Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume I

1930

January 1930

It means both the individual and the cosmic Nature. The Divine is concealed in the secret heart of all things and all beings. The phrase is an allusion to the constant Vedic and Upanishadic expression Hrdaye guhāyām, nihitam gūhāyām, gudham guhāyām, [hidden in the secret cavern of the heart]. What is meant, in the individual nature, is the secret psychic centre which is covered up in man by egoistic emotion and feeling and desire.

It is not necessary to translate the word. Nature. Any word or epithet which will convey the idea of the secret centre of the being or the consciousness, will do equally well.

March 16,1930

(About a book Dilip was preparing.)

I return the remaining Mss.

(1) I have corrected more extensively the conversation, adding one or two things where the thought was insufficient or not clear. The note about Yogic Sadhan may be omitted.

(2) The two poems, "Who?" and "In the Moonlight" can be taken. I think it is these two you wanted to include in the book—I have not got your note by me at the moment.

(3) The two Conversations,¹ 9 (on Divine Love) and 14 (on Art and Yoga), can also be included in the book.

(4) The Letter was not written by me; it is not well expressed and the ideas in it belong to an order of thought that I have

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1. Conversations with the Mother is the title of a book by Mother which contains a few talks she had with a few disciples every Sunday evening in 1929. These talks took place at Dilip's residence and were first published in 1931.

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now long over passed. I do not care to have it published.

(5) I do not know where you got the facts in your account of my life; but after starting to correct it I had to give up the attempt in despair. It is chock full of errors and inaccuracies: this cannot be published. As for the account of my spiritual experience, I mean of the Bombay affair, somebody must have inflicted on you a humorous caricature of it. This too cannot "go." The best will be to omit all account or narrative and say—at not too much length, I would suggest—what you think it necessary to say about me.

(6) You will naturally have to say something to account for the presence of two "Conversations with the Mother" in the book. Of course, you will send what you have to say on this point for the Mother's approval and mine.

That, I think, is all.

I did not send you the Mss before because, so far as my part in the book was concerned, the time for the publication did not seem to me to have come. Besides, the form (after all, only a surface talk [?]) seemed to me too slight for a first introduction of my teaching to the general public. But now it will do.

1930

I would prefer another form more in keeping with the tone of the text,—e.g.

"It may be observed that Sri Aurobindo's education in England gave him a wide introduction to the culture of ancient, of mediaeval and of modern Europe. He was a brilliant scholar in Greek and Latin, [passed the Tripos in Cam bridge in the first division, obtained record marks in Greek and Latin in the examination for the Indian Civil Service.] He had learned French from his childhood in Manchester and studied for himself Italian and German sufficiently to read Dante and Goethe in the original tongue."

I have left the detail about the Tripos and the record

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marks, though I do not find these trifles in place here; the note would read much better with the omission of the part between the vertical lines.¹

(But what is Beachcroft doing here? He butts in in such a vast and spreading parenthesis that he seems to be one of "these ancient languages" and in him too, perhaps, I got record marks! Besides, any ingenious reader would deduce from his presence in your note that he acquitted me out of fellow-feeling over the two examinations and out of university camaraderie,—which was far from being the case. I met him only in the I.C.S. classes and at the I.C.S. examinations and we never exchanged two words together. If any extra legal consideration came in subconsciously in the acquittal, it must have been his admiration for my prose style to which he gave fervent expression in his judgment. Don't drag him in like this,—let him rest in peace in his grave.)

March 1930?

I cannot fully answer just now as it is nearly six o'clock—but of this you may be sure that you will never get my con sent to go away and give up the sadhana and the spiritual endeavour—for it comes to that. It is not by going away from the difficulties that the difficulties will disappear. They are in oneself and it is in oneself that they must be overcome.

I shall write more tonight. I may say that the Mother was not in the least changed towards you and there is no reason why she should be so. As for myself if I am dry and perhaps father snappy [?] it is because I am much pressed by difficulties on every side—you will have to be patient with me till I get out of the press.

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1. We used square brackets instead of vertical lines.

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March 30, 1930

It is certainly the force hostile to the Yoga and the divine realisation upon earth that is acting upon you at the present moment. It is the force (one force and not many) which is here in the Ashram and has been going about from one to another. With some as with Barin, V. and Prashanta it has succeeded; others have cast it from them and have been able to liberate the light of their soul, open in that light to the nearness and constant presence of the Mother, feel her working in them and move forward in a constant spiritual progress. Some are still struggling, but in spite of the bitter ness of the struggle have been able to keep faithfully to the divine call that brought them here.

That it is the same hostile force would be shown, even if its presence were not for us visible and palpable, by the fact that the suggestions it makes to the minds of its victims are always the same. Its one master sign is always this impulse to get away from the Ashram, away from myself and the Mother, out of this atmosphere, and at once. For the force does not want to give time for reflection, for resistance, for the saving Power to be felt and act. Its other signs are doubt, tamasic depression, an exaggerated sense of impurity and unfitness, the idea that the Mother is remote, does not care for one, is not giving what she ought to give, is not divine, with other similar suggestions accompanied by an inability to feel her presence or her help, a feeling that the Yoga is not possible or is not going to be done in this life, the desire to go away and do something in the ordinary world—the thing itself suggested varying according to the personal mind. If it were not this one invariable hostile force acting, there would not be this exact similarity in all the cases. In each case it is the same obscurities thrown on the intelligence, the same subconscious movements of the vital brought to the surface, the same irrational impulses pushing to the same action,—departure, renunciation of the soul's truth, refusal

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of the Divine Love and the Divine Call.

It is the vital crisis, the test, the ordeal for you as for others — a test and ordeal which we would willingly spare to those who are with us but which they call on themselves by persistence in some wrong line of movement or some falsification of the inner attitude. If you reject entirely the falsehood that this force casts upon the sadhak, if you remain faithful to the Light that called you here, you conquer and, even if serious difficulties still remain, the final victory is sure and the divine triumph of the soul over the Ignorance and the darkness.

The opportunity for these contrary forces is given when the sadhak descends in the inevitable course of the sadhana from the mental or the higher vital plane to the physical consciousness. Always this is accompanied by a fading of the first deep experiences and a descent to the neutral obscure inertia which is the bed-rock of the unredeemed physical nature. It is there that the Light, the Power, the Ananda of the Divine has to descend and transform everything, driving away for ever all obscurity and all inertia and establishing the radiant Energy, the perfect Light and the unchanging Bliss. There and not in the mind or the higher vital is all the difficulty, but there too must be the victory and the foundation of the new world. I do not wish to disguise from you the difficulty of this great and tremendous change or the possibility that you may have a long and hard work before you, but are you really unwilling to face it and take your share in the great work? Will you reject the greatness of this endeavour to follow a mad irrational impulse towards some more exciting work of the hour or the moment for which you have no true call in any part of your nature?

There is no true reason for despondency; in nothing that has passed in you or which you have written do I find any good ground for it. The difficulties you experience are nothing to those that others have felt and yet conquered, others who were not stronger than you. All that has happened is that by this descent into the physical conscious ness, the ordinary external human nature has come to the

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front with its elemental imperfections and subconscient unsatisfied impulses and it is to these that the contrary force is appealing. The mind and the higher vital have put away from them the ideas and illusions which gave them a sanction and an illusion of legitimacy and even nobility in their satisfaction. But the root of them, their inherent irrational push for satisfaction, has not yet gone—this, for instance, is the reason for the sexual movements which you have recently felt in sleep or in waking. This was inevitable. All that is needed is for your psychic being to come forward and open you to the direct and real and constant inner contact of myself and the Mother. Hitherto your soul has expressed itself through the mind and its ideals and admirations or through the vital and its higher joys and aspirations; but that is not sufficient to conquer the physical difficulty and enlighten and transform Matter. It is your soul in itself, your psychic being that must come in front, awaken entirely and make the fundamental change. The psychic being will not need the support of intellectual ideas or outer signs and helps. It is that alone that can give you the direct feeling of the Divine, the constant nearness, the inner support and aid. You will not then feel the Mother remote or have any further doubt about the realisation; for the mind thinks and the vital craves, but the soul feels and knows the Divine.

Cast away from you these movements of doubt, depression and the rest which are no part of your true and higher nature. Reject these suggestions of inability, unfitness and all these irrational movements of an alien force. Remain faithful to the Light of your soul even when it is hidden by clouds. My help and the Mother's will be there working behind even in the moments when you cannot feel it. The one need for you and for all is to be, even in the darkness of the powers of obscurity of the physical consciousness, stubbornly faithful to your soul and to the remembrance of the Divine Call.

Be faithful and you will conquer.

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March 30, 1930

I return excerpts and poems; subject to the excisions I have made they can be published.

But there are mistakes in the typing...

When I spoke of being faithful to the light of the soul and the divine Call, I was not referring to anything in the past or to any lapse on your part. I was simply suggesting the great need in all crises and attacks,—to refuse to listen to any suggestions, impulses, lures and to oppose to them all the call of the Truth, the imperative beckoning of the Light. In all doubt and depression, to say, "I belong to the Divine, I cannot fail;" to all suggestions of impurity and unfitness, to reply, "\ am a child of Immortality chosen by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother; I have but to be true to myself and to them —the victory is sure; even if I fall, I would be sure to rise again," to all impulsions to depart and serve some other ideal, to reply, 'This is the greatest, this is the Truth, this alone can satisfy the soul within me; I will endure through all tests and tribulations to the very end of the divine journey." This is what I mean by faithfulness to the Light and the Call.

April 11, 1930

The "Introduction" will do. I do not know quite which is the conversation on "surrender" to which you refer, as I have not just now the Conversations before me. You sent me one for inclusion (besides the two originally chosen) along with the other Mss. If it is that, you can include it.

I am afraid I cannot gratify the poetess; I have made it a rule not to sign or write anything in autograph books and if I break the rule in one case, I have no defence in others.

I am afraid the handwriting and style of the letter are

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rather affected, maniéré. There is no simple spontaneity— too much attempt to be something or show something that is put on. Probably she has tried too much to put on Tagore-colour to be herself. However I will look at her poems when I have leisure—it may not be very soon—and see what they are like.

April 16,1930

The message on faithfulness to the soul's Divine Ideal seems to me too personal to be published.

It is better not to speak of these things that concern the life of the Ashram and the Yoga to people (like these cyclists) coming from outside who are generally moved by curiosity of a most trivial and superficial kind. But the distorted inter view seems to me more silly than intentionally malicious or capable of doing harm.

May 7, 1930

It does not matter about the poem.

I send back the farce; I cannot say that I have gone through it, but there is no objection to your giving it.

I have after so long a time got some idea of the introduction, but I do not know yet whether in the next few days it will materialise—or whether, when materialised, it will be satisfactory or even publishable. I will see in three or four days—though it is difficult to make time.

As for your sadhana—remember that an inner quietude, caused by the purification of the restless mind and vital, is the first condition of a secure sadhana. Next, that to feel the Mother's presence while in external action is already a great step and one that cannot be attained without a considerable inner progress. Probably, what you feel that you need is a

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constant and vivid sense of the Mother's force working in you, descending from above and taking possession of the different planes of your being. That is often a prior condition for the twofold movement of ascent and descent, and it will surely come in time. These things often take a long time to begin visibly, especially when the mind is accustomed to be very active and has not the habit of mental silence. When that is the case, much work has to be carried on behind the veil of the mind and the sadhak thinks nothing is happening when really much preparation is being done. If you want a more swift and visible progress, it can only be by bringing your psychic to the front through a constant self-offering. Aspire intensely, but without impatience.

P. S. More can certainly be given to the physician, but first, as he himself admits, the treatment must be finished and brought to a full and lasting success.

June 1, 1930

Re the dreams. You do not realise how much of the ordinary natural being lives in the subconscient physical. It is there that habitual movements, mental and vital, are stored and from there they come up into the waking mind. Driven out of the upper consciousness, it is in this cavern of the Panis that they take refuge. No longer allowed to emerge freely in the waking state, they come up in sleep in dreams. It is only when they are cleared out of the subconscient, their very seeds killed by the enlightening of these hidden layers, that they cease for good. As your consciousness deepens inwardly and the higher light comes down into these subliminal parts, these things will disappear.

I shall see whether I can get the thing done (the facts of the life) in these ten days.

I fear it is quite impossible for me to read what you sent

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me just now. Perhaps a week or two later. I suppose there can be no objection to your publishing the novel¹—especially as there is no politics in it.

September 1930 ?

.....I will try to explain the concentration; it is not really very difficult or abstruse. Nor is the Yoga so mysterious as all that; almost all the elements in it are quite familiar to the Vedantin, Vaishnava or Tantrik. It is only the combination of elements and their orientation that is new—and of course its being put in English instead of Sanskritic terms.

The "too good" idea is a delusion—it does not depend on that; people with less intelligence, more vital confusion and resistance, have at length got the opening. The main thing is to get rid of the despondency and disturbance of the mind, make it more quiet and peaceful too as to receive. I don't expect you at all to do the thing off your own bat, once you get the habit of receiving (as you did with the poetry) I am prepared to take you the whole way myself. Not in a day of course; kāla [time] is necessary as well as the Guru.

September 1930 ?

I was very glad to get your letter and especially to know that you are more at peace. That is what is first needed, the settling down of a natural peace and quiet on the nature— the spiritual peace is a bigger thing that can come afterwards.

Then as to concentration. Ordinarily the consciousness is spread out everywhere, dispersed, running in this or that

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1. A Bengali novel by Dilip: Ranger Parash (Touch of Colour).

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direction, after this subject and that object in multitude. When anything has to be done of a sustained nature the first thing one does is to draw back all this dispersed consciousness and concentrate. It is then, if one looks closely, bound to be concentrated in one place and on one occupation, subject or object—as when you are composing a poem or a botanist is studying a flower. The place is usually somewhere in the brain if it is the thought, in the heart if it is the feeling in which one is concentrated. The yogic concentration is simply an extension and intensification of the same thing. It may be on an object as when one does trātak on a shining point—then one has to concentrate so that one sees only that point and has no other thought but that. It may be on an idea or word or a name, the idea of the Divine, the word OM, the name Krishna, or a combination of idea and word or idea and name. But, farther, in Yoga one also concentrates in a particular place. There is the famous rule of concentrating between the eyebrows—the centre of the inner mind, of occult vision, of the will is there. What you do is to think firmly from there on whatever you make the object of your concentration or else try to see the image of it from there. If you succeed in this, then after a time you feel that your whole consciousness is centred there in that place —of course for the time being. After doing it sometimes and often it becomes easy and normal.

I hope this is clear. Well, in this Yoga, you do the same, but not at that particular centre, but anywhere in the head or at the centre of the chest where the physiologists have fixed the cardiac centre. Instead of concentrating on an object, you concentrate in the head in a will, a call for the descent of the peace from above or, as some do, an opening of the unseen lid and an ascent of the consciousness above. In the heart centre one concentrates in an aspiration, for an opening, for the presence of the living image of the Divine there or whatever else is the object. There may be Japa of a name but, if so, there must also be a concentration on it and the name must repeat itself there in the heart centre.

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It may be asked what becomes of the rest of the conscious ness when there is this local concentration? Well, it either falls silent as in any concentration or, if it does not, then thoughts or other things may move about, as if outside, but the concentrated part does not attend to them or notice. That is when the concentration is reasonably successful.

One has not to fatigue oneself at first by long concentration if one is not accustomed, for then it loses its power and value. One can relax and meditate instead of concentrating. It is only as the concentration becomes normal that one can go on for a longer and longer time.

September 3,1930

It is a very beautiful poem you have written.

I return your article. I have not been able to make time to go through the whole of it; I will read it when it is printed.

As to the book, I am afraid I have no time for such things. The twenty-four hours are already too short for what I have to do.

September 7, 1930

Yes, let your sister decide these things for herself; do not put any pressure upon her.

There is no reason why one should not receive through the thinking mind, as one receives through the vital, the emotional and the body. The thinking mind is as capable of receiving as these are, and, since it has to be transformed as well as the rest, it must be trained to receive, otherwise no transformation of it could take place.

It is the ordinary unenlightened activity of the intellect that is an obstacle to spiritual experience, just as is the ordinary unregenerated activity of the vital or the obscure stupidly

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obstructive consciousness of the body. What the sadhaka has to be warned against is, first, mistaking mental ideas and impressions or intellectual conclusions for realisation; secondly, the restless activity of the mere mind, chanchalam manah which disturbs the spontaneous accuracy of psychic and spiritual experience and gives no room for the descent of the true illuminating knowledge or else deforms it as soon as it touches the human mental plane. Always, it is substituting its own representations and constructions and opinions for the true knowledge. But if the intellect is surrendered, open, quiet, receptive, there is no reason why it should not be a means of reception of the light or an aid to the experience of spiritual states and an inner change.

October 13, 1930

This is a fundamental experience of the Yoga. It is the free ascent of the consciousness to join the Divine. When, liberated from its ordinary identification with the body, it rises upward to have experience of the higher planes, to link itself with the psychic or the true being or to join the Divine Consciousness, then there is this experience of ascension and of speeding or expanding through space. The joy you feel is a sign of this last movement,—rising to join the Divine; the passivity and expectancy of a descent are signs of the open ness to the Divine that is its result; there is also the sense of this openness, and emptiness of the ordinary contents of the consciousness, a wideness not limited by the narrow prison of the physical personality. There is too, usually or very often, a massive immobility of the body which corresponds to the silence that comes on the mind when it is released from itself—the Silence that is the foundation of spiritual experience. What you have felt (the former experiences were probably preparatory touches) is indeed the beginning of this foundation—a consciousness free, wide, empty at

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will, able to rise into the supraphysical planes, open to the descent of whatever the Mother will pour into it.

December 8, 1930

It is again a beautiful poem that you have written, but not better than the other. Why erect mental theories and suit your poetry to them whether your father's or Tagore's? I could suggest to you not to be bound by either but to write as best suits your own inspiration and poetic genius. I imagine that each of them wrote in the way suited to his own inspiration and substance and, as is the habit of the human mind, put that way forward as a general rule for all. You have developed an original poetic turn of your own, quite unlike your father's and not by any means a reflection of Tagore's. Besides, there is now as a result of your sadhana a new quality in your work, a power of expressing with great felicity a subtle psychic delicacy and depth of thought and emotion which I have not seen elsewhere in modern Bengali verse. If you insist on being rigidly simple and direct as a mental rule, you might spoil something of the subtlety of the expression, even if the delicacy of the substance remained. Obscurity, artifice, rhetoric have to be avoided, but for the rest follow the inner movement.

I do not remember the precise words I used in my letter to Amal,¹—! think I advised sincerity and straightforward ness as opposed to rhetoric and artifice. In any case it was far from my intention to lay down any strict rule of bare simplicity and directness as a general law of poetic style. I was speaking of "twentieth century" English poetry and of what was necessary for Amal, an Indian writing in the English tongue. English poetry in former times used inversions freely and had a law of its own, at that time natural and right

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1. Amal Kiran (K. D. Sethna).

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but the same thing nowadays sounds artificial and false. I have myself used inversions in my earlier poetry, though I would avoid them in anything I wrote now. English has now acquired a richness and flexibility and power of many-sided suggestion which makes it unnecessary for poetry to depart from the ordinary style and form of the language. But there are other languages in which this is not yet true. Bengali is in its youth, in full process of growth and has many things not yet done, many powers and values it has still to acquire. It is necessary that its poets should keep a full and entire freedom of turning in whichever way their genius leads, of finding new forms and movements; if they like to adhere to the ordinary norm of the language to which prose has to keep and do what they can in it, they should be free to do so; but also they should be free to depart from it, if it is by doing so that they can best liberate their souls in speech. At present it is this that most matters.

I think I prefer the original form of your penultimate verse. I did not myself find it ambiguous and it has a native glow of colour in it which the second version misses—at least, so it seems to me on a comparative reading.

P. S. I have had no time to answer today's letter, but I shall answer it as soon as possible. Do not let your vital get rest less,—keep a firm and quiet inner seat. You have progressed much more than you know. Never mind Russell and his shallow materialistic externalism. It is in the inner being that there are the riches and the colour and the immortal joy— but, to get them, first peace, quietude, self-mastery are indispensable.

December 25, 1930

Radharani's (?) rendering^.1

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1. A Bengali translation of Sri Aurobindo's poem, "God." (The question mark after "Radharani" is Sri Aurobindo's.)

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It is not a very satisfactory translation, but your changes improve it as far as it can be improved.

Why tobu [yet] in the fourth line? The idea is that work and knowledge and power can only obey the Divine and give him service; Love alone can compel him because, of course Love is self-giving and the Divine gives himself in return.

As for the second verse it does not give the idea at all. To have no contempt for the clod or the worm does not indicate that the non-despiser is the Divine,—such an idea would be absolutely meaningless and in the last degree feeble. Any Yogi could have that equality, or somebody much less than a Yogi. The idea is that, being Omnipotent, omniscient, infinite, supreme, the Divine does not scorn to descend even into the lowest forms, the obscurest figures of Nature and animate them with the divine Presence,—that shows his Divinity. The whole sense has fizzled out in the translation.

You need not say all that to the poetess, but perhaps you might very delicately hint to her that if she could bring in this point, it could be better. Then perhaps she could herself change the verse.

P. S. I shall answer about your sparkles and sounds—which are not an optical or any other kind of illusion, if you please. Why drag in Science! into a Yogic experience?

December 27, 1930

I send you my version of your version of your poem, Dān Lilā. I have no time to write it out fair, but I suppose you will be able to piece my alterations together.

I have not forgotten Russell¹ but I have neglected him,

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1. B. Russell, The Conquest of Happiness (Alien & Unwin, London, 1930), p. 160: "We are all prone to the malady of the introvert, who, with the manifold spectacle of the world spread out before him, turns away and gazes upon the emptiness within."

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first, for want of time; second, because for the moment I have mislaid your letter; third, because of lack of under standing on my part. What is the meaning of taking interest in external things for their own sakes? And what is an introvert? Both these problems baffle me.

The word "introvert" has come into existence only recently and sounds like a companion of "pervert." Literally, it means one who is turned inwards. The Upanishad speaks of the doors of the senses that are turned outwards absorbing man in external things ("for their own sakes," I suppose?) and of the rare man among a million who turns his vision inwards and sees the Self. Is that man an introvert? And is Russell's ideal man interested in externals for their own sake, Cheloo, for instance, or Joseph, homo externalis Russellius, an extrovert? Or is an introvert one who has an inner life stronger than his external one,—the poet, the musician, the artist? Was Beethoven in his deafness bringing out music from within an introvert? Or does it mean one who measures external things by an inner standard and is interested in them not for their own sakes but for their value to his inner self-development, psychic, religious, ethical or other. Are Tolstoi and Gandhi examples of introverts? Or in another field Goethe? Or does it mean one who cares for external things only as they concern his own ego? But that I suppose 'would include 999,999 men out of every million.

What are external things? Russell is a mathematician? Are mathematical formulae external things even though they exist here only in the World-Mind and the mind of man? If not, is Russell as mathematician, an introvert? Again, Yajnavalkya says that one loves the wife not for the sake of the wife, but for the self's sake, and so with other objects of interest or desire—whether the self be the inner self or the ego. In Yoga it is the valuing of external things in the terms of the desire of the ego that is discouraged—their only value is their value in the manifestation of the Divine. Who desires external things for their own sake and not for some value to the conscious being? Even Cheloo, the day-labourer, is not

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interested in a two-anna piece for its own sake, but for some vital satisfaction it can bring him; even with the hoarding miser it is the same. It is his vital being's passion for possession that he satisfies. What then is meant by Russell's "for their own sake?" If you will enlighten me on these points, I may still make an effort to comment on the mahāvākya [great dictum] of your former guru.

More important is his wonderful phrase about the emptiness within—on that at least I hope to make a comment one day or another.

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