Contact with The Mother

HOPE OF THE HOPELESS

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.