CHAPTER X
In chapter VIII the closing stress was on Sri Aurobindo's vision of the Earth as the final venue of "heroic souls"* who are missioned to carry through a great experiment because this Earth has been chosen as "the forge where the Arch-manson shapes His works."* This experiment has a twofold movement: first, the aspiration of the animality in man after Divinity and secondly, the rain of His answering Grace in order to transform man's seemingly ineradicable animality which has been the despair of dreamers and idealists. That is why Sri Aurobindo speaks so emphatically (if a little nostalgically) of the Descent of the power of Love Divine into our dismal humanity — a downpour of supernal Light on terrestrial life inaugurating a new era of freedom and harmony.
But to invoke the Divine Power for the redemption of earth- life is one thing, to apply the power to alleviate the "misery" of ignorant man is quite another. How hard this task is in practice is difficult for most of us to realise because, for one thing, few of us have any knowledge of occult powers and even less clue to the know-how, that is, how to make use of them when such powers are given to us — as they occasionally are — before we have achieved some real insight into the mysterious springs of human nature in action. Sri Aurobindo gave me a pregnant hint of this deep difficulty in 1924, when he said that he had come to realise through his Yogic knowledge that "to help humanity out, it is not enough for an individual, however great, to achieve an ultimate solution individually" because "even when the Light is
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* Savitri XLI For full quotation vide Chapter VIII
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ready to descend it cannot come to stay till the lower plane is also ready to bear the pressure of the Descent.... Consequently the utmost you can do, here and now, is to communicate only partially the light of your realisation in the measure people are receptive."*
What he meant by this I will try to explain with the light I got from him in my own sadhana.
As I lived in his ashram and, much to my shame, tussled with him in my pathetic ignorance which made me rush in again and again where much greater beings than I had feared to tread, I felt a great load weighing down my consciousness, as it were. For as the days passed, I came to realise increasingly, how much I had been found wanting: day after depressing day, I saw how I was petering out, even though the more restive I grew the more patiently he gave me a long rope. He did this not to force the balm of his wisdom on my unruly ego but to show me the way to my own higher nature which the thunder-storms of my boisterous self-will blurred so effectively from my "rational eyes", as I put it self-appreciatively. Month after weary month I challenged him to prove his thesis which I knew in my heart of hearts to be true and yet, curiously, I declined to meet him halfway every time he leaned down to accord me a warm hand-clasp. I aimed at him my crude gibes but he came down unperturbed to my level and met me with his smiling repartees. I doubted him but he blessed me in return. Year after year I resisted him but he only pacified the Old Adam in me. Those who, in their noisy ignorance, castigate the dogmatism of spiritual teachers may appear very sweetly undogmatic to the uninformed, but those who have even once come into contact with an authentic Guru can only testify to his incredible patience and tolerance.
But what I wish to stress here is not simply his tolerance and patience, not even his peerless capacity for understanding the rebel's point of view, but a gift, amounting to genius, of appraising with imaginative sympathy the tatter's position as a
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* Among the Great (American edition) p. 219-20.
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questioning seeker and then coming down to the level of his intelligence and receptivity. To give an instance in point
I had come to the Ashram with a strong mental predilection in favour of asceticism. So even though I loved karma — being, by nature, ineradicably rajasic — I wanted to trail off into inaction of the sattwic type, to shine as a living example of inaction, bhakti and wisdom. I was told by a gurubhai that Gurudev favoured a dynamic spirituality and karma as against static wisdom. This made me at once glad and sad. Glad because I was by nature energetic; sad because I feared that karma would tether me irrevocably to the world and therefore, a fortiori, to my present state of non-experience as against transcendent God realisation. Yet why must he go on browbeating Nirod the charming pessimist, with his Aurobindonian gospel of incessant karma to the exclusion of jnana and inveigh against those who, like Dilip, loved the traditional thoroughfare of bhakti which at least led somewhere? Did not even the great Sri Ramkrishna warn the spiritual aspirant against being caught in the toils of karma when he gave the simile of the wife carrying a child, saying that the nearer she draws to her confinemerit the lighter is made the load of her work till, when the child is born, she has only to live for the child to the exclusion of everything else?
As I waxed eloquent over the bliss of inaction, often enough I went too far: my impulse landed me in an anti-climax and I looked like a disciple who wanted to give points to his Guru. So I apologised in a postscript: wouldn't he pardon my unpardonable temerity? For if he got displeased with me, where would I land ? And then wasn't I at least a diligent worker in practice though an opponent of karma in idealistic theory...? To that he wrote, indulgent as ever (1934):
"I do not understand why you should assume that I am displeased with the karma question. I castigated or fustigated Nirod not from displeasure nor even 'more in sorrow than ln anger', but for fun and also from a high sense of duty: for that erring mortal was bold enough to generalise from his very limited experience and impose it as a definite law in Yoga, discrediting
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in the process my own immortal philosophy! What then could I do but to jump on him in a spirit of genial massacre?"
Nirod used to haunt my nest almost daily in those days as we two happened to be birds of the same shade of sky-hostile feather., Thus while roosting together, we two drowned our world- disapproval many a time in our morning jeremiads over the tea.
So we chuckled at this point, albeit, alas, a little too prematurely!
"I am afraid," Sri Aurobindo went on to add, "your letter too does very much the same thing. For in spite of your disclaimer, you practically come to the conclusion that all my nonsense about integral Yoga and karma being as much a way to realisation as jnana — and bhakti is either a gleaming chimera or practicable only by Avatars or else a sheer laborious superfluity — (since one can jump straight into the Divine through the open door of bhakti or sweep majestically into Him by the easy road of meditation) so why this scramble through the jungle of karma by which nobody reached anywhere? The old Yogas are true, are they not? Then why a new-fangled and more difficult one with this unheard-of talk about Supramental and God knows what else? There can be no answer to that; for I can only answer by a repetition of the statement of my own knowledge and experience. That is what I have done in my today's answer to Nirod and perhaps that amounts only to a perverse obstinacy in riding my gleaming and dazzling chimera and forcing my nuisance of a superfluity on a world weary of itself and anxious to get an easy short cut to the Divine. Unfortunately, I do not believe in short cuts — at any rate none ever led me where I wanted to go. However, let it rest there.
"I have never disputed the truth of the old Yogas — I have myself had the experience of Vaishnava bhakti and of Nirvana in the Brahman, I recognize their truth in their own field and for their own purpose — the truth of their experience so far as it goes — though I am in no way bound to accept the truth of the mental philosophies founded on the experience. I similarly find that my Yoga is true in its own field — a larger field, as I think
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— and for its own purpose. The purpose of the old is to get away from life to the Divine — so obviously, let us drop karma. The purpose of the new is to reach the Divine and bring fullness of what is gained into life — for that, the Yoga by work is indispensable. It seems to me that there is no mystery about that or anything to perplex anybody — it is rational and inevitable. Only you say that the thing is impossible; but that is what is said about everything before it is done.
"I may point out, however, that karma-yoga, is not new but a very old yoga, Gita was not written yesterday and karmayoga existed even before the Gita. Your idea that the only justification in the Gita for works is that it is all an unavoidable nuisance, so better make the best use of it, is rather summary and crude. If that were all, the Gita would be the production of an imbecile and I. would hardly have been justified in writing two volumes on it or the world in reading it as one of the greatest scriptures, especially for its treatment of the place of works in spiritual endeavour. There is surely more in it than that. Anyhow, your doubt whether works can lead to realisation — or rather, your flat and sweeping denial of the possibility — contradicts the experience of those who have achieved this supposed impossibility. You say that work lowers the consciousness, brings you out of the inner into the outer, — yes, if you consent to externalise yourself in it instead of doing works from within: but that is just what one has to learn not to do. For that matter, thought and feeling also can externalise one in the same way; but it is a question of linking thought, feeling and act firmly to the inner consciousness by living there and making the rest an instrument. Difficult? Even bhakti is not easy and nirvana, for most men, is more difficult than that.
"You again try to floor me with Ramakrishna. But something puzzles me, as Shankara's stupendous activity of karma puzzles me in the apostle of inaction! — you see you are not the only puzzled person in the world! Ramakrishna also gave the image of the jar which ceased gurgling when it was full. Well, but Ramakrishna spent the last few years of his life in talking about
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the Divine and receiving disciples — was that not action, not work? Did Ramakrishna become a half-full jar after being a full one or was he never full? Did he get far away from God and so begin work? Or had he reached a condition in which he was bound neither to rajasic work and mental prattling nor to inactivity and silence, but could do, from the divine realisation, the divine works and speak, from the inner consciousness, of the divine world? If the last, then perhaps, in spite of the dictum, his example at least is rather in my favour.
"I do not know why you drag in humanitarianism, X's activism, philanthropical service, etc. None of these are part of my Yoga or in harmony with my works, so they do not touch me. I never thought that the Congress politics or feeding the poor or writing beautiful poems would lead straight to Vaikuntha or the Absolute. If it were so, Romesh Dutt on one side and Baudelaire on the other would be the first to attain the highest and welcome us there. It is not the form of the work itself or mere activity but the consciousness and Godward will behind it that are the essence of karma yoga; the work is only the necessary instrumentation for the union with the Master of works, the transit to the pure will and power of Light from the will and power of the Ignorance.
"Finally, why suppose that I am against meditation or bhakti? I have not the slightest objection to your taking either or both as the means of approach to the Divine. Only I saw no reason why anyone should fall foul of works and deny the testimony of those who, as the Gita says, reached through works perfect realisation and oneness of nature with the Divine — samsiddhim sadharmyam (as did Janaka and others) — simply because he himself cannot find or has not found their deeper secret; hence my defence of works."
His indulgence emboldened me. But paradoxical though it may sound, I myself loved karma for its own sake, and yet found my mind championing quietism as soon as he emphasised activism, knowing all the time that his brand of activism was very different from ours. Thus, in the present instance, just when
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I felt his greatness most, I was conscious of a division in me and then and there I penned a long letter to him striving in my inapt way to rail at his theory about karma. I wrote that I was delighted that he had lifted the ban on bhakti; that I was indeed thankful for small mercies; that he confounded us beautifully with his paradoxes — wasn't that why he wrote about his being "puzzled"? and so on. I went on then to ask him if it was really possible to refer all our works to the Divine. I reminded him. once more that though I had tried to "remember" Krishna while I worked, I found that I failed utterly in the attempt for more than a few minutes at a time because I got quickly absorbed in whatever I undertook. So, I had come in the end to ask myself if "offering one's works" could prove a practical proposition. In short, bhakti and jnana, I contended, meant business where as karma only landed one in a quandary, because the moment it became interesting, it took entire possession of the mind and therefore could not be offered to the Divine. To put in more succinctly, through works none had so far arrived, while through bhakti and jnana at least a brilliant galaxy had achieved an exit.. So why on earth must one stick to the mantra: yat karomi Jaganmata-stadeva tava pujanam (whatever I do, O World Mother, is an oblation to thee!)? Lastly, I asked him whether his new-fangled Integral Yoga could really succeed with anyone who was not congenitally a Hercules? "Nayamatma valahinena labhyah" said the Upanishad. But, if "'none but strong deserved the fair Soul's favours", what hope was there for the likes of us who could not claim the strength of a Ramkrishna, a Shankar, a Ramana Maharshi or a Vivekananda? Thus I went on blowing my bubbles of sorrow, inveigled by their, phantom iridescence.
But this time he did not choose to meet my banter with banter and wrote back in high if not stem seriousness:
"I must again point out that I have never put any ban on bhakti, so there is no meaning in your saying that I have lifted a ban which never existed. Also I am not conscious of having banned meditation either at any time — so the satirical praise of my
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mercifulness is out of place. I imagine I have stressed both bhakti and knowledge in my Yoga as well as works, even if I have not given to any of them exclusive importance like Shankara or Chaitanya. Also. I think I have not imposed my own choice unduly upon anyone in the matter of sadhana. Those who wanted to go wholesale for meditation, I have left to do so without any interference, though not without any help I could give. I have latterly sometimes discounselled entire retirement, but that was because I did not want a repetition of the cases of N and others who, in spite of my warnings, went in for it and came to grief. I have written what I thought when people asked me; but if they have no use for my ideas about things, why do they ask me?
"My remarks about being puzzled were, by the way, mere Socratic irony. Of course I am not in the least puzzled by the case either of Shankara or of Ramakrishna.
"The difficulty you feel or any sadhaka feels about sadhana is not really a question of meditation versus bhakti versus works;
it is a difficulty of the attitude to be taken, the approach or whatever you may like to call it. Yours seems to be characterised on one side by a tremendous effort in the mind, on the other a gloomy certitude in the vital which seems to watch and mutter under the breath if not aloud: 'Yes, yes, go ahead, my fine fellow, but — it will come to nothing.' and then at the end of meditation:
'What did I tell you, hasn't it come to nothing?' A vital so ready to despair that even after a 'glorious' flood of poetry it uses the occasion to preach the gospel of defeatism! I have passed through most of the difficulties of the sadhakas, but I cannot recollect to have looked on delight of poetical creation or concentration in it as something undivine and a cause for despair. This seems to me excessive. Even Shankaracharya would not agree with you here.
"If you can't remember the Divine all the time you are writing, it does not greatly matter. To remember and dedicate at the beginning and give thanks at the end ought to be enough. Or, at the most, to remember too when there is a pause. Your method seems to me rather painful and difficult, you seem to be trying
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to remember and work with the one and the same part of your mind. I don't know if that is possible. When people remember all the time during work (it can be done) it is usually with the back of the their minds or else there is created gradually a faculty of double thought or else a double consciousness — one in front that works, one within that witnesses and remembers. This is also another way which was mine for a long time — a condition in which the work takes place automatically and without intervention of personal thought or mental action, while the consciousness remains silent in the Divine. But this is only a comment — I am not asking you to try that. For usually it does not come so much by trying as by a very simple constant aspiration and will of consecration — or else by a movement of the consciousness separating the inner from the instrumental being. Aspiration and will of consecration calling down a greater Force to do the works is a method which brings great results, even if in some it takes a long time about it. That is a great secret of sadhana — to know how to get things done by the Power behind or above instead of doing all by the mind's effort. Let me hasten to say, however, that I am not dogmatising — I don't mean to say that the mind's effort is unnecessary or has no result — only if it tries to do everything by itself, that becomes a laborious effort for all except the spiritual athletes. Nor do I mean that the other method is the longed-for short cut; the result may, as I have said, take a long time. Patience and firm resolution are necessary in every method of sadhana.
"Strength is all right for the strong — but aspiration and the Grace answering to it are not altogether myths; they are great realities of the spiritual life. Again, you see, I am muddling the human mind — like Krishna of the Gita — by supporting contrary things at the same time — can't help it — it is my nature.
"But I am unable to explain further today — so I break off these divagations. I am rather too overburdened with 'work' these days to have much time for the expression of 'knowledge'. This is simply a random answer."
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The general reader, I feel, is likely to appraise the value of letters such as these in terms either of their weightiness of matter or profundity of wisdom. But to us, his disciples, every such communication was valued even more as a token of his Grace than for its other merits, as also because of the light it carried from the fount of his luminous personality which we had grown to cherish. To me, personally, his letters radiating affection imparted something even more convincing — possibly because only such personal letters could convey to my sceptic mind the light of seer-hood that hovered round him, through a receptive emotion which nothing short of an intimate contact with his soul of compassion could arouse. Besides, had he not written to me once: "I am certainly not helping you only with letters, but doing it whenever I get some time for concentration and I notice that when I can do it with sufficient energy and at some length there is a response." Outsiders may not seize the import of this, but as I saw the effect of his concentration on and for me day after patient day, I had to believe in its concrete efficacy. Could it be otherwise when, time and time again, I experienced my glooms melting away like mists before sunrise and strength returning to me through his exhortation dripping every time the deep tenderness of his solitude?
On one occasion my gloom evaporated in a moment — it was almost like a let-there-be-light-and-there-was-light miracle. I was at the time in an utter mental prostration and wrote I could well understand his inability to help me out of the abyss of my despond since he could not possibly spare time for one so recalcitrant to his force. To that he wrote: "Want of time does not come in the way as there is no day on which I do not devote some time to thinking of you and concentrating for you. The difficulty lies in the removal of the obstruction in the physical mind — what you feel as the impasse. But it will go if you persevere. What seemed to me denied and impossible for years (bringing about a state of helpless stagnation and hopelessness and disbelief in even the goodwill and power of the Divine, the spiritual Force and the Guru) suddenly happens after all — when
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those who never had any experience for years get the opening The difficulty is great and the darkness of the material conscious ness obstinate, but still if one knows how to persist or even to wait, the Light comes...."
And then he went on to add reassuringly:
"It is not true that you never received force from us. You have received it to any extent; it can only be said that you were not conscious of it, but that happens with many. Certainly none of the sadhakas receives or uses all the Force that the Mother sends, but that is a general fact and not peculiar to you. I hope you will not carry out your idea of going suddenly away.... Whatever else you may doubt, you should not doubt that our love and affection will always be with you. But I still hope that you will be able to overcome this despair and develop the great force of intense will which brings the light that is sure to come."
And he wrote in a postscript in reply to my sigh over his preoccupation with the Empyrean: "No, it is not with the Empyrean that I am busy: I wish I was! It is rather with the opposite end of things: it is in the Abyss that I have to plunge to build a bridge between the two."
What exactly he meant by building a bridge and what was the nature of the resistance he was confronted with at every turn we shall probably never know, but we can surely infer from his beautiful if somewhat sad poem, A God's Labour, that he had known all along that it was unlikely to be an easy achievement of swift Yogic engineering:
I had hoped to build a rainbow bridge
Marrying the soil to the sky
And sow in this dancing planet midge
The moods of infinity.
But too bright were our heavens, too far away,
Too frail their ethereal stuff;
Too splendid and sudden our light could not stay;
The roots were not deep enough.
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How could the "roots" be "deep enough" when we, instead of tending the saplings, would throw so lightly away the seeds of faith and aspiration he would plant again and again in us? To give but one instance, one of his disciples on whom he had simply lavished his love declined to change and deserted. A year later this man wrote to me flaunting not only an ephemeral success of a trivial undertaking of his but rationalising it into a deep (?) philosophy:
"Life is a mirror, Dilip," he poetised complacently, "and being a mirror, it must return smile for smile and frown for frown." I forwarded it to Gurudev and received his comment the next morning:
"As for his 'philosophy' it is phrases and nothing else: what he means is, I suppose, that when one is successful one can be jolly — which is not philosophy but commonplace, only he turns it upside down to make it look wise. Or perhaps he means that if you smile at Mussolini and Hitler they will spare you castor-oil or cudgel: but even that is not sure, for they may want to know what the smile means first — flattery or satire"
But smile or no smile, he added, one must stave off defeatism and eschew the expensive luxury of despondency:
"Don't allow the assailant (Insidious Mr. Doubt) to become a companion, don't give him the open door and fireside seat. Above all, don't drive away the incoming Divine with that dispiriting wet blanket of sadness and despair! Or, to put it more soberly, accept once for all that this thing has to be done, that it is the only thing left for yourself on the earth. Outside are earthquakes and Hitlers and a collapsing civilization and generally speaking, the ass and the flood.* All the more reason to tend towards the one thing to be done, the thing you have been sent to do, and for getting it done. It is difficult and the way long and the encouragement given meagre? So what? Why should you expects so great a thing to be easy or that there must be either a swift success or none? The difficulties have to be faced, and the
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* Reference is to a parable which is to follow presently.
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more cheerfully they are faced, the sooner will they be overcome. The one thing to do is to foster the fixed resolve: 'Have it I must and have it I will'. Impossible? There is no such thing as impossibility: there are difficulties and things of tongue haleine, but impossibilities, no. What one is determined fixedly to do, will get done — now or later it becomes possible. Drive out the dark despair and go bravely on with your poetry, your novels and your Yoga. As the darkness disappears, the inner doors too will open."
Tagore once said of the poetry of my father, Dwijendra Lal Roy, that he passed from the serious to the light moods with an astonishing ease of transit. The same might be said of Sri Aurobindo's letters though not of his other writings which are more concerned with an illumined clarity than with the chiaroscuro of wit and humour. We had come to the Ashram drawn by this magnetic light with which his messages were instinct. But it was, more often than not, a puzzle rather than an effulgence to our novice eyes. So when, in the 'thirties, he started writing his letters, somewhat freely, naturally we all acclaimed them as much for the relief as for the rapture his light moods occasioned in our somewhat over-impressed breasts still resonant with the tribute of a quondam Prime Minister of England:
"I called on one whose name is on every lip as a wild extremist across whose path the shadow of the hangman falls... .He talked of things which trouble the soul of man; he wandered aimlessly into the dim regions of aspiration where the mind finds a soothing resting-place. He was far more a mystic than a politician. He saw India seated on a temple throne.... Man has to fulfil God, he has written, and that is only possible by fulfilling himself, this again being possible only through nationality....The Matripuja the worship of the Mother — has become a political rite....He returns to his Gods and to the faith of his country for there is no India without its faith and no faith without India."*
* Quoted from J. Ramsay Macdonald's The Awakening in India first published in London in 1910.
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We felt a sense of relief because when we dwell on tributes such as these the awe they generate militate against the sense of kinship we so often strive to feel with the Guru but in vain: he is too great for such as we, is he not? — we ask ourselves almost with a pang. But laus Deo — when such a heart-warming personality comes down to us with letters limpid with love and a human understanding which we can understand, then comes the thrill because the incredible thing then seems to have come to pass: even such a giant can then, on occasions, dwarf himself so that we may feel his humanity! I can almost recapture the thrill which his first letters gave us and the mystic thanksgiving that rose from our hearts like vapour from a calm lake at sundown, wistful and yet iridescent with romance. For such a great revolutionary, who matured later into an even greater Yogi of invulnerable gravity, to have retained unimpaired the human zest for laughter and humour and repartees! About his humour we gathered titbits only through anecdotes and cautious gossip and I learned, to my immense relief, that though in society he withdrew generally into the shell of his deep, congenital reserve, with his intimates of the inner circle he had always loved to indulge in banter and laughter and quips of every description. An old friend of his once gave me a sample of his pre-yogic humour. "The Prince of Baroda was going to be married," he said. "Sri Aurobindo was then the Vice-Principal of Gaekwar's College. When the distinguished guests had assembled for the wedding dinner, the royal bridegroom came up to him dignified and demur. The grave Vice-Principal, revered by all, shook hands with 'the cynosure of neighbouring eyes' and wished him 'Many many happy returns of the day!'"
As I have said, in the Ashram they often told me how refreshingly he used to spar with his adherents of old. I always envied them the privilege they had enjoyed till, in the course of time, he began writing freely to me. I must quote here in full the first letter he wrote, in 1932 shedding the solace of his humour on my badly hurt head:
"You struck your head against the upper sill of the door our
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engineer Chandulal fixed in your room? A pity, no doubt. But remember that Chandulal's dealings with the door qua door were scientifically impeccable: the only thing he forgot was that people _— of various sizes — should pass through it. If you regard the door from the Russellian objective point of view as an external thing in which you must take pleasure for its own sake, then this will be brought home to you and you will see that it was quite all right. It is only when you bring in irrelevant subjective considerations like people's demands on a door and the pain of a stunned head, that objections can be made. However, inspite of philosophy, the Mother will speak to Chandulal in the morning and get him to do what has (practically, not philosophically) to be done. May I suggest, however, if it is any consolation to you that our Lilliputian engineer perhaps measured things by his own head, forgetting that there were in the Ashram higher heads and broader shoulders? ... As for the Divine rapture, a knock on the head or foot or elsewhere can be received with the physical ananda of pain or pain and ananda or pure physical ananda — for I have often, quite involuntarily, made the experiment myself and passed with honours. It began, by the way, as far back as in Alipore Jail when I got bitten in my cell by some very red and ferocious-looking warrior ants and found to my surprise that pain and pleasure are conventions of our senses. But I do not expect that unusual reaction from others. And I suppose there are limits, e.g. the case of the picketers in Madras or Dr. Noel Paton." (These were beaten by the police as a result of which there were many fractured skulls.) "In any ease their way of having rapture is better off the list and that dwarfish doorway was not a happy contrivance."
Then came, in 1934, his comment on the parable I had retailed to him of the ass and the flood:
"Once upon a time, Guru, there was a foolish ass who lived in the neighbourhood of a wise Yogi. One day a sudden flood burst the banks of a river nearby and flooded the countryside. The wise Yogi, being wise, ran up till he reached the safe top of a hill at the foot of which he used to mediate day and night in a
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cave. But the ass — being asinine, not to say unmeditative — was swept away by the rushing tides. 'Alas!' he brayed, 'the world is drowning!' 'Don't be an ass,' reprimanded the Yogi in high scorn from up the hill-top. 'It's only you who are drowning — not this great big world.' 'But sir,' argued the idiot, 'if I drown how can I be sure that the world will survive?' And the Yogi was struck dumb and wondered, for the first time, which was the deeper wisdom — the human or the asinine! And I too have started wondering on my own, Guru!" I added — "So I appeal to you to adjudicate: tell me whose is the more pitiable plight: the Yogi's or the ass's? And incidentally, tell me also if my mind is going off the handle because I find the foolish ass's argument nearly as rational as the wise Yogi's?"
To that he replied: "Your wise but not over-wise ass has put a question that cannot be answered in two lines. Let me say, however, in defence of the much-maligned ass that he is a very clever and practical animal and the malignant imputation of stupidity to him shows only human stupidity at its worst. It is because the ass does not do what man wants him to do even under blows, that he is taxed with stupidity.
"But really, the ass behaves like that first because he has a sense of humour and likes to provoke the two-legged beast into irrational antics; and secondly, because he finds that what man wants of him is quite a ridiculous and bothersome nuisance which ought not to be demanded of any self-respecting donkey. Also note that the ass is a philosopher. When he hee-haws, it is out of a supreme contempt for the world in general and for the human imbecile in particular. I have no doubt that in the asinine language man has the same significance as ass in ours. These deep and original considerations are, however, by the way — merely meant to hint to you that your balancing between a wise man and the wise ass is not so alarming a symptom after all."
Once a rather funny thing happened in 1933. We used in those days to have a musical programme in the Ashram, about once in two months. As I was singing a song on Krishna on one such occasion with Mother sitting before me in samadhi, I was
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conscious of a sudden commotion behind me where the others were sitting. A senior sadhaka of considerable girth, Purushottam — so I was told subsequently — got up on a sudden to dance when Ambu, a rather thin though strong youth, leapt up to restrain the other's indomitable ecstasy, as a result of which there was, necessarily, a tussle. So the musical soirée was partially spoiled. This saddened me and I asked Sri Aurobindo if I had been responsible in any way, or if I had simulated a bhakri unfelt by my heart. To that he replied:
"There was no misdirection of your appeal to Krishna; if there was anybody responsible it was Anilkumar with his tabla (Indian drum). But there was nothing wrong and no possession in the evil sense of the word — nothing hostile. The beat of the tabla — more than anything else — created a vibration which was caught hold of by some rhythmic material energy and that in turn was caught hold of by Purushottam's body which considered itself under a compulsion to execute the rhythm by a dance. There is the whole (occult) science and genesis of the affair. Purushottam thought he was inspired and in a trance; Ambu thought Purushottam was going to break his own head and other people's legs; a number of others thought Purushottam was going cracked or already cracked; some thought Puriushottam was killing Ambu which Ambu contemptuously rejects, saying he was able to hold Purushottam all alone, and out of these conflicting mental judgments — if they can be called so — arose the whole row. A greater quietude in people's minds would have allowed the incident to be 'liquidated' in a less uproarious fashion — but the Mother was absorbed in the music and could only intervene later on when Champaklal consulted her. That is all."
And sometimes, though rarely, we had pure fun as well — just unqualified laughter and mirth. To give; an instance or two:
I had a friend whom we called Bindu. He wrote to Gurudev (1934) a long letter besieging him with a number or world-shaking questions to which the reply came in due course:
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'Bindu,
Good heavens! But what! But when! But which! You expect me to give you 'clear and concise' notes on all that, fixing the 'nature and salient features' of each blessed thing? It will take me several Sundays wholly devoted to grappling with this tremendous task! And how the deuce am I to tell you in a 'clear and concise way' what consciousness is or mind or life is? Do you think these confounded entities are themselves clear and concise or have any 'salient features'? They are 'salient' only in the Latin sense of jumping about all the time and becoming something different each moment. As for 'consciousness' you might as well ask me to define the world. Of course I could do it by replying — 'a damned mess', and that would be very satisfactory to me as well as 'clear and concise' but it would hardly serve the purpose."
Bindu had, however, a peculiar humour wedded to a native gift for insistence which he developed like a master craftsman till it looked almost indistinguishable from genius. I can give it no other name because in those days Gurudev or Mother never allowed outsiders to cook for them. But his sheer importunate genius prevailed and he was allowed to cook what we call prasad. This he sent up duly to Gurudev who ate of it but not much, whereupon Bindu penned him a disconsolate letter a copy of which I still possess.
"Gurudev," he wrote, "Nalina brought me back the dishes. I was stunned to find that you had hardly touched them. I am deeply pained, sorely disappointed, utterly dejected and mortally wounded, and cannot imagine why you are so unsympathetic to me."
Gurudev wrote back a sweet letter of solace:
"Bindu!
Don't be absurd! Our sympathy towards you is profound and perfect, but it cannot be measured by our sympathy towards your eatables. We, usually, just taste the prasad people send to us; sometimes we take more but never when it is very sweet or very extraordinary. Of your vermicelli pudding we could well speak in
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language of the passionate address of the lover to his beloved: 'O sweet! O too too sweet!' (which doesn't mean, though, that it was not well done). And the stew was extraordinary, albeit of anther world — so much so that if I tasted the first forkful with anxiety, the second was with awe, after which I ventured no farther into these unknown countries. By the way, I took much more of the vermicelli than I usually do of these concentrated puddings. So you are wrong in thinking that I did not touch your prasad."
Bindu came triumphantly to me flourishing the letter as a lethal weapon.
"You may write to him reams and reams of letters and poems and what not," he chortled, "but you dare not cook for him." "Don't be silly!" I returned. "Any duffer can." "I defy you to prove it, scoffer!" he retaliated. I had to accept the challenge, to save my face. But here, too, came a snag, for the stipulation was that I must peel, boil, fry — in a word, do all that had to be done single-handed.
So when I had playfully accepted the gauntlet flung by him, I felt scared: how could one who had never so much as boiled an egg in his life manipulate into being an eatable dish over the stove? Joking was all right, but I could hardly send up to Gurudev and Mother a horrible concoction as a bhoga! Suddenly I had a brain-wave: I appealed piteously to an experienced matron, Amiya, to come to my rescue and thus prove my saviour. I asked her to direct me, verbally, without moving a finger. And lo, it worked! The incredible miracle was achieved! A vegetable entrée of potatoes, peas, and tomatoes was got ready by myself, single-handed, in less than an hour and a half! As I sent it up to Gurudev I wrote in my covering letter all about its genesis and evolution and then went on to add, casually, that though it was literally "cooked all by myself," I had availed myself of a few 'whispering directions" by Amiya. His heartening letter came duly, the next morning. "Your cooking is remarkable and wonderful," he wrote. "If
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you had not disclosed the secret about Amiya's 'whispers' I would have been inclined to claim it as a yogic miracle'. Even with the 'whispers' it is an astonishing first success. Ashcharyavat pashyati kashchidenam* as the Gita says! My palate and stomach as well as my pen has done full justice to the event."
"Guru," I wrote once, "Lady Indignant told me today that she
had reported of late to you that she was being forced by me and Saurin to accept our invitations to tea. A word in self-defence. We never suspected that she had disliked our — shall I say — 'chivalry.' In fact when we invited her she complied after a few no's which we had, naturally, interpreted as 'yes' because when she came to tea, she, with her face wreathed in smiles, did not at all toy with the tea, far less with the cakes! 'Caprice!' I philosophised ruefully, 'thy name is woman!' But henceforth — now that the iron has entered into my soul — she comes to tea to us at her own peril, let her beware!"
He wrote back, applauding: "Well, that is all right. If Lady Indignant is a devotee of the Great Cha± Devi — she will fly and throw herself on the altar without need of urging: if not, she will sit in tealess meditation, invitation-free. As for chivalry, however, it is more than a century ago that Burke lamented:
'The days of chivalry are gone'! And in the year of grace, 1932, with feminism triumphant everywhere — except in France and Bokhara — how do you propose to keep the cult going any longer?"
Sometimes —just for fun — we wrote to him telegraphically
___________________
* Krishna's saying— it means 'some look upon it as amazing.'
± Cha. in Bengali. means tea.
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even though it bordered upon irreverence if not blasphemy. Here is a sample.
"O Guru," I dashed off, "I send you a Bengali poem of mine entitled Akuti which I translated last night into English. Can you revise it? Is it good? Mediocre? Worthless? Frank opinion, please! But what about Raihana's letter? Won't return? You keep mum. What's up? Bridge-building? Supramental? Wool- gathering?"
His repartee came, as echo to song:
"I shall see if I can get a few minutes for revising your English translation. But you seem to have progressed greatly in your English verse — (How so quickly? Yogic Force? Internal combustion? The subliminal self?) Raihana's letter and drawing which have unaccountably turned up again with me. Poltergeist? Your inadvertence? Mine?"
"O Guru," I wrote, "I could not meditate of late, thanks to mountains of proofs. But soon I will start like Pahari Baba. So beware!"
He answered it promptly the next day:
"After mountains of proof the mountain of meditation, with you, the BABA, on top? All right: I am ready to face it."
"O Guru," I wrote, "three solid pieces of jolly news: first, a Muslim writer named Abul Fazl comes to congratulate me because in my recent controversy with Tagore, he opines, the latter had very much the worst of it. Then comes a savant who praises my Bengali novel, Dola. Last, though not least, turns up a Zamindar who implores me to draft for him an address for a local doctor who has been honoured by a Rajah. Now tell me, do you smile on it or frown?"
He wrote back: I sympathise. Three cheers for Abul Fazl and
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the savant. But I don't feel enthusiastic about the doctor even though honoured by a Rajah! An address in honour of a doctor! What are things coming to! (Please don't tell this to Nirod). Perhaps, however, it may be on the principle: 'Honour the doctor that thy life may be long in the land!' But then to call in an eminent litterateur like you is after all appropriate. You can furnish them with a long address on the romance of medicine beginning with Dhanwantari, Charaka and Galen and ending with Nirod Taluqdar or Dr. Ramchandra."
When his correspondence in our Ashram increased to unconscionable proportions and he had to deal with them all by himself night after night from 9 p.m. till 5 a.m. the next morning, Mother intervened and decided that henceforth only a few were to be allowed to write to him, by special permission. But as the number of the privileged ones mounted day by day,
I wrote one day to him (1935):
"To how many have you given a special permission to write to you daily? Nirod confided to me — it's 121. Bindu says — impossible, it is only 97, out of the present total 150."
The reply came:
"The number openly accepted is two by tacit understanding, two by express notice and two by self-given permission. If it had been 97 or 121 I would have translated myself to the Gobi desert or the Lake Manasa in the style of Sri Bijoy Krishna Goswami."
"O Guru," I wrote once, "Lady Demure insists on being deeply shocked whenever somebody is caught lying, forgetting that she lies herself— as often as not. But then we all lie, Guru! So why are we so profoundly shocked when others repeat our favourite pastime? Please elucidate."
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"Lies?" he wrote back. "Well, a Punjabi student at Cambridge once took our breath away by the frankness and comprehensive profundity of his affirmation: 'Liars! But we are al1 liars!' It appeared that he had intended to say 'lawyers,' but his pronunciation gave his remark a deep force of philosophic observation and generalisation which he had not intended! But it seems to me the last word on human nature. Only the lying is sometimes intentional, sometimes vaguely half-intentional, sometimes quite unintentional, momentary and unconscious. So there you are!"
"O Guru," I confided, "Mr. Cocksure harangued me for nearly half-an-hour that he feels a wonderful power astir in him day and night leading him to a wonderful self-surrender! I am impressed. Aren't you?"
On this he commented:
"When he speaks of the power in him and his self surrender — well, one can only wish that if and when people are so wonderful, they might as well be a trifle less eloquent about their wonderfulness. One never knows to what this excessive self- appreciation will lead and the past examples do not encourage."
"0 Guru", I communicated, "Mr. Effusive, who is an admirer of yours has just sent me a Bengali poem which he implores me to sing to you 'without fail'. But I wonder how you would react to it if I complied, for he has, in effect, sounded the death-knell of Rishihood, calling you virtually the last of the Romans. I will translate into English only the opening couplet so that Mother may also know, just to be forewarned:
Glory to thee, 0 wistful India's last and lingering seer!
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Let me expire with thee, my Lord, who never more shalt appear.'
One hardly knows whether one should be laughing or whether weeping is here de rigueur? What do you say? And he wants your blessings, too, remember!"
"Dilip," Gurudev admonished, "you don't understand! What he means is that my shishyagan (disciples) will all become supermen; ergo, there can be no possible chance of any such small thing as a Rishi (seer) appearing again — I am positively the last of that crowd. All the same, you may send him my blessings — he deserves it richly for giving us such a gorgeous prospect."
"O Guru," I wrote after reading two autobiographies which set me thinking once again, "in Yoga, prayers have, I understand, a very important function to fulfill even when they are of the petitionary brand. In his reminiscences entitled Vale Dean Inge says, with true humility, that although the pearl of great price is only for those few who stake their all for the All-in-all, yet no sincere prayer is unheard. But then, I ask myself, why is there so much preventible misery when les miserables keep praying? I have seen myself ever so many praying (with fasting) till they are blue in the face and yet nothing happened — no miracle! Dean Inge may swear about his prayers having been heard, but what about Jawaharlal who writes, equally categorically, that he has often been dead thirsty for a little peace but, alas, to no purpose! Which reinforces his atheism (no wonder!) and he goes on castigating the religious. To the seer mystic his turnings may, indeed, seem childish but can one say that he is really as childish as he looks — staying put where he is admiring Gandhiji and, withal, criticizing his Guru's profoundest impulse towards mysticism? Or can it be because he simply hankered for peace but never prayed?"
"As for prayer," he wrote back; "no hard and fast rule can be
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laid down. Some prayers are answered, all are not. The eldest daughter of my maternal uncle, Sri Krishna Kumar Mitra (the editor of Sanjivani — not by any means a romantic, occult, supraphysical or even an imaginative person) was abandoned by the doctors after using every resource, all medicines stopped as useless. The father said: 'There is only God now, let us pray.' He did and from that moment the girl began to recover, the typhoid fever and all symptoms fled, death also. I know of any number of cases like that. Well? You may ask why should not then all prayers be answered? But why should they? It is not a machinery: put a prayer in the slot and get your asking. Besides, considering all the contradictory things mankind is praying for at the same moment. God would be in a rather awkward hold if he had to grant all of them; it wouldn't do. As for Jawaharlal, he has perhaps something in his temperament that might answer to the supraphysical, but by his intellect he has so much put it down that it is not likely to act in any overt manner."
"O Guru," I appealed, "Lady Indignant is again down on us, males! She says man in such a foul seducer and poor woman (poor? a modem woman? good Lord!) such a guileless, simple and trustful tendril! I retaliated in banter and reminded her what Tagore had sighed over in the 'twenties: 'We are a much maligned sex, Dilip! The fair maid complains that we pursue and harry her. But between you and me, do you think that the most leonine of lions would dare approach a woman if she really frowned upon his advances?' So adjudicate. Guru: who tempts first — man or woman? Or shall we say a la Sir Roger de Coverley: 'Much can be said on both sides?'"
"Dilip," he answered "it is six of one and half-a-dozen of the other. To throw it all on woman is Adamism. To ignore the man's Part is feminism. Both are in error. Yes, sir Roger is right".
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"O Guru", wails the Man of sorrows in me. "So be it. Since I have been hanging too long in mid-air and must land somewhere somehow, anyhow — therefore I propose — subject to your approval — a drastic prescription for my long-suffering unconvalescing self.
"Number one. I will give up tea: I love it. "Number two. I will do without cheese: I adore it. "Number three. I will bid adieu to all toothsome dishes and start periodic fasts.
"Number four. Will forswear hair-oil and shave my head. (I was not bald in those days).
"Number five. I will sleep on one sole blanket pillowless. But note: I tried this before already and remember that although you have kept me in reasonable comfort, I came ready to brave any austerity.
"Number six. I will sleep without the mosquito-curtain which, I fear, will be the most difficult of all feats because I have never been able to equate the crooning of the mosquito with a lullaby.
"Only believe me when I say that although I move this resolution in a language that may sound unparliamentary, my heart is really heavy and tearful, since I can see no shorter cut to salvation. So, in the circumstances, will you and the Mother ratify my resolution, or amend, please?"
My letter was dated September 14,1935.
He wrote back precipitately: "I stand aghast as I stare at the detailed proposals made by you! Fastings? I don't believe in them, though I have done them myself. You would really eat like an ogre afterwards. Shaved head? Great heavens! Have you realised the consequences? I pass over the aesthetic shock to myself at darshan on the 24th November from which I might never recover — but the row that would rise from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas! You would be famous in a new way which would cast all your previous glories into the shade. And just when you are turning away from fame and all the things of the ego! No: too dangerous by half. Sleep without the mosquitonet? That would mean no sleep, which is as bad as no food. Not
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only your eyes would become weak, but yourself also — and, to boot, gloomy, grey and gruesome — more gruesome than the Supramental of your worst apprehensions! No and No again. As for the rest, I placed some of them before the Mother and she eyed them without favour.
"After all, real asceticism is hardly possible except in a hut or in the Himalayas. The heart of asceticism, besides, is having no desires or attachments, being indifferent, able to do without things, satisfied with whatever comes. If you 'asceticise' outwardly, it becomes a rule of life and you keep it up because it is a rule, for the principle of the thing or for the kudos of it as a point of honour. But I have noticed about ascetics by rule that when you remove the curb they become just like others — barring a few exceptions, of course — Which proves that the transformation was not real. A more subtle method used by some is to give up for a time, then try the object of desire again and so go on till you have thoroughly tested yourself; e.g., you give up your potatoes and eat only the Ashram food for a time — if the call comes for the potatoes or from them, then you are not cured: if no call comes, still you cannot be sure till you have tried potatoes again, and seen whether the desire, attachment or sense of need revives. If it dies not and the potatoes fall away from you of themselves, then there is some hope that the thing is done.
"However, all this will make you think that I am hardly fit to be a Guru in the path of asceticism and you will probably be right. You see, I have a strong penchant for the inner -working and am persuaded that if you give the psychic a chance it will rid you of the impediments you chafe at without all this stemness and trouble".
"O Guru," I replied, "I thank you sincerely for refusing assent to my doom. And yet paradoxically, I feel a definite disappointment, too, along with the relief. For I had a lurking suspicion that your Supramental wisdom might still be wanting to impose asceticism on me since I have, willy-nilly, to practise your Supramental Yoga and no other: so I decided, after a mighty wrench, to ban everything my mental loved or even approved of. But now you yourself are turning down my
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proposal to conquer attachments which are holding me up. I repeat, however, that I am still 'game' if you reconsider your veto to give me another trial."
To that he replied next morning:
"But how in the earthly did you get this strange idea that we were pressing asceticism on you? When? How? Where? I only admitted it as a possibility after repeated assertions from you that you wanted to do this formidable thing, and it was with great heart searchings and terrible apprehensive visions of an ascetic Dilip with wild weird eyes and in loin-cloth, eating groundnuts and nails and sleeping on iron-spikes in the presence of a dumbfounded Lord Shiva! I never prescribed the thing to you at all: it was you who were clamouring for it, so I gave in and tried to make the best of it, hoping that you would think better of it. As for the Mother, the first time she heard of it she knocked it off with the most emphatic 'Nonsense!' possible. In fact what you proposed was even more formidable than my vision — a shaven-headed and mosquito-bitten Dilip in loin-cloth and the rest (not that you actually proposed the last but it is the logical outcome of the devastating shave!). Conquest of attachment is quite a different matter — one has to learn to take one's tea and potatoes without weeping for them or even missing them if they are not there. But we have repeatedly said that you could go on with them and need not follow the way taken by some others. As to seclusion, I have written my distrust of retirement several times: it is only a few people who can do it and profit, but they are not a rule for others.... If I am living in my room it is not out of a passion for solitude.... So you need not be anxious: solitude is not demanded of you, for an ascetic dryness or isolated loneliness cannot be your destiny since it is not consonant with your swabhava (nature) which is made for joy, largeness, expansion, a comprehensive movement of the life-force. So your subtle interpretation of our intentions or wishes was a bad misfit. However, all is well that ends well and inspite of your suggestion of being 'game' I will consider the danger as over. Laus Deo"
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The Maharaja of Dewas who was then a refugee in pondicherry once invited me to dinner. Gurudev wrote:
"I hope your dinner did not turn out like my first taste of Maharatta cookery — when for some reason my dinner was non est and. somebody went to my neighbour, a Maharatta Professor, for food. I took only one mouthful and only one. O God ! Sudden fire in the mouth could not have been more cataclysmic! Enough to bring down the whole of London in one agonised sweep of flame!"
To be serious again.
I wrote to him once quoting from Vivekananda. Did he not often decry the faith of the formal kind which, he was wont to say, was partly responsible for our decadence? But there was a snag here, I added, in that condemning people often engendered a sort of sense of self-superiority: was not that why the traditionalists accused Vivekananda of superciliousness if not actual conceit? Tolerance should be fostered, should it not?
He answered me with a long letter:
"As for the sense of superiority, that is a little difficult to avoid when greater horizons open before the consciousness, unless one is already of a saintly and humble disposition. There are men like Nag Mahashaya (among Sri Ramkrishna's disciples) in whom spiritual experience creates more and more humility; there are others, like Vivekananda, in whom it creates a great sense of strength and superiority — European critics have taxed him with it rather severely; there are others in whom it fixes a sense of superiority to men and humility to the Divine. Each position has its value. Take Vivekananda's famous answer to the Madras pundit who objected to one of his assertions, saying: 'But Shankara does not say so'. Vivekananda replied: 'No, but I, Vivekananda, say so, and the Pundit was speechless. That 'I' Vivekananda' stands up to the ordinary eye like a Himalaya of self-confident egoism. But there is nothing false or unsound
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in Vivekananda's spiritual experience. For this was not mere egoism, but the sense of what he stood for and the attitude of the fighter who, as the representative of something very great could not allow himself to be put down or belittled. This is not to deny the necessity of non-egoism and of spiritual humility, but to show that the question is not so easy as it appears at first sight. For if I have to express my spiritual experiences I must do that with truth — I must record them with their bhava, their thoughts, feelings, extensions of consciousness which accompany them. What am I to do with the experience in which one feels the whole world in oneself or the force of the Divine flowing in one's being and nature or the certitude of one's faith against all doubts or doubters or one's oneness with the Divine or the smallness of human thought and life compared with this greater knowledge and existence? And I have to use the word 'I — cannot take refuge in saying 'this body' or 'this appearance', especially as I am not a Mayavadin. Shall I not, therefore, fall into an expression which may make some shake their heads at my assertions as full of pride and ego? I imagine it would be difficult to avert it.
"Another thing: it seems to me that you identify faith very much with mental belief, but real faith is something spiritual, a knowledge of the soul. What you quote in your letters are the hard assertions of mental belief leading to a vehement vindication of one's mental creed and goal because they are one's own and must therefore be greater than those of others — an attitude which is universal in human nature. Even the atheist is not tolerant but declares his credo of Nature and Matter as the only truth and on all who disbelieve it or believe in other things he pours scorn a» unenlightened morons and superstitious half-wits. I bear him n« grudge for thinking me that, but I note that this attitude is not confined to religious faith but is equally natural to those who are1 free from religious faith and do not believe in Gods and Gurus. You will not, I hope, mind my putting the other side of the question; I want to point out that there is the other side, that there is much more to be said than at first sight appears,"
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Another trait of his character impressed me even though with time I came to take it for granted, as it were. It was his reluctance to impose his views on others. He seemed almost always like pleading for his case, even when it was obvious that the other's was untenable if only from the point of view of logic. To give one instance. A princess once came to the Ashram as my guest. She was fond of music and asked me to sing to her. I readily agreed and told her that I would have a regular musical soiree for her the next evening. Next morning her secretary came to me and asked a number of searching questions in the course of which he gave me to understand that the princess could not possibly sit in the same room with other sadhakas whereupon I bluntly retorted: "Tell her then that she need not come. For I feel very strongly that this is not her State but an Ashram where we all have the same status, and so, if she insists on being received with special deference I must decline to sing to such a person."
Next morning she called on me in person, wanting to explain. But I refused to see her. This was reported to Gurudev by a busybody who was aghast that I should have been impolite if not insulting to a rich and beautiful princess! Gurudev, however, smiled and sent word to me that not only was I right in my stand but that I had his full support, because every sadhaka had a perfect right to solitude if and when he did not feel like receiving visitors. (The princess came after all and I sang to her as she explained that it was all due to an unfortunate misunderstanding engineered by the same busybody).
But it so happened that a few months later a gurubhai was rude to a visitor. I quickly forgot my own similar misdemeanour and wrote to Gurudev condemning the delinquent out of hand. I asked whether spiritual realisation ought not to make people humble and courteous rather than rude and boorish. This time he reprimanded me politely, but firmly:
"But when on earth were politeness and good society manners considered as a part or a test of spiritual experience or true yogic siddhi. It is no more a test than the capacity of dancing
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well or dressing nicely. Just as there are very good and kind men who are boorish and rude in their manners, so there may be very spiritual men (I mean here by spiritual men those who have had deep spiritual experiences) who have no grasp over physical life or action (many intellectuals too, by the way are like that) and are not at all careful about their manners. I suppose I myself am accused of rude and arrogant behaviour because I refuse to see people, do not answer letters, and a host of other misdemeanours. I have heard of a famous recluse who threw stones at anybody coming to his retreat because he did not want : disciples and found no other way of warding off the flood of candidates. I at least would hesitate to pronounce that such people had no spiritual life or experience. Certainly, I prefer that sadhakas should be reasonably considerate towards each other, but that is for the rule of collective life and harmony, not as a siddhi of the Yoga or an indispensable sign of inner experience.
"And then how can the écarts of the sadhakas here, none of whom has reached perfection or is anywhere near it, be a proof that spiritual experience is null? You write as if the moment one had any kind of spiritual experience or realisation, one must at once become a perfect person without defects or weaknesses. That is to make a demand which it is impossible to satisfy and it is to ignore the fact that spiritual life is a growth and not a sudden and inexplicable miracle. No sadhaka can be judged as if he were already a siddha Yogi, least of all those who have only travelled a quarter or less of a very long path as is the case with most who are here. Even great Yogis do not claim perfection and you cannot say that because they are not absolutely perfect, therefore their spirituality is false or of no use to the world. There are, besides, all kinds of spiritual men: some who are content with spiritual experience and do not seek after an outward perfection or progress, some who are saints, others who do not seek after sainthood, others who are content to live in the cosmic consciousness in touch or union with the All but allowing all kinds of forces to fly through them, e.g. in the typical description of the Paramhansa. The ideal I put before our Yoga
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is one thing but it does not bind all spiritual life and endeavour. The spiritual life is not a thing that can be formulated in a rigid definition or bound by a fixed mental rule; it is a vast field of evolution, an immense kingdom potentially larger than the other kingdoms below it with a hundred provinces, a thousand types, stages, forms, paths, variations of the spiritual ideal, degrees of spiritual advancement. It is from the basis of this truth, which I will explain in subsequent letters, that things regarding spirituality and its seekers must be judged, if they are to be judged with knowledge. It is only by so understanding it that one can understand it truly, either in its past or in its future or put in their place the spiritual men of the past and the present or relate the different ideals, stages, etc. thrown up in the spiritual evolution of the human being,"
But as he knew to his cost what human nature was and how liable to be heading for disaster in its cussed moods, he always tried to efface promptly the aftermath of a froissement which even a gentle correction often brought in its train. So, over and over again he came out with the salve of his humour and irony after having dealt a blow. I could not help admiring this as a token of his unfailing understanding of the hurdles of the ego we had to negotiate when, willy-nilly, we had to accept an unpalatable dressing-down for the purge of our egoism. For example, after one such gentle rebuke he went out of his way to plead for his inability to finish two promised letters in the small hours of the morning — one for myself and one for a friend of mine whom I had sponsored.
"The lights went out, the lights went out!" he hastened to .write on the following morning. "So I have to wait till tomorrow. Man proposes but the Pondicherry Municipality disposes. But there will be grace tomorrow, Pondicherry Municipality volente." Then he went on to add the same night: "Joy! Joy! Joy!!! I have done it — both letters written — done they are this time!"
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But in spite of all the latitude he gave me, I found corrections hard to bear as I was hypersensitive; by constitution. Consequently he had to spare me and often weigh his words in a way he would not even dream of doing when dealing with, say, Nirod or Rajani. For he knew that these would not mind whatever it was that came to them from him. To each according to his need as he explained to me once in answer to a question of mine about consistency.
"It is a little difficult," he wrote, "for the wider spiritual outlook to answer your question in the way you want and every mental being wants, with a trenchant 'Thou-shalt' or Thou-shalt-not' — especially when the thou is meant to cover all. For while there is an identity of essential aim, while there are general broad lines of endeavour, yet there is not in detail one common set of rules in inner things that can apply to all seekers. You ask; 'Is not such and such a thing harmful?' But what is harmful to one may be helpful to another what is helpful at a certain stage may cease to be helpful at, another: what is harmful under certain conditions may be helpful under other conditions; what is done in a certain spirit may be disastrous, while the same thing done in quite a different spirit would be innocuous or even beneficial. I asked the Mother what she would say to your question about pleasures and social experiences (put as a general question) and she answered: 'impossible to say like that: it depends on the spirit, in which it is done.' So there are many things to be considered; the spirit, (the circumstances, the person, the need and cast of the nature, the stage, that is also the reason why we say that the Divine cannot: be understood by the mind, because the mind acts according to hard and fast rules and standards, while the spirit sees the truth of all and the truth of each and acts variously according to its own comprehensive and complex vision. That is also why we; say that no one can understand by his personal mental judgment the Mother's actions and reasons for action: it can only be understood by entering into the larger consciousness from which she sees things and acts upon them. That is baffling to the; mind because it uses
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its small mental measures, but that is the truth of the matter."
And I may add that that is also why he revealed at every step a new facet of his unfathomable personality to us all— to each according to his temperament. For example, to Nirod he would constantly assume a tone he never once assume with me. To illustrate what I mean:
"Nirod," he wrote on one occasion, "as there are several lamentations today besieging me, I have very littletime to deal with each separate jeremiad. But do I understand lightly that your contention is: 'I can't believe in the Divine doing everything for me because it is by my own mighty and often fruitless efforts that I write poetry and have made myself to a poet?' Well, that itself is épatant, magnificent and unheard of! It has always been supposed since the infancy of the human race that while a verse-maker can be made or self-made, a poet cannot. Poet a nascitur non fit — a poet is born not made, is a dictum that has come down through the centuries and millenniums and was thundered into my ears by the first pages of my Latin grammar. The facts of literary history seem to justify his stem saying But here in Pondicherry we have tried, not to manufacture poets, but to give them birth, a spiritual not a physical birth, into the body. In a number of instances we are supposed to have succeeded — one of them is your noble self, or if I am to believe the Man of Sorrows in you — your abject, miserable, hopeless and ineffectual self. But how was it done? There are two theories, it seems: one, that it was done by the Yogic Force, the other, that it was done by your splashing, kicking, groaning Herculean efforts. Now, Sir, if it is the latter if you have done the unprecedented thing, made yourself by your own laborious Length into a poet (for your earlier efforts were only very decent literary exercises), then, Sir, why the deuce are you so abject, self-depreciatory and miserable? Don't say that it is only a poet who can produce no more than a few poems in as many months. Even to have done that, to have become a poet at all, a self-made poet, is a miracle over which one can only say 'Bravo! Bravo!' without ever stopping. If your efforts could do that what
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is there that it can't do? All miracles can be effected by it and giant, self-confident faith is the only logical conclusion. So either way there is room only for Hallelujah, none for jeremiads
"The fact that you don't feel a force does not prove that it isn't there. The steam engine does not feel a force moving it but the force is there for all that. A man is not a steam engine? He is very little better, for he is conscious only of some bubbling on the surface which he calls 'himself and is absolutely unconscious of all the subconscient, subliminal, superconscient forces moving him. (This is a fact which is being more and more established by modem psychology though it has got hold only of the lower forces and not the higher, so you need not turn up your rational nose at it). He twitters intellectually and foolishly about the surface-results and attributes them all to his 'noble self, ignoring the fact that this noble self is hidden far away from his own vision behind the veil of his dimly sparkling intellect and the reeking fog of his vital feelings, emotions, impulses, sensations and impressions. So your arguments are utterly absurd and futile. Our aim is to bring the secret forces out and unwalled into the open so that instead of getting some shadows or lightnings of themselves out through the veil or being wholly obstructed, they may pour down and flow in rivers. But to expect that all at once is a presumptuous demand which shows an . impatient ignorance and inexperience. If they begin to trickle at first, that is sufficient to justify the faith in a future downpour. You admit that you once or twice felt a force coming down and delivering a poem out of you (your opinion about its worth or worthlessness is not worth a cent: that is for others to pronounce); that is sufficient to blow your jeremiad to smithereens; it proves that the force was and is there and at work and it is only your sweating Herculean labour that prevents you feeling it. Also it is the trickle that gives the assurance of the possibility of the downpour. One has only to go on and by one's patience deserve the downpour or else, without deserving, slide on until one get8 it. In Yoga the experience itself is a promise and foretaste but gets shut off till the nature is ready for the fulfilment. This is
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phenonienon familiar to every Yogi when he looks back on his past experience. Such were the brief visitations of ananda you have had sometimes before. It does not matter if you have not a 'leechlike tenacity' — leeches are not the only type of Yogis. If you can stick anyhow or get stuck — that is sufficient. The fact that you are not Sri Aurobindo (who said you were?) is an inept irrelevance. One needs to be only oneself in a reasonable way and shake off the hump when it is there or allow it to be shaken off without clinging to it with a leech-like tenacity worthy of a better cause...
"What are you to do? Dig yourself out if you can; if you can't, call for ropes and wait till they come. If 'God knows what will happen when the Grace descends,' that should be enough, shouldn't it? That you don't know is a fact which may be baffling to your — well, your intelligence, but is not of great importance, any more than your supposed unfitness,"
But though he could go on like this — sparring, reminiscing and scintillating if and when the spirit so moved him, few people who have known him will disagree with my estimate that he was essentially a man of deep reserve, a denizen of the deeps. It reminds me of a joke I had with him nearly fifteen years ago. On three (and later four) occasions in the year when he used to come out for us as well as the visitors, we used to take a look at him, but not, alas, a long look. His eyes rested on each of us but for a few seconds — because the whole procedure had to be concluded in about a couple of hours. On me he used to shed a kind glance but I searched his face in vain for a smile. I was, indeed, impressed by his grave face, but I missed the smile of a friendly recognition which made to me all the difference in the World. When he came to know of my disappointment he did try to change but, equally, in vain. At all events, that was my impression, I insisted. But a lady who happened to be next to me (and who could, without turning a hair, beat me in the game of
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insistence with a handicap) drove me to the wall asseverating that he had smiled at me, so I wrote to him more in shame than in sorrow. "0 Guru! here you put me out of countenance once more — possibly to pulverize the last vestiges of my self-confidence. For Lady Emphatic swears — and none can out-swear her, as you know — that she saw your lips bend into a curve which can only be equated with a smile. So, it follows, as the rain the drought, that I have forfeited even the right to believe in the testimony of my own senses, or is it that you only gave me a Supramental smile? If so, why did you waste such a boon on us, humans, whose mentality cannot possibly recognise it as such?" To that he wrote back: "But Lady Emphatic is right. For I did indeed smile — though it was not the broad smile of a Tagore or the childlike smile of a Gandhi. But I assure you I will try to be more convincing in future." (He did later — and succeeded, God be praised!)
But when — and here is my point — even his smile had to be noisily mooted before one could be convinced as to its authenticity, how could one call him anything but a reserved man?
And yet he was talking to me as to Befriend and a son" and to Nirod like an old comrade whom he almost invited to give him as much as he got! This I found a little difficult to account for and yet I feel I can safely assert that when he wrote his letters to us two, it did seem as though a lid had been suddenly lifted: the old trite simile of a stone slab covering a natural spring often recurred to my mind! Somehow with us two he was as free as free can be. But today I cannot help feeling some what conscience-stricken because I realise that I could not right fully claim what I clamoured for, to wit utter frankness on his part: I have become conscious as never before, that my way of reacting to his frankness was nowhere near what it ought to have been.
For what was it that did happen as against what could and ought to have happened? It would not, indeed, be untrue to claim that I had come to serve him, having previously responded to his call for self-transformation. But in the uphill path of Yoga a
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mere pious intention does not, alas, carry one very far: one has to be resolutely ruthless with one's ego if one really wants to be sincere to a purpose. I have all along taken not a little pride in my honesty and sincerity, little realising that the truly honest aspirant in Yoga is he alone who is sleeplessly self-critical, who is bent on having no truck with the promptings of his self-will — that everlasting pander to self-love. Today, when the one whose deep compassion was so eager to help me out of the ego's clutches is no more, this thought has become fraught with an added poignancy in that it has enabled me to see clearly how I could have reacted to his tireless exhortations to outgrow my egotism — if only I would — by choosing to be a little more docile and humble. But perhaps it was my over-weening self-confidence harnessed to an ineradicable pride in the sanity of my rational nature and demands that wrought my downfall again and again. (Isn't our rational pride often blinder than purblind faith?) To give a rather convincing instance, if only to illustrate how I hampered him at every turn by constraining him to waste his precious time for the redemption of the Old Adam in me:
"I got your first letter," he wrote once in the heyday of my self-will, "and as I always look at yours if there is any and leave the rest aside for later reading, I sat down after my daily walk and concentration to answer it. I missed your second 'urgent' letter altogether and came to know of it after I had seen the third — later in the night. If I had had it, I would of course have answered it at once. I am sorry you have had to wait the whole night without an answer.
"I was a little taken aback by the first letter, for my remarks about W had been perfectly casual and I attached little importance to them when I wrote them. I would certainly not have written them if I had thought they were of a kind to cause trouble to you. In scribbling them I had no idea of imposing my views about W on you — I had no idea of writing as a Guru to a disciple or laying down the law, it was rather as a friend to a friend expressing my ideas and discussing them with a perfect ease and confidence. Both the Mother and myself have a natural
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tendency to speak or write to you in that way, expressing the idea that comes without measuring of terms or any arrièr pensée because we feel close to your psychic being always and that is the relation we have quite naturally with you. That was why I wrote like that and I had no other intention in me.
"I do not believe in human judgments because I have always found them fallible — also perhaps because I have myself been so blackened by human judgments that I do not care to be guided by them with regard to others. All this, however, I write to explain my own point of view; I am not insisting on it as a law for others. I have not been in the habit of insisting that everybody must think as I do — any more than I insist on everybody following me and my Yoga.
"All that to brush aside what is an evident misunderstanding. Now about X Y Z, you should remember that what I wrote about them was not an after-invention or an idea formed as a result of their going away — all that I wrote about X, for instance, I had written long before he went — and also with the others I had not refrained from letting them know what was wrong with them, except for Y and Z with whom it was not necessary. I did not wholeheartedly assure and praise and encourage while they were there nor wholeheartedly damn when they were gone. Nor would I have said anything about them if I had not been questioned .from every side. Why then should you think that I would attack you if you went away — you, to whom I have always spoken with encouragement and kindness, and never, I think, with severe disapprobation or warning as I did with X Y Z?. If you went away I should write if had to write, what I have always said to you: 'Dilip had his difficulties, and he was gradually surmounting them, but his one great difficulty of doubt and self- distrust he did not meet sufficiently'; and I would add: 'and in a weak moment he has allowed it to carry him away. But he will find that he can discover his soul here alone and then he will return.'
"But all that is really unnecessary since you are not, like X Y Z, consumed with the desire to go or feeling the call for action
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elsewhere. But why this constant slipping back to the idea of failure? Why this idea that I am offended? Have I ever taken offence or evinced any least idea of giving you up? How is it you still lend credence to a suggestion your whole experience four relations contradicts? Your attacks of doubt and self-distrust are a weakness I have taken account of and I refuse to consider it as a bar to your arrival at the goal. It is in all sincerity that I affirm your possibilities."
But as the blackest clouds have a silver lining, I console myself today with this thought that even my wrongest moods did serve a twofold purpose: first, objectively, because they brought into relief his great understanding of and compassion for human nature which insists, suicidally, on smiting the hand that comes to save (an understanding that had made him write once to me: "My experience shows that human beings are much less deliberate and responsible for their acts than the moralists, novelists and dramatists make them and I look rather to see what forces drove them than what the man himself may have seemed by inference to have intended or purposed — our inferences are often wrong and even when they are right touch only the surface of the matter"). And then, subjectively, because it can hardly be gainsaid that had I been by nature less intractable than I was, I might, indeed, have been richer today in Yogic experience, but should I not have been ever so much poorer in my intimate knowledge of that human side of him which is so infinitely precious to me: the human in the Divine that made Krishna what He was to the grateful Pandavas — not only the Guru and pilot but the Friend and Sentinel as well who all but broke his pledge in the Kurukshetra and sprang out to slay Bhishma when he found his protege Arjuna's life in danger? A Muslim friend of mime recited once a Persian couplet which I translated in one of my bright moods of gratefulness and exaltation which made me feel vividly that even failure in a great endeavour was far preferable to success in little ambitions:
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when I waste my years to win thee, friend,
'T'is then I best achieve my end:
Only that life was rich in gain
Which strove and strove for thee in vain
And it was just such another exalted mood of mine inspired by my gratefulness for his indulgence which evoked, to my joy, one of his rarest sallies — a mood, alas, which his life-long preoccupation with us, dolorous dwarfs, made it all but impossible for him to indulge for relaxation. I shall quote it not only to end on a happy note but also for the sheer delight of revealing him in an impulse of unbridled laughter and fun which will, I hope, be welcome to all who cherish the memory of his lovelit personality . It happened like this.
It was in 1934, a few days before his birthday, the 15th August. I was reading out to Chadwick a letter of his which he had just written to me in answer to my importunities.
"Sonnets?" he wrote. "I have no time for writing sonnets — my energy is too occupied with very urgent and pressing things — quite apart from correspondence — to 'dally with the rhythmic line'."
We were both cursing away in our hearts the utter wryness of this providential dispensation and wondering about the nature of his "pressing" work in hand when Gurudev's secretary brought me a telegram to Gurudev which read: 'Wire permission for your Darshan on the fifteenth of August. Dilip, my friend, will recommend me — Aurobindo.' On the margin was written in Gurudev's handwriting: "please recommend and enlighten."
It was just that little query which, happily, made the wicked Goddess — Dushta Saraswati — fall plump and perch on my irreverent tongue. I dashed off then and there a Bengali poem which I sent up to Gurudev hoping, against hope, to draw him out. Here is an English translation of my wicked burlesque:
You ask me. Guru, who is this Aurobindo who desires to come
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To have your blessing on your birthday? I would rather now be dumb:
Because, I find, I know four personalities distinct and great
Who are your namesakes and so wonder how to place this candidate!
So I'll recount the deeds of each still graven in my memory,
For your Supramental may shed light where I grope rayless hopelessly!
The first was an aristocrat whose toilette very few dare eclipse :
He combed his curls for hours — a dandy, out and out, to his finger-tips,
Enamoured of pomatum, powder, silks and scents and fineries
He blithely hummed to all and sundry India's amorous rrnelodies.
Work he abhorred, yet such is fate — he was given a mill to supervise,
But he resigned and married pelf—not less resourceful than he was wise!
It is not likely— but who knows — perhaps your mystic call he hears!
And, sick at last of the world's brief tinkles, aches s for the music of the spheres!
Then, number two: he'd fallen in love with one he called his dreamof love
Come true on earth' —but she, alas, proved subtle whom no romance could move.
She smiled on him as Frau von Stein once smiled on Goethe: did not she
Invite the Poet? — but then "Oh no, not too close," said she warningly!
Only, while Goethe had for his flame to pay in poems, not in gold:
This modern 'Pickwick' gave her with his 'love-sick' heart his cash untold.
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Then, bankrupt, hugging me in London blubbered he between his tears:
"O kindred spirit, who but you can ever divine what my heart sears?"
You never can tell — perhaps he has since read your message of the One
Who can tell why love is doomed to shadows, and never a place wins in the sun?
Your namesake, number three, a youth who lived in Paris by his wits,
Took me in tow and showed me round the Eternal city's sweet retreats.
A specialist in gossip about prophets, poets and actresses,
"What is unknown-to me," he bragged "is not worth while — I know what pays."
And he made me know it, too, although I did pay what I could for him,
As he would clarify what to my mind had seemed intriguing, dim.
Maybe his "knowledge": has let him down and so he longs for a greater light
Than his continental firefly twinkles — helpless in his soul's dark night!
The last though not least, 0 great Master, of your namesakes was so brave
That we all stood aghast when, after lecturing "each his soul must save".
He wooed a Belgian old maid who, though not so wise as Solomon,
Was even as rich and "game" when he led her to the altar in Boulogne.
I had to be his best man though no bridesmaids were available,
But the great philosopher announced: "Without love even Heaven were hell!"
So the saviour angel of his soul led him to the turf in a mystic glee
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And then in the heaven of Monte Carlo gambled and lost exultantly.
I wonder: could his Eden elect have failed him in the last resort?
Else how could his brave ship want now to come to your supramental port?
I know not human destiny, nor your celestial mysteries
I only know your regal soul rich with the starry secrecies.
So I implore: O make me see the greatness of your name-sakes now.
Say, how come they to bear your name and yet stay where they are — Oh how?
Just one thing more: what shall I answer? — and please tell me his address.
I dare not recommend all, Guru, though all you can lean to bless.
And lastly, O Compassionate, forgive my dread frivolity:
To have laughed at those who bear your name? Oh, damn me not everlastingly.
Chadwick chuckled when I read this out to him, but shook his head. "It's unlikely to draw him out, Dilip," he sighed. "He's too busy. But I do wish you the best of luck."
Next day, however, I ran to him, for the miracle did happen — Gurudev did reply.
"Dilip," we read together, "Your epic of the four Aurobindos is luminous, informing and hair-raising! But there can be no doubt about who this Aurobindo is — it is, I presume, Aurobindo the fourth,' a doer of dreadful deeds'. I am referring to the phrase bhimakarma Brikodara* — However a truce to unseemly jests; let us come to grave practical matters.
"His address? How in the name of the wonderful am I to know? His address in the telegram is 'Aurobindo, Bombay' just as mine might be 'Aurobindo, Pondicherry'. In his previous letter he wrote that he was going to Bombay and would waltz from
* From Sanskrit, meaning literally: "wolf-belly of dreadful deeds."
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there straight to Pondicherry. He may have given his Bombay address but I don't think so. Nolini who has his letter can perhaps enlighten you. I do not know whether he expects us to put him up — I suppose not, since although he is Aurobindo, Aurobindo does not know him from Adam. However, what I am doing is to send you his reply-paid telegram form and shove my responsibility on your shoulders. You will decide these according to the ripe wisdom of your many Aurobindonian experience. Whether you wire 'come and be blessed' or 'stay where you are, in your Eden and be — is your shout — I back out. To sum the matter up in two far-flowing Alexandrine couplets:
Tell him, by wire: 'Come on' with a benignant nod,
Or leave him journeying to the devil or to God,
Decide for the other Aurobindo what you please,
This namesake-flooded Aurobindo leave at ease.
"In fact my Supermind is almost staggering helpless to make any decision under the weight of all these Aurobindos and others. I am told there will be 400 of them in families and singles apart from the 200 who are here, and so, unless the divine mercy descends with a greater force than the 'gentle dew' from Heaven, we may be still there receiving people till past three o'clock in the afternoon. So one Aurobindo more or less can make no difference to me. It is you who will rejoice or suffer according as he falls on you like a ton of bricks or envelops you like a soothing zephyr in the spring.
"But look at the irony of human decisions and human hopes.
My father who wanted all his sons to be great men — and succeeded in a small way with three of them — a sudden inspiration gave me the name Aurobindo, till then not borne by anyone in India or the wide world, that I might stand out unique among the great by the unique glory of my name. And now look at the swarm of Aurobindos with their mighty deeds in England. Germany and elsewhere! Don't tell me it is my fault because of my indiscretion in becoming famous. When I went to the National College in the Swadeshi days which was my first public step towards
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the ignominies of fame, there was already an Aurobindo prakash waiting for me there with the sardonic comment of the gods printed on his learned forehead. Aurobindo Prakash, indeed!
"As for the explanation, your epic of the four Aurobindos has suddenly revealed to me why the name Aurobindo has spread and why its bearers are heading for Pondicherry. I have it — eureka! And I am released from all kshobha* at the violated uniqueness of my name. Your description shows that each Aurobindo represents a world-type and it is of the conglomeration and sublimation of great world-types that the supramental terrestrial will be made. You may not have appreciated their greatness, but that is not their fault. Also the formula for the Supramental may sound to you too chemical like the formula for a patent medicine, but there it is. Incidentally, I am more convinced than ever that you lived and wrote and sighed ('I am between tears and sighs', said Maecenas as he sat between the weak and watery-eyed Virgil and the aesthetic Horace) under Augustus Caesar. You have kept the spirit and turn and most even of the manner.
"Your 'epistolary frivolity' was all right. There is laughter in the Kingdom of Heaven, though there may be no marriage there."
* Chagrin.
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