Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 1)

28

The whole basis of the Vibrational Theory which you present as the way to supramentalise the body's cells is most shaky in the sense that without a supramentalisation of the inner consciousness one can't hope to supramentalise the body. Of course, by mantra-power one may subtilise the physical being but to supramentalise it is a different cup of tea - or, to hark back to Rigvedic terminology, a different goblet of Soma, the nectar of Immortality. Your friend appears to make his followers believe that by merely quieting the mind and the vital nature one can have the power to supramentalise the physical instrument by means of a mantra. No follower of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother can subscribe to this facile sadhana, this "Yoga without tears".

Now to another topic on which you seem unclear. The impression of importance the Mother gives to a person has to be understood by the deepest heart and not by the superficial mind - the deepest heart which instinctively knows the Divine's wonderful way with the soul. In the ras lila, the traditional play of the Divine with the human, every Gopi felt that Krishna was all hers and that she was the whole world to him and that he gave her a supreme value. The Lord, we are told, multiplied himself innumerably in his dance with his devotees and each devotee had the experience that she and he were all in all to each other. Our Mother's Grace was something like that to us. I remember Counouma once telling me that one could have quite a delusion about oneself if one did not know well enough the Mother's way with those who had an intimate relationship with her. She often made them feel wonderfully unique. Something of this Krishna-like Grace is sought to be pictured in the last lines of my poem. The Triumph of Dante:

For, how shall earth be dark when human eyes

Mirror the love whose smile is paradise?-

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A love that misers not its golden store

But gives itself and yearns to give yet more.

As though God's light were inexhaustible

Not for His joy but this one heart to fill!

You must not be misled by the quotation of some censures passed by the Mother on this person or that. Actually she has said things in the same vein about the very person from whom you quote. Only in connection with certain specific occasions has she made critical remarks about people. They were never meant to be final summings-up carved in monumental alabaster. As the occasions change, the very opposite comments would come forth. Besides, the critical remarks themselves were spiritual actions on a subtle plane aimed at remedying the defects criticised: they were a secret favour to the people concerned and never .- as we might misconstrue them - an effusion of ordinary vindic-tiveness. To see them otherwise is to be dense to the way of a supreme spiritual consciousness.

The Divine Light acts in two manners, (It lays bare to us our own depth, "the imprisoned Splendour", as Browning names it. It also reveals the darkness covering and constricting that beauty. It gives us depth-evoking compliments and also passes deeply-searching censures to counteract the obscuring elements. Yes, "to counteract" - that is, work upon them not in order to expose our weaknesses for blame and contempt by the world but with the aim to dispel them by subjecting them to the Light. How and when the occasion would arise for this dispelling has to be left to the Mother's discretion. We cannot dictate to her what she should do. But we must have the faith that all she does is for each one's spiritual good. And we would quite misunderstand her motive if we tried to use her comments with the intention to do the other person down and bolster our own egos.

(28.11.1985)

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A word again on the business of Mantra. I know that the Mother attached a great importance to "Om Namo Bhaga-vate" and found its vibrations extremely helpful to the process of awakening the cells to the Supreme and transforming them. But, to direct the Mantra to this work, there must be the true mystical state in the Mantra-repeater. And the more psychic, the more spiritual, the more supramentally oriented one is, the better the transforming effect of the Mantra, For, indeed, without the Psychic's up-kindling thrill, the Spirit's widening peace, the Supermind's illuminating touch, the Mantra is sure to become an empty enchantment. Sadhana as taught by both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother -yes, by the Mother even in the period when she was busy with the Mantra's magic - is the sine qua non. What I understand your author to harp on is that a little quieting of the mind and of the vital being are all that is required as the background to the Mantric practice. Naturally, one has to reduce the great Supramental Yoga to this if one's purpose is to catch the ear of a large following, particularly in the West. This is what 1 would consider a distortion of the world-saving message of our Gurus. Such a distortion is that cheapening of the Truth which I dub "Yoga without tears", that is, Yoga in which everything is toned down to the capacity of the average man who does not want to exert himself to gain God but desires everything to be made easy, God to be almost brought to him on a platter. "Yoga without tears", in my sense, has nothing in common with the "Sunlit Path" to which you equate it but which is the path of the soul's spontaneous leap towards the Divine and its effortless increasing of its core of self-existent happiness to become the universal and transcendent Ananda that I once sought to crystallise in words with the following couplets:

Rapture that cuts away time-transient shows

Like petals from the odour of a rose:

One breath of luminous all-absorbing hush -

So wide a love that nowhere need it rush:

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Calm ether of an infinite embrace -

Beauty unblurred by limbs or longing face.

(24.10.1985)

You have asked whether I can say from experience if we are able to manipulate the world by sheer will-power. There have been occasions when I wanted something to happen or to be done and a force went forth from the ideative mind but backed by an urge from the heart-centre and a drive from the vital being - and Io, the impossible-looking event which had been willed and aspired after took place. But on other occasions there was only a passing on to the Mother of what I wished for and surrendering entirely to her the desired result - without any anxiety for that result, any exercise of will towards its fulfilment. Most surprisingly, a turn of events took place and the problem to be solved, the end to be reached, were tackled in the most natural manner which I was bound to call supernatural.

(24.10.1985)

Your friendly letter has been before me all these days but I could not get down to answering it - partly because I had a lot of work on my hands demanding immediate attention and partly because the bright part of my friend was getting eclipsed again and again. I was much moved by your deep feeling for me which has persisted down the years, but I was saddened by the hymn of hate in the rest of the letter where others came into the picture. My concern is not with those I do not come into contact with: my concern is about people who are constantly in touch with me. When they keep nursing their hurts and letting unhappiness overshadow them and all their fine qualities suffer abeyance in any respect, I feel very disappointed. Please pull yourself out of this dejection, this sense of frustration, this violent personal reaction. When, in spite of all your efforts, something cannot

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go the way you want, you should put it out of your mind and not allow the memory of it to cramp your future possibilities. Infinity is calling us, divinity is stretching warm glowing hands towards us: shall we stand stuck in grievances over past misfortunes instead of letting them be lost

In the dark backward and abysm of time

and turning our eyes

To the bright forward and empyrean of eternity?

Behind every setback, behind every contretemps, Sri Aurobindo waits for us to ask him what secret of swifter progress, what paradox of a greater leap forward hides in that distressing obscurity. If we inwardly go on offering the trouble to him and praying to him either to remove it or else, if it is for some reason irremovable, to make it open a deeper revelation of his presence within us, we shall not have wasted the uplifting love he brings to his children at every moment, be it day or night of the soul.

Ever we hear in the heart of the peril a flute go before us...

(5.3.1986)

The idea of utkata or ineluctable karma is, I believe, a Jain doctrine. In one of the talks reported by Nirodbaran, it was brought to Sri Aurobindo's attention by Dr. Manilal (a Jain) after the mishap to the Master's right leg on the night of November 23, 1938. The point raised was whether the accident had been due to what is called utkata karma. Sri Aurobindo ruled out this explanation and referred to the constant battle he had been waging against "adverse forces" that were ever on the alert to baulk him. He did not comment

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further on this kind of karma. I don't recollect anything written by him on the subject. What we may suppose on the strength of Sri Aurobindo's general outlook on karma is that certain actions create results which are very difficult to prevent or transcend and that we have to suffer them as long as we haven't found a way to rise above the plane on which they have their rationale. In other words, we may have to wait for freedom from them until we can ascend to the highest level of spiritual consciousness. I don't believe that there is no possibility of freedom. An absolute impossibility would not fit within Sri Aurobindo's scheme. That is perhaps why he has nowhere a word on the alleged karma of such a type.

A number of difficulties in one's being may not be amenable except to what Sri Aurobindo has called Supermind, the highest dynamic divine consciousness. These difficulties may be due to one's karma or to the play of universal forces or to the folly of other people. Take, for instance, the attack of polio which my left leg suffered when I was two and a half years old. Much was done by way of surgical intervention in London where my father, himself a doctor, had taken me three years after the attack. But, though later I could cycle, even ride horses, a certain defect remained. The Mother once told me: "One day I hope to cure you. But the cure can be effected only by the Supermind. Not even the Overmind can help here." She meant that the traces of physical damage which lingered were of a rigidity that overpassed the capacity of all hitherto-known spiritual agents. Whatever the cause, the condition may be termed utkata in relation to "the powers that be" but not in an ultimate sense.

In conventional Christian theology the "sin" of Adam's disobedience in the Garden of Eden may be designated as utkata karma in an agelong shape, for all descendants of Adam are said to incur this "original sin" and, in consequence, are deprived of adequate power of winning "grace". So extreme is the inherited sinfulness believed to be, that no

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human being can atone for it. One who is taken to be God's own Son is understood to have shouldered the responsibility for it and become a human being and paid the price for it. The price is said to be his "crucifixion" as a common "criminal" on a charge of violating Jewish orthodoxy and transgressing Roman authority. By this act he is commonly credited with opening man to Divine Grace through man's faith in him as the one and only Son of God, the single universal Saviour.

I am mentioning all this as a possible illustration, not recommending the semi-mythological and narrowly sectarian form in which the doctrine of a great soul's self-sacrifice for the good of mankind has often been couched.

(Feb. 1959)

You have touched upon an extremely personal as well as delicate subject when you ask me what I have to say apropos of the Mother's having once referred to me in the Agenda with the French term imbecile for having written to Sri Aurobindo about Savitri in what is termed a questioning vein. You are also asking me whether I consider the Mother to have made a mistake in using that word.

I may begin by saying that the censure would be more drastic if the word were taken in its English sense. In colloquial French I believe it means something in-between silliness and stupidity. I see that the translator of the Agenda into English has gone one better and employed the label: "moron." A moron is an adult with an intelligence equal to that of an average child of 8-12. To be moronic is to have an in-born defect of mind. It can never be got rid of. Surely the Mother did not mean this? For else she could easily have employed this label. But, even as regards the other term, would I say that she made a mistake?

The matter is rather complex for me. It has always appeared to me that the Divine, by the very fact of assuming a body, through the common human process must be prone

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at times to make mistakes, at least small ones. But I have also always held that the Divine's mistakes are still divine. They happen to probe in a baffling way layers of our selves which are secretly at odds with our conscious intentions. If we can probe in turn these seeming mistakes, they can provide us with short-cuts to outgrowing our hidden weaknesses, and prove actually a grace and not a mere punishment. So, in the fundamental assessment, they are no mistakes at all.

My "questioning vein" about Savitri was intended to serve as an objective filter to isolate what might be Sri Aurobindo's oversights, which can certainly accompany on some occasions the incarnate Divine's insights. In addition, I wanted to anticipate whatever criticism of the new poetry the literary world at large might make, so that the poet might not unnecessarily expose himself to it. Finally, knowing the kind of poetry Savitri was meant to be, I was anxious for the "Overhead" level to be kept as high as possible and was eager to draw Sri Aurobindo's attention to whatever might strike my critical tympanum, rightly or wrongly, as not quite gloriously Aurobindonian. I believe Sri Aurobindo understood all these motives and knew too my basic breath-bereaved admiration of his revelatory art and was aware of how 1 longed to kindle up my own work with the help of his solar splendour. Let me quote to you a passage from one of his letters:

"...I can perfectly understand your anxiety that all should be lifted to or towards at least the minimum Overhead level or so near as to be touched by its influence or at the very least a good substitute for it. I do not know whether that is always possible in so long a poem as Savitri dealing with so many various heights and degrees and so much varying substance of thought and feeling and descriptive matter and narrative. But that has been my general aim throughout and it is the reason why I have made so many successive drafts and continual alterations till I felt that I had got the thing intended by the higher inspiration in

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every line and passage. It is also why I keep myself open to every suggestion from a sympathetic and understanding quarter and weigh it well, rejecting only after due consideration and accepting when I see it to be well-founded."¹

There is also the fact, for which I can never be sufficiently grateful or discover a completely adequate ground - the fact that Sri Aurobindo, without my directly asking for the favour, chose me as the only disciple to see in absolute secrecy Savitri in the making. Morning after morning he used to send me in a sealed envelope passages of the poem in his own hand. 1 would type them out and put, in the margins, appreciative remarks or queries from a literary standpoint.

Obviously, in this there was nothing culpable on my part. But at times there must have been in me an urge, however faint, to find fault with Savitri in a few rare places in the light (or twilight) of my own aesthetic sense. I am positive the Mother's "imbecile" hit out at that lurking imp. The imp must have fed its own ego by remarks of Sri Aurobindo's like the one to Nirod on getting back the latest composed matter of Savitri which he had sent me during my visit to the Ashram in August 1947 after a long absence. He asked: "Is Amal satisfied?"

I may add in general that the Mother's censures at any time are never meant to be ultimate pronouncements -proposed as epitaphs like "Amal the Imbecile, was born such on 25.11.1904 and died likewise on..." You must counterpoise the sarcasm we are discussing with the several compliments Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have paid. Sri Aurobindo's are already in print. As for the Mother's I may mention the known fact that when in the early days she was allotting to various rooms little paintings by me of flowers with their significances, she asked me to put in my own room a painting of the flower whose significance is: "Krishna's light in the mind." In later times I remember her once telling

1. Letters on Savitri in the Centenary Edition of Savitri, p. 759.

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me during an interview: "If I told you what Sri Aurobindo and I think of your mind, you would get puffed up." I refrained from asking what they thought. I tried to remain unpuffed-up. Even if I had learnt from her their precise thinking, I don't feel I would have let it obscure my knowledge that on the one hand I have many serious gaps in my mind and that on the other it is she and Sri Aurobindo who are responsible for making me deserve any compliment.

I recognise very well my ail-too human fallibility in general and how miserably I fall short in quite a number of specific fields - mathematics, linguistics, sociology, economics, business. During Mother India's initial period - nearly 2 years — when it was a semi-political fortnightly I developed an understanding of political ideas, issues and events, but that was due to Sri Aurobindo's inner help for a job he wanted to get done through me. Before Mother India was launched, all concerned with it had a meeting with the Mother. I was expected to write editorials on politics from the point of view of Sri Aurobindo's world-vision. I said to the Mother: "I have no interest in or knowledge of politics." Surprisingly she remarked in response: "Neither have I." Then I gaped and asked: "How will I manage?" She replied: "There is Sri Aurobindo. He will do everything for you," And he jolly well did! Once his work was done, I think I have become the same old ignoramus.

And I may honestly testify that if I have any more-than-ordinary proficiency in any sphere it is Sri Aurobindo's creation out of whatever little potential I may have had to start with. For instance, can I ever believe that I could have written "Overhead poetry" in any bulk - tapping at times the plane which Sri Aurobindo has called "Overmind Intuition" and even receiving "an Overmind touch" - without his labouring upon my thick skull for years to bring about something of the situation hit off by him so overheadily in those lines of his own? -

Missioned voices drive to me from God's doorway

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Words that live not save upon Nature's summits,

Ecstasy's chariots.

(7.5.1988)

Sometimes my correspondence becomes rather a heap and a few letters get buried out of sight. This morning I chanced upon a letter from you dated as far back as 3.2.84, on the envelope of which I had scribbled as a reminder: "Reply soon." 1 am sorry two years and five days have elapsed since then.

You have asked me about a word in Savitri in the Centenary Edition, page 310, line 17:

Thou hast leaped into a glad divine abyss...

You report that you have heard a cassette of Nolini's recitation in which he has said not "glad" but "blind". Thinking he might have had access to unpublished information I have checked with the copy which has recently come to me from our Ashram Archives for a scrutiny of the corrections proposed on the basis of Sri Aurobindo's manuscripts. The printed text is correct. I don't know where Nolini got his epithet from. Sometimes one misreads: I have myself, while recording Savitri or Won, read some words wrongly, but I have been pulled up by the alert friend acting as my recorder: Chandrakant. Perhaps nobody was vigilant enough with Nolini.

However, there are rare occasions possible when some inner guidance may make one misread the published version. Thus the line 13 of page 702 in Savitri -

For ever love, O beautiful slave of God! -

was read by the Mother as it runs but heard within herself with "powerful" instead of "beautiful". She inwardly consulted Sri Aurobindo and asked why she had changed the

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adjective and how the mistake had come about. I don't recollect the Mother's exact report, but I can say that Sri Aurobindo replied in effect: "It is a truth you have heard, but a truth of the future. At present the truth is 'beautiful' and not 'powerful'." Nolini's slip does not strike me as belonging to the same category. It is oversight rather than far-sight like the Mother's. So you may confidently stick to "glad".

(8.2.1986)

Postscript: A friend has pointed out that Sri Aurobindo does have some words on utkata karma on p. 468 of Vol. 22 of the Centenary Edition. While admitting the difficult problem, he says: "Here too the achievement of the spiritual consciousness and life is supposed to annul or give the power to annul Karma. For we enter into union with the Will Divine, cosmic or transcendent, which can annul what it had sanctioned for certain conditions, new-create what it had created, the narrow fixed lines disappear, there is a more plastic freedom and wideness."

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