PART IV
Chinmayi - sketch by the Mother
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Chit, the pure spirit consciousness.
Chinmayi, one who is full or all
made of the pure spirit consciousness.
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Lion To Chinmaya with love - sketch by the Mother |
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CORRESPONDENCE WITH CHINMAYI
I always see you with pleasure.
Never believe that I do not want to see you. It is a suggestion from the hostile forces — a falsehood.
25 February 1930
THE MOTHER
Chinmayi,
The Mother has told me what you said to her. In other circumstances I would have asked you to stay on in the confidence that, however sharp the struggle might be, the inner being in you aided by the Divine Force would prevail over the other and foreign influence. But in the condition of mind described by you some relief and rest from the inner struggle seems to be necessary for you. An absence from Pondicherry and change of atmosphere may be the best way to give it.
I do not, however, care to take the responsibilities of sending you to Hyderabad, as that might turn out not at all the best, but the worst thing for you. Even if there were nothing else to do, it would not be possible to send you all that way alone; arrangements would have to be made. We would prefer instead to see whether another means cannot be arranged, such as staying in a quiet place in the hills where you could have a healthy change of air for a time and other surroundings and recover your vital strength and nervous balance. We are making enquiries and in a few days hope to be able to let you know what can be done.
I write this much today in answer to your request for an immediate decision; but I have something to say with regard to your spiritual life and its difficulties which I have not had time to finish. I will finish it tomorrow and send it to you.
3 June 1930
SRI AUROBINDO
Chinmayi,
It will be perhaps better after all if you write a word to Jafar Hasan. You might tell him that you wrote your first letter under the impulse of a wish to go to Hyderabad for a time, but after posting it you felt that your real life was in the Ashram and you should not leave it, — and you are
1. Chinmayi (Mehdi Begum) was born on 4 October 1906 at Hyderabad. She arrived in the Ashram on 23 October 1927.
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sending him this word so that he may not come to take you and go b disappointed, although you will always be glad to see him if at any time comes here.
Do not despond or be discouraged; if you persevere, there can be doubt that the permanent change will come. But be more resolute hereafter not to listen to the suggestions of these forces whom you know to the enemies of your own soul and of your quiet and happiness, no 1 hostile to you than to us and our work; especially, do not shut yourself the Mother's help for any reason whatever, and never do what these for tell you to do; this shutting yourself up against help is the great mist you make when you are in this trouble. For some time you resisted their suggestions, and then we found it much easier to help you and to minimize or shorten their attacks. If you persevere in that uninterruptedly their power of attack will diminish, and then the time will come when can make it cease altogether.
Our force is always with you to aid you; it is for you to keep your open always to it and to us that it may conquer.
19 January 1931
SRI AUROBINDO
I have a sweet little mother waiting at my door. Quick, quick, I must o¦ and let my sweet mother in.
26 March 1931
Chinmayi
It is very painful for us to see you in this condition and it makes very sad and anxious. Will you not make an effort to throw off the cloud that has fallen upon you? There is surely something you are not telling for nothing has happened to our knowledge that could make you go so as to refuse food and reject persistently the love and solicitude of Mother. Will you not tell us what is your reason and relieve your mine its burden?
You are our beloved child. Nothing should be able to throw a shad between you and our love. Throw off whatever shadow there is. I ask you to take your food as usual, speak to the Mother; turn to us once more; back the happiness and the sunshine.
SRI AUROBINDO
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The Mother is not yet all right. She sends you her love.
SRI AUROBINDO
I want to give my whole being to Mother with all my love. But there is the whole nature that won't let me open myself. It lies like a weight on me and turns into ridicule all the efforts I make for getting out of it.
Not the whole nature — only a part of the vital nature. And even there it is not really your self, but something that has been imposed on the vital by the past and holds it still. That is why you feel it like a weight laid on you. It is bound to diminish and lose its present force, if you persistently refuse to accept it.
SRI AUROBINDO
My dearest little child,
What a sad thing that my lovely is not well! I hope it is getting better now; but keep quiet and do not worry either for work or anything — you must not move until it is all gone... If you feel quite well this afternoon, come and I will be very happy.
With all my love and affection I am near you holding you in my arms and praying that you will be quite all right very, very soon.
Sunday morning 8.30
THE MOTHER
Herewith this morning's flower as pure and white as snow.
My dear little child,
I had no time to tell you that tomorrow morning there is no meditation but that I am expecting you at 7 o'clock as usual.
With my best love.
16 January 1932
THE MOTHER
This paper is made with true flower and leaf (the envelope too).
My dear little child,
Once more this morning I have forgotten to inform you that tomorrow morning there is no meditation and that I am expecting you at 7 o'clock as usual.
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I have kept you in my thoughts, in my heart, in my arms all day a feel sure that you, are quite all right now. With my best love,
3 February 1932
THE MOTHER
P.S.
Don't you find this picture very poetic?
My dear little child,
Once more this morning I had no time to tell you that tomorrow the is no pranam and to remind you to come at seven o'clock for the work.
I hope you have well understood what I meant this morning. When t true and sacred love is there (love from the Divine and for the Divine whatever happens is always utilized as a means for increasing and perfecting the union. This leaves no place for worry, regret and depression but, on the contrary, fills the consciousness with the certitude of victor
With my best love,
THE MOTHER
Thursday
I will never be willing to send her away.
SRI AUROBINDO
My sweet dearest little child,
I am so very happy to receive your loving letter.... Your affectionate thoughts had come in advance and had told me already of the vanishing of the clouds. I had felt your sweet love and cradled my dear little child my arms, filling her heart with the sunshine of confidence.
With my best love,
12 February 1932
THE MOTHER
My dearest little child,
Tomorrow no pranam, but you must come at 7 o'clock to do you work and receive your Mother's loving blessings.
3 March 1932
THE MOTHER
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Mon petit enfant cheri, ma chupi...
I am obliged to go down. But my love remains with you with all its intensity. And in the intensity of this love, I have prayed and prayed to our Lord asking Him to pour His Grace upon you and to make you consciousness of the Divine Light and Soul in you, to give you the supreme realisation of His Presence.
With all my heart I kiss you, mon enfant cheri
THE MOTHER
My dearest little child,
No, no, you have not lost it! You have left it with me, safely in the box, saying that you would show me first, tomorrow, what you have done before fixing its place.
All is all right with our protection and love. Surely you know that.
13 March 1932 .
THE MOTHER
My sweet little child,
HOW is it that I have not seen you all the evening? Can it be that I had forgotten to tell you about the music? I would be so very sorry if I have.
But what about the stores and the soup? I missed you although my love was with you all the time.
THE MOTHER
I am sending you your flowers.
I am waiting for you, little child, come at once.
4 August 1932
THE MOTHER
Chinmayi had, last night, two beautiful dreams — in the first one she was facing an ocean, but all the front was hidden by shadows and black rocks. She was considering these shadows and rocks and reckoning them for what they were (difficulties etc.) when suddenly the sun rose marvellous and dazzling — The light was so intense that all shadows and rocks were swallowed up by it.
In the second I had given her a lot of dirty clothes to wash; they were so dirty that they seemed black. She washed them and they became so
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white that she says she never saw anything so white in her life.
27 September 1932
THE MOTHER
Chinmayi,
I want to see you and speak with you. Will you please come.
SRI AUROBINDO
A great misunderstanding has taken place.
You seem to believe that I say one thing when I mean another. This is absurd.
When I speak, I speak plainly and always mean what I say.
When I say: the first condition for yoga is to keep quiet and calm mean it.
When I say that talk is useless and leads only to confusion, waste energy and loss of the little light one may have — I mean that and nothing else.
When I say that I have given nobody the right to speak in my name and to interpret my words according to his own fancy, I mean that and nothing else.
I hope that this is clear and decisive and this singular misunderstand will now come to an end.
Chinmayi,
There are two or three things that I think it necessary to say to you about your spiritual life and your difficulties.
First, I should like you to get rid of the idea that that which causes difficulties is so much a part of yourself that a true inner life is impossible to you. The inner life is always possible if there is present in the nature however much covered over by other things, a divine possibility through which the soul can manifest itself and build up its own true form in mind and life, — a portion of the Divine. In you this divine possibility exists in a marked and exceptional degree. There is in you an inner be: of spontaneous light, intuitive vision, harmony and creative beauty which has shown itself unmistakably every time it has been able to throw off clouds that gather in your vital nature. It is this that the Mother has always tried to make grow in you and bring to the front. When one has that in
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oneself, there is no ground for despair, no just reason for any talk of impossibility. If you could once firmly accept this as your true self, (as in- deed it is, for the inner being is your true self and the external, to which the cause of the difficulties belongs, is always something acquired and impermanent and can be changed,) and if you could make its development your settled and persistent aim in life, then the path would be clear and your spiritual future not only a strong possibility but a certitude.
It very often happens that when there is an exceptional power like this in the nature, there is found in the exterior being some contrary element which opens it to a quite opposite influence.
It is this that makes the endeavour after a spiritual life so often a difficult struggle: but the existence of this kind of contradiction even in an intense form does not make that life impossible. Doubt, struggle, efforts and failures, lapses, alternations of happy and unhappy or good and bad conditions, states of light and states of darkness are the common lot of human beings. They are not created by Yoga or by the effort after perfection;
only in Yoga one becomes conscious of their movements and their causes instead of feeling them blindly, and in the end one makes one's way out of them into a clearer and happier consciousness. The ordinary life re- mains to the last a series of troubles and struggles, but the sadhak of the Yoga comes out of the trouble and struggle to a ground of fundamental serenity which superficial disturbances may still touch but cannot destroy, and finally, all disturbance ceases altogether.
Even the experience which so alarms you, of states of consciousness in which you say and do things contrary to your true will, is not a reason for despair. It is a common experience in one form or another of all who try to rise above their ordinary nature. Not only those who practise Yoga, but religious men and even those who seek only a moral control and self- improvement are confronted with this difficulty. And here again it is not the Yoga or the effort after perfection that creates this condition; there are contradictory elements in human nature and in every human being through which he is made to act in a way which his better mind disapproves. This happens to everybody, to the most ordinary men in the most ordinary life. It only becomes marked and obvious to our minds when we try to rise above our ordinary external selves, because then we can see that it is the lower elements which are being made to revolt consciously against the higher will. There then seems to be for a time a division in the nature, because the true being and all that supports it stand back and separate from these lower elements. At one time the true being occupies the field of the nature, at another the lower nature used by some contrary Force
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pushes it back and seizes the ground, — and this we now see, while formerly the thing happened but the nature of the happening was not clear us. If there is the firm will to progress, this division is over passed and, the unified nature, unified around that will, there may be other difficulties, but this kind of discord and struggle will disappear. I have written so much on this point because I think you have been given the wrong idea that it is the Yoga which creates this struggle and also that this contradiction or division in the nature is the sign of an unfitness or impossibility t go through to the end. Both ideas are quite incorrect and things will b easier if you cast them out of your consciousness altogether.
But it is true that in your case as in others this contradiction has bee given.3 special and very discomforting kind of intensity by a hereditary weakness of the nervous parts which has always shown itself in you b fits of despondency, gloom, unrest and self tormenting darkness am spoiled for you the savour of life. Your mistake is to think that this i something to which you are bound and from which you cannot escape,, fate which mistakes a spiritual change of your nature impossible. I have seen other families afflicted by this kind of hereditary nervous weakness accompanying very often exceptional gifts of intelligence or artistic capacity or spiritual possibilities. One or two may have succumbed to it like Prashanta but others, sometimes after a period of acute disturbance overcame the perturbations caused by this weakness; either it disappeared or it took some minor and innocuous form which did not interfere with the development of the life and its capacities. Why then despair of yourself or fix without any true cause the conviction that you cannot change and this thing will always be there? This despondency, this adverse conviction is the real danger for you; it prevents you from making a quiet and settled resolution and a permanent effective effort, because of it the return of this darker condition makes you quickly yield and allow the adverse external force which uses this defect to play and do its will with you. It is false idea that makes more than half the trouble.
There is no true reason why you should not overcome this defect of your external beings as many others have done. It is only a part of your vital nature that is affected, even though it often over clouds the rest the other parts of your being can be easily made the fit instruments of the divine possibility of which I have spoken. Especially, you have a clear and fine intelligence which, when rightly used, becomes a ready instrument of the light and can be of great use to you in overcoming its vital weakness. And this divine possibility, this truth of your inner being, if you accept it, can of itself make certain your liberation and the change
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of your external nature.
Accept this divine possibility in you; have faith in your inner being and its spiritual destiny. Make its development as a portion of the Divine your aim in life, for a great and serious aim in life is a most powerful help towards getting rid of this kind of disturbing or disabling nervous weak- ness; it gives firmness, balance, a strong support to the whole being and a powerful reason for the will to act. Accept too the help we can give you, not shutting yourself against it by disbelief, despair or unfounded revolt. At present you cannot prevail because you have not fixed in yourself a faith, an aim, a settled confidence; the black mood has been able to cloud your whole consciousness. But if you have fixed this faith in you and can cling to it, then the cloud will not be able to fix itself for any long period, the inner being will be able to remain on the surface, keep you open to the Light and maintain the inner ground for the soul even if the outer is partly clouded or troubled. When that happens, the victory will have been won and the entire elimination of the vital weakness will be only a matter of a little perseverance.
SRI AUROBINDO
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Sri Aurobindo Painting by Barindra Kumar Ghose
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Barindra Kumar Ghose - sketch by the Mother
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LIFE SKETCH1
Barindra Kumar Ghose (1880-1959), head of the Maniktola secret society, was born in Croydon, England. He was eight years younger than his brother Sri Aurobindo. At the age of one his mother brought him to India where he was raised and educated in Deoghar, Bihar. He attend Patna College for about six months, but did not complete his studies Towards the end of 1902 Barin went to stay with Sri Aurobindo in Baroo during this visit his brother initiated him with the revolutionary oath. Early in 1903 he left for Calcutta to join Jatin Banerji, Sri Aurobindo's first emissary to Bengal, in revolutionary recruitment and organization, At this time he met Abinash Bhattacharya, who became his companion and assistant in the following years. The two spread their militant ideas especially among college students and the youth who belonged to the akharas or physical culture clubs in which wrestling, jiujitsu and lathi-fightin were taught.
In October 1904 Barin returned to Baroda for a year long stay with hi brother. During this period, probably inspired by Bankim Chandr Chatterjee's Ananda Math, he conceived the idea of an Ashram for the training of revolutionary Sannyasins, to be situated in some remote spot away from the cities. (An outline of this institution, written by Sri Aurobindo, was published in a pamphlet entitled "Bhawani Mandir" early in 1905.) Barin searched in the Vindhya mountains for a suitable place tc set up an Ashram, but could not find one. The scheme eventually took shape in a modified form in the centre at Maniktola.
Barin returned to Calcutta in the spring of 1906. Sri Aurobindo, having resigned his position in Baroda, also moved there at this time. The Partition of Bengal had awakened the people from their political slumber, and the two brothers realised that the moment had come for public work. Sri Aurobindo joined the staff of the Bande Mataram and put forth the call for national independence through self-help and passive resistance. Barin and his friends, with Sri Aurobindo's approval, started the vernacular daily, Yugantar, which openly urged the deliverance of the country through revolutionary means. Its leading writers were superb polemicists.
1. This life-sketch, and the reminiscences that follow it, are excerpted from Sri Aurobindo and the Freedom of India, compiled and edited by Chanda Poddar, Mona Sarkar and Bob Zwicker, 1995 ed., pp. 199-206.
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The fiery newspaper soon became immensely popular, with a readership at times in the tens of thousands. Aware of its influence, the Government prosecuted Yugantar six times for sedition during its brief lifespan.
Eager to do more than just talk about revolution, Barin formed his own revolutionary group in mid 1907, establishing his headquarters and training centre at Maniktola. The property, owned by the Ghose brothers, was a secluded two-acre piece of land overgrown with vegetation. Here at "the Garden", as it was called, Barin began systematic instruction of the young men he had recruited; there were almost twenty of them, most in their late teens or early twenties. The Garden's curriculum included meditation twice a day, the study of the Gita and the Upanishads, classes in Indian history and the history of revolutionary movements in other countries, physical exercises such as wrestling, lathi-fighting and jiu-jitsu, and instruction in military strategy and the use of firearms. For a few there was also training in the manufacture and use of explosives. Barin was in overall charge of the Garden, its training programme and external work. The recruits carried out their activities according to his orders and were directly accountable to him. One of the chief instructors, he was also responsible for the raising of funds and the collection of arms, ammunition and material for making explosives.
By the end of 1907 the society's self-taught chemist, Ullaskar Dutt, was producing powerful bombs. Barin decided to use them for the assassination of certain unpopular Government officials. This, h£ thought, was the "voice of the People". Later when asked why he had turned to "political murder" Barin replied simply, "we believed the people wanted it." During the next six months, attempts were made upon the lives of three officials, but they were unsuccessful. The Maniktola society members and others were rounded up in May 1908 and charged with conspiracy. Soon after his arrest, Barin made a detailed confession, taking full responsibility for the secret society and its work; he did this in the hope of saving other revolutionaries, his brother Sri Aurobindo, and the innocent persons who had been arrested along with them.
For his role as leader, Barin was awarded the death penalty; the sentence was later commuted to transportation for life. In December 1909 he was shipped to the British penal colony on South Andaman Island. Physically weak and constitutionally slender, he endured ten years of drudgery, deprivation and suffering before his release. He returned to mainland India in January 1920, following the amnesty granted to political prisoners after the armistice of the First World War.
In 1920 Barin visited Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry and stayed for a
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brief time. He returned in 1923 and lived for six years in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. In J929 Barin settled in Bengal, where he remained for thirty years of his life. He left several memories of his experience revolutionary and a prisoner. Extracts from these reminiscences are given below.
BARINDRA KUMAR GHOSE'S REMINISCENCES
Since his arrival in India in 1893 Sri Aurobindo used to visit our maternal grandfather Rishi Rajnarain Bose's house at Deoghar. My first meeting with him took place there. My patriotic inspiration was largely derived from his deep and charming personality. We used to go out for long in the mornings and in the evenings. Sri Aurobindo would speak then in fervent language about the suffering of our Motherland, her degradation and the need to free her from her shackles.
Sri Aurobindo himself initiated me by placing an open sword and the Gita in my hand and reading out an oath written in Sanskrit on a piece of paper. The gist of the oath was this: "As long as there is life in my body as long as this country is not liberated from the fetters of subjection to a foreign power, I vow to carry on the mission of this revolution. If ever I give out any word or fact of this secret society or harm the interests ( organisation in any way, I shall forfeit my life at the hands of the assassin assigned by the society."
After being there [in Barodaj for a year I came back to Bengal with the idea of preaching the cause of independence as a Political Missionary. I moved about from District to District and started gymnasiums. There young men were brought together to learn physical exercises and study politics I went on preaching the cause of independence for nearly two years. By that time I had been through almost all the Districts of Bengal; I got tired of it and went back to Baroda and studied for one year. I then returned to Bengal convinced that a purely political propaganda would not do for the country and that people must be trained up spiritually to face dangers. I had an idea of starting a religious institution. By that time the Swaideshi
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and Boycott agitation had begun. I thought of taking men under my own instruction to teach them and so I began to collect this band which has been arrested.
[In Alipore Jail] I was in a state of sweet self-intoxication, almost beside myself in a sort of overwhelming beatitude, when I was counting my last days, with the halter round my neck and shut up in the 'condemned cell'. I was then face to face with Death, and alone and away from the world, I was playing with it most amorously and trying to snatch the veil of the beloved one. For pain, its messenger had already whispered into my ears, "Behind that dark veil there is the most radiant and soul-entrancing beauty."
[In the Andamans] our sorrows were many. The greatest of them was the want of company. The orders were strict that we should not talk to each other, even though we might be close together and in the same block. What a wail we smothered in our hearts when we walked together, ate together and worked together and yet could not open our mouths!
And yet our delight was not small even in the midst of such sorrows. For it is a thing that belongs to one's own self. One may gather it as much as one likes from the inexhaustible fund that is within and drink of it to one's heart's content. Not that, however, the lashes of sorrow were an illusion to us. Even the Maya of Vedanta did not always explain them away, so often had they a solemn ring of reality about them. But a tree requires for its growth not only the touch of the gentle spring, but the rude shock of storm and rain and the scalding of the summer heat. Man remains frail and weak and ill developed if he has an easy and even life. The hammer of God that builds up a soul in divine strength and might is one of the Supreme realities.
Disciple: How to conquer fear?
Sri Aurobindo: By mental strength, will and spiritual power. In my own
1. Excerpts from Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo, recorded by A. B. Purani, 1982 ed., 'pp.545-46.
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case, whenever there was any fear I used to do the very things that I was afraid of even if it entailed a violent death. Barin also had much fear while he was in the terrorist activity. But he would compel himself to do those things. When death sentence was passed on him he took it very cheerfully.
Disciple: Is Barin still doing yoga?
Sri Aurobindo : I don't know, he used to do some sort of yoga even before I began. My yoga he took up only after coming to Pondicherry. In the Andamans also he was practising it. You know he was Lele's disciple. Once he took Lele to Calcutta among the young people of the secret society. Lele did not know that they were revolutionaries. One day Barin took him into a garden where they were practising shooting. As soon a Lele saw it he understood the nature of the movement and asked Barin to give it up. If Barin did not listen to him, Lele said, he would fall into a ditch and he did fall.
Disciple: Barin, I heard, had a lot of experiences.
Sri Aurobindo: They were merely mental and he gathered some knowledge, much information or understanding out of them. I heard that when he had begun yoga he had an experience of Kamananda. Lele was surprised to hear about it. For he said that experience comes usually at the end. It is a descent like any other experience but unless one's sex centre is sufficiently controlled it may produce bad results such as emission and other disturbances.
Disciple: Yes. He had brilliance.
Sri Aurobindo: But he was narrow and limited. He would not widen himself (Sri Aurobindo showed it by the movement of hands above the head); that is why his thing won't last. For he was a brilliant writer and he also wrote devotional poetry. But nothing of that will last because of the limitation. He was an amazing amateur in many things, e.g. music revolutionary activity. He was also a painter; though it did not come to much in spite of his exhibitions. He did well in all these but nothing more.
Disciple: Barin in his paper "Dawn" began to write your biography.
Sri Aurobindo: I don't know that. Did he publish a paper? I would have been interested to see what he writes about me.
Disciple; It ceased after a short time.
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