THE MOUNTAIN PATH OCTOBER 1964

[Guest guest]

How I Came to the Maharshi - IV

By Dilip Kumar Roy

 

 

 

Dilip Kumar Roy is known throughout India as a famous singer, apart from which

he himself composes songs and writes poems, especially devotional songs and

poems to Sri Krishna. For many years he was an inmate of Sri Aurobindo Ashram at

Pondicherry. Now he is the head of the Hari Krishna Mandir at Poona where, aided

by his foremost disciple, Indira Devi, he acts as guru to the many Krishna

bhaktas who come. This account of his visit to the Maharshi is taken on his own

invitation, from his book The Flute Calls Still, reviewed elsewhere in this

issue.

 

 

 

It happened in 1945, I think. I was still living as an inmate of Sri Aurobindo

Ashram, even though I had come to feel a growing sense of isolation and begun to

surmise that I was a misfit there.

 

My sadness and sense of dereliction only deepened with time till what little

peace I had left me completely and I felt all but stranded. But I need not go

into the why and wherefore of it all; I would plunge straight into what keeps me

company as one of the most unforgettable experiences I have ever had. It does,

as it was a landmark in my life.

 

After having been for weeks in the grip of a deep gloom, I … wrote straight to

Sri Aurobindo. He wrote back at once giving me the needed permission, which I

deeply appreciated.

 

I took the train to Tiruvannamalai where Ramana Maharshi lived. But as the train

rolled on I felt a deep and growing malaise ... How could I win the needed peace

at the feet of one who was not my Guru when I could not attain it at the feet of

my revered Guru, Sri Aurobindo, whose wisdom and greatness my heart had never

once questioned.

 

Well, I alighted at the station in a mixed frame of mind...

 

But it was too late then, for I was already at the gates of Ramanashram. How

could I return now, after having crossed the Rubicon? Besides, I was driven by

an irresistible urge to meet in the flesh the great Yogi who — unlike my own

preceptor, Sri Aurobindo — was available to all at all hours. And, to crown all,

I wanted to test the Maharshi for myself and see whether he, with his magic

compassion, could lift me out of the deep slough I had landed in.

 

But he did, and against my worst prognostications at that, so that I could not

possibly explain it away as a figment of autosuggestion. I mean — if there were

any auto-suggestion here it could only be against and not in favour of my

receiving the goods. But, as the Lord's ways are not ours, I won an experience I

could never even have dreamed of. So listen with bated breath.

 

I can still recapture the thrill of the apocalyptic experience that came to me

to charm away as it were the obstinate gloom which had settled on my chest like

an incubus. But, alas, words seem so utterly pale and banal the moment you want

to describe an authentic spiritual experience which is vivid, throbbing and

intense. Still I must try.

 

I entered a trifle diffidently a big, bare hall where the Maharshi reclined

morning and evening among his devotees and the visitors who happened to call.

Accessible to all, the great saint sat on a divan looking straight in front at

nothing at all. I was told he lived thus all the time, in sahaja samadhi, that

is a constant super-conscious state. I was indeed fascinated by what I saw, but

I will not even attempt to portray with words how overwhelmed I was (and why) by

what met my eyes.

 

For what is it after all that I saw? Just a thin, half-naked man, sitting

silently, gazing with glazed eyes at the window.

 

Yet there was something in him that spoke to me — an indefinable beauty of poise

and a plenitude that cannot be limmed with words. I wrote afterwards a poem1 on

him that may give a better idea, but I must not get ahead of my story.

 

I touched his feet and then, without a word, sat down near him on the floor and

meditated, my heart aheave with a strange exaltation which deepened by and by

into an ineffable peace which beggars description. My monthold gloom and

misgivings, doubts and questionings, melted away like mist before sunrise, till

I felt I was being cradled on the crest of a flawless peace in a vast ocean of

felicity and light.

 

I have to use superlatives here as I am trying to describe as best I can my

experience of an ineffable bliss and peace which lasted for hours and hours. I

can well remember how deep was the gratefulness I felt towards the Maharshi on

that sleepless and restful night as I reclined, bathed in peace, in an easy

chair under the stars at which I gazed and gazed in an ecstasy of tears.

 

And I recalled a pregnant saying of his:

 

" Just be. All is in you. Only a veil stands between. You have only to rend the

veil and then, well, just be. "

 

I had found this favourite remark of his rather cryptic heretofore. But in that

moment I understood for the first time and wrote a poem in homage to the

Maharshi.1

_________________________

1 - This poem has already been published in The Mountain Path of April 1964, p,

87.

 

 

 

To Sri Ramana Maharshi*

By Dilip Kumar Roy

 

 

 

A face that's still, like silent cloudless blue,

And eyes that even as stars drip holiness

Won from a source beyond our ken — a new

Messenger Thou, in this age, of a grace

 

Men ache for and, withal, are terrified

When it shines near — wan puppets of fool senses,

That would disown the soul's faith — even deride

The Peace they crave yet fear — for Life's false dances

 

And siren rhythms beguile the multitude!

And there they woo Time's whirls and wheels — for what?

At best a reeling moment — an interlude

Of half-lit laughter dogged by tears — of Fate

 

O Son of Dawn! who only knowest the Sun,

And through His eye of Light see'st all that lies

Revealed — a flawless plenitude which none

But Son's own children ever might surmise

 

For only the chosen few so far have won

The Truth that shines beyond world's wounds and cries

Who see Thee throned in high dominion

Of Self's invulnerable Verities.

_____________

 

* From the Golden Jubilee Souvenir, Sri Ramanasramam, 1946.