibilities waiting for fulfilment in us and day and night She keeps us in Her embrace for the fulfilment in the quickest possible time. It is evident that the fulfilment She will is and must be an all-round one, not of the psychic being alone but of the mind, the vital and the body also.
But with the touch and presence of the Delight-soul there is always the possibility of the Desire-soul getting energised, intensified and fortified. If the Delight-soul decides to let the Desire-soul have its play unhindered and unchecked the former retires behind and the latter asserts its supremacy. Sometimes the deviation from the true path, riju pantha, takes place because of the imperative necessity in the nature of the individual for experiencing the full play of the Desire-soul, sometimes or very often, it is the outside or environmental or avoidable pressure and influence that brings it about. It is true that the Mother’s Love and Help and intimacy always remain and are with us but the experience of the Desire-soul keeps them in the background for some time and may be for a long time till it exhausts itself and longs for the emergence of the Delight-soul. The successful Desire-soul is no sign of the sanction and support of the Delight-soul but only a tacit consent to the experience till the right time comes for re-emergence.
Parichand
*
27.5.76
Shyamkumari,
I feel that these dark dismal forces which the left-hand Tantriks make use of for serving their vile ends will meet more and more the sovereign hands of the Truth-Consciousness-Force either to transmute themselves or to dissolve for good. They will be dragged out from their remotest hiding places for exposure and confrontation and those nethermost regions will be filled with saving light and power. This throwup is rampant in Bengal which is the chosen land of the worship of the Shakti in the highest and also in the lowest forms. This confrontation of the highest and the lowest forms of the Shakti on this material field is often predicted by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother before the enthronement of the Divine on this earth. The Divine Mother has been using as instrument the gods and human beings of high spiritual, status for the replacement of the Powers of Darkness by the Power of Light.
Parichand
*
29.5.76
Shyamkumari,
It needs a considerable inner sight to know for sure why certain events, apparently uncongenial and even derogatory to the spiritual progress, happen and persist in happening in one’s outer life. If one puts this question sincerely to one’s inner self and waits patiently for the true answer in some calm, lucid moments of one’s inner state, one is sure to have it unequivocally.
But before that happens, before the thing and the cause are shown in a clear light one can only try and maintain one’s inner poise and equilibrium to the best of one’s capacity and be firm in one’s faith in the Omniscient guidance of the Divine Power and the unshakable conviction of the Divine Hand behind such untoward happenings. If something wrong in one’s attitude, some twist or wrong turn in one’s nature causes the events, it will be brought to light by opposition, if some spiritual purification or the establishment of some spiritual equanimity is aimed at by the Divine Power that will be done through the resistance. Whatever it be, one loses nothing but gains everything by turning these difficulties into opportunities so far as the real growth is concerned toward the Divine.
Parichand
*
1.6.76
Shyamkumari,
But one point is becoming more and more pronounced in the life here that each one of us has to be very sincere to one’s soul and to the Divine Mother through the soul. You must have felt poignantly how, after the Mother’s leaving the body, there is a chaotic, almost disruptive play of forces here which confounds, puzzles and obfuscates our mind, raises cross-currents of feelings and emotions in our heart and the effect of all this may be disastrous if we once make a wrong choice. But we also know to our great joy and sense of safety that the supreme Truth-consciousness of the Mother is all the time there to protect us, to lead us, to take us by the hand to the destination. The only demand from us is that we want Her alone and hold to Her alone and call Her alone for light and peace and purity and faith and sincere love. For this, I feel always, we must learn to live away from the ambiguities of mind, vital and physical and live in the psychic where alone we can be free from errors, deviations and vicissitudes.
My affection to you
Parichand
*
1.7.76
Shyamkumari,
While sending herewith the “Morning prayer” to make it faultless, I get the opportunity of expressing some thoughts and feelings of mine that press for expression.
The movement of consciousness upward, its upliftment into the spiritual mind ranges, its progressive transformation of the human mind, vital and body by the light and power of each of the spiritual mind range is and must be of capital importance in our sadhana and indispensable for the conversion of the human nature into the divine nature. If this be a spontaneous movement of one’s consciousness vertically one should not by ‘any means interfere with it.
But the imperative need of our sadhana at present and the safest course to follow is to develop more and more with a steady unflinching will the discriminative power of the psychic, to try and see things in the psychic light, to discern the pure psychic influences constantly operative in the massed tangle of vital and mental movements, to strongly adhere to those influences and discourage the unpsychic influences, to tend more and more to the depths where we can contact the heavenly psychic, to have the invincible urge to make the psychic our centre of life’s activities, to bring the psychic love for the Mother to bear upon the turbulent and recalcitrant parts of nature and make them change and transform themselves into the image of our true central being and bring about the most important “Psychic Transformation” as wonderfully described in the chapter “The Triple Transformation” of the Life Divine. If this could be achieved, the rest of the journey will be safe, swift, sure and steady.
Parichand
*
8.8.76
Shyamkumari,
All that we have hitherto collected on the psychic being from the Mother and Sri Aurobindo with true zeal and thirst will no doubt bring about a remoulding and rebuilding of our mental, vital and even physical being, inner and outer at once, if we sincerely and as of paramount need put them partially and progressively but steadily into practice and go on calling their aid and grace for the concrete and total realisation of the union and communion with our psychic being which alone and nothing else can seal our lives with Their Stamps and Signature for making us Their true servitors. The psychic way is the only way for this end.
Parichand
*
9.1.77
Shyamkumari,
Really speaking, the material food when thus offered to the fire of Brahman within is Transmuted into Spiritual food that nourishes not only the body but life and mind and soul also. This is the rationale of the Christian theory of Transformation, the conversion of the substance of bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood in the consecration of the elements of the Eucharist. Only the appearance of the bread and wine remaining. What great power is there of transforming the base substance of matter into the pure substance of the Spirit by the simple sincere act of consecration to the Lord. The Gita, therefore, holds him to be a thief who does not take consecrated food and eats it out of desire and sense pleasure.
Consecration is of the utmost importance in all works of life, a constant conscious consecration so that a higher Power possesses the instrument and guides and moulds it as per her will.
The Mother’s mantra of two all-transfiguring words “Remember and Offer” has to be a spontaneous ring and force in the whole being.
Parichand
*
28.2.77
Shyamkumari,
The real task for us now is to make this light in the intellect strong and stable enough to refine the heart’s emotions, to purify the vital’s impurities, to awaken the body consciousness — in a word, to make that light integrally dynamic. If the psychic being which has a transforming power emerges from within and the spiritual light descends from above through the intellect, this sought-for aim can be swiftly and irresistibly achieved.
Let us keep aspiration and faith burning in our hearts, our psychic love for the Divine Mother ever growing and our nearness to Her ever more concrete. That is the true work entrusted to us by the Mother and if we be sincere and earnest to do Her will singlemindedly during this great and glorious Centenary year, Her grace will pour in us and accomplish a century’s work in a year.
Parichand
*
5.7.77
Shyamkumari,
The Mother’s physical Presence and Guidance had always a great and powerful influence and control over the crude and recalcitrant movements of our physical vital, physical mind and vital mind. When the physical Presence is withdrawn, those resistant parts are once again liable to all sorts of wrong movements, wrong suggestions, wrong actions and wrong turns in life. The reasoning mind, if it is active, can easily be made subservient to those wrong tendencies and even made to put forward unquestioning and unquestionable justifications for those very actions which were strongly condemned before. We wonder then and are amused to see how the intellectuals have turned turtle when stormy wind from these three parts has blown high. All their professions come to nothing. Why this happens so and very frequently? Because even the reasoning mind or intellect, not to speak of the other parts, is always exposed to conflicting and contradictory movements and may at any time side with the lower ones instead of the higher. This explains so many deviations and detours.
The true safeguards and saving features lie in intellectual rectitude, will to ceaseless progress, openness and receptivity to the Light, Knowledge, Guidance from the higher and higher planes of Consciousness till the velamen above the mind is pierced through and a secure station is obtained.
Or, there is a steady push inwards towards the psychic being, a constant dissociation from the movements of the triple nature and acceptance of the Light and Love and Guidance from the soul within which is a portion of the Divine, a sincere, unflinching will towards the unfolding of the psychic being in the nature-part till the veil is rent asunder and the Mother’s Presence in the soul reveals itself.
In the present stage of our life and sadhana when we do not have the Mother’s physical nearness, it is imperative to have Her nearest to us psychically. On this will depend our true loyalty to Her and obedience to her will.
Parichand
*
23.9.77
Shyamkumari,
Strange! In the profound silence of the night, near midnight, the fragrance of the Champa flower asserted itself so vehemently that my entire being was drawn to it. This self-assertion was not so compelling at 9 or 9.30 p.m. It seems that in the silence all actions, actions of nature, actions of the soul gain in intensity a hundredfold. Not only sound proclaims itself, but smell too and even sight — I mean inner sight tends to survey inner domains. Above all, the Presence within comes more and more forward to be tangibly felt and therefore all senses become unusually active and serviceable for the revelation of the Presence. That is why, the Yogin holds the midnight as most propitious for the inner communion. The Champa flower by its sweet fragrant redolence did a great work of spiritual awakening and instead of the serious attempt to get out of the all-pervasive paraffin smell, I got intoxicated by its fragrant divine Smile.
Thanking you heartily for this help.
I am one in the Mother
Parichand
*
11.10.77
Shyamkumari,
If someone as a result of sincere sadhana for years at a stretch has developed in himself considerable psychic discrimination or has been able to intuitivise his mind amply and securely, he thus becomes a true possessor of spiritual light and consciousness to guide him safely in his dealings of multiple nature with men and surroundings and to keep him far above their sinister touches and influences. Not only that. He carries with himself always an aura of purity and self-mastery that dominates for the best all that came to hurt or degrade or falsify. But such a stage of inner and outer development can only be attained invariably by virtue of a sustained form of aspiration and the transforming action of the divine grace. If people have not yet established in themselves that spiritual luminosity and mastery, they have always to be on their guard in their contact with men and surroundings and not to let their own discernment be coloured or covered over by the free movements of the person who has mastered his nature and filled her with penetrating light. For the people of the valley it will be sometimes dangerous to follow the outer actions of the man on the height. The latter has not only achieved immunity from but also the capacity to elevate the lower natures and make the most of the divine elements inherent there.
The Divine Mother had to take up universal types in Her handling of them and would often expose to our view some special significant action of each type for the rich enlargment of our knowledge. But if on the basis of this revealing saying or writing of the Mother about a type we make a mistake of cherishing a wholesale admiration of that type and thus blinding ourselves to many a foible and dark spot in that type we are liable to land ourselves in pitfalls. We have therefore to see the movement of light in that type and not be deluded into overlooking movements of darkness and attach ourselves uncritically to that luminous characteristic of the type. This has been a very common and often a misleading error and many of us have to learn a bitter lesson from the false step. So we have to be possessed of psychic discrimination or intuitive illumination free from mental formations or judgments before we hope to tread the sunlit path. If we whole-heartedly cling to the Mother and to Her alone we are safe in Her hands.
Parichand
*
31.10.77
Shyamkumari,
First of all, our deeper and wider studies of the Mother’s and Sri Aurobindo’s books lead us to but one conclusion, the one imperative and all-swallowing need, the union with our psychic being and its coming to the front and being the true sovereign of our nature. The attractions and attachments to the material life, the lures and temptations of the vital life, the preferences and predilections of the mental life have therefore to be got over more and more progressively. Then the more enchanting and compelling experiences of the mid worlds have also to pass by unaffected and undeviated if we are sincere to the core to reach our soul straightly and swiftly and to unite ourselves with it for good. Dear are to the Divine Mother the children who have thus attained to the goal kept before us by Them. Nothing short of this can make us Their true children.
Parichand
*
9.12.77
Shyamkumari,
In the context of our prolonged talk yesterday night on “how is it at all conceivable or possible for any one person to be possessed of a wealth of inner occult and spiritual experiences and yet be indifferent to or negligent of their expression, if not equally intensely and forcefully, at least sufficiently visibly and tangibly, through the movements and activities of mind, life and body?” Unfortunately this disharmony and dissonance has been a patent fact in the majority of occultists and Yogis specially when they came to deal with and shape their triple outermost personality. What was then the real crux of the problem? Very evidently the unimaginably hard and intractable the nature of the outer parts on the one hand and the overwhelming pull and attraction of the inner regions, once the lids are removed and the doors are thrown open, so the easy gliding into the subliminal planes with their captivating experiences upon experiences generates more and more a disinclination and even, at times a disgust towards the effort of remoulding of the outer parts for a harmonious expression.
The mental will and light although the leader of the journey, śarīra prāṇa netā, gives in after a certain attempt unless it is genuinely open to the psychic or spiritual light and power to draw upon them. The emotionally developed beings meet with the same eventuality when they confront the rich unfoldings of the inner experiences unless the psychic being in them is powerful enough to guide them or love for the Divine is so pure and strong as not to admit of any errantry into those glimmering valleys or a lop-sided development of the spiritual state.
I was telling you that the mind’s clairvoyance, even in human ranges, gets often pitifully blurred or finds itself impotent to guide the impetuous vital so much so that it is compelled to yield to the latter and finally to build up a specious justification for the vital’s action.
So we see that we are safe in our journey towards the spiritual goal of complete union with the integral Divine and the manifestation of the Divine in our transformed mind, life and body only when we have taken a definite stand in our attitude and endeavour to discover our psychic being unite with it totally, station ourselves in it unwaveringly and make it the manifest sovereign of our entire nature. Not otherwise.
“But for such vast spiritual change to be, / Out of the mystic cavern in man’s heart. / The heavenly Psyche must put off her veil. / And step into common nature’s crowded rooms. / And stand uncovered in that nature’s front. / And rule its thoughts and fill the body and life.”
This seems to be the sole and secure way to the utter fulfilment of the Mother’s will in Her children’s lives.
Parichand
*
5.4.78
Shyamkumari,
Will and faith, steady, persistent and indomitable on our side and the Mother’s Grace and Protection on the other can be ever victorious over all physical, vital and mental obstacles. We have to be more obstinate in our true state of consciousness than the dogging obstinacy of physical illness. She is there for our help!
Parichand
*
22.6.78
Shyamkumari,
In our integral Yoga nothing is done till all is done. That means that if somewhere, in some corner of our nature, some desire, some attachment, some softness, some laxity remains, innocent-looking, may be negligible to our surface view, it may yet raise its head, gathers strength from environmental influence, sends its tentacles into the mind and procures its support or when sufficiently strong overrides mind’s decision. First a thin screen is put up between the soul and that deviating movement, then a thick lid is placed shutting off the soul’s light and thus a way is made clear for the disastrous slip from the true path. The outer mind, the outer vital, and the outer physical which are always exposed to the blasting winds of the surrroundings have proved to be the stumblings blocks in many yogis’ onward march. So the harmonisation of the inner and the inmost with the outer or the outermost can alone make Yoga’s path sun-lit.
An ever-burning aspiration, an unflagging will, a more and more consuming love for the Mother and for Her alone, an un-vacillating wakefulness, a conquering fervour and zeal, a courage that can face all vicissitudes of life with a calm confidence in the Mother’s protection and grace, a serene reliance on her omnipotent and omniscient Force, a candid and ever-widening openness to her supreme Light, an intimate, living and dominating Presence of the Mother within and without — these can lead us straight, unfaltering to our integral union with the Mother.
How to be in secure possession of these indispensable needs of the being? By our conscious and constant contact with the psychic being, by our stationing ourselves firmly there, by our radiating the soul’s transforming influences and by our achieving the total psychic transformation. Our ardent appeal to the Divine Mother for this consummation.
Yours in the Mother
Parichand
*
26.6.78
Shyamkumari,
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have shown us unequivocally and manifoldly that whatever we aspire for and whatever object is our life’s endeavour for we have first to accept intellectually the indispensability of our contact with our true central being and then to direct our multiple energies towards our constant union with that being and towards its victorious emergence into and governance over our triple nature. Whether we strive for a golden humanity i.e. a pure sattwic human life, or aim at exceeding it into a spiritual life or look up to a distant fulfilment held up before us as the highest crown — the supramental realisation — that which will lead us infallibly and irresistibly to the goal is our psychic being, the divine element in the undivine nature, the spark of the Divine Fire, the golden child of the Divine Mother, the golden key She has given us out of infinite Love for unravelling of all mysteries, for opening up all closed doors on unfathomable splendours and riches.
The Mother’s supramental Force is at work to reveal to us this truth, to enable us to hold fast to this truth so that all problems of life get solved and our entire life becomes a poem of beauty, joy and knowledge.
One with you
in the Mother
Parichand
*
4.8.78
My dear Shyamkumari,
I am sending you these 4 note-books which carry in them priceless treasures which, if made use of in life, will serve the divine purpose of our birth in human bodies. “An ounce of practice is infinitely greater than an ocean of theories.” The conscious contact with the psychic being, the steady emergence of it to the forefront of our nature, the assumption of the governance of the triple nature by the psychic being and finally the psychicisation of the nature in its entirety for becoming a flawless, luminous, totally consecrated instrument of the Divine Will marking itself out through us in this world. By prayer, by an insistent call, by a growing stress of consciousness, by feeling the imperative need of its coming to the front and by a confident reliance on the Mother’s grace this end can be surely and swiftly achieved, the Work of works can be accomplished.
You have been supplying to me out of love a transforming psychic food, a divinising nourishment, by your scrupulous compilation from the writings of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. I shall have further supply of the truly needed food and nourishment with a loving acceptance and response of my whole being.
With love and oneness
with you
in the Mother
Parichand
PS.
The Mother’s words on page 279 of the C. E. 10 in elucidation of Sri Aurobindo’s aphorism — 212 are of crowning importance and ever memorable.
*
19.12.78
Bonne Fête à Shyamkumari
This day of the soul’s descent on earth for the Mother’s great and unprecedented work of transforming this very earth into the home of the Wonderful is for ever noted in Her calendar for bringing Her eternal portion back into Her to saturate it with Her living Presence. The soul can then live more naturally into itself and work on oneself and on others in the Mother’s light and force. This psychic rebirth is attained by stages and now that the Mother’s Force has been most powerfully working to bring it about in each of us, She demands of us a pure need of it and a sincere wide aspiration for it. Her grace is infinite and the accomplishment of the psychic rebirth may be miraculously swift and sure.
This is the one thing worth praying for in all earnestness and at all times. Once it is achieved our spiritual journey to the supreme Goal is assured even in the teeth of stubborn resistances and alluring attractions of the nature.
I wish you deeply the ecstasy-filled identity of your psychic being with the Mother in awakened consciousness.
One in the love of
the Mother
Parichand
*
20.10.79
Shyamkumari,
What you write about Sri Aurobindo and His infinite capacity of knowledge by identity is perfectly true and no true disciple of His will disagree with you on this point, But I differ from your standpoint in this matter when the question and answer pertain to the presentation of all truths thus known of all subjects in luminous mental or intellectual forms embodied in revelatory words. In such commerce and communication of minds with minds one has to take a firm stand on what and how Sri Aurobindo has revealed in mental terms the spiritual or even the supramental truth enshrined in any philosophy, religion, literature, art, science and any of the innumerable channels of that truth’s expression comprehensible to the human mind. The bhakta’s implicit faith in the Guru’s omniscience may be unquestionable but his mind will look for the perfect formulations of the Guru’s all-knowledge in perfect mental terms. Then only there can be a true mental relation and in that only can there be a justification of the Shastra.
The relation of the soul with the soul or of the spirit with the spirit of the Guru or of others can very well dispense with the mental formulations whatsoever unless the soul of the disciple finds delight in the most beautiful and most natural thoughts’ and words’ images and feels their most powerful impact on his outer personality. Such is the irresistible effect of the mantric power enthroned in the soul-form, the thought-form and the word-form of the Savitri on our total being.
The greatest beauty of Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga and philosophy lies, I feel, in his unique achievement of a perfect harmony between the spirit, the intellect and the expressive word, as if they work in balance with each other. No hiatus anywhere.
Our appreciation of any writing on Sri Aurobindo or about Him naturally strives to find out to what extent the speaker’s or writer’s mind has allowed itself to be a mirror for reflecting the truth expressed in Sri Aurobindo writings, how passive an instrument it was to be a faultless means of communication to the world’s mind. The speaker or the writer has full faith in Sri Aurobindo’s knowledge by identity but that is in his inner being whereas he is expected to convey this truth to the philosophic mind in a philosophic way. Whether his philosophic exposition or exegesis bases itself on his psychic, intuitive or spiritual illumination or on his partly intuitive partly intellectual understanding or mostly on his sympathetic mental grasp or on his at times clear and radiant and at times blurred and befogged interpretation due to subtle imperceptible immixtures from lower planes — that makes all the difference in the success or failure, true presentation or imperfect presentation or even misrepresentation of Sri Aurobindo’s writings. The same truth holds good in the cases of the appreciators.
I cannot therefore lay the charge of ignorance or impertinence because inwardly he is conscious and loyal and obedient but the mind’s vehicle has its hurdles and detours. That is all. Hardly one can escape this limitation or falsification so long as mind is not psychicised or intuitivised.
Parichand
*
30.11.79
Shyamkumari,
The idea of “Transformation” was not conceived even. To give this conception for the first time and to make its effectuation possible the Mother had to swallow up like deadly poison all the consequences of our deeds in past births so that we might be free to advance towards the goal without any heavy persistent drag. The effects of our present natural movements are strong enough to impede our progress stubbornly but if we are sincere and resolute, transformation is possible with the help of the Mother’s Force. The Guru has descended on earth to remove all past and present obstacles in the way of transformation.
Parichand
*
19.12.79
Bonne Fête à Shyamkumari,
“There was no sound to break the brooding hush;
One felt the silent nearness of the soul.”
— Savitri
What an immense experience of Light, Love and Delight one gets even by one’s nearness to the soul! This nearness brings the intimate nearness to the Divine Mother ever-present in the soul. There you get a golden key to unlock the treasure-house of spiritual splendours. The Mother’s infinite Love and Grace pour on us incessantly to lift us up into her own regions of Truth, Good and Beauty. We have only to be passive in Her transforming hands as clay is in the hands of a potter. The more integrally we are detached to the attractions of the world, the more we are integrally attached to the raptures of the Divine Union.
I am indeed very happy to observe this steady and persistent inward and upward orientation in you taking your closer to Her Presence and preparing inner and outer conditions of life for a constant blissful union with the Mother and Sri Aurobindo.
Wishing you a hearty “bonne fête” again
I am
one with you in the
love of the Mother
Parichand
*
9.7.80
Shyamkumari,
“The central fire is in the psychic being, but it can be lit in all the parts of the being.”
Sri Aurobindo
So, the panacea of all diseases is in the kindling of the central fire of the psychic being. Let the body and its subconscient activities be set aflame with the psychic fire for the recovery of health and soundness in the physical being. A childlike simple prayer to the Mother is the most effective means of this achievement.
With love
Parichand
*
19.12.80
Bonne Fête à Shyamkumari,
The Divine Craftsman has his inscrutable way of handling each nature, softening and kneading it, fashioning and moulding it till he makes it ready for the emergence of the glorious psychic being and the conversion of the human into the psychic nature. This is evidently the Mother’s Will to bring out the true being and make it the governor of your nature and She turns all sufferings into perfect means of the fulfilment of the Will.
May you come closer and closer to Her integrally and be Her new-born child!
In the love of the Mother
Parichand
*
18.1.81
Shyamkumari,
Kim’s birthday yesterday set in motion a train of thoughts in my mind which asked for expression. The soul in each individual embodies itself on a special day and that day is considered very sacred from times immemorial. The real truth at the base of this sacredness was spiritual but as matter came more and more in the forefront to dominate the human mind, spirit withdrew as a silent witness and was thus lost to the vision of human mind. The memory of the sacredness of birth remained in consciousness and so kept itself alive by means of celebrations in different ways. The physical celebration is most obvious and general and consists in special foods and alluring gifts. Accompanying this is the vital celebration which introduces characteristically an element of warmth and exuberance, a joyous exchange and interchange, a verifying vital glow. Uplifting it on a mental plane comes the mental perception of the special work the soul in each is missioned to accomplish in the body and on the earth and the day puts on an importance in that subtle but reflected light. Enlightening and transforming the whole outlook and inlook dawns the psychic perception which changes at once the whole complexion and purpose of the celebration and founds it on a psycho-spiritual level. The soul then knows itself, knows its relation with other souls, knows its eternal relation with the Divine Mother and knows also why it has come and how to fulfil impeccably its mission. On this truth the celebration has been holding its own from ancient times.
But now the Mother has raised the celebration up to a supreme plane and revealed the as-yet-unrevealed secret behind the celebration. On the day of the soul’s ascension and entrance into the Origin from where it came down, its brief meeting with Him but packed with eternity and its replenishment with His Presence and His Glory for an ampler and mightier fulfilment of His Will on the earth the celebration is given the highest importance and laid on a divine foundation.
It is for us to be fully conscious of the workings on all the planes simultaneously in the birthday celebration of each one of us who have been sent down to work for the manifestation.
In the love of the Mother
Parichand
*
1.4.81
Shyamkumari,
You didn’t remember the flowers so the flowers are remembering you and coming to you of themselves. It is a wonderful creation, the flower; the first emergence of the psychic from the heart of matter and the presage of a glorious creation where the full emergence of the psychic being in all its splendour and sovereignty will pave the way to the Kingdom of God on earth. We are privileged to be placed in the heart of this creation for full participation in the Divine Manifestation. Let us fulfil the Mother’s Will in us.
In the Mother’s Love
Parichand
*
10.4.81
Shyamkumari,
About life led by an ideal.
It seems to me the lead of mind in general on human nature has lost ground. Moral sense and social decorum have been thrown overboard. The powerful impact of unrestrained, western vitality and the glamour of triumph of science on young minds and hearts have very much clogged the passage of the influx of higher light and the efflux of psychic radiance. As a result the great majority of young people fall an easy prey to upsurging vital desires. Money is a puissant instrument for their satisfaction and so the strong hankering for it. Sri Ramakrishna, the greatest spiritual figure of the past, knew full well what money stood for and wouldn’t even touch it. Rare are the souls which can escape its influence and remain true to their ideals throughout. Many who having led an idealistic life for a good number of years suddenly give way to the vital demands and hungers of the flesh because the transforming work from above or from within was not potent enough to counteract contrary workings. In the divine Dispensation fortunately there are souls, a few but chosen ones, who are well-protected and alert and awake all along to the Goal of their terrestrial journey and would stand no nonsense of mundane allurements. Such souls are not only in the Ashram, the very heart of the Mother’s Force, but, I believe, outside also. They will be the pioneers of the Mother’s victorious Work and instrumental in permeating her subtly mighty action in a wider and ever wider field of consciousness.
If we wish to be true instruments of the Divine Manifestation we have to contact our inner being, — which alone is immune to vital contamination — try and live there constantly and bring it out for transformation of the mind, vital and body. That is why to be in union with one’s soul is the ideal condition for divine work and divine service.
Thus the mental ideal of old has to make room for psychic idealism or transformation for freeing the young from vital domination on a stable basis. We are in a transitional stage.
Parichand
*
12.4.81
Shyamkumari,
I got a bunch of “Psychic tranquillity” flowers from my garden which I send you along with others. The psychic is ever tranquil in itself but it has to radiate the tranquillising influences in the outer nature down to the cells of the body. When the nature as a whole responds to the influences, a great harmony is achieved and our total personality opens itself to the Mother’s Force and prepares itself for Her Work. This is the work of works — the organisation of the entire being around the psychic — and on the accomplishment of it depends our spiritual life. There is no other way.
In the Mother’s love
Parichand
*
4.5.81
Shyamkumari,
It is heartening to note that the girl, a fine painter, is favoured with contacts with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother but nothing of profit has yet accrued from them. I always feel that the frequent relations with the beloved dead in dreams induce a kind of imbalance and morbidity and should not be much encouraged in the interest of a sound inner and outer life. To aspire to live in a close contact with the Mother and be filled with Her Presence, not only in dreams but in days’ activities also will help the growth of a truly spiritual life.
Parichand
*
19.12.81
Bonne Fête à Shyamkumari,
May the Mother’s supreme Will be utterly fulfilled in your soul’s earthly existence!
Each birthday is indeed great by the decisive action of the Divine Grace to bring down in a greater and ever greater degree the Mother’s Light and Force and Delight and manifest them on the earth in a special way through the soul and instal the luminous Presence of the Divine here.
My felicitations to you on this most auspicious day.
In the Mother’s love
Parichand
*
12.1.82
Shyamkumari,
G’s letter confirms a well-established tradition in India that the disciple finds his Guru in spiritual life according as the stage of his sadhana and the seeking of his soul bring him to the right Guru able to fulfil the then need of his soul. The disciple puts in him his implicit faith, gives him the highest place possible in the hierarchy of the Gurus and cannot admit of any greater than he. In him he gets his fullest satisfaction and need not turn to anyone else till, in this life or in the future, his soul’s onward journey demands a Guru of far greater knowledge and vaster consciousness. Looked at from this angle of vision I feel that how much and through how many births we have been made ready for coming straight to the highest Guru, recognising in Him the very incarnation of the Divine who has been throughout our sole object of spiritual seeking. Nothing short of the Supreme could fulfil the need of our souls.
Any premature attempt on our part at awakening the former type of the disciples to the integral Truth will fail in its objective until and unless the soul in each of the disciples needs a further and more complete realisation. That stage does not seem to have been reached by the soul of G. So let him proceed sincerely and whole-heartedly on his destined path and attain his goal sought for.
Parichand
*
14.11.82
Affectionate Shyamkumari,
With many thanks I send the “Mother India” Special Issue back to you.
Once at the Playground the Mother told Huta:
“Child, let us meditate on the physical body which will be transformed, penetrated by the Supramental Light, Harmony, Truth and Love....”
This talk of the Mother reveals a great many-sided truth. She was at that time in the Playground identifying Her consciousness with the physical consciousness embodied in the Playground, linking it up with the highest supramental Light, Harmony, Truth and Love and invoking it down in itself for the penetration and transformation of itself by the Supramental Consciousness. Sri Aurobindo says in effect the same thing in The Mother:
“... and it is only the very highest supramental Force descending from above and opening from below that can victoriously handle the physical Nature and annihilate its difficulties....”
The Mother’s Presence in the Playground and its activities there had been in the past and is still in the present a Force for this upliftment and connection of the body-consciousness with the supramental collectively and also individually.
The Mother’s call to Huta for meditation not on the soul, but on the physical body for transformation stands as an eternally verifiable truth for all of us who aspire for an integral transformation and She has given the golden key to that consummation in Her asking us to put a concentrated will on our body in a living faith in it for this orientation to the Supramental Force and its penetration into the body for the eventual transformation.
A Shankaracharya or a Raman Maharshi will never exhort his followers to this type of meditation. अंगम् गलितम् पलितम् मुण्डम् | दशन विहीनम् जातम् | करधृत कम्पित शोभित दण्डम् | तदपि न मुञ्चति आशा भाण्डम् |
Yet on this transformation alone rests the stable basis of the Divine Life on earth.
Parichand
*
13.2.83
Affectionate Shyamkumari,
It is no doubt sheer Grace of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo to take the souls of the devotees when they leave their bodies straight to the psychic world for rest without the long and painful ramblings of the passage. This Grace works on all equally who are in any way open to them like impartial sun-light.
But They want us to aspire for something infinitely greater even in this embodiment of ours — the attainment of the consciousness and illumined sense of our immortality and knowledge of our journey away from human life to the luminous psychic life in constant Presence of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. This at least we are expected to achieve, if not more. Then we shall in full consciousness of our immortal being discard the worn-out garment and be happy to put on a new one in the proper time. Their grace is out and working on us to make us possess this psychic realisation.
In the Mother’s love
Parichand
*
27.3.83
My affectionate Shyamkumari,
“The psychic influence compels the physical to turn towards the Divine.”
— The Mother
The radical cure of physical aberrations lies undeniably in the psychic influence, ever-growing, every-permeating, on the physical, so we should put our will in the body itself to open to the psychic and through the psychic to the Mother. Physical disturbances in all of us are probably pointing to the same eternal Truth. Treatment, medicines, massages may, if properly applied, help the Mother’s action on the body but Her demand is on the psychic’s action for healing and health.
With love Parichand
*
31.3.83
My affectionate Shyamkumari,
Sri Aurobindo wrote to Sahana:
“....And if the mind keeps quietude and receptivity to higher forces only, it can then easily pass on that quietude and receptivity to the body consciousness and even to the material cells of the body.”
Even the mind quiet and open, has such a power over the body! Not to speak of the psychic.
A time has come urgently that our triple nature should make a sustained conscious effort to open to the psychic influence and efflorescence so that the Divine Force can freely stream out for purifying and transforming the turbid and obscure parts of our nature into receptive and luminous parts. Our steady aspiration and the Mother’s grace will surely achieve this great high change.
In the Mother’s love
Parichand
*
10.4.83
My affectionate Shyamkumari,
“The true aim of life is to find the Divine’s Presence deep inside oneself and to surrender to it so that it takes the lead of the life, all the feelings and all the actions of the body. This gives a true and luminous aim to existence.”
— Sri Aurobindo
The more the resistance from our individual nature, mental, vital and physical, the more the disconcerting and distracting surroundings in which we happen to live and more and have our being, the more resolute must be our will to break open the inner lid, the more ardent our aspiration to unite with our psychic being. Then our Ashram life will fulfil its purpose and have a spiritual consummation.
Yours in the Mother
Parichand
*
23.6.85
Shyamkumari,
India never stood alone nor does she stand alone. If she is destined to be the leader of humanity and the spiritual Guru of the world there must be forces, visible or invisible, helping the Divine Cause and also the forces hindering vehemently either through individuals, through statesmen or through religious heads the fulfilment of the Divine Cause. Some of the helpful or harmful forces express themselves overtly through the words, deeds and manipulations of the persons in power in different fields and we base our judgments on those apparent fast-changing outer manifestations. But the forces in favour or against covertly working escape our perception and they are much more powerful in both ways than their expressed counterparts. But through this violent criss-cross of world-events and enigmatic operations of the dual forces the Divine Cause has been preparing its field of triumphant epiphany. The Mother says in the clearest terms:
“The future of India is very clear. India is the Guru of the world. The future structure of the world depends on India. India is the living soul. India is incarnating the spiritual knowledge in the world. The Government of India ought to recognise the significance of India in this sphere and plan their action accordingly.” Divine power alone can help India.
So when the divine power is behind India and controlling Her destiny, she can never be alone.
Further, she says: “It is India that can bring Truth in the world. By manifestation of the Divine Will and Power alone, India can preach her message to the world and not by imitating the materialism of the West.”
“In proportion as India’s... awakens consciously to this greater and embodies it in actions, India will stand at the helm of world-affair.”
Finally, to crown all, the Mother declares in unequivocal words “By following the Divine Will India shall shine at the top of the spiritual mountain and show the way of Truth and organise world unity.”
This is the work of works and the Divine Mother and Sri Aurobindo have been leading India inevitably through gigantic clashes of forces to the sublimest role India is destined to play and will surely play in the omniscient guidance of the masters of the unprecedented efflorescence of India’s soul and through it the world-soul. It is, as the Mother says, the sincere and straightforward recognition of the divine Leading that will impart a dynamic turn to the total course of events. Probably India is being led to it mysteriously and unknowingly. But it will reveal itself luminously and masterfully.
Parichand
*
Shyamkumari,
Cling to the Mother
If we really meant to mould our nature and its manifold movements by the truth that is inherent in these mantric words we must have to be perfectly sincere in holding to the one single object of our life — the integral union with the Mother and the integral fulfilment of Her supreme will in all the activities of our nature. In order to fulfil this one great object in our life we have naturally to be scrupulously alert and constantly watchful over the motives that actuate the various workings of our nature. If we do this and go on praying to the Mother for illumining the dark regions of our being, awakening Her consciousness in the unconscious parts, removing by Her grace all our clinging to the persons, things, attractive ways of life that stand powerfully in the way of our union and communion with Her, bringing to the front our psychic being and making it the ruler of our nature so that there can be no least possibility of any error, confusion, false step, yielding inertly to adverse promptings, insinuations, allurements that subtly and speciously influence and control many workings of our Nature, then we will be sure of our clinging to the Mother and giving body to the mantra integrally in our terrestrial existence. The demand of the Mother is an integral sincerity in our purpose and will to fulfilment.
7.5.76
Parichand
*
Those who have chosen the Ashram life in all sincerity and have decided to dedicate all their time and energy to the service of the Divine Mother and Her alone must needs be extremely careful and cautious about going out for some work or the other unless it be truly for the Mother’s work. What it takes one years to gain here may be lost in a few days’ activities outside.
Parichand
*
Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Pondicherry - 2
25.2.78
My affectionate Pradip,
I am indeed very happy to receive today itself the first day cover with the Mother’s symbol and stamp and also the cancellation. This is a precious thing, to us specially, not from a philatelic stand-point, but from our inner souls’ relation with Her. In the issue of this stamp on such a great — the greatest — day, Norensingh has played a great part, the Mother’s true child’s part and as far as I know you have also taken a share. The Mother’s benedictions will naturally shower on all those who have given their services to Her in whatever form and degree.
I am also happy to have a copy from you of the Mother’s short life-sketch, bilingual, very well-written and artistically printed. I shall keep them in my box with the Mother’s letters.
The Centenary celebration in the Ashram was elegantly and yet quietly accomplished. Though the crowd of people was nearly nine thousand, the organisation of the Ashram was efficient enough to see to the orderly movements and activities of them. The programmes of displays and exhibitions of the Ashram’s numerous productions and creations kept the visitors fully entertained for days at a stretch and the Theatre-hall attracted a huge number of people by performance after performance at nights. So time here passes so swiftly and joyfully that we hardly have sense of time. All faces are bubbling with joy and enthusiasm and beaming with a new light in their eyes.
I convey to you, to your brother and also to your mother my love and affection and send you my heart-felt thanks.
So I stop here today and hope we shall meet someday.
With love and Affection
Parichand
*
Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Pondicherry - 605 002
My affectionate Pradip,
Long I have been thinking of writing to you but somehow I could not. You were all in my loving rememberance and I have been in touch with you through your letters to Jiji. Life is full of joy and energy, peace and light and order for those who know how to attune themselves to the all-pervading Presence of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother in the Ashram and open themselves to Their Love and Grace. Their Presence and Love and Grace know no limits and are universally palpable whenever and whoever they are sought for. The most satisfying contribution and action of Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga is to develop a whole personality and to its utmost capacity. No part of inner or outer nature is neglected, overlooked and maimed. Mind and heart and life and body — all must undergo a revolutionary change under the influence and presence of the psychic being — our central being — and fill themselves with abiding Light, Love, Life and Health for becoming a faultless instrument of the supreme Divine. This is the work going on puissantly here and the workers concretely feel that it is Their Force that lead them on victoriously through vicissitudes to the great Consummation. Your affinity with the inmost life of the Ashram is a very encouraging sign and you will never miss Their Presence and Protection in the chequered course of your life. I advise you to keep yourself in intimate relation with their books as much as is possible amid busy days. Above all, Their photos are felt charged with Their living Power and Personality when you commune with them in faith and devotion.
I convey my love, affection and deep feelings of my heart to you, to your mother, brothers and sisters. This much today.
I am
Yours affectionately
Parichand
*
Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Pondicherry - 605 002
4.9.80
My affectionate Pradip,
I received duly your letter dated 25 August. Before I reply to it I am duty-bound to confess that it was the tendency to procrastination that made me void of impulse to write. This letter of yours has given a rude shock to the ingrained lethargy and energised my mind and body together.
First of all the expression of this latest letter, the spirit behind it and the permeating atmosphere of resignation to the Divine, the submission of our will to His Will and the calm acceptance of the calamities as His dispensation that make your letter so heartening and enlightenin— all give me a deep delight.
As soon as I got the news I knew very clearly that the soul of King had decided to leave the body and given no time for action. I have full confidence that his soul is with the Mother because of our relation with Her and She would put it when and where She wants for a spiritual work of the Mother. His example and influence remain as a living force to sustain and guide the whole family in the light and inspiration of the Mother in whose hands his soul is. That is why I tell Ila and all children to look to Her for light, strength, peace and joy so that She may protect them and lead them on in the right path and make them courageously surmount all obstacles.
Human helps and goodwill are no doubt a necessary support and spur but they become luminous and victorious when turned inwardly to the omniscient Power and Grace of the Mother. Faith in Her omnipotence, call to Her for Protection and Guidance, reliance on Her compassion even when things appear dark and disconcerting to our human minds are the most needed means of life’s true fulfilment. Man’s limited will surrendered to the Mother’s illimitable Will can do wonders. We have been brought up in this atmosphere of living and luminous Faith and Presence, my brother, myself and Kirankumari and Sumantra and so we can say in all earnestness and convincingness what we have imbibed throughout.
I received with delight the ornamental and useful pullover presented by you and your mother and found, it suited to my body. But the few days of winter of Pondy had passed, so I could not use it. The coming winter I shall make its use. I shall be very glad to meet you here when you arrange to come. More next.
With my love and affection
to you, your mother and brother
I am yours sincerely
Parichand
*
Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Pondicherry - 605 002
22.10.80
My affectionate Pradip,
I am glad to receive your letter of the 17th inst. and am surprised to find the “Ma Durga” stamp issued by East Germany the communist country so beautiful printed. It seems that the Indian spirituality which is now on a rising curve makes its strong impact on Western minds and influences the lives of numerous foreigners. Material progress and wealth have failed to give true joy and harmony that they seek and so they look for the source from where they can have them. It is only when they turn ‘inwards towards their soul which is the perennial source of peace and light and delight that they can possess them. That is why there has been a powerful turning to India and Indian religion and spirituality for getting over frustration of life and attaining to an abiding harmony in life.
Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s books, Their teachings and messages, The Integral Yoga that has been so lucidly and so elaborately put before us for a total acceptance, the light and knowledge that have come from them for perfectioning all the parts of our being — these are bound to spread all over the world and bring about a radical change in the attitude of life. Before that takes place there must be innumerable approaches to the ancient Indian inlook and outlook by the materialistic and mental Western people and they will find a sudden, an unexpected entry of spiritual light in their lives.
So many religious and pseudo-religious movements have been making their headway into the Western world and how enthusiastically, with what zeal and faith they submit themselves to them and make a drastic change in their living! They outdo the Indians on the observances and practices of religious teachings and preaching not only in India but in their own places.
I received also the Mahavir Jayanti stamp and have kept them carefully in my cupboard.
Have you completely recovered from the accident you had? Rajib gave us the details. We are all anxious to know about your full recovery. We are all doing well. Please convey my love to your mother and your brother and all. You are expected to go to Calcutta during November, I hear from Rajib. They felt deeply about your accident and they look upon you as their benefactor.
Yours ever
Parichand
*
Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Pondicherry - 605 002
17.1.82
My affectionate grandsons,
Pradip, Dilip and Pramod,
I am very happy to have your New Year’s Greetings adorned with the beautiful Ma Durga coloured stamp issued by E. Germany. I shall preserve the stamp for its artistic and symbolic value specially, as it is issued by a communist country.
Pradip, I felt a concrete change in your inner atmosphere and came closer to you in the life within. The outer life, however progressive and prosperous, cannot by itself satisfy the soul’s growth but along with the growth of conciousness, its expansion and illumination and upliftment the outer life gets its true value and serves a true purpose. Sri Aurobindo has untiringly insisted upon the harmonisation of the inner and outer but on the basis of a great and purer knowledge, an intenser and wider joy, a deeper and diviner love for all. Human life then fulfils its mission and changes into a vehicle of the manifold expression of the Truth on this earth. This aim you have always to keep it in mind in your life’s journey and maintain a balance of the two spheres. Richness of life must be founded securely on the richness of the spirit.
Our greatest advantage is that the Mother and Sri Aurobindo did the most austere and sublime sadhana for the humanity at large and so we are in a position now to get the maximum results with the minimum effort because, as they affirm, this is the Hour of God and our only duty is to be alert and awake to receive what comes to us from above or rise from within in a humble spirit of consecration and gratitude. A quiet faith in the Divine and a glad call from within are the most potent means of achieving this long-cherished end. May Their Light and Presence be always with you guiding you safely to the great Goal!
With my love and affection to you all and to your mother
I am
Yours sincerely
Parichand
Nirmal Kumari, Parichand’s wife( Kokota c. 1935)
Parichand flanked by his son and
daughter-in-law (Pondicherry c 1959)
(standing): Rajiv and Rosy (Parichand’s granddaughter);
(seated) Sangeeta and Rajib (Parichand’s grandson)
Parichand’s grandsons Sanjib (left) and Rajib (right)
with their nephew Suren (Kolkata)
Three generations of descendants of Parichand
Three generations of descendants of Parichand
Some family members of Parichand and Umirchand
Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Pondicherry - 605 002
22.9.82
My affectionate grandson,
Pradip,
I was glad to get your beautiful letter dated 29.8.82 and I think I am not very late in answering it. It is very heartening to me to know that your inner being and also your mind and heart respond to the words and to the vibrations that awaken the spiritual consciousness. It is to awaken the whole of humanity to the spiritual Truth, to the all-ruling, all-transforming Action of the Divine that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother came on the earth, did unprecedented Tapasya, brought down the highest supramental Truth here for changing the mortal ordinary way of life into the immortal divine way of life, have poured down the Knowledge inexhaustibly, lavished the Love on all of us, made the path to the supreme Goal sun-lit. It is for us to make the most of all that They have done for us, to profit by Their Teachings and make our lives attain to an all-round perfection.
Sri Aurobindo always holds out before us the fullness of life, physical, vital, emotional and mental, richness and progress in all spheres but He asserts unequivocally that this great and opulent aim of life can only be achieved when it is part and parcel of the spiritual growth and out-flowering because that imparts to the human life the true knowledge, the sure light, the unfailing power, the infallible guidance and to crown all, an ever-secure basis.
It is true your last visit and stay in the Ashram were very fruitful from the spiritual standpoint and once you have had the experience of the true inner life, you will cherish it in your living remembrance, be naturally drawn to it, associate it with life’s activities and grow in it more and more.
I am happy to learn about the engagement with Pramila and your marriage with her during December of this year. There are two other marriages in our family during the same month. Remember Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, look to them for light, strength and joy and protection. They will never fail you provided your faith remains unshaken. More next.
With my love and affection,
Your dadaji
Parichand
*
Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Pondicherry - 605 002
23.5.88
My affectionate grandson,
Pradip,
I was extremely happy to have your loving letter with the blooming photo of the new-born great-grandson who is amongst us. As I concentrate on his photo a calm wisdom shines through his broad eyes. To me he seems one of those who is described in the Savitri:
“The sun-eyed children of a marvellous dawn”.
So “प्रज्ञ” is his most appropriate name.
Coming down in the family which is genuinely turned to the Divine Mother, the child will blossom forth in an auspicious atmosphere under the sun-light of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Let the wisdom grow in him as a blazing sun.
You have chosen Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s stamps on the cover and also 1.50 stamp of 2 rose-flowers of my liking. Still you have Mother’s and Sri Aurobindo’s photos with you.
By the Grace of the Mother you have made a name in the philatelic world and you recognise it in your swift rise to progress in so early an age. The progress will be continuous when the Spirit is awakened and takes up the material life.
You will be busy now going to Delhi and when the exhibition opens on the 20th January you will be fully engrossed in that.
In between try to see us when the occasion arises.
Please give my love and affection to all and especially to your mother.
In the Mother’s consciousness
Parichand
*
23.3.74
Sumitra,
To-day we have a Bengali film on Chaitanya, who innundated the whole of India with billowing seas of divine love. Sri Aurobindo speaking about him in a footnote of the Essays on the Gita says: “Chaitanya, the Avatar of Nadiya, is said to have been thus partly or occasionally occupied by the divine Consciousness and Power.” In order to understand thoroughly the love he embodied and manifested, you have to fix your mind on the following words of Sri Aurobindo:
“Chaitanya’s prema was nothing but a psychic divine love with a strong sublimated vital manifestation.”
So let us be suffused and saturated with this intense psychic love of Sri Chaitanya and then we shall try to know what the highest supramental love is. Of this last stage a luminous description is given by the omniscient Master in one of his letters. Try and fathom these words: “The supramental love means an intense unity of soul with soul, mind with mind, life with life, and an entire flooding of the body consciousness with the physical experience of oneness, the presence of the Beloved in every part, in every cell of the body.” So effulgently clear and yet so unfathomably profound!
On Wednesday then we shall follow the lead of Sri Aurobindo into the supramental states of consciousness. Are you agreed?
Parichand
14.6.74
*
Sumitra,
On the eve of your happy birthday I convey my “Bonne Fête” to you.
Each birthday here is a precious occasion given by the Mother for a birth in the psychic by which the identity with the Divine Mother is truly felt. This identity will be felt more and more deeply and more and more widely through successive birthdays till it reaches its consummation in the absolute oneness of the child with the Mother, sarva bhāvena.
For this psychic birth Sri Aurobindo simply and yet most effectively asks of us: “If there is the will to surrender in the central being, then the psychic can come forward.”
No complex ritual, no askesis, no elaborate procedure, no inhibition and prohibition but a simple, sincere and steady will to surrender to the Mother and the Mother alone in the depth of one’s being is the guarantee of the psychic realisation. This is the spontaneous emergence of the soul under the sun-rays of Her presence in the mystic cave of our heart:
“Then through a tunnel dug in the last rock
She came out where there shone a deathless sun.
A house was there all made of flame and light
And crossing a wall of doorless living fire
There suddenly she met her secret soul.”
Wishing you a sunlit all-round progress under the Divine Mother’s guidance and governance.
I am
a co-pilgrim to Her shrine
in the mystic cave.
Parichand
*
12.11.75
Sumitra,
I went to yours and you had been to the Matrimandir. The word “Matrimandir”, the Temple of the Mother, set afoot a train of thoughts in my mind which find expression in this note.
The Matrimandir is the soul of Auroville. It is also the soul of India and the soul of the world. Its prototype is in the causal world, the Prajna, all made of pure luminous gold, hymned and worshipped by the supramental gods and goddesses and beings. Its subtle type is in the dream world, the Hiranyagarbha, made of a variety of hues and hymned and worshipped by the gods and goddesses and beings of the mid-world. Its gross type is in this visible world, the Virat, made of various concrete colours, hymned and worshipped by the gods and goddesses presiding over the visible world and its innumerable beings. The Auroville matrimandir stands as a colossal symbol of the omnipresent matrimandir in all the three worlds.
This much in the universe. But individually each Jivatman contains in itself the golden matrimandir where the Divine Supreme Mother is eternally present, worshipped by the Jiva, the central being for ever. Then each antaratman, the psychic being, holds in its bosom the matrimandir, pink in colour, where the Presence of the Divine Mother is ever felt and seen and a constant worship and hymn rises from the soul to Her.
Now one thing remains to be done.
The individual mind, vital and body have to build in themselves the matrimandir in its pristine glory by getting rid of ego and desire and a consequent purification and transformation. If this could be done progressively in a greater and greater number of individuals, the Divine Mother’s sovereign rule here on the earth would be a concrete fact. The Auroville Matrimandir is a bold pointer to this inevitable future realisation.
So I was happy to know that you had been there. May we read the Poems tonight? Please excuse my cogitations.
Parichand
*
Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Pondicherry - 605 002
6.9.86
My affectionate D,
I am glad to have your letter. While reading it with a quiet concentration I felt tangibly that the Divine Mother willed your soul’s decisive victory over your nature’s resistance. You know very well that the force of opposition in the nature’s parts have to be brought up, allowed their vehement actions, exposed in their true colours to the Light of the Truth before they are thrown out and eliminated. What Sri Aurobindo and the Mother strongly advise us to do in these hours of trials is to take our firm stand in the witnessing consciousness, to remain calm and quiet within when the storm rages without, to refuse identification of our inner being with the outer nature, to face the turmoil with courage and a serene faith in the Mother’s powerful working. If this inner peace and imperturbable poise is maintained Her Force would find a very favourable and helpful condition for converting the troubled state of nature into a tranquil, up-lifted, joyous and luminous nature. I think all of us have to pass through such experiences of confusion and struggle before the light dawns, peace pervades and the Divine Presence is felt upholding us and working out all inimical forces. Sri Aurobindo says: “The cup has to be emptied before it is filled with nectar.”
In my personal experience I observed that the very fact of non-identification with the surface trouble-ridden nature means a great relief and ensures a victory over it and invites at the same time the forceful working of the Divine Light and Power to establish His rule on our nature. Never stress the negative actions of nature, look into the soul’s light and peace and joy waiting all the time for expression and also look up to the Grace of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. You belong to them and it is Their divine concern to keep you in Their safe arms. You be a simple child in Their lap.
With my love and deep affection
I am ever yours in the Mother
Parichand
*
Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Pondicherry - 605 002
25.8.88
My affectionate D,
Received your extremely frank letter laying bare your mind’s questioning and nagging doubts that are perplexing it. Such free and frank exposure to the mind’s unyogic movements is a sure way to the psychic change demanded by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. You have to face them and bring them to the light of consciousness before having a mastery of them. The soul is wide awake, open to the Divine Light and Ananda and bides its time for the emergence. For that, nagging doubts and disbeliefs have to set at naught for the peace, light, joy of the soul to have chance to alter the texture of the mind and psychicise it.
When we calmly and consciously look into the inner depths we get a glimpse of millions of births and deaths that we have to pass through before attaining a human level of consciousness. Attaining that level we have to wade through many delusions and self-deceptions for finding a way. And now you have been brought here at the lotus-feet of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother at such an early age, grown up under the caressing and loving sun-beams of Their Consciousness, looking after every detail of your life with the minutest solicitude, making of you Their worthy warrior and disciple — one of them — for Their imminent victory and manifestation.
Buddhism, Shiva-bhakti and nirvanic peace are all of then an exit, an escape into moksha, laya and kaivalya. They belong to the past and have no raison d’être in the present and the future. Sri Ramakrishna rebuked Vivekananda when he sought bliss of trance and said, “Fie on you, you are seeking a personal Brahmananda. I will close the door to the trance-bliss. You have come for the great Mother’s work, to give shelter to the afflicted pilgrims under your banyan tree. Until that work is done, you have no rest.” A great era of dynamic yoga was ushered in by Sri Ramakrishna. Sri Aurobindo is taking up the thread and giving its fullest and widest fulfilment. Not only that he is here to bring the Supermind and change matter to its utmost. He saw: “...it is only the very highest supramental Force descending from above and opening from below that can victoriously handle the physical Nature and annihilate its difficulties.” Such is the injunction of Sri Aurobindo that matter has to change and be the playfield of the Spirit. Even if we fail or partially succeed, we will be rewarded by a glorious fall or partial success. Not extinction, not the nirvanic calm of the Buddha, great as it is, but the world-changing rapturous joy, the joy of Sri Aurobindo’s vision:
“Make earth the home of the Wonderful and life beatitude’s kiss.”
This is we have come here for and this is our aim They are preparing us for. The Mother said at the very beginning of her conversations:
“What do you want the yoga for? To get power? To attain to peace and calm? To serve humanity?
“None of these motives is sufficient to show that you are meant for the Path. The question you are to answer is this: Do you want the yoga for the sake of the Divine? Is the Divine the supreme fact of your life, so much so that it is simply, impossible for you to do with it. Do you feel that your very raison d’être is the Divine and without it there is no meaning in your existence? If so, then only can it be said that you have a call for the Truth.”
This call for the Truth is made easy when we do not accept the lead of mind but accept that of the soul. Mind is full of deceptive allurements and lands us in a vicious circle. The heart must open and hear the soul’s dictates. Once you get in the habit of the soul’s lead, you find your whole life carried by the Mother’s love and light to the ecstatic consummation. The discovery of the psychic being in-the very intricate whole of our lower nature is Sri Aurobindo’s most powerful means of highest and widest fulfilments and of transformation of nature. This is the coming of the Divine Grace and the Mother is pressing it down for its collective fulfilment. Here lies the highest power for divine realisation and for change of nature.
Not the hard and rugged Buddhist path, not the ascetic self-effacing hardly attainable path of Nirvana but the joyous, luminous self-fulfilling yoga of Knowledge, Devotion and the Works. Buddhism denies the soul whereas Sri Aurobindo says the soul is the Individual Divine. What if the lustre in the individual extinguishes itself in the lustre of the Permanent? The world goes on without the least change in it. The psychic change takes up the mind, heart, vital and the body, makes them instruments of world-change. He says:
“Lift up thy mind and thy heart into glory.
Sun in the darkness, recover thy lustre.
One, universal, ensphering creation,
Wheeling no more with inconscient Nature,
Feel thyself God-born know thyself deathless.
Timeless return, to thy immortal existence.”
Sri Aurobindo will not allow us to escape. His yoga is for battle and relentless fight but he assures us of ultimate Victory and divinisation.
Your whole family is dedicated in heart to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and you cannot come out of Their sway. Your soul won’t allow it even if the mind — a product of nature — suggest wrongly.
So I say, let the psychic attitude — an infallible luminous all-changing attitude — be your summum bonum. The Mother wants it and she has said she can give us in four months what yogi in former times needed four lives. Even a little of this true change gives felicity and promise of all-round perfection and fulfilment.
Take this straight path — not the tortuous path of ascetic yogis — and the Mother will give you ample light, peace and joy. When the whole being is open the joy comes in fullness. There is no end to the joy because it embraces mind, heart, vital and body.
I stop here today and hope to see you take a sun-lit psychic attitude instead of nirvanic calm difficult of attainment and a negative calm.
With my deepest love
I am
Your ever
Parichand
*
Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Pondicherry - 605 002
4.2.61
My dear King,
This time, I notice, you have got over your silence rather early. This I take as a sign of progress. But as I wrote to you last I won’t mind your silence because I will ascribe it to want of leisure. I have seen that business life and had ample experience of it. It may be more trying and uncertain than before as it is more competitive. But your will must be indomitable, your faith in the Mother unshakable. If you keep the Truth as your ideal, difficulties will vanish and life will not be dull and dreary but a field of useful experiences, by which you can grow in your consciousness. In fact, if you ponder a little, you will realise that our day-to-day experiences even shocks and blows, go to awaken our consciousness and make us richer in experience.
For making profit out of these experiences, one’s mind must be alert and not inert and indolent. The study of the Mother’s and Sri Aurobindo’s books helps immensely to develop the mental faculties and to bestow the power of discrimination. Make a point of reading some portions daily and concentratedly, even if for 15 minutes or so. In the uncongenial atmosphere this reading will act literally as nectar to dying persons. So I stop.
I wish you all happiness and progress.
My love and affection to all of you.
Yours sincerely
Parichand
*
Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Pondicherry
4.3.61
My dear Ila,
See, how prompt I am to reply to your letter inspite of the never-ending pressure of work. And is this not much better, this correspondence, this exchange of feelings and ideas, remaining comfortable and disturbing no programme of work? Life is for progress, is it not? Progress, — mental, vital, physical and above all spiritual. But our spirituality accepts life. Therefore our nature in our mind, life and body too must develop. An ordinary human life, lived almost like an animal’s, I repeat, is a sheer waste and is fruitless. So we must aspire for something higher and nobler, uncommon and therefore unpalatable to men of the society. We cannot help it because we cannot chew the cud.
I am tempted to give below an extract from the Mother’s sayings:
“The mind, if not controlled, is something wavering and imprecise. If one doesn’t have the habit of concentrating it upon something, it goes on wandering all the time. It goes on without a stop anywhere and wanders into a world of vagueness. And then, when one wants to fix one’s attention, it hurts! There is a little effort there, like this: ‘Oh! how tiring it is, it hurts!’ So one does not do it....
“But if you want to succeed in having a precise, concrete, clear, definite thought on a certain subject, you must make an effort, gather yourself together, hold yourself firm, concentrate. And the first time you do it, it literally hurts, it is tiring!...”
I purposely write in English to make you familiar with the subject in Sri Aurobindo’s words. Once you have the clue you will find his terms easy to understand. King will help you to grasp the meaning, I hope.
So, more marriages are looming ahead, more feasts and merry-making. Do you find time to look within even for a few minutes? I think, not. The life outside hardly allows one to go within unless one is gifted with a strong will and feels some inner touch.
Be cheerful always and healthy and mentally alert.
My love and affection to you and others.
Yours sincerely
Parichand
1 Parichand was born on 30 October 1904 in Azimganj, Murshidabad, Bengal.
2 Rishabhchand, author of His Life Unique, (a biography of Sri Aurobindo) and The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, was a relative and spiritual mentor of Parichand. Mother said that she saw Rishabhchand and Parichand always together in her consciousness and that their relation was of many lives. Rishabhchand was head of the Furniture Service of the Ashram.
3 Udaysingh Nahar, another old timer, was Parichand’s brother-in-law.
4 Chandradeep later translated several works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother into Hindi.
5 Umirchand (Sumantra’s father) had already settled in the Ashram, in August 1934. What Parichand means is that he was responsible for Umirchand’s family which the latter had left behind when he went away to the Ashram.
6 Benjamin, a local Tamil sadhak, was in charge of the Cycle Dept. of the Ashram. He also taught French to the beginners.
7 Purushottam was in charge of Prosperity until he left the Ashram. The responsibility then devolved on Duraiswami Iyer who then passed it over to Harikant Patel, the erstwhile Managing Trustee, who died recently in April 2002.
8 Only the essential portion of the letters of Parichand is given here.
9 The Mother put four exclamation marks (!!!!) here.
10 Here also the Mother put five exclamation marks.
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