Among the Great: Conversations with Sri Aurobindo, Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Romain Rolland, Bertrand Russell

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Sri Dilip Kumar Roy has brought together in this book the records of his conversations and correspondence with some of our great contemporaries: Romain Rolland, the artist; Gandhi, the saint; Bertrand Russell, the thinker; Rabindranath Tagore, the poet; and Sri Aurobindo, the seer. The author is the tirthankar, the pilgrim in quest of truth, the seeker of wisdom and he calls his book Among the Great.

Sri Dilip Roy’s teachers, except Bertrand Russell, believe in a Godhead which is the unmanifested principle of all manifestations and in the capacity of human beings to love, know and become assimilated to the Divine nature. To achieve this contact or communion is the final end and purpose of human existence. All these five teachers hold that humanity does not yet exist, that it is laboring, that its ideal defines itself only progressively. Humanity is in the making and requires to be made. This means a new discipline, a new law or dharma which must be followed and the way is profoundly and profusely illustrated in the writings of Sri Aurobindo.

We are greatly indebted to Sri Dilip Kumar Roy for giving us this invaluable book, written with a rare case and charm and ennobled by a deep moral concern for the good of humanity.

I was thirteen then, in 1910, when I came upon Sri Ramkrishna Kathamrita (talks of Sri Ramkrishna Deva) translated subsequently by Swami Nikhilananda under the title, “Gospel of Sri Ramkrishna.” I was indeed fascinated even though I was somewhat sceptical about its authenticity. A cousin of mine contended that it was a faithful record of the Sage’s sayings because Sri Mahendranath Gupta, the chronicler, had kept a meticulous record in his diary of all that he used to hear from day to day, and that his memory was wonderfully reliable. I decided to verify, the more as Sri Mahendranath happened to be al preferre most a neighbour of ours.

So I called on him. I was instantly charmed by his beautiful face: fair, tender and shy, with starry eyes and a rich white beard. He looked almost like a saint and had the voice of one. He asked me kindly who I was. I told him. “Oh, you are D. L. Roy’s son?” he exclaimed in delight. “Blessed—blessed boy, to have such a noble of they! Come; sit down near me here, close to me.” He caressed my face gently with his hands as I made him my obeisance and appraised me with an affectionate scrutiny. “Now tell me, my boy,” he said patting me on my shoulder, “what has made you call on me?”

I blushed and answered shyly: “I have come, sir, to hear about Thakur Ramkrishna and see your diary if you will be so kind as to allow me.”

He flushed with pleasure and shouted: “Prabhash! Prabhash! Just come, run! Look, this little boy has come to hear from me about Thakur, fancy that!” Then turning to me: “Look, how my hair has stood on end!” And I looked in amazement: his body was indeed quivering with ecstasy and every single hair on his hand had stood on end! Also his eyes glistened with unshed tears. I was dumbfounded. “What Gurubhakti!” I said to myself. “Shall I be able to have such a devotion to my Guru when he will appear before me?” “Not likely,” came the instant answer from within, “devotees are born and not made and, besides, you are too sceptical by nature to be able to let faith in, not to mention bhakti” And I mused on the verge of tears till he called me back from my reverie by placing on my lap, gently and reverently, his treasured diaries, bound in morocco, wherein lay recorded, for all times, the jewelled sayings of one who revolutionized the lives of millions all the world over.

(Years later, Aldous Huxley wrote in his Foreword to the Gospel of Sri Ramkrishna: “‘M’ as the author modestly styles himself, was peculiarly qualified for the task. To a reverent love of his master, to a deep and experiential knowledge of the master’s teaching, he added a prodigious memory for the small happenings of each day and a happy gift for recording them in an interesting and realistic way. Making good use of his natural gifts and of the circumstances in which he found himself, ‘M’ produced a book unique, so far as my knowledge goes, in the literature of hagiography.... To read through these conversations ... where discussions of the oddest aspects of the Hindu mythology give place to the most profound and subtle utterance about the nature of Ultimate Reality is in itself a liberal education in humility, tolerance and suspense of judgment.”)

I made my obeisance again to this greatest biographer the world has ever seen. “But before you go,” he said suddenly, “I would like to make you one request.”

“Request!” I stared at him in blank amazement.
“You are born blessed in having such a great father,” he went on. “Promise me you’ll keep a record of his sayings, will you?” I nodded mechanically as he added: “And not only your father’s,” he amended, “but try, whenever you meet a great man, to put on paper any memorable words that may fall from his lips.”

I do not know what impelled him to make such a strange request to a mere schoolboy. Can it be that a hero-worshipper bows a hero- worshipper when he sees one? Or maybe he felt something! I cannot tell. All I can say is that I have never been able to forget my promise to him. This is the genesis of my present book.

I must acknowledge one more debt; to my dear friend, Asit Kumar Gupta, whose remarkable flair for style and the mots justes I have profited by in this edition while he read through the proofs with me.

Sri Dilip Kumar Roy of the Aurobindo Asram, Pondicherry, has brought together in this book the records of his conversations and correspondence with some of our great contemporaries, Romain Rolland, the artist, Gandhi, the saint, Bertrand Russell, the thinker, Rabindranath Tagore, the poet and Sri Aurobindo, the seer. The author, Sri Dilip Kumar Roy, is the tirthankar, the pilgrim in quest of truth, the seeker of wisdom and he calls his book Among the Great.

What is greatness? There does not seem to be any measurable quality of it and yet we recognise it when we meet it. The high minds and brave hearts that press onward to their goal, never doubting, never yielding, have the quality of greatness in them. Rabindranath Tagore says: “In every land of every clime, a few men have crystallised into a nucleus of light, men who have made bold to proclaim that, though isolated, they fear none. You may deride them, persecute them, even kill them, but never will they return blow for blow. For they are pledged in everlasting loyalty and love, to the voice of the Lord seated in the Heart.”

The choice spirits whose considered convictions on many matters of vital interest and urgency are set forth in this volume are men of deep humility and profound insight, who are released from sectional views and have won through to illimitable horizons. They have wrestled with the central problems of life and reached decisive certainties. No one with a spark of spirit in him can help raising those central questions of life and thought which have engaged the attention of the great thinkers of the past. Who am I? From what causes do I derive my existence and to what conditions do I return? What beings surround me and what is my relation to them? Kant stated the chief problems in the form of three questions. What can I know? What ought It do? What may I hope for? The five outstanding personalities have pondered over these last uncertainties and after much toil and tribulation arrived at comprehensive views which rescue them from the strife of competing half-truths and the weariness of unrelated knowledge. A world troubled almost to despair by the tragedy of recurrent wars makes them burn with rage against the lack of contact between the principles of the religion we profess and the social action that should accompany it.