This is the fourth and final volume in the correspondence between Sri Aurobindo and Dilip. Sri Aurobindo keeps up his correspondence with his 'favourite' son throughout the difficult war years. Mother’s letters to Dilip are included in this volume.
Sri Aurobindo : corresp.
THEME/S
January 3, 1941
We were very glad to read your letter of this morning and to hear of this fine experience – for there can be no finer experience than this state of true bhakti. It is a real and great progress that you have made.
As for Colonel Pandalal and his wife I gather that they have not as yet asked to come. It might be better to let the wish to come rise in them of itself.
January 1941?
Your programme is all right. We will remember your prayer on your birthday.
When you are informed of the time of your broadcast do not forget to let us know, we wish to listen to it here.
With our love and blessings
*
January 22, 1941
À Dilip
Avec mes voeux de bonne fête et mes bénédictions [To Dilip with my wishes for a happy birthday and my blessings]
February 1941?
Yes, you can go after the “darshan” and we approve your programme and our blessings will go with you.
You can send our blessings to Hashi. Love and blessings
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April 2, 1941
We read your letter only today as yesterday there was too much hurry of the first.
I am sending the three flowers with blessings.
Glad to hear of your good experience in the dream as also of the experience of descent you had the other day. The inner being is evidently awake.
April 8, 1941
Certainly you can come tonight after meditation. I am sending a flower for Usha with the enclosed written blessings.
As for the dream she must not rely upon that, as it is likely to be a mental formation. My force and help are with her but these wordings cannot be from me.
Who is this Latika?4 If it is Barin’s wife I can not send her a flower as it is sure to be misinterpreted. If it is the niece then also it is not prudent to send a flower as I don’t want her to come here.
A ce soir! [See you this evening!]
Sri Aurobindo is keeping Usha’s letter to read it.
May 6, 1941
You are quite right. It has become necessary to state emphatically and clearly that all who by their thoughts and wishes are supporting and calling for the victory of the Nazis are by that very fact collaborating with the Asura against the Divine and helping to bring about the victory of the Asura. The Asuric power that is acting with Hitler as instrument and seeking through him domination of the world is the same power that has been opposing Sri Aurobindo’s work and trying to destroy it and to frustrate the Divine fulfilment.
Those therefore who wish for the victory of the Nazis should now understand that it is a wish for the destruction of our work and an act of treachery against Sri Aurobindo.
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May 8, 1941
Evidently this world is a bad one but change is its law and as it can hardly be worse than it is now, we may hope that it will soon become better. Old movements obstinately recur and make the sadhana difficult but you have made more progress than you allow yourself to believe and the attainment may be nearer than you think.
Our help is with you and our love and blessings.
P.S. I am sending four flowers with blessings.
May 18, 1941
Yes, it was altogether right. This experience and the result it brought are a great step towards spiritual freedom. Every rejection of desire and attachment brings one nearer to the Divine.
May 25, 1941
I am sending herewith the four flowers with blessings for Sachin5 and his daughter, for Hironmoy Sen and for Mani.
Music follows the rule of all things of earth – unless they are turned to the divine they cannot be divine.
December 2, 1941
We do not think it is necessary for you to go to Calcutta for these records; it is much trouble and effort for what is now a very small return. If at any time you felt like going then you can certainly go with our full blessings.
Don’t worry about the difficulty in the meditation. In the end you will come out of it with the consciousness of a spiritual progress made.
(Sri Aurobindo takes his pen from here)
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December 7, 1941
We do not agree that the course you propose is the right one or with the reasons you give. If we thought it was the right or only course, we would consent and give you our blessings, though not even then with the idea of a permanent departure. But we do not think that it is either necessary or advisable.
What you were told of the incompatibility of love and adoration of Krishna with this Yoga, is not true. There is not and cannot be any such incompatibility. Otherwise we would not have encouraged you in your aspiration. You can seek for him quite as well here as in Brindaban.
It is not at all a fact that your nature is incapable of love and bhakti: on the contrary that is the right way for you. Meditation is all right, but it will be most profitable for you if it is directed towards the increase of love and devotion; the rest will come of itself afterwards.
Also, it is not true that your nature is incapable of surrender; you made a great progress in that direction. But the complete surrender of all parts, especially of the whole vital, is certainly difficult. It can only come with the development of the consciousness. Meanwhile, that it has not fully come, is no reason for despair or giving up.
You are taking too black a view of things, the usual result of your giving way to depression. You used to have this before and you got over it by persistence. Now also by persistence it will go. To make radical decisions under the influence of depression is not good. To brace yourself up and, however persistent the difficulties are, to stick it out, is always the best.
Be faithful and persevering, then however long the way, you cannot fail to reach the goal. Our love and blessings.
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P.S. By the way, it would not be at all correct to think of Tajdar6 as an ideal sadhak and her present upset as the result of an effort at surrender. A sincere endeavour to surrender cannot bring such a result. In fact her illness has nothing to do with Yoga. It is the result of a constitutional or hereditary predisposition to hysteria, a malady which she had long before she came here. She had three or four severe attacks of the same kind already, but as they did not affect her bodily health Mother dealt with them herself. This time she became physically ill, so the doctor was called in. He does not regard it as insanity, but as the result of nervous disorder and hysteria (auprès du coeur [close to the heart], he says) of which the symptoms are quite recognisable. He expects the attack to pass off before long.
December 17, 1941
(From Mother)
You should make it a rule never to listen to this voice or accept the suggestions that come with it. It is clear from where it comes; it is a voice of untruth, the voice of the adversary which comes to almost everybody who follows the way of Yoga suggesting doubt and denial and incapacity and defeat. You must meet it always as you did this time. You should also reject such suggestions as those about your being a hindrance and going away for that reason; it comes from the same source and has no truth and indeed no substantial meaning that we can discover. Also you should not attach much value to what you hear – as that “we want people to stand on their own legs” and therefore cannot help. Certainly we want people to have strength and courage to go through, but we know that they need our support.
The special help you asked for in your other letter will be with you.
Our love and blessings
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December 20, 1941
I spoke of strange ideas in connection with what you said about peace and cheerfulness being obstacles in the Yoga because they are incompatible with an ardent longing for realisation. Peace was the very first thing that the Yogins and seekers of old asked for and it was a quiet and silent mind – and that always brings peace – that they declared to be the best condition for realising the Divine. A cheerful and sunlit heart is the fit vessel for the Ananda and who shall say that Ananda or what prepares it is an obstacle to the divine union? As for despondency, it is surely a terrible burden to carry on the way. One has to pass through it sometimes, like Christian of the Pilgrim’s Progress through the Slough of Despond, but its constant reiteration cannot be anything but an obstacle. The Gita especially says, “Practise the Yoga with an undespondent heart, anirvinnacetasa.”
I know perfectly well that pain and suffering and struggle and despair are natural – though not inevitable – on the way – not because they are helps, but because they are imposed on us by the darkness of this human nature out of which we have to struggle into the Light. I do not suppose Ramakrishna or Vivekananda would have recommended the incidents you allude to as an example for others to follow – they would surely have said that faith, fortitude, perseverance were the better way. That after all was what they stuck to in the end in spite of these bad moments and they would never have dreamed of giving up the Yoga or the aspiration for the Divine on the ground that they were unfit and not meant for the realisation.
At any rate Ramakrishna told the story of Narada and the ascetic Yogi and the Vaishnava bhakta with approval of its moral. I put it in my own language but keep the substance. Narada on his way to Vaikuntha met a Yogi practising hard tapasya on the hills. “O Narada,” cried the Yogi, “you are going to Vaikuntha and will see Vishnu. I have been practising terrific austerities all my life and yet I have not even now attained to Him. Ask him at least for me when I shall reach Him?” Then Narada met a Vaishnava, a bhakta who was singing songs to Hari and dancing to his own singing, and he cried also, “O Narada, you will see my Lord, Hari. Ask my
Lord when I shall reach Him and see His face.” On his way back Narada came first to the Yogi. “I have asked Vishnu;
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you will realise Him after six more lives.” The Yogi raised a cry of loud lamentation, “What, so many austerities! Such gigantic endeavours! And my reward is realisation after six long lives! O how hard to me is the Lord Vishnu.” Next Narada met again the Bhakta and said to him, “I have no good news for you. You will see the Lord, but only after a lakh of lives.” But the bhakta leapt up with a great cry of rapture, “Oh, I shall see my Lord Hari! After a lakh of lives I shall see my Lord Hari! How great is the grace of the Lord!” And he began dancing and singing in a renewed ecstasy. Then Narad said, “Thou hast attained. Today thou shalt see the Lord!” Well, you may say, “What an extravagant story and how contrary to human nature!” Not so contrary as all that and in any case hardly more extravagant than the stories of Harischandra and Shivi. Still I do not hold up the bhakta as an example for I myself insist on the realisation in this life and not after six or a lakh of births more. But the point of these stories is in the moral and surely when Ramakrishna told it, he was not ignorant that there was a sunlit path of Yoga! He even seems to say that it is the quicker way as well as the better! You are quite mistaken in thinking that the possibility of the sunlit path is a discovery or original invention of mine. The very first books on Yoga I read more than thirty years ago spoke of the dark and the sunlit way and emphasized the superiority of the second over the other.
It is not either because I have myself trod the sunlit way or flinched from difficulty and suffering and danger. I have had my full share of these things and the Mother has had ten times her full share. But that was because the finders of the Way had to face these things in order to conquer. No difficulty that can come on the sadhak but has faced us on the path; against many we have had to struggle hundreds of times (in fact that is an understatement) before we could overcome; many still remain protesting that they have a right until the perfect perfection is there. But we have never consented to admit their inevitable necessity for others. It is in fact to ensure an easier path to others hereafter that we have borne that burden. It was with that object that the Mother once prayed to the Divine that whatever difficulties, dangers, sufferings were necessary for the path might be laid on her rather than on others. It has been so far heard that as a result of daily and terrible struggles for years those who put an entire and sincere confidence in her are able to follow the sunlit path and even those who cannot, yet when they do put the trust, find their path suddenly easy and, if it becomes difficult again, it is only when distrust, revolt, abhiman or other darknesses come upon them. The sunlit path is not altogether a fable.
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But you will ask what of those who cannot? Well, it is for them I am putting forth all my efforts to bring down the supramental Force within a reasonable time. I know that it will descend but I am seeking its near descent and, with whatever dark obstruction of the earth-nature or furious inroads of the Asuric forces seeking to prevent it, it is approaching the terrestrial soil. The supramental is not, as you imagine, something cold, hard and rock-like. It bears with it the presence of the Divine Love as well as the Divine Truth and its reign here means for those who accept it the straight and thornless path in which there is no wall or obstacle of which the ancient Rishis saw the far-off promise.
The dark path is there and there are many who make like the Christians a gospel of spiritual suffering; many hold it to be the unavoidable price of victory. It may be so under certain circumstances, as it has been in so many lives, at least at the beginning or one may choose to make it so. But then the price has to be paid with resignation, fortitude or a tenacious resilience. I admit that if borne in that way the attacks of the Dark Forces or the ordeals they impose have a meaning. After each victory gained over them, there is then a sensible advance; often they seem to show us the difficulties in ourselves which we have to overcome and to say, “Here you must conquer us and here.” But all the same it is a too dark and difficult way which nobody should follow on whom the necessity does not lie.
In any case one thing can never help and that is to despond always and say, “I am unfit; I am not meant for the Yoga”. And worse still are these perilous mental formations such as you are always accepting that you must fare like Barin (one whose difficulty of exaggerated ambition was quite different from yours) and that you have only six years, etc. These are clear formations of the Dark Forces seeking not only to sterilise your aspiration but to lead you away and so prevent your sharing in the fruit of the victory hereafter. I do not know what Krishnaprem has said but his injunction, if you have rightly understood it, is one that cannot stand as valid, since so many have done Yoga relying on tapasya or anything else but not confident of any divine grace. It is not that, but the soul’s demand for a higher truth or a higher life that is indispensable. Where that is, the Divine Grace whether believed in or not, will intervene. If you believe, that hastens and facilitates things; if you cannot yet believe, still the soul’s aspiration will justify itself with whatever difficulty and struggle.
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As for Mother’s not seeing you, your first letter was not at all explicit, it conveyed the idea – I have seen it – that it was only a trouble of not being able to concentrate that made you sad and brought suggestions. There was nothing more. Mother would be glad to satisfy the demands of you and all, but she has only one body and there are days when it is physically impossible to do more than she is doing. This was one of them, She offered you a longer period tomorrow as long as you liked at 12 instead, even though tomorrow too is a hard day for her. She could not do more and I cannot see why you took this as a refusal of help.
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