Written by Niranjan Guha Roy  at Sri Aurobindo Ashram  in 1980

When I first came to the Ashram, to settle down in 1946, I had  one single clear aspiration: to realise the Divine.  I was aware of some absolute Being all around me, infinite and eternal, but I had no contact with It.  Then, by the grace of the Mother Divine, I followed a dangerous and extremely challenging path of yoga.  There were periods of light, followed by periods of the darkest night, revolt and despair, all that was hidden in my nature was thrown out like an erupting volcano.  Often it seemed that I had strayed away from the path of yoga caught up in the whirlpools of passion, violence and ambition.  Often I had the feeling that one more step in that direction and I would go up in an explosion and smoke.  Then gradually I could see my way through all this terrible upheaval for the darkest night was followed by the most glorious dawn each time.  The comforting Presence, the smile and the tender guiding hand were always there to take me over the most unfriendly countries peopled with dangerous visible and invisible beings with their death dealing fascination and fierce opposition to everything divine.  Slowly the veil broke down revealing the Supreme Godhead in all forms, in all beings, everything became just a mask for the great Player.  These high moments would last for a short while and then I would fall back again into the dark prison of human consciousness.  There is no sin or act in the world, no perversity, no diabolic act, nothing that happens here that I did not find in myself.  On the other hand, the Power was constantly at work in my consciousness, in my awareness, in my body with an ever increasing intensity though there had been periods, long ones where its action was not perceptible.  Even this action of the Power was a foreign sensation in the body.  It could be sometimes very painful and agonisingly unbearable.  At other times or most of the times, it was like a quiet flow of a liquid force from above which penetrates the entire body, the nerves and the cells.  The lower part of the body still seemed like a stone, impervious to the action of the Force.  In short the satyr had yet to be fundamentally transformed.  On the positive side, there was a simple and  constant experience.   There  is  only the  Divine.   One  infinite eternal Being forever manifesting Itself in the time and space movement.

The praying animal

When we go behind the relativity of forms we find the eternal Mother Divine.  Hers is this world-play of delight.  The vision recedes in the background but comes back with a greater intensity with new dimensions of insight.  One might say I am on the threshold of an entirely new Country, a new World.  This is just the elementary beginning, the birth into a new consciousness like a newborn baby, which has yet to grow and manifest its latent divine powers and capacities.

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