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LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF SRI AUROBINDO AND THE MOTHER |
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29. OPPORTUNITIES AND OBSTACLES Often I hear from devotees, “My prayer is always answered, most of the time at once. Sometimes the answer is delayed, but occasionally I get into a familiar situation. Mother grants me some unheard of rewards, more than I have been thinking of. I am overjoyed. Then one after another difficulties crop up. I am afraid of losing what has come. I pray. Things take a positive turn. A couple of days later again fresh difficulties arise. Each time difficulties arise I pray. Things change. What has come is so far out of my way that I am unable to remain calm. Constantly new problems arise. Things alternate and the end is constantly postponed. I am torn between two sides. The anxiety is so great that I even say to myself that it is better it comes to an end, let the opportunity be cancelled, I don’t mind. I am unable to stand this constant anxiety.” I would like to explain what a devotee can do on such occasions to help bring about the best result. I shall quote the experiences of some devotees and comment on them. “I am an American who has come to Pondicherry for a short visit to the Ashram. I have read Mother’s works and am devoted to Her in my own way. A visit to the Samadhi is uplifting, fills me with a peace I have not known before. I feel like sitting there for hours on end. My general tension comes down and disappears. My mind falls silent. My heart is full, full of pleasant, happy feelings. A strange fulfilment creeps over me. A friend engaged me in conversation and casually, without any intention, I mentioned to him that I have a pain in the back. At once he asked me why I should not pray to Mother for the pain to be removed. It never struck me. During my next visit to the Samadhi, I thought of taking it up as a prayer. This pain is very painful, being a back pain at the base of the spine. Several years ago when I was lifting a heavy bundle from my car’s trunk, I sprained my spine. I had medical treatment, but doctors say it cannot be fully cured. Day and night I live with it, though it is now within tolerable limits. My father has had it for over 15 years. Perhaps it runs in the family. I have learned to live with it. As a result, my general posture is slightly slanted to avoid the most painful position. It is much less now than in the beginning, but even at this level it is really painful. I wouldn’t wish this suffering even on my enemy. “I visited the Samadhi the next day, concentrated, meditated and after some time, remembered to pray to Mother that my pain should go away. I fell into deep meditation. When I came to myself, I stood up and walked to my room. My friend came to visit me that evening. As our conversation began to touch upon many issues, we came to my pain. Suddenly it dawned on me that for the first time since it began, my pain had not been there at all that day. I was unable to believe my senses. How is it that I did not notice it for the whole day? Mother had given me a gift, really a wonderful gift. My mind began to work. I thought of all the works I used to shun because of this pain. Now I could do them. I had an intimate friend who had this pain. I could tell her too about this. I could tell my father too. I thought, but I hesitated because there in America people may think I am crazy if I speak like this. My mind was full of a million thoughts. To my surprise, I found that the pain started coming back after two days. Again I prayed at the Samadhi. It left, but this time it left only half way. What a tragedy after that wonderful relief! I was unable to control my thoughts. I didn’t want to lose this relief. My mind has been on fire, not being able to go either way. I just do not know what I should do to make my relief permanent.” Let me quote another man also: “I am a retired government servant who at the time of retirement was sanctioned a pension of Rs.45 per month. After retirement I started selling casurina firewood for a living. Over the past 15 years I have progressed in my business and purchased lands and raised casurina myself. Now I have a good property and I am 75. I would like to sell the casurina lands and take rest, but the 27 acres are worth only Rs.10,000 in the market. I could sell it if someone offered me Rs.27,000. I have been trying to sell the lands for the last five years. Once a buyer agreed for Rs.27,000, but the sale did not come through. After great efforts, a buyer came to me, anxious to buy it at my price of Rs.27,000. At this point I was invited to Mother’s Darshan by another old man of 70. When I returned home, to my utter astonishment, my lands had become very valuable. A fertilizer company wanted the lands. I finalised the bargain at Rs.81,000. The man was writing the agreement but stopped in the middle. He said he would come back in a week. Two months have passed. He has never come back. I am almost mad. Every car that I pass looks like his car. Every person who comes to my house looks like that man. I have lost sleep and my peace of mind. What an opportunity came my way and how quickly it faded away. My mind considers thousands of possibilities. Finally I have decided to give up and go to the man who had offered me Rs.27,000. This opportunity has become like a torture and I would rather not have it.” Surely the man’s plight is pitiable. It is one thing not to have the opportunity. It is another thing to get it and lose it. On these occasions, the more the mind thinks, the more the opportunity is cancelled. What can we do? Is there anything that can be done to save the situation? Is there anything we can do to control our thoughts? A girl of 31 says, “No one who has looked at my face or even photograph has wanted to see me again. So far dozens of grooms have come and gone. The last man, a man of property, a graduate, came to our house with his parents, saw me and agreed to marry me. This was a surprise to me. Between now and the wedding my one fear is that the groom’s party may cancel it. My mind runs in all directions. The anxiety is so great.” An engineer says, “I am working in a simple situation. People who are starting a factory for Rs.1.5 crores have offered me a share. This is too great an opportunity for me to lose. My one fear is they should not change their minds before the documents are signed.” We can give a dozen more examples. As a rule, on these occasions the mind is activated, one is beside himself, daydreams, builds castles, plans for the future, and again, as a rule, the expectations cancel the opportunities or shrink them to a tenth of what was first offered. I would say that Mother gives, but Man cancels. This is to reverse the proverb that Man proposes and God disposes. It is true that I would suggest that one should keep the mind calm so that Mother can act effectively. It is not reasonable for me to advise a person in this situation to keep his mind calm, knowing it is nearly impossible. Is there a way out? There is. We know it is Mother who brought this great opportunity to us. We also know that She cannot act through impatience, anxiety, excitement or nervousness. We know Mother acts best in calm, quiet steadiness, firm faith, and great patience. People who are in such anxious conditions should try to understand this truth and resolve to be calm and unthinking. They must resolve not to be excited, not to activate the thoughts in a hundred directions. If thoughts persist, one should try not to indulge in the thoughts. Mind will become partially calm. In some cases, this resolution makes the mind fully calm, too. If, in spite of this resolution, the mind is still restive, pray to Mother for calm and patience. She certainly gives it. One by one the difficulties recede and the originally given opportunity always emerges in full measure. All who have consulted me, including those mentioned in this article, have happily and fully solved their problems in this way. Today I received a letter from a devotee in which he says his daughter, who is an M.Sc., has secured a job in his own native town on the day he got my letter. He is an ardent devotee for many years working in the government as an non-gazetted officer with a spotless record of service. All his four children are brilliant and often top the list in the college. Being a non-gazetted officer, he was unable to offer them the very best in life, but he did his very best to give them higher education. Several years ago when his son passed PUC with shining scores, he was faced with his son’s burning desire to join engineering college and his inability to support him in a college for five years. The government rules work in a strange fashion. As his salary crosses the income limit prescribed for eligibility for scholarship, his son could not apply for scholarship! Prior to studies is the hurdle of admission. Scores of applicants with distinction compete for seats. If merit alone were the criterion, his son would surely win. There are other considerations. As a government official, he knew many influential persons. But in matters of getting a favour, though it may be a deserving case, these contacts do not yield results. Still he called on a local VIP. When he arrived there, many bigwigs were waiting to meet the VIP. He was not willing to wait and make his representation too. Reluctantly, however, he waited his turn. The VIP was polite enough to promise to do his best for his son. Not finding any warmth in the promise, he returned home. He later met me and described his plight. He is an ardent devotee, but at that moment of despair to console him with a reference to prayer or faith could be embarrassing. He left remarking, “I have faith in Mother. Let us see.” I was happy he said that. When the results were out, his son had been selected. He called on me with great joy and constantly exclaimed his surprise at the selection of his son, saying “Mother is truly great.” He often used to meet me and narrate his experiences with Mother. Once when he was cycling home, he saw a woman loudly wailing, surrounded by a crowd. He stopped to see what it was. The child of the woman was lost and she had given up hope of finding the child after half a day of search. The more he heard about the details, the more he was moved. He thought he would cry if he listened any more. He moved to one side of the road next to a house, parked his cycle and called Mother to relieve the distress of this hapless mother. He was so absorbed in his prayer that he almost forgot what was going on around him. His eyes began to close and he felt lost inside. Suddenly there was a shout which jerked him back to awareness. He rushed towards the crowd to know if anything untoward had happened to the woman. On the contrary, someone who had found the child brought it to where the mother was and hence the shouts of joy. He was introduced to me thirty years ago when he came to my native town to work in the taluq office We used to meet at the house of a common friend. My friend used to describe to me, after he left, how efficient this man was at the taluq office. He earned a reputation at the office for efficiency, integrity and, above all, for his soft behaviour towards friends and a great willingness to work hard. Later, for several years we had not met. Our contacts renewed after about seven or eight years when both of us moved to another town and ran into each other. That was at the prime of his life and mine too. He was promoted in his job and was working hard to build up a career winning the good remarks of his superiors. So we met rarely. One Sunday morning he appeared at my house with worry writ large on his face. He explained to me that things were not going smoothly at the office and his next promotion was at stake. I was wondering how such a person could ever miss a promotion. He said that in circumstances like this anything could happen. It was impossible to predict, he said, who would be promoted and who would be denied. He added, “I am frustrated by life around and knowing how I am denied the promotion. This is clear injustice. But what worries me more is what is in store for the future. I was not even selected for the list of candidates from which the promotees will be selected. I appealed against that decision. The government has rejected my appeal. The implication of this rejection causes me greater worry. It means I am ineligible for any future promotion.” He came to me that day to find out whether someone in Madras could be approached to rectify the mistake and have justice restored to him. That was a decade when, among youth, it was a fashion to be an atheist. At that time he was an admirer of those ideals. Those were the first years of my coming to the Ashram. He was not one to whom I could speak about spirituality, much less prayer. I did not have the courage to propose to him that his prayer to Mother would restore justice to him. But that was a moment when such an idea could be spoken. Maybe he would listen to me. I mustered courage at last and briefly explained to him Sri Aurobindo’s role in national freedom, his yoga and the powers of Mother, giving a few examples. I ended up suggesting that he could visit the Samadhi. He seemed to listen with approval. After ten days, he called on me with excitement to say that his name was there in the selected list of Deputy Tasildars and he would soon be posted elsewhere. I asked him to clarify whether it was the list from which selection was to be made. He corrected me by saying that his name was in the selected list. He explained that he had visited the Samadhi on the very day he met me earlier and felt uplifted. He came away with a feeling that his cause would be upheld. “I never expected that things would move so fast and so well. I don’t understand how it all happened. For me it is very surprising,” he said. That was how he became a devotee long ago. The Life Divine, the magnum opus of Sri Aurobindo, says the American Sri Aurobindo Library, has been acclaimed as the greatest book of our times. It goes on to say that The Life Divine is a landmark in human thought and aspiration. Sri Aurobindo was also the author of the epic English poem Savitri, which runs into 24,000 lines of blank verse. As Sri Aurobindo attained Mahasamadhi before the Nobel Prize committee could implement its decision to award him the prize for literature, the prize was never awarded that year. Sri Aurobindo says that his is not merely a philosophy or an ideal towards which one strives, but a Force in action. The Force enters into those who are open to it and urges their march towards the Supreme. And to authors his writings have a special message. He was unique as a writer in the entire history of the Eastern and Western civilized world, in that he started writing five of his major books simultaneously in 1914 and he wrote them in installments for his monthly journal ‘Arya’, completing all of them in 1921. They are only a sixth of his total writings which run into 30 volumes. History tells us that neither Aristotle nor Shakespeare nor Vyasa nor Shankara undertook such a phenomenal effort of writing at the highest level of human thought. Writers are endowed with several faculties such as imagination, a right turn of phrase, inspired language, a knack for a striking plot, a capacity to maintain the readers’ interest, suspense, vivid images, descriptive narratives, etc. When a writer reads Sri Aurobindo’s writings or takes to his teachings, His FORCE enters the writer and energizes all his faculties. The writer finds that his imagination is more active, the right phrase comes to his pen more easily and more often, his ordinary writing becomes inspiring and his inspired moments creative, his dull plots change structure to become striking, his readers never tire of reading his writings, more images constantly present themselves and are live with energy, and descriptions become long and very interesting. It is common knowledge with the devotees of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother that after their Force enters the lives of devotees, in whatever profession they are, the devotees steadily rise in their profession, often ending at the top. That is true of writers too, only that being writers, the effect is two-fold in their lives. The writer’s main faculty is thinking and the Force’s main expression is light. The light of His Force shows in the mind of the writer as higher capacity of the already existing faculties and also it creates new ones. On this score alone, the writer becomes a better member of the profession. In its general expression of inherent progress, the Force takes the writer to higher levels of his work. In life, the writer finds his unpublished works are solicited for publication, long awaited recognition sails to him, rewards are announced for unexpected works, his services are sought for by the profession and the public at large, and above all, the intrinsic value of his thought, so far unrecognised, is now fully appreciated. He becomes a creative writer credited with wider recognition at all levels of the society. I was returning home from the Ashram. In the bus I met a friend who was also returning home from Pondicherry. By way of conversation I asked him on what assignment he had visited Pondicherry. He said he was returning from JIPMER Hospital where his brother was an in-patient for the last three weeks. I had never known that he had a brother, but I continued my general enquiries about how old he was and why he was hospitalised. To my utter surprise he explained the developments. “My brother is 17 years of age and he is in the 10th standard. Some three weeks ago he noticed some difficulties in his speech, but he had not clearly explained it to the other family members. It seems he knew that some throat trouble was developing and while speaking it manifested itself. It is not clear whether he himself was fully aware of it or not. One day we found him not answering our questions. As he is generally reticent and not given to talking, we were not initially struck by his not answering. After some time it dawned on us that he could not talk. Everyone in the family was upset. Some made light of it saying it may be a passing phase. Others were frightened. My brother himself did not make light of it. He was frightened beyond measure. In minutes his fright spread all through the family and there was overhanging gloom generating indefinable fear. After prolonged consultations within the family and with well-informed friends, it was decided to take him to Jipmer Hospital. The face of the boy became gloomier and gloomier, as he listened to the various stories of loss of speech narrated in his presence by the never-ending stream of visitors. Some said in these cases speech suddenly disappeared but reappeared with the same suddenness. This cheered the boy up. There was a faint smile on his face. Others cited cases of speech lost and only restored with a stammer. This was worse. No one was able to control their narration. Anyway, all of us hoped that as his speech had been lost abruptly, it may be restored in a spurt. There was hope, fear, gloom and, above all, a gnawing uncertainty. “We had him admitted to Jipmer Hospital. Now it was the turn of the doctors, nurses and co-patients to tell stories of lost speech. During the first week, the visiting doctors explained that the boy was under observation. We all anxiously awaited the results of observation. Doctors continued to visit but did not give us any explanation. In the second week we learned from the hospital staff that there was no known medical therapy for loss of speech. This smashed our hopes and we wondered why he was being kept in the hospital. Some of us felt that being hospitalised makes the patient feel that medical attention was being given and this helped to keep up his hopes. This appeared reasonable. We decided to continue in the hospital but our hopes were lost. We did not communicate our hopelessness to my brother. A few days later, one doctor suggested that in such matters one can only pray to God. We have all prayed to several gods ever since the boy was afflicted. What more is there for us to do?” This is a friend of a friend. I know him well enough, but he was introduced to me by someone else and my relationship with him is limited. I know only one incident in his life. My friend and this man were boyhood friends. My friend graduated, but this man stopped with SSLC. After that he tried to join in a clerk’s post somewhere. As he had not been selected by the Madras Public Service Commission, to secure a permanent post was ruled out. He was very efficient, in spite of his not being selected by the service commission. He secured a government clerk’s post on a leave vacancy for a month. He was so efficient, so amiable, alert, and cooperative that his boss was unwilling to part with him at the end of the month. He secured another temporary job for fifteen days. Here too, his boss and colleagues were impressed by him, but how could the temporary job be continued. He disposed of twenty files on one occasion in hours, whereas the man whom he had replaced could not handle that much in a day. This sweet treatment and short employment continued. There was no office in the district that he had not served in; there was no department he missed. He was now well versed in the rules of all the government departments and respected for it, but his jobs continued to be of short duration of months or weeks as they were all leave vacancies. About ten years had passed like this. My friend was sore over this misfortune of his boyhood friend. He once explained to me that the very first prayer he addressed to Mother after coming to the Ashram was that his friend should get a permanent job. Soon a new rule was introduced by which anyone who had put in a total of ten years temporary service could be made permanent. And so he earned his permanency. My friend also explained to me that he had never spoken about his prayer to his friend. As soon as the bus reached our town, I took this friend to a quiet corner and started talking in a serious tone. He was also seriously listening. I said, “It so happens that today is August 14 and tomorrow is Mother’s Darshan. If you choose to pray to Mother, your brother will get his speech back.” He agreed. I continued, “Please come to Mother’s public Darshan tomorrow and pray that your brother’s speech must be restored. Take a flower petal from the Samadhi and give it to your brother. If you can persuade your brother too to pray, it will be good.” The Darshan was on a Thursday. I saw him in the Darshan. Visitors who had come to my house for Darshan all left on Friday or Saturday. On Sunday night I was sitting up late with a friend who still remained on an important work for Mother. At 11 p.m. we finished our discussions and went upstairs to sleep. No sooner had I lay down on the bed than my wife came up saying someone wanted to see me. Who could come at 11 p.m. and on what business? Surely, it must be something important. I decided to go down and meet the visitor. It was none other than the friend whom I had met on the bus and later at the Darshan. I asked if there was any news from the hospital. He replied, “I came here to meet you at 6 p.m. to convey the glad news that my brother spoke one full sentence in a spurt this afternoon. This gave all of us hope and I thought I should first inform you. As you were not here, I returned home thinking I could meet you tomorrow. My brother and all others returned home from Pondicherry at 10 p.m., and I found his speech was fully restored late in the evening. I thought you won’t mind being disturbed at this hour, if I bring this news to you.” |