"I am happy to inform you that I have gotten the appointment, after I met with a great disappointment when the list was published with my name missing. I don't know what happened after the publication of the list and how I have been awarded the post. Anyway, one thing is sure. This job does not come to me by the strength of my thirty years of service nor by all the influential contacts that tried on my behalf. Nor does it come by any desert of mind.

Mother often used to stop Her work and concentrate for a second. This She would do during her writing, eating, interviews and any other work. She once explained that often Her children (devotees) 'call' her for help, to which she responds by sending Her force. One night at 1 a.m. She heard someone calling her frantically and she concentrated, then sent her force and 'saw' who it was. It was a man getting up from his bed, going to the door, leaning on it and calling her intensely. It was not clear to her who it was. The next morning news came.

A good friend and a longtime devotee who is an agriculturist was waiting for me since morning outside my room, while I was engaged in a serious discussion with some Aurovillians. I had not known that my friend was waiting outside. I felt sorry and somewhat outraged that he should wait for me without informing me, as this was a meeting which would be prolonged for hours. Immediately I excused myself from the meeting and went outside to see my friend.

It was the first time he met me and he was talking with great interest of many things. His manners were pleasant and his bearing cordial. His face was clear and calm. In the course of his talk he mentioned that he was employed as a car driver, which was difficult to reconcile with his poise, manners and appearance. Sensing my surprise, he explained, as if to clear my doubt, that his family had been a well-to-do one and later went bankrupt. They had owned lands, houses and two lorries. Now everything was lost, except the house where he and his elder brother lived with their families.

Balaraman is a mirasdar living in his native village. He is devoted to the Mother. His entire family is devoted to Mother. His thoughts come to him as images; rather, he thinks in images. Whenever he meets me he used to describe the many visions he had. Some are of Mother and others are of life. I used to think the Rishi was in him. One day late in the evening he came out of his village house and he was struck by a vision whose immensity immobilized him. Standing on the edge of the road outside his house, he saw a huge light (Brahmanda jyothi).

Om is a North Indian businessman. He is a craftsman par excellence. He carves out of soft stone very attractive artwork in the shape of boxes, vases, etc. His goods sell like hotcakes all over Europe. Buyers come to him, pay the price in advance, sit in his factory for the order to be produced and take it with them. Otherwise, if they ordered from their own countries, they may not get the goods in time or may not get them at all. Such is the demand. Such is its beauty.

When I decided to buy a cashew garden on the hill-top known as Caper Hills, my studies concerned the soil, climate, variety of cashew, the characteristics of the cashew plant, its present yield, its greatest capacity to yield, etc. These were all studies in cultivation of a crop. My friends and relatives were constantly reminding me that scientific studies of a crop may be important, but there was something more important, viz. the human factor. I was proposing to buy a piece of property officially described in the government records as forest.

I was returning home from the Ashram. In the bus I met a friend who was also returning home from Pondicherry. By way of conversation I asked him on what assignment he had visited Pondicherry. He said he was returning from JIPMER Hospital where his brother was an in-patient for the last three weeks. I had never known that he had a brother, but I continued my general enquiries about how old he was and why he was hospitalised. To my utter surprise he explained the developments. "My brother is 17 years of age and he is in the 10th standard.

The Life Divine, the magnum opus of Sri Aurobindo, says the American Sri Aurobindo Library, has been acclaimed as the greatest book of our times. It goes on to say that The Life Divine is a landmark in human thought and aspiration. Sri Aurobindo was also the author of the epic English poem Savitri, which runs into 24,000 lines of blank verse.

As Sri Aurobindo attained Mahasamadhi before the Nobel Prize committee could implement its decision to award him the prize for literature, the prize was never awarded that year.

Today I received a letter from a devotee in which he says his daughter, who is an M.Sc., has secured a job in his own native town on the day he got my letter. He is an ardent devotee for many years working in the government as an non-gazetted officer with a spotless record of service.