In this third volume of correspondence between Sri Aurobindo and Dilip Kumar Roy, Sri Aurobindo is night after night, imparting knowledge in his delightful way and keeping on encouraging Dilipda.
Sri Aurobindo : corresp.
THEME/S
1937
January 3,1937
Having led a faultless, nay, immaculate life for long I have had a fall of frivolity today. I was going to the pier this morning to write there another diaphanous poem when I sat down to scribble a few lines to Professor Sarcar and Professoress as they have just sent a tin of mustard oil and some muri [puffed rice], when lo, dushta [mischievous] sarasvatī tripped onto my pen and this Shuk- Sārī Sangbad77 of unpardonable unyogic levity was the horrific result. You know the rural style of Shuk-Sārī Sangbad, eh ? My father wrote a la Shuk Sārī Sangbad a rollickingly undevout Krishna-Radha Sangbad (Shuk says something in praise of his Krishna, Sarī contradicts with cogent arguments proving to the hilt that Krishna is not a patch on her Radha. My father varied on this) (mine is not so blasphemous after all!) thus:
Krishna says, "My Radha, look at me !"
Radha says, "Why do you trouble me needlessly—I have
enough troubles of my own."
Krishna says, "All the three worlds are illumined with my
beauty."
Radha says, "If only you were not so dark!—beauty would be
overflowing." etc.
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I halt in trepidation. The Lord has forgiven long enough my irreverence for His Supramental—I must be prudenter now, what?
Yet I send you—on a dare-divine mood the frivolity. Just smile a while fora change after my devout-enough poems of late, what?
P.S. The reference to yoginī is—les trois sceurs étaient bouléversees, excitées, bavardes, etc. en grande joie en mangeant Ie muri + sarsher tel.78 Do you know one rejoices in muri only when sarsher tel gives its unctuous support. Now proceed please and tell me how you react to this irreverence. Too scandalized, what ?
The question is not how I react to it, but how the mustard [oil] and muri react to your ribaldry. If they don't get irritated at this irreverent attempt to bring discord into their happy ménage (made sacred and legitimate by solemn wedlock) and don't give you an indigestion in revenge, it is all right. But such great gods ought not to be so lightly treated. If you had written a passionate lyric or a noble epic on the subject, that would have been something.
January 4,1937
(How we laughed at your rejoinder! God bless you!)
Here's a poem—a poem! I felt like a hero while writing it and copying it. Its fire. and glow almost made me believe I meant it all. But doubtless it is imagination catching fire, what ? Still see—just see : all these heavy thoughts sublimated into a curious radiance through rhythm and fire and austerity—isn't it ? I have been reading Andre Maurois's famous Ariel (Shelley's life) and his idealism stirred me deeply—fascinating. That may explain this maybe ? Anyhow I am delighted our language can express
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so much thought-stuff, with so much resilience and. subtlety. I trust you will go on shedding your austere force: I want—I love—to write some more in this new vein. But I am feeling so unmusical Guru, que faire ? Do help. I must be in full training now, you see—and poetical delectation won't give me that training, will it ?
Yes, it is a poem full of energized richness of expression.
No, certainly, poetical flow, however delectable will not put you into musical training. Don't know why you are so stuck up unless that part is lying fallow, but the moment is inopportune. Let us see if a little rain of heaven can't make it sprout.
January 7, 1937
Today the musical inspiration has come back at long last: I have sung with gusto and verve this morning for an hour or more and this evening for about half an hour. I will sing for half an hour more after meditation. Two hours a day will be enough—but not less—and singing is an activity you can hardly do unless you feel like singing. That is why I had to trouble you. I hope this will continue.
I am working quite [a] lot at revising a French translation of Sri Ramakrishna's sayings by a Swiss lady—given me by Herbert.79 So my poetry had to stop what with singing and revising. A week later I hope to start poetry again.
I feel well and tranquil enough in my Dilipian way and delightfully free from all wrong impulses—(of late I fed myself and people a little—not too much still—from tomorrow this too I will stop)—and have done a good deal of reading as usual. I send you the first really good review of Suryamukhi that has just appeared. My savant friend Professor Mukherji wrote verses once (quite good metres)
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that is why he has seized what many haven't so far. But he perhaps doesn't know yet that Suryamukhi has changed (or at least modified) the hostility of a number of anti- Dilips. Anyhow read the review: it is good and not a perfunctory sort of tribute I think, what ?
Glad the Rain of Heaven has produced the musical spirit— hope it will flourish.
A very good review. Suryamukhi seems a success from the point of view of worth having appreciation.
January 18,1937
Dhurjati wrote to me yesterday a short letter asking me to wire his brother (at Calcutta) your blessings on the eve of his departure for change. In sheer chagrin and vexation I tore it off and thought I would not even let you know. I utterly dislike this Kasmandaism for it is the same. Why on earth should you wire, fancy! Then suppose his brother takes an ill-turn: won't they say with a knowing smile and wise head-shaking, "Ah-h-h! Didn't we tell Dhurjati—”, etc. I know our Calcuttan critics and I can't dream of being instrumental in making my guru their butt. You may not mind but I do. So I decline. If you care to wire your blessings it's your business—not mine—for my heart is far from compassion débordante pour les gens qui n'approchent Ie Divin que lorsqu'ils sont malades.80 Yet I thought it would be wrong of me not to let you know even. For you may send a force, qui sait [who knows]—in spite of Kasmandaism and Dhurjati-ism. Do, if you can afford the time—that is entirely your affair. I tell you this to tell you in all sincerity that I am disgusted—disgusted—no milder word will describe my disappointment with this Dhurjatyism and Kasmandaism under the guise of devotionalism
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and sudden-turn-ism. Humbug ! You have to send your blessings by wire to his brother who (for ought we know) maybe of the type described by Shakespeare in Macbeth, "Nothing became them in life so much as their leaving it." (I quote the idea from memory.) Even the Kasmandas didn't dare so much, what ?
P.S. Whatever you may say. Guru, I respond still with Sri Ramakrishna's ideology, "To ask the Divine to cure this cage of flesh and bone! fie!" I was reading even the other day his prayer, "Mā erā tomār kāchhe ese ki nā prārthanā kare «rog bhālo karo»—bhakti dāo e prārthanā chhere ? ki hīna buddhi !" [Mother, they come to you and then pray to be cured from illnesses, instead of praying "give me bhakti !" What low mentality!]
hīna buddhi indeed! "Sots"—c'est Ie mot juste, n'est-ce pas ? ["Idiots" is the right word, isn't it ?] (Though by way of cautious reservation I may butt in this—that in such a moment of weak sottise [foolishness] I too may pray to be cured if I am ill—but that doesn't invalidate the truth behind my present contempt of such prayers, i.e. of all prayers which concentrate on gifts not quintessential to Divinity like Truth, Knowledge, Purity, Fidelity, Vairagya, etc. Bless me that I may be an orthodox ascetic on this point in all sincerity. Let that be my birthday prayer anyhow.
That is all right. It is a proper spirit for the spiritual training.
Obviously to seek the divine only for what one can get out of Him is not the proper attitude; but if it were absolutely forbidden to seek Him for these things, most people in the world would not turn towards Him at all. I suppose therefore it is allowed so that they may make a beginning—if they have faith, they may get what they ask for and think it a good thing to go on and then one day they may suddenly stumble upon the idea that this is after all not quite the one thing to do and that there are better ways and a better spirit in which one can approach the Divine. If they do not get what they want and still come to the Divine and trust in Him, well, that shows they
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are getting ready. Let us look at it as a sort of infants' school for the unready. But of course that is not the spiritual life, it is only a sort of elementary religious approach. For the spiritual life to give and not to demand is the rule. The sadhak, however, can ask for the Divine Force to aid him in keeping his health or recovering it if he does that as part of his sadhana so that his body may be able and fit for the spiritual life and a capable instrument for the Divine Work.
As for the wire of blessings, I do not see much necessity for it. All that is necessary is that he should send information whenever necessary.
January 19,1937
Yes, I see that now. I have on a chit of paper just quoted your "As for the wire of blessing I see no necessity; all that is necessary is that he should inform us about his brother whenever he thinks it needful" and just posted it—with no letter at all from me. So that is that.
I have been praying a lot for a little real inner surrender of late. Yesterday I did much japa, etc, and prayed. My work too (with Herbert re. Sri Ramakrishna's sayings of which the French translation I had to compare with the original Bengali) is finished today. He asked what would be the equivalent of vairagya in French. The translator had written désintéressement. I suggested detachement. Herbert says détachement won't quite do in French. What then ? Could you or Mother please suggest some word ?
The word désintéressement is not equivalent of vairagya. I think detachement is nearer to it, for vairagya means détachement des passions, des désirs, des liens de la terre [detachment from passions, desires, bonds of the earth]. It is not perhaps
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quite equivalent to vairagya but I .don't know any word in French or English which has the full connotation of vairagya.
Today I could not concentrate at all—though I tried much. I was resolved to do no work till my birthday [22nd]-— to concentrate on japa, etc. But I felt a strange restless- ness today the like of which I have not had since my last depression in November. (I haven't had any depression since if you will please note.) But I notice no progress in me towards spiritual consciousness and the old questionings come again, "What am J doing ? Why wasting my time—on what ?" My old vairagya seems a little agog and bent on giving me a little trouble. Though I don't relish them at all. I did a lot of japa, etc. but my restlessness still remains. The old idea of solitude an d doing proper sadhana too takes hold of me. But how to set about it I do not know. I feel the beginning of a sadness and loneliness again. I am not a little afraid of the gloom it is likely to bring in its train and just on the eve of my birthday at that. If come it must, try to send me a little force that the suffering should reawake my psychic fire which had lately fallen asleep, I believe, in my latter-day cheerfulness. Cheerfulness, Guru ? I have had a taste of it for two months. But a quoi bon ? [What's the use ?]—this question occurs again. Does it help the fire within or only make one forget the Divine ? Perhaps even depression is better than cheerfulness ? Strange such old questions should revive now of all times when I want to dive more into the heart of sadhana! But there it is and I think I should let you know it all.
This movement is one that always tries to come when you have a birthday or a darshan and is obviously a suggestion offerees that want to disturb you and give you a bad birthday or bad darshan. You must get rid of the idea that it is in any way helpful for sadhana, e.g. makes you remember the Divine etc.—if it does, it makes you remember the Divine in the wrong way and in addition brings up the weakness, also
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depression, self-distrust etc. etc. A quoi bon cheerfulness ? It puts you in the right condition for the psychic to work and without knowing it you grow in just the right perceptions and right feelings for the spiritual attitude. This growth I have been observing in you for a fairly long time now and it is in the cheerful states that it is the most active. Japa, thinking of the Divine is all right, but it must be on this basis and in company with work and mental activity, for then the instrument is in a healthy condition. But if you become restlessly eager to do nothing but japa and think of nothing but the Divine and of the "progress" you have or have not made (Ramana Maharshi says you should never think of "progress", it is according to him a movement of the ego), then all the fat is in the fire because the system is not yet ready for a Herculean effort and it begins to get upset and think it is unfit and will never be fit. So be a good cheerful worker and offer your bhakti to the Divine in all ways you can but rely on him to work out things in you.
January 20,1937
Well, you know what is my view about Cape Cormorin, and the Mother's is the same. It is not that something opposite to what you pray for is granted you, but that something opposite to the aspiration rises and creates an old opposite movement of the nature. It is no use finding fault with the nature for that—I mean, the personal nature because it happens to everybody. The only thing to do is to realise and understand what is happening and refuse to identify yourself with the movement or accept it as your own—to push it always away until it feels that it is disowned and can come no more. Cape Cormorin won't do that—not even a whole fortnight of CC.
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(Incomplete letter from Mother)
I just opened your letter and read, "Today Mother at pranam was very cold" and stopped there rather amused.
No, I was not very cold I had a cold which is not quite the same, and I was struggling with it. I thought you were aware of it.
Anyhow, now that you know (...)
Mother has already written to you about this morning's pranam—she was suffering from a bad attack on her body and had some difficulty in preventing more from coming. There was no intention of coldness to you or anybody, as you can understand, though others have complained also. I hope therefore you will have thrown aside any feelings that her supposed coldness—which did not or could not exist—raised in you.
My letter was only a repetition of what you yourself have written recently, that to grow in bhakti and self-giving is the only thing and it seems to me that you have been doing that very rapidly. That you do not recognise it is natural, because the bhakta has not the pride of the jnani and is apt to think that he has done nothing. The movement of bhakta has no doubt not reached the intensity or constant insistence on the surface which would make you feel satisfied that it is there, but that is a matter of time and growth and from my experience of these things I thought it better not to try and force the speed. That was all I meant. I hope therefore you will throw
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away the reaction my letter caused in you and get back the poise you had gained before.
January 22,1937
I am extremely glad to know that the worst of the attack has passed; I hope the after effects will quickly disappear. You had stood out so well for two months and repelled all incipient movements of the kind, that the sudden violence of this one was not expected—especially as the last darshan had gone off well. But when they get a chance these forces take it.
I quite agree with you in not relishing the idea of another attack of this nature. I am myself, I suppose, more a hero by necessity than by choice—I do not love storms and battles— at least on the subtle plane. The sunlit way may be an illusion, though I do not think it is—for I have seen people treading it for years; but a way with only natural or even only moderate fits of rough weather, a way without typhoons surely is possible—there are so many examples : durgam pathastat81 [difficult of going is that path] may be generally true and certainly the path of laya or Nirvana is difficult in the extreme to most (although in my case I walked into Nirvana without intending it or rather Nirvana walked casually into me not so far from the beginning of my yogic career without asking my leave). But the path need not be cut by periodical violent storms, though that it is so for a great many is an obvious fact. But even for these, if they stick to it, I find that after a certain point the storms dimmish in force, frequency, duration. That is why I insisted so much on your sticking—for if you stick, the turning point is bound to come. I have seen some astonishing instances here recently of this typhoonic periodicity beginning to fade out after years and years of violent recurrence.
These things are not part of the normal difficulties, however
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acute, of the nature but especial formations—tornadoes which start (usually from a particular point, sometimes varying) and go whirling round in the same circle always till it is finished. In your case the crucial point, whatever may have been the outward starting-point if any, is the idea or feeling of frustration in the sadhana; once that takes hold of the mind, all the rest follows. That again is why I have [been] putting all sorts of suggestions before you for getting rid of this idea—not because my suggestions, however useful and true if they can be followed, are binding laws of Yoga, but because if followed they can wipe out this point of danger. A formation like this is very often the result of something in past lives—the Mother has so seen it in yours—which prolongs a karmic samskar (as the Buddhists would say) and tries to repeat itself once again. To dissolve it ought to be possible if one sees it for what it is and is resolved to get rid of it—never allowing any mental justification of it, however logical, right and plausible the justification may seem to be—always replying to all the mind's arguments or the vital's feelings in favour of it, like Cato82 to the debaters, "Delenda est Carthago”— "Carthage must be destroyed", Carthage in this case being the formation and its nefarious circle.
Anyway the closing idea in your letter is the right one. "The Divine is worth ferreting out even if oceans of gloom have to be crossed". If you could confront the formation always with that firm resolution, it should bring victory. In the Mother's vision Kali did express a wish to interfere and break the thing—I don't know how she proposes to do it—by giving you the strength you pray for or by breaking the head of the unwelcome lodger or visitor. I hope she will soon do it.
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January 25,1937
Biren's letter. See, I am so sorry X. attacked him thus unscrupulously. Yet what lovely letters on honesty he wrote to me from Curseong! Oh, do hum X & Co. to ashes by your brahmateja for a change ? What ?
Why burn them to ashes ? What Biren complains of is what politicians always do in a campaign. If Biren wants to do politics he will have to meet a lot more of that and worse things and learn to bear all with a sweet ineffable grin. Politics is in that respect a kind of Yoga in which one who acquires a Baldwinian or Asquithian samata scores best. As the Gita says, " samatvam yoga ucyate” [it is equality that is meant by Yoga] and also, "yogah kannasu kauśalam" [Yoga is the true skill in works], while as for X and Co. he should remember the other saying,'''prakrtim yāntibhūtāni” [all existences follow their nature]—bhutas and politicians also...
What happened was that your song on Ramprasad put Mother into connection with something of the past and she got transferred there and saw a scene in connection with it...
January 1937 ?
There are people who start at once, others take time.
Anilbaran recognised the Mother as divine at first sight and has been happy ever afterwards; others who rank among Mother's devotees took years to discover or admit it, but they arrived all the same. There are people who had nothing but difficulties and revolts for the first five, six, seven or more years of the sadhana, yet the psychic ended by awaking. The time taken is a secondary matter: the one thing needful is— soon or late, easily or with difficulty to get there. H's case is
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different. His insincerity came in his wanting to carry on his lower devil and higher angel in one happy family team, or to pretend that the latter did not exist shouting when he was in revolt or misery, "I am great, I am glorious, I am full of light and love, etc. etc." He tried to get rid of his difficulties by ignoring them or pretending they were not difficulties but only little amusing gambols of his nature.... I would suggest to you to drop irrelevant comparisons and go ahead on your own way till the light that is beginning to dawn becomes the full day-light.
February 5,1937
Well, yes, X had a bad fan after last August and she couldn't right herself, because she did not take the right poise back that she had before. As for others and pranam, well, some people find themselves getting on famously with the morning meditation while others are desolate over the (temporary) lost pranam. These things go according to temperament and for the sun and shadow there seems to be no one law for all, nānā patho hi loke [many are the paths for men] and not nānā rucih [many tastes] only.
I do not disapprove of your resolution—my only point is that it should be done without the sadness, fear of depression or depression coming in. If the strength and steadiness can face and not flinch before the dryness, then the dryness won't be there always : it is the upheavals (of the wrong kind) that are to be avoided. Something is growing in you, but it is all inside—still if there is the steady persistence it is bound to come out. For instance, this white dazzling light with currents, it is a sure sign of the Force (the Mother's) entering and working in the ādhār [receptacle]/ but it came to you in sleep— that is to say, in the inner being, still behind the veil. The moment it came out, the dryness would disappear. My idea
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was that till it did come out and till the fear of the depression was no longer there, poetry and music should go hand in hand with a moderate amount of meditation. Still, if the urge to long meditations is there, I do not disapprove. Only keep your resolution firm that whatever the difficulty, you will keep on till you go through.
February 10,1937
I am afraid you did not quite understand the spirit or the letter of what Mother told you on Monday. Her point was not that the Pranam was useless except to a very few, but that only some made full use of it while the others got either nothing from it or an inferior gain and that the change to Meditation had shown that many got something from this new method while from the Pranam they had drawn much less advantage. (It is a fact that many have said so—others of course have lamented the stopping of the Pranam on the ground that they felt empty and could not draw anything from the Meditation.) Under these circumstances the idea has arisen of varying the method maintained up till now and alternating between Pranam and Meditation. That was what she was trying to explain to you.
On the other point of the wrong attitude of many of the sadhaks—about her smile; in the first place agacé does not mean irritated; it is the mildest possible word to express a certain contrariety, a slight and very mild feeling of impatience at something unreasonable. Secondly, she did not say that it was people missing her smile when she did not smile that agaced her, but that it was wrong complaints, their missing or rather refusing to acknowledge her smile when she did smile and attack her therefore—for it was not usually sorrow their letters expressed but anger, revolt or displeasure. Hundreds of times it has happened like that—even when she saw that the sadhak was morally out of sorts and did her best to cheer
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him by kindness, sympathy, her sweetest smile, he or she would write that Mother had refused him or her a smile, had been hard and angry, had shown a frowning displeasure. Very often she was accused of giving the wrong kind of smile, of giving a satiric or ironic smile—an intention of which she had been utterly unconscious and had not entertained a moment— or somehow or other not the smile the sadhak had wanted. Moreover it was often added that she had smiled on every- body else, but reserved her harshness only for one alone— and sometimes several people would write that on the same day! Moreover these things were discussed, the Mother's attitude to the sadhaks watched, estimated, slight variations made big things of, a table of intentional rewards and punishments, of the Mother's approval or displeasure built upon that—though such an idea was as far as possible from the Mother's mind. Now are not these things, especially when carried to excess and constantly repeated, agacant and is it so unreasonable for the Mother to feel agaced by them—to feel some contrariety or a slight impatience ? Would not anybody if he got day after day a correspondence full of such confounded complaints, reproaches, expressions of anger, sometimes something like abuse, be drawn to feel some ripple of agacement ? Is all that really in all cases—as in your own, which was not in question—the outcome of a feeling of the heart's dependence on the Mother ? Is it altogether (apart from any idea of self-giving) the right attitude for a sadhak in the Pranam ? I thought not and that was why I sometimes said to the Mother that if that was all the use so many made of the Pranam, it might be better to stop it rather than that it should be the occasion of such self torment and revolts as were expressed in these letters. I did not stop it, however—I only wrote to many pointing out the unreasonableness of this attitude and that has had a certain effect. My suggestion of stopping was merely an expression of agacement, a momentary grumble sometimes maybe permitted even to us—it was nothing more.
I may add that Mother had not spoken of self-giving and
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not demanding—what she said was that people should be more concentrated to receive what she could give them than occupied wholly with such external things. Nor was she thinking at all of you as a complainant—for you have not given her this kind of trouble.
Finally, when the Mother was explaining the thing to you, she did it smilingly, not in any spirit of irritation or displeasure. So I think you will see that you need not have taken it so much to heart, still less taken it for yourself. It was not aimed at you in the least degree.
All that was said had regard to the proposed change which would vary Pranam with Meditation—not stop Pranam alto gether. It had nothing to do with the temporary rest taken by the Mother—that was absolutely indispensable. I had often asked her to take some rest before but she had refused because it might disturb the sadhaks too much—what happened made the break physically indispensable. The sadhaks ought to concede that much to her after she has laboured night and day for so many years without giving herself any real rest even at night. You yourself wrote asking her to take the rest she needed. Even so she did not fail to begin going down morning and evening and renewing interviews as soon as it was physically possible.
Your description of the Avatars is magnificent in colour— I wish it were a sober fact that the Divine refuses us nothing— if He would start doing that, it would be glorious and I should not at all insist on constant beatitude. But from his representatives, Vibhutis and Avatars he rather exacts a good deal and expects them to overcome under rather difficult conditions. No doubt they do not call for compassion—but, well, surely you can permit them an occasional divine right to a grumble ? Most of them have grumbled—at least once or twice—and ours, like Mother's about the agacement or mine about the tons of correspondence is a semi-humorous plainte [complaint].
P.S. I don't know why you should fear the Mother will refuse you her smile at the Darshan time—she has never done
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so and has no intention of doing so. All these fears should be dismissed—it is only they that spoil things which would otherwise go all right.
February 11,1937
I will certainly send all the force available and hope the neck will lose its undesirable tendency to stiffness and other things again tend to OK-ness.
The Divine may be difficult, but his difficulties can be overcome if one keeps at Him. Even my smilelessness was overcome which Nevinson83 had remarked with horror more than twenty years before—the most dangerous man in India, Aurobindo Ghose "the man who never smiles". He ought to have added, "but who always jokes"; but he did not know that, as I was very solemn with him, or perhaps I had not developed sufficiently on that side then. Anyhow if you could overcome that, you are bound to overcome all the other difficulties also.
February 12,1937
Certainly you can arrange Thursday for Baron.84 MonodHerzen85 spoke to Pavitra about him and Pavitra said he could come but as yet he has not turned up. Of course we did not hear of his surrealism, only of his desire to contact a spiritual centre like this while he was in India. That of course (I mean his surrealism) makes him more interesting.
I really can't tell you what surrealism is, because it is something—at least the word is—quite new and I have not read either the reliable theorists of the school nor much of
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their poetry. What I picked up on the way through certain reviews, etc. was that it was a poetry based on the dream- consciousness, but I don't know if this is correct or merely an English critic's idea of it. The inclusion of Beaudelaire86 and Valery87 seems to indicate something wider than that. But the word is of quite recent origin and nobody spoke formerly of Beaudelaire as a surrealist or even of Mallarme.88 Mallarme was supposed to be the founder of a new trend of poetry, impressionist and symbolist, followed in varying degrees and not by any means in the same way by Verlaine,89Rimbaud,90 both of them poets of great fame—Verlaine is certainly a great poet and people now say Rimbaud also, but I have never come across his poetry except in extracts—and dev- eloping in Valery and other noted writers of today. It seems that all these are now claimed as part of or the origin of the surrealist movement. But I cannot say what are the exact boundaries or who comes in where. I suppose if Baron communicates to you books on the subject or more precise information, we shall know more clearly now. In any case surrealism is part of an increasing attempt of the European mind to escape from the surface consciousness (in poetry as well as in painting and in thought) and grope after a deeper truth of things which is not on the surface. The Dream consciousness as it is called—meaning not merely what we see in dreams, but the inner consciousness in which we get into contact with deeper worlds which underlie, influence and to some extent explain much in our lives, what the psychologists call the subliminal or the subconscient (the latter a very ambiguous phrase) offers the first road of escape and the surrealists seem to be trying to force it. My impression is that there is much fumbling and that more often it is certain obscure and not always very safe layers that are tapped. That accounts for the note of diabolism that comes in in Beaudelaire, in Rimbaud also, I believe, and in certain ugly elements in English surrealist poetry and painting. But this is only an impression.
Nirod's poetry (what he writes now) is from the Dream
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Consciousness, no doubt about that. It has suddenly opened in him and he finds now a great joy of creation and abundance of inspiration which were and are quite absent when he tries to write laboriously in the mental way. This seems to be to indicate either that the poet in him has his real power there or that he has opened to the same Force that worked in poets like Mallarme. My labelling him as surrealist is partly— though not altogether—a joke. How far it applies depends on what the real aim and theory of the surrealist school may be. Obscurity and unintelligibility are not the essence of any poetry—and except for unconscious or semiconscious humorists like the Dadaists91—cannot be its aim or principle. True dream poetry (let us call it so for the nonce) has and must always have a meaning and a coherence. But it may very well be obscure or seem meaningless to those who take their stand on the surface or "waking" mind and accept only its links and its logic. Dream poetry is usually full of images, visions, symbols, phrases that seek to strike at things too deep for the ordinary means of expression. Nirod does not deliberately make his poems obscure, he writes what comes through from the source he has tapped and does not interfere with its flow by his own mental volition. In many modernist poets there may be labour and a deliberate posturing, but it is not so in his case. I interpret his poems because he wants me to do it, but I have always told him that an intellectual rendering narrows the meaning—it has to be seen and felt, not thought out. Thinking it out may give a satisfaction and an appearance of mental logicality, but the deeper sense and sequence can only be apprehended by an inner sense. I myself do not try to find out the meaning of his poems, I try to feel what they mean in vision and experience and then render into mental terms. This is a special kind of poetry and has to be dealt with according to its kind and nature. There is a sequence, a logic, a design in them, but not one that can satisfy the more rigid law of the logical intelligence.
About Housman's92 theory, it is not merely appeal to emotion he posits as the test of pure poetry—he deliberately says that
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pure poetry does not bother about intellectual meaning at all—it is to the intellect nonsense. He says that the interpretations of Blake's famous poems rather spoil them—they appeal better without being dissected in that way. His theory is questionable, but that is what it comes to; he is wrong in using the word "nonsense" and perhaps in speaking of pure and impure poetry. All the same, to Blake and to writers of the Dream Consciousness, his rejection of the intellectual standard is quite applicable.
No time to say more. I am reading your article on Bhatkhande.93 A very keen and powerful face, full of genius and character.
February 13,1937
About your points
(1) I have answered this in my former letter. If the surrealist dream experiences are flat, pointless or ugly, it must be because they penetrate only the "subconscious" physical and "subconscious" vital dream layers. Dream consciousness is a vast world in which there are many provinces and kingdoms, but ordinary dreamers penetrate consciously only to these layers which belong to what may properly be called sub- conscious. When they pass into sleep beyond these, the recording surface dream-mind becomes unconscious and gives no transcript of what is seen and experienced there, or else in coming back these fade away and are quite forgotten before one reaches the waking state. But when the dream- state becomes more conscious, one can often remember the deeper dream-experiences and these have a considerable interest and significance.
(2) It is only the subconscious that is chaotic in its dream sequences—for its transcriptions are fantastic and often mixed, combining a jumble of different impressions; some
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from the past or outward touches pressing on the sleep-mind some from successive dream-experiences that are not really part of one connected experience—as if a gramophone record were to be made up of snatches of different songs all jumbled together. The vital dreams are often coherent in themselves and only seem incoherent to the waking intelligence because the logic and law of sequences is different—if one gets the guiding clue and has some dream-experience and dream- insight, then one is able to seize the sequences and make out the significance which is often very profound or very striking. Deeper in we come to perfectly coherent dreams recording the experience of the inner vital and inner mental planes or the psychic—the latter usually are of a great beauty. Some of these however are symbolic, many in fact, and can only be understood if one is familiar with or gets the clue to the symbols.
(3) It depends on the nature of the dreams. If they are of the right kind, they need no aid of imagination to be converted into poetry. If they are significant, imagination in the sense of a free use of mental invention might injure their truth and meaning—unless of course the imagination is an inspired vision coming from the same plane and filling out or reconstructing the recorded experience so as to give more fully the Truth held in it.
(4) The word psyche is used by most people to mean anything belonging to the inner mind, vital or physical. Poetry does come from there or from the supraconscient sometimes; but it does not come usually through the forms of dreams—it comes either through word-vision or through conscious vision and imagery whether in a fully waking or an inward- drawn state. The latter may go so far as to be a state of samadhi—svapna samadhi. Dreams also can be made a material for poetry; but everyone who dreams or has visions or has a flow of images cannot by that fact be a poet. To say that a predisposition and discipline is needed to bring them to light in the form of written words is merely a way of saying that it is not enough to be a dreamer, one must have the poetic
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faculty and some training. Unless they mean something else than what the words would naturally signify. What is possible however is that by going into the inner (what is usually called the subliminal) consciousness—this is not really subconscious but a veiled or occult consciousness—or getting somehow into contact with it, one not originally a poet can awake to poetic inspiration and power. No poetry can be written without access to some source of Inspiration. Mere recording of dreams or images could never be sufficient, unless it is a poetic inspiration that records them with the right use of words and rhythm bringing out their poetic substance. On the other hand I am bound to admit that among the records of dream-experiences I get even from people unpractised in writing a good many read like a brilliant and colourful poetry that does hit—satisfying Housman's test—the solar plexus. So much I can concede to the surrealist theory; but if they say on that basis that all can with a little training become poets— well, one needs a little more proof before one can accept so wide a statement.
P.S. I return your letter for point-comparison as perhaps my answers may not be clear enough without that.
February 1937
Yes, I have read your article on Bhatkhande. Very interesting: the character came home to me as a sublimation of a type I was very familiar with when in Baroda. Very amusing his encounters with the pundits—especially the Socratic way of self-depreciation heightened almost to the Japanese pitch. His photograph you sent me shows a keen and powerful face full of genius and character.
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February 16,1937
Will you please tell me ? Yesterday I was talking with Baron and his wife [Jeanne-Marie]. I had gone there to ask him to invite Dr. G. and he asked me what I felt, etc. and I found I glowed with faith in personal contact of Gurus etc., etc. etc.—truly. Guru, I felt all that, I was not insincere— it is strange whenever I come in contact with others I glow with, even, aye, radiate faith! fancy Dilip talking of faith! Yet this morning as I was talking, doubt came back again re. the usefulness of personal contact. lam troubled and I want you to help me a little. It arose like this:
Herbert had told me yesterday that Esculap Dayashankar94 had a marvellous command of French. At tea this morning my opponent's argument was that Dayashankar might have achieved a high inner spiritual state even though he had not offered pranam as he had done. I said it was impossible—for no matter how great a sadhak your Yoga can't be done by withdrawing from pranam. My opponent's argument was—it was possible temporarily. I saw his point of view when he pressed home the fact that now Mother has practically cut off all personal contact we were used to—also that Rishabhchand95 and Khirod96 (high yogis, unlike the social Dilip) don't find time to come even to meditation. I was surely cornered. Why then did you allow pranam, why does Mother meditate ? It was argued that Dayashankar had an ascetic fire to do sadhana alone basing himself on inner contact above ? But did not Harm, Nalinbehari, Swasti, [?] etc. all tried that and failed as you wrote once to me adding that cutting off pranam could never be good for any sadhak no matter what he says about his spiritual need of isolation. I gathered that personal physical contact with Mother was indispensable for your Yoga—but now that pranam is discredited I am out of joint and troubled ? What then ? Can one say that one can gallop speedily without any personal contact with
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Mother ? Then why stay here ? One could establish the inner psychic contact (on which the stress was put) from far off—as "there is no distance in the psychic ?” I don't want to encourage such doubts but rather revert to my faith: the weak-kneed personal-contact-theory—but the arguments of the strong men like Dayashankar are too strong for me and I can't rebut them. Please help Guru, as I don't want to float on the waves of the strong psychic currents so independent of all anchors of shore-contact.
P.S. I had thought D's case was far from reassuring—his cutting off pranam for instance ? Am I wrong there ? I had felt the same about Swasti. Qu'en dites-vous ?
What the deuce is all this about Dayashankar's high spiritual state and ascetic fire ? Brilliance in French doesn't imply spiritual siddhi. Dayashankar stopped coming to pranam because he was too nervous to bear the contacts of people. His abstention shows a high state of nervousness, not a high state of sadhana. Khirod and Rishabhchand don't abstain from pranam, only they have no time to stay long because of heavy work, but they get the personal contact. You surely know that Dayashankar is unbalanced nervously and that is why he has isolated himself, it has nothing to do with sadhana. His mind is brilliant at many parts but the nervous malady is there. You need not in the least waver in your faith in personal contact, there is nothing whatever in this argument.
February 17,1937
What I don't understand is why you take what other people say or think as if it were coming from the Mother or as if it were the law about Yoga. As you yourself write in this very letter we have always encouraged your friendships; I have myself written to you several times about this matter of
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friendship and Yoga—then why allow somebody's opinion that Mother thinks this or that—cancel my own express pronouncement and get upset over it. Certainly Pavitra was not commissioned or authorised by the Mother to say these things, she had not even spoken to him about this matter; he expressed only his own idea about it. So you need not have any compunctions about your feelings for Baron or anybody else nor any compunctions about its incompatibility with Yoga. Once more when you have my own statement in your favour in my own [ ?] if illegible handwriting over my own (almost) supramental signature, that should be enough for you and other people's ideas have no relevance.
I have read with interest your account of Baron's talk with you. I am quite willing to help him in his aspiration if he decides to take up the inner spiritual life. We shall see him on the 21st and see what he is—everybody seems to be favourably impressed by him already.
Mother will see B. and hear his music tomorrow at 12.30. So you will come with him then.
February 18,1937
Pavitra had no authority to say that Mother could be displeased or that you were to blame. Mother did not like that Suvrata97 should push herself like that and come, but she never had the idea that you were to blame. As it happened, you could not help it, since she practically invited herself and, as I wrote to you, we could not give her a flat refusal. So please don't be upset or allow any feeling of malaise to linger. Sing your best, for when you do so it is something done for the Mother. Let no shadow fall on you for so trifling a matter.
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February 19,1937
It is quite true that Mother did not want Suvrata to meet Madame Lafargue98 and try to take possession of her, but that was for special reasons personal to these two. There was no reason to make this special case a general law or found the general law that nobody should ever meet anybody. Nor does it follow that people should not be invited to hear the music. This habit of turning special cases into general laws of the Yoga or rules for all is current in the Ashram but it is quite unreasonable. I may add as a matter of fact that Mother had said nothing to Pavitra about Suvrata's self invitation, he learned of it first from you—so whatever he may have said was not in the least founded on any remark of the Mother in that connection. He only knew that she did not want these two to meet and probably got consternated by the fact that now they were likely to meet. As a matter of fact all passed off well enough and there was no such encounter.
There was nothing wrong at all in asking [?] to hear your music—why should there be ? Mother says it is not a fact that she does not like drum accompaniment, only she prefers not to have it always. Perhaps she once advised you not to have the tabla accompaniment on a certain occasion, but that was because you were going to sing to Europeans who have no ear for it (unless they are exceptional) and find it therefore monotonous. Of course, those of them who have a more plastic musical ear can appreciate it.
February 22,1937
It is not exactly that—Mother has to see Madame Marco Schiff (Monod Herzen's mother) tomorrow at 5 p.m., so she could not see Madame Miller—by way of an interview—
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tomorrow (Tuesday). But she would like her to come at 4 p.m. with Lalita" and Mother will show her the organ—it is better if she sees for herself whether the one we have will at all suit the purpose.
Mother would have answered your note herself in French, but she has not yet the free use of her eyes for reading and writing—so she asked me to answer for her.
February 24,1937
Mother was very well impressed with Madame Miller; she is indeed what you described her to be. I hope her contact with India and with here will plant in her the seed of a peace which, as it develops, will heal the sufferings of life she has under- gone and give her the inner spiritual happiness and release.
I have read Baron's poem-letter. One would gather from it that his poetry must have one characteristic in common with the "citronnelle" as you describe it, a "beautiful perfume".
The Mother had a very good impression of Charu and his wife100 [Bina]; but as for the drum I don't know whether it is possible. These two weeks after the darshan it is a sort of whirl, one thing after another and all the day like that with little time for anything at leisure.
(R.R. Diwakar,'101 an admirer of Dilipda's, wrote to him a letter dated 21st February 1937.)
"My dear Dada,
"Surely you need have not given me such a serious threat for paltry things as our pictures. You should reserve the threat of withholding music for something really serious. The delay in sending our photographs was due
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to my being really busy but now I am free once again and thanks to your good wishes and Sri Aurobindo's blessings and Mother's I have come out successful in the election to our provincial Council. Yesterday the photographs of all of us must have been despatched to you. I left that work to your Sister. I hope in due time you will get them.
"How nice you are coming out on a little tour. I wish we were at Bangalore but since that can't be I hope as your Sister has proposed you will try to come to Almora from sister Raihana's place, Baroda and give us a look up. I shall be at your service. It would be so nice if you came towards May or June but possibly it would be too hot for you. Anyway whenever it is we would welcome it. We need your music, particularly I, to raise me out of the worldly affairs [sansarik bate] where I seem to be falling. I understand Abha has requested you through her mother to record some of the songs you sang to us. I strongly support the request. Please don't forget the folk song. How nice you are going to give out songs in records for the music lovers of Hindusthan. We need your divine music to uplift us and since you can't yourself go about . everywhere possibly, gramophone records will be the best medium.
"Hoping to have the pleasure of your darshan at a not very distant time.
"With respects to Mother, Sri Aurobindo and yourself,
'Yours affectionately,
Diwakar"
(Dilipda's note on the letter:)
Please let me know. Guru, if you did really send some force for Diwakar's and Biren's election. I have written to Diwakar I will offer this Rs. 160 to Mother.
Yes—for Diwakar less because I thought his election fairly sure—but a good deal in Biren's case, as in spite of his father's influence and money expenditure it was doubtful. Nobody I
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think expected such a high majority against the Congress— which was indeed much blamed for allowing an unknown zamindar to give them such a defeat.
March 1937 ?
I have read Madame Miller's letter. I suppose circumstances are such that she cannot stay longer in India, but I hope that the impression she has received will help her in her life there in Europe and be the beginning of an inner development of something that will be a constant support and refuge.
As for Baroda and Raihana we will see how you feel about it when the Gramophone Co. decides the date and you are about to start. I am expecting the records to be a great
success.
P.S. It is sad to learn that we are under the displeasure of Tagore—we will hope however that he will come round and extend to us his "pardon" and poetic blessing once more.
I have thought of the name "Nilima" for Heddy Miller as a symbol of her aspiration.
Well, Maurice Magre102 found an inexpressible douleur [grief] in my blessed photograph! Proof that we know not
what we are.
I am glad to hear Heddy finds great peace at meditation.
March 6,1937
A manual of Bengali Prosody is an excellent idea and I hope you will carry it out—but you are right in postponing it as the success of the musical records is now the immediate kartavyam karma, the thing to be done.
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Thompson writes from the heights wrapping the purple cloak of his misunderstood benevolence and magnanimity around his wounded heart with a dignified but sorrowful calmness. It is rather astonishing to learn that Tagore objected to Ramakrishna's being regarded as a great man! It is good that he should have changed his mind under whatever influence. But great men make such blunders in their estimate of con- temporaries that it is after all not so astonishing perhaps as it looks at first sight!
March 7,1937
Very well. As the urge continues, we consent to what you propose. You can go and take this rest cure in Calcutta and Almora and you can go with our full consent and blessings and without any apprehension of the dire consequences you have been threatened with as the result of your temporary absence.
I don't know whether it is possible to get the deed of sale before next Sunday or rely on their sending it soon. These things always drag on for one reason or another; moreover the Brahman Sabha are particular about sending one of their own people, I think, and they may take their time about it— they were speaking of sending it to Bangalore when you were there. It might be better to obviate all that by signing it in Calcutta, informing beforehand that you are coming so that they may finish as soon as possible what they have to do. What Tagore or others think or say does not matter very much after all as we do not depend on them for our work but on the Divine Will only. So many have said and thought all sorts of things (people outside) about and against us, that has never affected either us or our work in the least; it is of a very minor importance.
Of course you can take from the money in the bank the
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monthly allowance you speak of for the time that you are outside.
I hope you will throw off your "peacelessness" and be inwardly quite at ease and happy.
March 8, 1937
There was no sternness at all in the Mother's gaze. She was waiting for you to speak and while she did a concentration came in which she saw around you the difficulties that were troubling you in a very concrete form and she was looking how they could be counteracted and trying to counteract them—it was at this she was gazing. There was not the slightest sternness in the matter, only solicitude. Also when you spoke together afterwards, she spoke without any sternness or displeasure, in her usual manner and tried to combat your depression and make you take the matter on the basis of my letter and yours also sent in the morning. You must have come with the idea put into your mind that the Mother would be full of disapproval and opposition and displeasure. But I had already intimated to you that it was not so, that you could go with our full consent and blessings. It was with her approval that I had sent you my reply. There was therefore no true ground or room for all the dark ideas that you expressed to her and put into your evening's letter, about death and never coming back or writing. We have said and written and done nothing to justify any such turn being given to your going out. You must remember that we have shown always nothing but kindness and affection to you and anything to the contrary in your mind has never been anything but a ground- less inference or an idea raised in your mind by listening to others. You should put all this dark stuff out of your mind and go out in all serenity of spirit. Go cheerfully, enjoy the outing, do your music at Calcutta with the knowledge of our force
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behind you and make it an entire success, refresh your mind and nerves with the peace of the Himalayas and the company of Krishnaprem which cannot but be stimulating and put away from you all mental and nervous tension. It may be that as the Mother suggested, the obstruction will break down there and in any case the change should give you a rest of mind that cannot but be good for you. It was because you were proposing to go in that spirit and not in a dark or despairing one that I consented to your going. I want you to come back to that basis. Do not listen to anyone or anything that suggests the opposite.
March 9,1937
I don't know that I need say anything with regard to the other beliefs current in the Ashram of which you make mention in your letter. As for going out, the Ashram has seen Amal go out twice and return with full permission, it has recently seen Vishnu103 and Rambai104 go with the Mother's permission, both with the full intention of returning—to say nothing of others. As for Nolina you yourself were entirely against her going and only the other day wrote condemning Tagore's remarks about the matter. Nolina herself always took the position that she ought not to go and asked for help against the other tendency in her. If she had decided to go and told us so, nobody would have stood in her way, although we would not have been lost in admiration at the spiritual wisdom of her choice. Our view is that once the full separate spiritual life is chosen, to cling and turn back to the ordinary one is an error. But if there are circumstances that make the (temporary) departure either harmless or psychologically or otherwise inevitable then we give permission. If the sadhak goes in a spirit of revolt and defiance or goes back to the ordinary life out of egoistic ambition as Bejoy and others did then of course Mother does not wish them to come back (so
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long as that remains) and refuses to allow it. Also if there is treachery, as in Saurin's case—a fact which you yourself asserted and I don't see that it can be denied—unless he atoned or changed, there was no reason why he should return, especially as he said his sadhana was going on admirably there. Mother knew his return with an uncorrected spirit would not be good for him and events showed that she was perfectly right. But I have always noticed that whatever untoward thing happens to a sadhak, many consider that it is we whose bad qualities are to blame for it. And yet they go on accepting us as Gurus and addressing us as Divine! That is truly baffling to the reason. Perhaps it shows that there is something really supramental here!!
In your case I have given the reasons why we accept your going out. There is no ground therefore why we should not support you in your music and other undertakings there, m these respects at least you allow that you have been supported and the support has been effective—there is no reason why that shall not continue—the more so if you keep us informed as others at a distance do when they want some help in any endeavour. For the sadhana, your strong distaste (to say the least) for the methods which we find most helpful but you find grim and repellent, makes a great obstacle. But I maintain my idea that if you remain faithful to the seeking for the Divine, the day of grace and opening will come. Nobody will be more pleased than ourselves if it comes over there in the Himalayas, or for that matter anywhere. The place does not matter—the thing itself is all.
(Sujata's note)
It was 1937, mid-March. We were then living in Hindustan Road, Ballygunj, South Calcutta. One day, my father, Prithwi Singh Nahar said to me, "Dilipda is coming today, would you like to come with me to meet him ?" Enthusiastically I nodded my head. Father then took me in his
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car and we went to Howrah Station. The platform was full of a press of people come to welcome Dilipda. They were also full of curiosity: after 8 years and 4 months he was coming out of Pondicherry Ashram, what has he become ?
As he stepped on the platform, dressed in geroua, his radiant personality charmed the crowd. A lusty cheer rent the air.
March 21,1937
We have just received your letter forwarded by Sahana. But all the news naturally has reached us as it came in, the triumph and the vivat and the conquest even of the Parichay. That is indeed an achievement! Your book has also reached me, though I have not had time to do more than glance at it yet.
Certainly, the gentleman Ego has to be kept in view, for otherwise with all that he might grow fat like the fellow in the Bible and kick—so much coming his way in the nature of food, strong meat of eulogy and lucbis105 of appreciation from all quarters and heady wine of victory. But you know the gentleman in question very well by now and it is sufficient if you are constantly on your guard with a wary eye upon him to keep him sober.
The draft from Prithwi Singh reached us quite safely and we shall have the sum by Wednesday.
It brings the long cherished project of the Ashram Building into a near prospect provided other conditions prove to be favourable. Deo volente[God willing]!
I trust all will go on swimmingly there as it has begun—our force and blessings will be with you. Wherever any special force is needed do not fail to let us know at once.
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June 3,1937
I have always told you that you should not take what any sadhak says or thinks as authoritative or coming from me or the Mother. Even when they say that it is from me or her, it cannot be accepted, for it is often an idea of their own minds which they "think" to be ours also or a one-sided misunderstanding of what we may have said in a particular connection but which their minds apply to something with which it was not connected or to all things in general. But when they simply write to you their own ideas without referring to us at all, why on earth should you suppose or imagine that it comes from us ? I know nothing of what X wrote to you, except from your own letter. What X writes is X's, we must not be held responsible for it. For that matter no sadhak, whoever he or she may be, can stand for us in our place or speak for us. Each must be taken as speaking on his own account his own thought or feeling.
I have not the slightest idea of disowning you or asking you to go elsewhere or giving you up or asking you to abandon the Yoga or this Yoga. It is not that I insist on your finding the Divine through me and no one else or by this way only and no other; I want you to arrive and would be glad to see you do it by whichever way or with whatever help. But even if you followed another way, your place with me would remain, inwardly, physically and in every way. Even if you walked off to the Himalayas to sit in seclusion till you got the thing as I think you sometimes wanted to do, your place would remain waiting for you here. I want you to understand that clearly and not imagine all sorts of things about cutting off or displeasure or abandonment and the rest of it. Nothing could- be farther from our minds or from our feeling for you.
This letter must reach you by the 7th and I am so damnably preoccupied with many issues and difficulties put by Matter before the interfering Spirit that I find it impossible to write a long letter as I used to do—I have become brief or often
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telegraphic by compulsion of circumstances. So I shall need time to write on the other questions involved in your letter— I hope to be able to do so when you are at Almora. I have only answered here to the main point you have raised of Sahana's letter and our attitude.
I may add briefly that it is quite natural that you should have been able to help in the way you have described by sitting at the patient's side and prayer—or that what you speak has a powerful effect even on sceptics. First of all there is something in you other than the outward mind which believes and knows—secondly, you have the energy and power of creation, expression, action and can easily receive the Force for these things—even if your outward mind is unaware of it. This indeed is a thing which has happened often enough to others besides you, others with less energy and vital force—they have made themselves successful instruments of the Force by a certain faith within them and a call to the Divine—nothing else is needed.
July 1937
In your new poems [written at Madhupur, July] there is the force of a new inspiration in the language and the building and turns of thought, something more intense and gathered together. I think there is something less mental, a new and more vibrant note.
July 1937 ?
Certainly, you will have my blessings on all your undertakings and what force I can give you. As for the other matter I am rather at sea as to your idea. Certainly, I am not going
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to write text books for the green and youthful minds of Calcutta under-graduates—if the Vice-Chancellor expects that of me, he is doomed to disappointment. As for the proposal about Anilbaran, I have no objection to it in principle, but what on earth is he going to make out of these books—I mean in the nature of a text book ? These books even boiled down will be heavy going for any undergraduate. If there is any specific and feasible proposal, I shall consider it, but—
August 15,1937
I have just—after the return of the light—been able to read your poems which are trés joli [very lovely]. No time to write today after a very strenuous 15th August (a thousand people, a nine hours sitting and [hard work] after that till 12.30 a.m.) But I was glad to get your letter and know that you have realised by your stay in Calcutta the reality of the progress made by you here—the true progress towards the change of consciousness and nature which is the basis of all the rest. Our blessings have been with you throughout and remain with you always.
August 21,1937
Well, perhaps Tagore does feel the mixed emotions he speaks of towards you and your recent success in Calcutta would only be a sort of weight in the balance. Men's feelings and motives are usually mixed like that and of the more sordid motives they are not always conscious.
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August 1937
(Incomplete letter)
As for Tagore, well, as I said before, human motives and feelings are mixed. Your success has, let us say, opened his eyes or his ears to your music—that is how it acts on many. But may it not also be that having heard the song from Hasi,106 though only one (especially if it was from a lovely singer as you say) he may have felt the evolution of the creative genius which he could no longer deny ? And if that was helped by the same discovery by others and the desire to be in the swim, well, humans are humans, even a great poet. Anyhow, if even he has committed himself to such high tribute, why not accept it—no need to look a gift horse in the mouth, even if— ...
August 30,1937
As regards Saraswati's question—this is not a Yoga of bhakti alone; it is or at least it claims to be an integral Yoga, that is, a turning of all the being in all its parts to the Divine. It follows that there must be knowledge and works as well as bhakti, and in addition, it includes a total change of the nature, a seeking for perfection, so that the nature also may become one with the nature of the Divine. It is not only the heart that has to turn to the Divine and change, but the mind also—so knowledge is necessary, and the will and power of action and creation also—so works too are necessary. In this Yoga the methods of other Yogas are taken up—like this of Purusha-Prakriti but with a difference in the final object. Purusha separates from Prakriti, not in order to abandon her, but in order to know himself and her and to be no longer her
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plaything, but the knower, lord and upholder of the nature; but having become so or even in becoming so, one offers all that to the Divine. One may begin with knowledge or with works or with bhakti or with Tapasya of self-purification for perfection (change of nature) and develop the rest as a sub- sequent movement or one may combine all in one movement. There is no single rule for all, it depends on the personality and the nature. Surrender is the main power of the Yoga, but the surrender is bound to be progressive; a complete surrender is not possible in the beginning not only as a will to it in the being for that completeness, but—in fact it takes time; yet it is only when the surrender is complete that the full flood of the sadhana is possible. Till then there must be the personal effort with an increasing reality of surrender. One calls in the power of the Divine Shakti and once that begins to come into the being, it at first supports the personal endeavour, then progressively takes up the whole action although the consent of the sadhak continues to be always necessary. As the Force works, it brings in the different processes that are necessary for the sadhak, processes of knowledge, of bhakti, of spiritualised action, of transformation of the nature. The idea that they cannot be combined is an error.
September 8, 1937
Nishikanta's song is indeed exceedingly fine.
As to Sahana's question, I am unable to say much—I have no special competence in this sphere of music and do not know on what aesthetic grounds she stands in this matter. These things are mysterious in their origin and so it is said, "De gustibus non est disputandum”—"There can be no disputing about tastes". Some connoisseurs of music exalt Wagner107 as a god or a Titan, others speak of him with depreciation and celebrate the godhead of Verdi108 who is
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disdained by their opponents. Yet I suppose the genius of neither can be disputed. So far as I can make out from her statement, Sahana does not dispute your genius or the aesthetic quality of your music, but something in her does not respond—- if so, it is either a matter of temperament or it is that she is looking for something else, some other vibration than that given by your music. If it is only conservatism and unwilling- ness to admit new forms or new turns of execution, that is obviously a mental limitation and can disappear only with more plasticity of mind or a change of the angle of vision—I don't know that I can say anything more—or more definite.
As for Sahana's singing, she seems to succeed when she can forget herself in her singing and to fail when she has to think of her audience or of success and failure. That would mean that she is in a certain stage of inner development where the state makes all the difference. I would hazard the conclusion that her future as a singer on the old psycho- logical lines hardly exists, but she has to find fully her soul, her inner self and with it the inner singer.
September 12,1937
Yes, you can keep the money in the bank for the purposes you mention and take Rs. 25 for your monthly expenses. Mother prefers that arrangement.
Evidently if Calcutta publishers are like that—as bad as Madras merchants—writing can't be a profitable occupation for authors in Bengal. A hundred copies sale for a novel by one of the two best-selling writers of fiction does not sound colossal! Evidently the sooner the Congress Ministers start universalising education and compel Fazlul109 to do the same in Bengal the better. But perhaps they will only insist on the teaching of Charka and cottage industries—in which case things will not be better for the authors. It makes me long for
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the Soviet Republic where the authors are the millionaire class. As things are in Bengal, you are served—you get the fame and Gurudas pockets the money.
November 25,1937
(From Mother)
I was with you in thought at the time of the music. I hope you are all right now as a beginning not of a few months but of many years of non-depression—depression of the consciousness is worse than dispersion of consciousness, so do be energetic to throw it away when it comes.
Blessings
November 26,1937
It was a very good prayer and I received it at the time, a good part of it in the very words you had used. I am also glad to know that you felt something of my answer; it shows that the inner connection is growing and that is a very encouraging sign.
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December 4,1937
All right—you can have the old friend Baron (I am glad he is here for a time) and also "Ie Directeur de I' Instruction Publique"110 and his wife.
Blessings on you and the music!
December 8,1937
That is all right. I approve your answer about going in March. I hope that you will succeed in all the objects which you have enumerated—you will receive our full help for that.
Indeed you have much progressed both as to grumbling and in other directions. Yes one does change and the complete change is sure.
What you said to Sahana about N/s death was quite the right thing.
Our love and blessings
1937 ?
You need not mind about what Sahana said to the Mother; she did not attach importance to it or believe that you were indulging in lethargy or indolence. She knows very well that you have been working with great energy for some time past. You need not have qualms about the time you give to action
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and creative work. Those who have an expansive creative vital or a vital made for action are usually at their best when the vital is not held back from its movement and they can develop faster by it than by introspective meditation. All that is needed is that the action should be dedicated so that they may grow by it (...)
I was not aware that my letter was formal and cold; it was written in pencil because it had to be written in haste. I confess I could not believe that you would leave the Mother and myself simply because Jyotirmayi had kept up correspondence with Niren—I took it as a hasty impulse which could not last. I still refuse to believe that you can throw us away for such a motive.
I ask you not to go like this, but to keep your word about fighting out these attacks and remaining faithful to the end. These attacks of depression are designed to push you away and [ ?] you of the [quest ?]. Do not yield to them, but keep firm (...)
(...) When the dark mood comes or overshadows, one begins to feel like that, sometimes that there never was any experience or contact, sometimes that things are getting always worse. When the good condition is there, you feel— you have often written it, surges of Bhakti, experiences that give closeness, a sense of progress, you are grateful for the energies flowing into you and do not think it would be just
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the same elsewhere. There is no increasing distance from the Divine—in fact during the fairly long spell of the better condition you have had, the distance was decreasing, as it always does when there is the better consciousness—for the distance is created by the consciousness alone. It is a pity you are allowing the dark spell to come back—I mean, by giving hospitality to its suggestions, especially those two great weapons of the Adversary—despondency and doubt. Prayer may not bring always an immediate response, though I believe in the end it does, if the whole being is behind it—but all experience shows the effectivity of two things, a central, if possible a complete faith and the mind's and heart's surrender.
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