M. P. Pandit

M. P. PANDIT
Symbol of Harmony

“When a man is born with a profound moral sentiment, preferring truth, justice and serving of all men to any honours or any gain, men really feel the superiority. They who deal with him are elevated with joy and hope; he lights up the house or the landscape in which he stands. His actions are poetic and miraculous in their eyes. In his presence or within his influence, everyone believes in, the immortality of the soul.”
–EMERSON

Once in a long, long while, heaven leans down from above and sheds its radiance on earth. The tallest of the mountain summits captures that radiance and transmits it to peaks next in altitude which in turn carry it further down until it reaches the plains. India was bathed in such divine light in the century which stretched from 1850 to 1950. It looked as though, Vasishta, Vamadeva and Bharadwaja, Sankara and Ramanuja, Kalidasa and Kamban and Aryabhatta and Varahamihira had all come here to recapture and re-establish the glories of an yester age and to push the frontiers of knowledge and experience to new, great reaches. The graces and beauty, the subtlety and depth, the might and majesty and the heroism and valour that characterise the life and strivings of a golden epoch were there in abundance. It was an age of Sri Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, of Sri Aurobindo and Sri Rarnana Maharshi, of Sir C. V. Raman and J. C. Bose and of Gandhi and Nehru. It was an epoch of great minds, great deeds, great achievements. Seventy years ago when Sri M. P. Pandit was born, the play of heavenly light on India was at its resplendent best. And he was cradled in this atmosphere of transforming currents of spirituality pouring in from all sides.

In the opening years of the third decade of this century when M. P. Pandit was in his tender teens, his family had played host to Vasishtha Ganapati Muni and Sri Kapali Sastriar. A poet of classic eminence, a scholar who had acquired mastery over Vedas, Upanishads and Tantras and who had made daring and original approaches to unravel the secret of the Vedas, Vasishtha Ganapathi Muni, after years spent in quest of the Divine, reached his heaven at the feet of Bhagawan Sri Ramana Maharshi. The most illustrious of Sri Maharshi’s disciples, he wrote the Sat Darshana, Sri Ramana Gita and several other works expounding the teachings of the Maharshi. Kapali Sastriar who was attracted by the peerless gifts of Vasishtha Ganapati Muni’s mind and his vast erudition and spiritual stature, accepted him as his Guru. And Ganapati Muni imparted to him many secrets of mantra and tantra sadhana and many new approaches to a correct interpretation of Vedas and Upanishads. And he also led him to the feet of Sri Maharshi. The riches he received from them were immense. His illuminating commentaries on many of Ganapati Muni’s monumental works constitute a testament of his adoration of and gratitude for them. Ganapati Muni’s and Sastriar’s stay with the family of M. P. Pandit proved fruitful in many ways. It was from here that Ganapati Muni wrote many classic letters in Sanskrit to Sri Maharshi. It was here again that Sastriar wrote his great commentary on Sat Darshana. And Pandit was, all this time, within the orbit of the aura of these two great rishis.

FIRST LETTER TO SASTRIAR

“The Guru”, Sastriar has said, “can effortlessly spot his potential disciple in a multitude the moment he sees him. Saint Nammalwar once said that the Divine Grace finds the recipient with the nature ease and certainty of a cow recognising her calf among hundreds of cattle.” Sastriar had obviously spotted in Pandit his potential disciple. For, when Pandit was hardly thirteen, he wrote in his first letter to Sastriar about his finding a picture of Sri Aurobindo in his brother’s library. To which Sastriar replied: “I learn that you found the photo of ‘a great soul, a very, very great person–in whom I found God–’ on the 15th of August, his birthday. How did you happen to get it? Don’t you think that there is some secret in it. You can know more of it when you grow.”

UNIQUE RELATIONSHIP

Recalling this incident and this letter, Pandit had recorded later on: “So you wrote in your first letter to me. I was thirteen. I still remember the thrill that ran through my veins at the awakening it brought to me at that time. For when I had stumbled across the photo of Sri Aurobindo in an old tome, ‘Alipore Case’, among the dusty shelves of my brother’s law books in his chamber, I had little idea of my fortune. It was your word that awoke me to the event and all my life thereafter has been a continual unrolling of its “secret” and the fulfilment of your prophecy. Was it not then that you took charge of my incipient, drifting soul? Was it not the beginning, rather the fresh beginning in this life, of a connection that grew up into a unique relationship that has forged a high destiny for a self-confessed weakling that I was.

“But can I truly speak of relation with you. Relationship needs two; my petty life merged in yours long ago. Ever since you brought me to port at the feet of our beloved Mother, my being has had no thought, no breath outside the aura radiating from you. You said you found God in Sri Aurobindo. And you have brought me face to face with God in the Mother who is one with Sri Aurobindo.”

And what was Sastriar’s own experience of Sri Aurobindo and his joining the Ashram meant a totally new life for him. He was very near the culminating stage in the yoga he was practising. He gave it up because he felt that the choice of his being was to participate in the manifestation, not to withdraw from it. His consecration to Sri Aurobindo’s yoga was so complete that every second of his life and every activity was attuned to the central objective of his life. “I have been favoured with a mind, trained for years to keep vigil and not fall into a stupor,” he has said. He was awake and alert every second of his life. Whether it was study or reflection, writing or speech, it had relation to the yoga of Sri Aurobindo. He studied the Vedic, Upanishadic and Tantric thought in the light of this yoga and explained in prose and verse that Sri Aurobindo’s achievements in the field of yoga are only a consummation and fulfilment of the evolving spiritual tradition of India. His writings in English and Sanskrit constitute not merely landmarks in the history of Indian spiritual literature but also a record and reflection of the growing identity between Sastriar and Sri Aurobindo. Sastriar’s commentary on the Rig Veda endowed this relationship with historic significance.

SASTRIAR & SRI AUROBINDO

To Sastriar, Sri Aurobindo was God. To him his word was law. His whole life was one constant and continuous adoration of his Master. He was always aware of his might and magnificence. “When I think of Sri Aurobindo as God,” he has said, “he reminds me of Shiva. He is Shiva with Himalayan grandeur. When I think of him as a poet, He is Vyasa – the same cosmic vision and breath, the same lofty style is there in both.”

As regards how Sastriar regarded the Mother, this is Pandit’s pen picture: “He was conscious every minute of the rare fortune of living at this moment the like of which comes hardly once in a thousand years in the history of the earth. For, he experienced and knew that the Mother is not simply a spiritual personality, a saint; neither a yogin who has arrived at the summit of spiritual realisation. She is not even an avatar of the traditional conception, a power or part of the Divine incarnated in human form. He saw and recognised in her a conscious embodiment of the whole Divine, a living Murti in whom are present all the four personalities of the Adya Shakti spoken of by Sri Aurobindo as presiding over the course of earth’s evolution. He invoked in her person Maheswari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi and Mahasara­swati and got their response in an unmistakable manner.”

HEIR TO SASTRIAR’S EMPIRE

The fostering care of Sastriar and the active transforming Grace of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother chiselled Pandit into his present shape. Today he is the inheritor of the vast intellectual and spiritual domains of Sastriar. He is not merely the heir to the spiritual empire of Sastriar. He is also the meeting point, the Triveni, of three celestial streams: Sri Aurobindo, who, like the Ganga, unites heaven and earth, quenching the evolutionary aspiration of the latter with the transforming waters from the supreme heights, the Mother who, like the Yamuna, has joined Sri Aurobindo to manifest all that he is and has achieved and Sastriar who, like the Saraswati, has merged into the mainstream of the consciousness of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

Pandit is a symbol of harmony. There is not a note of discordance anywhere around him, in any thing around him. The peace he exudes dissolves turbulence of any kind and degree in any mind. All the things around him, from the pencil and the scribbling pad to the wall clock and the books, bespeak order, harmony and peace and are alive in deep quiet, the chiming of the wall clock indicating now and again the depth of the peace. An ordered hurry, a repose in action, an unattached attention to the details of disciplined work and living, an alacrity to seize hold of the right moment to do things, an intense awareness of the value and potentiality of every minute of life–these–a package of Sastriar’s legacy–constitute the outer expression of his inner life. The whole place looks “apparelled in celestial light.”

The tradition of Sadhana, study and reflection built up by Sastriar is maintained by Pandit. Not only is it maintained; it is enlarged, enriched and also embellished. Sastriar drew from the limitless treasures of his vast learning to provide scriptural basis and ing for Sri Aurobindo’s yoga and also to interpret and present the approach and achievements of the Vedic, Upanishadic and Tantric seers in the light of Sri Aurobindo’s thought. They have, therefore, assumed the character, luminosity and validity of scriptures.

PART OF HIS SADHANA

Pandit treads the path chalked out by Sastriar with effortless ease. He draws inspiration, guidance and light from the compact treasure-house of Sastriar’s writings, from the vast ocean of Sri Aurobindo’s works and from the Empyrean waters of the Mother’s writings. Like Sastriar, he writes because it is not merely part of his Sadhana. It is also a mission which Sastriar has trained him for and charged him with. Sastriar had a different readership to appeal to, to convince. Pandit’s readership is different and his approach and treatment, therefore, differ, though the object remains the same.

Down the years, Pandit has evolved for himself a style which is lofty yet limpid, flowing yet compact. And what an extraordi­narily wide range of subjects has he covered! The deities of the Vedas, their personality delineated, their functions defined and their relation to other Gods described, come in for scholarly treatment. The Upanishads, both as source-books of the different systems of thought and as manuals of Sadhana, are subjects of illuminating study. The Tantras, embodying a powerful esoteric tradition and built around elaborate rituals and significant symbols are presented in a new light. The Gita, the favourite scripture of all students, thinkers and sadhaks, unfolds to him new facets of study. And the yoga of Sri Aurobindo is detailed in diverse ways, from diverse angles to suit seekers of diverse needs and development.

SHINING HARVEST

Pandit has produced a shining harvest of over hundred books. The pebbles he has gathered from the shores of the stretching ocean of Mother’s thoughts are presented in four volumes. And these four volumes contain not pebbles but precious stones of different hues and each one of them enlightens, exalts. Religions and philosophies, esoteric traditions in different countries, occult practices, dreams and their significance, life after death, studies in Savitri, the problems faced by sadhaks – these and allied subjects have been covered by Pandit with deep insight, con­vincing logic and assured mastery.

Pandit is no longer just one of the great sadhaks of Sri Aurobindo Ashram. His personality has, during the course of years, developed new dimensions. His mission has acquired a new character. He fulfils this mission by solving the problems of individual seekers from different parts of India and from different countries of the world through personal discussion, of groups through talks at the Sat-Sang gatherings in the Ashram and of the wider aspiring readership through the monthly Service Letter which deals with a variety of subjects with clarity of style and economy of words. The new mission takes him to different parts of India and the world. And in this matter, Pandit has a totally different approach and attitude. Every time he goes out of Pondi­cherry, the Ashram atmosphere accompanies him. “The soul,” writes Emerson “is no traveller; the wise man stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still and shall make men sensible by the expression of his countenance that he goes, the missionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign and not like an interloper or a valet.”

EMINENTLY READABLE

Pandit’s writings, dealing with the progress of earnest voyagers of inner life, stage after stage and through layer after layer of the overlapping physical, vital, and mental sheaths, would evoke a sense of awe, wonder and reverence at his deep perception and mirror-like presentation of the intricate, complex, subtle and exasperatingly stubborn problems faced by the seeker and the way the Divine Grace helps at every point.

It was said of C. P. Scott, the great editor of Manchester Guardian, that he made righteousness readable. It can be said of M. P. Pandit that he has made philosophy and spirituality eminently readable and easily understandable. All salutations to him on the occasion of his 71st birthday.  

(June 14, 1988).