I cannot but dwell, at least for a while, in a reminiscent vein on that glorious past as I look again at this correspondence. Most men live in their past; we here live in our future, but the past contributes to the high consummation of that future, and such a past recorded through the correspondence is like a brilliant page of one’s ever-present life. The picture of the past floats again before my eyes: I look at his chamber from the corner of my eyes: I look at his chamber from the corner of my room and imagine that he must now be busy at our letters. Then passing through the corridors of dream, I wake up to wait at the threshold of the morning hours for the divine post. There it comes carrying the heavenly breath and bearing the Spirit- touch. I pore on it and seem for a moment to touch the very hands that struck those harmonious chords.
Moments pass, but I still taste the “strange-ecstasied fruit”. The aroma of His unbodied Presence recreates the “Darshan” before my vision- calm and serene, golden and majestic, eyes reflecting the Unfathomed, smile and gravity on the lips in succession as known and unknown pass by. Are these the hands that have culled from the vineyards of his luminous mind the luscious fruits of knowledge and filled our mortal jars with its sparkling wine? Those the eyes that have passed sleepless nights over our daily tales of joy and woe, our babbles and stupid reasonings? Is this the mouth that has uttered, through an eloquent pen, volumes of speech just to assure one single person of his spiritual destiny, or to promise all help and succour in the battlefield of Yoga?
Many other vivid associations renew the contact of the soul with the veiled summit-source. Who can exhaust these iridescent memories, who can extinguish their flames? Worship and prayer, work and an intense desire for the fulfillment of his mission-the things with which he has inspired our souls, and the path that he has hewn through the virgin forest of our life, are a tale whose beginning only is disclosed, but whose end waits to be revealed by the future development of events. Above all, how much of his inner consciousness he has transfused into our blood through the medium of this correspondence, no one will ever know; indeed, very few will be able even to appraise it correctly. Only those who have been the recipients of that rejuvenating energy of the Divine Consciousness will understand its action, slowly, in the gradual process of self-unfolding. Our heart repeats the marvel of his name and waits his arrival through the very pathway that he has built with so much labor of love and compassion.
(‘Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo’, Nirodbaran, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1969)
Moments pass, but I still taste the “strange-ecstasied fruit”. The aroma of His unbodied Presence recreates the “Darshan” before my vision- calm and serene, golden and majestic, eyes reflecting the Unfathomed, smile and gravity on the lips in succession as known and unknown pass by. Are these the hands that have culled from the vineyards of his luminous mind the luscious fruits of knowledge and filled our mortal jars with its sparkling wine? Those the eyes that have passed sleepless nights over our daily tales of joy and woe, our babbles and stupid reasonings? Is this the mouth that has uttered, through an eloquent pen, volumes of speech just to assure one single person of his spiritual destiny, or to promise all help and succour in the battlefield of Yoga?
Many other vivid associations renew the contact of the soul with the veiled summit-source. Who can exhaust these iridescent memories, who can extinguish their flames? Worship and prayer, work and an intense desire for the fulfillment of his mission-the things with which he has inspired our souls, and the path that he has hewn through the virgin forest of our life, are a tale whose beginning only is disclosed, but whose end waits to be revealed by the future development of events. Above all, how much of his inner consciousness he has transfused into our blood through the medium of this correspondence, no one will ever know; indeed, very few will be able even to appraise it correctly. Only those who have been the recipients of that rejuvenating energy of the Divine Consciousness will understand its action, slowly, in the gradual process of self-unfolding. Our heart repeats the marvel of his name and waits his arrival through the very pathway that he has built with so much labor of love and compassion.
(‘Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo’, Nirodbaran, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1969)
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