16
I was greatly impressed by your "Golden Vision". It reveals the Mother in her full reality - not only the Universal Form of her but also the Individual Being. People often say that now that the Mother has left her body she is a Universal Form - as if the bodily shape alone constituted her individuality. What you saw shows not only the cosmic power set to greater use by her departure from the Body. It shows also how closely and organically the Universal and the Individual in her were related and how naturally they interplay.
It would seem that her individuality no less than her universality can now come home more vividly. Her individual aspect acted on you in the very way the embodied Mother used to do: she put her hands over your eyes just as she often did when she was tangible on the earth. But she repeated the old gesture with a luminosity and a meaning-fulness which exceeded the old personal relationship.
This meaningfulness, disclosed by your vision, acquires a plenitude by her bringing in one hand a lotus and in the other a hammer. The lotus would point to a power of effecting a spontaneous opening of our being to the Divine, especially to the Divine as Avatar. The hammer suggests a forceful action of swift grace. And what she did with the hammer to you personally is for me the climax - the most momentous part -of the vision. You do not say much of the change brought about in you, but from your few hints I conclude as follows.
The Mother has broken open your normal individuality and made something of you spread its consciousness in the universal existence. This change has come about by at once a profound interiorisation, a further plunging into the inner self and, as a result of this new deepening, a new widening.
How would I understand this new widening? I would say that it modifies the whole aspect of your future movements to distant places. I am sure that you did not go on travelling here and there merelv because you needed an outing. There was an
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inner call to meet the outside world for the sake of that world's good. Now, according to me, there will be an answer from you not simply to whatever possibility of good there may be for the world's sake. If only the world were concerned, you could sit at home and not go out at all and, without going out, get some work done. At present, there will be a going out purely because the Divine shall call you for purposes that you may not even know. The thinking mind will have no part in the motive of your travels. The thinking mind has been hit open and' something more inward has been set free - something inward beyond all your previous depth. Deriving from that suddenly revealed centre, your movements are bound to be a sheer motiveless response to the Divine Will - the individual Mother within you going forth ecstatically into the Universal Mother which is your highest being outside the body that is the visible Champaklal.
(14.5.1979)
I'll start with the end of your letter of 26th May. The R. C. Zaehner who met me years ago is certainly not whoever has come to Madras recently under the name Zaehner. My fellow emigrated to the Christian heaven (or so at least he must have thought he was doing) even before I completed my review of his book, a review ten times longer than his book. By the way, this heaven seems to be a queer place. St. Thomas Aquinas says that one of the experiences there of blessedness is a full view of all the tortures and sufferings going on in hell far below and so luckily escaped by the saved ones.
Hell, of course, is full of gnashing of teeth, and the topic of Nashe raised in your letter is quite appropriate as the next one. Ogden Nashe is, I think, connected with Basic English. Oh pardon me, ( am blundering awfully. The Basic-English-walla is simply Ogden. But in any case my Nashe is not the author of the modern poem you refer to. He lived soon after the Elizabethan age. The line I once quoted to you and its two successors -
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Brightness falls from the air,
Queens have died young and fair.
Dust hath closed Helen's eye -
are some of the most delicately magical in the English language. But it is reported that the opening verse which has a psychic pathos has come to us accidentally in its present form! Nashe is supposed to have actually written:
Brightness falls from the hair...
This would be quite consistent with the thought-sense of the next two phrases, but how far away from their soul-sense! Indeed it would take much off from that romantic world-cry which we hear in them in continuation with the other version of the opening words.
I didn't know that the flower going by the name "Passionflower" in English is called "Krishna-Kamal" in Maharashtra. The suggestions are quite opposite - divine suffering in one case and divine delight in the other. I don't think Sri Aurobindo had either symbolism in mind. Nor could he have attended to the significance given by the Mother to Passiflora caerulea: "Silence" - although "Silence" chimes very well with Sri Aurobindo's "Nameless" representing itself in his poem "Rose of God" as "Passion-flower":
"Passion-flower of the nameless, bud of the mystical
name."
You have asked: "What is psychic other than laughter and delight and love of the Divine?" The answer is: "luminous strength." If it were no more than what you have mentioned, it could never bring about the Divine's Victory in earthly evolution. Remember that the god of the psyche is Agni who in the Rigveda is named "Son of Force". Sri Aurobindo has spoken of the psychic being not only in terms of Matthew Arnold's well-known "sweetness and light": he has also
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ascribed strength to it, the power to conquer, the power to bear, the power not only to stand four-square against mortality but also to establish what Agni is in his cosmic function, "the Immortal in the mortal". And the psyche's strength is accompanied, as Sri Aurobindo says, by "light" no less than "sweetness". Your formula compasses only the latter in its threefold aspect: I have used the epithet "luminous" for "strength" - thus answering to Sri Aurobindo's "light". This light is at the same time sunniness and illumination, although the illumination is not of truth-know ledge but of truth-feeling, an inward turn spontaneously sensing what is God's Will rather than instantly visioning the plan and purpose of the Supreme as does the intuitive spiritual consciousness.
Yes, the Rigveda has a multiple numerology. One of its most expressive numbers is "thousand", meaning "completeness". A 100 is explained by Sri Aurobindo as perhaps suggesting the 7 planes multiplied by themselves in their interaction and the 49 thus arrived at to be added to another 49 so as to signify by 98 not only descent but also ascent - and then number 1 added at the top for the supreme Unknown and number 1 added at the bottom for the same at the other pole, the result coming to a century.
My personal number, as decided by the Mother, is 15 which also reduces itself to 1 +5=6, the number of what she has called "The New Creation", something which I am very much in need of in both my inner and outer being. The flower symbolising "New Creation" is the tuberose, a flower which used to be a favourite of mine before I knew my number was 15. But what the Mother considered to be my flower was the one she named "Krishna's Light in the Mind".
(25.6.1983)
I have promised to tell you why I cancelled the operation on my right thigh which was to counter the defect that had resulted from the serious thigh-fracture I had suffered. Let me
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first sketch the background of this final negative after all the positives that had set me on a course which almost everybody had disapproved of.
First was a general message from the Mother when I was thinking of the possible dangers in moving about after the period in the Nursing Home: "Fear nothing." Then, at a time of rather depressive uncertainty, revolving the theme of an operation: "I shall see you through." Again, in the night of 20.3.92, after hearing from a doctor friend, himself an orthopaedic surgeon, that the operation would mean three days of acute pain and seven days of constant pain: "Leave everything in my hands." Finally, at the Samadhi on 22.3.92 I figured myself as kneeling to the Mother as I used to do every afternoon when, on finishing her lunch with Pranab, she would go to her bathroom by an inner door and come out by an outer one leading to where I would be sitting and waiting for her. When I told her of my difficulties and perplexities I heard her say: "I'm with you." These words took away all doubts and fears.
My doctor nephew came to Pondy from the USA for a few days in November 1992. He raised a question which had never been considered before. He spoke of the formidable risk of infection in the case of a bone-operation done in India where the extreme precaution taken in the USA was unavoidably absent. Naturally this was serious food for thought. If the infection proved refractory as it very well might, the leg would have to be cut off from mid-thigh. As usual I put the matter to the Mother. Nearly two months passed but there was no reply. On the 16th of January this year at night I again pressed her for an answer. I said: "I don't want to suggest anything favourable. I leave it to you to say whatever you wish." In the morning, as if out of the blue, I got the words: "Yes, there is the danger, but keep your faith intact."
I discerned no positive assurance here as in the previous instances. Though no negation faced me, the statement was ambiguous. It seemed to imply that there would be a real test for my faith: the danger might be such that my faith would be
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strained to the utmost. On the other hand, if I could retain my faith in spite of everything looking awful I would come through. Perhaps the statement implied that I should not lose my faith even if the danger proved such as to render the operation a failure? My nephew had told me: "When bones are joined by metal screws and plates the combination is often liable to an infection which can resist all antibiotics," A great seriousness came over me after the Mother's message. I felt I had to gather as much strength as 1 could to face the uncertain future. In the afternoon at the Samadhi I had the sensation of the wide-spreading sturdy Service Tree merging with my being and creating a solid steady strength in my limbs. I was sure I could bear whatever complications might arise at the site of the surgery.
Two or three days afterwards, the doctor friend, who had earlier warned me about pain and whom I had not yet told of the Mother's pronouncement, asked me what I hoped to do with my leg made straight by an operation. I said: "With the help of my 'walker' 1 shall be able to move a little on my own in my rooms and go more easily than now to the bathroom. Of course, I shall never be able to move out of the house on my 'Canadian Canes' (hand-crutches). Even to make a round of my rooms with them would be out of the question. The possibility of falling again would be too great." Then my friend remarked: "The advantages of the surgery are marginal compared with the suffering, the inconvenience and the risks involved." At this, a wavering vision of my own about the smallness of the advantages even if the operation was a perfect success became vivid and clear. Still I refrained from making any decision by mere thought. My friend's words were submitted to a deeper realm of consciousness, a wide silence beyond human hopes and fears. Soon there was a waft from it, shaking somewhat the old firm resolution. But I wanted a quick definite decision as my nephew was to be informed as soon as possible whether, as planned by him, he should come to Pondicherry to attend the operation. A resolve crystallised, with the Mother's ambiguous message
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colouring it, that the operation should be cancelled. This was at about 7.45 a.m. the next day. 1 prepared a note for the Ashram doctor who is in charge of the Nursing Home where the operation was to be carried out. He wrote back:
"I received your note with a sense of relief truly. Somehow my own feeling was not very happy about this - but once you and Dr. Bhattacharya decided between yourselves I had to pursue it dutifully. Good that it is over now."
(24.3.1993)
I am glad The Problem of Aryan Origins has reached you. I am sorry to hear from you that it has oversights as well as insights. But hopefully it has dealt with the central issues in an adequate way and would administer a salutary knock on the wooden head of Jan Gonda whose latest "authoritative" pronouncements you have sent me. 1 had never thought he could be so sweepingly supercilious in his judgments. As regards the symbolic-spiritual interpretation of the Rigveda in Sri Aurobindo's Hymns to the Mystic Fire to which he has given a passing footnote, he should have offered a reason for rejecting it so out of hand. But I notice that he has left -inevitably like all other non-Aurobindonian interpreters - a definite joint in his own glittering armour.
Take the phrase on p. 24 of his "Introduction to the Veda in general and the Rgveda in particular" about "the indigenous inhabitants (dasa or dasyu)" with whom the Rigvedics fought: "Against these enemies, not always distinguishable from demoniac enemies...." The moment this admission is made, Gonda lies vulnerable to Sri Aurobindo's argument apropos of the dasa-dasyu.
We may put the argument as follows. Instead of looking at the Rigveda piecemeal we should cast a glance at it as a whole. Then we make a striking discovery. There are passages in which the spiritual-symbolic interpretation is the sole one possible and all others are completely excluded. There are no passages in which we lack a choice either between this inter-
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pretation and a nature-poetry - e.g., the supp Ian ration of night by sunrise, with cows and rain-rivers and sky disclosed -or between the spiritual-symbolic exegesis and the reading of human enemies. So neither such a reading nor the nature-poetry is indispensable, and the spiritual-symbolic vision which is absolutely imperative in several hymns and, unlike both of the other alternatives, is never completely excluded but always remains possible in all the rest of the cases, stands out as the most logical, the single consistent and sufficient explanation of the dasa-dasyu.
In an earlier instalment sent by you of Gonda's writings I come across the statement: "Natural phenomena and their mythological, symbolical or esoterical interpretation are often interwoven: the luminous phenomena connected with dawn appear like - no, as - cows..." (p. 242). What, then, is "absurd" and "unfounded" about interpreting, as Sri Aurobindo does, the proper name "Gotama" of a Rishi as "most radiant" (fn. 47, p. 244) because of the relations between cows (go) and morning-light, relations which Gonda himself admits in that very footnote on Hymns to the Mystic Fire? Besides, Gonda goes so far as to state on p, 245: "There is, in general, almost universal agreement about the poets' intentions to convey, by the symbols and images of cows, another and deeper meaning than the surface one in passages such as 4, 41, 5 stating that the big cow - i.e. poetic art - which with her milk gives a thousand gushes is expected to yield now also as if she had gone through the pasture..." What Gonda disputes is that such a meaning is to be seen everywhere. On a second look I observe that even that footnote does not run down Sri Aurobindo altogether. It says that "some modern mystics and philosophers - among them Aurobindo, e.g. in Hymns to the Mystic Fire, Pondicherry 1952 - go decidedly too far in assuming symbolism and allegories." Mark the expression: "too far." Here again is a joint in the armour. If we can show that in a good number of instances - as Gonda himself admits
-"symbolism and allegories" can be assumed and that nowhere are they completely ruled out in spite of a natural-
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istic or realistic appearance of the expressions, then Gonda's indignation at the Aurobindonian sense of "Gotama" can be exposed as unwarranted.
The one point at which he is likely to be a great stickler is his obsession by the theory of an Aryan invasion. But here too I see the armour carrying a bit of a joint. On p. 23 I read almost what Keith wrote in 1922: "It is generally assumed that the Aryan invaders entered by the western passes of the Hindu Kush and proceeded thence through the Punjab to the east. That advance itself - which in all probability covered some centuries - is not reflected in the hymns, most of which seem to have been composed in the country round the Sarasvati river, in the hilly and best parts of the Punjab." It is expected by Indologists like Gonda that the "advance" assumed would be reflected in the Rigveda. If, against such an expectation, it is not reflected, what is the ground for taking it for granted? Analogically, if the entry itself into India, which we would most expect to be reflected, finds not the slightest reflection, what reason have we to assume it?
Once the invasion-obsession can be lifted off, the chronology - c. 1500 B.C. - appears quite arbitrary. Do we have any grounds to believe that the Rigveda is subsequent to the Harappa Culture, the Indus Valley Civilisation, which is now said to have ended in c. 1700 B.C.? The only argument possible is that its story of destroying a large number of fortified towns, mighty strongholds, seems to point in the direction of the numerous citadels of the Indus Valley Civilisation. But Gonda does not see his Aryan invaders as destroyers of cities like Mohenjodaro and Harappa. He even has the phrase about the enemies of the Rigvedics: "The indigenous inhabitants (dasa or dasyu) - often but without sufficient evidence identified with the survivors of the Indus culture" (p. 24). In no way does Gonda show us any link between the Indus Valley Civilisation and his Aryan invaders. How then can he argue that they arrived after its downfall? No ground remains to stick to c. 1500 B.C. or any post-Harappan date. If so, why talk even of an invasion at any time?
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All in all, the historical tactics of Gonda are illegitimate. To put it in jocular terms, they are as if those of a sophistical Goonda!
(24.6.1992)
I cannot help addressing you familiarly by your first name because your "Offering in Celebration of 'Life-Poetry-Yoga' with love" has gone straight to the core of my heart where all formalities drop in the light of a spontaneous inner relationship as of soul to comrade soul.
It is the first time a Parsi has responded warmly and happily to my monthly series in Mother India and with such an originality of expression. The word "celebration" brings a gesture both of rejoicing and of honouring - it carries an air of festivity on the one hand and on the other an aura of reverence. My series seems to make you smile and laugh intimately at the same time that it brings to your eyes the vision of an ideal distance where one's finest hopes are fulfilled. A stylist like Flaubert would have been thrilled at your mot juste, though I doubt if he could have entered, for all his insight into complex character, the inner world of Aurobindonian reveries and realities in which we so closely meet in spite of being outwardly strangers.
My aim in "Life - Poetry - Yoga" has been to write not just from book-knowledge but from the stuff of my own experience or, if you like, book-knowledge as felt on my own pulses. All the problems that come to me have a family-relationship with the highways and byways of difficulty and solution that I myself have traversed.
(19.8.1993)
You have posed a number of points which call for discriminate consideration. You write: "One of the biggest reasons which gives rise to the fear of defeat in me is the urge for perfection. Nothing short of it satisfies me, and consequently
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I'm ever dissatisfied. I may be ahead of people of my age, but 1 have a sense of know-nothing-at-all. Though I am at the top in my class, I'm not really happy because I want to be as good as the professor, if not better!"
Well, to be satisfied is to stop progressing - there must be a "beyond" - but the beyond is to be seen as a happy prospect for progress, we must be elated by it instead of being miserable with our present condition. Dissatisfaction without depression: this must be our motto.
You have referred to "defeat" and later say: "That lurking sense of possible defeat - the question 'What will happen if I don't reach the highest I aim at?' - balks my efforts." It is the sincere attempt to surpass oneself that counts. If circumstances thwart your success, you must not think there has been a waste of effort and time. An inner development has come by the very attempt to reach out to a greater goal. Even a lifelong failure to realise one's highest objective should not cause a feeling of frustration. The inner development on the way to a seeming nowhere is the criterion of success. I remember a Chinese saying: "Better to be a crystal and be broken than to lie a mere tile intact for ever on a roof-top."
Keep in mind what Sri Aurobindo has said about his own work. After referring to the terrific difficulties he has faced in the new earth-transforming Yoga he has toiled at - difficulties greater than any encountered by any spiritual aspirant in the past - and after mentioning his faith in the ultimate fruition of his colossal labour, he adds: "But even if I still saw the chance that it might come to nothing..., I would go on unperturbed, because I would still have done to the best' of my power the work that I had to do, and what is so done always counts in the economy of the universe."
Mark the words: "so done." It spotlights the inner spirit, the self-dedication, the sense of being the instrument of the Supreme Will. To whatever small extent we can, we must be Aurobindonian in our attitude to the job in hand and calmly move apace.
You have written: "I experience a greater joy in doing
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work with full involvement than in exclusive meditation. During meditation I feel peaceful and concentrated no doubt, but the joy of progressing comes only while working with dedication and sincerity even if I don't remember the Mother continuously during work but only occasionally. But again if I work keeping some immediate result in mind I feel restless and tortured. I feel happy and fulfilled only when 1 work peacefully and persistently, free from the thought of result, because then I automatically get into a meditating poise.... I am "such a mixture of quirks and idiosyncrasies. 1 want you to help me go right."
Exclusive meditation is not to be ruled out. We don't have to regard it as inaction. There are occasions in the soul's life for rapt inwardness. But, by and large, to carry on, with the face turned to the Mother's light, whatever work falls to our lot is more creative in terms of the spirituality Sri Aurobindo has revealed, for this spirituality aims at a radical change of the outer being and at a new wakeful world of interrelations. At first we may not remember the Mother all the time, but a self-consecration at the start of a work and a self-consecration at the end are sufficient in the early stages of Yoga, When the inmost soul becomes a conscious flame in our days and a living mystery in our nights, then a kind of automatic offering of the work to the Divine all the time takes place. We carry the aura of the inner around the outer and are effortlessly guided to do everything in consonance with the inner's intimacy with the Divine - an atmosphere of humble holiness working out things envelops all our activity. Along with the urge to be perfect in every venture and be more and more productively dynamic, there has to be the aspiration to be perfectly in the hands of the Supreme. Those lines of Shelley's, which you recall me as quoting to you -
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow -
point you precisely to the state towards which I am asking
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you to aspire. At first glance it may appear to strike a note of escapism, but actually Shelley was not only a fervent idealist but also an ardent reformist. He yearned to liberate the world from the obscurantism of priests and the despotism of kings. Mind and body clear of shackles - such was the visionary drive behind his great lyrical drama, Prometheus Unbound. From that "something afar" where there is freedom from our sorrowful sphere he longed to bring a new light, love and liberty to that sphere. For what was initially seen at a distance was the true self, the hidden reality of what is found here and now. It has to be invoked as if it were a perfection to be evoked from our depths. The wonderful Beyond is like a mirror of a marvellous Within - or rather a realised form prefiguring the beauty and bliss waiting to emerge from the secret recesses of the Unknown behind man's reverie-rhythmed heart. Sri Aurobindo has vividly flashed on our eyes the ultimate result on earth of "the desire of the moth for the star" that is the Shelleyan cry:
It comes at last, the day foreseen of old,
What John in Patmos saw, what Shelley dreamed,
Vision and vain imagination deemed,
The City of Delight, the Age of Gold.
We have to keep the sense of this waiting City and that emergent Age alive in our thoughts and feelings. I see from your response to Nature from your roof-top that a frequent glimmer of this sense is a part of your life. And your ache for perfection is in its root a recurring echo of it.
(9.9.1993)
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