EWS #48: Narad’s early days in Auroville (3)
Oct 05, 2019
Topics:
Narad (0:00:00):
Namaste. Good evening and welcome to our continuing series, Evenings with Sraddhalu. Namaste Sraddhalu.
Sraddhalu (0:00:43):
Namaste. We are continuing with the discussion we had the last two occasions with Narad about his early life in Auroville and as an early Aurovillian, one of the first Aurovillians, the kind of circumstances in which he and others used to work and the difficulties they faced, the challenges and the help that they received from the Mother in every way. We have had two very interesting discussions already and in this discussion we will focus much more on Narad's experiences with the flowers. Would you like to start?
Narad (0:01:48):
I'll start with a brief reading of what Mother has written on the flower that spoke to me so beautifully and I wanted to collect every variety, every species and hybrid that I could find and that is Plumeria and Mother's name ‘Psychological Perfection’. Mother says, so here's my proposal. We put, because she speaks of the five psychological perfections and she says, “we put Surrender first at the top of the list. That is, we accept what Sri Aurobindo has said, that to do the integral yoga, one must first resolve to surrender entirely to the Divine. There is no other way. This is the way. But after that, one must have the five psychological virtues, five psychological perfections, and we say that these perfections are:
Sincerity or Transparency
Faith or Trust (Trust in the Divine, naturally)
Devotion or Gratitude
Courage or Aspiration
Endurance or Perseverance
One form of endurance is faithfulness. Faithfulness to one's resolution. Being faithful. One has taken a resolution, one is faithful to one's resolution. This is endurance. There you are. If one persists, there comes a time when one is victorious”.
So, I began my search for the plants of ‘psychological perfection’ from all over the world. I made contacts with growers, with societies. There was the beginning of a Plumeria Society of America in Houston, Texas. And the lady used to write to me and ask me all kinds of questions because in Houston, although it was pretty much tropical to subtropical most of the time, when a cold front would come down from Dallas and the north, it could freeze everything and a plumeria cannot take any freezing temperatures. So she had many questions. And I began collecting. We would take trips to Bangalore, Chennai, Calcutta, Delhi, and everywhere I would ask, may I have a piece of this one, may I have a cutting of this one, because the psychological perfection comes very easily from cuttings. You only have to let the base of it dry and then put it in sand and it will root. And I found other ways to root them because the sand sometimes, when you take it out, it pulls the roots. So I found this product, which was a waste product at the time, and you all know about it, coir, coir dust. But the coir had to be completely decomposed, or fungus would be created and it would kill everything. It had to be brown and almost a compost. Well, they would put the coconut husks in the backwaters and it would eat away at the shell and then they would have the coir. And the coir was very well broken down because they used the larger pieces to make mattresses and the like. So I would get that free. It was a waste product and it was the best thing I could do use for all kinds of cuttings. They just performed so beautifully. So I began to collect these extraordinary plumerias, psychological perfection. Theres many white forms, many colored forms, many with multi colors, different sizes, and we're discovering more and more every year. In fact, a small country like the Dominican Republic, they've discovered five or six new varieties. And in Haiti, another variety. So, the world of Plumerias has opened up, and people always think of it as a Hawaiian species. It's not. It's from the Caribbean. And yet the Hawaiian people took it upon themselves to honor this species and create more hybrids than any other country. So when I came back to America, I was asked to be the president of the Plumeria Society of America and eventually was made a life member and then would give regular talks in Southern California to the Southern California Plumeria Society, where there were very adventurous people. One man called Amphol, from Thailand, I believe, developed grafting systems. And he would graft on very strong rootstock the most delicate varieties. And so, plumerias that could not survive on their own roots were very, very happy. When I lived in Auroville, I had a gardening class for children age 5 to 13. They would come every Wednesday. And one boy at the age of 5 grafted a rainbow tree using 5 or 6 different varieties of Plumerias, using a grafting knife, tape and everything. It was a wonderful period for me with these children. Well, I started to become known as the Plumeria man all over the world. And people would come from Thailand and I gave them a complete collection and now they have hundreds of acres devoted to the Plumeria, to psychological perfection. You cannot imagine what that vibration means. They only know it as a plumeria, but Mother has given it the greatest significance, psychological perfection, just what I read. So, then people started coming from all over the country. They would come from Kerala and other places and when I was no longer here they would say, 'oh, we brought you a few hibiscus, we would like some Plumerias', and then they would go back to the states and everyone have a complete collection. But I never bothered if people stole as long as I had the stock because when a nurseryman steals the cutting, he's not going to let it die and he's going to reproduce it and so the chain continues.
Narad (0:09:47):
The next experience, one day I said, we must have more Prayer, Prayer is so important. And ‘Prayer’ is the name that Mother gave to the Zephyranthes. Zephyr is a gentle wind and it is also known as the rain flower. Zephyranthes only blooms about three days after a rain. And it will come into full bloom for a few days and then be gone until the next rain. So I started, I joined various clubs, such as a bulb society in Washington State and I got in touch with many many other people. I started buying these bulbs of Zephyranthes and I amassed a collection of 86 different varieties and shared them with people in the ashram, people in Auroville, so that nothing could be lost. And I made an experiment one day. I said, you know, if they only bloom after a rain, Why don't I do some rainwater harvesting and see if I can water them every few weeks and it worked. I could have prayer in bloom, five, six, eight times a year. It was just amazing how they would respond. So those were the two main species that I concentrated on. Of course, we wanted to grow all the varieties that Mother had given their messages to and we would concentrate in different areas, mix plants. We had Purity, the jasmine flower, and there's a double one called the Grand Duke. Have any of you seen the fully double variety? Well, it is the most amazing flower. It is so fragrant, and if you put two or three flowers in a tin of tea, you will have the most beautiful jasmine tea you've ever tasted, and we do it regularly. So we worked on all of these introductions and amassed quite a few. I think I've told you about the flower shows that we held last time. We had one year almost 400 flowers for that, for Mother's birthday. It was around 1973.
Sraddhalu (0:12:52):
Can you speak about the flower shows? We did not go into that.
Narad (0:12:55):
We didn't? Oh my gosh. Well, I just met a young couple, two friends. Her name is Poonam and his name is Ravi and they are going to do a flower show this year on on Mother's Birthday. They tried the first one last year with mixed results but not bad. So they've asked me to help. The way we did our flower show was an experience in collaboration. We involved everyone who wished to help and that made it a very special experience. There was a place called Golden Bridge Pottery run by Ray and Debra and they would make the vases for us, beautiful little vases, larger ones and then we found someone who could do calligraphy and they would write out the significances and my wife Mary Helen would do the flower arrangements. All the boys in the nursery would bring out the tables and beautiful clothes. Bus after bus after bus would come from the ashram and I have a photograph of Nirodbaran and Champaklal with me at one of the flower shows.
[Sraddhalu] This is in Auroville?
[Narad] In Auroville, at the Matrimandir gardens nursery. And you were too young, I think, at that time. But your mother may have come, I don't know. We held it for about two or three days, as long as the flowers would hold up. Well, people would come from all over India to see that show. The vibration of all those flowers and the weather of course was always perfect and the nursery was cleaned so well by all the boys who work for us and they were all part of it. There was no separation of Tamil and Western or other cultures. We had many, many different people. We had people from Switzerland, from Holland, from America, from Germany, so many different cultures helping us. And that's something I hope that some of you, if you come back around Mother's birthday, could have that experience of the flower show. And now I'll go on to talk a little bit about some of the experiences I have had with the flowers. You know I feel very strongly within, that as a result of the descent of the supermind, things are rapidly moving towards greater and greater beauty. It's often difficult for us to see because there's so much darkness, seeming darkness in the world, but I see it in the flowers more than anything. Transformation. Does anyone know the transformation flower? One? Okay. It's called Millingtonia Hortensis and it's the Indian cork tree and it's famous all over India. It has white flowers that hang down, fall on the ground and carpet the ground in the early morning. Well, transformation used to be a very seasonal flower. It would bloom for a few months and then be finished. Now we can find a flower every month of the year, almost every day of the year. That's how rapidly rapidly the flowers are changing because Mother says their whole life is an aspiration for light. Another flower that I've seen and become very close to is Mind. Mind, is a unique flower because it's completely poisonous. The leaves are poisonous, the flowers are poisonous, the fruit is poisonous and unfortunately often used by the village ladies to commit suicide. It's so poisonous. But at the base of every flower there is a drop of the most delightful honey you ever tasted. So if you are adventurous enough, take a fresh flower, at the very base of the flower, just taste that honey. For me, that's the mind. There are other flowers. Protection, the bougainvillea. Mother named many many different colors of bougainvillea and she named them according to the range of colors which she describes as having a series, so the dark reds are matter, the brighter reds are physical, the lavender and purple are the vital, the pink is the psychic and yellow is the mind and of course when we go above the mind, not in the protection of bougainvillea, but with many other flowers, we get into the blues and golds and orange of the Supramental and Sri Aurobindo and Krishna's flowers. Another flower that I've seen is the Zinnia. Now I know many of you know Zinnias, its the famous flower love in India. Mother has named it Endurance. I have seen Zinnias in the desert in California without rain for three months blooming like anything. That is a sign again that these flowers are opening to the new world to the new consciousness and what we are seeing especially amongst amateur horticulturists, amateur growers, is a breakthrough of colors we have never seen before. And when I wrote to Mother about that, she says, 'we cant exactly say what will happen next, but it will be an explosion of beauty as we've never seen before'. And it will be among the first things that we see because the flowers are so open. And that is, I think about half an hour for me, unless you have a question.
Sraddhalu (0:20:38):
I have lots of questions. I didn't want to interrupt you. It would make a more interesting thing if I had interrupted you but I didn't want your sequence to break. Going back a few steps when you made the experiment with rainwater and the prayer flower, did you find out what it was in the rainwater which triggered it?
Narad (0:21:10):
Yes, in the rainwater, there are micronutrients that are not available in groundwater. Many of them, very small quantities, but that's all a plant needs. And very often, I think if you've been in the rain, you smell iron. Yes. Yeah. I see a lot of people saying yes. And that is also something that the plant needs and doesn't get in the groundwater. So yes, the rainwater is very, very special and we have to preserve it. And India has a lot to do to preserve rainwater because we're concretising everything. And you all are aware of that.
[Sraddhalu] Can you elaborate on that, on that concretising?
Well, as urban sprawl continues and there are no vertical structures for housing hundreds and hundreds of people, houses are built all over, the roads are paved, sidewalks are paved, everything seems to be paved. No catchment areas for the rain any longer. It's very sad.
Sraddhalu (0:22:31):
A good example is Bangalore, where the lake which was in the middle of the city, which was actually a percolation pond, all the rainwater would come there and it would soak in, recharge the groundwater. That was covered up, concretized, and they made a bus stand. So the problem was every time it would rain, the water would tend to flood the bus stand and then people would say, oh there's a flood. But it never got a chance to seep into the ground. Meanwhile all the houses are pumping out ground water. So water table is keeping on going down, down, down and the water which is stuck up there goes out of the city. So in a place like Pondicherry, it all washes out into the ocean. But the water table is not being replenished. So this is happening all over. And in India, it's become now fashionable to concretise everything. In the old days, one of the responsibilities for the king was to deepen percolation ponds, create new ponds, create new lakes. And many of these were artificially created and then they allowed nature to take over. Today it's fashionable to close it, cover it up and put housing colonies. So around Pondicherry you'll see where we had fields you could walk about, walk 15 minutes and you would have green fields all over. All those have been concretized going down now at least 10 or 15 kilometers all the way to Auroville at least. And so all that water which would have gone into the ground is just washing out to the sea. So in summer time you have a drought, in winter time you have a flood. And that's a human created situation, it's not climate change.
Narad (0:24:16):
We had groundwater at 50 feet, at 40 feet. That's at Auroville. Today it’s at 200. 200 feet, the well has to go down and often that water has salt in it. It's often a mixture of salt. There's some salinity already coming from the Aspiration area that's closest to the sea.
Sraddhalu (0:24:43)
And you notice in Mother's design for Auroville, around the Matrimandir, she planned the lake which would be a circle all around and it would not only catch the rain water but it would be the percolation pond for recharging the groundwater. So it was part of the city design itself.
Narad (0:25:02):
To supply the water for the entire city. Yes. That has yet to be seen.
[Sraddhalu] We are moving in that direction hopefully now with awareness.
[Narad] It will be done because it's her vision. It must be done according to her visions.
[Sraddhalu] About the exhibitions of flowers, how do you manage to get all the flowers to bloom at that time?
[Narad] February is perhaps the most floriferous season and so we chose Mother's birthday for that. But we also studied very seriously when plants came into bloom and we could bring plants into bloom sooner by using various mixtures of what we call, I don't want to get too technical, but NPK, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. And if you held back the nitrogen so the plant didn't grow too rapidly and gave it more phosphorus, that would increase the bloom and accelerate the bloom. And you can do it with any plant, any flowering plant. So if the NPK, let's say, was 5, 10, 5 - 5 parts nitrogen, 10 parts phosphorus, and 5 parts potassium, you knew that you had a surefire way of increasing bloom more rapidly.
[Sraddhalu] But the blooms, you said, lasted two or three days for the exhibition. How did you time them to synchronize the bloom itself?
[Narad] There are a lot of techniques of cutting flowers underwater at a 45 degree angle in which the flower is able to take up the, stem is able to take up the water and last much longer. So you would have buckets of water and cut the stems under the water and you can all do that of course. Your flowers will last much longer.
Sraddhalu (0:27:30):
About the Plumeria which particularly attracted you and as president of the Plumeria Society. You said you spoke about the Plumerias. What happens in those sessions? Are you presenting new flowers? Are you presenting techniques for growing them, hybridizing them? What does a Plumeria Society dedicated to just Plumerias do for so many years?
Narad (0:27:54):
Well, I can tell you what I did and then I'll tell you what the Society does. I began every talk with Savitri. And I didn't cover this last time?
Sraddhalu (0:28:11):
No.
Narad (0:28:12):
Okay. It was an extraordinary experience. The first time I gave a talk at Southern California Plumeria Society, I quoted quite a few lines from Savitri. I think it was,
"Then Spring, an ardent lover, leaped through leaves
And caught the earth-bride in his eager clasp;"
Oh, that section! The moment I finished my talk, an elderly lady came up to me and she said, ' Sir, I must buy that book, where can I buy it?'. And I gave her my copy. This is very interesting because there was a young woman, she had two young boys, they were maybe young teenagers, and the day before she had taken me around to various houses where people were growing plumerias. And that night, when I finished my talk, and people were coming up to the stage, this lady came pouring tears and held me and cried and cried and she said, I was looking at you and seeing someone else and she saw Mother and I showed her Mother's picture and she passed away three months later of cancer. I've had so many experiences like that. There's a couple who only grew plumerias by hybridizing and planting seeds and found many many new flowers. So this is one of the things that the society does. Another one is that man Ampol who does the grafting and then others who go and collect plants and they have, they have contests to see the best flowers each year. But this couple, I won't mention their name because it's a bit private, took me to an Indian casino in Southern California where they had food like I have never seen in my life. Tables and tables of soups and desserts and breads and meats and vegetables. You could go on and on. And what did they talk about? He talked about needing a very serious operation. And they went into the operating room, and they were going to give him anesthesia and he said no I don't want any, I will just meditate. He meditated through that entire surgery. I've never heard anything like that. And this is the kind of thing that people open up because they feel something hopefully of Mother in each of us and these are moments in my life, another man who was president of the society told me how he used to go out of his body every night and he would sit by the sea and he was totally afraid of the sea and one night he went and his uncle was there and his uncle had died by the sea and when he realized that there was no more fear anymore, it was that one thing that he had to get over. I've had so many wonderful experiences with these people. Because they love this flower, they are so open to it and when I wrote my first book with my wife, ‘The Handbook on Plumeria Culture’, the first part of it was all Mother and Psychological Perfection.
Sraddhalu (0:32:42):
I would like you to dwell on the five perfections, of the psychological perfection that she has described. What do they mean to you? Because this is a flower which has called you so deeply and moved you so deeply.
[Narad] You know this flower has not had very good press. Many people say well it's just a couple of antlers for months at a time and no beauty to it at all, except when it flowers. And I saw beauty when no one else could see it, perhaps. The trees are bare during the winter. They love the heat. And so if you went into the nursery in the winter, you'd just see these bare branches with no leaves or anything and yet look at what they represent, sincerity or transparency. One time when.I wrote to Mother, I asked her what to do with my life because she had turned it upside down. And I said, should I go? Because I couldn't stay in the ashram. My vital was much too wild. So I had to go back. And I wrote to Mother, what should I do? Should I continue studying music because I had a scholarship for the Metropolitan Opera? Or should I learn to conduct choirs because I had a choir in the ashram also? And we sang to Mother. We sang to Mother on Christmas eve. And not little did I know that it would be a darshan. And the place was filled and there was only enough room for our little group of 25 people to stand by the Samadhi and look up at the lower window, the first window looking out at the Samadhi and Mother opened it and looked at us. Well, I should tell you briefly the experience because it was very unique. The first song was the worst music people had ever heard. Because nobody could hear themselves because the wind was blowing. So they couldn't hear each other's notes. I turned around. See, I was facing the Samadhi, and the choir was facing Mother. So I turned around and looked up to Mother, and I said, 'but Mother, we're singing for you'. Not a mistake for the rest of the concert. Not one mistake. So I wrote to her and I said, what should I do? She said, one or the other, because the important thing is not so much what you choose, but the spirit in which you will do it. And then she wrote, 'keep living in you the spirit of consecration and all will be alright' and that for me again is..
[Sraddhalu] I think that became the theme for your life.
[Narad] Yes, that was the theme for my life. Now courage, I guess I have never lacked courage. And aspiration is also a big part of my life.
Sraddhalu (0:36:39):
What does it mean for you? What does courage mean?
Narad (0:36:45):
Courage very simply means for me to face all difficulties with equality, knowing that the Mother is with you and so there's no fear. That's courage for me. Could you share some incidents of your life? During the troubles, the difficulties in Auroville, one day, and I won't mention names, but we all know who they are. A girl comes running down to the nursery and she says, they are beating two of my friends to death with clubs. Please help them. I gathered everyone in the nursery and we went out of the nursery onto the little dirt road right by Bharatnivas. I had a machete in my hand and the voice told me drop the weapon. I dropped it immediately. Then what to do? I didn't even think. I just called Mother's name as loud as I could and that group parted like the Red Sea and I walked in and I carried that one boy on my shoulders and at the very end, I stopped calling Mother when I gave him to another friend. And that moment, a stone hit my head and cracked my skull open. Never stop calling Mother is the lesson. Hard lesson to learn, but I learned it the hard way.
[Sraddhalu] Okay. Faith or Trust (Trust in the Divine, naturally).
[Narad] I never, I never lost my trust in Sri Aurobindo, or the Mother, because when I was in my late twenties, in New Jersey in my parents' home, sleeping in the room that I had for many years, Sri Aurobindo came to me twice. And those experiences are as alive now as they've ever been. He has come to me at other times also. And the last time was 9-9-1999. 20 years ago. He motioned me to come to him. I knelt down at his feet. No words were spoken and he let me massage his feet. I asked Arvinda Basu, what did it mean? He said, 'oh it just means that you've surrendered to him, but now you have to work to make the surrender more complete'. So, that's it for me.
[Sraddhalu] One more, you know this observation about faith or trust. Mother comments especially, trust in the Divine naturally and why she adds that is very significant, because the moment people say faith or trust, we tend to think of our faith and trust in others or in life or in limited circumstances. That is what she is referring to. People make the mistake of trusting others and I won't say it's a bad thing, it's good of course, provisionally. You should always trust, but recognize that ultimately that's not going to last and Sri Aurobindo has this very interesting observation he says that it's the very nature of life that ultimately everything in life will fail you and only the Divine will be there and so this aspect of the faith of trusting the Divine is so central to the whole journey of life itself.
[Narad] I have experienced the opposite many many times, people I trusted totally would betray you. The only time I never felt betrayed was when someone loved me without asking for love in return. And I've had that twice.
[Sraddhalu] Devotion or Gratitude? You know I grew up in my father's religion, Catholic, and one day my little brother was dying, all the blood in his body was drying up, and my father went to the Catholic priest and he said, please pray for him and the priest went, give me money. My father walked out and never came back. But my mother's faith was Russian Orthodox. And the devotion of those people was so powerful that I remember going to an icon and prostrating myself in front of that icon and only many years later did I realize that it was Mother, when I didn't know Mother at all!
Sraddhalu (0:43:27):
And the last is endurance or perseverance.
Narad (0:43:31):
To live in Auroville in those days you had to endure and persevere. The conditions were so difficult. I remember this German fellow who came and worked with us for a while and we would have our meals in the area called Peace, which was at the very center and which your Panditji would come every week and talk to us. Well, he sat down for a meal, he had the most beautiful teeth I've ever seen, and his first bite, there was a stone in the rice and he broke off a tooth. And we had to face those things every day, snakes I've talked about before, so many vipers and cobras and crates, and then we had to, as I mentioned in the last talks we had to endure the summers without electricity without a fan. The soil was laterite clay which is clay mixed with pebbles, almost impenetrable in the summer when it's dry, we had to break it up, add compost, it needed a lot of endurance and perseverance.
Sraddhalu (0:44:53):
I just want to make some observations about this. You see from the examples which Narad has narrated, the way his life was somehow especially drawn to this flower, psychological perfection, and then the examples he has given of each of these five, you see these five streams throughout the life, intermingling, joining, a sense of the practical form in which the psychological perfection can be developed through work, through dedicated work, especially consecrated work to the Divine. That's what one glimpses in the journey of your life. And when we look at it from this perspective of the five perfections, and it does not matter where you are, it does not matter what you are doing, if you do it with that spirit of dedication to the Divine, you are developing these five fold perfections. And then she says, 'there you are, if one persists there comes a time when one is victorious', and that's where you are.
Narad (0:46:06)
But I have to admit that there's a long way to go, I have to become much more sincere. There's no question about that. I have to become one-pointed in this yoga. And so I really consider myself only taking the first step.
[Sraddhalu] Thank you, Narad.
[Narad] Thank you.