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When I look back – I don’t know how to describe this feeling – it has been like a kite hovering in the sky, the kite we fly. So many things have happened. But behind all those, transcending everything, what remained vivid in my mind was the feeling of hovering in the sky, just like a kite. Looking back now I can call it the spiritual undercurrent, the adhyātma-bhāva, that I inherited. We can also call it an inborn vairagya – not clinging to anything, not clinging to anybody.

On the occasion of his 60th birthday, Nutan Swamiji shared deeply personal reflections on the qualities and traits he had inherited, which were instrumental to his spiritual growth and fruition.

मदीय हृदयाकाशे चिदानन्दमयो गुरु: ।
उदेतु सततं सम्यक् अज्ञानतिमिरारुण: ॥

madīya hṛdayākāśe cidānandamayo guru: ।
udetu satataṃ samyak ajñānatimirāruṇa: ॥

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Generally, for a spiritual sādhakā, the real birthday is the Deeksha-day – the day of spiritual initiation. For, the initiation puts him on the path of realizing his real identity. The change is so drastic that it is like the beginning of a new life, like the birth of his real Self. So, it is more apt for a sādhakā to observe, if at all, the deekshā-day than the birthday of the body-mind personality.

I too have been always discouraging the observance of my birthday. Particularly in the Ashram, we have been insisting not to observe any birthday other than that of Poojya Swamiji. But today, when I was told that some devotees from Thrissur are coming early in the morning to observe my sixtieth birthday in a very simple manner, and I have to speak a few words after the Pushpa-samarpanam and Prabhāta-raśmiḥ, I thought I would talk about some fundamental hereditary notes of my personality, which have been conducive to my spiritual sādhanā.

So, instead of speaking about how Baba and Poojya Swamiji have transformed my life completely and taken it towards fulfillment, I would rather speak on the qualities and personality traits I received by dint of sheer heredity, for which the gratitude is due to the physical birth, to the parents and their lineage, and perhaps to the civilization and culture of our country.

Although Self-realization or the Knowledge of the Ultimate Truth is the same for all sādhakās and Knowers, each sādhakā, each Knower, is different from the others in life and interactions, in individual traits and qualities. The most striking illustration that comes to my mind is the contrast between Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda. They were not only great spiritual personalities; they were Guru and his closest Sishya. But in their life and interactions, were they not poles apart? So much so that many of the brother disciples of Swami Vivekananda thought that he was not following the direction and guidance given by their Gurudev!

Spiritual sādhanā purifies the mind and intelligence by eliminating desires, and the Knower becomes natural and transparent. He works in tune with his personality, his characteristic qualities, and the needs of the society, the people around. That is why the life and activities of each Knower are different.

Sixty years is not a short time, of which may be about 56 years I remember quite well. I do not remember all the details. But what I remember very clearly is that there has always been a vivid fundamental unchanging tone underlying everything in my life – behind all thoughts and activities.

When I look back – I don’t know how to describe this feeling – it has been like a kite hovering in the sky, the kite we fly. So many things have happened; so many things I have done also – some are quite strange, adventurous, and not very common or usually done by people. But I don’t find any of those to be important at all. Those were passing like dreams, not leaving much impression on my mind. But behind all those, transcending everything, what remained vivid in my mind was the feeling of hovering in the sky, just like a kite. Looking back now I can call it the spiritual undercurrent, the adhyātma-bhāva, that I inherited. We can also call it an inborn vairagya – not clinging to anything, not clinging to anybody.

Today in the recorded Prabhata-raśmiḥ talk played just now (Poojya Swamiji was in Chennai on Oct 05), Poojya Swamiji was talking about making everything in life spiritual. Perhaps that is what I had been doing throughout, almost unknowingly. That has been the fundamental tone in my life.

Right from the beginning, I don’t think I ever had any ambition. I did not have any drive either. Ma often says that because I am involved in construction, I am running around. If construction work had not been there, I would have passed the time sleeping. Even then I would not have written what some people around are asking me to write. I don’t know whether I would have been sleeping, but it is a fact that I don’t have the drive. For editing others’ articles, I don’t need any drive, because it comes as a compulsion for publishing books or the journal.

Even in school or college, I did not have the ambition or drive to perform well in the examination. I have never studied for examinations. It was a constant point of contention between me and my father, that knowing everything well, I was not performing well in the exam, because I was not given to exam-oriented preparation. I was slow in writing. Sitting in the examination hall I would sometimes re-write the same answer trying to present it with more precision, brevity and order. Consequently, I would mostly end up answering only four questions in place of six!

Throughout my school, college and university education, I was given to self-study. I used to prepare very good notes – sometimes for the most difficult chapters – which would help my close friends to perform very well in examinations. They used to say that. But the same notes would not help me much because of lack of exam-oriented preparation. Since I had to appear for the examinations, I used to go, write, and come back. Fairly good marks I got generally.

Always given to doing things naturally as they would come up, nothing used to impress my mind deeply, except that overwhelming feeling of floating in infinitude. Along with that, there used to be a constant enquiry about the ultimate Truth. If I remember correctly, I had this enquiry even when I was five or so. I had the enquiry, but I never felt any bondage as such, from any worldly possession or relationship.

Because of this fundamental note, this constant undercurrent, nothing would interest me unless I could relate it to the inner personality – unless it produced a feeling of expansion, elevation, or unification. I have read very few books. Plenty of books were there. My brothers and sisters, my friends, used to read a lot of books written by famous authors. Most of the books, if I tried, I could read only a few pages – in the beginning, then here and there, and maybe a few pages at the end.

Only a few books I have read fully with a lot of interest. Those were books, in which I could relate something to my fundamental note. I have derived a lot of inspiration from those writings. Unless I was able to relate to something deep in my personality, I was not interested in it. Much later, when I became interested in people, in watching and understanding the fundamental forces working in the society or the world, I started reading many things, especially the newspaper, with deep interest.

As soon as I started studying Physics, I fell in love with it. Oh, what a joy it was! People have a lot of misunderstanding about science studies. Study of Physics has always given rise to impersonality and humility in my mind. I would not like to study a science subject that could not be related to deeper harmony and the concept of unity in diversity. So, studying Physics was verily a spiritual sādhanā for me. Physics used to give me the joy of expansion, the joy of vairāgya. Now I can say that this joy is essentially not different from spiritual joy.

Spiritual joy results from inner expansion. In fact, all kinds of true joy arise from inner expansion that takes us closer to our One Universal Identity. If we study a subject to understand Nature and the way we perceive it, if we are able to integrate the fundamental philosophical concepts of Physics into our vision of life and the world, then it will certainly grow impersonality and impartiality in our mind. And that is vairagya in essence.

Even spiritual books I have not studied much. The books narrating mystic powers of great Masters, or presenting pedantic analysis of Vedantic philosophy, I could not read. I was fond of literature dealing with the intricacies of sādhanā, or inspiring life stories of Masters where one can get in touch with their lofty qualities.

Another aspect of my personality I would like to mention here. I don’t think I ever had any abhāva-bodha – a sense of lack or insufficiency. Moving through everything in the world quite naturally, the mind was always looking for something beyond; it never felt any want – either material or emotional.

This lack of abhāva-bodha might be the reason that I have not quarrelled with anybody for anything. There were many occasions to feel troubled or even tortured by colleagues or hostel roommates. There have been many strange and interesting episodes which I may share some other time. But I have calmly carried on without getting affected – without saying anything or even looking for a remedial measure.

That is why I could outlive some of the things very close to my heart. I was intensely given to photography, but when I found that further refinement and improvement in the pursuit was not possible with the vintage camera somebody had presented to my father, I left photography. I did not ask for a better camera from my father. Again, when I went to stay in the undergraduate hostel, I was seriously pursuing tablā. Within a week after coming to the hostel, one day I found my instruments badly scratched and damaged by my mischievous friends. That was the end of my musical career. I never enquired who had played that hard joke.

I remember, whenever my father, mother, brothers or sisters – I was the youngest child and very much loved by people also – would say or do anything I did not like, I would simply get away from the house. And during food time, when mother would not be able to find me, she would send my sisters to look for me in the nearby forest or a roadside culvert. They knew that I would be found there! Seeing them I would coolly come back and take food.

Most of the time, the evenings I used to spend, sitting alone in smasāna (cremation ground), or burial ground, or on a hillock. During my college days, many times I had gone on parivrajana (wandering) – along the seashores, or in the forests and hilly areas. I used to move alone so that I could be in the exclusive company of Nature.

I think I should stop now. Today being the physical birthday, I thought I would speak only about the physical heredity. I have not said anything about the spiritual life, particularly after Initiation. In fact, the fundamental note I have spoken about, that feeling of hovering in the sky – a full understanding and clarity about it dawned only after the spiritual Initiation.

A few days after Initiation, when I wrote to Baba about some spiritual experiences I was undergoing, he wrote back (translated from Bengali): “Like a dead Babul tree (Acacia) standing on the bank of a river, go on seeing, just as a witness. So many boats are passing by – some carrying a marriage party while some other carrying a dead body. The dead Babul does not respond to or get involved in anything passing by.”

Very soon my hovering infinitude dawned with overwhelming reality, taking shape of a spiritual experience. Twelve years later, when we came back to Kharagpur after our first visit to the Ashram, our Poojya Swamiji’s sannidhi, the sākshi-bhāva (witness experience) enfolded the whole being. I told Swamiji: “I am moving around in the Institute (IIT – Kharagpur) doing everything, but I feel the body doing all these is not mine.”

But the full understanding and integration of this fundamental note took some more time after we renounced and came to the Ashram. The kite, floating in the sky, takes time to become the sky itself.

5th October 2009

From Vicharasethu—Nov 2009