Stories from the Ashram
Dilip Roy: Spiritual Child of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo
Once Dilip Roy was feeling disheartened about certain experiences at the Ashram. Then in the evening he went to the seashore, the Bay of Bengal. There a foreigner was meditating. The man came to Dilip Roy and said, “How long have you been here?”He said he had been there for 25 years.
“Please tell me something about the Mother and Sri Aurobindo,” the foreigner said.
On that day, Dilip was so discouraged, but he started saying such nice things about the Ashram and the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. So he wrote to Sri Aurobindo. He said, “I’m such a hypocrite. The whole day I was so disheartened. Then when this European came, I told him such nice things about you and the Ashram. What have I said? I am such a hypocrite.”
Sri Aurobindo said, “No, at that time your vital, your demanding vital, left. Your soul was able to come to the fore. When the soul comes to the fore, at that time we are so good. Your soul was able to come to the fore, and it pushed aside your demanding vital. So you did the right thing.”
Sri Aurobindo was so wise. Sri Aurobindo said, “That is the right thing.” It happens to many disciples. The day you are discouraged or suffering from self-doubt or doubting the Master or your spiritual life, on that day somebody comes and asks you about your spiritual life. In this way God brings your divinity forward, and you say such nice things. You are not a hypocrite. God wants your divinity to come to the fore. Again, the roguish mind will tell you, “Look, what a rogue you are. You are all criticism, and now you have become such a saint.”
16 September 2002 Sri Chinmoy Centre
23. In Sri Chinmoy’s book dedicated to Dilip Roy, entitled My Dilip-Da-Adoration (New York: Agni Press, 2007), he refers to “Dilip Kumar Roy, the Golden Voice,” as one of his “heroes,” and relates several stories illustrating Dilip’s kindness in encouraging the young Chinmoy in his poetic endeavours.↩
As noted earlier in this volume, Dilip Roy, the famous singer of Indian lyrical songs and Bengali devotional songs, lived in the Ashram from 1928 to 1953. Sri Aurobindo called Dilip his dearest son. Dilip was Sri Aurobindo’s darling, dearer than the dearest. Sri Aurobindo said Dilip was Sri Aurobindo’s son in a previous incarnation.↩
When Dilip Roy was visiting New York while traveling on tour in the mid-1960s, the Indian Consul General in New York assigned Sri Chinmoy to go and greet India’s famed Golden Voice at the airport and personally escort him back to the Consulate, where Sri Chinmoy was a trusted staff member at the time. The conversation in the limo on the way back to Manhattan was filled with fond reminiscences of the Ashram and inquiries by Dilip-da about Sri Chinmoy’s family members.↩
