Contact with The Mother

MIRACULOUS ACTION OF GRACE

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.