A Luminous Life

Reminiscences: healings and early guidance

I want to set down one more memory of instantaneous healing — not mine, but my brother's. He had joined the very first Grey Group formed in the Ashram, and was here when Sri Aurobindo left his body. He suffered from asthma, though I did not know this well at the time. One morning, as we were to go for Pranam, he sat unable to move, in obvious distress. "I can't breathe," he said. My heart nearly stopped — we are taught, after all, that not breathing means dying.

I decided to go straight to the Mother rather than the doctor first. She was in the meditation hall; I told her simply, "My brother says he can't breathe." She looked at me quietly, took a flower from a tray nearby, and said only, "Give this to him." That was all. I ran home and gave it to him, saying, "Mother has given this to you." He took it, wondering, and grew calm. From that day — this was 1948 — to this day, more than sixty years later, the trouble has never once recurred. No fuss, no gesture, no display: just an ordinary day's work for her, though it was a permanent miracle for him. He is over eighty now, still fit, and still plays tennis.

There is another small memory I keep close. When I went for my medical check before joining the newly formed playground groups, the doctor found some irregularity in my heartbeat and would not clear me without the Mother's permission. I told her, at morning Pranam, "Mother, the doctor says there is something wrong with my heart." She grew serious, looked at me, wagged her finger, and said, in a rising voice, "Never be afraid. Never." She meant far more than the heart. I have understood that ever since — in every dangerous situation I have found myself in, in India and abroad, I have never felt the vibration of fear, because that voice has always returned to me: Never be afraid.