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

1932 1932 The German translation of your poem is very well done. As for Frau Füllöp Miller1 whose judgement on men is as unanswerable as yours on European women. We will follow the profound Asquithian policy which is good throughout the ages: "Wait and see". 1932 ? ... PS. Did you read Cromnur Byng's compliments on my poems (I had sent him about a dozen of my latest) that he "greatly admired my beautiful poems ?" What would Thomson say to that? If even my beginner's poems are so appreciated (for I would not think he was insincere here—Englishmen are very chary of praise in such matters) how would he respond to the magnificent mature poems of Harin ? By the w

-012_The Waking State and the ^Why^ of the Samadhi-Plunge.htm Chapter III THE WAKING STATE AND THE 'WHY' OF THE SAMADHI-PLUNGE Above us dwells a superconscient god Hidden in the mystery of his own light: Around us is a vast of ignorance Lit by the uncertain ray of the human mind, Below us sleeps the Inconscient dark and mute. (Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book VII, Canto II, p. 484) Since mind-consciousness is the sole waking state possessed by mental being,...it cannot ordinarily quite enter into another without leaving behind completely both all our waking existence and all our inward mind. This is the necessity of the Yogic trance.

Chapter V THE EVOLUTION OF HUNGER The law of Hunger must give place progressively to the law of Love, the law of Division to the law of Unity, the law of Death to the law of Immortality. (Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 195) Our life, a breath of force and movement and possession attached to a form of mind and body and restricted by the form, limited in its force, hampered in its movement, besieged in its possession and therefore a thing of discords at war with itself and its environment, hungering and unsatisfied, moving inconstantly from object to object and unable to embrace and retain their multiplicity, devouring its objects of