Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 3)

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I have been much interested by your comment:

"Apropos your 'Life - Poetry - Yoga' in the May Mother India, where you have quoted St. Augustine's well-known sentence 'Thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee', I remember to have read it originally in German which runs thus:

" 'Du hast uns zu Dir hin geschaffen, und ruhelos ist unser Herz bis es Ruhe findet in Dir.'

"Here the words 'zu Dir hin' meaning 'towards Thee' ('hin' conveys movement) make the statement profounder still, as they indicate the Divine's intention in creating us. The whole meaning then reads: 'Thou hast created us towards Thyself and restless is our heart until it finds peace in Thee.'

"Thinking that you might perhaps enjoy this rendering I have given it."

The German translation "zu Dir hin" - "towards Thyself" - is a literal rendering of the Latin original. The whole statement in Latin reads: "Fecisti nos ad Te et inquietum est cor nostrum donee requiescat in Te." The "ad Te" means "towards Thee". But however it may sound in German, the phrase is awkward in English. In Latin it easily suggests direction without any awkwardness, and it conveys the purpose of the creation. A full explication would go thus: "Thou hast made us such that we may move towards Thee." The best and natural englishing of the suggestion of God's Godward-directed creation - summing up His purpose - is the preposition "for". A more Biblical mode of putting the matter would be: "Thou hast made us unto Thyself". Though somewhat archaic, this is better English than "Towards Thee". Certain compact Latin expressions give a lot of trouble to the English translator if he is after literalness.

Thus a bone of contention has been Virgil's concentrated "Sunt lacrimae rerum", literally "There are tears of things" or "Tears are of things". Some scholars have seen nothing extra-

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ordinary here and argued that at times in Latin the genitive is used in place of the dative so that Virgil meant "There are tears for things" suggesting that there are occasions which naturally draw tears from us or, rather, tears are naturally drawn from us by certain occasions. The world-cry which Virgil has succinctly packed into his brief phrase is entirely lost in such a commonplace interpretation.

C. Day Lewis has rightly taken Virgil to connote "Tears in the nature of things". Virgil's whole line -

Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt -

has been quintessenced by Sri Aurobindo in the second of the two lines among many which he puts in the mouth of Savitri's mother:

We have sorrow for a greatness passed away

And feel the touch of tears in mortal things.

(Cent. Ed., p. 429)

Lewis's full English version runs:

Tears in the nature of things, hearts touched by human transience.

I have put Virgil's significance in a more extended way and with what Sri Aurobindo calls "more colour" in the hexameter:

Haunted by tears is the world and our hearts by the touch of things mortal.

My letter has made quite a digression. My point is that what is pregnant in Latin cannot always be conveyed by a literal translation in English without its sounding a little artificial.

Now a word about the literary qualities of the original Augustine and the English and German versions. The German "until it finds peace in Thee" is not satisfactory. Besides departing from the conciseness of the Latin and bringing in

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the indirect "finds peace" instead of a straight verbal turn like "requiescat", it introduces a tinge of separateness between soul and God, as if the soul sought peace and would discover it as a quality of God's nature and enjoy it while remaining its own self: the sheer plunging into God's being and getting completely enfolded and suffused and fulfilled by it seems missed. There is no "finds" in Augustine. The English version answers exactly to the direct thrust of the Latin. The German "ruhelos" and "Ruhe" strike me as more explicit echoes than the Latin "inquietum" and "requiescat", though the latter's sound does have a subtle harking back within it to the former's. On a level with the German are the correspondences of the English "restless" and "rest". The sense is better driven home thus. But the Latin has the edge on the English by the repetition of "Te" in the two expressions "ad Te" and "in Te". The German also has it by its repeated "Dir". But in English it would be most gauche to say "for Thee" in order to anticipate "in Thee". We cannot avoid "Thyself" and I feel that the variations "Thou", "Thyself" and "Thee" make a very pleasing music which the German narrowly misses and the Latin cannot help doing so because "Te" (Thou in Latin) cannot stand apart from the verb "Fecisti" without a loss in style: it has to be implicit in it. Augustine could have rung changes by saying "Teipsum" ("Thyself") rather than anticipating his final "Te", but when "Te", like the German "Dir", could suffice he would have spoiled the austere beauty carrying the thrilled insight of his sentence.

(14.5.1992)

You have raised the question of sincerity. In its essence sincerity means to me to find your central self, your soul, and let its luminous guidance determine every turn of your life. Before the psychic being is discovered, sincerity consists in so ordering your life - its actions and reactions - that everything may conduce to the opening of the inner heart-centre. The psychic element in the mind and in the vital force should be

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your teacher. Here my master-formula is to be applied: equanimity plus "Remember and offer." Whoever takes to the spiritual ideal has been led to it either by a direct explosion of the secret dweller in the heart-centre or by this "divine dwarf" 's fingers of light extended above into the vibrant brain and below into the quivering guts no less than straight into the sensitive fibres of the outer heart of emotion.Of course, even after the soul has been found and its presence felt at all moments, one has to be vigilant, for it is for a long time a shy godhead and one has to guard it like a small flame between one's hands against the rude winds of the world. At a later stage not only its sweetness and light but also its strength will emerge and then it can defend itself against the rudest gust. The "divine dwarf" will then tower up and open your being to all the shining vastitudes of the "overhead" Spirit.

You want me to share with you whatever gifts of grace I may have received. Surely all such gifts are to be shared, though not always before they are firmly set within one. I have never stored them up, never stinted letting my friends be touched by them. But I have no personal desire to be considered a good sadhak or a spiritual helper. All I do is to remain to the best of my ability in a concentrated condition and let Sri Aurobindo radiate his peace and the Mother diffuse her love.

The concentrated condition means that I am concerned only with keeping myself plunged in that peace and bathed in that love - without any open attempt to be their channels. All I do with people is to inwardly offer them to our Gurus, Of course 1 don't keep majestically "mum", impressing people with my concentration. I talk with them on an equal footing and often I find them more knowledgeable and better personalities than myself. In my talk I try to let the depths speak - not necessarily deliberate "words of wisdom" but common speech emerging as far as possible out of the treasured silence of those depths.

(31.5.1992)

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Your cries for help have been reaching me for quite a time. I am offering you into the hands of our Divine Mother. The answer I get is: "Patient endurance." You have to stop being frantic. The fear-complex has come before and it has gone. Now too it will be on its way out. You must be certain of this. In the meantime you have to look at it calmly or rather look away from it with the certainty that it will pass. If something in you remains undisturbed and takes it as a temporary aberration which the Mother's gracious hands will surely sweep out of you, the free future is already there in a hidden form in the obsessive present. Along with this attitude or posture, continue with your medication. Go to the psychiatrist and state your symptoms from time to time. The Mother's force can work also through the drugs. The Supreme Grace is many-moded. But the central mode for you is "Patient endurance."

Your father is indeed very considerate and he is right in suggesting that you can take your degree 6 months later. Acceptance of his suggestion will take away the sense in you that you are falling back in the competition with your fellow-workers. Following your father's advice you will withdraw from the competition and will escape the inferiority complex you are developing. But I won't induce you to be a home-keeper. Go to your work as regularly as you can. Something must occupy your mind and body. Staying at home, what will you do? Read and sleep? Perhaps more sleep may help, but for that you don't have to flee altogether from the hospital. You have only to get up later in the morning and go to bed earlier at night.

You have quoted some Mantras of the Mother. The first is: "Let each suffering pave the way to transformation." But surely suffering by itself is no way to either transformation or anything else except perhaps inner toughness. AH depends on how you manage the Suffering - how calm you are, how patient you are, how much you appeal to the Divine to take you nearer him through this trial. The second Mantra is: "Grace will never fail us - such is the faith we must keep

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constantly in our hearts." But do you expect the Grace to be always swift? Of course it can be swift as a lightning-shaft but there would be no need for the words "faith" and "constantly" if such were the case on all occasions. People pass through various ordeals in Yoga. Some conditions persist for long. Sri Aurobindo even speaks of his own sadhana stopping at times for months in spite of his being under a Supreme Guidance! What did he do? He kept faith and practised patient endurance and kept up a quiet aspiration.

(2.8.1992)

Your letter No. 1 (7.8.92) has made me very happy. I have always wished you to be on the way to normalcy, and finding you so because of a letter of mine is quite a fulfilling experience. Keep the new state going by means of a calm confidence in the Mother's power. This power is always at work but receptivity and faith not only increase its effect in general: they also draw it into the most outer being and sustain its lustrous streaming into all the various parts of our waking outwardness.

Now for your "posers". The first is: "How to do the right thing in the right way at the right time?" Try to detach yourself from the situation so that the personal heat may not dictate the course of action. This amounts to what the Mother has called "stepping back" for a moment. A sudden silence will be felt and out of it a guidance will emerge. Lift this guidance towards the Mother and let the consecrated decision go out into the world. The movement may not be very positive at the start but gradually it will be quietly clear-cut and leave you sure that the Divine in the depth of you has acted.

Your next question is: "The Mother says, 'A day without a good action is a day without soul.' What does this good action amount to?" I remember the Mother saying that the Divine gives more value to a truly disinterested deed than to formal religious worship - going to a temple or carrying out a set ritual. The word "soul" in your quotation is a pointer to the Mother's meaning. For the soul in us is free of the narrow ego-

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motivated turn and it acts with an intuitive feeling of the Divine's secret will. The small self, demarcated from other small selves, is overpassed and one acts out of a wide impersonal space in which the soul, though an individual, is never cut off from other souls but lives and functions in a sweet luminous sympathy which is an aspect of the omnipresence of God.

You have asked: "What to do about the acute lack of confidence, at work or otherwise?" The sense that one has to compete with others whom one considers superior is the basis of this lack and behind that sense is the belief that one's own self is the only factor concerned. When one offers one's work to the Divine and cares only for the effective transmission of the Divine's force, one does not bother how one ordinarily compares with others in capacity. The Divine can not only make the most of whatever little capacity one has but also improve and expand such capacity. The main thing is to get over one's preoccupation with oneself and work as a dedicated sadhak.

The "jealousy" and the "inferiority-complex" of which you complain have the same root as "the acute lack of confidence". You have to drop making comparisons of one ego with another. Your aim must be service of the Divine in the way the Divine wants you to serve Him. By putting your personality at the Divine's feet you will bring the Divine's hands into action for whatever goal the Divine's eyes have chosen. Sometimes a certain imbalance in the nerves adds to one's psychological attitude. Here the psychiatrist with his potent pharmacopoea may come in as an additional help to you. That is why I drew your attention to him.

You say: "I am still doubting my intelligence as I find my mentation to be a bit hazy and vague and sluggish." 1 think that your impression is due to the disturbance which you suffered some time ago and the disuse of your mental powers which followed. Knowing what a fine show your mind made in the MBBS exam and appreciating also the keenness with which you are able often to analyse yourself and the felicity with which you frequently express your condition, I can

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vouch that you have a fine intelligence indeed. You have only to quiet your being and invoke the Mother's light to get the ability to see your own mind properly. Neither undervaluing nor overvaluing it, stop bothering about it and place it at the Mother's disposal.

You want to know "how to distinguish between the 'tranquil Vast throbbing behind our human smallness' and the consciousness of calm and self-giving that is developing." I would advise you to concern yourself with the consciousness you speak of. Its development will set you in touch with that tranquil yet throbbing Vast. The calm you experience is a foretaste of this Vast's tranquillity and the self-giving is a prefigure of its throbbing.

Your last question - "How to know the Divine Will and get the strength for carrying out that Will?" - is answered by pointing out to you what you are already doing; the development of calm and self-giving. Like a flame burning in a windless place, straight up and without a quiver, your practice will pierce into the mystery of the Divine Dynamism and you will know that the Dynamism contacted is Divine by the further peace you will enjoy along with a sense of further magnetic movement towards the Mother. In this condition her Will is bound to get revealed and start reshaping things.

(19.8.1992)

Of all the mantras given by the Mother my favourite is Sri Aurobindo sharanam mama - "Sri Aurobindo is my refuge." I have found it extremely powerful and at the same time deeply restful. It cuts through the hardest obstacle and carries the heart as if to its eternal home. I almost sense an aura forming with its utterance, within which I move protected from all inner forces of harm and on occasion even from all outer attacks. Originally, I believe, the Mother gave it to the sadhak whose job it was to take the Ashram's dead for cremation. She said that no ceremonies were to be performed but only this mantra was to be repeated a hundred and twenty

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times. It must have provided to the soul parted from the body a new body of subtle vibrations building, as it were, an Aurobindonian embrace shielding it from whatever adversary would come out of the unknown. Then nothing would obstruct it from reaching its place of divine repose before the next embodied entry into life's battle on earth.

I have heard of Vipasana meditation and I dare say it is an interesting practice - attending to one's inhalation and exhalation - but what about the content of the consciousness at the time? Is only one-pointedness of the mind the aim? Japa, with which you want me to compare or contrast it, would mean concentration on the chosen deity whose name is being repeated. Naturally it would start a movement of bhakti, devotion. I don't suppose any deity-name is associated with the act of breathing in and breathing out.

In Sri Aurobindo's Yoga there is no specific place for breath-practice or name-repetition, though nothing that may help a particular individual is ruled out. No special posture of the body is recommended, either. In the early days Sri Aurobindo used to do his sadhana walking 7 or 8 hours a day! We start straight with the consciousness. Just yesterday I read the Mother's answer to a question put by a very young man many years ago. He asked: "What is real meditation?" She replied: "It is an active and deliberate concentration on the Divine Presence and a sustained, alert contemplation of that Sublime Reality."

To me personally, meditation in its essence and at its best means a state of unforced inwardness, with eyes open or shut, in which, against a background of wide tranquillity, there is a flow of consciousness from the depth of the heart towards the Divine Presence whose visible form was Sri Aurobindo or the Mother - a flow from a Divine Presence itself hidden in that depth. Its effect is felt in the whole being, including the body, as a warm, pervasive, quiet, consecrated happiness ready to receive whatever gift of Grace comes from within, around or beyond.

(25.8.1992)

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