It is a bit awkward to write to you when I feel you are so near but it is hard to resist the pleasure, of going once more to the keyboard, to direct my thoughts to you and let my heart open to express this psychic love that you sowed fifteen years ago when we met for the first time in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Delhi Branch.

News of your death has spread like wild fire in the Pondicherry Ashram and people say to us:

How wonderful! Mr. Parashar has died like a yogi, he came specially to Pondi to leave his body.

And we answer: "Yes, of course," because we knew that you were a yogi.

Before relating the events that show how you left your body, perhaps I should try to explain to the reader in what way you were a yogi. This is also interesting; in particular it brings up another subject: if one is a yogi then one's own life is an example and thus friends could become disciples. In your case everybody was your fellow-traveller on the path. But how can that be when we have the unsurpassable teachings of our divine Masters, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother?

A yogi you are indeed but of an unusual path, the path of life, of human passions turned to the Divine, as the Mother told you. It takes a lot of courage to accept that nothing is intrinsically bad, that adverse forces can be seen as having the Divine behind them if one looks deep enough and to believe that "not a blade of grass can move without His will" is wonderful, but to live the far-reaching consequences that this poetic phrase implies in our daily struggle for happiness is indeed the work of a yogi in the true sense.

"Thus nothing is to be discarded really but our attitude; nothing is to be changed but our outlook on things. Life is a riddle with God as its key. Problems, unwanted vibrations or situations, even sickness and death are God-sent and the problem lies really in our incapacity to follow Nature in its evolution, in our egoistic reactions (a denial of our true nature), in our mental way of looking at this far-reaching plan of perfection which is leading this universe."

These true words of yours you lived so convincingly that by speaking with you one could get by contagion some of the delight that seemed to be the basis of your consciousness. Of course all is described in Sri Aurobindo's writings, in the chapters on Bhakti yoga, for example, and also in many lines of Savitri; so nothing is new. All right, nothing is new and truly when everything is harmonious an hour of reading of Savitri sends the reader to heaven, carried by the words of the poet into the vastness of his supramental visions; every line adds to the delight of the heart, oh! to read Sri Aurobindo is to be with him, surely it is a wonderful experience that can be renewed so many times, tirelessly. But to reach that state of equality to begin to appreciate Savitri is not given to everyone at birth, and the presence of a friend who can explain things or even where to start from is a blessing. Not to speak of the countless occasions that man's mind can find to lose its way and get stuck in obscure corners. In these fifteen years that we have known each other, hundreds of people have crossed the tiny doorstep of your room with a depressed face and come out with a smile full of enthusiasm for life. And to many who have had this experience you have become very very dear.

To others it looked a bit strange; what do you find in this man who can't see, can't hear, can't walk properly, spends most of his time reading Sri Aurobindo again and again as if he did not understand what he read? So the people who did not know you, or those who could not come close to you, could not guess that your mind had been silent since 1932 and that you had attained a very rare state of equality from where you would spend days together without a thought coming, turning to the Divine the minutest reaction of your various selves.

The common man wants miracles and to him of course your realizations were not very visible. So Mr. Parashar, was a yogi? Some even would object to your free habits (and they didn't know that you could eat meat, drink whisky if offered...) "Asceticism is not for me," you used to say; "in most people it is suppression of their vital nature; I prefer to watch my nature and wait till it is ready to change." When one's vital nature grumbles, Sri Aurobindo's yoga can appear dry and abstract but we have all learnt from your living example that the Integral Yoga aims at delight, delight right down to the veins of the body, and for this one needs to catch the difference between mental control and true understanding.

Anyway, here we are, four from Delhi, two from Pondi, sitting in Ganpatram's café around a cup of tea, one day after a sleepless night, the last homage given. United by your love but silently missing something, each one of us feels in his heart gratitude for what you were, for having known you, such a wonderful paradox.

How did it happen? I don't know; none of us was to come to Pondi this month because you had been here already in December and I had come in August; but I cancelled my trip to the US because I felt it was more important to meet you and Anu wanted to pray at the Samadhi. So once again we are here, the three of us, astounded by the pervading vibrations of the place. For the first time in your life, at the age of 83, you have come twice in twelve months to the place of your Love. (In the fifties, some people suggested to you to come and live here, so you wrote to the Mother; she said it was for you to decide, but being passive by nature you decided that you could equally love your masters from Delhi.) Absolutely nothing could point out that you would leave your body on that auspicious 11th of April 1989 after a meditation at the Samadhi and earlier on the same day you were taken to Sri Aurobindo's room; your health was perfect and you did not show any sign of fatigue. But this you did, to our greatest surprise, precisely at sunset. You went away quickly, without pain, without disturbing the solid peace of this place.

We will miss you, dear Parasharji, unless the presence of the Divine that we saw in you has already entered our heart, unless the work is done; in your happy childlike approach to things you used to say:

I want to bring bus-loads of people to the Mother.

Your friends, with Love and Gratitude.

P.S. The following is a transcript of the last part of the only recorded conversation I have had with Parasharji; it was made a few days before leaving for Pondy. It is all the more striking that when, fifteen years ago, I crossed the road from IIT to find someone who could teach me meditation, I was introduced to Parasharji who told me that I did not need to meditate and that all my problems would be solved by taking the witness attitude. Thus the circle is completed.

… What I like is that you don't force your meditation on you.

Oh no! I don't like it, I don't like it! no! because that is ego. And the fact of meditation is there, I mean to say if after meditation you don't find any change in you it means that you have not meditated at all. And sometimes though you don't meditate the meditation catches you; that is the best meditation; even for half an hour as compared to twenty-four hours, it is much better. You know, something in us is always meditating, you have just to catch it and spread it to other parts.

Is that what you do?

Oh yes. In fact, I was never interested in meditation, I mean to say to sit cross-legged and all that. But now when I meditate, I sit like this (back straight), automatically it happens. If I sit otherwise, I am not comfortable. This has come.

When I talk about the Divine, then I am more meditating because the Divine comes on the surface; he is not very far then. He gets into my words, into my feelings; and when someone comes and is really anxious to know something, when he goes away I wonder whether he has given me something or I have given him something; such a relation it is.

I can imagine a life, a complete life where one is all the time totally one with the Divine, that I can imagine, totally, in all parts.

< A Beautiful Death

Story of a sadhak called Murarilal Parashar