What they have said: Alice Boner
Other testimonies
Yesterday Alain Daniélou came to see me and I incidentally mentioned that I felt so desperately tired everytime I went up to Townshend in Kasar Devi Estate. I said I did not know why this particular walk exhausted me so much, though it was not such a very long one. He quickly said : ” It is the Devi “. I looked at him somewhat bewildered. So he went on and explained to me that at certain points of the earth there are particular stresses caused by superior powers, and that at such places temples are often erected. One ought not to live there, but only go there for worship. People here never go to that Estate without going to the temple and worshipping the Devi. Somehow he reasoning struck me and as I had not visited the Devi I thought it might be true. So at night in bed I concentreted on the Devi and tried to make contact with her. Everything became alive within myself and I started to realize the absurdity of my neglect.
I have been working for weeks now on my composition of Prakriti, but it never entered my mind to even pray to the Devi, to try to approach her, to identify myself with her, as I had done in the case of Vishnu’s Vishvarupa when, in a devotional spirit, I always tried to go beyond manifestation and to visualize the absolute. But the wonder of creation itself, the active manifesting power which had brought forth all these worlds, and was perhaps in the process of destroying them again, I always bypassed it, admiring it perhaps, but never workshipping it. There I found myself in an absolutely new position, face to face with the supreme creative power to whom we all owe our existence. I suddenly began to understand those who worship the Devi and was happy to have in some way seen the way leading to her. I decided to go to the temple with flowers and makes amends for my neglect. In the morning I plucked some roses from the garden and put them in a long boat-shaped vessel which I supposed represented the Devi’s symbol and prayed for her grace and mercy. After that I worked merrily and felt quite relieved and happy and at noon a note came from Gertrude Sen, announcing the end of the war.
Date: August 11, 1945, Almora (Himalaya)
Source: Alice Boner Diaries (India, 1934,1967) page 121
