Sri Aurobindo's letters between 1927 and 1950 on his life, his path of yoga and the practice of yoga in his ashram.
Sri Aurobindo : corresp.
Sri Aurobindo's letters between 1927 and 1950 on his life, his path of yoga and the practice of yoga in his ashram. In these letters, Sri Aurobindo writes about his life as a student in England, a teacher in Baroda, a political leader in Bengal, and a writer and yogi in Pondicherry. He also comments on his formative spiritual experiences and the development of his yoga. In the latter part of the volume, he discusses the life and discipline followed in his ashram and offers advice to the disciples living and working in it. Sri Aurobindo wrote these letters between 1927 and 1950 - most of them in the 1930s.
THEME/S
About the question of the Avatar, I do not think it is useful to press in the matter. It has become very much the tendency, especially in Bengal, to regard the Guru as the Avatar. To every disciple the Guru is the Divine, but in a special sense—for the Guru is supposed to live in the divine consciousness, to have attained union and when he gives to the disciple, it is the Divine that gives and what he gives is the consciousness of the Divine who is within the Guru. But that and Avatarhood are two different things. It is mostly in East Bengal recently that those have come who were acclaimed as Avatars; those who came had each of them the idea of a work to be done for the world and the sense of a Divine Power working through them, which shows that there was a pressure for manifestation there and something came in each case, for something of the Divine Power always comes when it is called, but it does not look as if there was anywhere the complete descent. It is this that may have created the idea that the Avatar was born there. It has always been said of the Advent that is to come now that there would be many in whom it would seem that it had come, but the real Avatar would work behind a veil until the destined hour came.
I do not gather from what is quoted as said by your Guru that he claimed to be the Avatar. It seems to me that he claimed to be a Power preparing the way for the work of the Divine Mother and even to indicate that all that he meant would be manifested not only by his own followers but by other groups (সম্প্রদায়), consisting evidently of those who had not had him for Guru but had some other Head and Teacher. This is also confirmed by the saying that some other one than his disciples might be the means of his প্রকাশ—that is to say, would be the means of carrying on his work and aiding the manifestation of
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the Mother. If this meant proclaiming him as the Avatar, I do not see how it can agree with the other saying that after his leaving his body the Avatar would come to the Asram he had created.
I do not quite know what is meant by ayoni-sambhava. An incarnation is always through a human mother, though there have been one or two cases in which a virgin birth has been proclaimed (Christ, Buddha). The only other meaning—unless we suppose an unprecedented miracle—might be a descent such as sometimes happens, the Godhead manifesting in somebody who at birth was a Vibhuti, not at once the full incarnation. But in the absence of a clear statement from your Guru himself, these are only speculations.
I have written this much as an answer to your question, but I doubt whether it is necessary or advisable to write anything of it to your friends. They have their own feeling about the matter; it seems to me better not to challenge or disturb it.
25 August 1935
Elsewhere people try to find out various qualities in their Guru to prove him an Avatar; here some try to find out reasons to disprove even the possibility.
It is a modern Asram, that's why!
14 November 1935
How can the Divine, who is the All or Omnipresent, containing the Infinite, incarnate in the small space of a human body? I believe it is because this seems impossible to the mind that the Arya Samajists do not accept the possibility of incarnation.
The objection is founded on human three-dimensional ideas of Space and division in spaces, which are again founded upon the limited nature of the human senses. To some beings space is one-dimensional, to others two-dimensional, to others three dimensional—but there are other dimensions also. It is well recognised in metaphysics that the Infinite can be in a point and not only in extension of space—just as there is an eternity of
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extension in Time but also an Eternity which is independent of Time so that it can be felt in the moment—one has not to think of millions and millions of years in order to realise it. So too the rigid distinction of One against Many, a One that cannot be many or of an All that is made up by addition and not self-existent are crude mental notions of the outer finite mind that cannot be applied to the Infinite. If the All were of this material and unspiritual character, tied down to a primary arithmetic and geometry, the realisation of the universe in oneself, of the all in each and each in all, of the universe in the Bindu would be impossible. Your Arya Samajists are evidently innocent of the elements of metaphysical thinking or they would not make such objections.
1 April 1936
When the Divine descends here as an incarnation, does not that very act mould his infinity into a limited finite? How then does he still continue to rule over the universe?
Do you imagine that the Divine is at any time not everywhere in the universe or beyond it? or that he is living at one point in space and governing the rest from it, as Mussolini governs the Italian Empire from Rome?
11 May 1937
Is it true that the Avatar is the full manifestation of the Divine Vibhuti?
If you consider it from the earth's point of view. But it may be truer to say that the Avatar holds himself back and manifests as a Vibhuti in many lives till the time comes for his manifesting as the Avatar.
27 September 1933
Does an Avatar create a new mind, life and body from the cosmos for himself, or take hold of some liberated human being and use his outer personality for his manifestation?
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That would be a possession, not an Avatar. An Avatar is supposed to be from birth. Each soul at its birth takes from the cosmic mind, life and matter to shape a new external personality for himself. What prevents the Divine from doing the same? What is continued from birth to birth is the inner being.
18 December 1935
We are a little puzzled when you give your own example to prove your arguments and defend your views, because that really proves nothing. I need not explain why: what Avatars can achieve is not possible for ordinary mortals like us. So if you had a sudden "opening" to the appreciation of painting, or if you freed your mind from all thoughts in three days, or transformed your nature, it is a very poor consolation for us. Then again, when you state that you developed something that was not originally there in your nature, can it not be said that it was already there in your divya aṁśa?
I do not know what the devil you mean. My sadhana is not a freak or a monstrosity or a miracle done outside the laws of Nature and the conditions of life and consciousness on earth. If I could do these things or if they could happen in my Yoga, it means that they can be done and that therefore these developments and transformations are possible in the terrestrial consciousness.
There are many who admit that faculties which are latent can be developed, but they maintain that things which are not there in latency cannot be made manifest. My belief is that even that could be done. Still, I don't think that I could be turned into, say, an artist or a musician!
How do you know that you can't?
As for your statement, "All is possible"—e.g. "an ass may be changed into an elephant, but it is not done"1—people say it is a pointless statement.
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[Underlining "but it is not done":] You had said it can't be done or somebody had said it.
About your changing "cowards into heroes" [p. 488], they put forward the same latency theory.
How do they prove their theory—when they don't know what is or what is not latent? In such conditions the theory can neither be proved nor refuted. To say "O, it was latent" when a thing apparently impossible is done, is a mere post factum explanation which amounts to an evasion of the difficulty.
They state very strongly that a paid Ashram worker, like Muthu, for example, cannot be changed into a Ramakrishna ...
Well, Ramakrishna himself was an ignorant, unlettered rustic according to the story.
or into a Yogi for that matter, even by the Divine.
If he were, they would say "O, it was latent in him."
One can't say categorically and absolutely that the Divine is omnipotent, because there are different planes from which he works. It is when he acts from the supramental level that his Power is omnipotent.
If the Divine were not in essence omnipotent, he could not be omnipotent anywhere—whether in the supramental or any where else. Because he chooses to limit or determine his action by conditions, it does not make him less omnipotent. His self limitation is itself an act of omnipotence.
The fact that X was not changed by the mental-spiritual force put on him proves that.
It does not prove it for a moment. It simply proves that the omnipotent unconditioned supramental force was not put out there—any more than it was when Christ was put on the cross
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or when after healing thousands he failed to heal in a certain district (I forget the name) because people had no faith (faith being one of the conditions imposed on his work) or when Krishna after fighting eighteen battles with Jarasandha failed to prevail against him and had to run away from Mathura.
Why the immortal Hell should the Divine be tied down to succeed in all his operations? What if failure suits him better and serves better the ultimate purpose? What if the gentleman in question had to be given his chance as Duryodhan was given his chance when Krishna went to him as ambassador in a last effort to avoid the massacre of Kurukshetra? What rigid primitive notions are these about the Divine! And what about my explanation of how the Divine acts through the Avatar?2 It seems all to have gone into water.
By the way about the ass becoming an elephant—what I meant to say was that the only reason why it can't be done is be cause there is no recognizable process for it. But if a process can be discovered whether by a scientist (let us say transformation or redistribution of the said ass's atoms or molecules—or what not) or by an occultist or by a Yogi, then there is no reason why it should not be done. In other words certain conditions have been established for the game and so long as those conditions remain unchanged certain things are not done—so we say they are impossible, can't be done. If the conditions are changed, then the same things are done or at least become licit—allowable, legal, according to the so-called laws of Nature,—and then we say they can be done. The Divine also acts according to the conditions of the game. He may change them, but he has to change them first, not proceed while maintaining the conditions to act by a series of miracles.
9 February 1935
You say that since "these things" have been possible in you, they are possible in the terrestrial consciousness [p. 402]. Quite true; but have they been done?
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The question was not whether it had been done but whether it could be done.
Has any sweeper or street-beggar been changed into a Buddha or a Chaitanya?
The street-beggar is a side issue. The question was whether new faculties not at all manifested in the personality up to now in this life could appear, even suddenly appear, by force of Yoga. I say they can and I gave my own case as proof.3 I could have given others also. The question involved is also this—is a man bound to the character and qualities he has come with into this life—can he not become a new man by Yoga? That also I have proved in my sadhana, it can be done. When you say that I could do this only in my case because I am an Avatar (!) and it is impossible in any other case, you reduce my sadhana to an absurdity and Avatarhood also to an absurdity. For my Yoga is done not for myself who need nothing and do not need salvation or anything else, but precisely for the earth consciousness, to open a way to the earth consciousness to change. Has the Divine need to come down to prove that he can do this or that or has he any personal need of doing it? Your argument proves that I am not an Avatar but only a big human person. It may well be so as a matter of fact, but you start your argument from the other basis. Besides, even if I am only a big human person, what I achieve shows that that achievement is possible for humanity. Whether any street-beggar can do it or has done it, is a side issue. It is sufficient if others who have not the economic misfortune of being street-beggars can do it.
We see in the whole history of humanity only one Christ, one Buddha, one Krishna, one Sri Aurobindo and one Mother. Has there been any breaking of this rule? Since it has not been done, it
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can't be done.
What a wonderful argument! Since it has not been done, it cannot be done! At that rate the whole history of the earth must have stopped long before the protoplasm. When it was a mass of gases, no life had been born, ergo life could not be born—when only life was there, mind was not born, so mind could not be born. Since mind is there but nothing beyond, as there is no supermind manifested in anybody, so supermind can never be born. Sobhanallah! Glory, glory, glory to the human reason!! Luckily the Divine or the Cosmic Spirit or Nature or whoever is there cares a damn for the human reason. He or she or it does what he or she or it has to do, whether it can or cannot be done.
Can a Muthu or a sadhak ever be a Sri Aurobindo, even if he is supramentalised?
What need has he to be a Sri Aurobindo? He can be a supramentalised Muthu!
If anybody comes and says "Why not?" I would answer, "You had better rub some Madhyam Narayan oil4 on your head."
I have no objection to that. Plenty of the middle Narayan is needed in this Asram. This part of your argument is perfectly correct—but it is also perfectly irrelevant.
You are looked on by us here, and by many outside, as a full manifestation of the Divine. The sadhaks here at best are misty sparks of the Divine.
The psychic being is more than a spark at this stage of its evolution. It is a flame. Even if the flame is covered by mist or smoke, the mist or smoke can be dissipated. To do that and to open to the higher consciousness is what is wanted, not to become a Sri Aurobindo or equal to the Mother.
So to say that parts can be equal to the whole is geometrically and logically impossible.
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But if we are the Divine, what is the harm of evolving into a portion of the Divine, living in the divine Consciousness even if in a lesser degree? No middle Narayan will then be needed for anybody's head.
Once when X had said she wanted to be like the Mother you thundered saying, "How can it be? That is an ambition!" Do you say now it's possible?
Certainly not, it is not intended and I never said that she could as a practical matter.
All this is really too much for me. Please give a more direct answer—is it possible or not? Can a Muthu be changed into a being as great as an Avatar? If he can be, I have nothing further to say; if not, there is a limit to the omnipotence of the Divine.
Not at all. You are always making the same elementary baby stumble. It is not because the Divine cannot manifest his greatness anywhere, but because it is not in the conditions of the game, because he has chosen to manifest his centrality in a particular line that it is practically impossible.
Next point: it is hoped that the sadhaks will be supramentalised. Since it is a state surpassing the Overmind, am I to deduce that the sadhaks would be greater than Krishna, who was the Avatar of the Overmind level? Logically it follows, but looking at others and at myself, I wonder if such a theory will be practically realised.
What is all this obsession of greater or less? In our Yoga we do not strive after greatness.
Past history does not seem to prove it. In Krishna's time no disciple of his was a greater spiritual figure than the preceding Avatar Rama, even though Krishna was an Avatar of a higher plane.
It is not a question of Sri Krishna's disciples, but of the earth
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consciousness—Rama was a mental man, there is no touch of the overmind consciousness (direct) in anything he said or did, but what he did was done with the greatness of the Avatar. But there have since been men who did live in touch with the planes above mind—higher mind, illumined mind, Intuition. There is no question of asking whether they were "greater" than Rama; they might have been less "great", but they were able to live from a new plane of consciousness. And Krishna's opening the overmind certainly made it possible for the attempt at bringing Supermind to the earth to be made.
I would not mind your fury in revenge if only you would crush me with a convincing assault. I hoped to close the chapter on "Divine Omnipotence" with this last letter, but you keep me hoping with that promise of yours to write at length some day.
"Peace, peace, O fiery furious spirit! calm thyself and be at rest." Your fury or furiousness is wasted because your point is perfectly irrelevant to the central question on which all this breath (or rather ink) is being spent. Muthu and the sadhaks who want to equal or distance or replace the Mother and myself and so need very badly Middle Narayan oil—there have been several—have appeared only as meaningless foam and froth on the excited crest of the dispute. I fear you have not grasped the internalities and modalities and causalities of my high and subtle reasoning. It is not surprising as you are down down in the troughs of the rigidly logically illogical human reason while I am floating on the heights amid the infinite plasticities of the overmind and the lightninglike subtleties and swiftnesses of the intuition. There! what do you think of that? However!!
More seriously, I have not stated that any Muthu has equalled Ramakrishna and I quite admit that Muthu here in ipsa persona has no chance of performing that feat. I have not said that anyone here can be Sri Aurobindo or the Mother—I have explained what I meant when I objected to your explaining away my sadhana as a perfectly useless piece of Avatarian fireworks. So in my comment on the Muthu logic, I simply pointed out that it was bad logic—that someone
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quite ignorant and low in the social scale can manifest a great spirituality and even a great spiritual knowledge. I hope you are not bourgeois enough to deny that or to contend that the Divine or the spiritual can only manifest in somebody who has some money in his pockets or some University education in his pate? For the rest as I myself have been pointing out all the time there is a difference between essential truth and conditional truth, paramārtha and vyāvahārika, the latter being relative and conditional and mutable. In mathematics one works out problems in infinite and in unreal numbers which exist nowhere on earth and yet are extremely important and can help scientific reasoning and scientific discovery and achievement. The question of a Muthu becoming a Ramakrishna, i.e. a great spiritual man may look to you like being an exercise in unreal numbers or magnitudes because it exceeds the actual observable facts in the case of this Muthu who very evidently is not going to be a great spiritual man—but we were arguing the matter of essential principle. I was pointing out that in the essentiality all things are possible—so you ought not to say the Divine can not do this or that. But at the same time I was pointing out too that the Divine is not bound to show his omnipotence without rhyme or reason when he is working by his own will under conditions. For by arguing that the Divine cannot, that he is impotent, that he cannot do what has never yet been done etc., you deny the possibility of changing conditions, of evolution, of the realisation of the unrealised, of the action of the Divine Power, of Divine Grace, and reduce all to a matter of rigid and unalterable status quo, which is an insolent defiance to both fact and reason (!) and suprareason. See now?
About myself and the Mother,—there are people who say, "If the supramental is to come down, it can come down in everyone, why then in them first? Why should we not get it before they do? Why through them, not direct?" It sounds very rational, very logical, very arguable. The difficulty is that this reasoning ignores the conditions, foolishly assumes that one can get the supramental down into oneself without having the least knowledge of what the supramental is and so supposes an
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upside-down miracle—everybody who tries it is bound to land himself in a most horrible cropper—as all have done hitherto who tried it. It is like thinking one need not follow the Guide, but can reach up to the top of the mountain from the narrow path one is following on the edge of a precipice by simply leaping into the air. The result is inevitable.
About greater and less, one point. Is Captain John Higgins of S.S. Mauretania a greater man than Christopher Columbus because he can reach America without trouble in a few days? Is a university graduate in philosophy greater than Plato because he can reason about problems and systems which had never even occurred to Plato? No, only humanity has acquired greater scientific power which any good navigator can use or a wider intellectual knowledge which anyone with a philosophic training can use. You will say greater scientific power and wider knowledge is not a change of consciousness. Very well, but there are Rama and Ramakrishna. Rama spoke always from the thinking intelligence, the common property of developed men; Ramakrishna spoke constantly from a swift and luminous spiritual intuition. Can you tell me which is the greater? the Avatar recognised by all India? or the saint and Yogi recognised as an Avatar only by his disciples and some others who follow them?
10 February 1935
I did not mean that anyone here could replace or equal myself and the Mother, much less the persons you name—or the actual Muthu equal the actual Ramakrishna. But certainly it is possible for X and Y and Z (I won't repeat the names) to change, to throw off their present perversities or limitations and come nearer to us than they are now—if they have the sincere will and make the endeavour. I have explained my meaning to X5—so I do not repeat it here. Of course in my writing to X, there is a certain note of persiflage and humorous insistence of which you
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must take account if you want to get the exact measure of my reasoning and its significance.
I would like to know something about my "bad logic" [p. 408] before I write anything further to you.
Helps to finding out your bad logic. I give instances expressed or implied in your reasonings.
Bad logic No 1) Because things have not been, therefore they can never be.
Bad logic No 2) Because Sri Aurobindo is an Avatar, his sadhana can have no meaning for humanity.
Bad logic No 3) What happens in Sri Aurobindo's sadhana cannot happen in anybody else's sadhana (i.e. neither descent, nor realisation, nor transformation, nor any intuitions, nor budding of new powers or faculties)—because Sri Aurobindo is an Avatar and the sadhaks are not.
Bad logic No 4) A street-beggar cannot have any spirituality or at least not so much as, let us say, a University graduate—because, well, one does not know why the hell not.
Bad logic No 5) (and last because of want of space) Because I [the recipient] am a doctor, I can't see a joke when it is there.
11 February 1935
About your personal example. You speak of the evolution theory to prove that "it can be done", though the domain I touched upon was only the spiritual. If the scientists say that man has not been able to create living things up to now, and therefore he will not be able to do so in the future—that it "can't be done", what will be your answer?
I have brought in the evolution theory or rather fact of evolution, to disprove your argument that because a thing has not been done, it is thereby proved that it could not be done. I don't understand your argument. If a scientist says that, he is using bad logic. I have never said it can't be done. I dare say some day
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in the right conditions the creation of life will become possible.
And if similarly I say that a Tom, Dick or Harry cannot be a Ram, Krishna or Sri Aurobindo, what reply will you give? My point is that Avatars are born not made.
They may not be Ram or Krishna or Sri Aurobindo, but they may become a spiritualised super-Tom, super-Dick or super-Harry. I have answered about the Avatar.
I have never said that you are only a big human person. On the contrary, you are not, and hence nobody can be like you. Nevertheless, I don't quite follow what you mean when you state that whatever you achieve is possible for humanity to achieve, your attainments opening the way for others to follow.
It is singular that you cannot understand such a simple thing. I had no urge towards spirituality in me, I developed spirituality. I was incapable of understanding metaphysics, I developed into a philosopher. I had no eye for painting—I developed it by Yoga. I transformed my nature from what it was to what it was not. I did it by a special manner, not by a miracle and I did it to show what could be done and how it could be done. I did not do it out of any personal necessity of my own or by a miracle without any process. I say that if it is not so, then my Yoga is useless and my life was a mistake—a mere absurd freak of Nature without meaning or consequence. You all seem to think it a great compliment to me to say that what I have done has no validity for anybody except myself—it is the most damaging criticism on my work that could be made.
If a man has transformed his nature, he couldn't have done it all by himself, as you have done.
I also did not do it all by myself, if you mean by myself the Aurobindo that was. He did it by the help of Krishna and the Divine Shakti. I had help from human sources also.
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I should say that Avatars are like well-fitted, well-equipped Rolls-Royce machines.
All sufficient to themselves—perfect and complete from the beginning, hey? Just roll, royce and ripple!
They do have plenty of difficulties on their journey, but just because they are like Rolls-Royces they can surmount them—whilst the rest of humanity are either like loose and disjointed machines or else wagons to be dragged along by Avatars and great spiritual personages.
Great Scott! What a penal servitude for the great personages and the Avatars! And where are they leading them? All that rubbish into Paradise? How is that any more possible than creating a capacity where there was none? If the disjointed machines cannot be jointed, isn't it more economical to leave them where they are, in the lumber-shed?
I don't know about Avatars. Practically what I know is that I had not all the powers necessary when I started, I had to develop them by yoga, at least many of them which were not in existence in me when I began, and those which were I had to train to a higher degree. My own idea of the matter is that the Avatar's life and action are not miracles and if they were, his existence would be perfectly useless, a mere superfluous freak of Nature. He accepts the terrestrial conditions, he uses means, he shows the way to humanity as well as helps it. Otherwise what is the use of him and why is he here?
I was not always in the overmind, if you please. I had to climb there from the mental and vital level.
Really, Sir, you have put into my mouth what I never mentioned or even intended to.
You may not have mentioned it but it was implied in your logic without your knowing that it was implied. Logic has its own consequences which are not apparent to the logiciser. It is like a move in chess by which you intend to overcome the opponent but it leads, logically, to consequences which you didn't
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intend and ends in your own checkmate. You can't invalidate the consequences by saying that you didn't intend them.
Let me remind you of what I wrote about the Avatar. There are two sides of the phenomenon of Avatarhood, the Divine Consciousness behind and the instrumental personality. The Divine Consciousness is omnipotent but it has put forth the instrumental personality in Nature, under the conditions of Nature, and it uses it according to the rules of the game—though also sometimes to change the rules of the game. If Avatarhood is only a flashing miracle, then I have no use for it. If it is a coherent part of the arrangement of the omnipotent Divine in Nature, then I can understand and accept it.
As for the Muthu affair, that was only a joke as ought to have been clear to you at once. Nobody has any intention of making Muthu a saint or an Avatar. But that is only because the Divine is not going to play the fool, not because he is impotent. Muthu's only business in life is to prepare himself for something better hereafter and exhaust some of his lowest tendencies in the meantime. That is not the question—the question is whether as a general rule rigid and unalterable man is bound down to his outward nature as it appears to be built at the moment and the Divine cannot or will not under any circumstances change it or develop something new in it, something not yet "evident", not yet manifested, or is there a chance for human beings becoming more like the Divine, sādṛśyamukti, sādharmyam āgatāḥ? If not, there is no use in anybody doing this Yoga; let the Krishnas and Ramakrishnas rocket about gloriously and uselessly in the empty Inane and the rest wriggle about for ever in the clutch of the eternal Devil. For that is the logical conclusion of the whole matter.
13 February 1935
I am afraid you are making me admit something I never wrote, neither implied nor intended in what I wrote. However, I shall consult your Essays on the Gita to see what your Avatar says about the Avatar.
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Can you not understand that it was the natural logical result of the statements made on either side about the unbridgeable distance between the Man Divine and the human being moving in the darkness towards the Divine? If you admit the utility of my sadhana, the controversy ceases. But so long as you declare that what I have done in my sadhana has no connection with what can be done, I shall go on beating you. (What the Avatar says in the Essays is only an explanation of the Gita; it is not a full statement of the issue. But still if you read three or four chapters there, you will get some idea of the general principles.) For the rest I propose that all discussion be postponed till after the 21st (not immediately after). This will give time for you to clear your ideas and for me to pursue my "Avataric" sadhana (not for myself, but for this confounded and too confounded earth race).
14 February 1935
You say, if I understand you right, that since the inner being is open to the universal, anything can manifest through it even if it is not there latent; you further add that it is impossible to say what will or will not manifest once the universal acts upon it. But is this impossible for Yogis also? For example, can't you say whether a man has a capacity for Yoga or for something else? Do you simply gamble when you accept someone?
I have never said anything about how I choose people. I was answering the argument that what has not been or is not in manifestation, cannot be. That was very clearly put in the discussion—that the Divine cannot manifest what is not yet there—even He is impotent to do that. He can only manifest what is either already manifest or else latent in the field (person) he is working on. I say no—he can bring in new things. He can bring it in from the universal or he can bring it down from the transcendent. For in the Divine cosmic and transcendent all things are. Whether He will do so or not in a particular case is quite another matter. My argument was directed towards dissipating this "can't, can't" with which people try to stop all possibility of progress.
15 February 1935
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I am sending with this note a typewritten MS on the Avatar. Please write an exhaustive reply, but in ink.
On the back the rational and logical result of your arguments. I shall write certain irrational answers on your MS—in ink.6
You have won all along the line. Who could resist such a lava-torrent of logic? Slightly mixed, but still! You have convinced me (1st) that there never was nor could be an Avatar, (2) that all the so-called Avatars were chimerical fools and failures, (3) that there is no Divinity or divine element in man, (4) that I have never had any true difficulties or struggles, and that if I had any, it was all my fun (as K. S. said of my new metres that they were only Mr. Ghose's fun), (5) that if ever there was or will be a real Avatar, I am not he—but that I knew before, (6) that all I have done or the Mother has done is a mere sham—sufferings, struggles, conquests, defeats, the Way found, the Way followed, the call to others to follow, everything—it was all make-believe since I was the Divine and nothing could touch me and none follow me. That is truly a discovery, a downright knock-out which leaves me convinced, convicted, amazed, gasping. I won't go on, there is no space; but there are a score of other luminous convictions that your logic has forced on me. But what to do next? You have put me in a terrible fix and I see no way out of it. For if the Way, the Yoga is merely sham, fun and chimera—then?
6 March 1935
When did I say that you are not an Avatar? On the contrary I wrote to you that you are an Avatar.
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You don't say, but if your theory or description of the Avatar is right, I am not one. I am proceeding on the necessary consequences of your logic.
I did say that the difficulties and struggles of the Avatar are all shams, put on, so to say.
If they are shams, they have no value for others or for any true effect. If they have no value for others or for any true effect, they are perfectly irrational and unreal and meaningless. The Divine does not need to suffer or struggle for himself; if he takes on these things it is in order to bear the world-burden and help the world and men; and if these sufferings and struggles are to be of any help, they must be real. A sham or falsehood cannot help. They must be as real as the struggles and sufferings of men themselves—the Divine bears them and at the same time shows the way out of them. Otherwise his assumption of human nature has no meaning and no utility and no value. It is strange that you cannot understand or refuse to admit so simple and crucial a point. What is the use of admitting Avatarhood if you take all the meaning out of it?
I never said that there could be no Avatars nor that they are failures.
Good Lord! You said most emphatically that they were all failures and that is why the Divine had to come back again and again—to "atone for his failures".
If your argument is that the life, actions, struggles of the Avatar (e.g. Rama's, Krishna's) are unreal because the Divine is there and knows it is all a Maya, in man also there is a self, a spirit that is immortal, untouched, divine, you can say that man's sufferings and ignorance are only put on, shams, unreal. But if man feels them as real and if the Avatar feels his work and difficulties to be serious and real?
I don't think I said that there is no divinity in man. In the quotation I gave from the Gita it is said that man is made out
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of the divine substance but has a thick coating on him.
If the existence of the Divinity is of no practical effect, what is the use of a theoretical admission? The manifestation of the Divinity in the Avatar is of help to man because it helps him to discover his own divinity, find the way to realise it. If the difference is so great that the humanity by its very nature prevents all possibility of following the way opened by the Avatar, it merely means that there is no divinity in man that can respond to the divinity in the Avatar.
You make a flourish of reasonings and do not see the consequence of your reasonings. It is no use saying "I believe this or that" and then reasoning in a way which leads logically to the very negation of what you believe.
I admitted that Avatars have many difficulties, but because they know, as Mother did, that they are Avatars, because the "real substance" shines through the alloy in all that they do, they have a fixed faith and conviction that they will never fail.
You think then that in me (I do not bring in the Mother) there was never any doubt or despair, no attacks of that kind. I have borne every attack which human beings have borne, otherwise I would be unable to assure anybody "This too can be conquered." At least I would have no right to say so. Your psychology is terribly rigid. I repeat, the Divine when he takes on the burden of terrestrial nature, takes it fully, sincerely and without any conjuring tricks or pretence. If he has something behind him which emerges always out of the coverings, it is the same thing in essence, even if greater in degree, that there is behind others—and it is to awaken that that he is there.
The psychic being does the same for all who are intended for the spiritual way—men need not be extraordinary beings to follow Yoga. That is the mistake you are making—to harp on greatness as if only the great can be spiritual.
Regarding the divinity in man—what is the use of this divinity if it is coated layer after layer with Maya? How many can
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really become conscious of it?
Exactly! Why admit any divinity then at all, if their humanity is an insuperable bar to any following in the Way pointed out by the Avatar? That was your contention that humanity and divinity are irreconcilable opposite things, that it is no use the Avatar asking others (except Arjuna) to follow in his Path—they, being human, cannot do it.
You had defeats, struggles, but had at the same time the spirit of absolute surrender, faith which we find shining through Mother's prayers as well. Did you not leave your great work for the country at one word of Krishna?
Lots of people leave things at the word of a human being like Gandhi, they do not need the word of Krishna.
Does the average man have this faith, etc.? If he has not, but has instead struggles, sufferings etc., picture what his condition would be!
If absolute surrender, faith etc. from the beginning were essential for Yoga then nobody could do it. I myself could not have done it if such a condition had been demanded of me.
This is only to refute the points you found implied or explicit in my letters.
Let me make it clear that in all I wrote I was not writing to prove that I am an Avatar! You are busy in your reasonings with the personal question, I am busy in mine with the general one. I am seeking to manifest something of the Divine that I am conscious of and feel—I care a damn whether that constitutes me an Avatar or something else. That is not a question which concerns me. By manifestation of course I mean the bringing out and spreading of that Consciousness so that others also may feel and enter into it and live in it.
7 March 1935
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I am eagerly waiting to see what you say in reply to X's questions of tonight.7 Often I have wondered why you made your cases equal to ours. Did you ever suffer from desires, passions, ignorance, attachment etc. as we do?
We have had sufferings and struggles to which yours are mere child's play,—I have not made our cases equal to yours. I have said that the Avatar is one who comes to open the Way for humanity to a higher consciousness—if nobody can follow the Way, then either our conception of the thing, which is that of Christ and Krishna and Buddha also, is all wrong or the whole life and action of the Avatar is quite futile. X seems to say that there is no Way and no possibility of following, that the struggles and sufferings of the Avatar are unreal and all humbug,—there is no possibility of struggle for one who represents the Divine. Such an idea makes nonsense of the whole idea of Avatarhood—there is no reason in it, no necessity for it, no meaning in it. The Divine being all-powerful can lift people up without bothering to come down on earth. It is only if it is part of the world arrangement that he should take upon himself the burden of humanity and open the Way that Avatarhood has any meaning.
At last I reopen the controversy.8 I have read your Essays on the Gita, Synthesis of Yoga, letters on Rama, and though I am wiser, my original and fundamental difficulty remains as unsolved as ever. What is so simple to you, as everything is, appears mighty complex and abstruse to my dense intellect. So no alternative but to submit to a fresh beating....
What your view comes to, put in a syllogism, is this: Since I have done it and I am an Avatar, so every other blessed creature can do it.
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This is idiotic. I have said "Follow my path, the way I have discovered for you through my own efforts and example. Transform your nature from the animal to the spiritual, grow into a higher divine consciousness. All this you can do by your own aspiration and by the force of the Divine Shakti." That, if you please, is not the utterance of a madman or an imbecile. I have said, "I have opened the Way; now you with the Divine help can follow it." I have not said "Find the way for yourself as I did."
In the Essays on the Gita you say man "is ignorant because there is upon the eyes of his soul and all its organs the seal of ... Nature, Prakriti, Maya ... ; she has minted him like a coin out of the precious metal of the divine substance, but overlaid with a strong coating of the alloy of her phenomenal qualities, stamped with her own stamp and mark of animal humanity, and although the secret sign of the Godhead is there, it is at first indistinguishable...."9
Does it follow that the coating cannot be dissolved nor the mark effaced? Then stamp the stamp of the chimaera on all efforts at spirituality and catalogue as asses and fools all who have attempted to rise beyond the human animal—all who have tried to follow the path of the Christ, the Buddha; stigmatise as folly Vedanta, Tantra, Yoga, the way of the Jinas, Christ himself and Buddha, Pythagoras, Plato, and any other pathfinder and seeker.
On the other hand you write that in "the Avatar, the divinely-born Man, the real substance shines through the coating; the mark of the seal is there only for form, the vision is that of the secret Godhead, the power of the life is that of the secret God head, and it breaks through the seals of the assumed human nature ..." [Essays on the Gita, pp. 158-59].
Does it follow that the breaking through had not to be done or was a mere trifling impediment? The power of the form can be
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exceedingly great as every thinker and observer of life can tell you.
After this you say that the object of the Avatar's descent is "precisely to show that the human birth with all its limitations can be made such a means and instrument of the divine birth and divine works.... Even human sorrow and physical suffering he must assume and use so as to show ... how that suffering may be a means of redemption ..." [Essays, pp. 164-65]. Well, Sir, it will have no go with me, my heart won't leap up at such a divine possibility, such a dream of Paradise!
Your heart not leaping up does not make my statement a falsehood, a non sequitur or a chimaera.
My fellow-brothers may venture to reach there through such a thin hanging bridge but if they do, I am afraid, it will be into a fool's Paradise.
The fool being myself, eh? For it is my Paradise and it is I who call them to it.
The difficulties you face, the dangers you overcome, the struggles you embrace would seem to be mere shams.
[Underlining "mere shams":] Truly then what a humbug and charlatan I have been, making much of sham struggles and dangers—or, in the alternative, since I took them for realities, what a self-blinded imbecile!
Mother knew she was an Avatar at a very early age.
At what age? But I shall say nothing about the Mother—I cannot bring her into such arguments, only myself.
She was thus able to follow the path of travails through volcanoes and earthquakes. But if she says to me, "You can also do it," I will cry out, "Forbear, Mother, forbear."
Nobody asks you to go through volcanoes and earthquakes or
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to proceed unhelped. You are simply asked to follow the Leader and Guide with the Divine help and with courage, in the face of whatever difficulties come.
If I knew I were an Avatar (pardon my bold hypothesis) do you think I would cry or wail for fear of any amount of crashes and collisions or would it matter if I began with a nature with not a grain of spirituality in me? I would jump from peak to peak in somersaults, go down the abysses, rise up the steeps without fear of mortal consequences since I would know that I was the Divine.
Would you? I wish you had been in my place then! You would have been a hundred times more fit than myself, if you could really have done that. And how easily things would have been done! While I did them and am still doing them with enormous difficulty because I lead and have to make the path so that others may follow with less difficulty.
There could be no death or failure for me.
The Divine in the body is not subject to death or failure? Yet all those claimed to be Avatars have died—some by violence, some by cancer, some of indigestion etc. etc. You yourself say that they were all failures. How do you reconcile these self-contradictory arguments?
You say, "A physical and mental body is prepared fit for the divine incarnation by a pure or great heredity and the descending Godhead takes possession of it" [Essays, p. 166].
Like my heredity? It was "pure"? But of course I am not a divine incarnation. Only why put all that upon one whom it does not fit?
To his beloved children created in his own image he says with gusto, I send you through this hell of a cycle of rebirths. Don't lose heart, poor boys, if you groan under the weight of your sins and those of your ancestors to boot. I will come down
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and take hold of a pure heredity with no coating around me and say unto you—come and follow my example.
Who gave this message? It is your own invention. The Divine does not come down in that way. It is a silly imagination of yours that you are trying to foist on the truth of things. The Divine also comes down into the cycle of rebirths, makes the great holocaust, endures shame and obloquy, torture and crucifixion, the burden of human nature, sex and passion and sorrow and suffering, manifests many births before he reveals the Avatar. And when he does reveal it? Well, read the lives of the Avatars and try to understand and see.
Nobody ever said there was no coating—that is your invention.
Not a very inspiring message, Sir!
No, of course not—but it is yours, not any Avatar's.
Jatakas tell us that in every life small or great, Buddha's frontal consciousness was always above the level of others.
Jatakas are legends.
Ramakrishna and Chaitanya began yoga in their cradle, it seems.
Did they? I know nothing about it; but if they told you that! Anyhow one died by drowning and the other of a cancer.
I don't know if Avatars ever play the part of the rogue or the eternal sinner in any life.
[Underlining "rogue or the eternal sinner":] Krishna was a rogue and a sinner even in his Avatar life, if tales are true! Don't you think so?
Now about your absence of urge towards spirituality. Even though that sounds like a story, pray tell us how you could
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free your mind from all thoughts in 7 days or be established in Brahmic consciousness in a few days.
3 if you please. You are terribly inaccurate in your statements. It was simply through the Divine Grace, because it had been done by thousands before me throughout the centuries and millenniums, and the Divine did not want me to waste time over that; other things in the Yoga were not so damned easy!
And even apart from spirituality, what of your waiting for the gallows for your country's sake with perfect equanimity?
[Underlining "perfect equanimity":] Who told you that? I was perfectly sure of release. But even so plenty of ordinary men did it before me.
What of your profoundly bold assertion that you would free the country by a Force that was under your feet?
Never said that, surely. Under my feet?
What of your brilliant career? If one has the essential principle, what does it matter if one has no urge towards spirituality?
My career was much less brilliant than many others'. They ought to have progressed then farther in Yoga than myself, e.g. Mussolini, Lenin, Tilak, Brajendranath Seal, the admirable Crichton, Gandhi, Tagore, Roosevelt, Lloyd George etc. etc. All Avatars or all full of the essential principle!
The inner consciousness is there.
All that does not apply to me alone. There are hundreds of others. The inner consciousness is not so rare a phenomenon as all that.
There are some people, I hear, who are to all external appearance debauchees or moral insolvents but whose psychic is much developed or "can be touched".
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That gives away the whole case. For mark that I have never asked the whole human race to follow me to the supramental—that is your invention, not mine.
Still you go on saying that what you have done is possible for me and not for Arjunas only to whom alone Krishna seems to have addressed the Gita.
What a waste of words and energy! Yet Krishna said "even Chandalas can follow my way."
I prophesy that your message will reverberate in the rarefied atmosphere evoking a loud rebellious echo from human hearts.
I admit that you have successfully proved that I am an imbecile.
But if you say, "I come to raise you bodily by my divine Omnipotence, not by my example," I shake hands. If you insist that I follow your example, it would be as well to insist on my leaving you bag and baggage at once.
All this is a purely personal argument concerning yourself. Up to now you were making general assertions—so was I. I was concerned with the possibility of people following the Path I had opened, as Christ, Krishna, Buddha, Chaitanya etc. opened theirs. You were declaring that no human being could follow and that my life was perfectly useless as an example—like the lives of the Avatars. Path, life, example all useless—even Power useless because all have been failures. These are general questions. Whether X or Y is able or willing to follow the path or depends on divine Omnipotence only is a personal question. Even if X or Y does so, he has no right to pass a general decree of impossibility against others.
There are some who claim that they are here and remain here by their soul's call. But I am not one of those fortunate ones. Where they hear the soul's call, I hear the calls of a thousand devils and if it were not for your love—well, no,—for your Power (which I firmly believe in), I would end up myself by
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being one of those devils. I hope you will believe that this is not a conceited statement.
It is very conceited. To be a devil needs a considerable personal capacity or else a great openness to the Beyond. If you had said, I can only be an ordinary human being, that might be modest.
We don't mean to give you a compliment when we say these things.
Of course not. It is the reverse of complimentary, since you prove me to be an ignorant and mistaken fellow of an Avatar, who merely wastes his time doing things which are of no earthly use to any human being—except perhaps Arjuna who is not here.
No, we say that the Sun is a thing apart, not to be measured by any human standards.
The Sun's rays are of use to somebody—you say all my acts and life and laborious opening of the Way I thought I had made for spiritual realisation, are of no use to anybody—since nobody is strong enough to follow the path, only the Avatar can do it. Poor lonely ineffective fellow of an Avatar!
We respect him, adore him, lay ourselves bare to his Light, but we do not follow him.
Who is this we? Editorial "we"?
Let me point out one or two facts, in a perfectly serious spirit.
(1) It has always been supposed by spiritual people that divine perfection, similitude to the Divine, sādṛśya, sādharmya, is part of the Mukti. Christ said "Be ye perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect"—the very Divine himself, mind you, not a mere Avatar or luminous projection from him. His followers strive to be Christlike. Thomas à Kempis, meditating and striving, wrote a book on the Imitation of Christ. Francis of Assisi and many
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others arrived at Christlikeness. [Krishna in] the Gita insists on sādharmya, gives himself as an example, and tells Arjuna that many before him from ancient times reached to it. Buddha in teaching karuṇā, the eightfold path, the rejection of sanskaras, gave it as an ideal to all true followers of his path, thus placing before them not only his own path but his own example. All this is trash and humbug? Christ and Buddha were fools? Myself even a bigger fool? It is not a question of greatness—it is a question of acquiring a certain consciousness to which the way is laid open. It is not a question of acquiring cosmic omniscience and omnipotence, but of reaching the essential divine consciousness with all its spiritual consequences, peace, light, equality, strength, Ananda etc. etc. If you say that that cannot be done, you deny all possibility of spiritual perfection, transformation or any true Yoga. All that anyone can do is to be helpless and wait for the divine Omnipotence to do something or other. The whole spiritual past of man becomes a fantastic insanity, with the Avatars as the chief lunatics. That is the materialist point of view, but I am unable to envisage it as a basis for sadhana. That example is not all, is true; I have not said it is; there is Influence, there is spiritual help—but the truth of the Way and the Example cannot be belittled in this scornful fashion.
(2) You make nothing of the Divine in man. If there is no divinity in man, then there is no possibility of Avatarhood; also spirituality can just as well pass away into silence—it has no foundation here. If the divinity is there in man, it can break through its coatings. You admit that it can do it in debauchees and moral insolvents—that it can manifest in ignorant and uncultured men and women is a proved fact; the Gita itself declares that all kinds of men and women can follow its path. Whether X or Y does or does not do so does not depend then on these things and it is no use trying to bar the path to people because of either their ignorance or their immorality. To do so is to betray a bottomless ignorance of spiritual things. As to the possibility of awakening the psychic being, on what intellectual grounds or by what fixed ethical or rational rules are you going to fix that and declare "No entry here for you"? You cannot
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generalise in the way you try to do by an intellectual reasoning. The mystery of the Spirit is too great for such a puny endeavour.
after 6 March 1935
How is it that later Avatars often find fault with the actions and movements of their predecessors?
Who finds fault with whom? I have not found fault with any Avatar. To discern what they expressed and what they did not express, is not to find fault.
Avatars are supposed to be infallible, they are supposed to have Knowledge directly from Above!
What is infallible? I invite your attention again to Rama and the Golden Deer. The Avatar need have no theoretical "Knowledge" from above—he acts and thinks whatever the Divine within him intends that he should act and think for the work. Was everything that Ramakrishna said or thought infallible?
22 April 1935
Every Avatar descended to relieve the world from falsehood, darkness, vice, etc. Also, everyone preached against them.
I am not concerned with what the Avatars did or are supposed to have done (though in that case Krishna seems to have done some very queer and undivine things). My business is with rising above the human consciousness and not with fulfilling limited human ideals; and I look at things from that standpoint.
20 April 1936
Avatars, unlike Vibhutis, do not need to satisfy their vital.
Why should they not?
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For the Avatar's vital has no cravings and desires as our vital has. He is above them. And if he seems to be satisfying them, it is only to acquire experience and knowledge of the vital world.
All that is wrong. The Avatar takes upon himself the nature of humanity in his instrumental parts, though the consciousness acting behind is divine.
When the Divine descends here (as the Avatar), he has to veil himself and deal with the world and its movements like an ordinary man of the cosmic product.
Exactly.
But behind he is perfectly conscious of what happens. The universal forces cannot make him their tool as they make us.
That does not prevent the Avatar from acting as men act and using the movements of Nature for his life and work.
23 July 1936
Avatars can of course be married and satisfy their vital movements. But do they really indulge them as ordinary people? Don't they even before they begin the practice of Yoga, remain conscious of their union with the Divine above even while satisfying their outer being?
There is not necessarily any union above before the practice of Yoga. There is a connection of the consciousness with the veiled Divinity and an action out of that, but this is not dependent on the practice of Yoga.
25 July 1936
What could be the Divine's purpose in leaving Arjuna in such a helpless condition after his withdrawal from the world?
It is said that it was done to break Arjuna's pride so that he might see his strength was not his, but the Divine's alone.
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Throughout the history of human evolution we see that the Avatar brings light into the world. But when he retires, very little of this light remains. There is no substantial change. Does the Divine will it to be so?
You have only to consider what the state of humanity would have been if Krishna and others had not come. They would have been still near to the beast with no openings on the heights of the spirit.
20 October 1933
Were the Avatars—the ten that have already come—known as Avatars in their own times?
Only to a few, according to the accounts.
I thought I had already told you that your turn towards Krishna was not an obstacle. In any case I affirm that positively in answer to your question. If we consider the large and indeed predominant part he played in my own sadhana, it would be strange if the part he has in your sadhana could be considered objectionable. Sectarianism is a matter of dogma, ritual etc., not of spiritual experience; the concentration on Krishna is a self-offering to the iṣṭa-deva. If you reach Krishna you reach the Divine; if you can give yourself to him, you give yourself to me. Your inability to identify may be because you are laying too much stress on the physical aspects, consciously or unconsciously.
18 June 1943
You can't expect me to argue about my own spiritual greatness in comparison with Krishna's. The question itself would be relevant only if there were two sectarian religions in opposition, Aurobindoism and Vaishnavism, each insisting on its own God's greatness. That is not the case. And then what Krishna must I challenge,—the Krishna of the Gita who is the transcendent
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Godhead, Paramatma, Parabrahma, Purushottama, the cosmic Deity, master of the universe, Vasudeva who is all, the immanent in the heart of all creatures, or the Godhead who was incarnate at Brindavan and Dwarka and Kurukshetra and who was the guide of my Yoga and with whom I realised identity? All that is not to me something philosophical or mental but a matter of daily and hourly realisation and intimate to the stuff of my consciousness. Then from what position can I adjudicate this dispute? X thinks I am superior in greatness, you think there can be nothing greater than Krishna; each is entitled to have his own view or feeling, whether it is itself right or not. It can be left there; it can be no reason for your leaving the Asram.
25 February 1945
After reading your answers, one part of me tries to justify itself and attribute to you the ordinary humanity.
Of course. Whatever does not say ditto to the human mind cannot be divine. That is the usual maxim of judgment. "The Divine must do what I want and think as I think, judge as I judge and support my ideas, interests or feelings against others, otherwise how can he be Divine? For whatever I think, feel or want must be the TRUTH." At least that seems to be the attitude of most sadhaks in the Asram.
Shall man know of your divinity only after the supermind has descended?10
There is no necessity of the supermind for that. It is the inner consciousness that has to recognise—it is impossible for the outer mind to know it by its own reasonings.
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I have a strong faith that you are the Divine Incarnate in bhāgavatī tanu. Am I right?
Follow your faith—it is not likely to mislead you.
12 August 1935
One thing. There is coming here in a day or two (perhaps tomorrow) a lady from Switzerland named Madame X who is a friend or acquaintance of Y's mother; she will put up in Boudie House, perhaps for a month, perhaps for a shorter or longer time. We know nothing of her and it is not yet sure whether her profession of seeking the spiritual Truth is really deep or genuine. Therefore till we are fixed about her, Mother wishes that she should not be taken in intimately into the Asram life or told anything about inner matters of the Asram or spoken to about questions such as the divinity of the Mother or myself (for her we are simply spiritual Teachers) or shown freely messages or letters. A certain reserve is necessary until she has been thoroughly tested. I write this in view of the possibility of your and other sadhaks meeting her and an acquaintance forming, so as to put you on your guard. It is not a case like Z or even the A's.
9 December 1936
Do you really think it necessary or advisable to publish an exegesis of this kind?11 The last paragraphs are about things that concern only disciples or even only sadhaks of the Asram, it is not desirable to discuss them and publish to outsiders or the general public. What you write about my books would be considered as extravagant by most readers. Also we do not usually encourage sadhaks of the Asram to write about us as divine, though one or another may have done it—there is a certain reticence in this matter which is desirable in writing for the general public.
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