Uncertainty of Friendship

Whoever enacts my play The Descent of the Blue, please do not add anything. Memorise or read out the lines, but do not add anything please. With other plays, you can add some lines, but The Descent of the Blue is so sacred for me. When I wrote it, before every scene I used to meditate and meditate and meditate. I am very grateful to those who do not add anything and are sticking to the original.

The other day I was asked a question, and I said, repeatedly, on earth there is nothing certain, nothing certain. I made it very clear that in this world nothing is certain. God knows the ultimate, but with our human eyes, with our human heart, we get puzzled when things go wrong. Do you have a copy of The Descent of the Blue here? Let me read out the speech that C.R. Das gave to the court on the day of Sri Aurobindo’s release from jail.

Sri Chinmoy reads from the book: “My appeal to you is this, that long after this turmoil, this agitation will have ceased, long after he is dead and gone, he will be looked upon as the poet of patriotism, as the prophet of nationalism and the lover of humanity. Long after he is dead and gone, his words will be echoed and re-echoed not only in India but across distant seas and lands.”¹²

This was his prophetic utterance. They had such friendship, such admiration for each other. Alas, it ended. C.R. Das came to see Sri Aurobindo, and he wanted to realise God. Sri Aurobindo said, “If you want to realise God, then you have to give up politics. Politics and spirituality do not go together. I have realised God because I gave up politics, so the same thing applies to you. You have to give up politics if you want to realise God.”

C.R. Das did not see eye to eye with Sri Aurobindo. Then he found a Guru who was infinitely, infinitely inferior to Sri Aurobindo. I am not saying this because Sri Aurobindo was my Guru. That Guru said that politics and spirituality can go together. C.R. Das was very, very happy that he could be in the vortex of politics and at the same time practise spirituality. That is not enough. He begged Mahatma Gandhi to be the disciple of that Guru, but Gandhi said, “No, I cannot be his disciple, but I can say nice things about him.” There is a picture of C.R. Das with folded hands watching his Guru with utmost devotion, next to Gandhi’s commentary.

Earlier C.R. Das had begged Sri Aurobindo to translate one of his books from Bengali into English. The name of the book is Sagar Sangit. His poems Sri Aurobindo translated so beautifully. I cannot remember the actual figure, but C.R. Das had such appreciation and gave a large sum of money to Sri Aurobindo for translating that book from Bengali into English. A few years later C.R. Das said the translation was no good because Sri Aurobindo was not familiar with Bengali literature and so forth. The same fellow a few years earlier had such appreciation. This is called human appreciation. Then C.R. Das translated the book himself and printed it. This is what happened with Sri Aurobindo and C.R. Das. They had such friendship and admiration, but on earth nothing is certain, nothing is certain.

22 February 2007 Chiang Mai, Thailand