“The Inner found its way out”

Auroville Today: Could you start by telling us a bit about your early years and what led you to India?

Nishtha: I grew up in a small farming village in Southern Germany, where from a young age I often felt closer to nature than to the general setup of human society. Then came the early seventies, the time of the hippie movement, of idealism, of people speaking about peace and inner freedom. I felt drawn to that search for a deeper, truer life. Finally, when I was around twenty, I went through a deep crisis of meaning, and feeling a deep question rise within me: “Is this all there is?” I couldn’t identify with the world I saw around me. 

One day, a friend showed me a magazine that had an article on Auroville. This was early 1976. I remember being captivated by the idea that there was a place on earth dedicated to living in harmony, where work was not just about earning but about self-expression and service to a greater ideal. The article mentioned that a new German book on Auroville had just come out. I ordered it, not knowing what awaited me. When it arrived, my life was changed forever. I was deeply impressed by the biographies of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, and was especially struck by the idea that the Divine is not something remote, not something to be found only after death or in heaven, but something we can experience here, in life. That realisation was transformative, it felt like a new birth. Within weeks, I knew I had to go to India.

That must have been quite a radical step to take at the time.

Absolutely. First of all, my family was in deep shock and travelling to India in the seventies was not what it is today. But when I finally came to India, the experience was overwhelming. We landed in Chennai, then Madras, and everything was different: the smells, the heat, the sounds. Finally, after a five hour adventurous bus trip I reached Pondicherry there was a palpable change in the atmosphere. And this deepened as I was travelling in a cycle rickshaw through the old French township towards the Ashram main building. I will never forget these magic moments. The next day I hired a bicycle and searched for the guest house in Auroville, where I had booked a room months ago by postal contact. After travelling on a gravel road through open fields with no big trees, from where I could see the four pillars of the Matrimandir rising out of the ground, I reached the guesthouse, which was very basic. In the thatched roof ‘capsule’ where I stayed there were rats, even snakes, and I fell ill almost immediately and lost much weight.

You eventually settled in Auroville in 1981. What did those first years look like?

They were very formative years. From 1977 onwards I immersed myself in the works of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. The Synthesis of Yoga, The Life Divine, Essays on the Gita, and especially Savitri and Prayers and Meditations became my daily companions. The poetry of Savitri touched something profound in me. Then in 1978 I discovered The Secret of the Veda and Hymns to the Mystic Fire. These texts spoke to me in a way that was not only intellectually inspiring but deeply spiritual.

And is that how your journey with Sanskrit began?

Yes. But even though the wish to read the Nagari text above Sri Aurobindo’s English renderings was there early on, it began almost by accident. During one of my stays at the Ashram at the end of 1980, I attended lessons on Essays on the Gita conducted by Dr Arabinda Basu. One day at my request, he wrote down and recited for me the shloka ‘sarva dharmān parityajya, mām ekaṁ śaranaṁ vraja...’ which by then I had understood to be “The supreme secret of the Gita”. It was a short moment, but it felt like a revelation. When in March 1981 I permanently settled in Auroville, I was determined to learn more. I bought cassettes and transliterated texts of the Gita and the Devimahatmya, and began to practice Sanskrit pronunciation by myself. Later, my interest turned more and more toward the Veda. I would cycle to Pondicherry, go to the Ashram Library, and hand-copy hymns from an old Rig Veda book. I had no electricity then, so I worked by kerosene lamp. Those were quiet nights of deep joy in Agni Community, for which I myself had chosen the name and planted many shrubs and trees there, based on Mother’s flower book, which for me, due to its profound spiritual psychology, was a veritable Veda of flowers by itself.

Did learning Sanskrit change your way of seeing the world?

Definitely. First of all, I must say that from the beginning I felt some familiarity with Sanskrit, which was not the case when I looked at some texts in Latin or later on in ancient Greek. I never had the sense that this is an old or archaic language. I rather felt it represents an omnipresent eternal reality and noticed that when I tried to chant the verses metrically, something began to move in me and I could feel a natural rising and falling of waves of sound. The poetry would flow naturally only if I respected the original rhythm, sometimes even undoing the euphonic word combinations called sandhi. That’s when I began to realize that the Rig Veda’s language is even more rich and profound than the later classical Sanskrit. In comparison the classical form feels simplified, almost domesticated, since it observes grammar rules that developed only when ‘writing’ was established. The Vedic Sanskrit, on the other hand, is alive with more light, fire, colour and power. This is not to say that the Gita and the metrical Upanishads do not have their own speciality and grandness. In fact, many of those Upanishads still echo something of the Vedic Sanskrit and style of poetry, due to which in recent years I also study them more and more in the original and make my own translations.

You were also drawn to music during this time and have taught the recorder for years.

Yes, music was always part of me. I had wanted to play an instrument since childhood, but my family couldn’t afford one. Only at the age of eighteen during my apprenticeship as industrial merchant, I took some basic guitar lessons. But it was not until the early 1990s that I began earnestly studying by myself the alto recorder. And after some years of rigorous practice I played duets, trios and quartets with friends in Auroville and in the Ashram, and music became a means of meditation and of experiencing a higher harmony collectively. I realised that music, like Sanskrit, demands one’s full dedication. It’s not only about talent but about surrender and practice. Then music can truly become alive in you. It was during that period that I taught the soprano and alto recorder at Deepanam for seven years.

How did your work as a teacher and researcher develop from there?

Around the early 2000s, I joined advanced Sanskrit studies with Vladimir Iatsenko. After its completion three years later, I began teaching the same at Savitri Bhavan. Later, I co-led study sessions in Pondicherry where we would begin with the recitation of Vedic hymns before discussing Sri Aurobindo’s translations. It was during these sessions that I realised even more the importance of restoring the original Vedic metre. The flow of the verse reveals its inner music. If the rhythm is broken, the true expression is lost. Even though there existed already the entire Rig Veda in a metrically restored version online by the Western academic scholarship, I found out that it is even possible to do the restoration spontaneously while reading the traditionally written Samhita text. The result was astonishing, the verses came alive with new resonance. Sri Aurobindo had hinted at this in his writings as well.

Your research into Vedic metres and pronunciation became quite groundbreaking.

Perhaps from a certain point of view one could say so, since I began to see connections others had possibly missed or did not find them important. To say it in a very inadequate nut-shell, I found out that the Vedic pronunciation of words like Sūrya, spoken tri-syllabic as Sūriya, seems to be still preserved in the Tamil language, eg Sathiya. For the Rig Veda there already exists a metrically restored online version, but I am not aware of any such version for the Yajur Veda and the Atharva Veda. Therefore I started myself to systematically restore the meter of any given hymn.

In 2008 you were formally recognised as a full-time Veda researcher in Auroville. What did that mean for your work?

It allowed me to dedicate myself fully. Under SAIIER, I worked on translating and commenting on all the major hymns to Brihaspati and Sarasvati in the Rig Veda, and on the 18-verse hymn with the Gayatri Mantra of the seer Vishvamitra. These were deep, luminous years. Later, I began leading weekly sessions called “Meditations with Hymns to the Mystic Fire.” We would chant together, explore Sri Aurobindo’s translations, and discuss the symbolism. It wasn’t academic, it was more experiential, and some people felt the living vibration of the ancient words. During those years I was able to touch with these sessions dozens of visitors from all over India and some from abroad.

And that eventually led to the founding of ‘Agni Veda Research’?

Yes, in 2018. The interest in my work was growing, and I wanted to create a space dedicated to Vedic research and teaching at my Veda sthana home in Agni. I also began to develop my own Sanskrit learning method for spiritual seekers. Most modern primers are too academic, they ignore the heart of the language. My approach early on brings together Vedic, Upanishadic, and Classical Sanskrit, along with song texts from the Carnatic music tradition. 

I have developed around forty lessons and built my own Sanskrit-English dictionary, over 550 pages now, that integrates Sri Aurobindo’s interpretations. It’s both a tool and a meditation. The intention is to make Sanskrit alive, to teach it through poetry and meaning rather than only through dry grammar. In fact it is hoped that those who usually shy away from grammar get an incentive through the rich samples. 

Alongside this work I made several discoveries during my daily research, which I intend to publish in the near future and for which I have skimmed so far through 890 of the 1028 hymns of the Rig Veda and several dozens of the Atharva Veda, for each of which I created a separate research document, and hundreds of files on particular topics therein.

You have said before that Sri Aurobindo’s own Vedic work was left incomplete. Could you elaborate?

He never allowed The Secret of the Veda to be published as a book during his lifetime, because he considered it unfinished. Even in the 1940s, he was working on around 150 hymns to Agni, either newly translating or revising, but finally published only 35. The same applies to his Upanishadic work, only the Isha Upanishad was approved for publication. To me, that is deeply meaningful. It means the field is open. We are invited to continue the work, to listen, to rediscover, to contribute. The Veda and the Upanishads are not closed books, and still wait to be interpreted in a more integral approach.

How would you describe what Sanskrit and the Veda have given you, after all these decades?

They have given me everything. A sense of belonging to something vast, luminous, eternal. When I chant, I don’t feel that I am repeating ancient words. The Veda is not in the past, it’s in the present moment, in the light that burns in our being. In addition, one has the impression that to study the Veda is to gradually build in oneself a ladder that connects the ascending scale of mind-hierarchies. This might as well be the deeper meaning when some Upanishad teachers ask the student “Did you study the Veda?”

Let me end with a line from the Rig and a verse from the Atharva Veda:

viśvā́yur agne, guhā́ gúhaṁ gāḥ (Rig Veda |I.67.6|)

Sri Aurobindo: "O Fire, thou art universal life, enter into the secrecy of the secret Cave."

bā́lād ékam aṇīyaskám, utáikaṁ néva dr̥śyate |

tátaḥ páriṣvajīyasī, devátā sā́ máma priyā́ (Atharva Veda |X.8.25|)

Sri Aurobindo: "One (presence) is smaller than a child, and one is not even seen.

More embracingly close than that is the deity. She is my beloved."