Enlarged edition. Writings, letters of Sri Aurobindo & The Mother that were preserved by Champaklal. 'These writings to devotees are most valuable' - Champaklal
Sri Aurobindo : corresp.
THEME/S
I always see you with pleasure.
Never believe that I do not want to see you. It is a suggestion from the hostile forces — a falsehood.
25 February 1930
The Mother
Chinmayi,
The Mother has told me what you said to her. In other circumstances I would have asked you to stay on in the confidence that, however sharp the struggle might be, the inner being in you aided by the Divine Force would prevail over the other and foreign influence. But in the condition of mind described by you some relief and rest from the inner struggle seems to be necessary for you. An absence from Pondicherry and change of atmosphere may be the best way to give it.
I do not, however, care to take the responsibilities of sending you to Hyderabad, as that might turn out not at all the best, but the worst thing for you. Even if there were nothing else to do, it would not be possible to send you all that way alone; arrangements would have to be made. We would prefer instead to see whether another means cannot be arranged, such as staying in a quiet place in the hills where you could have a healthy change of air for a time and other surroundings and recover your vital strength and nervous balance. We are making enquiries and in a few days hope to be able to let you know what can be done.
I write this much today in answer to your request for an immediate decision; but I have something to say with regard to your spiritual life and its difficulties which I have not had time to finish. I will finish it tomorrow and send it to you.
3 June 1930
Sri Aurobindo
It will be perhaps better after all if you write a word to Jafar Hasan. You might tell him that you wrote your first letter under the impulse of a wish to go to Hyderabad for a time, but after posting it you felt that your real life was in the Ashram and you should not leave it, — and you are sending him this word so that he may not come to take you and go b disappointed, although you will always be glad to see him if at any time comes here.
1) Chinmayi (Mehdi Begum) was born on 4 October 1906 at Hyderabad. She arrived in the Ashram on 23 October 1927.
Do not despond or be discouraged; if you persevere, there can be doubt that the permanent change will come. But be more resolute hereafter not to listen to the suggestions of these forces whom you know to the enemies of your own soul and of your quiet and happiness, no 1 hostile to you than to us and our work; especially, do not shut yourself the Mother's help for any reason whatever, and never do what these for tell you to do; this shutting yourself up against help is the great mist you make when you are in this trouble. For some time you resisted their suggestions, and then we found it much easier to help you and to minimize or shorten their attacks. If you persevere in that uninterruptedly their power of attack will diminish, and then the time will come when can make it cease altogether.
Our force is always with you to aid you; it is for you to keep your open always to it and to us that it may conquer.
19 January 1931
I have a sweet little mother waiting at my door. Quick, quick, I must o¦ and let my sweet mother in.
26 March 1931
Chinmayi
It is very painful for us to see you in this condition and it makes very sad and anxious. Will you not make an effort to throw off the cloud that has fallen upon you? There is surely something you are not telling for nothing has happened to our knowledge that could make you go so as to refuse food and reject persistently the love and solicitude of Mother. Will you not tell us what is your reason and relieve your mind its burden?
You are our beloved child. Nothing should be able to throw a shad between you and our love. Throw off whatever shadow there is. I ask you to take your food as usual, speak to the Mother; turn to us once more; back the happiness and the sunshine.
The Mother is not yet all right. She sends you her love.
I want to give my whole being to Mother with all my love. But there is the whole nature that won't let me open myself. It lies like a weight on me and turns into ridicule all the efforts I make for getting out of it.
Not the whole nature — only a part of the vital nature. And even there it is not really your self, but something that has been imposed on the vital by the past and holds it still. That is why you feel it like a weight laid on you. It is bound to diminish and lose its present force, if you persistently refuse to accept it.
My dearest little child,
What a sad thing that my lovely is not well! I hope it is getting better now; but keep quiet and do not worry either for work or anything — you must not move until it is all gone... If you feel quite well this afternoon, come and I will be very happy.
With all my love and affection I am near you holding you in my arms and praying that you will be quite all right very, very soon.
Sunday morning 8.30
Herewith this morning's flower as pure and white as snow.
My dear little child,
I had no time to tell you that tomorrow morning there is no meditation but that I am expecting you at 7 o'clock as usual.
With my best love.
16 January 1932
This paper is made with true flower and leaf (the envelope too).
Once more this morning I have forgotten to inform you that tomorrow morning there is no meditation and that I am expecting you at 7 o'clock as usual.
I have kept you in my thoughts, in my heart, in my arms all day a feel sure that you, are quite all right now. With my best love,
3 February 1932
P.S.
Don't you find this picture very poetic?
Once more this morning I had no time to tell you that tomorrow the is no pranam and to remind you to come at seven o'clock for the work.
I hope you have well understood what I meant this morning. When the true and sacred love is there (love from the Divine and for the Divine whatever happens is always utilized as a means for increasing and perfecting the union. This leaves no place for worry, regret and depression but, on the contrary, fills the consciousness with the certitude of victor
With my best love,
Thursday
I will never be willing to send her away.
My sweet dearest little child,
I am so very happy to receive your loving letter.... Your affectionate thoughts had come in advance and had told me already of the vanishing of the clouds. I had felt your sweet love and cradled my dear little child my arms, filling her heart with the sunshine of confidence.
12 February 1932
Tomorrow no pranam, but you must come at 7 o'clock to do you work and receive your Mother's loving blessings.
3 March 1932
Mon petit enfant cheri, ma chupi...
I am obliged to go down. But my love remains with you with all its intensity. And in the intensity of this love, I have prayed and prayed to our Lord asking Him to pour His Grace upon you and to make you consciousness of the Divine Light and Soul in you, to give you the supreme realisation of His Presence.
With all my heart I kiss you, mon enfant cheri
No, no, you have not lost it! You have left it with me, safely in the box, saying that you would show me first, tomorrow, what you have done before fixing its place.
All is all right with our protection and love. Surely you know that.
13 March 1932 .
My sweet little child,
HOW is it that I have not seen you all the evening? Can it be that I had forgotten to tell you about the music? I would be so very sorry if I have.
But what about the stores and the soup? I missed you although my love was with you all the time.
I am sending you your flowers.
I am waiting for you, little child, come at once.
4 August 1932
Chinmayi had, last night, two beautiful dreams — in the first one she was facing an ocean, but all the front was hidden by shadows and black rocks. She was considering these shadows and rocks and reckoning them for what they were (difficulties etc.) when suddenly the sun rose marvellous and dazzling — The light was so intense that all shadows and rocks were swallowed up by it.
In the second I had given her a lot of dirty clothes to wash; they were so dirty that they seemed black. She washed them and they became so white that she says she never saw anything so white in her life.
27 September 1932
I want to see you and speak with you. Will you please come.
A great misunderstanding has taken place.
You seem to believe that I say one thing when I mean another. This is absurd.
When I speak, I speak plainly and always mean what I say.
When I say: the first condition for yoga is to keep quiet and calm mean it.
When I say that talk is useless and leads only to confusion, waste energy and loss of the little light one may have — I mean that and nothing else.
When I say that I have given nobody the right to speak in my name and to interpret my words according to his own fancy, I mean that and nothing else.
I hope that this is clear and decisive and this singular misunderstand will now come to an end.
There are two or three things that I think it necessary to say to you about your spiritual life and your difficulties.
First, I should like you to get rid of the idea that that which causes difficulties is so much a part of yourself that a true inner life is impossible to you. The inner life is always possible if there is present in the nature however much covered over by other things, a divine possibility through which the soul can manifest itself and build up its own true form in mind and life, — a portion of the Divine. In you this divine possibility exists in a marked and exceptional degree. There is in you an inner being of spontaneous light, intuitive vision, harmony and creative beauty which has shown itself unmistakably every time it has been able to throw off clouds that gather in your vital nature. It is this that the Mother has always tried to make grow in you and bring to the front. When one has that in
oneself, there is no ground for despair, no just reason for any talk of impossibility. If you could once firmly accept this as your true self, (as in- deed it is, for the inner being is your true self and the external, to which the cause of the difficulties belongs, is always something acquired and impermanent and can be changed,) and if you could make its development your settled and persistent aim in life, then the path would be clear and your spiritual future not only a strong possibility but a certitude.
It very often happens that when there is an exceptional power like this in the nature, there is found in the exterior being some contrary element which opens it to a quite opposite influence.
It is this that makes the endeavour after a spiritual life so often a difficult struggle: but the existence of this kind of contradiction even in an intense form does not make that life impossible. Doubt, struggle, efforts and failures, lapses, alternations of happy and unhappy or good and bad conditions, states of light and states of darkness are the common lot of human beings. They are not created by Yoga or by the effort after perfection; only in Yoga one becomes conscious of their movements and their causes instead of feeling them blindly, and in the end one makes one's way out of them into a clearer and happier consciousness. The ordinary life re- mains to the last a series of troubles and struggles, but the sadhak of the Yoga comes out of the trouble and struggle to a ground of fundamental serenity which superficial disturbances may still touch but cannot destroy, and finally, all disturbance ceases altogether.
Even the experience which so alarms you, of states of consciousness in which you say and do things contrary to your true will, is not a reason for despair. It is a common experience in one form or another of all who try to rise above their ordinary nature. Not only those who practise Yoga, but religious men and even those who seek only a moral control and self- improvement are confronted with this difficulty. And here again it is not the Yoga or the effort after perfection that creates this condition; there are contradictory elements in human nature and in every human being through which he is made to act in a way which his better mind disapproves. This happens to everybody, to the most ordinary men in the most ordinary life. It only becomes marked and obvious to our minds when we try to rise above our ordinary external selves, because then we can see that it is the lower elements which are being made to revolt consciously against the higher will. There then seems to be for a time a division in the nature, because the true being and all that supports it stand back and separate from these lower elements. At one time the true being occupies the field of the nature, at another the lower nature used by some contrary Force pushes it back and seizes the ground, — and this we now see, while formerly the thing happened but the nature of the happening was not clear us. If there is the firm will to progress, this division is over passed and, the unified nature, unified around that will, there may be other difficulties, but this kind of discord and struggle will disappear. I have written so much on this point because I think you have been given the wrong idea that it is the Yoga which creates this struggle and also that this contradiction or division in the nature is the sign of an unfitness or impossibility to go through to the end. Both ideas are quite incorrect and things will be easier if you cast them out of your consciousness altogether.
But it is true that in your case as in others this contradiction has been given a special and very discomforting kind of intensity by a hereditary weakness of the nervous parts which has always shown itself in you by fits of despondency, gloom, unrest and self tormenting darkness am spoiled for you the savour of life. Your mistake is to think that this i something to which you are bound and from which you cannot escape, fate which mistakes a spiritual change of your nature impossible. I have seen other families afflicted by this kind of hereditary nervous weakness accompanying very often exceptional gifts of intelligence or artistic capacity or spiritual possibilities. One or two may have succumbed to it like Prashanta but others, sometimes after a period of acute disturbance overcame the perturbations caused by this weakness; either it disappeared or it took some minor and innocuous form which did not interfere with the development of the life and its capacities. Why then despair of yourself or fix without any true cause the conviction that you cannot change and this thing will always be there? This despondency, this adverse conviction is the real danger for you; it prevents you from making a quiet and settled resolution and a permanent effective effort, because of it the return of this darker condition makes you quickly yield and allow the adverse external force which uses this defect to play and do its will with you. It is false idea that makes more than half the trouble.
There is no true reason why you should not overcome this defect of your external beings as many others have done. It is only a part of your vital nature that is affected, even though it often over clouds the rest the other parts of your being can be easily made the fit instruments of the divine possibility of which I have spoken. Especially, you have a clear and fine intelligence which, when rightly used, becomes a ready instrument of the light and can be of great use to you in overcoming its vital weakness. And this divine possibility, this truth of your inner being, if you accept it, can of itself make certain your liberation and the change of your external nature.
Accept this divine possibility in you; have faith in your inner being and its spiritual destiny. Make its development as a portion of the Divine your aim in life, for a great and serious aim in life is a most powerful help towards getting rid of this kind of disturbing or disabling nervous weak- ness; it gives firmness, balance, a strong support to the whole being and a powerful reason for the will to act. Accept too the help we can give you, not shutting yourself against it by disbelief, despair or unfounded revolt. At present you cannot prevail because you have not fixed in yourself a faith, an aim, a settled confidence; the black mood has been able to cloud your whole consciousness. But if you have fixed this faith in you and can cling to it, then the cloud will not be able to fix itself for any long period, the inner being will be able to remain on the surface, keep you open to the Light and maintain the inner ground for the soul even if the outer is partly clouded or troubled. When that happens, the victory will have been won and the entire elimination of the vital weakness will be only a matter of a little perseverance.
Sri Aurobindo Painting by Barindra Kumar Ghose
Barindra Kumar Ghose - sketch by the Mother
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