Reply to Mother
Collected Works
When Bhagavan left home his family tried to trace him but at first without success. Only some years later they discovered him in Tiruvannamaliai. The Mother, not yet ripe to renounce the world and join him, went to try to persude hiom to return to her. At this time he was not speaking, so he wrote briefly that whatever is destined to happen will happen. The poetical rendering of his reply is given below:
The fate of souls are all by God ordained According to the deeds that they have done. That end that's destined ne'er to be attained Will never be achieved by anyone However hard they try. All those things, too That it is destined must occur, one day Will come to pass, whatever you may do To interfere and try their course to stay. And this is certain. At length we come to see That it is best that we should silent be.
— reproduced from the 1979, 5th edition
of 'Collected Works', ed.Arthur Osborne
of 'Collected Works', ed.Arthur Osborne