Narad on Mary Helen

 

Feb. 16, 2002

 

In that moment when she embraced me, folding her thin, frail arms around me, I knew she had transcended human love and I was enveloped in the rapture of her soul's embrace.  All the sweetness, all the tenderness of this beautiful being I knew as Mary Helen flowed into me and no human emotion will ever again approach that divine and selfless expression.

In later years the intensity of our human love turned more and more towards its divine source and in doing so deepened the sacred atmosphere around us.  I don't know exactly when the commitment was truly made to try and give myself completely to Mother and Sri Aurobindo but it must have been early in 1999. Then, in late 1999, a long visit to the Ashram accelerated the aspiration.  Poetry too began to descend in me to a greater extent than before.

On the first day of the new millennium when we were blessed to be able to meditate in Sri Aurobindo's room for nearly an hour I felt that much was changing within.  Sri Aurobindo has lifted so many things during the past two yeas and I feel Mother holding a mirror before me so that I may see the defects and deficiencies that need to be attended to and offered up for purification.

Gratitude has grown through all our trials and Mary Helen's long illness.  Was she not given back to me for three years when the doctors gave her no chance of surviving three months?  The intensity of the Divine Grace working to open us to the light, the blessings that have been and continue to be showered upon us, the force that presses upon the world for truth to manifest, the love that fills the atom and the cell deepens my humility and my surrender.

I must be patient with myself and know that if things at this time are dimmed a bit and no clear direction is evident, these are only passing clouds across the soul, in a life of love and mutual aspiration and that Mary Helen's soul is in the Mother now and as long as this body remains on earth it must learn the discipline and joy of offering.  The air of other's sadness and the loss that is felt over Mary Helen's departure will in time subside and this heart, praying for purification perhaps will glimpse the deeper meaning of her passing.  Ultimately there is only gratitude and an intense aspiration to move toward Their Feet.