Dadaji, Stationed Beyond Darkness

To know the truth about a man, he must be judged by his dealings and behaviour with his subordinates and not his friends, for no man thinks it necessary to keep up appearances before those who work under him. Unfortunately the same rule does not apply to a spiritual leader vis-a-vis his disciples. A great spiritual personality is so often surrounded by a collective ego-wall of mediocre followers that truth-seekers cannot help but hesitate to approach the Master. I often feel that all these legends grow around a luminary not because the disciples have too much faith but because they lack faith in the human qualities of their master. They only want to vindicate their tepid faith by endowing him with a multitude of divine qualities.

I certainly do not refer to the blessed handful who have realised the Divinity in their Guru – but to the majority who unknowingly do a deep disservice to the cause of spirituality by expressing their confused beliefs.

It is true that those who live in close proximity with a great personality seldom know him well, for human beings take most blessings for granted when they are easily available, but it is also true that the greatness of a man lies not in his few glorious moments but in little things and little daily acts and that only those who have the good fortune to live close to such a person and are able to stand back dispassionately can see and marvel at the progressive flowering of a genius.

I have had that good fortune of living for twenty years at the feet of Dadaji, a truly great man, and of observing him not with the sentimental eye of a disciple, but through the microscopic lens of a truth-seeker. I have not judged him with my biased mind but have weighed him on the scales of a seeing heart and have not found him wanting. I asked myself in 1946 when I first met Dadaji: “What is it that draws me to him? Is it his genius – his many-mooded personality as an artist, a musician, a litterateur, a composer, a wonderful conversationalist, an understanding friend and guide?” The answer was No. It is his transparent sincerity and his regard for Truth, his utter guilelessness and his courage to stake his all at the altar of Truth.

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Truth is not an abstract platitude for him? Nor is it a simple granite rock standing eternally in a sea of stormy falsehoods to be washed by the frothy waves of half-truths. It is a way of life. It is his life. It is his God and his goal. I have seen him jubilantly clinging with his heart and soul to what he believed to be true and I have watched him cast away at one sweep all that he held dear for years when he found it necessary. It requires courage to live for Truth but it requires a much greater courage to discard that truth when it starts betraying cracks.

Before I met Dadaji I had often wondered why eminent men, especially spiritual geniuses, were so often surrounded by a crowd of mediocre people. After I had been with Dadaji for some years it dawned on me that it is not true that we are more mediocre than others but that in contrast to his towering personality we look smaller. Our littlenesses show off more glaringly beside his largeness of heart.

Human beings are complex with many strands co-existing in one personality. The difference between an average persona and a luminary is that while the former is a cacophony of many discordant notes the latter is a multi-coloured splendour woven into a harmony of diverse colours, contradictions and paradoxes which add up to make a beautiful whole. It is this harmony of love and light that makes Dadaji such a beloved personality. It is this blending of utter detachment from things earthly and the superhuman power of feeling for his fellow-beings that marks him out as a sadhu.

I have known the sensitive artist and social man in him to suffer intensely at being misunderstood by old friends and dear ones and yet the Yogi in him to break all ties to swim away from the shore of human bondage in search of the Infinite.

A man really lives only as long as he keeps growing, evolving. When evolution stops he ceases to live – he just exists. Which is why after a time distance comes between him and the others whose pace is slower than his. This is much more relevant in the case of a spiritual aspirant. Dadaji’s central being has always been that of a Yogi. His Gurudev Sri Aurobindo once wrote to him: ‘You are a born Yogi.’ He has the soul of a Yogi that wants nothing but to give itself unconditionally to the Lord; the intellect of a scientist which disowns all blind beliefs and wants to accept nothing on trust or hearsay evidence; the tremendous vitality of an activist which compels him to work ceaselessly and the sensitive nature of an artist that thrills to things of beauty, nobility and sacrifice.

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But even though it is the Yogi Dilip Kumar that triumphs every time, he has not rejected his soul-stirring music, his literature, poetry and his all-embracing love to become an ascetic. He has used all these gifts his Maker has endowed him with so that he may worship the Lord. All these he converts into a fuel to the fire of his aspiration and thus emerges, an effulgent phenomenon.

What is it that makes a Yogi or an illuminate? Spiritual life is essentially an inner life which is difficult to appraise from the surface. It is not the clothes, the food, the outer detachment, the rituals that really matter. But then I have asked myself how shall one know? I do not talk of the inquisitive mind that questions and does not wait for an answer – that only indulges in window-shopping in the city of knowledge. I have in mind the thirsty heart that needs water and can appease the thirst not by mere information but by drinking at the Fount of Truth.

Shall I judge a sadhu by his power to perform miracles, by the number of followers he has, by the number of times he has crossed the seas to preach? Or shall I judge him by his oratory, his learning, his teachings? All these things can be very misleading, indeed.

How do I claim then that Dadaji is a sadhu? By his superhuman power of loving all those who come near him – rich, poor, good, bad, eminent men and poor peasants, those who love and admire him and those who misunderstand and slander him.

I call him a sadhu for his tolerance of human failings and his understanding of people’s misunderstandings. He never judges a man. “Who am I to judge?” he often says. “None of us are perfect. Let us see our own flaws and not frown on others’ shortcomings.”

I call him an illuminate because of his great humility – not the conventional kind that says: “I am nothing, I am nothing,” but the humility that comes from an inner strength and makes him bow down to holiness and nobility of character wherever he meets them. The humility that makes him perform one of the most difficult feats especially for a spiritual master – to wit, having the courage to say, “I do not know.” It is perhaps because of his love and regard for truth that he never hesitates to say: “I do not know this or that.” It is because of his inner fulfilment that he says to all who come to him for guidance: “I have not achieved the final illumination.

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I am a seeker, if you follow my guidance, remember I am one of you (which he is not), only a few steps ahead of you.”

I revere him as a Yogi because there is no “holier than thou” pretension about him – he is so utterly natural and so human that one can’t help feeling that he is with us yet not one of us.

I love him as a sadhu for I see his greatness in acknowledging greatness wherever he sees it even when the person he extols runs him down behind his back. Time and again I have heard him say: “Just because X does not like my music or my writings it does not mean I shall not appreciate his poetry.”

Gratitude is his spiritual quality rather a rare one. Last year when someone misbehaved with him he said to me: “Today he is not behaving well but let us remember all that we have received from him in the past. Let us be grateful to him for his love and his service.”

I admire him as a sadhu for his infinite capacity of giving joy to all who come to him. He scatters joy and laughter wherever he goes and how much the world needs that with all the strain and struggle of existence.

Above all I adore him as a sadhu and a Guru for he teaches not by words but by his deeds, by example rather than precept. His work is his worship and what infinite pains he takes to make that offering as perfect as possible! I have seen him get up in the middle of the night to change one word, one little punctuation in a poem that he had composed before going to bed.

I have been overawed again and again to see with what care he corrects his proofs or writes his letters – always striving for perfection even in the smallest acts.

On our way to America, a few years back, we had halted at Hongkong for a night. I had probably forgotten some bag in his room and went to retrieve it in the middle of the night. What was my amazement to see Dadaji sitting on the floor with a little stool in front of him, writing. I knew he had planned to write a travelogue. “Why don’t you wait till we reach Tokyo tomorrow, Dadaji?” I asked. “No, my child,” he answered, “Tomorrow I may not remember all the detail. To be truthful I must record my impressions today and not put off everything like you till tomorrow.”

Above all, I worship him for I have not seen the like of him in my life.

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“Do not tell me anything you want to keep secret” he told me in 1949, Mother Anandamayi said a few years back: “He is transparent like a glass almirah.”

An eminent writer and thinker said to me in Los Angeles: “When I read Sri Ramakrishna’s life I wondered how a man so childlike and so guileless could talk of the highest wisdom. After meeting Sri Roy I know it is possible.”

Indira Devi 1994-95

Written on the occasion of Dilipda’s 80th birthday

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