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PILGRIMS OF THE STARS
219 What runs consistently through all parts is the devotion of both the persons for Krishna. The two here emerge as one. Two parts written by Dilip Roy and one by Indira Devi are consequently organically and inseparably interconnected.
Almost all the prominent traits of a good autobiography as well as a few new features can be noticed in Pilgrims of the Stars.
In a story of spiritual struggle an account of outward events is not very important. Therefore Roy has paid less attention to them than to the elucidation of inner strife. It seems that Roy, in doing so, has been inspired by one of the letters written to him by Sri Aurobindo in which he talked of the life of Krishna:
"What matters is the spiritual Reality, the Power, the influence that came with him or that he brought down by his action and his existence. First of all, what matters in a spiritual man's life is not what he did or what he was outside to the view of the men of his time (that is what historicity or biography comes to, does it not?) but what he was and did within: it is only that that gives
any value to his outer life at all."4
Dilip Roy's aspiration to live a life of Truth from his very childhood forms one of the major characteristics of his personality. While writing this autobiography at the age of about seventy six years, Roy feels retrospectively that an unseen' hand of God always played a role in pushing him to the front of spiritual goal of rising higher and higher towards Truth. In fact, in his other works of biography he always chose to show the pattern of the ever-mounting aspiration of a lover of God. In his own life, too, it is evident. In the pages of his autobiography he shows how he had to struggle with himself and also with others to walk on this path of 'upward spiral'. He tells us how his scepticism did not permit him to believe not only what others' said or experienced, but his own direct spiritual experiences. He tried to follow the path of austerity and meditation from his very young age under the inspiration of Sri Ramkrishna. He had been frantically looking for his divinely-appointed guru. He found none for a long time. He met at last Sri Aurobindo. But his doubting nature did not cease to doubt. He could not credit in the Master's notions of higher reality and the possibility of the descent of the supernatural force.
We learn of a few events in his external life, too. He tells how his determination not to marry clashed with his grand-father's desire to see him married. Owing to his scepticism he could not see eye to eye with his fellowinmates of the Ashram. Moreover, he had been temperamentally at once, both, extrovert and introvert. He needed to stay alone in the seclusion of the Ashram, but on the other hand he also loved to be in the midst of people entertaining them with his songs and music. He was very much social by nature.
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