Introduction IT is in our four capacities that I am related to this book of Dilip Kumar Roy's which I have been asked — or rather privileged — to introduce. As editor of the fortnightly review, Mother India, I had the delight of publishing it for the first time in serial form. I am also a friend of the author: I have known him for the last twenty three years and have valued his friendship from not only the personal standpoint but also the literary and the spiritual. Next, our friendship has resulted in a special relation on my part to his book: I actually figure in some vivid pages of it that are a most generous appreciation of me. This leads me to the fourth capacity, a pointe

-22_Sri Aurobindo's Message.htm CHAPTER XIV Sri Aurobindo's Message Sri Aurobindo was not a man easy to fathom, nor were his breathtaking messages all easy to understand. I remember once he wrote to me years ago, in 1928: "Nobody except myself can write about my life because it has not been on the surface for man to see." Nevertheless, since then, a few notable biographers have written about his life as it has come within their purview and, within limits, they are good — that is, as far as they go. Only they do not — cannot — go far enough. I remember: in 1949, under a huge pandal in Calcutta, lecturer after lecturer spoke eloquently about his great gifts and achievements. Most of them spoke ab

APPENDIX I The Ashram: Some Disciples I have decided, not without hesitation, to write now about a few of the disciples I came to know in the Ashram who made on me an impression for a twofold reason: first because of their native aptitudes and secondly because of the characteristic manner in which each of them reacted to Gurudev's personality and guidance. I have undertaken to attempt this in order to correct a wrong stress I may have unwittingly given while paying my homage to one who has been the most unforgettable character that I ever came to know in my life. This I say apart from the deep debt I shall always owe him as much for having bee

CHAPTER IV The Ashram: The Call Before I launch into the difficult task of setting down my various reactions to the Ashram-life that opened before me in 1928, I must portray my dread of such a life prior to my being plunged into it by a mysterious force which was at once too tangible to be dismissed as an airy nothing and too indefinable to be grappled with. For this it is necessary to go back a little even at the risk of becoming frankly autobiographical. I was born in one of the most aristocratic Brahmin families of Bengal. My father's maternal uncle, Kalachand Goswami, traced a direct descent from the saintly Adwaita Goswami, one of Sri Chaitanya's intimates. My fat

APPENDIX II Sri Krishnaprem vis-a-vis Sri Aurobindo We often say, in common parlance, that so and so is (or was) a great man. It is not easy to define what we mean by this epithet. But the feeling — or shall I say, the conviction — is not misty any more than the impression of beauty is. Sri Krishnaprem is an instance in point. He impinged on the heart with a force that told. Of course this applies only to those whose hearts have a —sense of spiritual values. For politicians or materialists may not react favourably to such personalities. For them, therefore, Sri Krishnaprem may exist merely as the memory of a robust man — intelligent, ind

CHAPTER XIIl Messenger of the Incommunicable* The Gita says that everything that has a beginning must have an end. After Gurudev had assured me that he loved me not a whit less because of my insistence on the unique epiphany of Krishna, things returned slowly to normal and the imbroglio ended. But woe is me! The respite was as short-lived as it was delectable. For, I had hardly begun to have a glimpse of what Gurudev called the "sunlit path" when a sudden thunder-storm burst and, once more, my horizon grew darker than ever. And it happened like this: In 1946, in East Bengal, thousands of Hindus were massacred, their women raped, houses burnt and

Foreword Dilip — I shall call him Dilip, as Dilip Kumar Roy sounds too pompous for so ethereal and lovable a spirit — Dilip has evolved an 'art' of biography all his own. Perhaps the word 'evolved' is somewhat inappropriate here: Dilip hasn't pursued laborious technological processes to arrive at his 'art'; it has just come to him or he has come by it as a matter of course — an edict of destiny, if you will, but no frowns, no tears, no nerve-racking researches. His two earlier works —Among the Great and The Subhash I knew — have made us familiar with the contours of this 'art' — an art so artless that it resembles the sinuous movements of a mountain-stream rather than the rigid

CHAPTER VII Guru, The Transformer The more I brooded over man's utter helplessness when he is at odds with his own human nature, the less hopeful I felt about my prospective ability to make good in such a difficult undertaking as Yoga, that is, to effect a junction with the Divine Grace to be able to surmount Destiny. At such times, I bitterly complained to Gurudev: why, oh, why had he dragged me to such a path.. . .But since the milk was split, alas, the sooner I was allowed to graze on other fields the better for all... I must not waste his time any more ... no wonder he had been growing cold and so on and so forth. But if Dilip was Dilip, Gurudev also

CHAPTER IX The Poet-Maker I referred, in a previous chapter, to Sri Aurobindo as a "poet-maker." In this I am going to transcribe a part of my experience on which I based the remark, less to convince others than to state — as truthfully as I can — some of the data which carried conviction to me, personally. I know of course that what I am claiming here is liable to be misunderstood since my chief datum is going to be my own poetic flowering. Nevertheless I have thought fit to risk it because nobody else will be able to present the material I possess and so, if I keep silent, a great trait of Sri Aurobindo's character will stay for ever unknown, to wit, the pain

CHAPTER VI "Bleeding Piece of Earth"* One of the things that make Ashram life so hard to bear is that it first invites one to change, then exhorts, then coaxes and lastly presses one to realise that unless and until one agrees to change progressively, the divine life must remain a Utopian dream. Somebody said that human folly makes even angels weep because human idiocy is the only malady for which even the gods can find no medicine. Sri Aurobindo, however, was wont to put it in a different way. He said that it was not folly alone, but some kind of perversity (which something in us thrills to) that makes it so difficult even for angles to deliver fools from their c