Paul Richard arrived in Pondicherry in
mid-April 1910. He was of course busy with politics - for that was the ostensible
reason for his coming - but he also kept in the forefront his inner quest, and
in fact he was more at home with intellectuals and students of spiritual
philosophy than with politicians and electioneering strategists. Soon after his
arrival, Richard made inquiries: was there any great spiritual adept at
Pondicherry? People shook their heads at first, for in those days Pondicherry
was little more than "a dead city .... It was like a backwater of the sea,
a stagnant pool by the shore"; it was even akin to a "cemetery ...
infested by ghosts and Goblins". An adept, a realised saint, a yogi - at
Pondicherry? Knowing people raised their eyebrows, but at last one of Richard's
friends suddenly remembered. Quite recently, a yogi from North India - a yogi
doubled with a fiery patriot - had taken political asylum there, and perhaps he
would serve M. Richard's purpose! Accordingly, Zir Naidu agreed to fix up an
appointment, and thus it was that Paul Richard met Sri Aurobindo, who had as
yet no home of his own and was staying as a guest in Calve Shankar Chetty's
house. He was in near total seclusion too, and few strangers were permitted to
see him. Richard was one of the rare exceptions, and this game of Destiny was
fraught with consequences which nobody could foresee at the time.
Their talks ranged over a wide spectrum,
from French-Indian politics to the probable future of mankind, and Sri
Aurobindo learnt about Mirra, of her small group of seekers who met weekly in
her room, of her occult and spiritual experiences, and of her dedicated
ministry in the service of the Future. It was believed, we have said, that
Mirra had given Richard several questions to be solved, including the
significance of the symbol of the Cosmic Movement. What is especially significant
is that the same symbol, with certain geometric modifications and the lotus
drawn in outline diagrammatically, was to become Sri Aurobindo's own symbol of
mystic knowledge and yogic action.
We may also conceive the lotus as standing
for the opening of the human Consciousness to the Divine: the bud of aspiration
receives the warmth of the rays of the Sun, and there is the splendour of
efflorescence petal by petal, the pointed aspiration from below being met by
the answering response from above. Indeed, all the mystique and marvel of Yoga.
Sadhana and Siddhi are embodied in the lotus
symbol.
That Sri Aurobindo had made an overwhelming
impression on Richard may be inferred from subsequent happenings. Wherever he
went, he spoke in superlative terms of the Indian Yogi. Writing of "The
Sons of Heaven", Richard said that they were of all religions, and indeed
they transcended religions:
The religions are the paths below, but they
are on the summit; on the summit where all the paths join, where all religions
are accomplished, where Heaven becomes one with the earth.
Richard had traversed the earth looking for
these "Sons of Heaven", and found them too, especially one
"greater than all, a solitary, the Chosen of the future".5 An even less veiled reference to Sri
Aurobindo occurred in the course of a speech he made to a Japanese audience:
The hour is coming of great things, of great
events, and also of great men, the divine men of Asia. All my life I have
sought for them across the world, for all my life I have felt they must exist
somewhere in the world, that this world would die if they did not live. For
they are its light, its heat, its life. It is in Asia that I found the greatest
among them - the leader, the hero of tomorrow. He is a Hindu. His name is
Aurobindo Ghose.
There are no qualifications here, and many
years later, when Dilip Kumar Roy met him in France and opened up a
conversation on Sri Aurobindo, Richard spoke again with the same conviction and
vigour of phrasing, and with a more detailed particularity:
I have not met his peer in the whole world.
To me he is the Lord Shiva incarnate.... If Aurobindo came out of his seclusion
today he would overtop all others as a king of kings. But he has chosen to
decline his country's invitation to resume his leadership - a renunciation I
look upon as the most convincing proof of his spiritual royalty....
Sri Aurobindo would have risen to the top in
any walk of life - as a philosopher, poet, statesman or leader of thought. But
he spurned these lures - why? Only because his vocation was to be an instrument
of God missioned to fulfil a human destiny which no other master-builder could
have achieved.
To the question "What exactly is Sri
Aurobindo's ideal?", Richard gave the answer:
It is that Man must not rest content with
his humanity, however brilliant or many-splendored. He has to win through to a
new vision and follow it up to reach a peak his predecessors never dared to
assault. Nietzsche had indeed heard the call- the call to transcend
humanity.... But the mistake he made, as Aurobindo has pointed out, is that one
who is going to fulfil humanity is not the superman of power but the Superman
of Love who expresses his love through power. Love is necessary because when it
is absent Man becomes not a god but a titan. But power is also necessary
because without its support he can't help but fail to translate his ideal of
Love into a real f1ower-fulfillment in the wilderness of life. This is the Call
Aurobindo has heard - a call that once heard can be unheard no more. But you
cannot hear such a fateful Call till you are chosen by the One on high who
leads us on. It is He who has coronated Aurobindo as His Messiah. So march on
he must, for harking to His Call has transformed him into what he is today - a
herald of the Power that never came down to earth, though it was destined.
(‘On
The Mother’, Chapter 4 – “Agenda for Future”, K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar, Sri
Aurobindo Society, Pondicherry)
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