The Sun and The Rainbow

Two Letters from the Ashram

 

 

MAY 12,1954

 

I wonder why you write: "Nobody mentions the Mother." Either my letters haven't reached you or else you don't read them rightly. I think they mention hardly anything except the Mother. Surely one need not speak of her directly in order to mention her. My letters are one long spiritual autobiography. And what is a spiritual autobiography from here except a various presentation of Mother-moodedness?

What shall I say to your question about Sehra and me and the psychic being? Both of us live, each in an individual way, in something of its glow at least frequently if not all the time. But that is different from the outburst of the psychic. That outburst is different also from a soft steady light. I may say that something like an outburst happens now and then, for a brief while. But for it to be constant a firm poise is to be found inside, and that poise is not always easy to come by when one has made a choice of the spiritual life. This will strike you as a paradox. But really there is a difference between short trips to God's land and a permanent stay there. The trips are enthusiastic and the very shortness of them feeds the fire. Thepermanent stay means ''business'' and when one gives noticeto one's defects to quit they protest persistently and even violently and one has calmly and smilingly to bow them out and lay a firm foundation of purity and peace. The whole movement is somewhat dissimilar. In the short trips the defects can be completely forgotten and ignored. Now they have to be faced as long-standing parts of one's self. And one has to go

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deep, break through many barriers, suffer occasional blow-ings-up in order to emerge into an air of freedom in which one may turn to the Mother and be her child in every detail and on every layer of one's being.

A more complicated process is this and one does not remain in a fixed felicity or a constant flame. But the sense is there, all the same, that a far greater thing is being done than during any flying visit, however resplendent. And the light that gets kindled in one is more effective, for all its slowness and interruptedness, because it comes from the utmost profundities and seeks to spread to the utmost widenesses. Here is the process not only of changing your central consciousness but also of changing the whole of your life.

Considering all this and considering various other circumstances I think that matters are moving at a not unsatisfying rate, though, of course, there is ever a better beyond one's best. An inner freedom, an inner readiness to change in all directions and to become anything the Mother wants, even if that goes against one's cherished beliefs or inclinations, a smiling turn towards the Mother as if one were not bound at all to anything, a slow but unmistakable feeling that, with a growing warmth in the heart and an increasing glow in the mind, one is mysteriously proceeding towards some kind of sweet security in a background region midway between the heart and the mind, until one shall be quite out of the problem of the lower nature — all this seems to be the sadhana at present.

I said: "Out of the problem of the lower nature." This does not mean that the problem ceases. No, it remains there — but oneself is no longer in it. One deals with it as if from outside it like a sculptor chiselling the rough stone to a perfect Hermes or a flawless Aphrodite, the hardest blows and dints and scrapings hurting not himself at all — himself playing the part of only an instrument or the inspiring Spirit, within whose freedom and farness he is caught up!

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AUGUST 24,1954

 

 

I suppose you want spiritual news from me. On the whole it is definitely good. And it is as a whole that we must see sadhana if we are to measure it correctly — especially sadhana like that of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga where a single-track move to the Divine is not permitted and all the turns and twists of one's nature have to be negotiated patiently and persistently. But this Integral Yoga can have two kinds of progress. In one we have, time and again, sidetracks leading off from the main progressive line and these have to be led back by a counter-force because otherwise they would point quite away into the all-too-human morass on either side of the Godward course. In the other type there are draftings too, but they are like curves which of themselves after a little side-swerve turn back to the luminous line. Here the deviations occur because of our complex unregenerate constitution but they are a natural part of the journey and held together in the general scheme by an inner spontaneity of soul and do not require, as in the first type, a deliberate act of the will. Of course, the will's co-operation is called for on occasion but mostly to cut short the deviation, to let the curve be as small as possible. The point is that even if the will did not come to add its own helpful quota the Godward course would be rejoined by the drifting slide-offs. And it would be rejoined because the final choice has been made — the mighty Purusha above the head has thrown in the lower being's lot with the Eternal, and the Purusha behind the heart, "no bigger than a man's thumb" as the Upanishad describes the evolving soul, has tuned in to the God-affirmative broadcast of that lordly dweller in the Infinite's ether and his whole being vibrates in unison with that music of the spheres. Difficulties, tensions, perplexities occur, yet the very discords are woven into the multi-toned echo the deep soul with its fire-tongue makes to the Sun-cry above. We may consider the deep soul's echo as a composition in the modern style, a lot of counterpointed movements in which

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everything is not smooth and there are oppositions and yet a harmony is achieved. The two types of sadhana may be called the forcefully willed and the spontaneously controlled. Mine.e at present is of the second type. It was of the first type when I came to the Ashram twenty-seven years ago. Perhaps the more accurate way of putting it would be that my sadhana was always of the second type but long ago the deviating curves were so large that they looked like straight shootings away and had to be met by the forceful will — until in a large view over years and years one saw that the joining back to the spiritual course was in the very nature of the phenomenon. Somewhere inside of me I always knew that there was no possibility of ultimate deviation, but the outer self did not share the inner knowledge. Now it does and that is why, in spite of all disturbances, there is the sense of security and together with all puckerings of the brow, a smile of certainty. This, however, does not make everything a process from light to light — the way is long and uneven yet there is no fear, no doubt, no hesitation. All shall be well: that is the mantra heard hour after hour and right through the darkest spells. Coming to the most external life, I may say that I feel sometimes unspeakably happy in this little wide-verandaed flat which seems poised in Sri Aurobindo's vast peace and caressed by the Mother's million winds of love. My work goes on with a sweet efficient rhythm, and the presence of Sehra is no bar at all but a natural portion of God's magnificent day and mysterious night. She is as much a child of the Mother as I am and, although there are several differences in our temperaments, they are as nought in the sweep of the one love towards the All-Beautiful. This is a grace I had dreamt of and hoped for and striven after: it has come sooner than expected and better than visioned. .

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