S A V I T R I
The
Way of Love
Dr. M.V. Nadkarni
Memorial Lecture 2010
Narad
(Richard
Eggenberger)
Savitri
Bhavan, Auroville, 2010
Edited transcript of the
talk by Narad (Richard Eggenberger)
held at Savitri Bhavan on
The talk was recorded by Auroville Radio
aurovilleradio.org
A video of the occasion has
been prepared by Sergey Stanovykh for Wisdom
Splendour and is available from
wisdomsplendour.com
Cover design Sergey Stanovykh
Narad asserts his
moral right to be recognised as the author of this talk
Extracts from Savitri : a legend and a symbol by Sri
Aurobindo
Are copyright of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust
Quoted here with grateful
acknowledgements to the Trustees
This version is published
by Shraddhavan for Savitri
Bhavan
With funds provided by SAIIEr (Sri Aurobindo
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Bhavan
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The
first
Dr.
M.V. Nadkarni Memorial Lecture
held
at Savitri Bhavan, Auroville
on
Introductory
Remarks by Shraddhavan
Dear
Brothers and Sisters
I welcome you
all here on this special occasion. The large number gathered is a mark of the
admiration and affection felt by Aurobindonians all
over the world for the person whose memory we are celebrating today.
Particularly we are happy that two of Dr. Nadkarni’s
sisters are with us this afternoon.
We
regret that it is not possible for Mrs. Nadkarni and
her daughters to be with us in the flesh, but they are definitely with us in
spirit. Mrs. Nadkarni has sent a message, which I
shall share with you shortly.
Perhaps
they and others will be listening in to this occasion on the Auroville Radio. We are most grateful to the Radio team for
making possible a live broadcast of this significant event.
When members of
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s family gather at this
moment in time, as the Centenary of Sri Aurobindo’s arrival in
When he first
visited us here at Savitri Bhavan in March 1995, he
was already well-known to Aurobindonians in the
U.S.A, where as a young researcher at the
When he first
came and met us here, we were a small group, meeting under the trees every
Sunday morning to study Savitri. It
was our brother Franz who first brought him here, after attending one of the
Study Camps in
Thereafter, Dr. Nadkarni made it customary to round off each of those
Savitri Study Camps with a concluding session here at Savitri Bhavan. We have such happy memories of those joyful
occasions, which up to August 2003 were regularly attended by our beloved Nirod-da, Dr. Nirodbaran. Along
with him would often come his friend Professor Arabinda
Basu, and we are specially happy that today Arindam-da is again able to be with us. We shall never
forget the support of dear Prabhaben and her team in
providing us so lovingly with refreshments, which contributed so much to the
family atmosphere.
In his talks Dr.
Nadkarni always emphasized that this is a place where
all members of the Aurobindonian family can come together,
as children of the Mother, to bathe in the atmosphere of Savitri together – and this insistence of his has, I believe,
contributed significantly to a growing sense of oneness amongst us all.
The first
gatherings were held under the trees, near to the spot where the Foundation
Stone for the Savitri Bhavan complex was laid by Nirod-da on
By that time too
Dr. Nadkarni had become even more closely connected
with Savitri Bhavan, by agreeing to become a member
of our Advisory Group, formed in 2006 to help steer the future development of
the Bhavan. The photograph we have here was taken on
the occasion of a meeting of the Advisory Group in April 2007. Looking at that
smiling energetic face, who could imagine that in just a few months he would be
gone, at the age of only 74 - as if his immense dynamism and aspiration just
overflowed the limited human form. We can never forget him, and all that he has
done for us.
So we were
extremely happy that when Mrs. Meera Nadkarni came to visit us in July 2009, shortly before
leaving to join her daughters in the
Message from Mrs. Meera Nadkarni and family
Dear Shraddhavan,
Last year when you had mentioned to me you will
institute a Dr. Nadkarni Memorial Lecture series
around my husband's birthday's time, I was overwhelmed and overjoyed. It was my
keen desire and earnest wish to institute a series of talks on Savitri in my husband's memory.
But I had neither the expertise nor the infrastructure to do so. Needless to
say I feel extremely gratified that this event is being hosted by Savitri Bhavan.
My daughters and I thank you most sincerely for
taking all the trouble to organise this function. Convey our sincere thanks to Narad for giving the talk and my sincere apology for my
inability to attend the talk. I very much like Narad's
topic for the lecture - ''Savitri - The
Way of Love''. Sri Aurobindo has developed the
original love story between Savitri and Satyavan
into a great Magnum Opus, showing how the Divine Love for
humanity conquers all negative aspects including death. Our heartfelt
thanks to all of your colleagues who have helped you organise this function.
Though physically I will not be able to be at the
lecture, I will be there in spirit soaking in the joyous atmosphere of this
auspicious event.
Please convey my sincere thanks to all those who
will attend the talk with affection and respect for my husband. He always said
that it was the Grace and the Love of Sri Aurobindo
and the Mother and aspirations of the audience that enabled him to speak.
I end by offering my immense gratitude to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother for everything and our prayers to
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother to preside over the
function.
Warm Regards
Meera,
Nandita &
Sucheta
S
A V I T R I
The Way of Love
I am
honoured and grateful to have been asked to give this inaugural lecture
honouring Dr. Mangesh V. Nadarni
- a man who has opened doors to Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri for thousands of people. I am not in any way a formal
speaker, but the invitation I received from Shraddhavan
and Mrs. Meera Nadkarni
touched my heart, and I felt I had to accept. Meera
had written to Shraddhavan :
Our
association with Narad (whom we knew as Richard Eggenberger) goes back to 1966, when we were in
As she
mentions, I first met Mangesh and his wife Meera more than forty years ago, when I was working with Jyotipriya (Dr. Judith Tyberg) at
the
In this,
our age of difficulty and promise, of the last gasp of the dark forces and
their attempts to destabilize the world through terrorism and power-lust, we
have the constant help, guidance and protection of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. And we
have Savitri - The Way of Love.
Savitri is Divine Love manifested on earth. Savitri is sacred, and Divine Love is
the
golden
thread that weaves its heavenly tapestry. We find the word ‘Love’ in the titles
of Book Five, The Book of Love, and Book Ten, Canto Three, The Debate of Love
and Death.
The
‘Author’s Note’, which I read frequently, takes us deeply into the inner
meaning of the poem and prepares us. Sri Aurobindo
felt it important to include this at the beginning of Savitri. He speaks there of each of the main characters :
Satyavan is the soul carrying the divine
truth of being within itself but descended into the grip of death and ignorance;
Savitri is the Divine Word, daughter of the Sun, goddess of the supreme Truth
who comes down and is born to save; Aswapati, the
Lord of the Horse, her human father, is the Lord of Tapasya,
the concentrated energy of spiritual endeavour that helps us to rise from the
mortal to the immortal planes; Dyumatsena, Lord of
the Shining Hosts, father of Satyavan, is the Divine
Mind here fallen blind, losing its celestial kingdom of vision, and through
that loss its kingdom of glory.
And now
this most important section, where Sri Aurobindo says
:
Still
this is not a mere allegory, the characters are not personified qualities, but
incarnations or emanations of living and conscious Forces with whom we can
enter into concrete touch and they take human bodies in order to help man and
show him the way from his mortal state to a divine consciousness and immortal
life.
When the
Mother gave me her blessings to be the first to read Savitri in Auroville, I did so each
Wednesday for more than ten years, first in the Matrimandir
Gardens Nursery and then in the small meditation room in the ‘Workers Camp’ of
the Matrimandir. I went deeper and deeper into the
poem, understanding so little with the mind - for who can understand
experiences that only Sri Aurobindo had among all the
sages and seers the earth has known? His love and His sacrifice for us is
beyond our comprehension, and the least we can do is kneel down in gratitude
before Him.
Of all
the greatest works of poets and sages, the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, the Odyssey,
the Iliad, the greatest works of Shakespeare, and the overhead touches Sri Aurobindo points out in his Letters on Poetry, Savitri
stands alone as the greatest work in all the languages of the world, for it is
mantra, the power of the Word.
Let us
now look further into the theme of love I have chosen for my talk. We first
read of Savitri herself in Canto One of Book One, and we find that Life denies
her gifts.
A
narrow movement on Time's deep abysm,
Life's
fragile littleness denied the power,
The
proud and conscious wideness and the bliss
She
had brought with her into the human form,
The
calm delight that weds one soul to all,
The
key to the flaming doors of ecstasy.
Earth's
grain that needs the sap of pleasure and tears
Rejected
the undying rapture's boon:
Offered
to the daughter of infinity
Her
passion-flower of love and doom she gave.
In
vain now seemed the splendid sacrifice.
A
prodigal of her rich divinity,
Her
self and all she was she had lent to men,
Hoping
her greater being to implant
And
in their body's lives acclimatise
That heaven might native grow on mortal
soil.
p.6
Men and
earth have long rejected the Divine Love.
In Canto
Two of Book One we have the first description of Savitri, in lines that K.D. Sethna, whom we know as Amal Kiran considers the highest and greatest of all the lines
in the poem. In fact I believe he terms it the ‘nec plus ultra’ ‘that of which there is
nothing higher’. Here we experience a passage so profound, so beautiful and so
filled with love that only Sri Aurobindo could have
written it.
As
in a mystic and dynamic dance
A
priestess of immaculate ecstasies
Inspired
and ruled from Truth's revealing vault
Moves
in some prophet cavern of the gods,
A
heart of silence in the hands of joy
Inhabited
with rich creative beats
A
body like a parable of dawn
That
seemed a niche for veiled divinity
Or
golden temple-door to things beyond.
Immortal
rhythms swayed in her time-born steps;
Her
look, her smile awoke celestial sense
Even
in earth-stuff, and their intense delight
Poured
a supernal beauty on men's lives.
A
wide self-giving was her native act;
A
magnanimity as of sea or sky
Enveloped
with its greatness all that came
And
gave a sense as of a greatened world:
Her
kindly care was a sweet temperate sun,
Her
high passion a blue heaven's equipoise.
As
might a soul fly like a hunted bird,
Escaping
with tired wings from a world of storms,
And
a quiet reach like a remembered breast,
In
a haven of safety and splendid soft repose
One
could drink life back in streams of honey-fire,
Recover
the lost habit of happiness,
Feel
her bright nature's glorious ambience,
And
preen joy in her warmth and colour's rule.
A
deep of compassion, a hushed sanctuary,
Her
inward help unbarred a gate in heaven;
Love
in her was wider than the universe,
The
whole world could take refuge in her single heart.
p.14
Then
again we read :
Apart,
living within, all lives she bore;
Aloof,
she carried in herself the world:
Her
dread was one with the great cosmic dread,
Her
strength was founded on the cosmic mights;
The
universal Mother's love was hers.
And this is only the beginning, in a poem of nearly 24,000
lines !
In this second canto, we begin to learn more of Savitri, her will
and her work for the earth and again we are lifted by lines that speak to us of
love.
As in a many-hued flaming inner dawn,
Her life's broad highways and its sweet
bypaths
Lay mapped to her sun-clear recording view,
From the bright country of her childhood's
days
And the blue mountains of her soaring youth
And the paradise groves and peacock wings of
Love
To joy clutched under the silent shadow of
doom
In a last turn where heaven raced with hell. p. 11
We read in moving passages of all that Savitri must face and
conquer.
On the bare peak where Self is alone with
Nought
And life has no sense and love no place to
stand,
She must plead her case upon extinction's
verge,
In the world's death-cave uphold life's
helpless claim
And vindicate her right to be and
love.
p.12
In Canto
Three we are introduced to Savitri’s human father,
King Aswapati, the one who by his ‘concentrated
energy of spiritual endeavour’ has called her down to earth’s need, in ‘The
Yoga of the King: The Yoga of the Soul's Release.’
The
Supreme's gaze looked out through human eyes
And
saw all things and creatures as itself
And
knew all thought and word as its own voice.
There unity is too close for
search and clasp
And
love is a yearning of the One for the One,
And
beauty is a sweet difference of the Same
And
oneness is the soul of multitude.
p.32-33
Again,
the theme of love.
In Canto Four, ‘The Secret Knowledge’, a canto that I cannot
read often enough for there is so much in it, we find these lines which many of
you will know:
In
moments when the inner lamps are lit
And
the life's cherished guests are left outside,
Our
spirit sits alone and speaks to its gulfs.
A
wider consciousness opens then its doors;
Invading
from spiritual silences
A
ray of the timeless Glory stoops awhile
To
commune with our seized illumined clay
And
leaves its huge white stamp upon our lives.
In
the oblivious field of mortal mind,
Revealed
to the closed prophet eyes of trance
Or
in some deep internal solitude
Witnessed
by a strange immaterial sense,
The
signals of eternity appear.
The
truth mind could not know unveils its face,
We
hear what mortal ears have never heard,
We
feel what earthly sense has never felt,
We
love what common hearts repel and dread;
Our
minds hush to a bright Omniscient;
A
Voice calls from the chambers of the soul;
We
meet the ecstasy of the Godhead's touch
In
golden privacies of immortal fire.
These
signs are native to a larger self
That
lives within us by ourselves unseen;
Only
sometimes a holier influence comes,
A
tide of mightier surgings bears our lives
And
a diviner Presence moves the soul; …
p.48
In Book
Two, The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds, Canto Two, ‘The Kingdom of Subtle
Matter’, this passage ends with the words ‘love and sweetness’. I have been
told that ‘sweetness’ was Sri Aurobindo’s favourite word and indeed, it occurs
in more than 80 lines of Savitri.
Interestingly, it is well-known that it was also Shakespeare’s favourite word.
On
every plane the hieratic Power,
Initiate
of unspoken verities,
Dreams
to transcribe and make a part of life
In
its own native style and living tongue
Some
trait of the perfection of the Unborn,
Some
vision seen in the omniscient Light,
Some
far tone of the immortal rhapsodist Voice,
Some
rapture of the all-creating Bliss,
Some
form and plan of the Beauty unutterable.
Worlds
are there nearer to those absolute realms,
Where
the response to Truth is swift and sure
And
spirit is not hampered by its frame
And
hearts by sharp division seized and rent
And
delight and beauty are inhabitants
And
love and sweetness are the law of life.
p.111
Friends, Mangesh loved Savitri,
as all of us who knew him could see. So many of us, in this sacred place that
is filled with the Force and the Grace of the Mother, can feel the Presence.
For me, Savitri is the Way - and Love
shall guide us, inspire us, heal us, and one day, transform us.
Thus
we draw near to the All-Wonderful
Following
his rapture in things as sign and guide;
Beauty
is his footprint showing us where he has passed,
Love
is his heart-beats' rhythm in mortal breasts,
Happiness
the smile on his adorable face.
p.112
Book Two contains passages that resonate in
the depths of the soul, and even though there are sections that we are rather
difficult to read - such as the experiences that Aswapati
goes through in his Descent into the Night, the mantra lifts us again and
again.
Here are some lines from Canto
Three, ‘The Glory and the Fall of Life’:
Creation leaped straight from the
hands of God;
Marvel and rapture wandered in
the ways.
Only to be was a supreme delight,
Life was a happy laughter of the
soul
And Joy was king with Love for
minister.
p.124
Only a few pages further on we
read of
A flood of universal love and
peace.
p.127
On Tuesday evenings at Savitri Bhavan and Friday evenings in the Ashram School, during the
OM Choir, I read passages from Savitri
and we are lifted far above ourselves into realms where the New Music can descend
in human bodies and through them into the earth, a music of healing and
transformation, a music of love for and from the Divine.
Even in the very difficult Canto Eight, ‘The
World of Falsehood, the Mother of Evil and the Sons of Darkness’, Sri Aurobindo speaks to us of love:
He imposed upon dark atom and
dumb mass
The diamond script of the
Imperishable,
Inscribed on the dim heart of
fallen things
A paean-song of the free Infinite
And the Name, foundation of
eternity,
And traced on the awake exultant
cells
In the ideographs of the
Ineffable
The lyric of the love that waits
through Time
And the mystic volume of the Book
of Bliss
And the message of the superconscient Fire.
p.232
Two pages further on, we are in
Canto Nine, ‘The Paradise of the Life-Gods’:
Across the vibrant secrecies of
Space
A dim and happy music sweetly
stole,
Smitten by unseen hands he heard
heart-close
The harps' cry of the heavenly
minstrels pass,
And voices of unearthly melody
Chanted the glory of eternal love
In the white-blue-moonbeam air of
After another two pages, in the
same canto, we read:
In sudden moments of revealing
flame,
In passionate responses
half-unveiled
He reached the rim of ecstasies
unknown;
A touch supreme surprised his
hurrying heart,
The clasp was remembered of the
Wonderful,
And hints leaped down of white
beatitudes.
Eternity drew close disguised as
Love
And laid its hand upon the body
of Time.
p.236
Then,
reaching Canto Fourteen, ‘The World-Soul’:
A
fire of passion burned in spirit-depths,
A
constant touch of sweetness linked all hearts,
The
throb of one adoration's single bliss
In
a rapt ether of undying love.
p.291
And in
the last canto of Book Two, Canto Fifteen, ‘The Kingdoms of the Greater
Knowledge’, we read :
Here
came the thought that passes beyond Thought,
Here
the still Voice which our listening cannot hear,
The
Knowledge by which the knower is the known,
The
Love in which beloved and lover are one.
p.297
Now we
enter Book Three, The Book of the Divine Mother. There is so much here on love,
and I could go on for hours – for I haven’t even covered a portion of all the
lines in the poem that refer to love.
But I will continue with a few. Sri Aurobindo
writes:
A
burning Love from white spiritual founts
Annulled
the sorrow of the ignorant depths;
Suffering
was lost in her immortal smile.
p.314
- lines which lead us to the passage that so
many love and cherish, the description of the Divine Mother, beginning with “At the head she stands of birth and toil and
fate,” which I leave for you to listen to in the Mother’s own recitation,
with all the force, majesty, beauty and power of the Divine.
You
can hear Mother recite this and other passages from Savitri on the website which I began with the Ashram’s permission
in 2000, savitribysriaurobindo.com, which has had more than 120,000
visitors in the past two years since we added a counter.
A
Bliss, a Light, a Power, a flame-white Love
Caught
all into a sole immense embrace;
Existence
found its truth on Oneness' breast
And
each became the self and space of all.
p.322
In the fourth canto, ‘The Vision
and the Boon’, we read Aswapati’s plea to the Divine
Mother:
O
radiant fountain of the world's delight
World-free
and unattainable above,
O
Bliss who ever dwellst deep-hid within
While
men seek thee outside and never find,
Mystery
and Muse with hieratic tongue,
Incarnate
the white passion of thy force,
One
moment fill with thy eternity,
Let
thy infinity in one body live,
All-Knowledge
wrap one mind in seas of light,
All-Love
throb single in one human heart.
p.345
And her
response :
"O
strong forerunner, I have heard thy cry.
One
shall descend and break the iron Law,
Change
Nature's doom by the lone spirit's power.
A
limitless Mind that can contain the world,
A
sweet and violent heart of ardent calms
Moved
by the passions of the gods shall come.
All
mights and greatnesses shall join in her;
Beauty
shall walk celestial on the earth,
Delight
shall sleep in the cloud-net of her hair,
And
in her body as on his homing tree
Immortal
Love shall beat his glorious wings.
I have
read you many passages, and yet this is much less than one third of the all
lines in the poem that speak of love! I will continue with a few lines from the
later books and hope that you will seek out the rest.
In Book
Four, we read of the birth and youth of Savitri, and of how those around her
were enchanted by
The splendid yoke of her beauty and her love.
p.365
As she
grows to maturity, her father the King sends her out on her mission, to
discover her life’s companion:
O
living inscription of the beauty of love
Missalled in aureate virginity,
What
message of heavenly strength and bliss in thee
Is
written with the Eternal's sun-white script,
One
shall discover and greaten with it his life
To
whom thou loosenest thy heart's jewelled strings.
O
rubies of silence, lips from which there stole
Low
laughter, music of tranquillity,
Star-lustrous
eyes awake in sweet large night
And
limbs like fine-linked poems made of gold
Stanzaed to glimmering curves by artist gods,
Depart
where love and destiny call your charm.
Venture
through the deep world to find thy mate.
For
somewhere on the longing breast of earth,
Thy
unknown lover waits for thee the unknown.
Thy
soul has strength and needs no other guide
Than
One who burns within thy bosom's powers.
There
shall draw near to meet thy approaching steps
The
second self for whom thy nature asks,
He
who shall walk until thy body's end
A
close-bound traveller pacing with thy pace,
The
lyrist of thy soul's most intimate chords
Who
shall give voice to what in thee is mute.
p.374
And now
we have only reached the Book of Love :
In
these great spirits now incarnate here
Love
brought down power out of eternity
To
make of life his new undying base.
p.397
Continuing
on the same page is a passage that speaks to us of our long journey and the
recognition that lies within each of us, in lines that are emblazoned on
eternity.
On
the dumb bosom of this oblivious globe
Although
as unknown beings we seem to meet,
Our
lives are not aliens nor as strangers join,
Moved
to each other by a causeless force.
The
soul can recognise its answering soul
Across
dividing Time and, on life's roads
Absorbed
wrapped traveller, turning it recovers
Familiar
splendours in an unknown face
And
touched by the warning finger of swift love
It
thrills again to an immortal joy
Wearing
a mortal body for delight.
There
is a Power within that knows beyond
Our
knowings; we are greater than our thoughts,
And
sometimes earth unveils that vision here.
To
live, to love are signs of infinite things,
Love
is a glory from eternity's spheres.
p.397
Continuing,
on the following page, we are told:
Love
dwells in us like an unopened flower
Awaiting
a rapid moment of the soul.
p.398
I wish
that I could share with you all the lines of love from Savitri, but now we move ahead to Book Six, The Book of Fate, at
the beginning of Canto One :
He
sang to them of the lotus-heart of love
With
all its thousand luminous buds of truth,
Which
quivering sleeps veiled by apparent things.
p.417
And then
on to where, in the same book and canto, we hear Savitri’s
voice:
Let
Fate do with me what she will or can;
I
am stronger than death and greater than my fate;
My
love shall outlast the world, doom falls from me
Helpless
against my immortality.
p.432
Then,
moving far ahead to Book Ten, and the great debate with Death, who at the end
is “eaten by light” and in Arabinda Basu’s words, not killed but transformed, we find Savitri
affirming:
"O
Death, who reasonest, I reason not,
Reason
that scans and breaks, but cannot build
Or
builds in vain because she doubts her work.
I
am, I love, I see, I act, I will."
Death
answered her, one deep surrounding cry:
"Know
also. Knowing, thou shalt cease to love
And
cease to will, delivered from thy heart.
So
shalt thou rest for ever and be still,
Consenting
to the impermanence of things."
But
Savitri replied for man to Death:
"When
I have loved for ever, I shall know.
Love
in me knows the truth all changings mask.”
p.594
Now I
skip ahead to Book Twelve, the Epilogue, ‘The Return to Earth’, to Savitri’s last words and the lines with which I often close
… but today it will be a little different.
These are
Savitri’s last words, when, after her conquest of
death and all the Tapasya she has accomplished for
the earth and humanity, a sage in the crowd that has gathered welcoming her and
Satyavan wonders at the great change that has
occurred and asks her the following:
"O
woman soul, what light, what power revealed,
Working
the rapid marvels of this day,
Opens
for us by thee a happier age?"
Savitri
replies:
"Awakened
to the meaning of my heart
That
to feel love and oneness is to live
And
this the magic of our golden change,
Is
all the truth I know or seek, O sage.”
p.724
Because
this Memorial Lecture Series is so important, continuing the great work and
tradition of Savitri Bhavan, at the end of my talk
today I would like to share with you some very special remembrances from
disciples who have offered lights and insights I had never heard before.
Purani was a wonderful guide and elder
brother to me and I have cherished for nearly fifty years the gift of his book,
Savitri, An Approach and A Study. Nolini and others have also helped me greatly as you can
read in Invocation, issue no. 30.
More
recently I have been told some things that have touched me deeply. One was from
Nirodbaran, who told Arabinda
Basu that Sri Aurobindo had
said to him, ‘Don’t put anything on top of Savitri,
it is my body’.
Another
is from my dear friend and sadhika, Sunanda, who cares for Mother’s treasures. She spoke to me
of a sacred copy of Savitri in her
care, in which the Mother has written, “To Savitri, with love, Mother”.
And this last is also from Arabinda, who has told me about the occasion when Dilip Kumar Roy came to him with tears in his eyes and
recounted this experience. Mother has asked to see Dilip.
He replied, “I don’t want to see her.”
So Nolini came to see him, and in his way he
could be very strong: he said “That would be disrespectful”. So Dilip came before Mother. She asked him one question, “Why
are we here?” Dilip fumbled around – ‘to do sadhana’, this, that … Very quietly, Mother said “To please
Sri Aurobindo.”
Lately I
have been corresponding with a Jesuit priest, Father Donald Goergen,
a friend of Arabinda Basu,
who has visited the Ashram and had to be literally pulled from Sri Aurobindo’s
room, so deep was he in trance. He calls himself a Christian Aurobindonian. In Gavesana – the journal edited by Arabinda
Basu – of 2003 there is an article by him on the
withdrawal of Sri Aurobindo and the resurrection of
Jesus. I will quote just a few lines:
I first
visited the ashram in 1996, following an invitation issued long before by Arabinda Basu. On that occasion I
also had the opportunity for a visit with Amal Kiran – a moving experience in itself. I was able to visit
him again on my next visit to the ashram in October of 1999. In 1996 Sri Aurobindo ‘appeared’ to me twice, once in
Sri Aurobindo lives; he did not die; yet he was transformed,
transported to another plane of existence, not out of contact with this world.
He is still connected to this cosmos. Although his is a spiritual existence, I
would not say that he is disembodied. His is a new way of being embodied. We
may not call his ‘withdrawal’ a resurrection, but are we not trying to
articulate in available and human language an experiential and profound
knowledge?
I close
with five lines from Book Six, Canto One :
My
spirit has glimpsed the glory for which it came,
The
beating of one vast heart in the flame of things,
My
eternity clasped by his eternity
And,
tireless of the sweet abysms of Time,
Deep
possibility always to love.
p.435