Amal-Kiran - Poet and Critic

Excerpts from Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo

We have various guesses about your previous lives. The other

day I happened to ask Nolini whether you were Shakespeare. He

was diffident. My own belief is that you have somehow

amalgamated all that was precious in those forces that

manifested as Homer, Shakespeare, Valmiki, Dante, Virgil

and Milton: if not all, at least the biggest of the lot. Kindly let

us know the truth. Among your other and non-poetic incarnations,

some surmise Alexander and Julius Caesar.

"Good Heavens, all that! You have forgotten that Mrs. Besant claims Julius Caesar. I don't want to be prosecuted by her for misappropriation of personality. Alexander was too much of a torrent for me; I disclaim Milton and Virgil, am unconscious of Dante and Valmiki, diffident like Nolini about the Bard (and money-lender?) of Avon. If, however, you can bring sufficiently cogent evidence, I am ready to take upon my back the offences of all the famous people in the world or any of them; but you must prove your case.

"Seriously, these historical identifications are a perilous game and open a hundred doors to the play of imagination. Some may, in the nature of things must, be true; but once people begin, they don't know where to stop. What is important is the lines, rather than the lives, the incarnation of Forces that explain what one now is — and, as for the particular lives or rather personalities, those alone matter which are very definite in one and have powerfully contributed to what one is developing now. But it is not always possible to put a name upon these; for not one hundred-thousandth part of what has been has still a name preserved by human Time."

1.4.1932

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Certain poets very strongly appeal to me and

their minds and characters seem to have strong affinities with mine in different

ways. Have you any intuition in the matter of my past lives?

Mother once saw Horace (as well as Hector) behind Dilip; but

she has told me nothing about myself except that she is positive I

was an Athenian.

"A strong influence from one or more poets or all of them together is not sufficient to warrant a conclusion that one has been those poets or any of them in former lives. I have myself no intuition on the subject of your past lives, though from general impressions I would be inclined to wager that you were not only in Athens (that is evident) but in England during the Restoration time or thereabouts, in Renaissance Italy etc: these, however, are only impressions."

12.5.37

There is an idea that Harin is a  reincarnation of Shelley. It is

supposed to be based on your own intuition or at least a

practical certainty on your part. The character of Harin

poetry seems to add colour to the idea.

"I have never had any practical certainty or any certainty that Harin was Shelley. The question was often raised - I remember to have replied in the negative. No doubt there was a strong Shelleyan vein in Harin's poetry, but if everybody who has that is to be accounted a reincarnation of Shelley, we get into chaotic waters. In that case, Tagore must be a reincarnation of Shelley, and Harin, logically, must be a reincarnation of Tagore — who couldn't wait till Tagore walked off to Paradise or Shelley must have divided himself between the couple. It may be that after- wards I leaned at a time towards a hesitating acceptance, but I am certain that I was never certain about it.

"Besides, I imagine Shelley was not an evolutionary being but a being of a higher plane assisting in the evolution."

19.7.1937

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Is it true that the same consciousness- that took the form of

Leonardo da Vinci had previously manifested as Augustus

Caesar, the first Emperor of Rome? If so, will you please tell me

what exactly Augustus Caesar stood for in the history of Europe

and how Leonardo's work was connected with his?

"Augustus Caesar organised the life of the Roman Empire and it was this that made the framework of the first transmission of the Graeco-Roman civilization to Europe - he came for that work and the writings of Virgil and Horace and others helped greatly towards the success of his mission. After the interlude of the Middle Ages, this civilisation was reborn in a new mould in what is called the Renaissance, not in its life-aspects but in its intel- lectual aspects. It was therefore a supreme intellectual, Leonardo da Vinci, who took up again the work and summarised in himself the seeds of modern Europe."

29.7.1937

What is meant by the light of the Mother's consciousness and is

it the same as that of yours? Does she lead us to the same goal as

you?

"The Mother's consciousness is the Divine Consciousness and the Light that comes from it is the Light of the Divine Truth.

"One who receives and accepts and lives in the Mother's Light will begin to see the truth on all the planes, the mental, the vital, the physical. He will reject all that is undivine - the undivine is the falsehood, the ignorance, the error of the dark forces; the undivine is all that is obscure and unwilling to accept the divine Truth and its Light and Force of the Mother.

"That is why I am always telling you to keep yourself in contact with the Mother and Her Light and Force, because it is only so that you can come out of the confusion and obscurity and receive the Truth that comes from above.

"When we speak of the Mother's Light or my Light in a special sense, we are speaking of a special occult action — we are speaking

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of certain Lights which come from the Supermind. In this action, the Mother's is the White Light that purifies, illumines, brings down the whole essence and power of the truth and makes the transformation possible. But in fact all Light that comes from above, from the highest divine Truth is the Mother's.

"There is no difference between the Mother's path and mine, we have and always had the same path, the path that leads to the Supramental change and the Divine realisation; not only at the end, but from the beginning they have been the same.

"The attempt to set up a division and opposition putting the Mother on one side and myself on another and opposite or quite different side, has always been a trick of the forces of Falsehood when they want to prevent a sadhaka from reaching the Truth.

"Know that the Mother's Light and Force are the Light and Force of the Truth; remain always in contact with the Mother's Light and Force, then only can you grow into the divine Truth."

10.9.1931

Won't you tell me something to which I can always turn for

help and contact during my stay in Bombay?

"Remember the Mother and, though physically far from her, try to feel her with you and act according to what your inner being tells you would be her Will. Then you will be best able to feel her presence and mine and carry our atmosphere around you as a protection and a zone of quietude and light accompanying you everywhere."

12.12.36

I feel divided and disturbed. Above me is the ecstatic light;

below me is a voluptuous darkness: I strain my arms towards

the high splendour but my feet carry me into the frenzied deeps.

The Mother is very dear to my soul, but that does not help me to

make the obscure impulses turn and follow her. You will tell me

that I must do this or do that; but what's the use of "must"s to

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one who feels too exhausted to move an inch in the right

direction. I cannot conceive how possibly I can live without the

Mother and yourself, but neither can I imagine how the mass of

human folly in me is to be controlled and illumined.

"The moral of the condition you describe is not that Yoga should not be done but that you have to go steadily healing the rift between the two parts of the being. The division is very usual, almost universal in human nature, and the following of the lower impulse in spite of the contrary will in the higher parts happens to almost everybody. It is the phenomenon noted by Arjuna in his question to Krishna, 'Why does one do evil though one wishes not to do it, as if compelled to it by force?', and expressed sententiously by Horace: 'video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor' By constant effort and aspiration one can arrive at a turning point when the psychic asserts itself and what seems a very slight psychological change or reversal alters the whole balance of the nature."

2.3.37

Last night - or rather early this morning -1 had a dream in

which I was vividly aware of being near you and touching your

body. But I doubt very much my feeling, because in the dream

you had an acute stomach-ache and were rather upset by it!

Nirod, too, was near and I asked him to give you some

peppermint and then I was helping you to go upstairs some-

where. At the close of the dream I found myself reading a poem,

but I forget now what exactly it was. I am inclined to think

that some disorder in my own stomach must have got transferred

to my dream-figure of you. But please tell me if my

"experience" of being in almost physical touch with you was as

mythical as your gripe.

"Well, it is difficult to say. The vivid awareness seems to indicate

1. "I see the better and approve of it, I follow the worse."

an actual contact - but the stomach-ache etc. seem to be a foreign intrusion. What happens often in these dreams of the vital plane is that the subconscient (which is mainly responsible for ordinary dreams) throws its figures across the transcription of the expe- rience and one gets a very mixed record. As I have no stomach- ache and, if I had, would not be in the least upset by it (for I have reached the stage when even the aches come only as a form of Ananda and, besides, if any non-delightful ache came in the stomach I could at once dismiss it, for that much at least of the semi-supramental force I have developed in me), this item must be put down to a subconscient dream-maker - whether transfer- ring the pain from your stomach to mine or creating it in vacuo is open to debate."

15.12.35

It's come to be a habit now to get out of my body, time and

again. Occasionally I just see with my closed, eyes. At other times

I actually leave the body - and the coming back to it is often due

to some disturbing thrust of impulse from it into the new

condition. I am fully conscious when I leave the body and soon

start testing the concreteness and reality of the things I am

amidst by touching them. Usually I move about in my own

room but now and then I go outside too. The room I move in is

 not quite the same as the physical: the furniture is arranged

somewhat differently. My conclusion is that I move in a subtle

body in a subtle plane; but is that always unavoidable? Does

one's subtle body never move in the very physical plane? In my

latest experience I went to the pier, but the street through

which I ran to reach the pier was of a strange kind because I

moved, shortly after, from room to room, as through some

deserted building. At last I glimpsed the sea; many boats were

standing in dirty green water close to the shore. The word

"lagoon" came to my mind. But further on I found myself in

full sight of the sea. And it was an extremely beautiful

spectacle. The water had a violet colour mixed with indigo and

there was an atmosphere of magic as the large waves heaved

and broke with spray and sparkle.

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Two remarks I may make about the world I explore. While running I noticed or rather felt that the defect in my left leg was present there also. I wonder up to what plane my physical disability continues. Secondly, it is not always necessary to move step by step: one has just to wish to touch or reach an object and one is simply there without much sense of passing through the intervening space.

I have asked whether one is forced to explore only some subtle world. But take the following experience. I was meditating in my easy-chair. A book was lying on my left side where I had put it before closing my eyes there was a book-marker inserted at the page where I had stopped reading. Now, I went all numb, as I always do when these phenomena take place - but the eyes are exempted from the general paralysis, so to speak. I keep on opening them and thus swing from the consciousness of one plane to that of the other. This time, however, I opened my eyes and saw not only my own body lying inert, with my both arms dropped paralysed, but also a third arm free at the right shoulder, it was, of course, a subtle arm and could move. Immediately my experimentalist mind thought of a test. So I strained the third arm towards the book by my side, caught hold of the hook-marker and tried to pull it out. I actually did pull it out, but imagine my surprise when I saw that though I was holding a book-marker in my subtle hand the original was still in the book!

"It is evidently in a subtle world, not the physical  that you move;

that is evident from the different arrangement of things, but such details as the third arm and the book-marker removed yet there show that it is a subtle world very near to the physical; it is either a subtle-physical world or a very material vital domain. In all the subtle domains the physical is reproduced with a change, the change growing freer and more elastic as one gets farther away. Such details as the lameness show the same thing, — the hold of the physical is still there. It is possible to move about in the physical world, but usually that can only be done by drawing on

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the atmosphere of other physical beings for a stronger materialisation of the form — when that happens one moves among them and sees them and all the surroundings exactly as they are at that time in the physical world and one can verify the accuracy of the details if immediately after returning to the body (which is usually done with a clear consciousness of the whole process of getting into it) one can traverse the same scene in the physical body. But this is rare; the subtle wandering is on the contrary a frequent phenomenon, only when it is near to the physical world all seems very material and concrete and the association of physical habits and physical mental movements with the subtle events is closer."

23.8.37

Will the Supermind, when it makes its descent, have the power

to transform us in spite of ourselves?

"I suppose the (vital's) will to resist will disappear."

I am all agog to know whether I should pack up for

Pondicherry. Should I come away with my heart still far below

normal by medical standards? I surely can't expect it to catch

up with normalcy so soon after that mistake of mine with the

tonic stimulant powder given me by a friend. You know that

owing to an error in instructions, instead of taking the normal

dose, I swallowed more than 4 grains, which - if I may believe

the doctors - means about 50 times the normal dose, over 4

times the dose a horse might be given and nearly 25 times the

dose at which the drug begins to be sheer poison for human

beings! I also remained without real medical aid for 45

minutes! In my awful condition I only kept calling to Mother

and you. Of course I am again up and doing, and I can't take

this set-back very seriously, though I have semi-collapses now

and then and the medicos say I need regular attention and

should not exert myself. Mother and you get me out of all

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scrapes; the sweet grace of you both has been unfailing. And I

don't think I am much frightened by theoretical possibilities of

death. Will my undertaking to come away do me any harm?

This is a year in which, I believe, the Truth-Consciousness may

make up its mind, or rather its Supermind, to descend. I was

expecting a wire from Mother in May; it's almost the end of

July now - but the year is not out yet, and August 15 is pretty

close.  Won't I be losing something great if I don't throw all

caution to the winds?

"You must on no account return here before your heart has recovered. No doubt, death must not be feared, but neither should death or permanent ill-health be invited. Here, especially now when all the competent doctors have gone away or been sent to a distance from Pondicherry, there would be no proper facilities for the treatment you still need, while you have them all there. You should remember the Mother's warning to you when she said that you would have your realisation in this life provided you did not do something silly so as to shorten your life.2 That 'something silly' you tried your best to do when you swallowed with a cheerful liberality a poison-medicine without taking the least care to ascertain what was the maximum dose. You have escaped by a sort of miracle, but with a shaken heart. To risk making that shaky condition of the heart a permanent disability of the body rendering it incapable of resisting any severe physical attack or shock in the future, would be another 'something silly' of the same quality. So it's on no account to be done.

"You need not be afraid of losing anything great by postponing your return to Pondicherry. A general descent of the kind you speak of is not in view, at the moment and, even if it comes, it can very easily catch you up into itself whenever you come if you are in the right openness; and if you are not, then even its descending would not be of so urgent an importance, since it would take you time to become aware of it or receive it. So there

2. Before he left for Bombay in February 1938, Amal had an interview with the Mother in which she had warned him against any accident happening to him and doing serious damage to his body. - Editors

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is no reason why you should not in this matter cleave to common sense and the sage advice of the doctors."

1.8.38

It is well-known and pretty evident that you realised the Supermind years ago. But is the impression right that you stand on that high level and act directly from there and the solething left is to bring the Supermind down completely into theembodied consciousness here? Or is it that even the outer consciousness of you is acting straight from a supramentalrealisation? Or would it be correct to say that at present this consciousness is functioning from only the top of the Over mind

established in it?

"If I had been standing on the Supermind level and acting on the world by the instrumentation of Supermind, the world would have changed or would be changing much more rapidly and in a different fashion from what is happening now. My present effort is not to stand up on a high and distant Supermind level and change the world from there, but to bring something of it down here and to stand on that and act by that, but at the present stage the progressive supramentalisation of the Overmind is the first immediate preoccupation and a second is the lightening of the heavy resistance of the Inconscient and the support it gives to human ignorance which is always the main obstacle in any attempt to change the world or even to change oneself. I have always said that the spiritual force I have been putting on human affairs such as the War is not the supramental but the Overmind force, and that when it acts in the material world it is so inextricably mixed up in the tangle of the lower world forces that its results, however strong or however adequate to the immediate object, must necessarily be partial. That is why I am getting a birthday present of a free India on August 15, but complicated by its being presented in two packets as two free Indias this is a generosity I could have done without, one free India would have been enough for me if offered as an unbroken whole."

7.8.47

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Am I right in thinking that she [the Mother] as an Individual

embodies all the Divine Powers and brings down the Grace more and more

to the physical plane and that her embodiment is a chance

for the entire physical to change and be transformed?

"Yes. Her embodiment is a chance for the earth-consciousness to receive the Supramental into it and to undergo first the transformation necessary for that to be possible. Afterwards there will be a further transformation by the Supramental, but the whole earth- consciousness will not be supramentalised - there will be first a new race representing the Supermind, as man represents the mind."

(13.8.33)

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