This Monk From India - The Divine Life Society

MOTHER INDIA
Later in the lorry, when I saw her lips moving in silent prayer with her chapelet (mala) in her
hand, only stopping now and again to put the baby’s thumb back in his mouth, her face suddenly so
tender, her voice more and more peaceful as she tried to sing a lullaby to him, I wondered at such a
wondrous faith and acceptance of His Will. The memory of it never left me. Had it unconsciously
inspired me when so many years later it was my turn to say, “Thy will be done,” although my
surrender had only come after a most terrible revolt against God. What was more, it had been His
work, not mine.
One day, years later, a Brahmachari gave me a prayer which had been printed by a great
devotee of Swami Chidananda.
O All-merciful Lord
Friend of the weak and helpless
Through Thy Grace and Will—
Whatever has happened
has happened for the best
Whatever is happening now
is happening for the best;
Whatever is to happen in the future
will happen for the best.
Bless me that I may accept Thy Will.
And make my surrender pure,
perfect, complete and unconditional.
I thought then of the old lady. Hadn’t her way of living shown me the deep wisdom of this
prayer, and had it not shown me, in an unforgettable way, that the secret of happiness, the secret of
peace, the very secret of all life was in that very prayer.
Two of the officers under whose orders I had served during the war and who had read my
book scolded me when I met them here in India.
“Why on earth did you not write the whole story about this old lady”
The Americans had ordered that all the Allied armies must evacuate the region, for the
winter was so terribly severe that we had to amputate the frozen legs of too many soldiers. But the
French people of the region had helped us when we had come to liberate them. And the Germans,
under whose rule they had been for five years, declared them traitors, and they were to be shot at
sight. That is why De Gaulle, the French General in Chief made us go back to help our countrymen,
and we succeeded in throwing the Germans out and, thus, stopped the holocaust that it would have
been in two or three of the most patriotic regions of France. Instead of our being punished for our
disobedience, very soon everyone seemed to congratulate us. Perhaps the prayers which were said
everywhere in silence and amongst us had a lot to do with it.
The two officers continued. “It would have been the best demonstration of the reality of
what this monk you call your ‘gourou’ tries to express when he says: All religions have the same
basis. It is only the man-made dogmas of the different creeds which separate men from each other.
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