My First Poem

Next year, 2011, will mark fifty years since I met Mother and was given my initiation by Her. When I first arrived in the Ashram I was drawn to the Samadhi and the Service Tree, but perhaps even more so to the small meditation room at the top of the stairs and to the right after you enter the Ashram gate.

It was in this small room where there is an old sepia photograph of Sri Aurobindo. "I would kneel before it and often prostrate myself before One who was my guide and Lord." One day I asked Arabinda Basu why this room was so special to me and why the photograph was so important. "He replied simply, 'Because the Presence is there'."

There are two events that stand out significantly and I wanted to write of them so that others who are called to this room could share these transcendent experiences. I no longer remember the chronology, but I believe the first experience occurred about 1961-1962. It was then that I heard Sri Aurobindo's voice for the first time. "I looked at His photograph and then knelt down and bowed to Him in reverence. Then, spontaneously, I prostrated myself before Him and stayed for some time in that supine position. It was then that he spoke to me and said, 'And it's good for the circulation, too!'

The second experience may have taken place in 1968 when Mother had invited me to come for the inauguration of Auroville. This time I knelt before Him once again and as I offered myself these four lines came directly from Him, the first poetry I had ever written, a very special grace and blessing, expressing in poetic form my prayers and aspiration.

Here are the lines:

These are the currents of my life,
Engulf them in Thy sea,
The tangled threads of daily strife
Reweave to image Thee.

So, for nearly fifty years I have been going to the small mediation room and offering myself. During this time almost 1500 poems have descended by Sri Aurobindo's grace, I guess in a similar way that he had helped doctors, mathematicians and many of his disciples to open to poetry." I make no claims as to the poetic quality of the poems that came to me because too often the intruding mind cut across the inspiration and descent. In fact all my poems are my offering to Sri Aurobindo and I take credit only for the errors, lack of ability to receive as an instrument without the mind or vital mind having its play. I take credit only for the errors in reception!

"Only there remains a profound gratitude that I opened a little as a receiving instrument."