Writings, talks, letters of Sri Aurobindo & The Mother that were preserved by Champaklal. 'These writings to devotees are most valuable..' - Champaklal
7 April 1920
7th April 1920
I have received your three letters, but up to now I have not managed to write an answer. It is a miracle that even now I sat down to write, because letter writing for me takes place once in a blue moon—especially writing in Bengali which I have not done for five or six years. The miracle would be complete if I could finish this letter and put it in the post.
First about your Yoga. You wish to give me the charge of your Yoga and I am willing to take it, that is to say to give it to Him who is moving by His divine Shakti both you and myself whether secretly or openly. But you must know the necessary result will be that you will have to follow that special way which He has given to me and which I call the integral Yoga.
What I began with, what was given to me by Lele, that was a seeking for the path, a wandering around in this and that direction touching this or that in all the old partial Yogas; lifting it up, taking it in the hands and scrutinising it and, having had some kind of complete experience of one thing, running in pursuit of another.
Afterwards, when I came to Pondicherry, this unsteady condition ceased. The Guru of the world who is within us gave me the complete direction of my path, its full theory, the ten limbs of the body of the Yoga. These ten years He has been making me develop it in experience. But it is not yet finished. It may take another two years, and as long as it is not finished, I doubt if I shall be able to return to Bengal. Pondicherry is the appointed place for my Yoga siddhi, except one part of it—that is, the action. The first centre of my work is Bengal, although I hope that its circumference will be all India and the whole earth.
I shall write to you afterwards what is the way of Yoga, or if you come here I shall tell you about it. In this matter the spoken word is better than the written word. At present I can only say that its root principle is to make a harmony and unity of complete knowledge, complete work and complete bhakti, to raise this above the mind, and to give it its complete perfection on the level of gnosis above the mind. The fault of the old Yoga was this, that it knew the mind and knew the Spirit and it was satisfied with getting the Spirit expressed in the mind. The mind can grasp only the division, it cannot completely grasp the infinite, the indivisible. In order to reach it, sannyasa, moksa, nirvana are the mind's means. One man or another can get this featureless Moksha, but what is the gain ? The Brahman, the Self, God, are always there. What God wants in man is to embody Himself here in the individual and the community, to realise God in life. The old way of Yoga would not make the harmony or union of the Spirit and life. It dismissed the world as Maya or a transient Lila. The result has been the loss of the power of life and degeneration of India. It is said in the Gita “These people would perish if I did not do works” and in fact the people of India have truly gone down to ruin. What sort of spiritual perfection is this, that some Sanyasins and Vairagis should be saintly, perfect and liberated, some Bhaktas should dance in restless ecstasy or love and emotion and Ananda and a whole race should become lifeless, void of intelligence, sunk in deep Tamas; one must first get all the partial experiences on the mental level, flood them with the spiritual delight and illumine them with the light of the spirit and then rise above. If one cannot rise above, that is, to the Supramental level, it is hardly possible to know the last secret of the world. The problem of the world does not get solved. There, the ignorance of duality between spirit and matter, the spiritual truths and life, disappears. There one need no longer call the world Maya. The world is the eternal Lila of God, the eternal manifestation of the Self. There it becomes possible to fully know and fully possess God—as it is said in the Gita, “To know Me integrally”.
The physical body, the life, the mind and understanding, the supermind and Ananda, these are the spirit's five levels. The higher we rise the nearer we get to the condition of the highest perfection of Man's spiritual evolution. By rising to the supermind it becomes easy to rise to the Ananda. There is a firm foundation in the condition of the indivisible and Infinite Ananda. Not only in the timeless Akshara Brahman, but in the body, in life, in the world. The full Being, the full Consciousness, the full Ananda, blossoms out and takes form in Life. This is the central clue of my Yoga, its fundamental word.
This is not easy to do. After these fifteen years I am only now rising into the lowest of the three levels of the Supermind and trying to draw up into it all the lower activities. But when this Siddhi is complete I am absolutely certain that God will through me give Siddhi of the Supermind to others with less difficulty. Then my real work will begin. I am not impatient for success in the work. What is to happen will happen in God's appointed time, I am not disposed to run widely and leap into the field of work in the strength of my little ego. Even if I did not succeed in my work I would not be shaken. This work is not mine but God's. I will listen to no other's call. When God moves me then I will move.
I knew well that Bengal is not really ready. The spiritual flood which has come is for the most part a new form of the old. It is not real change. Still it was needed. Bengal has been awakening in itself the old Yogas and exhausting their sanskaras, extracting the essence and fertilising the soil. At first it was the turn of Vedanta: the Advaita, Sannyasa, Shankara's Maya etc. What is now taking place is the turn of the Vaishnava Dharma—the Lila, love, intoxication of the emotional delights. The merit of Vaishnava is that it keeps a connection between God and world and gives a meaning to life. The tendency to create sects which you have noticed was inevitable. It is the nature of the mind to take the part and call it the whole and to exclude all the other parts. The Siddha who brings the Bhava, although he leans on the partial Bhava, yet keeps some knowledge of the integral, even though he may not be able to give it form. The bundles will open of themselves. All these are the signs of the incompleteness and unripe condition. I am not disturbed by it. Let the spiritual power play in the country in whatever way and in as many sects as there may be. Afterwards we shall see. This is the infancy or embryonic condition. It is the previous hint, not even the beginning.
I do not want a society founded on division. I want a Sangha which is the image of spiritual unity and founded on spirit. You will say, what is the need of a Sangha I will be free and remain in every vessel. Let all become one without form, let whatever must be happen in the midst of the vast formlessness. That is true but only one side of the truth. Our business is not with the formless spirit. We have to keep life in motion. There is no effective motion of life without form. The taking of life by the formless, the assumption of name and form is not a caprice of Maya. It was needed. We do not want to leave anything of the world.
Politics, industry, society, poetry, literature, art, will all remain. But we shall have to give them a new soul and a new form.
Why have I left politics? Because the politics of the country is not a genuine thing belonging to India. It is an importation from Europe and an imitation. At one time there was a need of it. We also have done politics of the European kind. If we had not done it the country would not have risen from its sleep, and we too would not have had the gain and full development of experience. There is still some need of it, not so much in Bengal as in the other provinces of India. But the time has come to no longer extend the shadow but seize on the reality. We must get to the soul of India and make all its works in the image.
People now talk of spiritualising politics. Its result will be, if there be any permanent result, some kind of Indianised Bolshevism. To that kind of work also I have no objection. Let each man do according to his inspiration. But that is not the real thing. If one pours his spiritual power into all these impure forms—the water of the causal ocean into raw vessels—either that raw thing will break and the water be spilt and lost or the spiritual power will evaporate and only the impure form remain. In all fields it is the same. I can give the spiritual power but that power will be expended in making the image of an ape and setting it up in the temple of Shiva. If the ape is made powerful by the putting of life into it he may play the part of the devotee Hanuman and do much work for Rama, so long as that life and that power remains. But what we want in the temple of India is not Hanuman but the God, the Avatar Rama Himself.
I can mix with all, but in order to draw all into the true path keeping intact the spirit and form of our ideal. If we do not do that, we shall lose our direction and the real work will not be done. If we remain individually everywhere, something will be done indeed, but if we remain everywhere, as parts of a Sangha, a hundred times more will be done. As yet that time has not come. If we try to give a form hastily, it may not be the exact thing we want. The Sangha will be at first an unconcentrated form. Those who have the ideal will be united but work in different places, afterwards giving it some form like a spiritual commune and making a compact Sangha. They will give all their work a shape according to the growth and need of the age, not a bound and rigid form, not an acalāyatana but a free form which will spread out like the sea, take different wave-forms and surround this, over flood that and take all into itself. As we go on doing this there will be established a spiritual community. This is my present idea. As yet it has not been fully developed. All is in God's hands, whatever He makes us do that we shall do.
You write about the deva sangha: “I am not a God, I am only some much hammered and refined iron”. No one is a God but in each man there is a God and to make Him manifest is the aim of divine life. That we can all do. I recognise that there are great and small Adhars (vessels). I do not accept as accurate your description of yourself. Still whatever the nature of a vessel be, once the touch of God is put upon it, once the spirit is awake, great and small, all that does not make much difference. There may be more difficulties, more time may be taken, there may be difference in the manifestation, but even about that there is no certainty. The God within keeps no account of all these hindrances and deficiencies. He breaks his way out. Not our strength but the Shakti of God is the sddhaka of this Yoga.
Let me tell you in brief one or two things about what I have long seen. My idea is that the chief cause of the weakness of India is not subjection, nor poverty, nor the lack of spirituality, nor dharma but the decline of thought-power, the growth of ignorance in the Motherland of knowledge. Everywhere I see inability or unwillingness to think-thought incapacity or thought-phobia. Whatever may have been in the middle ages this state of things is now the sign of terrible degeneration. The middle age was the night, the time of the victory of ignorance. In the modern world it is the age of the victory of knowledge. Whoever thinks most, seeks most, labours most can fathom and learn the truth of the world, gets so much more Shakti. If you look at Europe, you will see two things, a vast sea of thought and the play of a high and rapid and yet disciplined force. The whole Shakti of Europe is in that. And in the strength of that Shakti it has been swallowing up the world like the tapasvī of our ancient time, by whose power even the Gods of the world were terrified, held in doubt and subjection. People say Europe is running into the jaws of destruction. But these revolutions and upsettings are the preconditions of a new creation.
Then look at India. Except for some solitary saints, everywhere there is your “man on the street”, that is, the average man who does not want to think and cannot think, who has not the least Shakti, only a temporary excitement. In India, you want the simple thought, the simple word. In Europe they want the deep thought, the deep word; an ordinary labourer or artisan thinks, wants to know, is not satisfied with surface things but wants to go behind. But still there is this difference, that there is a fatal limitation in the strength and thought of Europe. When it comes into the spiritual field its thought power no longer proceeds. There Europe sees everything as a riddle—nebulous, metaphysical, yogic hallucination. They rub their eyes as in smoke and can see nothing clear. Still in Europe now some effort is being made to surmount even this limitation. We have already the spiritual sense owing to the merit of our forefathers and however has that sense has near at hand such a knowledge and Shakti as with one breath might blow away all the huge power of Europe like a blade of grass. But to get this Shakti one must be a worshipper of Shakti. We are not worshippers of Shakti. We are the worshippers of the easy way. But Shakti is not obtained by the easy way. Our forefathers, swimming through a sea of vast thought, gained a vast knowledge and established a mighty civilisation. As they went on their way, fatigue and weariness came upon them. The speed of thought diminished and with it the strong current of Shakti. Our civilisation has become an acalāyatana, our religion a bigotry of externals, our spirituality a faint glimmer of light or a momentary wave of religious intoxication. And so long as this sort of thing continues any permanent resurgence of India is improbable.
In Bengal this weakness has gone to extreme. The Bengali has a quick intelligence, emotional capacity and intuition. He is first in India in all these qualities. If to these were added depth of thought, calm strength, heroic courage and a capacity for and pleasure in prolonged labour the Bengali might be a leader not only of India but of mankind. But he does not want that, he wants to get things done easily, to get knowledge without big thinking, the results without labour, Siddhi by an easy Sadhana. His task is the excitement of the emotional mind, but excess of emotion, empty of knowledge, is the very symptom of this malady, after it there comes fatigue and a tamasic condition. All the time the country has been gradually going down, the life power has diminished and finally what has the Bengali become in his own country? He cannot get enough to eat, or clothes to wear. There is lamentation on all sides. His wealth, his trade and commerce, his land, his very agriculture has begun to pass into the hands of others. We have abandoned the Sadhana of Shakti and Shakti has abandoned us. We do the Sadhana of love—but where knowledge and Shakti are not there, love does not remain. Narrowness and littleness come and in a little and narrow mind, heart and soul, there is no place for love. Where is love in Bengal ? There is more quarreling, jealousy, mutual dislike, misunderstanding and faction there, than anywhere else even in India so much afflicted by division. In the noble, heroic age of the Aryan people, there was not so much shouting and gesticulating but the endeavour they began, remained steadfast through many centuries. The Bengali endeavour last for a day or two in the system, and in all its movements. In the sea of Shakti the extension of the rays of the sun of knowledge and in that luminous extension the steady ecstasy of an infinite love, delight, and oneness. I do not want hundreds of thousands of disciples. It will be enough if I can get a hundred complete men, empty of petty egoism, who will be instruments of God. I have no faith in the customary trade of the Guru. I do not wish to be a Guru. That at my touch or at another's some wake and manifest from within their slumbering Godhead and get the divine life—this is what I want. It is such men that will raise the country.
You must not think from all this lecture that I despair of the future of Bengal. You say that what is needed is the Bhava intoxication of feeling, to excite the country with the ideal. In the time of Swadeshi we did all that in the field of politics, but what we did is all now in the dust. Will there be a more favourable result in the spiritual field? I do not say that there has been no result. There has been. Where there is movement, there will come out some result, but it is for the most part of the nature of an increase or possibility and hardly to actualise it. There is not the right method. Therefore I wish no longer to make emotional excitement, Bhava, in any intoxication of the mind the base. I wish to make a large and strong equality the foundation of the Yoga and, established on that equality, a full firm and undisturbed Shakti.
What do they say? That this time a great light will manifest itself in Bengal? I too hope, still I have tried to show the other side of the shield. Where is the fault, the error, the deficiency. If these remain, the light will not be a great light and it will not be permanent.
The meaning of this extraordinarily long letter is that I too am tying my bundle, still I believe that this bundle is like the net of St. Peter, all the catch of the infinite is crowded into it. I am not going to open the bundle now. If I do that before the time the śikār might run away. Neither am I going back to Bengal now. Not because Bengal is not ready but because I am not ready. If the unripe goes amidst the unripe what work can he do?
(Translated from the original in Bengali)
18 November 1922
Arya Office, Pondicherry. 18th November 1922.
Dear Barin,
I understand from your letter that you need a written authority from me for the work I have entrusted to you and a statement making your position clear to those whom you may have to approach in connection with it. You may show to anyone you wish this letter as your authority and I hope it will be sufficient to straighten things for you.
I have been till now and shall be for some time longer withdrawn in the practice of Yoga destined to be a basis not withdrawal from life, but for the transformation of human life. It is a “Yoga” in which large tracts of inner experience and new paths of Sadhana had to be opened up and which therefore needed retirement and long time for its completion. But the time is approaching though it has not yet come, when I shall have to take up a large external work proceeding from the spiritual basis of this Yoga.
It is therefore necessary to establish a number of centres small and few at first but enlarging and increasing in numbers as I go on, for training in this Sadhana, one under my direct supervision, others in immediate connection with me. Those trained there will be hereafter my assistants in the work I shall have to do, but for the present these centres will be not for external work but for spiritual training and Tapasya. The first, which will be transferred to British India when I go there, already exists at Pondicherry but I need friends both to maintain and to enlarge it. The second I am founding through you in Bengal. I hope to establish another one in Gujarat during the ensuing year.
Many more desire and are fit to undertake this Sadhana than I can at present admit and it is only by large means being placed at my disposal that I can carry on this work which is necessary as a preparation for my own return to action.
I have empowered you to act for me in the collection of funds and other collateral matters. I have an entire confidence in you and I would request all who wish me well to put in you the same confidence.
I may add that this work of which I have spoken is both personally and in a wider sense my own and it is not being done and cannot be done by any other for me. It is separate and different from any other work that has been or is being carried on by others under my name or with my approval. It can only be done by myself aided closely by those like you who are being or will in future be trained directly under me in my spiritual discipline.
Aurobindo Ghose
[Script Barin Kumar Ghose.]
1 December 1922
Pondicherry, 1st December 1922.
I waited for your letter in order to know precisely what portions Chittaranjan wanted to publish and why. It turns out to be as I said, but I wanted confirmation. I must now make clear the reasons why I hesitated to sanction the publication.
I should have had no objection to the publication of the portion about the spiritual basis of life or the last paragraph about Swaraj but that about non-cooperation as it stands without further explanation and amplification would lead, I think, to a complete misunderstanding of my real position. Some would take it to mean that I accept the Gandhi programme subject to modifications proposed by the committee. As you know, I do not believe that Mahatma's principle can be the true foundation or his programme the true means of bringing genuine freedom and greatness of India, her Swarajya and Samrajya. On the other hand others would think that I was sticking to the school of Tilakite Nationalism. That also is not the fact, as I hold that school out of date. My own policy, if I were in the field, would be radically different in principle and programme from both, however it might coincide in certain points. But the country is not yet ready to understand its principles or to execute its programme.
Because I know this very well, I am content to work still on the spiritual and psychic plane, preparing there the ideas and forces which may afterwards at the right moment and under the right conditions precipitate themselves into the vital and material field, and I have been careful not to make any public pronouncement as that might prejudice my possibilities of future action. What that will be will depend on developments. The present trend of politics may end in abortive unrest, but it may also stumble with the aid of external circumstances into some kind of simulacrum of self-government. In either case the whole real work will remain to be done. I wish to keep myself free for it in either case.
My interest in Das's actions and utterances apart from all question from personal friendship, arises first from the fact that the push he is giving, although I do not think it likely to succeed at present, may yet help to break the narrow and rigid cadre of the “constructive” Bardoli programme which seems to me to construct nothing and the fetish worship of non-cooperation as an end in itself rather than a means and thereby to create conditions more favourable for the wide and complex action necessary to prepare the true Swarajya. Secondly, it arose from the rapidity with which he seems to be developing many of the ideas which I have long put down in my mind as essentials of the future. I have no objection to his making use privately of what I have written in the letter. But I hope he will understand why the publication of it does not recommend itself to me.
9 December 1922
Pondicherry, 9th December 1922.
My dear Barin,
I have read carefully Jyotish Ghose's letter and I think the best thing is first to explain his present condition as he describes it. For he does not seem to me to understand the true causes and the meaning.
The present condition of passivity and indifference is a reaction from a former abnormal state to which he was brought by an internal effort not properly guided from without or from within. The effort brought about a certain breaking of the veils which divide the physical from the psychic and vital worlds. But his mind was unprepared and unable to understand his experiences and judged them by the light of fancy and imagination, and erroneous mental and vital suggestions. His vital being full of rajasic and egoistic energy rushed up violently to enjoy these new fields and use the force that was working for its own lower ends. This gave an opportunity for the hostile power from the vital world to break in and take partial possession and the result was disorganisation of the nerves and the physical system and some of the brain centres. The attack and possession seem to have passed out and left behind the present reaction of passivity with a strong hold of tamas and indifference. The tamas and indifference are not in themselves desirable things but they are temporarily useful as a rest from the past unnatural tension. The passivity is desirable and a good basis for a new and right working of the Shakti.
It is not a true interpretation of his condition that he is dead within and there is only an outside activity. What is true is that the centre of vital egoism that thinks itself the Actor has been crushed and he now feels all the thought and activity playing outside him. This is a state of knowledge, for the real truth is that all these thoughts and activities are Nature's and come into us or pass through us as waves from the Universal Nature. It is our egoism and our limitation in the body and individual physical mind which prevent us from feeling and experiencing this truth. It is a great step to be able to see and feel the truths as he is now doing. This is of course the complete knowledge. As the knowledge becomes more complete and the psychic being opens upwards, one feels all the activities descending from above and can get at their true source and transform them.
The light playing in his head means that there has been an opening to the higher force and knowledge which is descending as light from above and working on the mind to illuminate it. The electrical current is the force descending in order to work in the lower centres and prepare them for the light. The right condition will come when instead of the vital forces trying to push upwards, the Prana becomes calm and surrendered and waiting with full assent for the light and when instead of the chasm in between there is a constant aspiration of the heart towards the truth above. The light must descend into these lower centres so as to transform the emotional and vital and physical being as well as the mental thought and will.
The utility of the psychic experiences and knowledge of the invisible worlds as of other Yogic experiences is not to be measured by our narrow human notions of what may be useful for the present physical life of man. In the first place, these things are necessary for the fullness of the consciousness and the completeness of the being. In the second place, these other worlds are actually working upon us and if you know and can enter into them instead of being the victims and puppets of these powers we can consciously deal with and control and use them. Thirdly, in my Yoga, the Yoga of the Supramental, the opening of the psychic consciousness to which these experiences belong to are quite indispensible. For it is only through psychic opening that the supramental can fully descend and with a strong and concrete grasp transform the mental, vital and physical being.
This is the present condition and its value. For the future if he wishes to accept my Yoga, the conditions are steady resolve and aspiration towards the truth. I am bringing down a calm passivity and an opening upward towards the source from which the light is coming. The Shakti is already working in him and if he takes and keeps this attitude and has a complete confidence in me there is no reason why he should not advance safely in the Sadhana in spite of the physical and vital damage that has been done to his system. As for his coming here to see me I am not quite yet ready but we will speak about it after your return to Pondicherry.
30 December 1922
Arya Office, Pondicherry 30th December 1922.
First about Krishnashashi. I do not think you are quite right about him at least in idea that he is responsible for the recent undesirable manifestation at your place. He is evidently what is called psychic sensitive and one of a very high though not perhaps the first order. It is not his fault, I think, that things went wrong recently. These sensitives require a constant protection and guidance from some one, who has both power on the psychic and vital plane and knowledge of the science of these planes. There is none such among you. Especially when he is in certain psychic conditions such as these into which he has recently entered, he needs absolutely these protections. He cannot then possibly protect himself because the very nature of these conditions is an absolute passivity and openness of the psychic and psycho-vital influences. It is useless to ask him at that time to exercise his judgement or his power of rejection. For that would immediately make the condition itself impossible. If the psychic and psycho-vital influence are of the right kind, all is well and very remarkable results can be obtained. If they are bad the condition becomes dangerous. The only way to secure the exclusion of the bad influences is for someone else with psychic power to keep a wall of protection round him at the time. The sort of trance is which the breath diminishes, the tongue goes in, the body is curved upwards and psycho-physical movements begin in the body is one which I know perfectly well and there is nothing essentially wrong about it. It may be brought about by a very high influence and equally by a bad one, or being brought about by the former, it can be misused or attacked by the latter. If there had been a protection about him exercised by one who had knowledge and confidence in his own psychic and vital force, the untoward influence evidenced by the cries, grimaces etc., would not have come in to spoil this stage. Let me add that these are not forces of our lower universal but an intervention from a foreign and hostile vital world.
In the present circumstances the proper line for Krishnashashi is to postpone this kind of psychic development, I mean the latter ones, especially those of a physical character. He must understand the character of his higher psychic experiences. These including the voice are not direct from the Supramental but psychic and intuitive on the whole mental plane from the higher mind downwards. There is no reason to belittle them. Only in the transcription in his mind there is a mixture of his own mental and other suggestions which is almost inevitable at the beginning. We should now without interrupting his higher psychic development give more attention to a self controlled meditation and mental enlargement. In one letter he speaks of interrupting the reading of “Arya” from fear of growing too intellectual. This was an erroneous suggestion of his own mind. Let him by all means read and study these things. Of course in this kind of mental enlargement and self controlled meditation there are dangers and likelyhood of mistakes as in all the rest of Yoga. But I think what he needs is at the present stage. The progress would be slow but it is likely to be more safe, and he can resume the full psychic development when the necessary conditions can be provided. He should also turn his will towards mental and vital purification. There is often much misunderstanding about passivity and self-surrender. It does not mean that there should not remain in the earlier stages any kind of choices, self-control or will towards certain things which are seen to be needed rather than others. Only they must be subject to a confidence and free openness to a higher guidance, which will respond to his choice and will in us if the choice and will are right and sincere.
Next with regard to the hostile manifestations which I observe to be of a very low vital and physico-vital character. I may observe that although there is a real force behind them many of them are not of a real character, that is to say, the faces seen and touches felt were not in all cases of real vital beings but only forms suggested and created out of the stuff of your own surrounding vital atmosphere and can easily be dismissed by refusing to accept their reality or to admit their formation. It may be that some particular person in your group opened the way for them but they need not necessarily have had such a personal cause. The real cause may have been the coming together in meditation of so many yet undeveloped people carrying with them a very mixed atmosphere. When that happens or even when there is a general meditation, a chakra, hostile forces are attracted and try to break in. There ought to be some one in the group who during the meditation protects the circle. If the meditation is of a psychic character the protection must be psychic on the vital plane. Mirra's experience is that protection must take the form of a white light constantly kept round the circle. But even this is not enough as the forces will attack constantly and try to find a gap in the protection; there must therefore be round the white light a covering of dense purple light sufficiently opaque for these beings not to be able to see through it. It is not sufficient to have this light in the mental or psychic levels. It must be brought down in the vital and fill it, because it is in the vital that there is attack. Further nobody must go out of his body during the meditation (I mean the vital being must not go out, the mental can always do it) or psychically out of the circle. But there is one thing that must be noticed. That if the manifestations occur in spite of all there must be no fear in the minds of those who become aware of them. It is by creating fear through terrible forms and menaces that the hostile beings prevent the Sadhaka from crossing over the threshold between the physical and vital world and it is also by creating fear and alarm that they are able to break in on the vital being of the body. Courage and unalterable confidence are the first necessity of the Sadhaks.
I observe that in your Calcutta Centre the Sadhana seems to have taken a different turn from that in the Krishnagore centre. It seems to be marked by an immediate opening and rapid development of the psychical conscious and psychical phenomena. This turn has great possibilities but also by itself great danger. In the complete Sadhana there are two powers necessary, the masculine, Purusha or Ishwara power coming down in knowledge, light, calm, strength, wide consciousness from above, and the feminine, Nature or Ishwari power opening in receptivity, the responsiveness on all the planes of the being from below. The first by itself tends to be predominantly mental or mentalised intuitive and afterwards mentalised supramental. It is slow in action but sure and safe, only there is often a difficulty of opening up the separate psychic vital and physical being to the illumination and change. The second by itself is rapid, sensitive, full of extraordinary and striking experiences but apt in the absence of psychic or occult powers to be chaotic, uneven and open to many dangers. It is when both are present and act upon each other in the being that the Sadhana is likely to be most perfect.
I think you should insist in your Calcutta centre an attention being given to what I call the Purusha side, that is to say a basis of deep calm, strength, equality, wide consciousness and purity in the mental being, and as the vital physical opens, also in the vital and physical being. If that is attended to and successfully developed the play of the psychic vital and physical experiences will be more steady, ordered and safe.
As to the three photographs you have sent I give you Mirra's comments in inverted commas with my additions afterwards.
1) KANAI.
“An extremely interesting head, highly psychic personality but he must be careful about the physical as this type is likely to burn up the body in the intensity of its psychic developments.”
The basis of calm, strength and purity brought down .into the physical consciousness without any hasty trepidations unhealthy vibrations will secure the physical safety and is here very indispensable.
2) GIRIN.
“An intellectual and philosophic temperament but there is something heavy below.”
I think that the heaviness is in the vital being and the physical mind and may cause considerable obstruction but if these two can be cleared and illuminated there may be behind a fund of conservative energy and steadiness which will be useful.
3) JAGAT PRASANNA.
“Very dull. I do not know whether anything can be given to him.”
I seem to find behind the eyes a psychic capacity of a very low kind and in the vitality something and impure which maybe mediumistic element for the lower psycho-vital forces. If he sat in the circle or meditated in the house that might explain the interruption of the undesirable phenomena. This is my impression about the man. But I am not quite sure. If he is to do any Yoga it should be rather of the old kind and especially a discipline of self purification. Passivity of any kind in his case would be dangerous.
One or two things I should add suggested by your remark on Krishnashashi. All should understand that the true direct supramental does not come at the beginning but much later on in the Sadhana. First, the opening up and illumination of the mental, vital and physical beings; secondly, the making intuitive of the mind, the right will etc. and the development of the hidden soul consciousness; thirdly, the supramentalising of the changed mental vital and physical beings and finally the descent of the true supramental and rising into the supramental plane.
This is the natural order of the Yoga. These stages may overlap and intermix, there may be many variations but the last two can only come in an advanced state of the progress. Of course, the supramental Divine, guides this Yoga throughout but it is first through many intermediate planes, and it cannot be easily said of anything that comes in the earlier periods that it is the direct or full supramental. To think so when it is not so, may well be a hindrance to progress.
As to what you, 3ay about an unhinged and unsound element in Krishnashashi, this is a probable explanation. The nature of this kind of psychic sensitiveness is complex and is full of many delicate springs easily touched from behind the veil; hence the sensitiveness but also easily twisted owing to their very delicacy. Something may have been thus twisted in his nature. In that case great care must be taken. It must be found out what it is and the thing be put right. without any too rough handling.
I shall write to you separately about Arim's money and Sarojini.
January 1923
Pondicherry January 1923
It is unfortunate that Krishnashashi's Sadhana should have taken this turn. As things stand however a general mass in Calcutta is the worst possible place for him. If no other arrangement can be made it is better that he should go for the present to Chittagong, do his Sadhana there and write to me. It is not possible for me to have him here just now. If his Sadhana rights itself it may be possible hereafter.
As to the development of egoism in him that is the thing which often happens in the first rush of experience and with proper protection and influence may be got over. The serious features are only the psycho-vital, the danger to the body and certain suggestions which are evidently meant to put him off the right way. I still find it difficult to believe that the menacing apparitions are primarily due to him, for there is nothing in the atmosphere of his letters that suggest a medium of this kind. If a photograph of him is available that you can send or ask him to send it to me.
I see that you say in your letters that all have been frightened by these apparitions. Insist on what I have said about the necessity of dismissing fear.
Some time or other everybody will have to face things of this kind and how can they do it if they fear ? If they are afraid of these things, many of which are merely figures or nervous formations, how can they be spiritual warriors and conquerors, without which there can be no rising towards supermanhood. I presume they would be brave against physical dangers; why not then be brave against all dangers or menace.
If Krishnashashi needs the instructions I have sent in my former letter to you (They were made after consultation with Mirra) all may yet be well. If not, I shall have to try to send my mental protection and see what I can do. He is unfortunately too far away for me to put a psycho-vital protection about him. Let me know immediately what has been done and where he goes. I am sending you a letter for him enclosed to you.
As regards Arun's money, I understand that it is for the Calcutta centre and I do not understand why you want to send it here. If he can give the first monthly instalment at once that ought to lighten your difficulties there. I shall be able to arrange with Durga Dass' help and with the money coming from Madras and Gujarat for one year's expense here, just sufficient for the two houses. What I want you to do, if you can, is to raise money from Bengal for the next year and for the maintenance of your Bengal centre also for two years, so that there may be no need of hunting for funds for some time to come.
At present the main difficulty in your attempts to raise money there is that all remains as potentiality and promise and thins away before it can come to material realisation. It is possible that if you can materialise the small amounts this obstacle may break and remember that it is a psychic difficulty, a state of forces, that is the thing to be changed, because that is the real obstacle. If another balance of forces can be begun in which there is the actual materialisation even on a small scale that may well be an opening for better conditions.
I have got a fuller idea from your letter about Krishnashashi's collapse. The main cause is what I saw, the vehement and unrestrained pressure and the vital uprush overstraining and upsetting the defective physical mind. There is no evil in the physical and mental or even the vital being proper. The seat of the harm is evidently in the physico-vital and the physical being. The physico-vital dazzled by the expriences began to think itself a very interesting and important person and to histrionise with the experiences and play for that purpose with the body. This is a frequent deviation of Yoga observable even in some who are considered great Sadhakas. It is a kind of charlatanism of the vital being but would not by itself amount to madness, though it may sometimes seem to go very near it. Ordinarily if the physical mind is strong it either rejects or else keeps these demonstrations within certain bounds. But in this case the physical mind also broke down. The coarse kind of violence exhibited is due to the rough and coarse character of the physical being. So much I see but am not yet able to determine whether the disorder is only psychic or, as was suggested in my last letter, there is some defect in the brain which has come to the surface. I am concentrating daily and those in Krishnagore have to help me by remaining calm and strong and surrounding him with an unagitated atmosphere also those, who can, have to keep a quiet concentration. He, must be kept outwardly and inwardly under the control and check. If the disorder is only psychic the violence will pass away and the other signs abate and less frequently recur. But if there is some brain defect there as I said, it may be a difficult affair. I can give final instructions only after seeing how the malady goes.
As regards your own Sadhana and those of others in Bhawanipore I think it necessary to make two or three observations. First I have for some time the impression that there is a too constant activity and pressure for rapidity of progress and a multitude of experiences. These things are all right in themselves but there must be certain safeguards. First there should be sufficient periods of rest and silence, even of relaxation in which there can be a quiet assimilation. Assimilation is very important and periods necessary for it should not be regarded with impatience as stoppages of the Yoga. Care should be taken to make calm and quiet strength and inner silence, the basic condition for all activity. There should be no excessive strain, any fatigue, disturbances, or inordinate sensitiveness of the nervous and physical parts, of which you mention certain symptoms in your letters, should be quieted and removed, as they are often signs of overstrain or too great an activity as rapidity in the Yoga. It must also be remembered that experiences are only valuable as indications and openings and the main thing always is the steady harmonious and increasingly organised opening and change of the different parts of the consciousness and the being.
Among the experiences there is one paper headed “Surface Consciousness”. What is described there is the nervous or physico-vital envelope. This is the thing observed by the medium and it is by exteriorising it to a less or greater extent that they produce their phenomenons. How did Rati come to know of it? Was it by intuition, by vision or by personal experience?
If the latter, warn him not to exteriorise this vital envelope for to do so without adequate protection, which must be that of a person acquainted with these things and physically present at the time, may bring about serious physical dangers and also injuries to the nervous being and the body or even worse.
Sri Aurobindo
23 January 1923
Arya Office, Pondicherry 23rd January 1923
I got your telegram about Krishnashashi this morning. Yesterday I received his photograph and today his last written experiences. I have been able to form from all these and from other indications as complete an idea about him as is possible at this distance. The photo shows a remarkable soul, an idealistic psychic intelligence and the presence of a high and beautiful being internal but the part of the face showing the emotional and vital being is too delicate to support adequately the upper part of the physical and the physico-vital mould is of a poor and inferior character not easily lending itself to the higher movements or to the change demanded by the Yoga. This disparity in the being was the cause of his illness and is the cause also of his present disorder. The immediate cause, however, is his being hurried by circumstances and the eagerness of his own mind into a development too rapid for the physical consciousness which should have been subjected to a long and steady preparation.
I do not know whether Krishnashashi received Barin's letter written to him at his other address, Raja Brojendra Narayan Roy's St., which he should have got on the 14th. In this letter I suggested that he should remain in Chittagong or some other quiet place and do the Sadhana by himself turning to me for help and protection and I also insisted that the main object of his Sadhana should be the purification and calming of the mind, the vital being and the body. After returning to Bhawanipur I see that just the contrary has happened: a feverish psychomental activity and a much too eager attempt at rapid progress. Instead of calmly receiving he has been seizing at everything that came and trying to translate it and throw it out into form. He has also been pulling at realisation and trying, as Murrach has put it, to swallow the world in a minute. The result is that there has been an uprush of some undesirable kind from the imperfect vital being and the physical mind unable to bear the strain has been thrown into disorder. It is evident also that the atmosphere of the Bhawanipur centre is not favourable to him. There is there an intense mental and psychic activity and a constant push towards rapid experience and progress which are just the things that are dangerous for him and there is not yet the assured basis of calm, peace, serenity and inner silence which he needs above all things.
I hope that it is only a crisis or a passing disorder. I am doing my best to mend the breakdown, but you must help me by keeping there a firm quietness and calm concentration. This was the object of my telegram. I am of the opinion that when he recovers his balance, my original instructions (into Manni's letter) should be adhered to, and he should go to some quiet place where there will not be any high pressure. He must be instructed to put away every other object except the quieting of his mind, vital being and body and the attainment of a poise of serene calm and peace. Also it is better for him not to pass the whole day in meditation and Sadhana but to take plenty of relaxation for the relief of the physical being and do some kind of physical work not exhausting which will keep it occupied and healthy. He must be assured that this thing does not mean at all a rejection but that it is necessary to secure the proper condition for his future Sadhana. He must of course keep himself in constant spiritual connection with me and write to me from time to time.
Please keep me constantly informed of his condition until he recovers.
Since the above was written your second telegram came into my hands this morning. It is possible that Krishnagore may be a more suitable place for Krishnashashi than Calcutta. There is a more settled basis there. The place is more deliberate and the surroundings are likely to be quieter, a not unimportant consideration in his case. Besides he needs some one who can impose upon him an atmosphere of calm and influence him directly from the psychic nature and not through the mentality, the latter being always of a doubtful affectivity in dealing with psychic people, and from what you have told me about Indu, it is possible that he may be able to help him in this way. In that case it would not be necessary for him to return to Chittagong or pursue his Sadhana in isolation. All this of course after he has recovered. His case is not that of insanity in the ordinary sense but, as in J.'s case and for rather similar reasons, a psychic disorder, I should of course be kept informed of his condition. I have many things to write but as this must go without delay I postpone them to another letter.
31 January 1923
Arya Office, Pondicherry 31st January 1923
I got your letter of the 26th and intended to wire but had not your Krishnagore address. This afternoon I have received your telegram and send a reply giving permission for Krishnashashi's removal. In case the telegram should not reach I have also wired to Kanai in Calcutta. Although to cure Krishnashashi by psychic means might not be possible, the prolonged resistance and the increasing violence make the present conditions impossible. The ordinary means of restraint and medical treatment will have to be used and therefore his removal as you suggest is the only thing left open to us.
It appears from your letters that there is a strong play around you of the hostile opposition from beings of the lowest physico-vital and physical ranges. These beings are small and without intelligence but full of power to do various kinds of harm and mischief. They are similar to those that did the stone-throwing in the other house. To produce brain incoherence, freaks, absurdities, sexual disorders, nervous agitations and disequilibrium, coarse violence of various kinds is their sphere in the physical domain and in the physical to bring about accidents, illness, injuries, physical impediments and on the smaller scale little mischiefs, inconveniences and hindrances of all kinds. It is these that have taken possession of Krishnashashi's brain and nervous centres and impel his speech and movements. It is these also that pursue with accidents those who are trying to collect money. I have for some time been aware of their activities and suggestions and they are now almost the only positively hostile forces of which I am aware in the Yoga, the rest being merely obstructions of nature. In my own atmosphere I am able to make their suggestions abortive and minimise their play pending their elimination. But in your case they seem to be moved by some more powerful force which not being able to act on you directly is using them as agents. Probably you have in your Sadhana touched and awakened the plane on which they work, but are not yet able to conquer and protect as you can in the higher fields. Those entirely within your spiritual influences may resist or escape but others are exposed to their attack.
I think in these circumstances it is best to limit your creation of a centre there to those who have already begun and even with them, I mean the new comers, you should be careful. Probably the best course is to keep the centre at Krishnagore as you suggest and have only a small establishment in Calcutta. The atmosphere of Calcutta cannot be a good environment for Sadhana centre. As to money affairs you must see whether the resistance can be overcome during February and in any case I hope you will not return empty-handed or with a nominal sum, for that would mean a victory for the hostile force which will make things more difficult in the future. I understand from your last letter that Satkhari has already realised Rs. 500/-. If so get that sum and send it at once, also get in hand and send the Benares money. That will mean so much materialised and to that extent the opposing force defeated. Afterwards see whether the rest does not come in with less difficulty. If you can prevail, that means the way made clear for better success in the future. It is enough that these forces should have destroyed such fine psychic possibilities as of Krishnashashi. I do not like their being successful in other directions also.
As to Sarojini, it is out of the question that she should come here. Make it plain to her that the Yoga I am doing is now too much difficult for her. Her coming here would be waste of time and money. If she is in earnest about Sadhana she must begin with something much more easy. The first thing for her is to study these things, understand, get her mind prepared and begin with turning herself Godward, elimination of egoistic movements and perhaps doing works in the spirit of Karmayoga. A meditation active and not passive, with these things as the object is all she can safely try at the beginning. I have of course no objection to her turning to Theosophy if she is drawn that way. But for her to come into concentrated atmosphere here just now would not be good for her and it would be disturbing to us. Please stop her coming by whatever means you can.
I learn from your post card today that Kanai and the others are at Krishnagore. Please let me know your address there so that I may be sure whenever necessary of making a direct communication.
Aurobindo
2 April 1923
2nd April 1923 Arya Office, Pondicherry
First about the photographs. The mounted photograph man is fully unfit for the Yoga. The face is empty except for a great deal of pretension, not warranted by any substance behind. He had better be put off or left aside. It is no use just now bringing in people who have not a definite possibility and even among these who have the best only should be chosen.
As to the unmounted photograph, this is a much worse case. I cannot at all find what you say you see in his eyes. They seem to me rather the eyes of madness or at least monomania. The whole face is a nightmare. It seems to me a clear case either of possession or, even, of the incarnation of some vital being. Please do not meddle with him at all. It is only when we have obtained mastery over the physico-vital and all the physical planes that it will be at all safe to deal with such cases and certainly even then it will not do to begin by taking them into the Yoga.
I note from this case and from what you say in connection with Rathin that you have just now what seems to me, a rather dangerous attraction (because likely to create hindrances or misdirect the energy) towards these vital cases. What you say about the different vital worlds is no doubt interesting and has a certain truth but you must remember that these worlds, which are different from the true or divine vital, are full of enchantments and illusions and they present appearances of beauty which allure only to mislead or destroy. They are worlds of “Rakshasimaya” and their heavens are more dangerous than their hells. They have to be known and their powers met when need be but not accepted; our business is with the supramental and with vital only when it is supramentalised and until then we have always to be on our guard against any lures from that other quarter. I think the worlds of which you speak are those which have a special attraction and a special danger for poets, imaginative people and sane artists. There is, especially, a strain of aestheticised vital susceptibility or sentiment or even sentimentalism through which they affect the being and it is one of the things that has to be purified before one can rise to the highest poetry, art and imaginative creation. In the case of Krishnashashi some influences from these worlds certainly entered into the cause of his collapse. I shall write about Rathin directly to his father for I don't know how long you are staying in Gauhati. I shall only say just now that it will not be good for the boy if he merely changes the control of one kind of vital world for that of another. He must become healthy normal first and all else can only come afterwards.
As to money matters, I think you should go on trying for some time longer. I believe the obstacle is bound to break before long if we do not get tired out by the obstinacy of the resistance. I am just now very much concentrated in the effort to bring down the supramental into the physical plane which demands a very constant and sustained effort and it is for this reason that I have not been able to answer letters. I shall decide about Khitish when the time for your return draws near.
14 April 1923
1923 14th April Evening
Dictated letter about Barindra's inquiries:
We should not accept any man into the Yoga because he is rich, or at the same time we should not debar any man because he happens to be rich. But he must be made to understand the demands of the Yoga. There are three demands:
1st. The will (not mere inclination or desire) for a greater Truth.
2nd. Complete consecration to that Truth in doing all the works for that Life.
3rd. Transformation.
That means he must be able to remove to give up all motives other than that of the practice of Yoga even in the worldly pursuits.
The possession of wealth is a great obstacle and it is also a supreme opportunity. In our aim of Yoga we have to conquer the world for the Divine and if we can bring some force of wealth from the rule of vital worlds on our side, it is worthwhile. At present these forces are held by the vital world. We should win them for the Divine.
16 April 1923
Pondicherry, 16th April 1923
I answer first your letter of the 6th April. I have already let you know that I approve both the people whose photographs you have sent to me. As to Bibhuti Bhushan Datta you are right in thinking that he is a born yogin. His face shows the type of the Suffi or Arab mystic and he must certainly have been that in a former life and brought much of his then personality into the present existence. There are defects and limitations in his being. The narrowness of the physical mind of which you speak is indicated in the photograph, though it has not come out in the expression, and it might push him in the direction of a rather poverty-stricken asceticism instead of his expanding and opening himself richly to the opulences of the Divine. It might also lead him in other circumstances to some kind of fanaticism. But on the other hand if he gets the right direction and opens himself to the right powers these things may be turned into valuable elements, the ascetic capacity into a force useful against psycho-vital dangers and what might have been fanaticism into an intense devotion to the Truth revealed to him. There is also likely to be some trouble in the physico-vital being. But I cannot yet say of what nature. This is not a case of an entirely safe development, which can be assured only where there is a strong vital and physical basis and a certain natural balance in the different parts of the being. This Balance has here to be created and its creation is quite possible. Whatever risk there is must be taken for the nature here is born for the yoga and ought not be denied its opportunity. He must be made to understand fully the character and demands of the integral yoga.
Next for Kumar Krishna Mitter. He is no doubt what you say, a type of the rich and successful man, but the best kind of that type and cast on sound and general lines. There is besides indicated in his face and expression a refinement and capacity of idealism which are not too common. Certainly we are not to take people into the yoga for the sake of their riches, but on the other hand we must not have the disposition to reject any one on account of his riches. If the wealth is a great obstacle, it is also a great opportunity and part of the aim of our work is not to reject but to conquer for the Divine Self expression the vital and material powers including that wealth, which are now in the possession of other influences. If there is a man like this and is prepared with an earnest and real will to bring himself and his power over from the other camp to ours, there is no reason to refuse him. This of course is not the case of a man born to the yoga like Bibhuti Bhusan, but of one who has an opening in him to a spiritual awakening and I think of a nature which might possibly fail from certain negative deficiencies but not because of any adverse element in the being. The one necessity is that he should understand and accept what the yoga demands of him—first the seeking of a greater truth, secondly the consecration of himself and his powers and wealth to its service and finally the transformation of all his life into the terms of the truth and that he should have not merely the enthusiastic turning of his idealism but a firm and deliberate will towards it. It is especially necessary in the case of these rich men for them to realise that it is not enough in this yoga to have a spiritual endeavour on one safe side and on the other the rest of the energies given to the ordinary motives, but that the whole life being must be consecrated to the yoga. It is probably from this reason of a divided life these men like Arien singh fail to progress in spite of a natural capacity. If this is understood and accepted the consecration of which he speaks is obviously in his circumstances the first step in the path. If he enters it will probably be advisable for him to come for a short time and see me in Pondicherry but this of course has to be decided afterwards.
I may say a word in passing about Nalineswar. I have read through his experiences and they confirm what I have said about the deficient capacity of his adhar. The mental, vital and physical being are full of weakness and Tamas and the debility and torpor which he constantly experiences are the result of this deficient adhar trying to bear the pressure of the Sadhana. At this time he has one thing which can carry them through if he keeps it steadily, the persistant faith and self-surrender. If the physical lightness, which he experienced for the last four or five days before he wrote can be made permanent then probably the worst part of the difficulty is over. In any case that permanence whenever it comes will be the sign of a certain fundamental safety and the other deficiencies can be gradually rectified by the coming in of the light and the power into the mind and the vital being.
As regards Jyotish Mukerjee, the most notable thing in his photograph is the strong symmetry between the two sides of his face centered in the dissimilarity of the two eyes. This always is a sign of two sides in the nature which have not been harmonised and unified, one side perhaps of faith and devotion and another of a critical and negative mind or one side drawn to higher things and the other held down by the earth nature. This is likely to create a great disadvantage and difficulties in the earlier part of the Sadhana, for it remains even though the disparity may be suppressed by the mental effort but once the balance or unification can be created there is a compensatory advantage by the combination of two strong elements both necessary to completeness. The Sadhana he has been doing seems to have been mainly that of a preliminary mental and vital (psychological) purification and preparation of a very sound character but what is still lacking is a positive spiritual side of the Sadhana. However, the clearing of the system seems to have gone far enough for him to have had at least glimpses of psycho-spiritual experiences and a promise even of the supramental awaiting its time for manifestation. I shall, if I make time, write separately my comments on his experiences and if he understands and follows he may proceed more rapidly in his Sadhana. What you say about your Sadhana is probably the right interpretation of your experiences. The two things of which you speak are really two sides of one movement. The opening and clearing of the lower strata can only be effectively done in proportion as this relative or mentalised supramental can lay hold on the consciousness and open to and bring down the higher or intermediate from above, and this in its turn can only. settle it into the being in proportion as the psycho-vital and physical open, clear and change. The interaction must go on until a certain balance between the two movements is created which will enable the higher to hold the being without interruption, and open it more and more to the true supramental activities. The action into which you have been cast was probably necessary because it is the dynamic part of your being in which the defects of the lower nature have the greatest hold and are most prominant.
P.S.
After this letter was finished I got your last of the 12th. What you say about Kumar Krishna there is what I could already gather about him, only made precise. I do not think that these things very much matter. All strong natures have the rajasic active outgoing force in them and if that were sufficient to unfit for the yoga very few of us would have had a chance. As for the doubt of the physical mind as to whether the thing is possible, who has not had it? In my own case it pursued years and years and it is only in last two years that the last shadow of doubt, not laterly of its theoretical feasibility, but of the practical certainty of its achievement in the present state of the world and of the human nature entirely left me. The same thing can be said of the egoistic poise, the almost all strong egoistic poise. But I do not think judging from the photograph but it is of the same half bull and half bulldog nature as in B. P.Mittra. These things can only go with spiritual, development and experiences and then the strength behind them becomes asset. It is also evident from what you say about his past experience of the voice and the vesture that there is, as I thought a physical something in him waiting for and on the verge of spiritual awakening. I understand that he is waiting for intellectual conviction and to bring it some kind of assurance from the inner experience. To that also there is nothing to say. But the question is, and it seems to me the one question in his case, whether he will be ready to bring to the yoga the firm entire and absolute will and consecration that will be needed to tide him through all the struggles and crises of Sadhana. The disparity between his mental poise and his action is natural enough, precisely because it is a mental poise. It has to become a spiritual poise before the life and the ideal can become one. Have the spoiling by luxury of which you speak and the worldly life sapped in him the possibility of developing an entire Godward will? If not, then he may be given his chance. I cannot positively say that he is or will be the Adhikari. I can only say that there is the capacity in the best part of his nature. I cannot also say that he is among the “best”. But he seems to me to have more original capacity than some at least who have been accepted. When I wrote about the “best” I did not mean an Adhar without defects and dangers, for I do not think such a one is to be found. My impression is of course, founded on a general favourable effect produced by the physiognomy and the appearance, on certain definite observations upon the same and on the psychic indications which were mixed but in the balance favourable. I have not seen the man as you have.
Your fuller account of your Sadhana shows that you are seeing in the nature and power of the supramental but you are seeing it probably through the revealatory light descending into the mind. It can only fulfil itself on the conditions I have named, first the opening to the actual descent of the supermind itself which you will find something still more concrete and full of the truth power and truth substance and is penetration of the physical consciousness in all its layers.
30 May 1923
Arya Office, Pondicherry 30th May 1923
I have been obliged for some time, partly owing to the many sided storm of which you speak, to concentrate on other things and perhaps that is one reason why this stream of money collection has run dry. I shall see whether we can set it flowing again. I do not ask you to come back as yet because it is much better if possible to get this thing finished in such a way that you may not have to go running back after a time to complete it. The arrangement I thought of with regard to the debts have not taken shape or rather have postponed themselves to an indefinite future. If I remember right what you have immediately to pay is some 251 more to Kamala Palit and 600 to Arun. Besides this and the other 2000 to Arun, which if necessary can wait, there are the sums due, 1500 altogether to the Kaviraj and Pulin Mitter. I believe there is nothing else. Can the last two wait and if so how long? What is still necessary is to raise 1500 more for next year's expenses here. Next, to pay off, the more pressing debts and if there is any large opening all the debts. I would have no objection to your applying the money you can raise from the Marwaries to the latter purpose. If Basantlal Murarka can readily raise 5000 from them, the problem will be solved. I shall then be able to keep Das' money separate and if he also keeps his promise that with some help from elsewhere will prevent all necessity of thinking of these things for another two years.
As regards Kanai, the experiences of which he is afraid do not seem to me dangerous in themselves. They are such as come to all people whose Yoga runs strongly on psychic lines and those you mention and similar ones of still stronger character have been experienced by Mirra at least a thousand times during her Sadhana. The only danger, apart from any hostile interference, comes from the disturbance of the physical mind and the fear and apprehensions of the nervous and physical being, I have already written once before that the fearlessness is first necessary condition for going through this Yoga. These fears and apprehensions and the sense of weakness and insecurity come from the attachment of the physical and nervous being to its ordinary basis of consciousness and usual habits of living and its alarm at anything abnormal which forces it out of its own grooves. As for the need of immediate protection, that is only when the vital goes out of the body. The psychic being can go out without any danger if the physical consciousness does not disturb and itself create the danger. But unfortunately Kanai's physical and nervous being seems to be weak and not on a level with the powers of his mind and psychical nature. It may be better for him to concentrate first on the preparation of his physical consciousness, I have already said that what he must do is to bring down the basis of calm light and strength into the physical mind, nerves and body. Once this is thoroughly done all attacks can be met. There will be no disturbing vibrations and all kinds of psychic and vital experiences such as those now pressing upon will be welcomed as an expansion and fulfilment of the integral nature and a cause not of apprehension but of knowledge and Ananda. As to his coming here, I was not calling him because just now I am still in the concentration on the complete mastery of the physical and that prevents me from putting myself out very much at present. I could not give him the constant attention which will be needed according to your suggestion and besides as his physical being is the weakest part of him, it might not be altogether advisable for him to be here until I have established a sufficient general security against any attack which might touch on that plane. Still I shall see whether I can call him after a little time.
I have no objection to Rajani's proposal of visit here in case of his confirmation. It might be helpful to him in the present stage of his Sadhana.
I had forgotten that Poury Mohan Das and Chittagong aspirant were one and the same person. You will have to take together what was said about each in Nalini's letter. The chaotic nature of his experiences about which I spoke are probably due to some kind of difficulty or exaggeration in his vital being. It is best for him to start with getting a sure foundation of calm and quiet opening upon all the planes of his consciousness, especially the emotional and vital, so that a sound and orderly development of the Yoga may be possible.
If Kanai really gets anything of the nature of psychic trance the one thing he will have to be careful about is to meditate under such conditions that it will not be roughly broken from outside.
14 February 1924
14th February 1924 Arya Office, Pondicherry
I have received the Benares money and am sending an acknowledgment with this letter, which you can transmit to Das. Rajani's fifty has not yet reached me.
I had already written to you about Akhil and on the 10th Manmohan telegraphed and wrote to Chittagong instructing him not to go to Bhawanipur but to collect the money and as soon as he had done this and sufficiently recovered from fever, to write and he would receive a call from here. It appears from your telegram today that he started before receiving Manmohan's telegram. I can give no other instructions than these I have already given, Akhil must collect the money sufficient for his journey here and back either to Krishnanagore or Chittagong and he must not come without the sum in his hand. I have arranged things here so as to have just sufficient to meet one year's expenses under each head just that and no more. Until I am assured of the next year's expenses and more I cannot meet unexpected charges or enlarge my expenditure. Therefore it will not do for him to come and then have to wait here indefinitely for means of his return journey. An arrangement agreed upon ought to be observed otherwise there is unnecessary inconvenience and confusion.
I infer from your letter and telegram taken together that Mohini is starting for Krishnagore in order to take back Krishnashashi. Of course in that case there is no need to wait further as was suggested in Mohini's letter. I have received no news about Krishnashashi for the last three days. This kind of disregard of instructions is not at all right. It puts us in considerable difficulty in trying to help Krishnashashi. Please ask Mohini to let me know often from Chittagong about Krishnashashi and his condition. Barada Babu's letter is very interesting but does not solve the difficulty I had, as it gives me no fresh information of any importance. It had already been seen that the immediate cause of the collapse was partly sexual; for that we included in what I meant by the uprush from the vital being. Nor does it make much difference that the physico-vital force possessing him took from the form or assumed the pranic body of some dead friend. The situation remains as before. If the disorder is only psychic it will disappear in time. If there is some brain defect that has come up, the issue is more doubtful. The suggestion about the medicine may possibly be useful hereafter. Mohini had better be informed about it.
As to Rajani's difficulties you might ask him to write to me himself stating them and the precise cause of his doubts. As far as I know about his Sadhana he was progressing in a steady and sound fashion, but for long I have no further news of it. There is no reason why he should not succeed in the Yoga if he keeps the right attitude and faith and perseverance. He will necessarily have difficulties with his vital nature and physical mind which have a strong earth element, but that is the case also with several others. His development, if he preserves, is likely to be rather through knowledge and will than any great richness of psychic experience, but he must not take the absence or paucity of the latter for an inability to develop the Yoga.
The paragraph in one of your letters about the debts is very confused and I can make nothing precise out of it. What I want is to know first what were the heads and the exact sums actually met by the loan of two thousand. What for instance, is the amount still due to the Kavirajas and what the amount of the small loans. It is very necessary for me, whether in determining what to write to Amar with regard to money matters or in trying to help you, to have an exact and clear idea of the whole transaction. Where there is only a confused vague or general idea, the force I put out loses itself very largely in the void. Specially I shall have in the future to try and act more and more from the Supramental and less and less from the mind. Now the first condition of the Supramental is exactness, clearness and order both in the total and the details and their relations. Therefore it is a great advantage if there are these elements in the data upon which I have to work and great disadvantage if they are absent.
I shall await your report about Mohini. I gather from his letter that he wanted to remain sometime with me for Sadhana. My own idea is that as already written by Manmohan to Chittagong it is better for most to practice first in the elements at least the synthetic Yoga of Jnana, Bhakti and Karma and establish peace and Samata before taking up the Yoga of complete and direct self-surrender. There will always be exceptions, but this is far most the safest course.
Letter to A. B. Purani
With regard to the attacks you get there A.G. says they are bound to come as long as your entire consciousness is not transformed. Even when the higher power works in you down to your physico-vital consciousness, the attacks will find a way through the physical consciousness. Even if the power is in full action down to the physical itself, the attacks you complain of in your letter, especially those that take the form of illness can get you through, the medium of subconscious vibrations of the physical. You have to fight them out of you until your entire Adhara is completely transformed when no more attacks of any kind can trouble you. These things are always coming from the universal as you have had full experience; and now that you are no longer isolated they have the additional advantage of the people with whom you mix,—for that is always full of the perturbed human currents.
Now to your question how you should mix with people there. A.G. says you should retain and remain in your own Yoga consciousness separate from and above the consciousness of those who are around you. But you need not show them that you are in a different plane of being. It is enough to live in yourself in the true inner poise and keep the protection of your own atmosphere, without your outward manner of aloofness or of being other than they are.
You say that you have lost the Divine peace which had come to you on your way to Gujarat. A.G. says that the Divine peace that you speak of—like other deepest states—comes and goes increasing gradually in the return until it can be fully established in the various planes of your being—they cannot be ready at once to keep it in its fullness. Lastly A.G. wants you to communicate to him constantly your experiences and the progress that you can make in your Sadhana in spite of any difficulty you may now and then feel in writing letters.
Arya Office, Pondicherry 18th November 1922
Dear Chitta,
It is a long time, almost two years I think, since I have written a letter to any one. I have been so much retired and absorbed in my Sadhana that contact with outside world has till lately been reduced to a minimum. Now that I am looking outward again, I find that circumstances lead me to write first to you. I say circumstances, because it is a need that makes me take up the pen after so long a disuse.
The need is in connection with the first outward work that 1 am undertaking after this long inner retirement. Barin has gone to Bengal and will see you in connection with it, but a word from me is necessary perhaps and therefore I send you this letter through Barin. I am giving him also a letter of authority from which you will understand the immediate nature of the need for which T have sent him to raise funds. But I may add something to make it more definite.
I think you know my present idea and the attitude towards life and work to which it has brought me. I have become confirmed in a perception which I had always, less clearly and dynamically then, but which has become more and more evident to me, that the true basis of life and work is the spiritual, that is to say, a new consciousness to be developed only by Yoga. I see more and more manifestly that man can never get out of the futile circle; the race is always treading until he has raised himself to the new foundation. I believe also that it is the mission of India to make this great victory for the world. But what precisely was the nature of the dynamic power of this greater consciousness? What was the condition of its effective truth? How could it be brought down, mobilised, organised, turned upon life? How could our present instruments, intellect, mind, life, body be made true and perfect channels for this great transformation? This was the problem I have trying to work out in my own experience and I have now a sure basis, a wide knowledge and some mastery of the secret. Not yet its fullness and complete imperative presence—therefore I have still to remain in retirement. For I am determined not to work in the external field till I have the sure and complete possession of this new power of action—not to build except on a perfect foundation.
But still I have gone far enough to be able to undertake one work on a large scale than before—the training of others to receive the Sadhana and prepare themselves as I have done, for without that my future work cannot even be begun. There are many who desire to come here and whom I can admit for the purpose, there are a greater number who can be trained at a distance; but I am unable to carry on unless I have sufficient funds to be able to maintain a centre here and one or two at least outside. I need therefore much larger resources than I at present command. I have thought that by your recommendation and influence you may help Barin to gather them for me. May I hope that you will do this for me?
One word to avoid a possible misunderstanding. Long ago I gave to Motilal Roy of Chandernagore the ideas and some principles and lines of a new social and economical organisation and education and this with my spiritual force behind him he has been trying to work out in his own way in his Sarigha. This is quite a separate thing from what I am now writing about—my own work which I must do myself and no one can do for me.
I have been following with interest your political activities specially your present attempt to give a more flexible and practically effective turn to non-cooperation movement. I doubt whether you will succeed against such contrary forces, but I wish you success in your endeavour. I am most interested however in your indications about Swaraj; for I have been developing my own ideas about the organisation of a true Indian Swaraj and I shall look forward to see how far yours will fall in with mine.
Yours...
6 April 1923
6th April, 1923 Arya Office, Pondicherry
My dear Rajani,
I am writing today about your son Rathin and his illness if it can be called by that name. I shall state first in general terms the nature of the malady and its usual developments, that is to say, the normal course it takes when no psychic or spiritual force is brought in to remove it. Afterwards I shall indicate the two possible means of cure.
I think it is best for me to state the case in its worst and not only in its best possible terms because it is necessary that you should know the full truth and have courage to face it. These cases are not those of a truly physical malady but of an attempt at possession from the vital world: and the fits and other physical symptoms are signs, not of the malady itself, but of the struggle of the natural being against the pressure of the hostile influences. Such a case in a child of this age indicates some kind of accumulation in the physical heredity creating an opportunity or a predisposition of which vital invasion takes advantage. It is especially the physical consciousness and physico-vital which contain the germs or materials of this predisposition. The physical being is always changing its constituents and in each period of seven years a complete change is effected. If the symptoms of this predisposition in the nature are detected and wise influence and training used by the parents to eradicate them and that is done so effectively that in the first seven years no seeds of the malady appear, then usually there is no further danger. If on the contrary they manifest by the seventh year, then the next period of seven years is the critical period and ordinarily the case would be decided one way or the other by or before the fourteenth year.
There are normally three possible eventualities. The difficulty in dealing with the case of so young a child is that the mind is not developed and can give no help towards the cure. But as the mind develops in the second seven years it will, if it is not abnormally weak which I think is not the case here, react more and more against the influences. Aided by a good control and influence it may very well succeed in casting out the hostile intrusion and its pressure altogether. In that case the fits and other signs of the physical struggle pass away, the strange moral and vital tendencies fade out of the habits and the child become mentally, morally and physically a healthy normal being.
The second possibility is that the struggle between the natural being and the intruding being may not be decisive in the Psychic sense, that is to say the intruder cannot take full possession but also he cannot be thrown out entirely. In that case anything may happen, a shattered mind and health, the death of the body or a disturbed, divided and permanently abnormal nature.
The third and worst possibility is that the intruding being may succeed and take entire possession. In that case the fits and other violent symptoms will disappear, the child may seem to be physically cured and healthy, but he will be an abnormal and most dangerous being incarnating an evil vital force with all its terrible propensities and gifted with abnormal powers to satisfy them.
In Rathin's case there is not as yet possession in the full sense of the word, but a strong pressure and influence indicated by the strange habits of which you have written. These are suggested and dictated by the intruding being and not proper to the boy himself. The fearlessness and security with which he does these things is inspired from the same source. But the fits prove that there is as yet no possession. There is struggle indicated by them and a temporary hold which passes out again. He is evidently in the earlier part of the critical period. I have indicated the course normally taken by the illness, but it is not necessary to pass through it and take its risks. There are other means which can come to his help and effect a complete cure.
The first and easiest is to cure by hypnotic suggestion. This if properly applied is an absolutely sure remedy. But in the first place, it must be applied by some one who is not himself under the influence of evil powers, as some hypnotists are. For that obviously will make matters worse. Moreover, it must be done by someone, who has the proper training and knows thoroughly what he is about, for a mistake might be disastrous. The best conditions would be if someone like yourself who has a natural relation and already an influence over the child could do it with the necessary training and knowledge.
The other means of cure is the use of spiritual power and influence. If certain psycho-spiritual means could be used, this would be as sure and effectual as the other. But this is not possible because there is no one there who has the right knowledge. The spiritual influence by itself can do it but the working is likely to be slow. It must ordinarily be conveyed through someone on the spot and you yourself are obviously the right instrument. What you have to do is to keep the idea that I am sending to you power for this object, to make yourself receptive to it and at the same time make your own will and natural influence on the child a direct channel for it. The will must be a quiet will, calm and confident and intent on its object, but without attachment and unshaken by any amount of resistance and unalarmed and undiscouraged by the manifestations of the illness. Your attitude to the child must be that of a calm and firm protecting affection free from emotional weakness and disturbance. The first thing is to acquire such an influence as to be able to repel the attack when it comes and if it takes any hold to diminish steadily its force and the violence of its manifestation. I understand from your letter that you have already been able to establish the beginning of such an influence. But it must be able to work at a distance as well as in his presence. Further you must acquire the power of leaving a protection around him when you are absent. Secondly, you must be able to convey to him a constant suggestion which will gradually inhibit the strange undesirable habits of which you speak in your letter. This, I may say cannot be effectively done by any kind of external coercion. For that it likely to make these impulses more violent. It must be a will and suggestion and silent influence. If you find the control increasing and these habits diminishing, you can understand, that the work of cure has begun. Its completion may take some time because these vital beings are very sticky and persistent and are always returning to the attack. The one thing which can make the cure rapid is if the boy himself develops a will in his mind to change for that will take away the ground of the hostile influence. It is because something in him is amused and takes pleasure in the force which comes with the influence that these things are able to recur and continue. This element in him calls the invading presence back even when it has been centrally rejected. I shall of course try to act directly on him as well as through you, but the instrumentality of one on the spot greatly enforces and is sometimes indispensible to the action.
A word about your sadhana. It seems to me that the key of your future development is contained in the experience which you say you often attained for a few days at Krishnagore (your letter of the 9th February) “A state which was full of knowledge, calm, serenity, strength and wide consciousness—all questions automatically solved—a continuous stream of power passed into body through the forehead centre—extremely powerful having undisturbed samata, calm, conviction, keen sight and knowledge”. This was the consciousness of true Purusha in you aware of his own supramental being and it is this which must become your normal consciousness and the basis of the supramental development. In order that it may so become, the mind has to be made calm and strong, the emotional and vital being purified and the physical consciousness so opened that the body can hold and refrain the consciousness and power. I notice that at the time you had it the body also expressed it. This is a sign that the capacity is already there in your physical being. The calm and strength will descend from above, what you have to do is to open yourself and receive and at the same time, reject all the movements of the lower nature which prevent it from remaining and which are ruled by desires and habits inconsistent with the true being, the true power and the true knowledge, of course the superior power will itself reveal to you and remove all obstacles in your nature. But the condition is that not only your mental but your vital and physical being must open and surrender to it and refuse to surrender themselves to other powers and forces. As you yourself experienced at that time, this greater consciousness will of itself bring the development of the higher will and knowledge. Psychic experiences of a proper kind are of course a great help but in your case it may be that any rich development of the psychic will only come after or in proportion as this consciousness with its calm knowledge, will and Samata take possession of the different parts of the being.
14th April, Morning
About Natverial Bharatia: Tell him I can't take charge of his whole family all at once and that his disconnecting with Lele I don't call peaceful. Ask for particular reasons he has written in his letter and also about how Lele has taken this matter. For I told you about the Dattatraya Yoga. If that was the case, these Yogis don't care for Divine or Asuric or Rakshasic forces and when Lele saw the woman that force took possession of her, because she seems to have a very sensitive Psychic being and therefore she might have opposed the influence and there she was upset, and once it is upset it is very hard to cure. Besides if her husband died at the time when she was sufficiently grown up to receive any influence from him, then it may be that there was a clash between her husband's influence and that of Lele. I am inclined to think that it is due to both.
If Lele gets angry or chooses to react you must know that after all he is a Yogi and he can harm the boy. Now if his influence is working and I mix in this matter then our forces would clash which I don't like because it would not be good for the boy himself.
About Yoga he must thus be free from any influence from Lele, and even then he would have to prepare himself for this Yoga.
It is not so easy for him at present. But some line may be pointed out.
16 June 1923
Arya Office, Pondicherry 16th June, 1923
I have read the record of Jyotish Mukherjee's experiences. It appears from it that he has made the right start to a certain extent and has been able to establish the beginning of mental calm and some kind of psychic opening but neither of these has as yet been able to go very far. The reason probably is that he has done everything by a strong mental control and forcible stilling of the mind and emotional and vital movements, but he has not yet established the true spiritual calm which can only come by experience of or surrender to the higher being above the mind. It is this that he has to get in order to make a foundation for a more substantial progress.
(1) He is right in thinking that an inner calm and silence must be the foundation, not only of external work but of all inner and outer activities. But the quieting of the mind in a mental silence or inactivity although often useful as the first step, is not sufficient. The mental must be changed first into deeper spiritual peace Shanti, and then into the supramental calm and silence full of the higher light and strength and Ananda. Moreover, the quieting of the mind only is not enough. The vital and physical consciousness have to be opened up and the same foundation established there. Also the spirit of devotion of which he speaks must be not merely a mental feeling but an aspiration of the deeper heart and will to the truth above, that the being may rise up into it and that it may descend and govern all the activities.
(2) The void he feels in the mind is often a necessary condition for the clearing of it from its ordinary movements so that it may open to a higher consciousness and a new experience but in itself it is merely negative, a mental calm without anything positive in it and if one stops there, then the dullness and the inertia of which he complains must come. What he needs is, in the void and silence of the mind, to open himself to, to wait or to call for the action of the higher power, light and peace from above the mind.
(3) The survival of evil habits in sleep is easily explained and is a thing of common experience. It is a known psychological law that whatever is suppressed in the conscious mind remains in the subconscient being and recurs either in the waking state when the control by itself cannot eradicate anything entirely out of the being. The subconscient in the ordinary man includes the larger part of the vital being and the physical mind and also the secret body-consciousness. In order to make a true and complete change, one has to make all these conscious, to see clearly what is still there and to reject them from one layer after another till they have been entirely thrown out from the personal experience. Even then they may remain and come back on the being from the surrounding universal forces and it is only when no part of the consciousness makes any response to those forces of the lower plane that the victory and transformation are absolutely complete.
(4) His experience that whenever he gains conquest in the mental plane the force of past Karma, that is to say, really of the old nature, comes back upon him with a double vigour is again a common experience. The psychological explanation is to be found in the preceding paragraph. All the attempt at transformation of the being is to fight with universal forces which have long been in possession and it is vain to expect that they will give up the struggle at the first defeat. As long as they can, they seek to retain possession and even when they are cast out they will, as long as there is any chance of response in the conscious or the suconscious being, try to recur and regain their hold. It is no use being discouraged by these attacks. What has to be done is to see that they are made more and more external, all assent refused until they weaken and fade away. Not only the Chitta and Buddhi must refuse consent but also the lower parts of the being, the vital and the physico-vital, physical mind and the body consciousness.
(5) The defect of the receiving mind and the discriminating Buddhi spoken of are general defects of the intellect and cannot be entirely be got rid of so long as the intellectual action is not replaced by a higher superintellectual action and finally by the harmonising light of the supramental knowledge.
Next as regards the psychic experiences. The region of glory felt in the crown of the head is simply the touch or reflection of the supramental sunlight on the higher part of the mind. The whole mind and being must open to this light and it must descend and fill the whole system. The lightning and the electric currents are the (vaidyutd) Agni force of the supramental sun touching and trying to pour into the body. The other signs are promises of the future psychic and other experiences. But none of these things can establish themselves until the opening to the higher force has been made. The mental Yoga can only be a preparation for this truer starting-point.
What I have said is merely an explanation of these experiences but it seems to me that he has advanced far enough to make a foundation for the beginning of the higher Yoga. If he wishes to do that he must replace his mental control by a belief in and a surrender to the Supreme Presence and force above the mind, an aspiration in the heart and a will in the higher mind to the Supreme. Truth and the transformation of the whole conscious being by its descent and power. He must, in his meditation open himself silently to it and call down first a deeper calm and silence, next the strength from the above working in the whole system and last the higher and glory of which he had a glimpse pouring through his whole being and illuminating it with the Divine truth movement;
1923
(1923...)
Dear Ramchandra,
I am answering your second letter which reached me today. And first I must say something about the very extraordinary line of conduct you propose to adopt in case of not hearing from me. I think it is because, as you say, your mind is not yet in a completely right condition that you have proposed it. No one with any common-sense and certainly no one with a clear moral sense would support you in your intention. As to the law, it is not usual in France to take up things of this kind but only public offences against morals. The court would probably take no notice of your self-accusation and in any case it could not proceed in the absence of evidence from others which would here be lacking. But supposing it were otherwise, what would your action amount to ? First, it would be putting an almost insuperable obstacle in the way of your own mental and moral recovery and of your leading a useful life in the future. Secondly, it would be bringing an unmerited disgrace upon your father and family. Thirdly, it would mean, if it took any form, the ruin of the life of someone else, for if I understand rightly what you say, some other or others would be involved, and your suggestion that you are entirely responsible would be absurd in law and could have no value, and all this havoc you propose to cause merely in order to satisfy, in fact if it could be a morbid moral egoism. It would be, seriously executed, a greater immorality than anything you have yet done. The true way to set yourself right for your act is not to do untold harm to others in the name of honesty or any other virtue, but to put yourself right inwardly and do otherwise in the future.
I shall answer briefly the questions you put in your second paragraph. (1) The way to set yourself right is, as I have said, to set your nature right and make yourself master of your vital being and its impulses.
(2) Your position in human society is or can be that of many others v/ho in their early life have committed excesses of various kinds and have afterwards achieved self-control and taken their due place in life, if you would know that your case is not exceptional but on the contrary very common, and that many have done these things and afterwards become useful citizens and even leading men in various departments of human activity. (3) It is quite possible for you to recompense your parents and fulfil the past expectations you spoke of, if you make that your object. Only you must first recover from your illness and achieve the proper balance of your mind and will. The object of your life depends upon your own choice and the way of attainment depends upon the nature of the objects. Also your position will be whatever you make it. What you have to do first is, to recover your health; then with a quiet mind to determine your aim in life according to your capacities and preference. It is not for me to make up your mind for you. I can only indicate to you what I myself think should be the proper aims and ideals.
Apart from external things there are two possible inner ideals which a man can follow. The first is the highest ideal of ordinary human life and the other the divine ideal of Yoga. I must say in view of something you seem to have said to your father that it is not the object of the one to be a great man or the object of the other to be a great Yogin. The ideal of human life is to establish over the whole being the control of a clear, strong and rational mind and a right and rational will to master the emotional, vital and physical being, create a harmony of the whole and develop the capacities whatever they are and fulfil them in life. In the terms of Hindu thought it is to enthrone the rule of the purified and sattvikbudhi, follow the Dharma, fulfilling of one's own Swadharma and doing the work proper to one's capacities; and satisfy Kama and Artha under the control of the Buddhi and Dharma. The object of divine life, on the other hand, is to realise one's highest self or to realise God and to put the whole being into harmony with the truth of the highest self or the law of the divine nature, to find one's own divine capacities, great and small, and fulfil them in life as a sacrifice to the Highest or as a true instrument of the divine Shakti. About the latter ideal I may write at some later times. At present, I shall only say something about the difficulty you feel in fulfilling the ordinary ideal.
This ideal involves the building of mind and character and it is always a slow and difficult process demanding patient labour of years, sometimes the better part of the lifetime. The chief difficulty in the way with almost everybody is the difficulty of controlling the desires and impulses of the vital being. In many cases as in yours, certain strong impulses run persistently counter to the ideal and demand of the reason and the will. The cause is almost always a weakness of the vital being itself, for, when there is this weakness it finds itself unable to obey the dictates of the higher mind and obliged to act instead under the waves of impulsion that comes from certain forces in nature. These forces are really external to the person but find in this part of him a sort of mechanical readiness to satisfy and obey them. The difficulty is aggravated if the seat of the weakness is in the nervous system. There is then what is called by European science a neurasthenic tendency and under certain circumstances it leads to nervous breakdowns and collapses. This happens when there is too great a strain on the nerves or when there is excessive indulgence of the sexual or other propensities and sometimes also when there is too acute and prolonged a struggle between the restraining mental will and these propensities. This is the illness from which you are suffering and if you consider these facts you will see the real reason why you broke down at Pondicherry. The nervous system in you was weak, it could not obey the will and resist the demand of the external vital forces, and in the struggle there came an overstrain of the mind and the nerves and a collapse taking the form of an acute attack of neurasthenia. These difficulties do not mean that you cannot prevail and bring about a control of your nervous and vital being and build up a harmony of mind and character. Only you must understand the thing rightly, not indulging false and morbid ideas about it and you must use the right means. What is needed is a quiet mind and a quiet will, patient, persistent, refusing to yield either to excitement or discouragement, but always insisting tranquilly on the change needed in the being. A quiet will of this kind can not fail in the end. Its effects are inevitable. It must first reject in the waking state not only the acts habitual to the vital being, but the impulses behind them which it must understand to be external to the person even though manifested in him and also the suggestions which are behind the impulses. When thus rejected the once habitual thoughts and movements may still manifest in the dream-state, because it is a well-known psychological law that what is suppressed or rejected in the waking state may still recur in sleep and dream because they are still there in the subconscient being. But if the waking state is thoroughly cleaned, these dream movements must gradually disappear because they lose their food and impressions in the subonscient are gradually effaced. This is the cause of the dreams of which you are so much afraid. You should see that they are only subordinate symptoms which need not alarm you if you can once get control of your waking condition.
But you must get rid of the ideas which have stood in the way of effecting this self-conquest.
1) Realise that these things in you do not come from any true moral depravity, for that can exist only when the mind itself is corrupted and supports the perverse vital impulses. Where the mind and the will reject them, the moral being is sound and it is a case only of a weakness or malady in the vital parts or the nervous system.
2) Do not brood on the past but turn your face with a patient hope and confidence towards the future. To brood on past failure will prevent you from recovering your health and will weaken your mind and will be hampering them in the work of self-conquest and rebuilding of the character.
3) Do not yield to discouragement if success does not come at once, but continue patiently and steadfastly until the thing is done.
4) Do not torture your mind by always dwelling on your weakness. Do not imagine that they unfit you for life or for the fulfilment of the human ideal. Once having recognised that they are there, seek for your sources of strength and dwell rather on them and the certainty of conquest.
Your first business is to recover your health of mind and body and that needs quietness of mind and for some time a quiet way of living. Do not rack your mind with questions which it is not yet ready to solve. Do not brood always on the one thing. Occupy your mind as much as you can with healthy and normal occupations and give it as much rest as possible. Afterwards when you have your right mental condition and balance, then you can with a clear judgement decide how you will shape your life and what you have to do in the future.
I have given you the best advice. I have told you what seems to me the most important thing for you at present. As for your coming to Pondicherry, it is better not to do so just now. I could say to you nothing more than what I have written. It is best for you so long as you are ill not to leave your father's care, and, above all it is the safe rule in illness like yours not to return to the place and surroundings where you had the breakdown until you are perfectly recovered and the memories and associations connected with it have faded in their intensity, lost their hold on the mind and can no longer produce upon it a violent and disturbing impression.
To Hrishikesh,
It appears from your present letter and attitude that you propose to give God a seat on your right hand and R. another on the left and to sit in meditation between oscillating sweetly from one to the other. If this is what you want to do please do it in the Cherry Press and not in Pondicherry. If you want to come here, you must do it with a firm determination to get rid of this attachment and make a complete and unconditional consecration and self-surrender.
You seem not to have understood the principle of this Yoga. The old Yoga demanded a complete renunciation extending to the giving up of the worldly life itself. This Yoga aims instead at a new and transformed life. But it insists inexorably on a complete throwing away of desire and attachment in the mind, life and body. Its aim is to refound life in the truth of the Spirit and for that purpose to transfer the roots of all we are and do from the mind, life and body to a greater consciousness above the mind. That means that in the new life all the connections must be founded on a spiritual intimacy and a truth quite other than any which supports our present connections. One must be prepared to renounce at the higher call what are called the natural affections. Even if they are kept at all, it can only be with a change which transformed them altogether. But whether they are to be renounced or kept and changed must be decided not by the personal desires but by the truth above. All must be given up to the Supreme Master of the Yoga.
If you cling to the desires of the mental, vital and physical beings, this transference and transformation cannot happen. Your attachment to your son is a thing of the vital parts in you, and if you are not prepared to give it up, it will inevitably clash with the demands of the Yoga and stop your progress.
When you came here, your physical being was opened up, and the mental, vital and physical obstacles sufficiently worked upon to admit of this opening. This came first, because that was the strongest part of you for the purposes of Yoga. Afterwards there was an attempt to open up the mind and the other parts. But owing to certain influences their resistance became strong enough to bring things to a standstill. Doubt and non-understanding in the mind and the vital attachments of which this one to your son is the strongest were the main instruments of this resistance. It is no use coming back with any of these things still cherished and supported by your mind and will. Either you will make no progress at all here or if the power works on you it will work to break the resistance. The nature of this struggle and the consequences may be of a serious and undesirable character. The power that works in this Yoga is of a thorough-going character and tolerates in the end nothing great or small that is an obstacle to the truth and the realisation. To come here will be to invite its working in its strongest and most insistent form.
23 August 1924
23rd August 1924
To Chandrashekhar,
1) It is not easy to get into the Silence. That is only possible by throwing out the mental and vital activities. It is to let Silence into you i.e., to open yourself and let it descend. The way to do this and the way to call down the higher powers is the same. It is to remain quiet at the time of meditation, not fighting with the mind or making mental efforts to pull down the power of the Silence but keeping only a silent will and aspiration for them. If the mind is active one has to learn to look at it drawn back and not giving any sanction from within—until its habitual and mechanical activities begin to fall quiet for want of support from within. If it is persistent a steady rejection without strain or struggle is the one thing to be done.
2) The mental attitude you are taking with regard to Lord as the Yogeshwar can be made first step towards this quietude.
3) Silence does not mean absence of experiences. It is an inner silence and quietude in which all experiences happen without producing any disturbance. It would be a great mistake to interfere with the images rising in you. It does not matter whether they are mental or psychic. One must have experiences not only of the true psychic but of the inner mental, the inner vital and subtle physical worlds or planes of consciousness. The occurrence of images is a sign that these are opening and to inhibit them would mean to inhibit the expansion of consciousness and experience without which this Yoga cannot be done.
All this is an answer to the points raised in your letter. It is not meant that you should change suddenly what you are doing. It is better to proceed from what you have attained which seems to be solid though small and proceed quietly in the direction indicated.
A.G.
16 October 1924
Arya Office, Pondicherry 16.10.24
To Seth Gangaram Bharatia,
A letter has been received from Purani by which Sri Aurobindo has been fully informed of the details of Natwarlal's case. He now knows clearly what is really the matter with him and he wishes me to draw your attention to the following points.
1) Natwarlal's case is not one of ordinary madness—that is, disturbance of the brain, but some hostile being or power has laid hold of his mind (as happened in the case of his sister, but in a different way and as yet less completely). It is preventing him from using his own intelligence. At the same time this power is continually giving bad suggestions to him—not to take food, suggestions of death, of throwing away his present body, of wrong motives in those who offer him food, of sin, of aparadha, etc.
2) To cure this illness of the mind will be difficult and is likely to take a long time, because these suggestions have become fixed ideas which he is unable to resist. Even if the being is driven away, something in Natwarlal's mind finds delight in the play or workings of the being and that is likely to bring it back again.
3) There is a supreme power that can cure him at once, because nothing can resist it. But that comes by the Grace of God, under conditions which cannot be commanded. Sri Aurobindo by his will cannot command it; he hopes to be able to call it down, but it is not certain. Meanwhile time is needed and the danger is that if he does not eat the body may collapse before anything effective can be done.
4) The hostile power is trying to destroy him by giving the suggestions not to eat, to throw away his body etc. The first thing necessary is that he should be made to resume eating and all of you should see that these suggestions are counteracted. He should be made to eat by any means, persuasion, pressure, compulsion or otherwise.
5) This can be done best if there is someone near him with a will stronger than his own, someone who will quietly and strongly insist, take no notice of and give no value to his objections and make him eat in spite of his own mind and its hallucinations.
6) If there is none, then if a powerful and genuine hypnotist is available, he can by right suggestions counteract the bad ones of the being, make Natwarlal have the will to eat and throw out the ideas of death, aparadha, etc., which are now perverting his intelligence.
7) Otherwise, the only possible method is to put him under the control of somebody accustomed to deal with these cases who will make him eat in spite of his objections.
8) Sri Aurobindo wishes to make it clear to you that he can absolutely have no cause for anger towards you or Natwarlal. On the contrary he has every cause to be pleased with him. He asks you to remove from your mind any idea of aparadha done towards him by yourself or Natwarlal as that will only hinder his helping effectively.
Sri Aurobindo says that he will try to free Natwarlal from hostile possession of his mind—the result is in God's hands. Only as time is necessary for a complete cure, Natwarlal must be made to take food so that he may not break down in the middle. That is the first and the one indispensable thing to be done.
Yours sincerely, Punamchand M. Shah
24 December 1924
24-12-24
Letter to N. S. Chidambaram
In order to get to the higher consciousness the essential condition is quietude of the mind. The ordinary nature of the mind is either to be active or if denied activity to go to sleep. The method of counting 1, 2, 3 only stupifies the mind and though this method once accidentally got you into the higher consciousness, it is not the right way. The other way which you yourself got afterwards of “directing the aspiring Drishti of your entire Antahkaran towards its own heights and from there watching” is the right process; continue and make this progressively your normal condition.
As to Shakti Upasana, you need not trouble about it at present as your Sadhana is taking a different course, from that laid in the Yogic Sadhan. Shakti is of two kinds, the lower of the mind desires and the higher Divine Shakti. When the first has been quieted and the higher consciousness made normal in you, it is possible for the Divine Shakti to take up all your activities. This action of yielding and giving place to the higher Shakti is the aim of the Shakti Upasana. Let the quietude and the higher consciousness establish themselves. The rest will come later on. The replacing of the power of lower consciousness by that of the higher is the object of self-surrender—the surrender of your small narrow personal being and its activities to the higher and vaster Divine being and the Divine activities. By this surrender one will cease to act from one's personal motives, impulses, desires, etc. as one is at present doing. By the progressively increasing self-surrender the action of the higher consciousness will gradually begin to play in the place of the personal. That is how works in life and surrender are reconciled. The work in life will proceed as the result of surrender—from the higher consciousness instead of as now from the narrow personal. But this will come at a later stage: you need not mind about it now. But go on with the method indicated.
Only take care not to surrender to any suggestions or forces coming from the lower being as that is the chief danger of the Sadhana.
Letter to Motilal Mehta
About your difficulty in explaining to people what A.G. is doing—it will of course be useless to tell them in the true terms because they would not understand. But you can put it in this way which they will perhaps find intelligible.
A.G. is engaged in Pondicherry in Tapasya for Yoga Siddhi which is necessary before he takes up his future work. As Gandhi believes in soul force, that is to say in an inner moral force as the one thing necessary behind all true action, so A.G. believes in a higher spiritual force as the one thing necessary—the one thing that must be at the basis of India's freedom and greatness. It is this spiritual force which he is seeking to call down, embody and perfect in himself and others. This he has found can only be done by a long and patient Sadhana. It is when he feels it completed in himself and his whole mind, life and body capable of transmitting the spiritual knowledge and power into a perfectly effective action that he will come out from his Sadhana and begin his action. At the same time he is training a number of people to be effective instruments of the same power and centres and supports of his action. When he goes out into British India he intends to create a large centre for this spiritual training where his ideal will be embodied just as Mahatma Gandhi has done at Sabarmati for his own ideal, and with that as his basis undertake a work which will be for the world in general and specially for India. This work will embrace and will mean the spiritualising of all activities none being excluded. A.G. believes that a free India returned to her great spiritual ideal but on new and larger lines is destined to be the means of uplifting the world and initiating a new age of the general evolution and it is towards this ideal that all his work is to be directed.
Dear M,
I spoke of your visit to Sri Aurobindo and he asked me to write to you certain things which he thinks it better you should know. It is better you should not speak of this letter to Ramchandra, as in his present state of nervous weakness to know that his illness is being discussed might have an undesirable effect upon him. He is suffering from a strong attack of neurasthenia which developed suddenly during the three days before his departure. He was asked to go home because the conditions here are not suitable in his present state and also because in this case it is better to change the surroundings and associations under which the attack ... along with the appearance of others that were not there before. The symptoms of the illness are, first weakness of some of the nervous brain centres resulting in occasional failure of memory and a mechanical repetition of thoughts and words in the brain; secondly an instability of the temperament in rapid alternations of modes and manifestations of exaggerated self-depreciation and its opposite and fits of violent melancholy and gloom. Finally a morbid sensitiveness and suspicion specially as to what others may be saying or thinking about him. When he spoke of his illness he showed that a part of his mind was perfectly self-contained and had a lucid and accurate observation of what was wrong with him. But the will centres are not sufficiently strong to combat and throw off the attack, specially he has certain vital habits, which in the long run impair the nervous system and against which he struggled very persistently. But his will was too often unable to resist the habitual instinct. What he needs is, first, a perfect quiet and absence of anything that would cause excitement and disturbance, especially of anything that would excite or encourage the symptoms of which I have spoken. By quiet is not meant solitude; he should have society but as much as possible only of those he specially likes, and nothing should be thrust upon him. He should not be forced into any kind of occupation he does not want. But any occupation like easy reading which should distract his mind without straining it should be encouraged. Finally, he needs entire kindness and sympathy and the avoidance of anything that would wound or ruffle his feelings. If these conditions are satisfied it is possible that his nervous system will get soothed and quieted down and the illness pass away. Whatever help can be given from here will be constantly given.
12 March 1926
Pondicherry, 12th March 1926
Dear Chakravarty,
I have been obliged to answer in the negative to your request by wire for contributions to the “Bengali” on the occasion of your taking it over on behalf of the Nationalist Party. I have been for a long time under a self-denying ordinance which precludes me from making any public utterance on politics and I have had to refuse similar requests from the “Forward” and other papers. Even if it were not so, I confess that in the present confused state of politics I should be somewhat at a loss to make any useful pronouncement. No useful purpose could be served by any general statements on duties, in the present situation. Everybody seems to be agreed on the general object and issue, and the only question worth writing on is that of the best practical means for securing the agreed object and getting rid of the obstacles in the way. This is in any case a question for the practical leaders actually in the field and not for a retired spectator at a distance. It would be difficult for me even to pass an opinion on the rival policies in the field; for I have unable to gather from what I have seen in the papers what is the practical turn they propose to give these policies or how they propose by them to secure Swaraj or bring it nearer.
Please therefore excuse my refusal.
Yours sincerely, Aurobindo
1926
I received this morning your letter about Tirupati. I shall try to explain to you Tirupati's condition, the reasons why I have been obliged to send him away from Pondicherry and the conditions which are necessary for his recovery from his present abnormal state of mind.
Sometime ago, Tirupati began to develop ideas and methods of Yoga Sadhana, which are quite inconsistent with the ideas and methods that underlie my system of Yoga. Especially he began practices that belong entirely to the most extreme form of Bhakti Sadhana, practices that are extremely dangerous because they lead to an excited, exalted abnormal condition, and violently call down forces which the body cannot bear. They may lead to a breakdown of the physical body, the mind and the nervous system. As soon as I became aware of this turn, I warned him of the danger and prohibited the continuance of the practices. At first he attempted to follow my instructions, but the attraction of his new experiences was so great that he resumed his practices in secret and in the end openly returned to them in defiance of my repeated prohibitions. The result was that he entered into and persisted in an abnormal condition of mind which still continues and at times rises to an alarming height dangerous to the sanity of his mind and the health of his body.
The following are the peculiar types of his condition.
(1) There is a state of mind in which he loses hold to a great extent of physical realities and lives in a world of imaginations which do not at all belong to terrestrial body and the physical life.
(2) He conceives a great distaste for eating and sleeping and believes that the power in him is so great that he can live without sleep and without food.
(3) He is listening all the time to things which he calls inspirations and intuitions, but which are simply the creations and delusions of his own excited and unduly exalted state of mind. This exalted state of mind gives him so much pleasure, so much a false sense of strength and Ananda and of being above the human condition that he is unwilling to give it up and feels unhappy and fallen when he is brought down to a more ordinary consciousness.
(4) In this condition he has no longer enough discrimination left or enough will power to carry oat my instructions or even his own resolutions, but obeys blindly and like a machine these false inspirations and impulses. Every thing contrary to them he explains away or ignores; that is the reason why he ignores my orders and puts no value on my telegrams or letters.
(5) Also he feels in this condition an abnormal shrinking (not any spiritual detachment) from physical life, from his family, from his friends—for some time he withdrew even from the society of his fellow Sadhakas—and considers anything that comes from them or turns him from his exalted condition as the prompting of evil forces.
Please understand that all these things are the delusions of his own abnormal and exalted state of mind and are not, as he falsely imagines and will try to persuade you, signs of a high spiritual progress. On the contrary, if he persists, in them he will lose altogether such spiritual progress as he had made and may even destroy by want of food and want of sleep his body.
To allow him to remain here would be quite disastrous for him. He would count it as a victory for his own aberrations and would persist in them without any further restraint with results that might be fatal to him. And the intensity of the spiritual atmosphere .... Besides when in this condition he brings about here a state of confusion and perturbation, the one thing to be absolutely avoided in this way of Yoga, which if prolonged would make the Sadhana of my other disciples impossible and would spoil my own spiritual work altogether.
His one chance is if he can settle down in Vizianagram for a considerable time and in the surroundings of his old physical life returned to a normal condition. Please therefore do not send him back or give him money to return to Pondicherry. It will be of no use and may do him great and irreparable harm. He promised, when he went from here first, to eat well and sleep regularly, and he has. now promised, on my refusing to see or receive him on account of his disobedience of my order, to remain quietly at Vizianagram, to cease listening to his false inspirations and intuition and to obey my written orders. I had already written to him to that effect and also to throw away his shrinking from life and from his conduct with others; but he came away without waiting for my letter. If this time he carries out my instructions, he may yet recover. He must eat well, he must sleep regularly, he must give up his wrong Sadhana and live for some time as a normal human being, he must do some kind of physical action, he must resume normal contact with life and others. If he returns to his erratic movements, the remedy is not to let him leave Vizianagram, but to remind him of my instructions and his promises and insist on his carrying them out. Only you must do it in my name and remind him always that if he does not obey me, I have resolved not to see him again nor to receive him. This is the only thing at present that can make him to do what is requisite. I consented to an arrangement by which he could live quietly by himself because that was what he asked for; but the best would have been that he should live either with his family in their house so that his needs could be looked after or with some one who would see to his needs, some one with a strong will who will quietly insist, always in my name, on his doing what he has promised. But I do not know if there is any one there who could do this for him or whom he would consent to have with him.
You should not understand by what I have written, that he should live as a householder, resume his relations with his wife etc., or that he should not be left mostly to quiet and solitude, if that is what he likes. What I mean is that he must come gradually, if not at first, to deal with those around him as a human being with human beings without his present nervous shrinkings and abnormal repulsions. The spiritual attitude I have told him to take is one of calm freedom from attachment (āsakti) not of an excited shrinking. It may be that after a time will seem more possible to him than it does at present.
It will be best if you let me know fairly often what he is doing and whether he is carrying out my instructions, as it is likely that he will not write himself to me all the truth when he is in the wrong condition.
2 June 1926
(Reply of Sri Aurobindo to Rambhai through Punamchand)
2.6.1926
You have to make some further progress before you can come here. What you are doing now is a mental effort. You imagine the Divine to be present before you and then you try to offer all your mentality to the Divine; all this is a mental effort. Peace which you feel after few days was the result of your surrender. And the pressure which you felt was a sign that something in Nature resists the working of the Higher Power. When peace or any higher thing begins to descend then you should stop your mental effort because it hinders the natural working of the Higher Shakti. Instead of making any mental effort at that time you should watch as Sakshi Purusha the working of the Higher Power.
You write that you felt that the work of the sacrifice was carried on by somebody else and you were merely an onlooker, this is Sakshi Purusha, some part of you was watching and work of sacrifice was carried on by the Higher Shakti. You have to remain as Sakshi Purusha watching and consenting to the working of the Higher Power and rejecting the old lower movements of your nature. Rejection does not mean fight, it means that you have not to give your consent, anumati, to the things which come in the way of your surrender to the Divine. Let the peace and calmness settle down more and more in you.
8 June 1926
8th June, 1926
When you take Yoga, horoscope does not hold good, because another and higher force enters into play. After that, the predictions are only true, as far as you carry with you parts of your ancient life into the new one. This is a well known fact.
At least to know what is going to happen may induce one to react and to stand against these limitations and break them. I would say in such a case “This will not happen”, why should I submit to what is imposed by these vital forces ? If the Divine is in me, I am the master of my destiny.
(Based upon Sri Aurobindo's instructions)
1 December 1926
1.12.1926
Your aspiration for the truth would be satisfied if you make yourself fit for the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo. In order to make yourself fit you should continue to read the Arya as you are at present doing and practise daily meditation.
In meditation you should concentrate first in an inner aspiration that the central truths of which you read in the Arya should be made real to you in conscious experience; and at the same time you should aspire that your mind may open to the calm wideness, strength, peace, life and ananda of the spiritual consciousness.
20 May 1927
To
Date: 20.5.27
Chandulal,
The first conditions of this Yoga are:
(1) A complete sincerity and surrender in the being. The divine life and the transformation of the lower human into the higher divine nature must be made the sole aim of all the life. No attachments, desires or habits of the mind, heart, vital being or body should be clung to which come in the way of this aspiration and one object of the life.
One must be ready to renounce all these completely as soon as the demand comes from above and from the divine Shakti.
(2) A fundamental calm, peace and purity in the mind, vital being and all the nature.
The hours of meditation should be devoted to the formation of these two conditions in you, by aspiration and by self observation and rejection of all that disturbs the nature or keeps it troubled, confused and impure. Aspiration, if rightly done, quietly, earnestly and sincerely, brings the divine help from above to effect this object.
As to the hours devoted to work, needs, family etc., they can be made an aid only on the following conditions.
(1) To regard all these things as not belonging to yourself, your inner being, but as things external, work to be done so long as it remains on your shoulders to the best of your ability without desire or attachment of any kind.
(2) To do all work as a sacrifice without any egoistic motive.
(3) To establish and deepen the inner calm and quiet. If that is done, all these things will be felt more and more as external and the falling off of desire and attachment will become possible.
For getting rid of passion the same condition. If you separate yourself from these movements, and establish calm and peace inside, the passions may still rise on the surface, but they will be felt to be external movements and you can deal with them or call down the divine aid to get rid of them. So long as the mind does not fall quiet, it is not possible to deal finally with the vital being from which these forces rise.
July-August 1927
He can come, if he understands the conditions under which alone he can profit by staying here. Henceforth a stay here can only be possible
1) for those who are ready for an intensive sadhana turning their back on all attachments belonging to the ordinary human life;
2) for those who though not ready yet recognise fully the aim and open themselves so as to prepare for it;
3) those who, even if not capable as yet of an inner intensive sadhana, can yet dedicate themselves entirely in the way of service.
9 January 1928
1928-01-09
Motibai is quite happy here and she is progressing very well in her sadhana. If she goes away from here the progress will be stopped and most of what she has gained may be lost. An intense and concentrated sadhana once begun has to be persistently continued in the right atmosphere. If it is kept up only for a short time and then dropped for another kind of life in which the concentration is diffused and weakened, there is no likelihood of any fruition. For this reason we would disapprove of her departure.
9th January, 1928
2 September 1926
It is quite impossible to turn the Ashram into a sanitorium. It is understood that apart from the use of medicines as an occasional and quite subordinate expedient, those who live here should be sufficiently open mentally,—psychically, and physically to the spiritual force to recover rapidly from attacks of illness and to keep a sufficient power of life and health in them not to need to be treated as chronic invalids. Any other rule would make the existence of the Ashram impossible.
Keep faith and confidence and remain cheerful.
2-9-28
The Mother
November 1928
(Mother's answers to questions by Muljibhai Talati)
Divine Mother, J wish to get light on the following points.
1) Have I the capacity and are there potentialities in me to lead this path?
This is not the question, the question is whether you have the necessary aspiration, determination and perseverence and whether you can by the intensity and persistence of your aspiration make all the parts of your being answer to the call and become one in the consecration.
2) How should I continue my practice (sadhana) after returning home?
Quiet yourself and in the quiet see and feel the Mother.
3) How can I meditate ? What is meant by opening? Where should I open?
An inner purity and receptivity that freely lets in the Mother's influence. Begin with the heart.
4) I aspire for higher life from above the head; but I always feel strained on the middle part of the forehead. What should I do?
Do not strain yourself.
5) How does the psychic being become open ? How to understand the psychic and vital beings in the adhar?
By the force of aspiration and the grace of the Mother.
Psychic: your true being, the being that is in the heart and that is the spark of the Mother's own consciousness.
Vital: the part from which proceed desires and hunger and dynamic activities, having its physical basis round about the navel.
6) My family consists of myself, wife, two sons and one girl. I desire to come here and stay permanently, but my wife does not approve of it. What should I do?
Detachment.
7) I want to come here again for a stay of at least three months. Kindly give me permission.
Inform when you are ready to come. It is omy then that the permission can be given.
8) In my daily life, I become dejected and fall prey in the hands of the lower forces (anger, lust etc.). I humbly request the Mother for help and protection.
9) My wife is devoted to Goddess Ambaji. Her heart opens to Her, but she cannot get rid of the worldly attachments. Please help her. May I send her photo ?
If you like.
10) I request for permission to write letters to the Mother.
You can write.
11) What attitude should I keep while doing my works of daily routine? How should I act with family-members, relatives and friends?
12) What should I read at present?
Sri Aurobindo's books.
November 1928.
Your loving Child Muljibhai Talati
June 1926
(Monilal Doctor)
If this is his only illness there is absolutely no reason why it should not be cured, if he keeps proper habits and diet and above all the right attitude. I expect that the reason why the illness has such a hold and strong effect on him, is in the imagination and the nerves, more than anything else. There is something that expects the illness, accepts it when it comes and gives it free play. He must learn to keep quiet and calm in the mind and vital being, to refuse to regard the illness and the tendency to it in the body as something normal to it, regard it rather as something imposed from outside and he must believe firmly that it must and will go. If he keeps this attitude and opens to the true force, the mind and the nerves being once strengthened, the weakness will disappear.
June 1929
1 October 1929
It is not possible to come here. Since he has married and taken service, he must go on with the ordinary life. He is still much too young and too unripe for any complete sadhana. At best he can do at present some kind of Karma yoga, trying to realise the one Divine Force behind the action of the world and preparing himself so that one day he may feel a direct guidance.
1-10-1929
9 February 1930
(Answer to Swami Satyanand Giri)
As I am in retirement and see nobody for the present, not even those who are here, what he requests is not possible.
Further no one is allowed to live in the Ashram except those who are here to practise Yoga. There is no arrangement for visitors.
Pondicherry. 9-2-30
February 1930
Vithaldas,
It is only by remaining perfectly peaceful and calm with an unshakable confidence and faith in the Divine Grace that you will allow circumstances to be as good as they can be. The very best happens always to those who have put their entire trust in the Divine and in the Divine alone.
Mira
(Condolence message to Motilal Roy on the death of his wife)
Condolence. Only consolation for sincere sorrow—submission to divine will.
18 May 1930
The protection and help will be there as they were here. You have to keep yourself open to them and live inwardly seeking to become more and more conscious so that you may feel the Divine Presence and Power.
As to the Bombay atmosphere, keep inwardly separate from it, even while mixing with others, see it as a thing outside and not belonging to the inner world in which you yourself live. If you can achieve this inward separateness, it will not be able to cloud you, whatever its daily-pressure.
18.5.30
23 August 1930
It is certainly not very Yogic to be so much harassed by the importunity of the palate. I notice that these petty desires, which plenty of people who are not yogis at all nor aspirant for yoga know how to put in their proper place, seem to take an inordinate importance in the consciousness of the sadhaks here—aot all, certainly, but many. In this as in many other matters they do not seem to realise that, if you want to do yoga, you must take more and more in all matters, small or great, the yogic attitude. In our path that attitude is not one of forceful suppression, but of detachment and equality with regard to the objects of desire. Forceful suppression (fasting comes under the head; it is of no use for this purpose, abandon that idea altogether) stands on the same level as free indulgence, in both cases, the desire remains; in the one it is fed by indulgence, in the other it lies latent and exasperated by suppression. It is only when one stands back, separates oneself from the lower, refusing to regard its desires and clamours as one's own and cultivates an entire equality and equanimity in the consciousness with respect to them that the lower vital itself becomes gradually purified and itself also calm and equal. Each wave of desire as it comes must be observed, as quietly and with as much unmoved detachment as you would observe something going on outside you, and allowed to pass, rejected from the consciousness, and the true movement, the true consciousness steadily put in its place.
But for that these things of eating and drinking must be put in their right place, which is a small one. You say that many have left the Ashram because they did not like the food. I do not know who are the many; certainly, those who came here for serious sadhana and left, went for much more grave reasons than that. But if any did go because of an offended palate, then certainly they were quite unfit for yoga and this was not the place for them. For it means that a mutton chop or a tasty plate of fish was more important for them than the seeking of the Divine. It is not possible to do Yoga if values are so topsyturvy in the consciousness. Apart from such extravagance, these things which aught to be only among the most minor values even in the human life, are promoted by many here to a rank they ought not to have.
At the same time it is better, if it is possible, to have well-cooked rather than badly-cooked food. The idea that the Mother wants tasteless food to be served because tasty food is bad for yoga, is one of the many absurdities that seem so profusely current among the sadhakas in this Ashram about her ways and motives. The Mother is obliged to arrange for neutral (plain and simple), not tasteless food for the reason that any other course has been proved to be impracticable. There are ninety people here, from different countries and provinces whose tastes are as the poles asunder. What is tasty food to the Gujarati is abomination to the Bengali and vice versa. The European cannot stand an avalanche of tamarind or chillies, the Andhra accustomed to a fiery diet would find French dishes tasteless. Experiments have been tried before you came, but they were disastrous in their results; a few enjoyed, the majority starved, and bad stomach began to be the rule. On the other hand, neutral food can be eaten by all and does not injure the health,—that at least is what we have found,—even if it does not give any ecstasy to the palate.
Only, the food, if neutral, should not be tasteless. A certain amount of fluctuation is inevitable; no one can cook daily for 80 or 90 people and yet do always well. But if it is too much, a remedy is to be desired and the Mother is willing to consider any practicable and effective suggestion. If any practicable suggestion is made, it will be considered,—keeping always in view the difficulty I have pointed out, of the ninety people and the three continents and half a dozen provinces that are represented here, apart from individual idiosyncracies and fancies, which, of course, it is absolutely impossible even to try to satisfy unless we want to land ourselves in chaos.
What if people were to remember that they were here for yoga, make that the salt and savour of their existence and acquire samatā of the palate. My experience is that, if they did that, all the trouble would disappear and even the kitchen difficulties and the defects of the cooking would vanish.
August 23, 1930
20 November 1930
20th November, 1930
A deep well was seen in meditation. Its walls were deep blue. The water inside it was also blue. Ripples were playing on the surface of the water. The sky and all around was blue. As I began to look towards the water it went deeper and deeper and all around became very deep blue. Very very small blue flowers began to rain, with the flowers were white star-like things raining and falling into the well. As I went on looking towards the water it became deeper and deeper until it could not be seen. I want to know what it is. Sometimes flames of sacred fire are seen in front.
Yours,
Vishnu
Sri Aurobindo's reply:
It is a symbol of the growth of the spiritual consciousness and its manifestations. The blue colour gives the indication. The flames are the flames of Agni, the inner aspiration towards the Divine.
22 November 1930
22nd November, 1930
Yesterday morning I saw a number of green parrots in the beginning of my meditation. They had wings but could not fly and were coming crawling with great difficulty towards the centre. The colour of their beaks was light violet. They used to die as soon as they were reaching the centre. In this way innumerable parrots came and died. After this I had calmness and blue colour as usual.
What were these parrots and their death ? Have all visions some real meaning? Should I care to see these things and write to you whatever I see?
The centre is the centre of the true being. Green and. violet are colours of the vital plane and the parrots seem to indicate movements of the vital mind which try to become luminous and join the truth centre. The absence of the power of flight in the wings indicates a defect, probably that they are unable to transcend the vital plane (however brilliant in that plane itself) and therefore cannot live when brought into contact with the truth centre. Their death is no loss; it only leaves unstained the calm and intensity of the spiritual consciousness indicated by the blue colour.
All visions have a significance of one kind or another. This power of vision is very important for the Yoga and should not be neglected although it is not the most important thing—for the one most important thing is the change of the consciousness. All other powers like this of visions should be developed without attachment as parts and aims of the Yoga.
21 December 1930
21.12.1930
About ten or eleven years before, I had seen a church in a city in my vision. I do not now remember the details of the city, but when I was coming from the station to the Ashram this time the church on the way resembled the church in my vision. Yesterday I went to see the church from inside and found it all resembling that. About six or seven years before continuously for many months I used to see in my vision beautiful rooms and furniture of different kinds and colours and sometimes a young European lady used to appear there. Generally I used to see such visions at eight in the morning or at noon after taking my food. I had asked my Hatha-yogic Guru if these things had any meaning and he told me not to care to see such things as they had only a purpose to please the fancy.
I want to know whether these visions had some meaning in my coming here.
Vishnudutt...
From your account the church seems to have been a prevision of the church at Pondicherry. The second vision may have been also a prevision, but that is not so positive.
Visions of this kind are certainly not there only to please the fancy; they have always a significance. But all are not visions of the physical earth; they may be scenes in other worlds. Also you may see a scene, a house, people etc., in vital counterpart and not in their exact physical circumstances, the arrangement of rooms, furniture etc., may be different, the people may be acting, as people act on the vital plane and not as they do here etc.
You have evidently, had always a faculty of vision, but experience and the growth of an inner knowledge is necessary to understand and make use of the faculty.
6 October 1931
Pondicherry
Kanti
You are right in feeling that the protection and grace are always there and that all has been for the best. In your wife's condition, the best was that she should change her body and she has been able to do so in the state of mind which would give her the happiest conditions both after death and for a renewal hereafter of the spiritual development for which she had begun to aspire. It is good also that you have been able to keep your poise and the freedom of your spirit in this occurrence.
Again, you are entirely right in your resolution not to marry again; to do so would be in any case to invite serious and probably insuperable difficulties in your following the path of yoga, and, as in this path of yoga it is necessary to put away sexual desire, marriage would be not only meaningless but an absolute contradiction of your spiritual life. You can expect full support and protection from us in your resolution and, if you keep a sincere will and resolution in this matter, you may be sure that the Divine Grace will not fail you.
6.10.31
12 August 1932
To Lord Sri Aurobindo, Pondicherry. Dated 12th August 1932
My Divine Father,
Please let me know how can a disciple make the best use of his Guru, the spiritual guide, for his spiritual advancement and the Divine Light or Knowledge.
I am. Your son............
16 August 1932
No. 6, Depuy Street, Pondicherry
I could not answer your letter of the 12th at once for want of time. Your question is put in a general form and I can only answer that there are three conditions for a disciple profiting fully from his relation to a spiritual guide.
1st. He must accept him entirely and him alone without submitting himself to any contrary or second influence.
2nd. He must accept the indications given by the Guru and follow them firmly and with full faith and perseverance to the best of his own spiritual capacity.
3rd. He must make himself open and receptive to the Guru, for even more than what the guru teaches to the mind of the disciple, it is what he spiritually is, the spiritual consciousness, the knowledge, the light, the power, the Divinity in him that helps the disciple to grow by his receiving that into himself and its being used within himself for the growth of his consciousness and nature into its own divine possibility.
I answer generally because of the general form of the question; if there is something more precise and particular you hold in mind, you can state it and I will see whether I can give you a more particular answer.
16-8-1932
Natural Order of the Yoga
All should understand that the true Supramental does not come in the beginning but much later on in the Sadhana.
First:— The opening up and illumination of the mental, vital and the physical beings.
Secondly;—Making intuitive of the mind, thought, will etc., and development of the hidden consciousness progressively replacing the surface consciousness.
Thirdly:— The supramentalizing of the changed mental, vital and the physical beings and finally the descent of the true Supramental and the rising into the Supramental plane.
This is the natural order of the Yoga. These stages may overlap and intermix, there may be many variations, but the last two can only come in the advanced state of the progress. Of course the Supramental Divine guides this Yoga throughout but it is first through many intermediary planes; and it cannot easily be said of something that comes in the earlier periods that it is the direct and full Supramental. To think so when it is not so may well be a hindrance to progress.
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