Letters on poetry and other forms of literature, on painting and the other arts, on beauty and aesthetics, and on their relation to the practice of yoga.
On Poetry Sri Aurobindo : corresp.
Letters on poetry and other forms of literature, on painting and the other arts, on beauty and aesthetics, and on their relation to the practice of yoga. Most of these letters were written by Sri Aurobindo in the 1930 and 1940s to members of his ashram. Around one sixth of them were published during his lifetime; the rest were transcribed from his manuscripts after his passing. Many are being published for the first time in this volume.
THEME/S
Can one gain as much profit (I mean spiritually) from writing poems, etc. as from devoting one's time to sadhana—meditation, etc. In other words, can literary activity be taken as part of one's sadhana?
Any activity can be taken as part of the sadhana if it is offered to the Divine or done with the consciousness or faith that it is done by the Divine Power. That is the important point.
29 March 1934
It is obvious that poetry cannot be a substitute for sadhana; it can be an accompaniment only. If there is a feeling (of devotion, surrender etc.), it can express and confirm it; if there is an experience, it can express and strengthen the force of experience. As reading of books like the Upanishads or Gita or singing of devotional songs can help, especially at one stage or another, so this can help also. Also it opens a passage between the exterior consciousness and the inner mind or vital. But if one stops at that, then nothing much is gained. Sadhana must be the main thing and sadhana means the purification of the nature, the consecration of the being, the opening of the psychic and the inner mind and vital, the contact and presence of the Divine, the realisation of the Divine in all things, surrender, devotion, the widening of the consciousness into the cosmic Consciousness, the Self one in all, the psychic and the spiritual transformation of the nature. If these things are neglected and only poetry and mental development and social contacts occupy all the time, then that is not sadhana. Also the poetry must be written in the true spirit, not for fame or self-satisfaction, but as a means of contact
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with the Divine through aspiration or of the expression of one's own inner being, as it was written formerly by those who left behind them so much devotional and spiritual poetry in India; it does not help if it is written only in the spirit of the Western artist or littérateur. Even works or meditation cannot succeed unless they are done in the right spirit of consecration and spiritual aspiration gathering up the whole being and dominating all else. It is the lack of this gathering up of the whole life and nature and turning it towards the one aim, which is the defect in so many here, that lowers the atmosphere and stands in the way of what is being done by myself and the Mother.
19 May 1938
What I wrote to you about poetry was an entirely general answer to the question of the relation of poetry to sadhana. I wrote how poetry could be part of sadhana and under what conditions, what were its limitations and also that it could not be a substitute for sadhana. I made no personal application; I have not said or suggested anywhere that the ideas or bhakti expressed in your poetry were humbug or hypocrisy and I have not said or suggested anywhere that all our labour on you had been wasted and gone for nothing. These absurd ideas, like all the rest, are imaginations and inventions of the vital ego foisted by it on your mind in order to justify its pressure on you to leave Pondicherry and the Yoga.
I understood from what you had written and said before that you wanted to concentrate altogether on the sadhana—to do what I call "the gathering up of the whole life and nature and turning it towards the one aim", and I wrote that the lack of this was the defect of the majority of the sadhaks here. What I wrote implied therefore an approval of your resolution. No doubt, it implied also that you had not yet made this total gathering up and turning; if you had, there would have been no need of this resolution of yours and no room for it. If your whole life and every part of your being has already been gathered up and entirely consecrated to the Divine, then you are on the perfect way and there is obviously no need of any change in your way
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of life or your sadhana. But this can be said of very few in the Ashram. But that does not mean that all the people in the Ashram except a few are insincere and that all our work on them has been thrown away. What it means is that for our work to be fully done, for the decisive realisations and the complete inner and outer change, the entire gathering up and turning of the whole life and nature is indispensable and that if it is only partially done, it is a defect in the sadhana and stands in the way of a full working and decisive and total change of the consciousness. If your whole vital nature and all the movements of your outer life had been already gathered up and turned towards the Divine alone without any other aim or interest, how is it that this vital revolt came about? And how is it that it whirls furiously around such things as the refusal of an easy chair or an almirah or of a special room which the Mother has reserved for another purpose? Or around the gossip of sadhaks and what this one may have said or that one may have said or the attitude of sadhaks towards you? It is evident that the part of your vital which was concerned with these outward things or with the outward contacts with others was not yet turned solely towards the one aim, that it was still interested and affected by these things which have nothing to do with the realisation of the Divine or with Yoga.
It is quite true that when you first came, the Mother was not in favour of your staying and taking up the Yoga here, for you had then a very strong obscurity and impurity in your vital nature and this could easily make the Yoga too difficult for you and create serious trouble. When however you persisted in staying, we gave you your opportunity as we had done in similar cases before. For it is always possible for the psychic being to prevail, if it is determined to do so, over the difficulties of the vital nature, even though it may mean severe inner struggles for a time. This concession was justified by certain results; you opened in a remarkable way into the inner being by the poetic aspiration and you had experiences which strengthened the psychic call and created a psychic and mental basis for your sadhana. Even you were able to throw out from the vital the sexual obsession which
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had been one of the chief difficulties there.1
It won't do to put excessive and sweeping constructions on what I write, otherwise it is easy to misunderstand its real significance. I said that there was no reason why poetry of a spiritual character (not any poetry like Verlaine's or Swinburne's or Baudelaire's) should bring no realisation at all. This did not mean that poetry was a major means of realisation of the Divine. I did not say that it would lead us to the Divine or that anyone had achieved the Divine through poetry or that poetry by itself can lead us straight into the sanctuary. Obviously if such exaggerations are put into my words, they become absurd and untenable.
My statement is perfectly clear and there is nothing in it against reason or common sense. The Word has power—even the ordinary written word has a power. If it is an inspired word it has still more power. What kind of power or power for what depends on the nature of the inspiration and the theme and the part of the being it touches. If it is the Word itself,—as in certain utterances of the great Scriptures—Veda, Upanishads, Gita,—it may well have a power to awaken a spiritual impulse, an uplifting, even certain kinds of realisation. To say that it cannot contradicts spiritual experience.
The Vedic poets regarded their poetry as mantras, they were the vehicles of their own realisations and could become vehicles of realisation for others. Naturally, these mostly would be illuminations, not the settled and permanent realisation that is the goal of Yoga—but they could be steps on the way or at least lights on the way. Many have such illuminations, even initial realisations while meditating on verses of the Upanishads or the Gita. Anything that carries the Word, the Light in it, spoken or written, can light this fire within, open a sky, as it were, bring the effective vision of which the Word is the body. In all ages spiritual seekers have expressed their aspirations or their experiences in poetry or inspired language and it has helped themselves and
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others. Therefore there is nothing absurd in my assigning to such poetry a spiritual or psychic value and effectiveness to poetry of a psychic or spiritual character.
24 December 1934
I have always told you that you ought not to stop your poetry and similar activities. It is a mistake to do so out of asceticism or with the idea of tapasyā. One can stop these things when they drop of themselves, because one is in full experience and so interested in one's inner life that one has no energy to spare for the rest. Even then, there is no rule for giving up; for there is no reason why the poetry, etc., should not be a part of sadhana. The love of applause, of fame, the ego-feeling have to be given up, but that can be done without giving up the activity itself.
16 April 1935
It is perfectly true that all human greatness and fame and achievement are nothing before the greatness of the Infinite and Eternal. There are two possible deductions from that, first, that all human action has to be renounced and one should go into a cave; the other is that one should grow out of ego so that the activities of the nature may become one day consciously an action of the Infinite and Eternal. But it does not follow that one must or can grow out of ego and the vital absorption at once and, if one does not, that proves incapacity for Yoga. I myself never gave up poetry or other creative human activities out of tapasyā; they fell into a subordinate position because the inner life became stronger and stronger slowly: nor did I really drop them, only I had so heavy a work laid upon me that I could not find time to go on. But it took me years and years to get the ego out of them or the vital absorption, but I never heard anybody say and it never occurred to me that that was a proof that I was not born for the Yoga....
As to the born Yogi what I said was that there was a born Yogi in you, and I very explicitly based it on the personality that showed itself in your earlier experiences in a vivid way which no
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one accustomed to the things of Yoga or having any knowledge about them could fail to recognise. But I did not mean that there was nothing in you which was not "born Yogic". Everyone has many personalities in him and many of them are not Yogic at all in their propensities. But if one has the will to Yoga, the born Yogi prevails as soon as he gets a chance of manifesting himself through the crust of the mind and vital nature. Only, very often that takes time. One must be prepared to give the time.
Of course when you are writing poems or composing you are in contact with your inner being, that is why you feel so different then. The whole art of Yoga is to get that contact and get from it into the inner being itself, for so one can enter directly into and remain in all that is great and luminous and beautiful. Then one can try to establish them in this troublesome and defective outer shell of oneself and in the outer world also.
10 November 1934
Literature and art are or can be first introductions to the inner being—the inner mind and vital; for it is from there that they come. And if one writes poems of bhakti, poems of divine seeking etc., or creates music of that kind, it means that there is a bhakta or seeker inside who is supporting himself by that self expression. There is also the point of view behind Lele's answer to me when I told him that I wanted to do Yoga but for work, for action, not for Sannyasa and Nirvana,—but after years of spiritual effort I had failed to find the way and it was for that I had asked to meet him. His first answer was, "It should be easy for you as you are a poet." But it was not from any point of view like that that Nirod put his question and it was not from that point of view that I gave my answer. It was about some special character-making virtue that he seemed to attribute to literature.
18 November 1936
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I don't understand why Lele told you that because you are a poet, sadhana will be easy to you through poetry.
Because I told him I wanted to do Yoga in order to get a new inner Yogic consciousness for life and action, not for leaving life. So he said that. A poet writes from an inner source, not from the external mind, he is moved by inspiration to write, i.e. he writes what a greater Power writes through him. So the Yogi karmachari has to act from an inner source, to derive his thoughts and movements from that, to be inspired and impelled by a greater Power which acts through him. He never said that sadhana will be easy for me through poetry. Where is "through poetry" phrase? Poetry can be done as a part of sadhana and help the sadhana—but sadhana "through" poetry is a quite different matter.
23 May 1938
If poetic progress meant a progress in the whole range of Yoga, Nishikanta would be a great Yogi by this time. The opening in poetry or any other part helps to prepare the general opening when it is done under the pressure of Yoga, but it is at first something special, like the opening of the subtle vision or subtle senses. It is the opening of a special capacity in the inner being.
8 August 1936
I do not think you need be anxious about the poetry; the power is sure to re-express itself as soon as you are ready for a progress. It has probably stopped working temporarily because the pressure is now for the inner self-creation more than for the outer expression—I am speaking, of course, of your case in particular. The expression in poetry and other forms must be, for the Yogin, a flowing out from a growing self within and not merely a mental creation or an aesthetic pleasure. Like that the inner self grows and the poetic power will grow with it.
9 December 1931
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What you say about the spontaneous development of the capacity in the metre after a silent and inactive incubation of over two years, is quite true. But it is not amazing; it often happens and is perfectly natural to those who know the laws of the being by observation and experience. In the same way one suddenly finds oneself knowing more of a language or a subject after returning to it subsequent to a short interim without study, problems which had been abandoned as unsolvable solving themselves spontaneously and easily after sleep or when they are taken up again; knowledge or ideas coming up from within without reading or learning or hearing from others. Sudden efflorescences of capacity, intuitions, wellings up of all sorts of things point to the same inner power or inner working. It is what we mean when we speak of the word, knowledge or activity coming out of the silence, of a working behind the veil of which the outer mind is unconscious but which one day bears its results, of the inner manifesting itself in the outer. It makes at once true and practical what sounds only a theory to the uninitiated,—the strong distinction made by us between the inner being and the outer consciousness. It is how also unexpected Yogic capacity reveals itself, sometimes no doubt as a result of long and apparently fruitless effort, sometimes as a spontaneous outflowering of what was concealed there all the time or else as a response to a call which had been made but at the time and for long seemed to be without an answer.
22 February 1935
I like very much both the feeling and the form of your poem. Of course when you are writing poems or composing you are in contact with your inner being, that is why you feel so different then. The whole art of Yoga is to get that contact and get from it into the inner being itself, for so one can enter directly into and remain in all that is great and luminous and beautiful. Then one can try to establish them in this troublesome and defective outer shell of oneself and in the outer world also.
20 November 1934
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This poetry, even if it does not lead to any realisation,—though there is no reason why it should not, since it is not mundane,—is yet a link with the inner being and expresses its ideal. That is its value for the sadhana.
25 December 1934
The use of your writing is to keep you in touch with the inner source of inspiration and intuition, so as to wear thin the crude external crust in the consciousness and encourage the growth of the inner being.
24 July 1938
What do you wish me to be, an artist, a literary man, or a poet?
A sadhak—all these things can be included in sadhana.
Why is my mind so wretchedly limited, my soul such a feeble flame?
It is not the question, for this is not a question of personal capacity but of the development of the receptivity and for that the sole thing necessary is an entire or at least a dominant will to receive. What you call your mind and your soul are only a small surface part of you, not your whole being. Personal capacity belongs to the temporary surface personality which you have put forward in this life and which is mutable, is already changing and can change much farther—e.g. the poems you are writing are certainly beyond what was your original capacity—they belong to a range of experience to the Word of which you have opened by a development beyond your old mental self—a farther development beyond not only your old mental self but also your old vital self is needed to get the concrete realisation of that range of experience.
What is standing in the way is something that is still attached to the limitations of the old personality and hesitates to take the plunge because by doing so it may lose these cherished
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limitations. It stands back in apprehension from the plunge because it is afraid of being taken out of its depths—but unless one is taken out of the very shallow depth of this small part of the self, how can one get into the Infinite at all? Further more, there is no real danger in finding oneself in the Infinite, it is a place of greater safety and greater riches, not less; but this something in you does not like the prospect because it has to merge itself into a larger self-existence. You asked the Mother to press on you the lighting of the fire within and she has been doing so, but this is standing back with the feeling "Oh Lord! what will become of me if this flame gets lit." You must get rid of this clinging to the past self and life, then you can have a fire which will not be feeble. You have not fallen between two stools,—you are hesitating between two consciousnesses, the old and the new, the small and the great, that is all.
As for the poetry, well—you have developed up to a point at which your work is of a very rare and unique quality—in no way inferior to that of the others of whom you speak,—the difficulty of intermittency of production is nothing, for all feel that except Nishikanta and Dilip who have no misgivings about their creative power. Yours rises probably from the fact that in order to have free command of the highest planes of poetry, you have to rise into them and not only open to the Word from them—it is therefore the same difficulty in another form. Otherwise, if you had the old self-satisfaction of which you draw so glowing a picture, you would have found your present poetry marvellous and gone on writing freely only oscillating between the different planes achieved and content to do so. This is not a proof of incapacity but of the will to greater things. Only that will must not be in the mind only but take full hold of the vital also and must be a will that what you write of shall be a part not only of thought but of life. Which comes back to what I have written above—get free from the obscure hesitation to open and let the force do its work.
One must either do that if one wants a rapid change or go
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quietly and wait for the slower working from behind the veil to reduce and break the obstacle.
10 August 1937
There is nothing definite that I can tell you. Mother finds no conscious opposition in your mind or will to surrender and transformation. But probably the difficulty lies in the vital (not mind) of the artist (the poet, painter etc. in you), because the vital of the artist is always accustomed to its independence, to follow its own way, to make and live in its own world and pursue the impulses of its nature. If that element changes then probably surrender and transformation could be more rapid, but it is not always easy for it to change at once, it usually goes by a gradual and almost unobserved change.
I hesitate to write in this high tone: "I am the Light of the One," etc. It sounds too high and grand. Some don't like this tone at all. Dilip is one. They call it insincere. Is there no justification for a poet-sadhak to use this tone?
If such poems are put as a claim, or vaunted as a personal experience of Yoga, they may be objected to on that ground. But a poet is not bound to confine himself to his personal experience. A poet writes from inspiration or from imagination or vision. Milton did not need to go to Heaven or Hell or the Garden of Eden before he wrote Paradise Lost. Are all Dilip's bhakti poems an exact transcription of his inner state? If so, he must be a wonderful Yogi and bhakta.
14 April 1938
I seek for Ananda, it eludes me—Love, Peace are nowhere. If poetry doesn't give them, what's the use?
Poetry does not give love and peace, it gives Ananda, intense but not wide or lasting.
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You will say that it is my mind that obstructs by its struggle.
Your mind has obstructed the free flow of the poetry—but what it has obstructed more is the real peace and Ananda that is "deep, great and wide". A quiet mind turned towards the ভূমা is what you need.
28 July 1936
I have no hesitation at all and feel very glad when I tell you of my aspiration to do the sadhana through literary activity.
Literary activity can be made a part of sadhana like other things, but sadhana through literary activity is a phrase whose meaning is not very clear.
29 June 1937
What is the use of literature if the nature stays just the same?
Good heavens! where did you get this idea that literature can transform people? Literary people are often the most impossible on the face of the earth.
10 November 1936
We may have progressed in literature, but the outer human nature remains almost the same.
Outer human nature can only change either by an intense psychic development or a strong and all-pervading influence from above. It is the inner being that has to change first—a change which is not always visible outside. That has nothing to do with the development of the faculties which is another side of the personality. That is another question altogether. But such sadhana means a slow laborious work of self-change in most cases, so why not sing on the way?
11 November 1936
To be a literary man is not a spiritual aim; but to use literature as a means of spiritual expression is another matter. Even to
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make expression a vehicle of a superior power helps to open the consciousness. The harmonising rests on that principle.
19 September 1936
Literature like everything else can be made an instrumentation for the Divine Life. It can be made of some spiritual importance if it is taken up with that aim and, even so, it cannot have that importance for everybody. In ordinary life no particular pursuit or study can be imposed as necessary for everybody; it cannot be positively necessary for everybody to have a mastery of English literature or to be a reader of poetry or a scientist or acquainted with all the sciences (or encyclopaedia of knowledge). What is important is to have an instrument of knowledge that will apply itself accurately, calmly, perfectly to all that it has to handle.
29 December 1934
Literature, poetry, science and other studies can be a preparation of the consciousness for life. When one does Yoga they can become part of the sadhana only if done for the Divine or taken up by the Divine Force, but then one should not want to be a poet for the sake of being a poet only, or for fame, applause, etc.
Has my writing any spiritual value?
No present value spiritually—it may have a mental value. It is the same with the work—it has a value of moral training, discipline, obedience, acceptance of work for the Mother. The spiritual value and result come afterwards when the consciousness in the vital opens upward. So with the mental work. It is a preparation. If you cannot yet do it with the true spiritual consciousness, it, the work as well as the mental occupation, must be done with the right mental or vital will in it.
14 May 1934
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Well, of course the first business of Yoga is not to make geniuses at all, but to make spiritual men—but Yoga can do the other thing also.
11 November 1934
Am I right in feeling that the writing is doing me some good at present?
Yes, as it keeps you in the right frame of mind without the sinking into tamas and nervous troubles.
6 September 1934
There is no incompatibility between spirituality and creative activity—they can be united.
Nirod, Nolini and Sahana are all wrong in laying down a rule of that kind for my conduct. I do not base my action on mental rules which have to be applied to every case. It is a still greater error to suppose that because I (or the Mother) do something in the case of one person or another, we are bound to do it for everybody and to complain of our not doing it as "making a difference". All that belongs to the ignorance and clamour of the vital egoistic nature and has nothing to do with spiritual life.
I cannot allow myself to be drawn back into a preoccupation with the poetry of the sadhaks. I have much more serious things to deal with on which depends the whole work and Yoga. I have ceased to deal with Bengali poetry—if any is sent, which is no longer done, I send it back with or without a word of comment. But neither can I spend time in teaching beginners how to write English verse. Nirod's case is one in which for special reasons I have made an exception, nor is he any more a beginner. Neither on his own nor on Romen's poems have I need to spend a long time. Even so, I do it only because I have a few moments to dispose of; if they claimed it as a right, I would refuse.
The spiritual life and one's own inner psychic and spiritual
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change should be the first preoccupation of a sadhak—poetry or painting is something quite subordinate and even then it should be done not to be a great poet or artist but as a help to the inner sadhana. It is time that everyone got away from the vital view of things to the psychic and spiritual on which alone can stand Yoga and the spiritual life.
Will it do any harm to my sadhana if I attempt stories or a novel?
You can try, if you like. The difficulty is that the subject matter of a novel belongs mostly to the outer consciousness, so that a lowering or externalising can easily come. This apart from the difficulty of keeping the inner poise when putting the mind into outer work. If you could get your established peace within, then it would be possible to do any work without disturbing or lowering the consciousness.
21 August 1934
Sahana once told me that she gave up writing because you thought it was doing harm to her sadhana.
What is necessary for one, need not be necessary for another.
We remembered that Sahana had said you stopped her writing a novel, because her mind or consciousness was being externalised.
That is when one is already in a steady stream of spiritual experience, living partly at least in an inner realisation, while the rest of the being is not yet in it. Writing a novel means then going out of the inner state of experience and stimulating the rest of the nature. If the writing is something in harmony with the inner consciousness, then there would be no necessity for one to stop. On the other hand if one has attained the full consciousness in
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both the inner and the outer nature then also one could write anything one is moved by that consciousness to write, whatever it might be. In certain cases this rule may not hold. One may be strong enough to do all kinds of outward things without affecting the inner state of experience. But ordinarily this can be done freely only in the earlier stages before one is drawn inwards and kept there or in the later stages when one is fully conscious spiritually in the outer being also. It is simply a question of "spiritual tactics" not a hard and fast rule for all in all states and stages.
Why did Sahana find it necessary to stop?
Because she was losing hold of her inner experience and thinking only of her novel.
When I was writing that novel or even while busy with poems, I had often a curious experience. I used to feel an inclination to read a passage from Sri Aurobindo's Essays on the Gita.... There I felt a depth which moved and inspired me and I could then sit down to write my novel.... What has a novel to do with the Gita or with Truth Supramental?
There is obviously nothing on their surface connecting the two. It may have been that the literary quality of the Essays and its depth of thought satisfied some ideal in your temperament and therefore put you into touch with the creative force behind you. A poet for instance can feel himself stimulated enough to creation after reading Homer, yet his own work may be quite different, not epic at all and dealing with quite another order of ideas and things. It is only that the reading stimulates his inner being to create, but according to its own quite different way and purpose.
26 October 1935
If I intend to take literature as a work to be done for sadhana, I must read all good stories, novels, poems, dramas etc., must I not?
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No rule can be made, it differs with different people.
I felt that it will be a mistake to give up all that and to want to meditate all the time or to do only such things which do not hinder me from an inner concentration on you. I felt that all our faculties and capacities have to be given to you.
It is a question of the right consciousness—no unvarying mental rule can be made for these things.
All meditation and no work is not good and helpful to sadhana, I have heard; I don't know if it is true.
Writing and reading absorb the mind and fill it with images and influences; if the images and influences are not of the right kind they naturally turn one away from the true consciousness. It is only if one has the true consciousness well established already that one can read or write anything whatever without losing it or without any other harm.
17 May 1934
To acquire a good style in prose I am reading any and every book in Bengali.
Any and every! That is more likely to spoil the style.
But I don't want to lose the peace and the joy I am in now. If you think that over-reading or reading anything will lower the consciousness I shall lessen the activity.
I do not know whether the peace and joy will stand over-reading. It may if it is very strong.
8 June 1934
A "literary man" is one who loves literature and literary activity for their own separate sake. A Yogi who writes is not a literary man for he writes only what the inner Will and Word wants him to express. He is a channel and an instrument of something greater than his own literary personality.
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Of course the literary man and the intellectual love reading—books are their mind's food. But writing is another matter. There are plenty of people who never write a word in the literary way, but are enormous readers. One reads for ideas, for knowledge, for the stimulation of the mind by all that the world has thought or is thinking.
Poetry, even perhaps all perfect expression of whatever kind, comes by inspiration; reading helps only to acquire for the outer instrument the full possession of a language or to get the technique of literary expression. Afterwards one develops one's own use of the language, one's own style, one's own technique. Reading and painstaking labour are very good for the literary man, but even for him they are not the cause of his good writing, only an aid to it. The cause is within himself.
If one lives in the inner consciousness, if the inner mind or higher mind become dynamic, all the ideas in the world and all sorts of knowledge come crowding in from within or from above; there is little or no need of outside food any longer. At most reading can be then an utility for keeping oneself informed of what is happening in the world—but not as food or one's own seeing of the world and Truth and things. One becomes an independent Mind in communion with the cosmic Thinker. It is a decade or two that I have stopped all but the most casual reading. Poetry too need no longer depend on any outer stimulus; the power of poetical and perfect expression can of itself increase tenfold; what was written with some difficulty, often great difficulty, comes with ease. There is a heightening of the consciousness and the greater inspiration that comes from the heightening.
11 September 1934
Reading and study though they can be useful for preparing the mind, are not themselves the best means of entering the Yoga. It is self-dedication from within that is the means. It is with the consciousness of the Mother that you must unite, a sincere self-consecration in the mind and heart and the Will is the means for it. The work given by the Mother is always meant as field
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for that self-consecration, it has to be done as an offering to her so that through the self-offering one may come to feel her force acting and her presence.
27 February 1935
I do not think you should stop reading so long as the reading itself does not, as a passion, fall away from the mind; that happens when a higher order of consciousness and experiences begins within the being. Nor is it good to force yourself too much to do only the one work of painting. Such compulsion of the mind and vital tends usually either to be unsuccessful and make them more restless or else to create some kind of dullness and inertia.
For the work simply aspire for the Force to use you, put yourself inwardly in relation with the Mother when doing it and make it your aim to be the instrument for the expression of beauty without regard to personal fame or the praise and blame of others.
8 October 1936
Does not the knowledge of yoga come by itself?
Yes. The real knowledge comes of itself from within, by the touch of the Divine.
If so, then isn't it better to have only that knowledge and not the knowledge obtained by reading?
Reading can be only a momentary help to prepare the mind. But the real knowledge does not come by reading. Some preparation for the inner knowledge may be helpful—but the mind should not be too superficially active or seek to know only for curiosity's sake.
6 July 1933
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Reading novels is always distracting if you are deep in sadhana. It is better to avoid it now.
12 May 1933
If novels touch the lower vital or raise it, they ought not to be read by the sadhak. One can read them only if one can look at them from the literary point of view as a picture of human life and nature which one can observe, as the Yogi looks at life itself, without being involved in it or having any reaction.
28 March 1936
How is it that sometimes secular literature moves one more, and gives a greater light and illumination than religious literature?
Religious literature inspires only the religious-minded,—and most religious literature, apart from the comparatively few great books, is poor stuff. Secular literature either appeals to the idealistic mind or to the emotions or to the aesthetic element in us, and all that has a much easier and more common appeal. As for spiritual light, it is another thing altogether. Spirituality is other than mental idealism and other than religion.
In literary expression, I think, it is the inner man that counts. But that would be tantamount to saying that an insincere man can't write things which will move readers with a genuine and concrete something.
Plenty of insincere men have written inspiring things. That is because something in them felt it, though they could not carry it out in life, and that something was used by a greater power behind. Very often in his art, in his writings, the higher part of a man comes out, while the lower dominates his life.
18 October 1935
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How is it that one person reads sacred books, yet is very far from the Divine, while another reads the most stupid so-called literary productions and remains in contact with the Divine?
It is not reading that brings the contact, it is the will and aspiration in the being that bring it.
11 August 1933
The development of the mind is a useful preliminary for the sadhak; it can also be pursued along with the sadhana on condition that it is not given too big a place and does not interfere with the one important thing, the sadhana itself.
1933
Learning languages makes the mind active. Does not the Yoga mean to keep the mind quiet and turn it always to the Divine?
Do you mean to say that in order to have quietness of the mind one must do nothing? Then neither the Mother nor I nor anyone else here has a quiet mind.
6 April 1937
What is the need for so many here to learn French? Are you preparing them for giving lectures or opening centres in France or French-knowing countries?
Are life and mind to be governed only by material utility or outward practicality? Spiritual life would then be inferior even to ordinary mental life where people learn for the sake of acquiring knowledge and culturing the mind and not only for the sake of some outward utility.
24 March 1937
Is it very important in our sadhana to give up reading newspapers? I find that almost all the sadhaks including some of the best ones like Anilbaran read them. Moreover, since you also
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read, there is an excuse that it is useful to read newspapers, otherwise one remains uninformed and blank.
These things depend on oneself and one's own conditions—there can be no general rule. It is true I read newspapers, but Mother never does unless her attention is called to a particular item. I dare say if Anilbaran stopped reading papers for a year, it might be very good for him. One has to see what is one's necessity for the sadhana. If the newspapers disperse the mind or externalise the consciousness too much, they should be avoided. If on the other hand one is dawdling over the sadhana and having no particular inner endeavour one can read newspapers—it is no worse than anything else. On the other hand if the newspapers do not affect the formed or forming inner consciousness in any way (by dispersion, lowering, externalisation etc.) one can read them. I read the newspapers mainly because I have to see what events are happening which might any day have an effect on my work etc. I don't read for the interest of reading.
9 July 1936
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