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

LIFE - POETRY-YOGA Life - Poetry -Yoga PERSONAL LETTERS by AMAL KIRAN (K.D. SETHNA) Vol. 2 The Integral Life Foundation P.O. Box 239 Waterford CT. 06385 USA First published 1995 (Typeset in 10.5/13 Paiatino) © Amal Kiran (K.D. Sethna) Published by The Integral Life Foundation, U.S.A. Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry PRINTED IN INDIA

5       You were a bit on the late side for me to send anything for Singapore's celebration of August 15. The next best thing that has happened is that I am writing this letter on the August 15 of Pondicherry. As I was meditating, my mind went back to my first August 15 here. Between February 21, 1928, the Mother's birthday, which marked my first darshan of Sri Aurobindo, and his own birthday-celebration which at that time was the next since there was no April 24 in the interval, a great deal had happened. At the first darshan I had watched Sri Aurobindo's outer appearance closely - his eyes, nose, moustache, beard, hair - and found him impressive enough to be accepted as m

21       Your inquiry about the darshans, in response to my article in the November Mother India, 1990, is such that I feel I have succeeded in putting my very soul into this piece of writing. That is always my aim in writing letters. Even if the subject is intellectual, it should be tackled not with the mere mind but always by the Dweller in the Depths who lives in the light of the Divine Presence at all times. Shouldn't something like this be expected of anyone who has had the supreme luck to have touched the feet of the Master who was a dispeller of all darkness and the feet of the Mother whose smile could heal every wound?   Memorable was the whole series of da

11       I was most happy to get your letter and the "Triple-Life" tablets. From this afternoon I'll start being triply alive. In the meantime, with whatever warmth of a single life I have, let me thank you for both the wisdom and the wit of your letter. Yes, wit has come in, whether you meant it or not. Of course, "always and all ways" is a conscious expression, but I don't think you intended a paradoxical pun in writing: "A world gone illiterate by increasing degrees" - that is to say, the more the academic qualifications obtained, the more incapable the world grows of a true reading of life's riddle! Then there is the phrase: "...as fast as glych and glamour are being em

12       I was delighted to get your poem' for my birthday, all the more because it brought a breath of England with its conjuration of flowers from Sussex hills and woods on the music of a language which is part of my inmost being. There is a slight touch of early Milton and a half-hint of Shakespeare in the verbal turn here and there, but both are taken up most felicitously into the quintessential You, and this taking up is all the richer because of that faint waft of the past, which I love, mingling with the air of the England your dear self carries into my heart. I have particularly in mind the phrases - remarkable in both image and rhythm - in lines 5-10:   A Bi

22       I am surprised that in Spanish the equivalents of the English "portent" and "portentous" - namely, "portento" and "por-tentoso -can only mean "wonder" and "wonderful" and their synonyms but never anything to do with the suggestion of a significant sign, whether favourable or unfavourable. In that case, Calderon could have chosen for his well-known play "Il Magico Prodigioso" the adjective "Portentoso" to go with the noun. It seems that both in Spanish and in French there is nothing corresponding to the ambivalent epithet "foreboding" in the Savitri-line:   The huge foreboding mind of Night, alone...   where, so far as the meaning in general is co

17       I have two letters from you and some photos. The first recounts the misery you feel when you don't hear from me for a long time. Fart of your misery is due to your fear that I may be unwell or may even have bidden goodbye to the earth. Except for the infirmity of my legs I am in fair-enough health and have had no wish to become "the late lamented". In fact I am likely to be rather "late" in becoming "lamented": I am already past 86. So be of good cheer. And what is this appeal to me that if I quit the earth-scene I should carry you along with me? You are 30 years younger than I am. Life for people like us is for doing Yoga and you should never think of cutting sho

6       You unpredictable wonderful little girl of fifty odd years, what is all this sudden lamentation and shedding of tears and self-doubting? The Divine Mother is always with you and has accepted you and given you not only good relatives and friends, dear and near ones, but also an elder soul-brother out of the blue who though physically far is ever close to you inwardly and never forgets you even when he delays writing letters. You must hold your soul in peace. We are devotees of Sri Aurobindo who said that his Yoga is founded in equanimity, a wide solid calm, which can sustain all the extraordinary experiences which he can give to his children. If there is no tranqui