Diary

September 28, 1998

Surgery Day

7:47 a.m.

Mary Helen,

Thou hast been such a blessing to this soul. No human can know what Mother and Sri Aurobindo have done for us and for the body of the earth. Cherished are all my memories of thee, steadfast companion on the way. Your deep gentle love, your thoughts of others always before yourself, your quiet depths, your calm revealing smile rising from the inner recesses of your soul of light, your voice ever soft and gentle, these are only a few of the many gifts of you I hold, divine gifts and treasures of the spirit.

My sincere prayer is that you may be allowed to continue the inner journey in this body on earth. But if it is the Divine Will that you have progressed as far as you could in this body, then I accept, in eternal gratitude, the Lord's edict. For thou art Her child and it is in Their hands that you are now and have always been. My prayer, too, is that I may grow worthy of the divine gift that you are and always will be, companion of the sunlit way, lover of all things beautiful and refined.

The iris is Mary Helen's flower. She has always felt strongly that previously she has lived in Egypt and Japan. Once, when Madhav Pandit was coming regularly to the Matrimandir Center to speak to us about the yoga he allowed people to write their questions to him and in the course of his talk he answered them. No one knew who asked what question, but one day I knew the question Mary Helen had written to him. When he came to the paper with her question she did not hear his quiet first words which I heard very clearly sitting near him. They were: "This is a question from a realized being".

O blessed friend and companion of this brief life, if it is granted that you come back to me to continue on the path together, I consecrate myself anew to Mother and Sri Aurobindo. If you leave the body soon to be with them, my consecration shall not flag, for you, as always, have been its impetus and moving force. Now, in the few minutes left before surgery begins, as the sky brightens with the beginning day, we are each alone in the Lord's hands, and this is as it should be.