12
AN OLD CORRESPONDENCE ON SRI AUROBINDO
BETWEEN K.M. MUNSHI AND K.D. SETHNA
Hamilton Villa, Nepean Sea Road, Bombay
7-9-51
Dear Mr. Munshi,
Thanks for sending me your speech on Sri Aurobindo. It is a good tribute, with genuine feeling and admiration behind it, and has some memorable phrases.
In one or two places there seems to have been a little hurry and therefore some carelessness. What you say about his poetry is perfectly true and well put, but by some mistake the quotations you have made are not from Sri Aurobindo's work but from mine! I feel very flattered by the unconscious compliment you have paid me.
I can't agree that even for a student of philosophy the philosophic works of Sri Aurobindo are too difficult. Compared to Kant, for instance, he is smooth sailing. It is his comprehensiveness and integrality that challenge the reader accustomed to the intense but one-sided philosophical treatment that our own thinkers have given to basic problems. Yet, with a grounding in the Upanishads and the Gita, one should be able to follow Sri Aurobindo in his multifarious original extensions of spiritual thought. The trouble is, I believe, that students of philosophy in India lack somewhat in suppleness of mind and are also under the obsession of India's own great spiritual past which they consider to be unsurpassable even by India's own spiritual present and future. We should be ashamed that while Stanford and Cornell Universities in America have made Sri Aurobindo a graduate and postgraduate course the country of his birth can see little further than Radhakrishnan and Bhartacharya who for all their Indian thinking are still philosophers in the Western sense
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and do not project their thought-systems from the illumined harmony of the God-realised soul.
You say in connection with India's fight for freedom: "He prophesied that after him will come someone who will achieve what he could not." I suppose you have Gandhiji in mind. But I don't think Sri Aurobindo exactly said that he himself could not have achieved India's independence. He did what was creatively possible in the short period he allowed himself and he left politics not because of any sense of inability but because of a greater and deeper call. Without answering that call he could not have even really done for India's independence what was necessary. Political independence without a spiritual new life ready to be drawn upon would hardly be freedom in the genuine Indian sense. Besides, the spiritual power that Sri Aurobindo won was actually the hidden sustaining energy of the nationalist movement; because it was occult the outer eye could not appreciate it but a flash of its presence is given even to this eye by the strange fact that our Independence Day falls not on Gandhiji's or Nehru's or Patel's or even Tilak's birthday but on Sri Aurobindo's.
I believe it was Sri Aurobindo's idea that the two men who had the authentic creative and coherent and consistent power to lead India to political independence were Tilak and, after him, Chitta Ranjan Das. With their passing, politics in India lacked the full dynamic for quick and complete results. There were brilliant spurts and a host of concurrent and sometimes colliding movements but not the massive one-pointed vitality. Of course, all sincere and forceful workers helped the cause of freedom but it cannot be said that any one man had the gift to achieve the ultimate result. For one thing, none had the Tilakian and Dasian combination of fundamental vision with tact of the moment and there were a whole series of blunders which hindered rather than helped our cause. We have somehow stumbled into independence and one proof of our lack of authentic sight or constructiveness is that we achieved a fissured independence and brought to birth with it
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two monsters on either side of us.
One last point. Your distinction between a Yogi and an Avatar does not go to the root of the matter. You say: "A Yogi is one who attempts an ascent to Divine Consciousness. An Avatar is one who is born in Divine Consciousness." An Avatar is surely born and not made, in the sense that anybody and everybody can't be an Avatar, but whether the Divine Consciousness shows itself openly through the Avatar to the world from the very beginning depends on the purpose with which one or another birth of the Avatar takes place. No Avatar before Rama showed specifically the Divine Consciousness either from birth or during life. Even Rama, whatever he may have inwardly known himself to be, never quite showed the Divine Consciousness; he was there to establish the dharma of the ethical man and acted out a moral ideal in a manner that suggested to everyone the superhuman. He never asked people to transcend the human consciousness and unite with the Divine. The Divine Consciousness as such formed no direct part of what Rama exemplified or sought to manifest. And yet he was undeniably an Avatar. Secondly, it is not necessary that an Avatar, when his business is to manifest the Divine Consciousness as such, should show it from the very start. Even Krishna, as the Chhandogya Upanishad says, became a disciple of Rishi Ghora (if I don't mistake the name) before growing aware of the Divine Consciousness in full: the awareness came almost at a touch, but the incident of discipleship is significant. Then take Chaitanya. The Krishna-being manifested here in an intensely recognisable way - but intermittently, as it were. In certain periods Chaitanya was a supreme Bhakta and nothing more, and he was certainly not born in Divine Consciousness. I don't argue that no Avatar was or could be born like that, but no surface tests can be applied. Again, an Avatar too has an instrumental Nature-being like any of us and develops a series of births; if he did not, he would be just a miraculous freak and hold no lesson or hope for evolving earth. An Avatar is especially a leader and exemplar of the evolution, and for this he need not be born in
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Divine Consciousness in any overt way; to be an exemplar as well as a leader he may have to look quite human for a long time, or at intervals, as happened with Chaitanya. The Avatar's function is to come and put forth a great power at critical and crucial points of history - and particularly when a transition from one stage to another is to be made. That is why we have in the traditional Hindu account, a fish Avatar, an amphibious tortoise Avatar, a land-animal boar Avatar, a man-lion Avatar, a dwarf-man Avatar, a rajasic human Avatar (Parashurama), then a sattwic human Avatar (Rama) and then a guna-transcending superhuman "global" Overmind Avatar (Krishna). If we count Buddha as an Avatar too, he would represent on earth the clean break bypassing the Overmind into the Transcendent, but only the Transcendent's negative aspect and not Its positive Truth-Consciousness integral and creative and dynamic. After him, in between, there could be an Avatar (Chaitanya) intensely establishing in the human emotional-vital the possibility of an absolute love and surrender which might be the basis for calling down and receiving the power from above of a divine life. That Truth-Consciousness above the Overmind would be what the next Avatar would exemplify. And when he exemplifies it he would take into himself the whole human being and nature, represent all the sides and tendencies of evolving man, assume even the agnostic aspect of the modern mind and show ultimately how all Nature is to be taken into Super-nature and how by the latter's descent an integral transformation is to be accomplished in terms of the Truth-Consciousness. The final Avatar who would bring God to earth and establish Him here was called Kalki by Hindu tradition and to identify Kalki we have to look for a figure whose goal is integral earth-transformation with the force of the supreme dynamic divinity of a Supermind which manifests the next stage after the Overmind by compassing not only the Transcendent's formlessness and absolute peace but also Its sovereign creativity of form and Its
.
Force one with unimaginable rest.
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Can you find anyone who does these things better and more clearly than Sri Aurobindo? Do you think any mere Yogi can come to effect so revolutionarily evolutionary a change on earth as the ascent to and descent of the Supermind - and that too for the collectivity and not only for a few individuals?
Of course, most disciples of every spiritual figure in India claim their master to be an Avatar. But I am not proposing an apotheosis of Sri Aurobindo on a mere impulse of bhakti. I am presenting to you in outline a consistent vision of Avatarhood and its functions and methods and pointing out how logically and inevitably Sri Aurobindo fits into the scheme.
Appreciating once more the fine spirit behind your speech,
I remain,
Yours sincerely,
K D. Sethna
No. C 187/51/PAM
1, Queen Victoria Road, New Delhi
The 16th September 1951
My dear Sethna,
Your letter dated the 7th September to hand.
I am glad you like my tribute to Sri Aurobindo. Most of my speeches have to be prepared in a hurry and with the scanty materials at my disposal for the moment.
I understand Advent is going to publish it. Perhaps you might also like to do it; if you do, substitute any good quotations from Sri Aurobindo rather than from yourself.
If Kant is difficult, Sri Aurobindo may be difficult too. I take the normal philosophical student as one who is able to understand John Stuart Mill or Radhakrishnan easily, but 'The Life Divine' is rather difficult to follow even for such a student unless he has a" grounding not merely of the Upani-shads and the Gita but of some of the easier works of Sri Aurobindo.
I do realize that Sri Aurobindo's works ought to be prescribed in our University courses. Our University Profes-
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sors of Philosophy, however, following western Professors, are intellectuals; they are not creative artists of higher life, as those interested in philosophy and yoga should be. Still we must not forget that quite a large number of intellectuals in our country have begun to appreciate the position of Sri Aurobindo as the prophet of Indian renaissance and the architect of an advanced philosophy and yoga.
As regards your next point - there I am again speaking from memory - Sri Aurobindo did say somewhere in the beginning of the century that someone will come who will achieve the purpose for which he was working, I have a distinct recollection of it and if I get hold of that passage, I will let you have it. A thing 'creatively possible' is different from 'actually realized'. Therefore, I cannot over-emphasize the services of Sri Aurobindo in disregard of those of Gandhiji.
You refer to the coincidence of 15th August. Does Sri Aurobindo need an adventitious importance of accidental coincidence of dates? You are a devotee and naturally prefer to surround him with a supernatural halo, but in doing so perhaps you convert the prophet of the new age into the head of a mystic sect.
I read your theory of Avatara with great interest. I will not try to combat it, for it expresses again the faith of a devotee. I can only give you my views on the matter. "Avatara" is the descent of God on earth in human form. The aspirant can only become first an aspirant, then a Siddha or Mukta or to use the language of Gita a Brahma Bhuta; and later on, can become merged in God, "enter Me". This is the basic idea of Aryan culture as developed in India. God descends on earth as a man and a man can merge himself into Him by complete surrender. This is the line of demarcation between Aryan and Semitic cultures. The latter does not envisage the descent of God on earth but only of his son or prophet. The Aryan idea is at the root of integration of personality differently called 'Samsiddhi' or self-realization by Gita, 'Mukti' or freedom by Upanishads, 'Nirvana' or liberation by Buddhism and 'Kai-valyd or integration by Yoga and Jainism.
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With our national weakness for easy apotheosis, we have been multiplying Avataras. Even Swami Narayana {early XIX century) claimed to be Sri Krishna come again and is worshipped as an Avatara by his sect. The other day a Sadhu came to me and, throughout a forty-minute conversation, referred to himself as Bhagwan. The basic concept of Avatara, however, is that he is very much more than a Brahma Bhuta, Siddha or Mukta. The line of demarcation appears to me to be at the point which separates an elaborate effort at self-discipline and the sudden unveiling of Divine Consciousness, leaving no trace of human weakness to conquer.
Where then, you will naturally ask me, do I place Sri Aurobindo? There is first Aurobindo the great speculative thinker, the intellect who postulated the mind; then the Overmind; and then the Super-mind. The Siddha transcends his samsiddhi; becomes completely absorbed in God or call it Divine Consciousness, and then brings it down not only in himself but through himself to mind and matter in order to elevate them. To put it concretely - I may be wrong - Arjuna surrenders himself to Sri Krishna and becomes ''God-minded'', raises himself higher and merges into Vasudev-hood; (then comes the Aurobindonian thought) Vasudev-hood descends into Arjuna and through him uplifts the universe.
This is a sweeping advance on self-realization but this is speculative thought, not individual evolution.
As regards the latter, Sri Aurobindo's life was a tremendous effort up to say 1928 for realizing the Divine. Assuming he reached 'Vasudev-hood' in 1928, and brought it down as you believe it, it is a question of faith. But this effort is scarcely consistent with the concept of Avatara. It may be stealing the thunders of Jove; but it is not the descent of Jove himself. But I am afraid I have no right to discuss this matter.
Whether he reached a stage of Siddhi or Vasudev-hood, whether he became a transmitting agency of God or was merged in Him, are matters beyond the reach of the ordinary mind. They are more within the sphere of faith. As Buddha says about God -
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Om Amitaya! Measure not with words the immeasurable;
Nor sink the string of thought into the fathomless;
Who asks doth err: Who answers errs. S
ay naught.
To me Sri Aurobindo has been a prophet, both of Indian nationalism and Indian renaissance; one who attained sam-siddhi and transcended human limitations of fear, attachment and wrath and gave a fresh validity to the destiny of man as Indian culture envisaged it. That is enough for me.
As I am too near him and I am not gifted with the higher faith of a devotee which you possess, perhaps we are destined not to agree.
With kind regards,
K.M. Munshi
19.9.51
My dear Munshi,
It was a pleasure to get your letter. Two or three points mentioned by you call for a short comment. I hope you'll forgive a little forthrightness on my part.
You think that to be a devotee is to overrate a man's greatness. But every devotee is not a brainless emotionalist seeing in a super-rosy light everything connected with the object of devotion. Besides, devotion is of various kinds; at its best it is only the opening of the deep heart-centre by which an ideal becomes dynamically operative in the emotions and in the life-impulses instead of remaining a high and dry intellectual light; it makes one's very bodily being respond to the ideal because it responds not just to a fine idea but also to its embodiment in a man, in the personality of him who gives us that ideal. Here there is nothing to unbalance the mind
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proper and distort the view and value of things.
On the contrary, I may say that if at times devotion runs the risk of exaggerating the truth it is yet the only power that can at its finest give one a perfect insight into the truth. Even God cannot be known truly unless he is deeply loved; love or devotion puts one en rapport with the inmost reality of a thing, or person, and, provided it is not the only power at work and one's consciousness is developed all round, it is the master-key to correct vision and appreciation. Besides, without it a great man is simply wasted. If Sri Aurobindo was great, what is the use of his greatness if we do not go to him as his devotees so that he may move us from the centre of us and make us his instruments? I am sure that Sri Aurobindo was on earth mainly for those who in some way or other could be his devotees, for they alone can make his mission a fruitful force on the largest scale.
Further, may I ask what is wrong with giving Sri Aurobindo "a supernatural halo"? Was he not a master of the spiritual consciousness and therefore one who has risen above Nature though never disdainful of Nature and ever wanting to transform and fulfil Nature? Without a supernatural halo he would be no Yogi at all and would be of little use in bringing about a radical change of human consciousness. He did have a supernatural halo and to recognise it cannot lead, as you fear, to a mystic sectarianism but rather to a proper appreciation of and response to his extraordinarily wide and non-sectarian spirituality.
As regards Avatarhood I remember Sri Aurobindo saying that he didn't care a damn whether he was called an Avatar or not. He was interested in making the Supermind a permanent state of wide-awake consciousness in the embodied human and in converting every part of human nature into a form of its own divine perfection which pre-exists archetypally in the Supermind. He was interested also in establishing the Supermind as not only an individual consciousness but as a part of earth's collective being. Provided he did these things he never bothered whether the doing of them made people look at him
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as at an Avatar or as at only a Brahma Bhuta or Siddha or Mukta. But one saying of his is very suggestive; "I am not doing anything for myself, as I have no personal need of anything, neither of salvation (Moksha) nor supramentalisa-tion. If I am seeking after supramentalisation, it is because it is a thing that has to be done for the earth-consciousness and if it is not done in myself, it cannot be done in others." It reminds me strongly of Sri Krishna's words in the Gita to the effect that, having everything, he has no need to do anything and yet he is all the time at work because that is how the universe goes on and progresses.
My view of Avatarhood is, as I have specifically stated, not a product of a muddled or fuddled devotionalism. It is too systematic for that. Also, I may say that it is not my own invention. It is a paraphrase of Sri Aurobindo's own view of the process and purpose of Avatarhood as not a mere divine freak but a divine demonstration to man of how evolution is to be accomplished and human difficulties overcome and human nature divinised. Of course every Yogi cannot be an Avatar by the mere fact of his demonstrating something or other of the process of spiritual growth. But the Avatar, for all his special position, is a sort of primus inter pares closely connected with the evolutionary endeavour. Does not Sri Krishna speak of many lives of himself in the past and not only of a few supreme ones? This means that in many lives he played the role of a human Vibhuti and did not look like an Avatar in the conventional sense, although inwardly he was always the Supreme Divine Person. This means, to follow Sri Aurobindo's words, that in Avatarhood there is a Consciousness behind which is that of the Godhead and a frontal consciousness, human or apparently human or at any rate with all the appearances of terrestriality, which is the instrumental personality. Very naturally, therefore, there could be a phenomenon in which, instead of a withholding of the inward divinity so that only a Vibhuti manifestation is made or also what you call "a sudden unveiling of Divine Consciousness, leaving no trace of human weakness to conquer", the Avatar
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couid keep his inward divinity back for a time and make his instrumental personality go through human-looking labours, what you call "an elaborate effort at discipline", for the sake of teaching humanity how all difficulties can be accepted and transcended.1 Such a manifestation would be precisely in tune with the modern age, the age in which the evolutionary idea is most active and a visible practical example of a process of divinisation through an overcoming of the typical modern difficulties would be the most helpful. If you won't mind my saying so, your notion of an Avatar is too popularly "flashy", too rigid and traditional and one-sided.
But, of course, as I said before, the attaching of a certain label was something Sri Aurobindo never cared a tuppence for and the most important point is to understand Sri Aurobindo's mission and help the undeniable grandeur and immensity of it; the descent and establishment of the Supermind on earth, with the nucleus of the supramental race shining out from this dear India of ours. If we agree on this, all disagreements elsewhere can have no importance.
K. D. Sethna
P.S. Have you seen the latest issue of Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual? It contains an early essay of Sri Aurobindo's, entitled Vyasa: Some Characteristics and part of his Notes on the Mahabharata proposing to disengage almost in its entirety the original epic of Vyasa in about 24,000 slokas from the present mass of 100,000.
1, The phrase "no trace of human weakness to conquer" is rather ambiguous. Unless the "supramentalisation" of all our nature-parts, including the body, is done as envisaged by Sri Aurobindo, certain fundamentals of human weakness, however subdued, are bound to be left. There never was any Avatar in the past completely supramentalised or even envisaging the supramentalisation of every nature-part.
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3.10.51
You must have received my letter of 19.9.51 replying to yours of 16.9.51. In it I touched upon a few points which stood out in my mind as of immediate importance. But on rereading your letter I find that there are some other points which call for a short comment because they are based on insufficient information about Sri Aurobindo's spiritual life. As you are an admirer of Sri Aurobindo, I think you will be glad to have the correct facts.
You have written: "There is first Aurobindo the great speculative thinker, the intellect who postulated the mind; then the Over-mind; and then the Super-mind." A little later, after giving what you consider to be "the Aurobindonian thought", you say: "This is a sweeping advance on self-realisation."
Now this is a capital mistake. The Arya in which, from 1914 to 1921, the Aurobindonian thought was first embodied in a comprehensive way was not a journal of philosophical postulation. At the end of an editorial note written by Sri Aurobindo in the Arya of July, 1918 he makes this quite clear. Here is the whole passage:
We had not in view at any time a review or magazine in the ordinary sense of the word, that is to say, a popular presentation or criticism of current information and current thought on philosophical questions. Nor was it, as in some philosophical and religious magazines in India, the restatement of an existing school or position of philosophical thought cut out in its lines and needing only to be popularised and supported. Our idea was the thinking out of a synthetic philosophy which might be a contribution to the thought of the new age that is coming upon us. We start from the idea that humanity is moving to a great change of its life which will even lead to a new life of the
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race, - in all countries where men think, there is now in various forms that idea and hope, - and our aim has been to search for the spiritual, religious and other truths which can enlighten and guide the race in this movement and endeavour. The spiritual experience and the general truths on which such an attempt could be based were already present to us, otherwise we should have had no right to make this endeavour at all; but the complete intellectual statement of them and their results and issues had to be found.
The concluding sentence leaves absolutely no doubt that when Sri Aurobindo wrote of all the major spiritual realisations and the special supramental realisation he was not acting the speculative philosopher; he was only putting into philosophical terms the body of a direct and concrete experience that was his already in 1914 when the Arya began publication.
This point being disposed of, the other point of yours -namely, that "as regards individual evolution, Sri Aurobindo's life was a tremendous effort up to 1928 for realising the Divine" - has no meaning. On the strength of the statement I have quoted from Sri Aurobindo, the Divine had been most richly realised by the middle of 1914.1 wonder what gave you the idea that right up to 1928 there was a tremendous effort only. If we examine the published facts of Sri Aurobindo's life and draw upon his own published letters (of which 4 volumes are already out), we find the realisation of the Divine dating even much further back than 1914. At one place in the Letters are the words: "Durgam pathastat may be generally true and certainly the path of Laya or Nirvana is difficult in the extreme to most although in my case I walked into Nirvana without intending it or rather Nirvana walked casually into me not so far from the beginning of my yogic career without asking my leave." In another place he says, in a letter meant for Aldous Huxley, that the realisations of Nirvana and, soon after, of the Ishwara and "others which followed upon them, such as that of the Self in all and all in the Self, the Divine in all and all in the Divine" presented to him "no long or obsti-
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nate difficulty." So, long before even 1914, Sri Aurobindo was at home in God-realisation.
Turning to the booklet Sri Aurobindo and his Ashram, in which is given a sketch of his life based on authentic data, we read: "Sri Aurobindo began his Yoga in 1904. Even before this he had already some spiritual experiences and that before he knew anything about Yoga or even what Yoga was. For example, a vast calm descended upon him at the moment when he stepped first on Indian soil after his long absence, in fact'with his first step on the Apollo Bunder in Bombay. This calm surrounded him and remained for long months afterwards. There was also a realisation of the vacant Infinite while walking on the ridge of the Takht-i-Suleman in Kashmir, the living presence of Kali in a shrine on the banks of the Narmada, the vision of the Godhead surging up from within when in danger of a carriage accident in Baroda in the first year of his stay. But these were inner experiences coming of themselves and with a sudden unexpectedness, not part of a sadhana."
The first great experience that was part of a sadhana was the one of Nirvana I have already spoken of. About this the booklet says: "Meditating only for three days with Lele, he {Sri Aurobindo) followed his instructions for silencing the mind and freeing it from the constant pressure of thought; he entered into an absolute and complete silence of the mind and indeed of the whole consciousness and in that silence had suddenly the enduring realisation of the indefinable Brahman, Tat, in which the whole universe seemed to be unreal and only That existed." This silence remained with him ever since and when activity returned it was not broken by the necessity of any conceptual thought or personal volition. All the mental workings, speech, writing, thought, will and other kindred activities came from above the brain-mind. Sri Aurobindo had entered into what he afterwards called the overhead consciousness. And the entry was permanent.
This was in 1908 - full twenty years before the date 1928 when, according to you, he was still making a tremendous effort at God-realisation. And the mention of the fact that all
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his speech and writing have come ever since 1908 from above the brain-mind shows how different from speculative thinking was the philosophical expression of the Arya. To continue quoting from the booklet: "Before coming to Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo had already realised in full two of the four great realisations on which his Yoga and his spiritual philosophy are founded. The first... in January 1908... was the realisation of the silent spaceless and timeless Brahman gained after a complete and abiding stillness of the whole consciousness and attended at first by the overwhelming feeling and perception of the total unreality of the world, though this feeling disappeared after his second realisation which was that of the cosmic consciousness and of the Divine as all beings and all that is, which happened in the Alipore Jail. To the other two realisations, that of the supreme Reality with the static and dynamic Brahman as its two aspects and that of the higher planes of consciousness leading up to the Supermind, he was already on his way in his meditations in the Alipore Jail."
This means that by 1910 - the year in which he came to Pondicherry - he could have rested on his spiritual laurels, for, in matters of God-realisation as traditionally envisaged he had nothing more to achieve. I don't know where you have picked up the utterly apocryphal story that up to 1928 he was still making efforts at realising the Divine. What Sri Aurobindo has made tremendous efforts for was not God-realisation, We must not mix up God-realisation with the descent of the Supermind into the whole of embodied nature, down to the very physical cells. As said in the letter for Huxley, God-realisation of the completest kind presented to Sri Aurobindo no long or obstinate difficulty. "The only real difficulty," the letter continues, "which took decades of spiritual effort to work out towards completeness was to apply the spiritual knowledge utterly to the world and to the surface psychological and outer life and to effect its transformation both on the higher levels of Nature and on the ordinary mental, vital and physical levels down to the subconscience and the basic Inconscience and up to the supreme Truth-consciousness or
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Supermind in which alone the dynamic transformation could be entirely integral and absolute."
The reason of the difficulty is stated by Sri Aurobindo in a letter to Dilip: "As for the Mother and myself, we have had to try all ways, follow all methods, to surmount mountains of difficulties. A far heavier burden to bear than you or anybody else in the Ashram or outside, far more difficult conditions, battles to fight, wounds to endure, ways to cleave through impenetrable morass and desert and forest, hostile masses to conquer - a work such as, I am certain, none else had to do before us. For the leader of the way in a work like ours has not only to bring down or represent and embody the Divine, but to represent too the ascending element in humanity and to bear the burden of humanity to the full and experience, not in a mere play or Lila but in grim earnest, all the obstruction, difficulty, opposition, hampered and only slowly victorious labour which are possible on the path,"
In other words, the difficulty arises not so much because the work is so radically new as because Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have to give their work a significance for all humanity and not make it a glorious isolated triumph open perhaps at most to a few gifted individuals. And we may add that by the very difficulty they have accepted for us our own path becomes easier.
I hope this letter will dispel the mistaken picture of Sri Aurobindo's spiritual life that you have somehow formed.
I shall be happy to hear from you again.
6th October, 1951
Your letter to hand. 1 feel myself incompetent to enter into a controversy with you. You had close personal touch with Sri
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Aurobindo. You have read his works thoroughly. To me, since 1909, Sri Aurobindo has been a distant star. The only light I received was the casual reading of his writings and glowing brilliant vision for a few fleeting moments.
I was no doubt observing and intermittently contacting him from 1901 to 1909 - more particularly in 1907 at the time of the Surat Congress; I was never in his circle. I drew the inspiration from Bande Mataram and from one or two friends who were in close contact with him. I knew Lele, and Pandya who was in close touch with him. We heard about Sri Aurobindo's yogic developments only from 1904 onwards. But in his outer aspects, it would not be right to say that he had developed that 'wide calm' which later on became the principal characteristic of his personality. His Uttarpara speech, which, for many years, became my annual swadhyaya, also gave me the same impression.
Anyway, we need not measure the measureless, as I said before. He had, as I have said of late, one of the most mature and wide-visioned minds that I have known or read of both in insight and individual evolution. He, in my opinion, was one of the greatest of philosophers and Yogis that I have read of; and he has presented to the world a mighty and successful achievement of integration of personality giving thereby a message to the modern world and to Indian culture a fresh validity. That is quite enough for my purpose.
I have been reading of late Sri Aurobindo's criticism of Savitri1 in 'Mother India'. I wish Srsi Aurobindo's comments on literary criticism may be collected in book-form.
Who is Rishabh Chand? His exposition is masterly.
More when we meet. With kind regards,
K. M. Munshi
1. Editor's Note: What is meant is critical comments in answer to questions put by K.D. Sethna on Savitri.
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