812. Punya Bhoomi

Pilgrimage is the pious privilege of a heart that adores the sacred soil of a Saint. Man, when he is favoured with fairly good luck in life, finds himself condemned to comfortable middle class. Those who have a flame inside look on such a life as a failure. An American was an editor of an international management quarterly based in London for fifteen years. He came to Pondicherry in pursuit of his management projects. That gave him an opening to publish four books on his subject. Those who hosted him were devotees. He found they were reticent about The Mother and Sri Aurobindo.

He wished to hear of the Master. A long explanation ended in his summarising some chapters of The Life Divine. He said, "The concepts are unfamiliar to me. It took three hours to read and summarise one chapter." The devotee who heard him had a private joke. It had taken him three weeks to do the same. The American was an intellectual. He could comprehend the contents. The Indian was an Indian Ph.D. He rarely followed the arguments in the book. He wondered that the American was sorry it had taken three hours. Arguments in The Life Divine are not incomprehensible to those who possess an academic training. To go beyond that needs spiritual insight. The American journalist summarised a few chapters while he was here. He went home. At one time, he renewed his work with The Life Divine chapters. He took three days to do one chapter. Another person from Europe who was here for thirty days spending all his time discussing these ideas went home and forgot the book itself.

Should someone read, summarise, takes notes of, deliver lectures on or relate to The Life Divine in some fashion, he deserves our congratulations. Reading two or three pages evokes endless sleep. All mental energies are sapped. A muni sat before Ramana Maharshi and wrote a thousand verses in Sanskrit on Uma, at the end of which the silent monument asked, "Have you written all that I said?" He was SILENT but his silence was creatively eloquent. One can summarise a chapter here in Pondicherry in three hours, but not so outside this little town. Pondicherry is the Punya Bhoomi where the impossible is possible. It is a sacred soil. Still, in 1972 Mother said, "Do your yoga from where you are. Don't come here. Here all your difficulties will be magnified." One more contradiction of Hers. Shiva is a God, but the cobra is on his neck. We cannot go near him. We can only worship him from afar. Pondicherry carries the spiritual atmosphere. Universities are enveloped in an academic atmosphere. The boy who has enjoyed in a foreign university all the material affluence comes home and finds the home sweeter than any other thing. It is a psychological cosiness that can never be given by material splendour. Spirit is exalted. Its height is inviting. Its charms are irresistible. Still, sometimes close proximity is forbidding. It becomes an adventure. Always it is enchanting.