Mother's Grace

Feb. 25, 1999

On Mother's Birthday, February 21st, five months have passed since Mary Helen's surgery. I look back on this period and understand how much the Grace has been with us, and in moments of the greatest difficulty and pain there has also been the joy of knowing that Mother and Sri Aurobindo have so blessed us. Indeed, they have always been with us only I have not at times been aware!

When Mother first accepted me in 1961 after receiving my photo and seeing my handwriting sent by Jyotipriya, She said: "He may come as stay as long as he likes." She has given me all that I need to progress on the path. Yet, I have turned away again and again.

When Mother wrote to Mary Helen and accepted her, Mary Helen was only 21 years of age and traveled alone to India, packing her most treasured things and planning to live permanently in the Ashram. So it was with me. I arrived the evening before Darshan in November 1961, age 23, with hardly a pair of shoes on my feet. Yet Mother said I could stay as long as I liked and I began life in the Ashram, teaching music in the school, forming a choir, playing sports and reading Savitri.

In my long interview with Her in 1961 she told me so many things that I have intended to write down and now, thirty eight years later, remember vividly those moments when the Divine touched this soul and poured into it the love and grace and power that it has gradually and slowly begun to realize through long years.