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FULLER PORTRAITS
41
his human weakness, and Krishnaprem is no exception, though Dilip Roy fails to perceive or define the limitations of his more pious friend.
To think that Hinduism is all good is to be blind to number of its evils. It seems, he does not have a clear understanding of the complex phenomenon called Hinduism. It has excellent spirituality in its tradition of wisdom. But this tradition has been the tradition of a few people fired with the desire to stand face to face with the Divine beyond all darkness. Most people have never had anything to do with it. Most of the so-called saints are really hypocrites and worse than parasites. Hinduism, it cannot be denied, also means social practices of caste and untouchability, of satti and infanticide, of ignorance and sloth and superstitions. To ignore it all and to praise Hinduism without defining it, does not bespeak love of truth. One must call spade a spade and to call spade a spade one must perceive the spade first as a spade. Often, however, we feel, the foreigners drawn to India by the power or spell of her spirituality, fail to notice her ugly realities. Krishnaprem, too, looks like one of them. We must appreciate his piety. But we must realize also that living and moving first among the Indian elite and later among the solitary heights of Himalayas, he could never experience the pangs of poverty and disease and misery of inertia her people suffer from, harassed constantly by the 'mendicants' dressed in silk and wallowing in wealth in palatial houses called ironically 'huts'. Dilip Roy is himself no better than Krishnaprem in all this. He himself does not see India as she is. How can he then recognise Krishnaprem's failure in seeing all her complexity in all clarity?
Krishnaprem appears to be dogmatic as far as his views on the divinelyappointed guru are concerned. His insistence on absolute loyalty to guru seems to be incorrect. It may perhaps be true to say that one should have only one guru on the path of spirituality. But how should one find him out ? Would it not require trials and errors ? Should one not have the right to change a guru when one does not feel comfortable with the person one meets first ? How to be sure that the guide you accept is the god-appointed guru for you?
The higher spiritual experiences which Krishnaprem described to Dilip Roy can be called mystical in nature. Such experiences are very rare and are available to those few who have advanced very far on the path of spiritual asceticism and wisdom.
Krishnaprem exerted a great deal of influence on Dilip Roy, though the latter was Sri Aurobindo's disciple. Krishnaprem always guided Dilip Roy very lovingly with the steadiness of mind. Dilip Roy's gurubhais were surprised to see Krishnaprem's hold over Dilip Roy and disapproved of it. But Sri Aurobindo did not mind it. He understood Dilip Roy and allowed him to keep contact with Krishnaprem because “he had faith not only in the spiritual wisdom of Krishnaprem but also in the purity of his love for 60 Dilip Roy. Spiritual instruction does not require guru's ownership of the disciple. It is love that ideally should bind the two in
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