A collection of anecdotes by sadhaks and devotees describing their experiences related to The Mother & Sri Aurobindo.
The Mother : Contact
THEME/S
These anecdotes and reminiscences were compiled by Har Krishan Singh and published periodically during the period 1958-1960 in Mother India magazine.
I received a letter from my sister in California informing me that my mother was to undergo a series of operations. My mother had not written to me for fear of making me worried, living, as I was, three thousand miles away in Pondicherry.
My sister who had not cared to know anything about the Mother and whose Christian unitarian religion would never let her believe in her divinity, wrote to me in a tone of challenge, “Now tell that person in Pondicherry about whom you have so often been writing to us to do something in this critical period of our mother’s operations.”
I went to the Mother that evening and told her that I had received an urgent letter from my mother in the United States informing me that within four or five days she was to have a series of operations and that she wanted the Mother’s help.
The Mother did not do anything more than nod her head.
When about fifteen days had passed, I received a letter from my mother that she had been successfully operated on. “But”, wrote she, “something wonderful happened, very difficult to put into words.”
“After the operations, when the effect of the anaesthetic was gone and the pain became intolerable, suddenly, in the Boston Hospital itself, I felt the presence of somebody surrounding and enveloping me. I can’t explain it. I can’t put it in words. The pain left me completely and I had a wonderfully deep and peaceful sleep. I am now having a surprisingly rapid recovery.
“I want to ask you but one thing. Could that presence, could it be the Mother of Pondicherry?”
The day I received the letter I went to the Mother and told her the whole thing. In reply, with her wonderful smile, she uttered only these four words: “Yes, I was there.”
When I finally came to the Ashram, we were three or four persons who travelled together from Calcutta to Pondicherry.
As we reached Bhuvaneshwar, I felt some fear and a kind of uneasiness but there was no evident cause for it.
I started to concentrate on the Mother. I saw her during my concentration and felt a sudden jolt in the train, though, as I learnt from my friends when I opened my eyes, nothing had actually happened.
The rain now started falling heavily. Not more than fifteen minutes had elapsed when with a huge jerk the train went off the rails. All the bogies fell on one side, broken and smashed. Many people were crushed, many were pent up inside the compartments, crying for help. The heavy rains made matters worse. It was all a horrible wreckage and jumble.
Later a train came from Madras to fetch us. All of us bound for Pondicherry were unhurt as if by a miracle.
On reaching Pondicherry, I went straight to the Mother who was then in the Playground. I had already sent her a telegram intimating to her about the train disaster. As I saw her and was having her blessings, I asked her, “How is it that we all were saved. We were not even a little injured.”
“Don’t ask me this question. Simply express your gratitude to the Divine,” she told me with an intimate smile.
I was in the service of the West Bengal Government. But to make both ends meet, I had a side-business which I used to carry on in off-duty hours.
I had a partner, certain irregularities of whom made the business fail. A case was filed against us in the court. The situation was that I must pay a certain sum of money by a fixed date, or the court would go into action and we had to go to its sessions on each summons.
I was in a fix, for it was not then financially possible for me to pay the amount. I wrote to the Mother for her blessings so that I might be able to get over my difficulty more easily. She sent me her blessings.
Though the case, which was to be taken up two days after, was postponed, no solution was yet visible.
It was a December night, shivering cold. 1 lay in my bed, uncomfortable and tossing. I got up and thought, “Let me call the Mother.” I meditated for a time and went to sleep.
Suddenly my sleep broke and I saw a white figure. It was the Mother. She was in a gorgeous dress and beaming with light. Her presence filled the room with a soothing shine and my being with a deep bliss. She was so clear, so vivid, with distinct features, that it was certainly not a dream, nor a vision but something more than all that. It was the Mother who was herself there face to face with me. I was fully awake, sitting up in my bed when she spoke: “Your problem will be solved.” The next moment she disappeared.
Then I pulled my blanket over me and again went to sleep. During the day I went to my work as usual and got a letter from my father reproaching me for not having written to him about my difficulty. A friend of mine had disclosed to him the whole story. So my father wrote to me that he was sending the necessary money immediately to have the case against me withdrawn.
It was in 1936 that at the age of 28, I came to Pondicherry for the first time. I did not know much of Yoga nor about Sri Aurobindo and nothing about the Mother. I had not read any of their books.
On my arrival, I was taken to the Mother. It was in the room near the staircase, where she used to give collective meditation to the sadhaks. As the light was dim, I could not see her face distinctly. I can only remember her white figure in half-lit silence when we sat in concentrated hush.
I was put up in an Ashram house, then called the “Artists’ House”, where now the three-storeyed steelless cement marvel of architecture, the Golconde, stands.
At night I was alone in that house and, to be honest, I was afraid of ghosts. I felt a little frightened in that dumb and gaping loneliness.
After a short sleep, I got up and suddenly saw the Mother sitting in the chair opposite my bed. Then I dozed off. Again I got up after a time and saw her standing outside my mosquito-net, as if in the air, but with a face as clear as before. Once more I dropped into sleep to be roused a third time by her presence which seemed to grow more and more concrete. I felt a great happiness poured into me.
When I went to the Mother in the morning, she caught my hand and said, “You were afraid last night? There are no evil spirits here. I have driven away all of them from here. There is no need to be afraid.”
This was a most fortunate day for me. It changed the entire future course of my life.
The years before the late forties of this century were years of comparative asceticism, strict discipline and intense inward-drawn spiritual sadhana. It was not easy to be admitted to the Ashram, so much so that in the twenties and thirties even permission to visit the Ashram and have Darshan of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother was strictly limited and one was not permitted to visit the Ashram premises and participate in any Ashram work outright. Indeed, the young ones were admitted only as rare and exceptional cases.
In 1937, a youth of 22 came to Pondicherry in mysterious circumstances. It was about 10-30 or so in the morning. He met the Secretary who sent him to me. The Mother had given instructions that anybody who visited the Ashram from my part of the country should be directed to me for the necessary help.
The condition of the boy was like that of a runaway. No good clothes, no bedding, no money even for food. He had somehow reached Pondicherry. The strange thing above all was, as he told me, that he had come for the purpose of staying in the Ashram permanently. This was a thing for which, during those days, nobody easily dared to make a request.
The boy had come to me at the hour when daily I used to go see the Mother. I met the Mother and told her about him and his intentions. She said that she would see the boy when she came out for the Terrace Darshan. She instructed me to stand the boy by my side.
After she had seen the boy, she told me when I next saw her that he could stay here. It was a surprise for me and many others. She also said that I could take him to the Dining Room and that she would arrange for his work and that I should keep him in one of the houses which I had rented out for the convenience of visitors.
The boy was happy. He was given work in the Ashram Bakery and then in the Press.
It was only after some days had passed that he told me how he had happened to come to Pondicherry.
“My mother died in my early childhood”, thus he began narrating his life-story, “and my stepmother, who was my auntie, brought me up. Her treatment of me was in no way an exception to the proverbial treatment by stepmothers. I had a hard life. Somehow I felt an urge to take up the spiritual life. I left my house without knowing where to go. I came to B, a town some hundred miles away, to a sadhu’s ashram. I decided to stay there. They accepted me.
“That very day I had a dream in which I was told that I should go to Sri Aurobindo. I spoke of it to my Guru. He at once agreed; he encouraged me by saying that that seemed to be the place for me. But I did not know anybody in Pondicherry nor was I very eager to come, so I did not pursue the idea. But again I had the same dream. The Guru pressed me to go to Pondicherry and actually arranged for my ticket and gave me some money for the essential needs. Well, here I am!”
A few days after, the boy fell sick. His condition was such that the Ashram doctors could not do anything. He was advised to be taken to the Government Hospital for treatment. He was X-Rayed, but no treatment was of any avail. No progress could be made. So all the doctors decided that he should go away from here if he was to survive. The climatic conditions of Pondicherry did not suit him.
They took the Mother’s sanction. One of the doctors told me that the patient must leave Pondicherry that very night.
I informed the boy accordingly and I could see from his face how worried he was. But he did not express himself. Where could he go in such a state of health? He had already left home and he did not want to go there and he did not know of any other place where he could go. And, as I was told that the Mother had already decided about his departure on the advice of the doctors, there was to be no more questioning, and on my part I could not dare to approach the Mother on this point and avert his going, even if I knew that the condition of the boy was pitiable.
In the evening at about six, the boy and myself went to the seaside for a stroll. There he wept out his heart to me. After his pitiful lamentations he told me, “All right, I shall go if the Mother has so decided. I shall go in spite of my condition. It must be the best thing for me. But one thing I want to know. Please ask the Mother:”Is it really she who wants to send me away? If it is not she, and if it is only because of my sickness that I am asked to go, I will not go. I will remain here, I will die here.”
He knew that I used to go to see the Mother late in the evening, before the time the train would leave the station. So he requested me that I should at least get it confirmed whether it was the Mother who had decided that he should leave.
After a little hesitation I agreed.
“No, I don’t want him to go,” said the Mother emphatically, as I related to her the whole story, “I don’t want him to go. I merely agreed to his going. The doctors came and reported to me about him. They said that he must go from here if there is to be any chance of his surviving. But I am not sending him away. I don’t want him to go.’”
“Then he must not go,” I replied. “If you have not decided on his going, why should he go at all? He does not want to go from here. He says, ‘If I have to die, why not die at the Mother’s feet rather than go away from her protection. Whatever happens I do not want to leave the Ashram’.”
“Then let him stay,” said the Mother, “but one thing he must do. He must forever forget that he is sick. He should not think that he is sick. He must give up the thought with a strong resolution.”
He was waiting for the last word before his departure to the station. When I saw him from a little distance, I shouted that the Mother did not want him to go, she was not sending him away. He beamed with joy as if new life had entered into him.
I explained to him what the Mother had told me. He was prepared for anything and everything. “Yes, I will forget and remember no more,” said he as I stressed upon him that he should forget all about his sickness. “But,” he added in a firm gathered voice, “but, please do not ask me, whenever you meet, about my health: ‘How are you? ’What is your condition now?’, ‘Are you now improved in your health?’ etc.”
He was now in revived spirits. His behaviour was such that not only did he follow the Mother’s words literally, but responded in full faith to her intention and the force behind her words.
The next morning I told the Mother about it. “Then it is all right,” she replied.
In about eighteen days’ time, not only was he perfectly cured, but his health improved beyond belief. He was not to be easly recognised. He had received and assimilated the Mother’s curative force to his full benefit.
The Ashram doctor, who had treated him and failed, asked me:
“Is it the same boy? I saw him yesterday. Has he not already left? He looked like him, but I could not recognise him.”
Then I told him of what had brought about his cure.
Once I was staying in the Golconde. A painter also lived there. One day he was painting a lily which bloomed in the pond in the courtyard. I liked the lily-painting very much. I asked him if he would give me that painting. Of course, he could not oblige, for, he said, he wanted to offer it to the Mother.
After one year, on 15th August, when I went to the Mother, she gave me the same piece of painting with these words on it:
“To my dear child,
With my love and blessings.”
Once I had fever. During sleep I saw a lion trying to jump upon me with a loud roar. I could see that it was made of earth, yet I was very much afraid of it.
I prayed to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Sri Aurobindo instantly stood by me and told me: “The lion is also created by God. Why fear it?” Immediately the lion became quiet and tamed and lay down near my feet. I patted it on the head and it behaved like a cat.
Once a newcomer was brought to me to see my department. He had come to stay in the Ashram permanently. The sadhak who brought the newcomer to me, told me while departing, that he would again come the next day with the newcomer.
The newcomer had devoted the best part of his life to my line of work before coming over to Pondicherry and was well-experienced.
I had doubts in my mind as to why he was being brought to me. “What is this movement?” I thought. “Why was I told that he would come again? Is he being brought here as the future head of my department?” The truth is that I have always felt repugnance to the idea of being a boss or of being bossed since I left my job in Calcutta and came over to Pondicherry permanently.
Before sleep that day, I prayed to the Mother in some such words: “I leave the matter to you. Whatever you decide will be welcome. But I do not want anybody to come between myself and the Divine.”
I did not have a very comfortable sleep that night. When I got up in the morning, I was delivered a letter from the Mother which read thus:
“I am sending X to visit your..., because...is his chief interest in life.
“He will be very willingly a co-worker, if you welcome him as such. As for being a boss, he has never thought of such an absurd thing and he knows quite well that there is no boss but the Divine.
“So, I am sure you will welcome him as your brother and as a child of mine.”
On reading this letter, all my doubts were gone and when the person came to me, I received him with an open heart as a comrade in common service to the Divine.
The anteroom, beside the Mother’s present Drawing Room in the Playground, was under renovation and I was supervising the work.
There was to be built a bathroom for her behind this ante-room. The old room was there, only it was to be reconstructed to suit new purposes. The old foundations had been dug up and the mud-walls were exposed. After the day’s work, the labourers left.
At night, at about twelve or one o’clock, there was heavy rain. I suddenly got up at night and thought of the half-finished work in the Playground exposed to danger in that heavy rain. I feared that the mud-walls might give way as a result of the water seeping into the foundations and there was every possibility of the roof falling down.
At that hour, I could not but pray to the Mother. As soon as I called Mother”, to my wonder she appeared before me. Her countenance was so vivid that she was beyond a shadow of doubt present to my wide open eyes. I told her, “It is raining heavily and the bathroom wall is exposed to the danger of falling down. The roof also might collapse. Now it is your responsibility. I am helpless.”
The Mother listened and withdrew. I felt myself relieved of a heavy burden. My worry washed away and with a happy feeling I went to sleep. After a short while I found to my wonderment that the rain had completely stopped though it had threatened to be a heavy shower.
Next morning, I went to the Playground and saw that everything was all right. So I continued my daily work.
Before the daily blessings, our Engineer went to the Mother as usual. When he was with the Mother, she asked him, “Did last night’s rain do any damage to the construction work in the Playground?”
As he did not know anything about my previous night’s worry or my consequent experience, and was unaware of any possible damage by the heavy downpour, he was at a loss to give any precise answer. He simply told the Mother that he would enquire.
On coming to the site of the work, he told me the whole story. As he was relating it, I started to recall the previous night’s happening. I told him how the Mother had appeared and what I had told her.
He used to go to the Mother once again at about I o’clock. He related to her my experience and asked her whether it was all true.
The Mother said, “Yes”.
A friend of mine, a naval doctor, lived in Barrackpore. For some reason he had to leave his daughter at Calcutta for her studies.
He approached me and asked whether his wife and daughter could stay with me for a time. I had no objection, if I could be of any help to him. I told him that they were fully welcome, if they did not mind the inconvenience they might have to suffer for all my defects of temper etc. They brought their luggage and put up with me.
His son, a young boy of twenty-five, had enlisted in the Air Force. He was then in Bangalore. We got a letter from him that he wanted a watch and some fifty rupees for his personal expenditure. These were sent to him.
After the lapse of a few days, the parcel and the money-order came back unacknowledged. We were surprised. We wrote to the Air Force authorities to let us know the whereabouts of the boy. No answer was received. We wrote again, but to no effect.
The boy’s mother wept and moaned. But what could be done? Those were the days of war, the year 1942. He must have been sent on active service to the front.
I used to console her that the Divine Mother in Pondicherry would protect her son if she kept up her own spirits. “You should keep faith in the Mother and pray to her. She will surely listen to your call.”
But the woman was far from the ways of prayer and would not believe in such “meaningless airy” things, so much so that she would grumble when her daughter sat with us in collective meditation.
One day I returned home at midnight leaving them at one of their relatives’ houses to attend a marriage party where she had gone, on my persuasion, with great reluctance, for she was all the time sorrowful, lamenting her misfortune.
As I got into my room, I turned the radio-knob. Some European music was going on. My hand was still on the knob when suddenly I saw the Mother standing opposite me as if physically, with graceful slimness, gorgeous dress, crowned forehead, white bright face, glittering eyes and piercing look. I could also see some light radiating from the middle of her forehead. “The boy is coming tomorrow”, she spoke, smiled and faded away.
In the morning, before going to my office, I handed over my house-key to another lady who was staying in the upper flat. That day I returned home early, eleven o’clock instead of twelve, to see whether the boy had come back. I met only the bewailings of my friend’s wife. With seeming sternness, I almost shouted: “Why all these lamentations all the time? Your son is coming today. No more bewailings. Why cry about your misfortune and make a fuss for nothing?”
At midday as we sat around the table for lunch, the door-bell rang. I told the girl to see who was calling. As soon as she reached the main door and opened it, we heard a loud scream. We got frightened. I rushed to the door only to see the brother and sister standing face to face, the boy outside the door bewildered, and the girl inside gasping in dread with wide-open eyes, the door half-closed.
“Why? Can’t you recognise me?” the puzzled boy was asking his puzzled sister. She could not believe that it was her own brother who had come back.
The incident turned this family to draw spiritual solace and inspiration from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
I went for my usual work in the fields. That day we had to plough the field before planting paddy.
Before doing so, we always put leguminous crop. When nicely grown we plough it down to the soil to increase the fertility of the soil.
It was late in the afternoon and, as we reached the fields with the tractor, I just looked up at the declining sun. Suddenly I saw within the circumference of the sun the Mother looking vivid and brilliant. The disc of the sun was a little bluish and around it hung a cluster of clouds. I closed my eyes and reopened them to confirm that I was not dreaming. I could again see as before the Mother’s figure very distinctly. Therewith came to me a spontaneous feeling, as if a symbolic message were conveyed to me, that there would be rain soon, although there were no signs of rain at that time.
I told the tractor driver and the workers to hurry up. I said to them, “The rain is coming soon. Finish the scattering of the seeds before it starts pouring.” They were amazed at my wild” prophecy.
It rained cats and dogs just as the scattering was over.
Once I went to hear a musical performance in the Ashram. When the song was being sung, I saw in a vision Sri Aurobindo sitting on a sofa against the wall opposite me. He had a big symbolical ball-like thing in his hand as if he was holding and revolving the whole earth between his fingers. I could see that all the goddesses were standing around him with folded hands.
It at once came to my mind, “What is the use of worshipping and invoking the Mother when all the goddesses and powers of the Mother pay their homage to the Divine? Why not adore only Sri Aurobindo?”
Next morning I went to the Mother, but she received me with the same affection which I had always got from her.
I wrote to Sri Aurobindo about my vision and my reactions to it. He replied in some such words: “What you saw is not the Supreme Mother. They are the aspects of the Mother. You should quiet your confused mind and take shelter in the Mother.”
I told the Mother all that had happened. She patted me and gave me her blessings’ warm and gracious touch and told me with a smile: “Never mind, I will do all for you.”
It was in 1945. I had fever and a severe headache so much so that it was extremely painful to move my head one side or the other. I had only to lie down in bed in one position.
Someone told me that the Mother did not like people to lie in bed when they were not well: it was always better to move about usefully and then one was more easily cured. Because of the acute headache there was nothing for me but to rest till I would meet the Mother at about 6-30 p.m., when she used to see a group of young boys apart from other sadhaks.
At the right time I managed to leave my bed and went to the Mother. The staircase door was closed and we waited outside. Surprisingly enough for a boy of such young age who knew little of the Mother’s action, I already felt a bit relieved.
After some time, when she opened the door, I told her about my condition. As she blessed me with a touch of her soft fingers on my head, I found that not only was I cured instantaneously and completely but was full of joy and peace, as if nothing had ever happened.
Some visitors from Calcutta, whenever they came, used to present to the Mother their devoted offerings and bring some other dry eatables (biscuits etc.) to get her Blessings’ touch on them and then distribute them as her prasad when they returned home.
In 1949, they bought a few packets of biscuits of a costlier quality which they themselves had never tasted and, while buying them, they had spoken to one another casually about it.
When they went to the Mother with their packets—some as offerings for her and some for her Blessings’ touch—she not only blessed the latter packets for prasad, but also returned their offering-gifts with her affectionate blessings. And the whole thing happened in such a natural way that they realised the return of those packets only when they had left the Mother. They had hardly had the time to say to her that they had meant those for the Mother and not to be returned as prasad.
Thus even in small and trivial matters Her Grace could act.
My father came to the Ashram in August 1956 for Darshan on Sri Aurobindo’s birthday. He intended to stay here for a couple of months after the 15th August. But only four days had passed after the Darshan when a telegram came to him informing him of his sister’s death and wanting his immediate return.
During those days, we used to have daily Distribution in the Playground. My father followed the queue to get prasad from the Mother. As soon as he reached her, he handed over the telegram and told her that his sister had died and that he prayed the Mother for peace to her soul.
The telegram in her hands, the Mother went on looking at my father as if she had not understood anything of what he had told her.
Next morning, I approached the Secretary in connection with my father’s talk with the Mother and told him that my father was leaving the town that very evening and would like to get a reply from the Mother. The Secretary told me that the Mother had said she could not understand anything of what my father had tried to explain to her.
I informed my father accordingly and I asked him what exactly he had told the Mother. “‘Mother, my sister has died; I pray for peace to her soul,’ this is exactly what I told her in clear words,” was my father’s reply.
In the evening, he left for the station at 7-30 p.m. and I left for my work. As I was going, someone told me that there was a telegram for my father on the Ashram Message-Delivery Board.
I took a friend’s cycle and went straight to the Ashram to get the telegram which read, “Previous news wrong. Sister not dead. Details follow.”
I cycled to the railway station and gave the telegram to my father and requested him to come back.
I explained the whole thing to the Secretary the next day. He replied, “The Mother could not understand because she could see that your aunt was not dead.”
This was in the early thirties. Once a thought entered my mind that without the Divine Grace nothing substantial could be achieved in life and that in spite of my best efforts this Grace was not felt by me as consciously and distinctly as by others.
So, when I had a chance to have an interview with the Mother (in the Darshan Room upstairs in the Ashram), I sought an opportunity to express my feelings. I spoke with great anxiety on my face.
The Mother who was always compassionate and affectionate to us and had an ever-smiling face became immediately serious.
Observing the unusual attitude I began to go inward.
She said: “You ask for the Divine Grace? It is as if a man sitting on the bank of a river were crying, ‘Mother, Mother, I am dying without water, I am dying without water!’.” And she made a gesture with her arms to show how large was the measure of Divine Grace available in the Ashram. Then her smile returned and her face beamed.
I felt at once that mine was a cry of sheer ignorance when the Divine Grace was incarnate amidst us.
Soon the Mother’s physical form began to disappear and a light began to manifest. It was so impressive that not only was I free from any doubt about the Divine Grace but there was concretely within and around me its beatific Presence.
A Friend pressed me to speak to the Mother before I left the Ashram after the February Darshan of the year 1945. I argued that not only did I feel no need or urge to speak but had nothing to say either. Yet he prevailed upon me.
“Mother, the day after tomorrow I am going,” said I when I went to her for blessings. She nodded her head in a gesture of consent.
“And I want your Grace,” I continued. The Mother nodded her head affirmatively.
A few months after, one summer night at about 10.30 p.m., as I lay in my bed reading the Bases of Yoga, in the light of a lamp placed on a tripod beside my cot, an owl ventured to peep and screech through the head-side window of my forest-situated office. I smiled at the idea as to what wisdom the night bird had come to bestow upon me. That the owl is a symbol of wisdom, I had come to know during my last trip to Pondicherry, from a letter of Sri Aurobindo to a captain in Hyderabad. In our own parts it is popularly considered the symbol of the opposite quality.
The usual stillness of the night in a solitary place, harmonising itself with the chirping of the crickets—pierced only by a fake gun-shot from the nearby Hanuman Rice Mills, to scare away the wild boars that used to devastate its paddies—reasserted itself. And then suddenly a heavy thud on the big wooden chest lying at a few yards’ distance from my feet broke that calm. A cat had jumped in from outside the window behind the chest, I thought. But could the soft pads of a cat’s paws produce such a heavy sound? I wondered for a while and then buried myself in my book, undisturbed, not caring a whit to see what was the matter, thinking myself on the road to samatā, spiritual equality, a state of unperturbedness even if the heavens fall ! A faint sound of some movement on the bags beside the chest succeeded the thud.
Then all was quiet. Suddenly a grasshopper struck and sat on my book. I drove it away. A few minutes later it made its stubborn presence felt on my hand. I shook it off. A third time it sprang on my chest. I caught it and threw it away into the surrounding forest. A few minutes after, while I was almost sure of its disappearance, the mattress near my pillow started rising a little, and I thought that the “little rascal” had reappeared and got under it, though what was happening seemed a little too much for its strength.
I prepared myself to press the mattress down with a blow and so crush the disturber of my precious peace. But something made me stay my hand and sit up on the cot to look before hitting. What did I find?
A big black snake, its fore-part raised from the ground, its head just near the mattress of my bed, in between the cot and the tripod in the comparative darkness below the lamp! Was it not the Grace that without any preconceived idea in my brain deterred me from the blow that would have been lethal—to myself?
In 1943, I was working in Bengal in a Government Depot of rice and flour. My superiors wanted to mix rotten rice and wheat full of worms and make money through black business. My friend and myself did not wish to sell this poison to our compatriots. It was the time when millions of men were dying because of famine and unhealthy food. Our disobedience offended our officers. My friend was dismissed and I was arrested under a false charge of theft.
In the prison I felt disappointed and asked myself: Is there not a God who could save me from the danger to which I am exposed?
At night I had a dream and I felt as if some divine presence was supporting me. Three days later I was let off on bail.
After a year, judgment was given in the court against me and I was condemned to two months’ imprisonment.
I made an appeal to the higher court. The Mother was informed about it. Every day she sent me her blessing flower as a token of her support for me. They said in Pondicherry that come what might I would be free without any punishment.
And indeed by the Mother’s Grace I was saved from the punishment which I did not deserve.
There are always ups and downs in spiritual life and I was for a time down and out. The adverse forces seized the opportunity to attack me on all fronts. I became a persona non grata with the bosses though I had done nothing to incur their displeasure. Somehow they wanted to get rid of me and no consideration of truth or honesty weighed with them. My self-constituted judges, as could be expected, passed a verdict of condemnation and used the language of threats and warnings against me.
I at once sought the Mother’s protection but did not proceed through any human channel and lo the miracle took place! I received her instant protection though nothing verbally was conveyed to me. That the Grace was acting very powerfully was evidenced by the almost incredible change of behaviour, without any apparent reason, on the part of the very men who had condemned me overnight. And then the truth of Sri Aurobindo’s words flashed like lightning through my mind as tears of gratitude welled up in my eyes: “And when the grace and protection of the Divine Mother are with you, what is there that can touch you or whom need you fear? A little of it even will carry you through all difficulties, obstacles and dangers; surrounded by its full presence you can go securely on your way because it is hers, careless of all menace, unaffected by any hostility however powerful, whether from this world or from worlds invisible”.
In one of her evening drives the Mother went to a far-off spot outside the town. Seated in an open field, she was talking with two or three sadhaks when she saw at a distance a ragged old beggar woman bowing down and raising her head again and again.
“Why is she doing this?” asked the Mother.
A sadhak went up to the old woman to find the reason. She said, “For so many years I have been waiting for the Darshan of the Mother. Now I have it. That’s why I am offering her my pranams.” The Mother then sent for her. The woman came, knelt at the Mother’s feet and bowed. The Mother laid her hand upon her head. As she left, the Mother said, “Her psychic being has recognised me.”
Once a relative of mine visited the Ashram for the first time. She wanted to offer a sari to the Mother, but she had not enough money. A good silken sari costs between 100 and 150 rupees, but it was far beyond the capacity of my relative to spend anything like that.
Anyway she went to the bazar and brought a few samples of saris including a few which were a little costilier.
When the Mother was shown these samples, she chose the one which cost eleven rupees only and, to our greatest pleasure, she wore it the very next day before my relative left Pondicherry in the evening.
I came to Pondicherry with my wife and youngest son of about 8 years in 1940 for the Darshan of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Children were not then so easily permitted into the Ashram as now. The spiritual atmosphere was considered in many cases to be too intense for the immature child-body and child-nerves.
We bought some flowers at Villupuram to be offered to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. My son too collected some cinema film frames which he said he would offer to the Mother.
On arriving at the Ashram gate we were told that we could not take the boy into the Meditation Hall. “The Mother will see him tomorrow morning and then she will decide about his entrance.”
Naturally we felt it a little that we had to leave our son outside, though he was so turned towards the Mother. The child too was sad and started crying. But somehow we made him sit in the Reception Room. To console him we said that if he kept calling to the Mother she would allow him to see her.
We went to the Mother for her blessings and, when we returned, we found him playing outside the gate, with another Ashram boy of his age who also was not allowed within the Ashram compound. As soon as he saw us he came running towards us and, embracing my legs, shouted, “Father, Mother came and told me, ‘I will see you tomorrow’.”
“How did she come?” we asked him in surprise.
The child took us to the Reception Room and, pointing to the high-raised big photograph of Sri Aurobindo, he said, “She came through the door behind that photograph.”
He had been satisfied at this and started playing outside the Ashram Gate before we came after the Mother’s blessings in the Meditation Hall.
From my boyhood I was following the Vedantic way of sadhana. Not only had I no interest in the Shakti aspect of the Divine, but I denied it emphatically. More than once in my life, I had had discussions with Tantrik sadhaks and argued with them that the sadhana of the Shakti aspect was a lower pursuit and should not be indulged in, that Shakti should not be worshipped. I was convinced and was proud of my firm stand.
When I was told about Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and their Ashram at Pondicherry, I did not believe in their Avatarhood, and all explanations, in this connection, of a friend of mine who had been to the Ashram and was their devotee, fell upon me like rain on a rock. There was little place for them in my heart.
Failing to convince me in talk he sent me a few books by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. I did not wish to decline at that time. After a few days he asked in a letter how far I had studied and understood the contents of the books. But I quite flatly replied that I had neither the interest nor the inclination nor the time to go through them and that I had plenty of books of my own of far more useful and practical interest.
One evening as usual I was sitting in meditation on my Ishta Deva and telling beads with my Ishta Mantra. Suddenly I felt a strain and pain in my body, especially in the nerves, so that I became restless, and not only could I not continue my meditation but my pain seemed to be beyond relief.
Instantaneously an idea flashed through my mind that I should read one of the books of Sri Aurobindo or the Mother sent by my friend. I got up and stretched my hand towards the shelf. But what book to read and from what page?
I shut my eyes and took one of the books, thinking that whatever book fell to my hand would be the best book to read. It happened to be the Synthesis of Yoga. I opened it at random. The page was 196 of the American edition of the book (On Yoga). A long footnote is there in explanation of Ishwara-Shakti, the dual manifested power of the Supreme. In brief it reads, “Ishwara-Shakti is not quite the same as Purusha-Prakriti... Ishwara-Shakti stands behind the relation of Purusha-Prakriti and its ignorant action and turns it to an evolutionary purpose. The Ishwara-Shakti realisation can bring participation in a higher dynamism and a divine working and a total unity and harmony of the being in a spiritual nature.”
The footnote was in small print, so I could not read it but I remained gazing at it because my first look went there. I felt the whole of my physical system pacified and a sort of coolness filled it. The rosary fell from my hands. I felt myself drawn into a deep inwardness where I found a white goddess-like figure with white dress standing within me and radiating white light that permeated my body. I did not know what figure it was, but developed a natural reverence for it.
Since that day this figure has become my Ishta Deva. I began to concentrate on her and found myself offering everything to her. I had not yet seen the Mother but felt within that the figure was hers. So I started offering flowers to Sri Aurobindo’s book The Mother.
A quick change set in in my life and the Mother became its centre. When I came to Pondicherry and saw her I immediately recognised in her the figure that I had visioned.
Since then I have been the child of the Mother.
Whenever it was the day of the Mother’s general blessings I sat near her in the first or second row and remained there till the end.
One day, when the Mother was distributing blessing flowers, suddenly I felt that there was no Ashram, not a soul present around me and not even the Mother on her chair-throne. I saw instead a huge rising sun before my wide open eyes. I saw the Mother inside, wearing a golden crown. The sun cast its brilliant light on her face and body.
When I told the Mother what I had seen she replied it was not I alone who had seen that sunrise. “Others also saw it,” she added. “I was trying to bring the rays of light from the supramental Sun.” Then the Mother told me the name of at least one other witness.
I met that person and spoke to her of her vision. She asked me how I had known about it. I related to her what the Mother had said, adding, on the basis of her last sentence, that it was “Gayatri” that I had seen by her Grace.
I was just a boy, a new-comer to the Ashram, who knew little of Yoga. I had just the common religious feelings about Avatars and saints.
In my early days in the Ashram, I used to have fear, particularly fear of ghosts. One day I told the Mother about it.
After that, whenever I went to the Mother for blessings, she used to enquire what dreams had come to me the previous night.
“Did you fear last night?” she would ask me. I used to relate to her how the night had passed.
One night I saw a dream which was something unusual. It was like this: “I was going to my room, looking up. I saw the Mother there in the window. I had flowers, most probably those signifying faithfulness, in my hand. I took these to the Mother and offered them to her. As I was going to give them into the Mother’s hands, suddenly I saw thousands of Mothers, all in full physical form as if everywhere around me.”
Then I woke up.
When I went to the Mother next morning at 9 o’clock as usual just before the general blessings at 9.30 a.m., I narrated to her my dream.
“So you see,” she told me with a loving but serious emphasis, “I am everywhere. Then where is the reason for fear?” Then she blessed me with a few flowers and her photograph.
Ever since, I have had not a single frightening dream, nor felt any kind of fear at home even when alone.
Once I was to cover a distance of about 100 miles in a train. It was raining heavily.
There was only one person in the compartment where I got in. It was very cold and the wind blew on the face through the windows with such force that it almost froze us. We shut all the windows from the inside. During the journey I started concentrating on the Mother and feeling a little heaviness. When I got up, I saw that every bit of my luggage was gone.
When I reached my destination, without any belongings, a sadhak friend of mine at the Sri Aurobindo Circle in the city told me that I had no right to lose my things in such an oblivious manner and that I should have been more conscious of my belongings which should be considered the Mother’s, left in my custody, and that I was expected to look after them with all the care of a trust property.
When I next saw the Mother I reported to her what I had been told by the aforesaid sadhak. She, with a most gracious look, said, “At that time you were doing meditation on me and were deeply concentrated in me. There is no fault of yours if you lost those things in this manner.”
I have been in touch with the Ashram since 1926-27. I first came across Sri Aurobindo’s Thoughts and Glimpses. I liked his description of God, “An eternal child playing an eternal game in an eternal garden.” Many of the questions which used to arise in my mind got automatically solved just by pondering over this aphorism. My parents had died when I was still young and such a number of calamities fell upon me in my early life that I wondered how a benevolent and compassionate God could create a world full of evil and misery. Sri Aurobindo’s writings, most of which I later read, satisfied me immensely. I believed in divine help and on many occasions the help of the Mother came to me: my faith in her and in the Master grew greater and deeper day by day. I had a firm belief that Sri Aurobindo knew about the Divine more than anybody else and that his was the one solution for the world’s problems.
A most decisive incident occurred in 1950. A partisan labour movement was in terrific swing in the area and the organisers were inducing Harijans and other peasants to violence. They were trying to grab or rob whatever lands and cattle and riches they could lay their hands upon. The life and property of Mirasdars who were few in number in comparison to workers and labourers were in danger. The ratio can be put as something like 5:95. Threats of use of force and murder were being issued, so much so that many of the Mirasdars fled from their villages out of panic.
I had gone to South Arcot with my family for some ceremony. When I returned alone to my native place, I heard talk of an attack upon my house. The threat was duly notified. Already many Mirasdars had been harassed and attacked by the said organisers.
As I was informed about it I did not take the matter very seriously. There was no arrangement of police there as the police station was at least five miles from the village. Mirasdars and other villagers grouped themselves together in an organised defence so that some measures might be taken in the event of any sudden danger. Village guards were posted to prevent small incidents of violence. They used to patrol at night.
There was an epidemic of cholera in that area and unexpectedly most of guards took leave just one day before the day of the incident which follows. They had been patrolling the area in my absence for three days and nights consecutively, so they wanted to go home to have their bath and to rest.
It was a full-moon night. At the dead of it, a few words as of a harsh command, broke my sleep only to make me wonder whether what I was seeing was a reality or a dream. For the whole scene did resemble a dream. Four fully armed and disguised men stood on one side of my bed and four on the other, one before my feet and one behind my head. One of these was tapping me and asking me to get up. My first reaction was complete astonishment. I could not believe my eyes.
The main gate was locked, but the back door was open. They had entered by the back door and with quiet feet climbed the stairs and stood in formation by my bed.
I had not yet come out of my dreamy surprise when a fellow gave me a soft slap on the face which made me conscious of the reality of the situation. The shock was over in a few seconds and courage took its place. Peace prevailed in my limbs and the remembrance of the Mother in my heart.
One of the party spoke through clenched teach: “You wretch, troubling the peasants, depriving them of their rights and drinking their blood, not giving them livelihood! Get up! We have today come to settle the matter!”
“You have been crushing the labourers all along! Where is your treasure?” hissed another.
“Can you prove what you are saying? Where is the evidence that I have been oppressive?” I asked.
“Don’t talk too much! Open your safe!”
I did not really attach much importance to my valuables. I opened the lock of my safe and they gathered out all the silver utensils in a gunny-bag, including a silver ornament of Kali with a red cloth. They removed the few gold ornaments, notes and pronotes and coins of a few thousand rupees that were there, for most of the gold ornaments were taken by the female members of my family who had gone with me to South Arcot and were still there.
The servants were in the backyard and there was only my land supervisor in the next house. They asked me to open the front door of the house which was still bolted from inside. I obeyed. They were all surrounding me.
I was confident that they could not do any harm to me without the sanction of the Divine, so I kept myself peaceful all along in the way I was trained during the past few years of my sadhana.
They asked me to lead them to the next house and there they ordered me to open the iron safe. I told them that there was nothing in it except the Lord’s silver ornaments and that I had no key with me, for it was with my wife who was away. “You can break it open if you like, but I have not got the key with me!” I replied.
One of them put a heavy hand on my shoulder and removed the towel from off it. This gave me the suspicion for the first time that they had evil intentions on my life also. It was a warning signal to me. When they again brought me in front of my house, there were about 25 armed men and even on the surrounding road about 500 well-trained Malaya-returned soldiers stood on the alert. They talked in a language which I did not understand. It was not, in any case, an Indian language.
As I reached near my house, they bade me march towards the threshing-ground of my field which was about 1¼ furlongs from the house. They started irritating me in various ways. “You did not open the safe.” “You did not hand over the keys to us.” “You started arguing when we asked you to share your field-proceeds with labourers” etc., etc.
Now I understood that my end was approaching. But I had somehow still a very deep faith in the Divine. I lifted my head and called for die help of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. Then a miracle happened far sooner and far more tangibly than I could ever expect. I heard a few sounds which got translated in my mind into some such words as: “They are taking you southwards. They will give you a push and as soon as the push comes, run...”
It was a five minutes’ walk from my house to the threshing-ground. Before starting, they made me give them ten gunny-bags of paddy seed and a tin full of kerosene oil. They emptied three-fourths of the tin on the bags and, keeping some wax-candles by the side of the bags, lit them so that by the time they reached the threshing-ground—that is to say, within five minutes—the whole house would be on fire and if people came on the spot they would run towards the house rather than towards the threshing-ground or towards the escaping murderers. This diversion would help them to carry out their designs.
As soon as we reached the spot, most of the men withdrew ready to escape. There were only two men behind me ready to kill. All along the way they kept me in their vigilant hold. As they reached the intended place, they left me free and gave me a heavy push so that as soon as I lay flat on the ground they would slash me from behind.
The push was near my neck. Immediately on getting it, I shot forward at full speed. And as soon as I ran, the bell of the temple which was about 1¼ furlongs from that place rang. The bell was the signal of danger. When my people had known that I was being taken to the threshing-ground they had run towards the temple to ring the bell. The coincidence of the ringing of the temple-bell and my running was the most important factor on which hung the question of my life or death. Had the bell rung before most of them had left me and I had been pushed, they would have killed me then and there on the way because I was still in their grip. But as I was made free to be pushed down I could escape. The ringing of the temple-bell, and most strangely, just at that very time, the great bellowing of about fifty cattle who were grazing in the field, made people run from miles towards the spot shouting “Coming, coming”, “Run, run”, “Danger, danger”. The absence of the guards who had gone on leave was another strong point for my safety. Had they been there, they would have run to save or would have been running about shouting of danger. That also would have been another incitement to my captors to hurry up their work instead of choosing such a ceremonious plan of killing me on the threshing-ground.
As soon as I ran, the would-be murderers also ran behind me and, with their long spears, tried to pierce my body. I got a few jabs on my arms and shoulders and even on the back of my neck although I ran all along with my head bent low to avoid any deep wound.
When the shouting of the villagers increased, the two men ran back and disappeared.
When I returned later to my house, I found that the kerosene-sprinkled gunny-bags of paddy seed remained unburnt, for the candles consumed themselves to the end without touching the bags. This saved the house too from being gutted.
The whole incident had such a transforming effect on the entire structure of my life that even now my being remains full of utter gratitude to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother who gave me new life from within as well as from without.
The year was 1952 when, in the Kumbh Mela at Allahabad, there was a bridge-crash.
Myself, my mother and two other Gurubhais were on a pilgrimage. We reached the Kumbh Mela a day before the actual date. We were put up in the Bharat Sevak Samaj buildings. We came out of the building and went to the bathing ghat of the Yamuna. My mother took a dip in the holy waters. My friend suggested to me that we should leave my mother at the Samaj building so that we could be free to move about and see the mela.
While on our way to the Samaj building, we saw a big party of sadhus coming in a procession. As the procession was nearing us, two of our men stood aside while we—myself and my mother—were surrounded by spectators and they came in such a rush that many people fell down layer upon layer. We too fell on a group of persons and another group of persons fell upon us. “I am undone,” came my mother’s cry. We could not get up and were trod upon by other persons. My mother felt helpless. But she started calling to the Divine Mother. For two or three minutes we were under the pile of people. But I pulled myself out and turned towards my mother, lifted her out and took her to one side.
As I was in an old military khaki dress, the people thought me to be a military man. Coming out of the human débris, I asked the crowd to sit down. They all sat down. In the meantime the military police came. They also gave the same order and asked all to sit down. My mother could not move because of severe pain. But she went on calling to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
We somehow took her to the camp in a rickshaw. No doctor was available at that time. We did hot-water fomentation and sent a telegram to the Mother informing her of the condition of my mother. She was very weak. But I felt that if the night passed without any serious trouble, she would survive, because by the next morning the Mother at Pondicherry would have got the telegram and as a result her Grace was sure to act. As soon as we sent the telegram, we happened to meet a homeopath doctor. He gave some medicine. The night passed without trouble.
The next day we left for our home town and from there wrote a detailed letter to the Mother. We got her blessing-flowers and my mother was completely cured soon without the use of much medicine and thus, despite her old age, survived the stampede of a crowd.
A few years ago I was working in a plantation. One day I went to another town for work. Although the work was almost finished on the same day and I could very well have avoided personally going there on the next, yet I felt impelled to motor my way through the 30-mile rough road for that small work left unfinished.
As soon as I passed over a bridge on the way, my jeep toppled over it, from a height of about is feet, but leaving me, strangely enough, on the bridge itself. I got only a slight injury, the jeep down the bridge was completely smashed.
A boy who accompanied me in the automobile went down with the jeep but miraculously enough he had only a small cut from the broken front glass and received no other injury.
This incident was the crowning one in a whole series that had occurred during those days to sabotage my determination to go permanently to the Ashram. Yet the Mother’s Protection and Grace were with me at each critical moment of the play of the hostile forces.
After a couple of days I received the joyous news from the Mother that she had allowed me to join the Ashram permanently. And it is interesting to note that her decision was taken on the very day of the accident! Her divine Action had met by a definitive master-stroke the final all-out attack on one destined to devote his energies to her service.
I was a person of a very nervous constitution. Hardly could I tolerate any painful scenes. They would make me fall unconscious. In 1953 I was admitted into a hospital for an operation. The date of the operation was fixed: it was to be two days after my admission. The fear of the impending operation made me pale and almost faint. In the meantime I had a glimpse into the operation room where another patient was being operated on. No sooner did I look in than I fell unconscious. The doctor advised me not to move towards the operation room. I failed to understand how I would be able to bear the operation. To add to my distress, I saw that all the cases, similar to mine, were coming out of the operation room almost half-dead.
The next day I was to be operated on. I sat down just at 8 p.m. in the hospital cabin and began to read Prayers and Meditations of the Mother. I not only felt but saw clearly that streams of peace, just like a downward flow of cold water, were entering into my head and inundating my whole body. Within four or five minutes all my fears and agonies disappeared and I became careless and fearless as if nothing were going to happen.
The following day, peacefully and gladly I entered the operation room at the appointed hour and lay waiting on the operation board for two and a half hours but laughing and delivering a lecture on “what Sri Aurobindo’s Ashram is” and “Who is the Mother?” etc. etc. To the great astonishment of all, I asked the civil surgeon to operate deeply and radically. Another patient, who was to be operated on after me, was weeping at the gate of the operation room. I explained to him how fearless I felt. Rather I was speaking as in a conference. Such extraordinary happenings moved the civil surgeon and turned him into a devotee of the Mother.
My father was seriously ill. His sickness was so painful and at so advanced a stage that he as well as we thought it would be better if he left his body soon.
We wrote about it to the Mother and her blessings worked in such a way that we who were in the service of our father round-the-clock could not even know the time of his death—it was so silent and peaceful. What happened is this. After finishing our lunch, we sat at the bedside of our father who was in a coma, and started singing adoration of the Divine Mother and Sri Aurobindo. The whole atmosphere seemed as if a serene peace were manifested all around. As we completed our song, we saw that our father had expired during our singing. Nobody wept or cried. Later on, all functions, from the cremation to the shraddha, were performed peacefully. We could all the time feel that the Divine Mother was with us in each of our functions, and we could very well believe that she was taking care of the soul of the deceased.
I intended to visit the Ashram in December last but I had to give up the idea as no arrangement for money could be made.
Then my children wrote from the Ashram that I must visit Pondicherry on the Mother’s birthday. But no solution to my problem of money was visible. So I thought that this time too I would not be able to go. Yet I had a silent faith that if the Mother wanted me to be there, she would do something about my monetary requirements.
For some time, in the light of revised pay-scales, the official decision on my scale of pay had been pending. Though I was entitled to the new scale of pay, there was some technical hitch which delayed the decision in my case for a pretty long time.
A few days before the Mother’s birthday, our office treasurer sent to me, for signature, a bill for quite a good sum of money due to me as arrears. But, strangely enough, these arrears were neither according to the new pay-scales, nor were they according to the old ones. For, the money was less if calculated according to the former and more if calculated according to the latter. But the amount was just sufficient to cover the expenses for my return ticket to and from Pondicherry and other necessary expenditure during, the journey and my stay in the Ashram.
Surprised as I was I thought of referring the matter to the treasurer and inquiring how he had come to calculate my arrears in the way he had done. But a thought came to me that the amount had come to me by the Mother’s Grace and that I should not reject it or try to tamper with the aid given me for something for which I had intensely aspired and longed, because, in any case, the necessary adjustments could very well be done later, on my raising the issue after returning from Pondicherry.
I took the money in all sincerity and transparency of faith, for I concluded from the timely help that the Mother had signalled me to go to the Ashram.
The construction of the Golconde, a marvel of engineering, the only of its kind in India and standing among the rarest types of building-work, was started in 1938 with the help of Antonin Reymond, an American architect of Czech birth, a Japanese engineer named Sundaram by Sri Aurobindo, and Chandulal, an Indian engineer.
This three-storeyed building, with two wings each of nine rooms on a storey (54 large rooms in all), has a whole set of rooms for stores and dining in the basement.
During the construction work, an engineering problem arose. None of the engineers could find a solution to it. Chandulal suggested: “Why not go to the Mother and seek her advice?” The others opined that the Mother could very well remove the spiritual difficulties, but wondered how she could help in technical difficulties of engineering.
Somehow they agreed to go to her on the plea that even though she might not be able to help them out of their difficulties, she could at least give them some advice on their next move and, besides, it could well be an extra occasion to have the Mother’s company for some time.
They went upstairs to her and put their problem before her. Each one of them had sought its solution in a different way and come to a point from where he could not proceed further. The Mother asked where, in particular, each one’s obstacle lay. After she had given each a concentrated and quiet hearing, without hesitation she told them, “Why don’t you try this way?...” and she explained to them what could possibly be done.
As soon as she had told this to them, their minds started converging on a common plan, amazed how none of them had thought of that solution, which was indeed the right one.
Similarly another Ashram engineer had once a difficulty in a building work in the Playground.
A wall was in a dangerous condition. So he showed it to the Mother on the spot, and asked her what he should do. After a little concentration, she told him, “Buttress it from here and plaster it afterwards. That will be all right.”
The solution, to the utter surprise of the engineer, was correct. He could not help asking the Mother, “But how could you know this?”
“I kept quiet for a time and contacted Engineer X and got the answer from him,” she replied smiling.
I had a small cloth shop and along with it a shoe store. My partners dealt with me very badly. Ultimately they led me over head and ears into debt. I could not find any way out. All my hopes were shattered.
I was forced to break with my partners. I had now no money left to proceed with. I could not even provide for my family’s immediate needs.
The strain of this situation affected my health. In such a condition I came into contact with a devotee of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. I told him all about my state. “Why do you worry so much?” he said. “Remember the Mother and she will do everything for you.” Till then I did not know anything about the Mother. But he spoke as if the Mother were magic. I told him, “It is beyond your Mother’s power to pull me out of this wretched plight. It is impossible. I can’t believe it.”
Yet he persuaded me to write to the Mother. I was a worshipper of Kali. Reluctantly and half-heartedly I wrote a letter to the Mother. After a short time, as if indeed by a miracle, I saw that conditions began to improve. The sale proceeds of the shop started rising steeply. This outer change in business brought about such a transformation in my heart and such a spontaneous faith in the Mother that I laid all my business before her when I came to Pondicherry. I accepted her as in-charge of my inner and outer affairs. Now people started giving me goods worth many thousands without even being asked. My business continues to flourish in capital and goods. All my prosperity is due to the Mother. I owe to her more than I can ever be grateful for.
It was the day after the Mother’s Birthday in 1956. Just the day before it I had a strong will to open myself and surrender to her. Perhaps it was in reaction to this will that I started getting hostile suggestions and attacks seeking to frustrate my efforts at Yogic sadhana.
“You will not be able to do Yoga. It is a very difficult and perilous path. You are inviting unnecessary trouble and dangers. Leave it and be free”—such was the constant vehement suggestion. I almost felt helpless.
The attack was mainly on the mental plane, the vital was quiescent and remained unaffected. Yet I kept up my Godward will and recalled Sri Aurobindo’s words on the need of willed surrender and on the consequence of denying the Divine, which he details in the first chapter of The Mother.
I also repeated to myself time and again this assurance of the Divine in the Gita: “Know it for certain, O son of Kunti, that My devotee perishes not.”
Two hours passed. Although inwardly agitated I behaved normally to the outward sight and did not tell anybody. In fact I could think of none in the city who could really help me.
Suddenly an idea flashed through my mind that I should write the whole thing to the Mother immediately.
I picked up my pen and writing-pad and started writing. As soon as I reached the end of my letter, I was surprised to find my trouble completely gone. There was no attack, no struggle, even no after-effects and I was full of calm and joy.
For some time I had not been keeping in good health. Most of the time I felt indisposed and there was a general disability to perform my daily work well.
Although I had been devoted to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother I had not yet visited the Ashram. During the last Durga Puja days, I felt a strong urge to visit the Ashram, but as all my earned leave had been exhausted, it became very difficult for me to arrange leave from my office. My indisposition became for me a fit cause for applying for leave on medical grounds and I considered it to be a divine boon that through it I got a chance to fulfil my aspiration to visit the Ashram.
So I approached the local doctor. He wanted to make a thorough examination. When he took my blood pressure he found it high. And, without my particularly mentioning to him about my proposed visit to Pondicherry, he advised me complete rest for at least two months and gave me a certificate to that effect. He also prescribed certain medicines which could help me to improve my health.
Thus I submitted my leave application along with the medical certificate to my superiors. My leave was sanctioned.
A few days later when I came to the next main railway junction on my way to Pondicherry, I consulted one of my relatives, who is Chief Medical Officer of the Tramways Company of the city, and found to my utter surprise that my blood pressure was normal. On his advice, I stopped taking medicine so far as it related to blood pressure. As for my general weakness and indisposition, I now feel improved in health immensely without much use of medicine.
I consider the whole turn of this incident as a mysterious Grace of the Mother who has helped me in fulfilling my urge and turning to the Divine.
My friend’s father after staying in England for two years started for India. As the Suez Canal was closed he came via Africa. He alighted at Mombasa, having decided to stay there a few months. Just by chance he applied for a permanency, which was granted—now an almost impossible thing. Before settling down he thought it would not be possible to visit India for at least five years, so he made the decision in a day and again applied for a permit to leave the country. The Immigration Department was astounded that this man after getting his permanency should go risking his grant. But he was given permission for six months.
He came to Bombay on 19th November. His ticket for Pondicherry was ready but he could not come here and thought he would come on his birthday, 1st January. He reached Pondicherry on 31st December but was disappointed as he could not see the Mother. He stayed on, and from 15th January he got Balcony Darshan. He had planned to leave Pondicherry for a South-India trip on 20th January, but he got fever on the 18th. He thought it was something ordinary and would subside. He wrote a letter to the Mother informing her about his intention to leave, but she was reported to have just smiled.
The fever continued. It did not come down at all to normal for days. His trip was cancelled. His ticket to Delhi on the 3rd was also cancelled. He had a disdain for medicine and tried out his own Naturopathy, in which he had acquired a diploma in England. He fasted for 20 days. On 15th February he was normal. He even got out of his bed, but otherwise was very weak.
On the 28th, at 10.55 p.m., just ten minutes before the Ashram Gate is locked, he asked his son to go to the Samadhi and bring flowers from there. When the flowers were brought, he reverently caught them to his breast. But his wife saw that his condition was a little serious and sent a neighbour to fetch the doctor. His feet were getting cold. So she applied some ginger powder. He said: “Don’t call the doctor. I am quite all right.”
At about 11.35, the doctor came. After feeling the pulse of the patient for a few seconds he said it was all finished. My friend’s father had passed away without his family knowing it.
In the morning the doctor informed the Mother about it. She sent two beautiful roses to the wife and son and said, in effect: “Tell them not to sorrow. I had called his soul from Africa. He had no disease at all. It was just an excuse to leave the body. The soul had made the decision to leave. This might have happened in Africa. The soul is with me.”
The brother of the deceased had been trunk-called in the night and he arrived with his wife in a plane which he had caught shortly after getting the news of his brother’s death. He reached Pondicherry at 1.30 p.m., as if all had been planned.
The whole family went to the Mother on 1st March at the time of “Prosperity” blessings. The 1st of each month is the day when the Mother provides the sadhaks for their needs of the month and gives her blessings. The Mother caressed and blessed the wife of the departed and behaved as if she were removing all the looming grief off her environment. The wife left the Mother full of peace and gratefulness.
This reminds me of another similar incident, in which the Mother explained how she removes people’s grief when they come to her for blessings with entreaties and prayers. A man had died. His brother who was in the Ashram had not broken the news to the man’s family who were about to leave the Ashram that very evening, after getting the news of his illness. They were waiting near the door of the Mother’s Interview Room for her parting blessings. The brother of the deceased told the Mother about the recently-received telegram concerning the death. The Mother took him to the Interview Room and worked in such a way that when he and the rest of the family went to their house and when their near and dear came with condolences and sympathies, the latter looked more sorrowful for the death than the members of the family who could not grieve, could not but remain peaceful and confident. The Mother explained to the brother in some such words: “When anybody comes to me full of grief and sorrow, I just make a movement like this as with a pin” (here she drew her finger in a line across her heart) “and by that I take away the grief. Then I stream out from my depths towards him a calmness, peace and joy that relieves him of all his worries.”
At the end of 1943, suddenly I was attacked by a very bad type of typhoid. In those days there was no specific medicine for typhoid, like chloromycetine. The doctors and patients were practically helpless.
Our family physician, a retired major of the Indian Medical Service, was careful from the very beginning and was fully conscious of the gravity of the disease. He did all that was in his power to save my life, but my condition went from bad to worse and by the middle of the second week I practically lost consciousness. My fever was rising to 105 and falling to 101. My relatives became apprehensive and my colleagues in the local bar library discussed an eventual condolence resolution.
In one of my short lucid moments of wakefulness, I asked my mother to write to the Divine Mother at Pondicherry praying for my recovery. So far I had never gone to the Ashram and had read only Sri Aurobindo’s book The Mother. My mother wrote, “My son X is swinging between life and death and I pray to you for his recovery.”
The doctors of my home town had given me up as a lost case, although our family physician was bravely and kindly putting up a strong fight against the malady. He advised my mother to get some more experienced doctor from the city, a hundred miles far from my town, and keep him by my bedside for a few days as a measure of last resort. The necessary money was wanting. But quickly some few hundred rupees were collected and my brother-in-law was made ready to get a doctor from the city.
Early in the morning our family physician came to see me and stopped my brother-in-law from proceeding to the neighbouring city because he detected that my tongue was wet. My relative’s departure was postponed by about six hours, so that if there was in me really some change for the better it might not be necessary to arrange for another doctor. That day my temperature rose to 104 and fell to 100. On this the idea of bringing another medical practitioner was temporarily abandoned.
On the next day, my temperature went down by one degree more, i.e. it rose to 103 and fell to 99. Next day it rose to 102 and fell to 98. On the fourth day there was another decrease of temperature by one degree: 101, 97. That morning, we received a letter from the Ashram, “The Mother sends you her blessings”.
The letter was dated 4 days earlier, and the very day it had been posted in Pondicherry my fever had come down by one degree both ways. And since then it had fallen gradually by one degree every day till on the fourth day I was completely out of danger.
Within a week I was fully cured, though I was still very weak. This bent the entire course of my life towards the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo. Our family physician considered my recovery to be indeed a miracle and made it a “must” to see the Mother at Pondicherry at least once in his life, although not from the point of view of doing Yoga.
In the city where I stayed last, the only means of transport was rickshaws. There was a bus service, of course, but it was very unreliable and dirty so that often people avoided to avail themselves of it.
One morning a friend and colleague of mine who stayed in an adjacent flat came and told me, “Well, sir, how will you go to the office today; there is a total strike of rickshaws and the buses too are not plying.” The office was about four miles from our residence. I told him, “I’ll ring my office up for the office car and, if even that is not available, I’ll take leave. But I won’t go on foot.”
“Now perhaps your Mother may help you in this difficulty.” There was shrewd sarcasm in his tone. “You depend so much on her! Why, you can’t ask her for a rickshaw?”
I was cut to the quick. “Yes, that is also possible. Her Grace can work in any way.” My faith retorted immediately in these words. But it was a little too much to pray for help in such a small matter. I dropped the subject and busied myself with my meditation. My friend left the house quite early to foot the whole distance to the office.
When I came out of my house to the rickshaw stand at the road-crossing, I found it deserted. Then I remembered the sarcastic words of my friend. For a second I thought of the Mother and the morning’s incident. When I looked the other way, a rickshaw was there. Because of the strike, I could imagine that the rickshaw driver would charge exorbitantly. I was prepared to pay ten times the usual fare. I questioned him. I was surprised to hear him demand from me the usual ordinary fare.
When my rickshaw had gone about four furlongs from my house, I heard someone shouting my name. I made the rickshaw stop. Looking back I found my friend hurrying on foot. He was perspiring. After a word or two with him, I continued my journey.
While working in the office, I came to know from someone that my friend had been spending quite a good time in inquiring whether the strike was over and the rickshaws had started plying again. He felt surprised, disappointed and cooled down. In the afternoon, he came to me with tears of apology, for he felt that even though he understood next to nothing about the Grace, yet it could work at any time in any matter—and that it did work in the present case.
His enquiries had shown that between 7.30 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon when he came to me, not one rickshaw had plied on that road to my office. I was extremely grateful to the Mother and smiled at her ways.
I was staying in a suburb of Bombay before I joined the Ashram. The house that I lived in was on the slope of a hillock, and there were many snakes of the most poisonous varieties in the garden adjoining my bedroom. My bedroom formed part of a big verandah and the partition that was built to make this room had an open space of about four inches running all along at the bottom. If rodents or snakes wanted to enter they could do so very easily.
I lived in that room for eight full years but no snake ever entered the room.
The very day I gave up the house to come and settle in Pondicherry our landlord who wanted the house for his own use placed his own bed in exactly the same place where my bed used to be. The very first night when his wife entered the room, she found a poisonous snake (Russell’s viper, to be exact) twined round the post of her husband’s mosquito-curtain-frame. I learnt about this nearly a year and a half after I had come here. Only then did I realise how the Mother’s protection worked around me and works even hundreds of miles away on all those who come within the aura of her Grace.
About thirty years back, when I was at the age of thirteen, I had my first conscious awakening to spirituality through the books of Swami Rama Tiratha, entitled In the Woods of God-Realisation.
One noon, lying on the cot on the roof of my house, as I was studying one of these volumes, something made me stop reading. I kept the book aside and closed my eyes. I saw before my closed eyes as if the whole horizon, surcharged with peace, power, light and bliss had come down and merged into the earth.
Though awe-stricken I was left in a daze of joy and bliss. Later in my life I always used to remember this vision and pine for having it again, but it would not happen.
Recently I came into contact with the Mother. My desire to have that vision was still there. Last year on the Mother’s birthday, when I was sleeping in my room in the Golconde, again I had the vision of the horizon surcharged with peace, power and bliss coming down and uniting with the earth. Also with it I had a perception as if the Mother was behind the horizon directing this descent. Thus my long-standing desire was fulfilled and along with it I understood more clearly the significance of the vision.
I was staying at a great distance from the premises of the Delhi Branch of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Archani near Qutab Minar. I often found it difficult to attend the meetings there. I tried to get a house near the Ashram Branch but all my efforts went in vain.
On 4th December 1958, the relics of Sri Aurobindo were brought from Pondicherry to Delhi to be enshrined in the Branch on the following day, the day of his Mahasamadhi. On the 4th December I got a memorandum from the office allotting to me new Government quarters just near the Ashram Branch building. This facilitated my regular visits there. And I consider it not a fortuitous coincidence but an act of the Divine Grace.
During 1953, the year when I came to the Ashram for the first time, my wife was seriously suffering from a malady whose right diagnosis could not be made. She was X-rayed and treated by a doctor who said that she was suffering from rheumatism. But there was no improvement in her condition.
We got her examined by another more qualified medical practitioner who found in the X-ray plate signs of bone T.B. He started treating my wife. He was paid every day from 20 to 30 rupees—an amount beyond my capacity. The treatment continued for two months during which time the patient was strictly prohibited from moving. My resources were exhausted, yet there were no visible signs of cure. My wife, pinned to her bed, felt unable to bear suffering any more.
I wrote to the Mother through a friend of mine. I was sent her blessings. Now I started depending entirely on the Mother’s Grace, yet putting in the right effort. When the malady did not lessen after the doctor’s treatment for two months, I again wrote to the Mother and got her blessings.
A Gurubhai advised me to establish inner contact with the Mother so that I might receive her help more easily and more tangibly.
Dropping the treatment by this doctor, I went to another still more qualified doctor who said that if the disease was bone T.B., the patient needed to be kept plastered for 6 months. She was to be X-rayed and examined again and kept in the hospital for 7 days for this purpose. We agreed. After a thorough examination, it was found that the disease was not bone T.B. It was rheumatism. The treatment was given for this so that not only were we saved from the exhorbitant expenditure on treatment of bone T.B., but also the patient was spared her bed-pinned plight. The treatment was continued for six months. Now the patient is cured, except that she is weak.
I feel sure that the Mother’s blessings put the whole case on the right track so that the just remedy was given, with the resultant cure.
When I went to see a Minister in connection with my licence for the purchase of machinery from a foreign country, he said that I could get it only if I agreed to pay the amount of purchase to the sellers three years hence and not forth-with; otherwise, he added, he was not interested to help me in any way.
Although I had not enquired of the representative of the sellers in the city whether he would agree to such terms or not, reserving my doubts I accepted the Minister’s offer on the spot in the hope of persuading him. When I went to him he did not accept these terms. It seemed I had vainly spent nearly Rs. 50,000, visiting foreign countries in a look-out for machinery and neglecting for that reason my regular business in India.
For three days I was in a dejected yet a most prayerful mood, remembering and oiling the Mother all the time. Finding no way out I thought of leaving the city to return to mine to attend to my regular business. Before this I went to bid good-bye to a clerk in the Ministry, from where I had been trying to arrange for the licence. He had been kind enough to help me in various ways.
When I met him he offered his congratulations on the grant of licence to me. “Why this joke?” I asked. “What is the use of getting a licence on terms which are not acceptable to the sellers?”
“No, the licence has been granted on immediate cash-payment basis. We have received a special order from the Secretary granting you the licence. So there you are!”
How it all came about, how the whole situation got changed, I did not know, but I could not attribute it to anything except the Grace of the Mother, and for that I am grateful to her.
This happened during the last week of August 1957. My daughter, aged 22 years, was down with serious typhoid for over three weeks. She was running a high temperature and her condition was worsening from day to day. The place being a village, no proper medical aid was available. We were dying with anxiety for the safety of our beloved daughter. I was all along praying to the Mother for her recovery.
During those fateful nights, at the request of my daughter, I used to recite a few verses from Chapter II of the Gita and keep a small photo of the Mother by her bed. I used to talk to her about the Mother and the Ashram and to this she used to listen with great interest in spite of the bad state of her health. Then she used to be lulled to sleep for an hour or two.
One morning she called me suddenly. She was all joy and her eyes were beaming. She said that in the middle of the previous night she had seen in a dream Goddess Durga clad in spotless white and riding a fierce lion. Durga had distinctly resembled the Mother and had been enveloped in unearthly splendour. She added that in the small hours of the morning there had been another dream wherein the Mother had stood by her bed in her ordinary dress. Seeing the Mother, she continued, she had fallen on her knees and felt her loving touch on her head. She had heard the Mother saying, “Don’t worry, my child, I am here to look after you.” Her mind had been filled with ineffable joy and peace at these words. Strange to say, this second dream repeated itself till the end of the week. We had no doubt that she would be cured of her illness by the Mother’s Grace.
After these happenings, twice her sickness took a serious turn and we almost gave up hopes of her survival. But somehow, as if by a miracle, she began to show signs of improvement and regained her health gradually. She was confined to bed for over five months. Now she is all right and is very eager to see the Mother and the Ashram.
In the year 1951 I had a serious attack of typhoid.
One night I had a dream which was for certain more than a mere dream, for it was symbolic and luminous
I saw as if some Asuras, signifying perhaps the messengers of Death, had entered my room. They lifted my body in its lying position and took it towards the sky to an unknown place. Some time later I found as if they had put an end to my life. Yet I was the witness of all this and all that followed.
Later they brought back my dead body and threw it on the bed from where I had been removed.
A few minutes later, I saw the Mother entering my room. She lifted my dead body in her arms and took it towards the sky. After a while she brought it back, now living. Then she gently put it on the bed. At once I got up and felt I had got a new life by her Grace.
After this, as long as I was confined to bed, I kept feeling her Presence all around me: she was always there with me to guard and protect.
A few days after, I completely recovered from my illness.
In 1950, I was returning from Pondicherry after the darshan of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. On the way, as my journey had to be broken at a city where my younger brother was working in an office, I went to see him. Later he came to see me off at the railway station. When I was going to board the intended train, I felt a strange uneasiness within me. I told this to him. He replied that it could be nothing, maybe I felt uncomfortable because of the hustle-bustle and the clatter on the platform. Yet something in me was not convinced and kept me back from travelling by that train. Anyway I decided to go by the next train which left after a couple of hours.
When I reached another station midway my journey back home, there the news was about that the train in which I had desisted from travelling had met with an accident some stations ahead and for that reason our train would not be leaving the platform for a time.
Although I was entirely ignorant of the coming calamity, the Mother portended to my heart inwardly by that knowing uneasiness not to travel by the first train and saved me from the fatal consequences.
During our stay at Madras from 1952 to 1955, we often heard from various people a story of two birds (eagles) believed to be two ancient Rishis flying daily from Benaras to pay their homage to the Lingam of Shiva in the temple of Trikalikundam which is on the top of a steep hill about 45 miles far from the city. We naturally felt a desire and a curiosity to visit the place. But unfortunately every time we had to postpone our visit as I was suffering from asthma and used to find it difficult even to climb an ordinary staircase. At last in March 1955, my husband received an order of transfer from Madras. Hearing of it I and my child went to Pondicherry to receive our farewell Blessings from the Mother. On my return I asked my husband to arrange for our long-cherished visit to Trikalikundam and Mahabalipuram, for if we missed them now we might not get a second chance again. My decision was happy news to my husband though he felt a bit nervous and worried on account of my weak and asthmatic condition. How could he possibly believe that I who could not climb an ordinary staircase would be able to perform the task of climbing a huge hill up 600 steep stony steps! However, finding me adamant and undaunted he agreed to my proposal, perhaps secretly believing that I might have brought with myself some divine strength from the Ashram. So, next morning along with our little boy who was nine years then, we reached the spot in a taxi. There were lots of people ready to go up for the sight of those strange birds. My husband enquired if there was any means available to carry me up, but there was no such arrangement. I looked at the top of the hill and felt dizzy for a moment, but I lost neither courage nor confidence, for I felt convinced that my heart’s prayer to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had been answered and they were sure to carry me through. I inwardly placed myself like a little child in the lap of the Mother. As soon as I did that I at once felt light and happy and was filled with enthusiasm like my little son at the very idea of marching up and up to reach the summit. My husband was rather apprehensive not only on my account but even for himself! We started our upward journey. Believe it or not I was feeling so light and strong that I went on merrily jumping like a bird; I forgot all about my physical limitations. So much so that now I started teasing my husband who in spite of his good health and strong body was showing signs of exhaustion. Oh! how happy and grateful I felt when at last I reached the top at the exact appointed time and actually saw the birds coming down from distant skies like aeroplanes, eating prasad from the hands of the Pujari and then flying back to their destination.
When we got down from the hill I was in such a good condition that we proceeded to Mahabalipuram and there further wandered about to see the caves etc. On our return my husband said that I was sure to feel the aftereffects of the difficult journey when I lay down and relaxed. But instead I had sound sleep and got up hale and hearty next morning! My husband whose muscles were aching was wondering at the miracle!
Whenever I am reminded of the above experience my heart is filled with joy and gratitude and automatically these words come out:
mūkam karoti vācālam paṅgum laṅghyate girimyatkṛpātamahaṁ vande parmānandamādhavam
Salutations to Him, the Supreme Delight,By whose great Gracious Might,The dumb is made to speak,The lame to scale the peak.
Our Guru was a Jain Sadhu. Three days after his death, he appeared to me in a dream and asked me to go to Pondicherry and accept in future Sri Aurobindo and the Mother as my Gurus. I did not then know that one required previous permission to go to the Ashram. I went to the Ashram, but as the Darshan Day did not fall within my stay, I had to return without having the blessing glimpse of Sri Aurobindo.
The next year I came for the Darshan and saw Sri Aurobindo. Since then I visit Pondicherry every year for a fixed number of days, whatever happens.
Now each time I was about to leave for the Ashram, circumstances conspired to put my faith to the test. But I had made up my mind that whatsoever came in my way, I would not desist from going to Pondicherry: surely Mother and Sri Aurobindo would help me.
Once when I was preparing to leave, an accident took place: a day before my departure my son fractured his wrist-bone. It was a serious case, but I left just the same, as planned. And everything went well in my absence.
Another time, one baby in the house got typhoid just the day when I was to leave. In Pondicherry I received the news that three days after my departure the baby had recovered completely.
Once again my son had a leg-fracture a day before my departure. I left as usual without flinching in my faith. My son recovered remarkably in my absence by the Grace of the Mother.
I started smoking in 1923-24. Then I hardly used to smoke more than twice or thrice a month. But by 1932 this habit had such a strong hold over me that I used to smoke nearly three packets of high-quality cigarettes a day. During that year my wife died. She had not liked my smoking. For four years I did not touch a single cigarette. But again in 1936 I slid back, smoking about three-four packets every day when in town and about six-seven packets when out of it.
In 1952, an Ashram sadhak came to the Sri Aurobindo Circle of our town. While talking about the Ashram, he said, “Smokers are not allowed to go before Sri Aurobindo’s Samadhi.” Those were the days when I was seriously contemplating to go to the Ashram during the month of May.
A struggle ensued within my mind. “I want to go to the Ashram; what is the use of going if I won’t be allowed to see Sri Aurobindo’s Samadhi? But if I have accepted Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, can I not give up smoking if she does not like it?” This mental conflict went on for eleven days. On the 11th day I decided to smoke as many cigarettes as I could and say good-bye to this deep-seated habit for ever.
The last cigarette that I smoked was at 11.15 p.m. Then I went to my Meditation Room, bowed before the photographs of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and prayed to the Mother, “Today I am giving up smoking entirely. Grant that never in the future I may touch a cigarette.” Later I retired for the night
And, wonder of wonders, utterly against my expectations, when I got up in the morning, I felt absolutely no craving for smoking. I did not even once think of it. Since then I have not only abstained from smoking but when somebody smokes near me, I have either to move away from there or to request him to stop it or move away from me.
And all this happened by a strange mystery of the Grace, the mystery of the misstatement of the Ashram sadhak. Instead of saying that smoking is not allowed in the Ashram, he had said innocently, “Smokers are not allowed near the Samadhi.” But this proved to be a divine boon for me.
The year was 1934. I was suffering from unnatural bone-growth in the ring-finger of my right hand. I consulted a doctor. He said that I needed an operation: the upper phalange of the ring-finger had to be cut off. But I did not like the idea of getting part of my finger so excised.
I went to an Ayurvedic physician. He also said that there was no way out except to get my phalange cut off.
To relieve my pain, I was applying hot onion, although that did not work any miracle.
I wrote a letter to the Mother with my left hand mentioning that I did not want to be minus a phalange.
I posted the letter personally at 11 a.m., and at 4 p.m. the same day the swelling of the finger burst and the bone came out apart. And within a few days my hand was completely cured.
The car was a Hindustan Landmaster, No. P.1921. (1921 is not the year of its manufacture but the registration number.) It was always my trusted car in Delhi and therefore I sent it to Pondicherry for our use over there. And it was in this Landmaster that on the morning of 23rd October, 1959, I left for Madras from where I was to take the plane for my return to Delhi.
The car had a full load, for, besides the driver and a colleague of mine, there were my wife, youngest daughter, youngest son, and the grown-up son who usually drives me down to Madras. Thus there were seven persons in all in the car, all of whom, except my colleague and myself, were travelling primarily to leave me at Madras and then return to their permanent abode—Pondicherry.
Our programme was approved by the Mother and it was after Her gracious blessings that we left Pondicherry in the early morning.
Narendra, my grown-up son, was behind the steering, driving with skill and confidence. All along the journey, the atmosphere in the car was full of hilarity. It was raining quite heavily when we reached the outskirts of Madras. The rain-sodden fields on the two sides of the road presented a charming and fast-shifting scenery. The wipers on the screen were wiping off the torrents of rain-water with a rhythm.
And then suddenly the car skidded. It began to swerve, now going this way and the next second the other way. We all did feel that the car was swerving, but none took any particular notice of it. Narendra was quite a picture of confidence holding the steering wheel firmly in both hands. The swerving, however, continued for about two furlongs. And lo! the car suddenly overturned throwing all of us over one another. It had more or less turned turtle near the brink of the road just beyond which was a khud, about 5 to 6 feet deep, full of water. The front screen together with the steel frame flew off and fell nearly 20 feet away on the road without, however, the glass being broken. The dicky of the car broke down and the entire luggage, including suitcases, beddings and tiffin carrier etc. went flying away and lay scattered on the road. The luggage carrier also went off from the top of the car and fell at some distance. The engine caught fire while the car with its two wheels raised in air lay on the road on its left side so that the left-hand side-doors were completely blocked by the ground.
But the overturning of the car was so slow and gentle that we all felt as if we had just turned on our sides in bed. One by one we came out of the car through the new exit made possible by the flying away of the front screen while the engine was still on fire. As we crept out, almost all of us smiled spontaneously and gratefully because to our pleasantest surprise none of us had received even a scratch or a bruise. Looking at the smashed overturned car and then looking at ourselves, we could not help laughing.
Did we laugh at the utter failure and defeat of the forces which had dared attack and harm the children of the Mother who carried with them Her gracious blessings?
I tried vainly to read or detect signs of shock in the visage of Dayawati, my wife, who is generally very nervous and afraid while travelling in the car, in the face of Purnima, still in her teens, and in the face of the little kid, Victor. But no, none of them, and for that matter, none of the rest of the party, including Narendra who sat behind the steering during the fateful journey, betrayed even the slightest sign of fear or alarm or nervousness. The way all were calm added to the magnificence of the miracle.
The scene of this frightful accident had, in the meantime, attracted some passers-by with whose help we brought the car back to its normal position. But no sooner were all the four wheels back on the ground than the car suddenly moved backward on the slope and fell into the khud. None of us was standing behind.
Leaving Narendra and the driver to look after the car, the rest of us left for Madras, which was hardly 16 miles ahead, in a public transport. A few hours later came another Ashram car by which Sri Keshavdev Poddar and Sri Himmatsingka and others were travelling to Madras. This car picked us up in Madras and brought us back to Pondicherry—to the feet of the Mother.
Throughout our journey to Madras and then to Pondicherry, after the accident, we kept on laughing. Yes, laughing at the stupidity and futility of the Asuric forces which were perhaps unaware that the Mother had sent, I might say, a number of gods with us even though our journey was so brief and simple. Each god had a specific duty to perform in this wonderful demonstration of the Mother’s powers.
Thus the first god was there to control and halt all traffic on the road for the time during which our car was swerving, thus eliminating the horrible possibility of our car colliding against any other passing vehicle. Otherwise how was it that for about a minute or two while our car was dangerously swerving, and until it ultimately overturned, not a single vehicle or even a pedestrian passed that way—on such a busy highway?
The second god saw to it that the process of overturning was so slow and gentle as not to cause any of us even a violent jerk. In addition, this god was also there to see that the overturning car did not go farther than the road-edge.
God Number Three was in charge of providing the emergency exit and he did a splendid job of it by making the opening from the front through which everyone of us came out without the least inconvenience.
And yet another god kept the fire under control—until we had got out of the car. He did not allow the engine fire to flare up or burst out.
And then there was the fifth god who brought another Ashram car which drove us back to the blessed abode of The Mother.
The next day, the Mother sent for Narendra and the automobile engineer of the Ashram, Abhaya Singh, and, with a handbook on the Hindustan Land-master in her hand, held a small conference wanting to know the reasons of the accident. I guess that the Mother meant to investigate what Asuric power was the mischief-maker behind the material circumstances.
Before my departure from Pondicherry, the Mother, while showering Her blessings, had given me a flower as a token of them. I now looked at it intently, and discovered that it was the flower of Grace.
Surendra Nath Jauhar
My daughter had been living in the Ashram at Pondicherry, since we first visited the Ashram in 1954. Before leaving for Central Africa I wished her to spend a few days at our village.
I went to the Ashram in November 1956 to fetch her and, before leaving, we had the Mother’s Blessings.
As we wanted to come back before the November Darshan Day, I asked a relative of mine to take us in his car to the station, which is 7 miles away from the village. When we had reached half way the car suddenly stopped. He tried his best to get the machine moving but failed. In the meanwhile, the intended train left the station. We decided to go by the next day’s train.
And we did travel the next day. On reaching Pondicherry on the Darshan Day, we heard the news that the train in which we had intended to travel had met with a dangerous accident. Our relatives at the village thought we had been on that train and were much worried. They sent somebody to find out what actually had happened. When he found we were living in the Ashram he was surprised.
It was through the Mother’s Grace that we were saved by the breakdown of the car which was to take us to the station in time for the ill-fated train.
Premilaben B. Patel
One afternoon I sat up to read in the Mother India of December 5, 1959, the article: “The Grace of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.” I was so deeply moved that it created in me reverberations of gratitude to the Master and the Mother. When I recovered from the immensity of them, I found it was already 3.15 p.m. My God! lost in the Grace, I had forgotten to attend my Professor’s lecture on Eliot’s “The Burial of the Dead” in The Waste Land, which was to begin at 3 p.m. “Did Grace fail me or did I fail it?” This was the first thought that struck me. Then came second thoughts: “Well, let me give a fair man’s chance to the Grace. If, by some freak, the lecture has not yet begun, I can still attend and get the benefit.”
With this thought I rushed up to the Lecture Hall and found to my disappointment that the lecture had started. Then the faith in me said, “What if the lecture has started? Still there are 40 minutes to go (it was 3.20 p.m.). Why don’t you profit by them?” To this the sceptic in me came up with his objection and resistance: “My boy, you will be disturbing the harmony of the class if you intrude in the middle.” It was at this time that the third thought (not thoughts!) sprang from my mind: “Come what may, get into the class.” I invoked the peace of the Mother, took courage in both hands and managed to enter. There was, to my surprise, absolutely no reaction to my intrusion. To my greater surprise and even wonder, I found that the lecture on Eliot had not begun after all! The Professor was doing the concluding part of his lecture on Middle English (which, of course, I had not intended to hear) and the one on Eliot was to follow. Needless to say, I attended the whole lecture and enjoyed it exceedingly.
Only that night I could realise (I had known it before, but only yesterday I could realise it) that the Grace of the Divine is for those who wait without hope. Before going to bed, I prayed to the Mother in the aspiration that the sceptic in me might be educated and, then in the words of Eliot,
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope.
I hope this letter of mine does not come as too much of an anti-climax to that article in Mother India.
Kandaswami
When I first came to the Ashram as a visitor, I did not know anything about the Mother. My friend, with whom I had come, arranged for me permission for the Pranam which the Mother used to give in the Meditation Hall after 8 a.m., when aspirants came one by one in a queue and received her blessings on the head and some flowers with a special significance.
As I moved in the queue, my wife behind me, I saw people bowing at the feet of the Mother. My self-conceit revolted at the idea of this. “I have not come here to bow before a European lady. I came here for the darshan of Sri Aurobindo.” I thought of turning back, but good manners had the better of such an idea and I decided to follow on.
As soon as I reached the Mother and tried to look into her eyes, lo! there were no eyes there—but a deep vast ocean spread in front. I spontaneously bowed at her feet and took her blessings. Some years later, as I pined for the repetition of this experience, the Mother told me that it had been an experience of the sudden opening of the psychic being which had been very much in the fore at that time.
During this visit, as I stayed a number of days and the Mother came to know about me, I felt from her talk that she was encouraging me to stay on, but I could not catch clearly her idea. When I went to her for the parting Pranam, she asked, “So you are going today?” Continuing, she said, “There is a marked improvement in you. When you come again I shall try to accommodate you in a house nearer the Ashram. But your wife has to get accustomed to the Ashram life. When are you coming back?” I did not understand why she told me all this, but I just said, “Mother, I shall take the earliest opportunity to return.” And we left.
My wife wanted to see her mother on the way and we went to her parents’ house. Only the first night I had good sleep. On the second day I got ill and my condition started going from bad to worse. Breathing grew difficult. It was a small place, with no qualified doctor. The experienced compounder of the town had no hope about me.
I was on my death-bed. As is the custom, I was brought outdoors, for dying indoors is considered inauspicious. Although apparently unconscious, deep in my death-approaching silence I remembered the Mother’s words, “So you are going today?” and my reply, “Mother, I shall take the earliest opportunity to return.” Now I understood the meaning of her encouragement to me to stay on rather than go back; but yet my attachment had lain with my house and family. Although I had decided to go, her Grace had followed me and as I realised my foolishness, my heart appealed to her, “If I survive, I will for certain come to you.”
And it was all a miracle. Suddenly I began to breathe and so I was brought inside the room. Within a couple of days I recovered almost completely. I went home, soon to return to the feet of the Mother, forever.
February 21, the birthday of the Mother, is also the day on which Mother India was born. And the day of its birth, eleven years ago, had behind it a special outbreak of the Grace of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
This journal was in several senses a desperate venture. It was the idea of a businessman, K. R. Poddar, but conceived without any narrow concern for business: it sought to make current the gold of a spiritual light at any material expense, and there was no calculation made about the length of time it might take for that celestial coinage to be accepted. It was because Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had taken interest in the project and blessed it that the journal was launched in the form of a fortnightly in the midst of that very centre of frantic business, the commercial capital of India, Bombay, where the word “Spirit”, if it meant anything at all, might connote simply what Prohibition puts out of the way of celebrating or relaxing businessmen. The desperateness of the publication and its sheer need of Grace from the Divine was well hit off by the message (dated January 29, 1949) received from Aldous Huxley for the first issue:
“I wish you all success in your venture. You will, of course, be a voice crying in the wilderness. But if a few individuals pay attention, something will have been accomplished.”
A further point added to the apparent quixotism: Mother India had, as part of its aim, the object of plunging into political problems with a spiritual vision. It strove to look at national and international situations from the height of Sri Aurobindo’s thought. In the hubbub of political slogans it brought a standard of judgment that was non-political. In general this standard may be summed up by saying that in every field of ’activity the aim was to criticise whatever militated against humanity’s instinct of an evolving divinity within itself and to give the utmost constructive help to all that encouraged that instinct. Without flinching, Mother India spoke forth on many political subjects in direct contradiction of official or popular ideas. Those were the days when Stalin overshadowed, almost overawed the world, especially the Asian world. But Mother India, while never advocating stark individualism or boosting up rank capitalism, never hesitated to expose the sham of the Stalinist sociology and its rigid negation of the two beliefs or intuitions that are the authentic stamp of homo sapiens: the key-importance of the creative individual in the evolutionary process, the presence of a secret Godhead who can inspire and enlighten the consciousness of the individual. Mother India went all out in support of the American intervention in Korea, regarding as it did the attack of the communist North Koreans as inspired by Mao and Stalin and as the first step of communism towards conquest of all Asia, including our own country. Mother India refused to accept any right of Red China’s to invade Tibet: the historical suzerainty of China over Tibet could only be accepted if at the same time the equally historical internal autonomy of Tibet were granted. Our uncompromising protest, argued out at great length, created a bit of stir in Indian parliamentary circles. Perhaps even more disturbing to current thought was the protest, voiced in three slashing editorials, against recognition of Red China—a protest based on an all-round survey of the situation. We also spotlighted the delusion that there could be real cultural bonds between India and any country wedded to totalitarianism, or that a China gone Red and furiously working for world-communism would have no aggressive intentions against India. In regard to Pakistan there was the same attempt on our part to look into the heart of the matter and judge issues from insight into the psychological and occult forces at work behind the scene of the immediate physical event. Our guide was the vast and impartial yet dynamically precise wisdom of Sri Aurobindo, and we cared not whether we found favour with persons or institutions, whether our circulation soared or slumped as a result of our unconventional views. Did we not have the blessings of the Mother to make us a success in the sense of being a force that made its mark?
The blessings of the Mother: thereby hangs a tale, particular no less than general. But before we come to it a glance may be thrown at the peculiar case of the Editor of Mother India. He was in love with poetry and deeply attached to literary criticism; he was a fast friend of philosophy and on fairly intimate terms with science; he could even have a close relationship with history; but politics was his bête noire, politics gave him the shivers. So when the privilege of editorial appointment came his way, he stood at once delighted and dazed: it was an honour indeed’ to fight with the pen for the Aurobindonian ideal, but the foreignness of the field, the disagreeableness of the ground, on which battle was to be waged, gave him pause. He was expected to write thousands of words on various political themes in a manner that would be clear, cogent, exact, penetrating, widely informed, easily authoritative. Here was a feat the poor fellow could not have performed even in his wildest dreams. But he had learnt from experience as well as observation that the Mother was no chaser of rainbows: if she put him in the Editor’s Chair, it was surely to get solid results out of him in that position. Trusting in her wonderful practical flair, he unburdened his mind of fears to her. “Mother, I have to be an expert political thinker and writer. But I have no turn for, no touch on, politics.” She smiled a cool sweet smile and answered: “Neither have I.” I got a start. “Well, then what shall I do?” Again the imperturbable sweetness and then the reply: “There is Sri Aurobindo. He will guide you in everything.” A sudden flood of power swept over me. “Oh, yes,” I said, “Sri Aurobindo will do the impossible.” And he did. Out of absolute nothing he created a prolific commentator on political questions. Articles simply streamed forth and it was most amazing how their author was called up by people for views on this, that and the other burning topic, as if he were a political oracle! And the wonder was that he successfully acquitted himself like one. His hearers thought that it was but natural he should talk with expertness and far-sightedness: he alone knew that the Grace of Sri Aurobindo did all the talking.
This grace, fashioning a new mind from poor or no materials, worked in many modes at its job which was like that of Napoleon who was said to have made generals of genius out of mud. Sri Aurobindo not only put from afar his mighty spiritual force to the task of “politicising” the Editor’s grey cells. He also got every editorial, however lengthy, read out.to him before publication and sent a telegram of approval or modification or rejection. Matter for Mother India received preferential treatment among the sundry calls on the precious time of the Avatar of Supermind. And his interest in it had a directly personal touch. On one occasion, when a sadhaka’s sceptical attitude to the opinions expressed in the fortnightly was reported to him, he said: “Doesn’t he know that Mother India is my paper?” Here was Grace in abundance and without stint—initiating, fostering, shaping, supporting, championing.
The presence of both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother was felt constantly in all the turns of the editorial activity in Bombay. In fact, there would have been no such activity at all if this presence had not openly taken charge of things. And here what I have called the particular tale of the Mother’s blessings falls into place. Let us go to the period of preparation before the first issue saw the light. We were about to launch a fortnightly without any experience of the brass-tacks of such an adventure. When the office was set up we had only six or seven weeks to go before the date fixed for the opening number. We had no materials in reserve except for two or three issues. One day a veteran journalist dropped in and told us that we were heading for the rocks: unless we had six months’ matter in hand it was foolhardy to start on February 21. We said that our opening number would be a brilliant one and it was a shame to suppress it. A warning finger was wagged in front of the novice Editor’s nose: “It is better to lie quiet for some months than go up a rocket and come down a stick.” We suggested that we would work frenziedly and keep going. “Impossible! All journalistic experience is against you. Mass your forces sufficiently—six months’ stuff in hand—and then make your entrance.”
We were in a quandary. To commence and then flop—this was an unbearable thought. The Editor had at times the apparently irrational feeling that if hard pressed he could write the whole journal single-handed. But could one rely on such delusions of grandeur? Not to be published according to the original plan was galling. Yet he could not involve everything in a rapturous risk. He thought it best to consult the Mother. So he sent her an urgent note: “All journalists advise us to postpone publication for some months. They say we are doomed otherwise. My own instinct is that of Foche at the Battle of the Marne. When he was asked by his superior at the headquarters for a report from the field, he sent the message: ‘Mon centre cède, ma droite récule, situation excellente, j’attaque!’ (“My centre is giving way, my right wing is in retreat, situation excellent, I am attacking!”) But what do you say?”
On January 27, 1949, I received the telegram: “Stick to the date. Live on faith. Blessings.—Mother.” With a whoop we went into action—and our faith in the Mother’s Grace has kept us in action up to now.
Both the Editor and the Associate Editor, S. R. Albless, experienced again and again in their day-to-day movements in the office and at the press the blessing and guiding hand of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. Difficulties rose up of various kinds—psychological, physical and technical. But all got solved and never was Mother India late by even a few hours. Occasionally there was a sudden dearth of contributions. An appeal would go forth to the secret presence. Not only would the immediate need be answered but also “God’s plenty” would pour in, making possible a sumptuous Special Number close on the heels of an ordinary issue that had seemed hard to fill. On some occasions the Editor would have a relapse into his old non-political self. A helplessness would settle like a cloud over him and he would be afraid that the deadline might find him unready. But a deep inner aspiration at night cried out to the Master, “After all, Mother India is your concern. I am only your instrument. You have to look after it and see that everything is in order. Please get an editorial written tomorrow morning.” And the next dawn would break on the early-risen Editor thumping away on his typewriter in a gust of inspiration.
When matters other than political were treated—and there were a lot of them, since Mother India touched on politics as only one side of its multiple Aurobindonian work—the situation of stand-still in any sense was non-existent. For, there the Editorial Staff was in its own element. But here too the enlivening stream of inner help from Pondicherry was clearly felt. And, paradoxically, the most intense experience of it came after the Master had left his body! I had flown to the Ashram on getting the heart-shattering news. As already recounted in the issue of last December 5, the Mother had assured the appalled disciple that nothing had really changed and that he would get as ever the fullest help possible from Sri Aurobindo. But now the greatest challenge was to be faced: what must be written about the mystifying event that had just taken place? All the readers of Mother India would be looking up to the Editor for enlightenment.
Before leaving Pondicherry I was granted an interview by the Mother. She said, “The whole event is quite clear to me. But I shan’t tell you anything. You must write on it all by yourself.” I meditated with the Mother for a while and then left the same night for Bombay. All through the railway journey to Madras and the flight from there to Bombay, I kept inwardly invoking Sri Aurobindo and the Mother to make me do well the job which seemed the greatest my life could confront me with—namely, the reading of at least some part of the spiritual secret that was behind what looked so mighty a tragedy, the secret which would reveal in this apparent tragedy a triumph in accord with all the earth-divinising Yoga taught and lived out by Sri Aurobindo.
Bombay held nothing of interest for me. I would hardly go even out of my room lest the concentration on the hidden light should flicker for a moment and my search fall short of its goal. I said to myself: “What use my whole career of writing if now I cannot bring forth words aglow with God’s own truth?” And the prayer rose up: “O Mother, O Sri Aurobindo, if I could now see into the heart of this mystery and draw out of its depth the speech of revelation, I should be content to drop the pen for ever. I do not care whether I write anything else after it; but here let me not fail.” Once again the old appeal took shape in my mind: “My Master, Mother India is your concern after all. Will you not save it from failure, from frustration?”
Slowly through the empty days and the hopeless nights a mass of light was felt invisibly moving towards expression. I had the urge to write. But something told me to control it. Not till I felt absolutely surcharged with that mass should I put pen to paper. I waited. Then at last came the feeling that now I should find utterance. For several days I went on writing—at times sitting at my typewriter hour after hour, producing nothing rather than let anything unworthy of the colossal theme take form. A long essay progressed towards its end—one of the longest, if not the most lengthy, editorial I had written. I had the sense that the Grace had worked, bearing me through my supreme trial as a writer.
I posted my composition to the Mother. It was entitled: “The Passing of Sri Aurobindo: Its Inner Significance and Consequence.” It was read out to her in two sittings. The Ashram Secretary sent me on December 27, 1950, the telegram: “Your Passing of Sri Aurobindo admirable. Fully approved by Mother. Nothing to change.—Nolini.” My Associate Editor who was still in Pondicherry wrote to me what the Mother had said to him on December 28. Her words were: “I have read Amal’s article. It is excellent. Tell him I am extremely satisfied. I would like to have it printed in booklet form. He can get it printed in Bombay, if he wants. Otherwise I shall have it printed here.” A little later she again spoke to the Associate Editor: “It is quite the best thing Amal has written. I would like to print 15,000 copies of it.”
Face to face with all this, I could only bow my head with inexpressible gratitude. Mother India had found its fulfilment through the Grace of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
KD Sethna (Amal Kiran), The Vision and Work of Sri Aurobindo: The Grace of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother: Some Reminiscences
The Christmas vacation had just begun and I wanted to spend it in Pondicherry. Those were the days of the Punjab partition and millions of people who were homeless had to be rehabilitated in different parts of India and the trains were over-crowded. When I came to board the Grand Trunk Express my heart gave way to see the platform a seething mass of desperate human beings scrambling to get into the train somehow. Every compartment was packed to overflowing and some of the South Indian soldiers bound for their homes stood at the doors to shove off any new entrant. I was very much nonplussed as to what I should do: whether lose my chance of replenishing my spiritual stock or make a final bid and trust in the Mother’s grace. I asked my servant to bundle me into a compartment through a window and not care at all for what happened to me. The soldiers blocked the window but I went on butting in not caring for their shoutings and angry ejaculations. One of them showed me his bayonet to which I retorted, “I will be glad if the Indian soldiers kill me.” A hush fell on them and one of them said, “Let him get in, he will know himself that there is nowhere any accommodation.”
On entering the compartment I discovered that I could barely get space to stand, and to add to my distress almost all were bound for Madras. So the dismal prospect of having to stand for hours on end sent a cold shiver through my spine. Will the Grace prove again, ‘Trust and thy trust will be justified’? This was the question in my mind. The train was late in starting, and I began to feel stiff in the legs and yet there was no sign of anybody relenting and offering me a seat. At last the train steamed off and another Punjabi refugee coming to know that I hailed from Lahore offered me a seat. I heaved a sigh of relief, and marvelled at the omnipotence of the Grace. I do not remember how it happened but to the utter chagrin of the petulant soldiers I got sleeping space by the time dusk was falling. Thus I arrived in Pondicherry without any strain and spent a fortnight in the ambience of the Mother.
The return journey proved even more thrilling and fortifying. I kept with me money barely enough for the journey and the rest I offered to the Mother. But some sadhaks gave me some books to be delivered to their friends in Delhi. I did not care to see that my luggage exceeded by many pounds the maximum that a third class passenger is allowed to carry with him. And the railway regulation is that if the luggage is only ten pounds in excess then the passenger has to pay only that much freight charge but if it is even one pound more than that then as a penalty he has to pay for the whole luggage that he is carrying with him. Somewhere in the middle of the journey the T.T.E. quietly entered the compartment and started checking not only the tickets but the luggage too. He tried to lift my trunk and felt that it weighed more than what was allowed. My heart fluttered, but I persisted that it was not so. He told me that he would bring the weighing machine at the next halt and then charge for the excess. I remembered what the Mother had said, that on such occasions we should not be agitated but call the Grace to come to our succour. I had with me only five rupees. I sat quietly and went on calling the Mother.
The T.T.E. got down at the next station and I had a faint hope that he might forget all about it and not pester me anymore. But just before the train steamed off he again got in with a servant carrying the weighing machine. He started weighing the luggage of another passenger and charged something in the vicinity of thirty rupees. And now was my turn and I had only five rupees on me! The servant asked me to draw out the trunk from beneath the seat. I asked him to do it himself. He lifted it and at the last moment left it saying it was not in excess and then walked back to his seat. I was greatly relieved and could see how by an idea put into the mind of a man the yogic Force invoked can subtly change from far away the whole course of events.
People often feel bewildered when they are told that Sri Aurobindo used to help the Allies in the last world war or India’s struggle for freedom. And yet if we read the account of the last war we see that Hitler had made foolproof preparations for an invasion of Britain and his relations with the Soviet Russia were most friendly and yet a small idea like a tiny bee started buzzing in his head, ‘If Russia stabs me from behind, then what?’ And this small buzz paralysed all his sprawling war-machinery. I do not suggest that this was the actual way in which Sri Aurobindo worked—the Yogic Force has also a massive concrete outward-going movement affecting physical events: I am only suggesting how tremendously potent a small suggestion sometimes can be and how a Yogi can manipulate it.
K.
It was a case of prolonged suffering. Doctors had declared it to be beyond recovery and simply ‘hopeless’. The last injection was given and the best of the doctors in the State said in a most pessimistic tone that now it was a question of a few minutes and if I survived that night a doctor would have to be called in from Calcutta. As I am a Class I government servant the best medical aid was easily available to me, yet seemed all in vain.
All the members of my family, my wife and children were shocked to hear of the imminent calamity. But even on the pronouncement of the doctor I had not lost heart and was feeling very much ‘relief’ within and was absolutely calm and composed.
I asked my wife to sprinkle Ganges-water over my body and to put Tulasi leaf and Ganges-water into my mouth. When this was done I asked her to close the door, take the pictures of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo from my Puja-corner and put them on my chest so that I might see them clearly and meditate on them intensely. This also was done. Then all those who were in the room, including my wife and children, were asked by me to leave me alone. This was at 3 a.m. and I asked them to open the door at 6 a.m. to see whether I was still alive or gone.
Silently, in the heart of my heart I started repeating the mahāmantra: श्री मीराऽरविन्दाय नम:—“obeisance to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother”—with rapt meditation on them within my deepest heart. It was hardly 45 minutes to 4 when I felt the Mother as if physically near my pillow, looking at me with infinite love and compassion and showering on me Her peace and bliss. The Mantra and Meditation went on uninterruptedly and all along I felt the Mother’s physical yet luminous Presence near me, very near me. She then put her right palm on my forehead and said, “Worry not.” I fell into a happy slumber but the Mantra, Meditation, the Mother’s Presence and Her words “Worry not” were all mingled up in it. Every cell of my body was as if bathed in divine intoxication. It was indeed an experience which can better be imagined than described. It lasted for over two hours and when my wife opened the door at exactly 6 a.m. she found me completely recovered.
The Divine has His own mysterious ways of puffing us ignorant mortals towards His Love and Grace which we resist with our utmost blindness.
For two years I was suffering from a disease which could hardly be diagnosed. There was blood-coagulation and excessive increase of red corpuscles. I was unable to walk even ten or fifteen feet. My diet was cut down to a small quantity of fruits only. No treatment helped.
A friend of mine happened to visit Pondicherry where his sister stays. He came into contact with a homeopath of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, to whom he casually related the symptoms of my disease and whom he wanted to give some medicine for me, if possible. The doctor got the Mother’s consent to take up the case.
It may be well to recall what Sri Aurobindo says about the use of medicines in illness. They are “a pis aller that have to be used when something in the consciousness does not respond superficially to the Force.”
“Illness marks some imperfection or weakness or else opening to adverse touches in the physical nature and is often connected also with some obscurity or disharmony in the lower vital or the physical mind or elsewhere.”
“It is very good if one can get rid of illness entirely by faith and Yoga-power or the influx of the Divine Force. But very often this is not altogether possible, because the whole nature is not open or able to respond to the Force. The mind may have faith and respond, but the lower vital and the body may not follow. Or, if the mind and the vital are ready, the body may not respond, or may respond only partially, because it has the habit of replying to the forces which produce a particular illness, and habit is a very obstinate force in the material part of the nature. In such cases the use of the physical means can be resorted to,—not as the main means, but as a help or material support to the action of the Force. Not strong and violent remedies, but those that are beneficial without disturbing the body.” - Sri Aurobindo
Letters on Yoga - IV: Doctors and Medicines
When my friend returned from Pondicherry, he brought with him some medicine through which the Mother’s Force was to work. I used it for a week or so. Amazingly, the disease just walked away and I was sufficiently cured to come to the next Darshan falling on the 24th April. I remained in Pondicherry up to the 1st of May and by that date even the lingering remnants of the ailment vanished and I was entirely free from my sufferings.
Thus did the Mother not only cure me of my malady but also bring me into the light of her presence.
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