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A LOVER OF LIGHT AMONG LUMINARIES : Dilip Kumar Roy The reader also learns about Dilip Roy's remarkable talent as a musician and a composer and a singer of devotional songs. He inherited these qualities in his life from his father. When Dilip Roy went to Cambridge to study for I. C. S., like Subhas Chandra Bose, he felt a powerful urge to give up the study for dedicating himself to the service of the nation. On Subhas Chandra's advice, he started learning the Western music and left his study. He travelled far and wide in Europe to learn it. On his return to India, he roamed through the country, in search of musicians and learned mostly devotional songs of famous mystics like Mirabai, Tulsidas, Kabir, Surdas and others.
Of all the people Roy met, two left indelible influence on him. One was his guru Sri Aurobindo and the other, Indira Devi. Like all other books, Pilgrims of the Stars, too, reflects Roy's intense love and reverence for his guru. It also shows his guru's patient care and love for his disciple. Roy writes that Sri Aurobindo was "...my guru and the one fixed point in my otherwise kaleidoscopic life ... it was he who, in his infinite compassion, moulded me into whatever I may amount to now... To be with him was to enjoy a forestate of heaven."
For Sri Aurobindo, Dilip Roy was “...a friend and a son, a part of my existence.” As it is seen in his portrait of Sri Aurobindo, for Roy, his guru's word was final in all the matters of his life, so he always sought advice from him through letters. The same details he has given in his earlier books.
Another person on whom Roy depended after the passing away of his gurudev was Indira Devi. About her he writes:
"She was a highly gifted mystic and never failed to sustain me with her luminous experiences which Sri Aurobindo fully endorsed, acclaiming her samadhi or superconscious trance, as
"authentic” and her visions as “beautiful”.?
It was Sri Aurobindo who asked Roy to accept Indira Devi as his disciple telling him that she would be a help, not a hindrance to his yoga. Roy did accordingly. After receiving her as his disciple, he felt:
“And the more I came to know her, the more gratified I felt because her spiritual help and personal example proved a corrective to my incurable tendency to vacillate and doubt. Indira had her own difficulties but indecision was not among them. She did need the support of my strength but no other prop. She looked to me somewhat like a helpless daughter who,
paradoxically, leaned on her father in order to help him."8 He often felt, “... the teacher has become the disciple."9
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