27       As you are yourself a painter I think you will be interested in knowing the background to the scene Jayantilal has depicted of the Mother taking up the development of a number of budding artists in the early 'thirties of this century. Jayantilal, a fine artist himself, deals in particular with his friend who was also my friend, the gentle and devoted Sanjiban, who passed away recently in the Ashram Nursing Home while I was there too, lying under complicated traction for a multiple fracture of the thigh-bone where it makes a joint with the shin. The article is well done and brings out effectively the right psychology of art in the Ashram and the Mother's way of

13       I am going on as usual. The peace is there and the aspiration continues, but a big breakthrough has to come. When I look deep within myself, I seem to feel a thorough self-giving in general to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, but evidently whatever is there is not fully translated into the outer being with its remnants of the Old Adam though they are not specially lingering on the look-out for any old (or even young) Eve. I hope it won't take too long for the ordinary consciousness to kindle completely with the rose-and-white glow of the innermost profundity and the blue-silver-gold splendour of the overarching infinite. Will I have enough time to live altogether up t

2       Your letter has been in hiding for quite a number of days, but its place in my drawer did not mean that it was ever forgotten. Always my mind dwelt on it and it was securely lodged in my heart no less than in my drawer. Never to forget that it had been set aside for a less crowded time is really not to have set it aside at all in the true sense of the word. If, as Milton often says in Paradise Lost, small things may be compared to big ones, this morning when I have pulled your letter out I am reminded of what the Mother once told me after her son Andre's first visit to the Ashram. She said in effect: "Truly speaking, Andre was never absent. All through the years it w

3       Your experience, during four or five months, of seeing Sri Aurobindo smile at you from his photograph while you have been concentrating on it after a whole clay's tiring work, has certainly a truth in it. Not that the picture itself undergoes a change but, since in every picture of Sri Aurobindo or the Mother the presence of them has been instilled, this presence responds and superimposes its gesture on your sight or, rather, on the consciousness behind your seeing, through the features in the representation.   I too have had a response from the photo of Sri Aurobindo or the Mother. Just a few days back the big picture of the Mother which hangs on the wall j