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
*
February 1944
(...) do accept this time, you and Mother, as he has changed a lot – even in eating.
I thought so, but I am glad to be confirmed by you.
I will have more money to offer Mother but I am keeping some money in hand as they threatened me a few days ago for income tax as a French citizen.
Who? French administration or English? And when did you become a French citizen?
Sotuda saved me here in the past and he may do so again. But in case he faiis I may have to pay a iot. Your force is necessary. I have written to Sotuda.
I enclose also a letter of Ambalal.19 I have replied to him. I am very busy with my books. My novels too are selling well now and poems also (especially AnamiJ. So I can say I work at these also to serve you somewhat, what?
While we are about money-matters, what’s to be done about Bansidhar’s20 Rs. 1000? He made a cheque in Nolini’s name, but Bansidhar’s bank refuses to pay to anyone so unknown and without position in the financial and commercial world as Nolini Kanto Gupta, unless his signature is attested by impossible persons. Nolini has no account anywhere in the world; the Banque d’Indochine knows my signature but not Nolini’s.
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So we could do nothing but send back the cheque with the Bank’s reasons for its refusal to Bansidhar and asked to send by insured letter. We have heard nothing; I suppose, being a busy business man, he has forgotten. But Rs. 1000 is too big a sum to lose in these days of high prices and large expenses. Would it be at all possible for you to drop a line to Bansidhar casually mentioning the facts infer alia and asking him whether he had received the cheque and Nolini’s letter?
I am keeping Sayani’s article to read at leisure.
What about the letter on “Grace “. Have you verified by comparison with the original as regards the defective sentence? If the original is also defective, you could send the typescript back to me and I will try to rewrite the sentence so as to make it more intelligible.
February 21, 1944
I can’t write at length today, as it is the Darshan day and the Mother will be occupied every minute from early morning to midnight, so there will be no time to read your letter to her or my answer, I can only just tell her of it.
But is there really any reason why you should attach so much importance to the comments or pronouncements of Anilbaran (or for that matter of anyone else in the Ashram), especially on matters which lie solely between yourself and us, or allow yourself to be upset by them? Anilbaran is neither an oracle nor authorised by us to pass judgment nor has he any information from us as to the motives of our actions. It is only the Mother and myself, who have authority here and not Anilbaran. It is with our full authority and approval that you went to Esha’s marriage in spite of your not being willing to go; your stay in Calcutta and your visits to Bombay and Ahmedabad had our sanction; we wished you to go. You have done good service to us by going and collecting such large contributions – not for the first time. I would ask you to go on cheerfully in your path, sure of our support and unmoved by ill-considered judgments from others.
Our love and blessings
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March 2, 1944
Please look at the Upadhi Patra – do – guru by Rasik Vidyabhushan. He is now the head of the Vaishnav Samaj of Bengal and is reputed to be one of the most learned men among savants. He is 105 now and he gave his blessings etc. of his own accord. I saw him at his residence in Calcutta. He looks still radiant and is very charming. Has written a number of books on Krishna and Govranga of which two he gave me. In the preface of a book of his on Govranga I read he has been suffering from insomnia for years...
(...) published in a few months.
What about Synthesis? They are all asking me. I collected the money as needed for Synthesis you know, as they would have refused to contribute had it been asked in the name of Analysis of which all are tired, what?
I hope you are not referring to the whole colossal mass of the Synthesis – though that too may be ready for publication before the next world war (?) or after the beginning of the Satya Yuga (new World Order?). If you mean the Yoga of Works, I am writing or trying to write four or five additional chapters for it. I hope they will be ready in a reasonable time; but my daily time is short and chapters are long. In the absence of exact prophetic power, that is all I can say.
(...)
March 11, 1944
Pratibha (la cousine des quatre sceurs [the four sisters’ cousin]) told me of two experiences as she is very eager to know what they mean. I add my eagerness thereto as such experiences are rare. I will tell you briefly as I understand you are too busy now-a-days.
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A) The first remarkable experience was on 24th November last – a darshan day. She was feeling rather sad when she saw, as she was sitting near the staircase (at about 2 p.m.):
(1) Yourself in a lovely moonlight with a self-luminous blue scarf. You looked the essence of magic, she says.
Blue is the normal colour of the spiritual plane; moonlight indicates the spiritual mind and its light.
(2) Mother in a powerful sunlight on a lion – her jagaddhatrT aspect, I infer. She looked so puissant, etc.
It was probably the Durga aspect.
(3) Near you both Krishna on a galloping horse with a flute.
Please write a few words below as to what these mean especially (3). One never pictures Krishna on a horse, does one, and playing flute too on a horse! What an anticlimax!
Well, why should not Krishna ride a horse if he so wants? His actions or habits cannot be fixed by the human mind or by an immutable tradition. Especially Krishna is a law to himself. Perhaps he was in a hurry to get to the place where he wanted to flute.
These visions are not rare or unusual; they are of the usual kind seen commonly by those who have developed the gift of vision. Mostly they take place on the vital plane, though sometimes on the mental and psychic – the vital is freest in its play and it does not at all follow the preconceptions of the physical mind. As for meanings, they vary infinitely; much depends on the character of the vision.
B) The next experience: on the 21st February, as she gazed at you at darshan she saw through you and visioned Kishore Krishna – round about your heart.
Why does she see Krishna in you when she is more partial to Shiva? Now-a-days she is sort of won over by Krishna, she says, but why should Krishna come so repeatedly as she equates you, spontaneously, to Shiva and not to Krishna.
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I have said that visions of this kind do not necessarily spring from the physical consciousness or the mind and its preconceptions or preferences. If they did they would have no independent reality.
C) Last Sunday I was singing Raihana’s song on Krishna on moonlight chandini rat [moonlit night] (whose translation I sent you the other day). I felt a deep bhakti and lo, Pratibha saw again Krishna dancing about and playing flute – a lovely youth this time not Kishore Krishna but adult Krishna. Why is it that nobody else saw it?
Why should they? The vision may have been personal to her, but even otherwise for all or many to see is somewhat rare, one might say very rare.
She was in deep ecstasy but still regrets what do these visions import. She has been told that visions are not experiences and as such was telling me, regretfully (fancy, regretting after visioning Krishna and in you too!J these things really meant very little in spiritual life. But do tell me. How can these things mean so little? Seeing Krishna and in one’s Guru too. How I have longed for such a darshan!
Visions come from all planes and are of all kinds and different values. Some are of very great value and importance, others are a play of the mind or vital and are good only for their own special purpose, others are formations of the mind and vital plane some of which may have truth, while others are false and misleading, or they may be a sort of artistry of that plane. They can have considerable importance in the development of the first Yogic consciousness, that of the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical or for an occult understanding of the universe. Visions which are real can help the spiritual progress, I mean, those which show us inner realities: one can, for instance, meet Krishna, speak with him and hear his voice in an inner “real “ vision, quite as real as anything on the outer plane. Merely seeing his image is not the same thing, any more than seeing his picture on the wall is the same thing as meeting him in person. But the picture on the wall need not be useless for the spiritual life. All one can say is that one must not attach oneself too much to this gift and what it shows us, but neither is it necessary to belittle it. It has its value and sometimes a considerable spiritual utility. But, naturally, it is not supreme – the supreme thing is the realisation, the contact, the union with the Divine, bhakti, change of nature, etc.
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I have been working hard. Last night till nearly 2 a.m. I am working at a spiritual novel (voicing my spiritual experience, etc.). I want to do sadhana more consciously through service and as my books are selling progressively better and better I want to offer it all as a concrete sacrifice to you and Mother. Work I am fond of but I want to do it more and more in the right spirit. Do help me here, Guru.
March 13, 1944
Yes, the use to which you have turned your vital capacities in Bengal and Bombay – to turn them into instruments of service and the Divine Work, is certainly the best possible.
Through such action and such use of the vital power, one can certainly progress in Yoga. Vital power is necessary for work and you have an exceptional amount of it. Of course, to make a full Yogic use of it and of its force for action, the ego must gradually fade out and vital attachments and impulses be replaced by the spiritual motive. Bhakti, devotion to the Divine, and the spirit of service to the Divine are among the most powerful means for this change.
Certainly, my force is not limited to the Ashram and its conditions. As you know it is being largely used for helping the right development of the war and of change in the human world. It is also used for individual purposes outside the scope of the Ashram and the practice of Yoga; but that of course is silently done and mainly by spiritual action. The Ashram however remains at the centre of the work and without the practice of Yoga the work would not exist and could not have any meaning or fruition. But in the Yoga itself there are different ways of proceeding for different natures, even though the general path is the same, surrender to the Divine and change of nature. But surrender to the Divine in the complete sense cannot be achieved in a short time, nor can the change of the nature. On the whole, one has to go as quickly as one can and as slowly as is necessary – which seems contradictory but is not.
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April 2, 1944
My Tirthankar first edition is exhausted, writes Tara-pada – promising to send me what he owes me (to be offered to Mother of course). En attendant, I have been hard at work revising this and adding new things – to make it sell even better in the second edition. I have written Tagore’s death-scene day before yesterday and am going to add a letter or two of Holland – one on yourself.
1 have chosen two letters to be added to the second edition. Here they are. Please revise them and approve – which I hope you will as these are not personal letters but of general interest. May I also publish the letter you allowed Nolini to publish in the last issue of The Advent, on war, I mean ? That is surely “addable “ in the Tirthankar now that it is published. It will certainly make the book sell more (being on war) so that I may in future offer more to Mother! But Tarapada has failed me hopelessly, Guru. Not a pice yet, fancy! For a book which has made me all but famous in Bengal and Gujarat – for it has been translated into Gujarat! as you must know! I wonder how much he will send me though! Am I getting too commercial after Bombay and Ahmedabad?
If you give the money to the Mother that can’t be commercial; commerce implies personal profit, and here your profit is only spiritual.
You can publish the two letters; as to the one in the Advent, I have no objection, as far as I am concerned – I don’t know whether the Advent has any.
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April 4, 1944
You came here on this day! I feel so joyful. Also because yesterday the Gurudas Library21 sent me the account book. I will be able to offer Mother a very good amount out of the sale of my own books which I wrote here in Pondicherry. I mean, I do not include the sale of my father’s books which is dwindling now. But just because of it I want you to permit me to keep Rs. 1000 for a new edition Sajani Das undertook to publish (as I informed you). This is but an investment as they will push well and I am sure I will be able to offer Rs. 1500 in about a year.
So I hope you and Mother will permit. I make this proposal to increase the Ashram income not for any personal motive – though of course I would like my father to be recognised as a great poet as Sajani Das22 and others are beginning to admit now he was. I would like you to read Sajani’s tribute to him which I enclose herewith. You know the Tagorites cut him for a long time because he (my father) called Tagore effeminate and an “actor “. JVow many say he had to protest as he (my father) stood for virility in literature, as Sajani too says. He will issue a royal edition of his poems and songs only. The plays will be with Gurudas. I hope I am clear?
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Yes, you can use the Rs. 1000 as you propose.
1 am writing to my Calcutta bank to send me Rs. 900 for the sale ending in half year last year. The sale of my books was Rs. 1200 but they deduct 25% that is Rs. 300. So I will offer to Mother’s feet Rs. 900, in about a fortnight. Of this Rs. 100 will be offered to Nishikanta today on the 4th. So that I will offer Rs. 800. This Rs. 100 is due to a book of songs whose profits they sent Rs. 213-12 annas. Half of this is his for this book was written by both of us – a number of his songs etc. So please remember-.-
I offer Rs. 800 in about two weeks
Nishikanta offers Rs. 100 today as he wants to offer Mother something.
Please allow me to say that I have offered Mother for Gitasri more than Rs. 500 already of which Rs. 250 is really Nishikanta’s. As he however wanted to offer [the amount]....
April 8, 1944
I enclose Nolini’s typescript of your letter on Grace as it is important and as I don’t quite understand the “somewhat “. Is it all right?
I find from the “Who’s Who “ that Murray23 (who spoke “with diffidence “ about your likelihood of rising high as an original thinker and metaphysician) is a scholar. But what does First Class Hum. mean? But I want to make him more confident. Will you permit that I send him your Collected Poems? / think we should be agog (a little at least) to get them confer on you the Nobel Prize this year. Why, I think we should send your poems by next mail to Professor Gilbert Murray also. Qu’en dites-vous?
You can send the Poems to the two Murrays.
Romain Rolland said before the last war, “I will not rest “ – till the final recognition of Humanity. Let ours be a modester vow, “We will not rest till the Nobel committee crowns you. “ It will be a good restlessness, don’t you think?
I am afraid it would be premature to be agog about the Nobel Prize. Even if the Russians go banging into Berlin shortly there would still be so much to clean up that the Prize might have to wait another year or two before being available and by that time all my published works capable of getting it would be old and Nobelly out of date.
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One last thing: my host and hostess at Tambaram were going to come yesterday. I receive a letter he is down with fever. She has been inviting me to spend a week with them before they leave for Calcutta this month. I have worked rather hard during the last month (three books in the Press, you see) and I finished only last night. What would you say to a flying visit of mine for four or five days to their delightful and secluded garden house with a swimming pool? I want to swim for a few days – getting too fat sitting writing all day.
Lastly, Nishikanto expressed a desire he would like to come too for five or six days. I can take him with me as they surely accommodate him willingly if I ask them. What would you say to that? It might be a change for N. (I hope not for the worse?).
All right. You can of course take the outing and the “defat “ of the swimming course. Nishikanto also can go. Does he intend to live [like] the gorilla there in its native jungle?
But don’t forget about my resolution about being agog re. your Nobel Prize. I want to take the tide (in the affairs of big gurus) at the flood, what?
April 11, 1944
As I found that I was slowly doing well in meditation in the evening I thought it would be unwise to go now even for a week. Besides I should try more for the inner surrender and any going out for private pleasure however innocent it was, I thought likely to increase my inner difficulty. Of late I find the inner resistance melting and feel I should work harder to serve you – for the present in writing. Here is my plan of work:
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1) A publisher of Bengal wants to publish a book of my published articles at their own expense. I have begun to work on it, revising my articles selected. This will take a fortnight or so.
2) Gurudas has undertaken my novel on Hashi (a spiritual one, really) and I have to revise the second part; first part I revised working eight to nine hours a day after my return here this time.
3) Now Jayantilai24 asks me about the English of Tirthankar which is ready but I have to revise. Please let me know what to do. In view of the income tax collection I suggest I ask this publisher to make over all the money to you – that is to Mother. I mean I simply give him the MS. and do the revising work but the work is yours – I have nothing to do with the money part. What do you think of it? I don’t like them to get twenty-seven per cent from the money I want to offer to you – that is why I suggest this. Please let me know. I think I will give Jayantilal’s friend the book and have Rs. 500 down. Hein?
That is all right. But the publisher should be careful to send the money as an offering, and not mention or hint of your royalty, otherwise the fat might get into the fire.
April 12, 1944
Here is the letter to Jayantilai. Please show it to Mother as she will have to deal with the publisher henceforth. I felt a great joy to be able to make over the right also of handling money. Because Guru, I sincerely do not like money – from my youth I conceived a deep aversion to it. That is why I did not go to America in 1927 when I was invited by Edison Co. to record. I would have earned a lot.
But to give you and Mother is a joy. But still to have to worry about tax etc. I don’t like. I would work hard to increase your income with great joy but take over the charge of money.
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Apropos, I was thinking yesterday why not make just such an arrangement with Gurudas. I think the income will be more than Rs. 150 a month from them alone – net. For I am going to publish more books. (I will offer Mother some Rs. 800 in a week’s time – sale of my books.) But what about the tax, etc. ? I thought over it and came to the conclusion that I will write to Gurudas too – through Sotuda – to make just such a legal document – money goes straight to Mother from them as offering. I hope the Gurudas people will accommodate me hereanent.
I have to confess one bad point of my character I discovered in this connection. I found myself worrying a little of what will happen to my personal expenses – pocket expenses. Now I can’t manage with less than Rs. 50 or Rs. 60. I keep a little money in the Calcutta Bank as you know to spend from it. I give presents also to people – buy books, etc. So it is about Rs. 2 a day, Rs. 60 a month. I can manage with that. But if all goes to Mother how shall I manage? Ask her? But if she doesn’t give? I felt hurt in imagination even. “Very funny surrender this, “ I thought, “if she doesn’t give I should accept it as gladly as if she did give. That is the spirit. Why do I make a reservation here ? I must throw myself unconditionally on her mercy. “ But you see little things like this still bind – how can I have real bhakti till I surrender my little self-will too? There is a lurking self-indulgence, I detected yesterday and thought I must make a clean breast of it to Mother. And that is why I want to be quite surrendered here, too, to her will. If she gives me Rs. 50 or Rs. 60, good. If not, I must manage with whatever she gives. Please show her this, I am very much ashamed of myself.
I am afraid the proposed arrangements will not serve the purpose you have in mind. For the publisher to deal direct with the Mother and send his accounts to her would turn the offering into a business transaction or at least a business arrangement. If the income tax officers poke their astute noses into the matter, they will at once smell a trick and pounce upon a tempting prey. If they did so, they might insist in regarding the Mother as a foreigner taking profits from a British India business and tax her, in which case the tax could be, I believe, higher even than your twenty-seven and a half percent. A fortiori this would apply to a documentary arrangement with a publisher such as you propose with Gurudas. We have had to consider such difficulties before and the Mother decided not to have any direct dealings with publishers who are not our own people.
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The whole difficulty lies in the fact that the British Income tax office are keen to get more out of profits that go out of the domain than those that stay in it, charging exorbitant rates. If you received your profit in British India you would be charged only ten or twelve percent (I am told) and you would be able to do what you liked with it afterwards. I hear that this is Sotuda’s idea, that you should give a power of attorney which will enable Sachin or someone else to draw your money for you from the publishers which can be sent by hand or otherwise to the Ashram. We have to wait his promised letters and till then it is not much use imagining what to do. That is for the latter. As for the Bombay affair, it must have the character of an offering pure and simple from the publisher, any business dealing with the Mother coming in would not do.
It is not that Mother is not prepared to accept what you offer. Also, of course the pocket money question should not count on either side. But there is the necessity to avoid direct business dealing by the Mother with outsiders apart from the advisability of everybody being clear of the whirlpool of excess profits for the Income Tax Office.
April 23, 1944
Anil Bhattacharya is an ignoramus in Yoga; his dictum only means that he is finding that he can’t succeed in Yoga; but has he tried sincerely to throw away his worn self? As for the reaction about L., that is an old one which happened to him at one time whenever somebody fell or slipped, especially somebody deemed in the Ashram to be a big sadhak or one in favour with the Mother. If L. has gone the way of others, it was not because she was the Mother’s favourite and could not bear the grace (that is absurd), nor was she a “favourite “, but rather the opposite, that she wanted to be the favourite, first, alone and unique, got disappointed and decided Yoga was no good or not possible and it was better to be a great one or at least somebody in the social world. It is not, however, certain that she will not come back some day. (By the way, all this about L. is rather confidential – unlike the rest of the letter; it should not be generally known, as, if she came back, that might stand against her.)
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Yes, attacks of this kind come often at Darshan time, not only to you but to many others, and in a way generally, e.g. against the work or physical health. The hostile forces get furious at the very fact of the Darshan and go all out to make a black mark on the brightness. All the more reason to reject the mischief and spoil their game.
April 25, 1944
But in reality these things are not sufficient reasons for getting sad and depressed. It is quite normal for difficulties to come back like that and it is not a proof that no progress has been made. The recurrence (after one has thought one has conquered) is not unaccountable. I have explained in my writings what happens. When a movement in the nature is cast out, it takes refuge in some less enlightened part of the nature, and when cast out of the rest of the nature, it takes refuge in the subconscient and from there surges up when you least expect it or comes up in dreams or sudden inconscient movements or it goes out and remains in wait in the environmental being through which the universal Nature works and attacks from there as a force from outside trying to recover its kingdom by a suggestion or repetition of old movements. One has to stand fast till the power of return fades away. These returns or attacks must be regarded not as parts of oneself, but as invasions – and rejected without allowing any depression or discouragement. If the mind does not sanction them, if the vital refuses to welcome them, if the physical remains steady and refuses to obey the physical urge, then the recurrence of the thought, the vital impulse, the physical feeling will begin to lose its last holds and finally they will be too feeble to cause any trouble.
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April 26, 1944
(Sri Aurobindo had said to Nirod, “Dilip is immensely changed.” Dilipda asked in what way.)
What I meant by the change was the great improvement in your mental and vital attitude and reactions to outward things and to life which was very evident in your letters and account of happenings and gave them quite a new atmosphere warm and clear and psychic. Naturally the change is not yet absolute and integral, but it does seem to be fundamental. Moreover, it is certainly due to a growing bhakti within, especially an acceptance of bhakti as your path and of the implications of that acceptance. The mind has taken a new poise less intellectual and more psychic. What prevents you from seeing the growth of bhakti (sometimes you have seen it and written about it) is a continuance of the physical mind which sets going with a constant repetitionary whirl of its fixed ideas whenever there is any touch of depression. One of these ideas is that you don’t progress, will not progress and can never progress, the old thing that used to say “Yoga is not for the likes of me “ etc. The activity of the physical mind (next to the wrong activity of the vital) is what most keeps one’s consciousness on the surface and prevents it from being conscious within and of what goes on within; it can see something of what happens on the surface of the nature, the results of the inner movement but not the cause of the happenings, which is the inner movement itself. That is one reason why I like to see the physical mind occupied in poetry and music etc. and other salubrious activities which help the inner growth and in which the bhakti can express itself, for that keeps the physical mind busy, unoccupied with the mechanical rotatory movement and allows and helps the inner growth. The rotatory movement is less than it was before and I expect it one of these days to get tired of itself and give up altogether.
April 27, 1944
There is a confusion here. The Mother’s grace is one thing, and the call to change another, the pressure of nearness to her is yet another. Those who are physically near to her are not so by any special grace or favour, but by the necessity of their work – that is what everybody here refuses to understand or believe, but it is the fact: that nearness acts automatically as a pressure if for nothing else, to adapt their consciousness to hers which means change, but it is difficult for them because the difference between the two consciousnesses is enormous especially on the physical level and it is on the physical level that they are meeting her in the work.
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There is another cause of the general inability to change which at present afflicts the sadhak. It is because the sadhana, as a general fact, has now and for a long time past come down to the Inconscient; the pressure, the call is to change in that part of the nature which depends directly on the Inconscient, the fixed habits, the automatic movements, the mechanical repetitions of the nature, the involuntary reactions to life, all that seems to belong to the fixed character of a man. This has to be done if there is to be any chance of a total spiritual change. The Force (generally and not individually) is working to make that possible, its pressure is for that – for, on the other levels, the. change has already been made possible (not, mind you, assured to everybody). But to open the Inconscient to light is a herculean task; change on the other levels is much easier. As yet this work has only begun and it is not surprising that there seems to be no change in things or people. It will come in time, but not in a hurry.
As for experiences, they are all right but the trouble is that they do not seem to change the nature, they only enrich the consciousness – even the realisation, on the mind level, of the Brahman seems to leave the nature almost where it was, except for a few. That is why we insist on the psychic transformation as the first necessity – for that does change the nature – and its chief instrument is bhakti, surrender, etc.
May 20, 1944
I send you Khitish Sen’s translation side by side with what I hope to be improvements. I will be glad if you will advise me and correct. I have tried this as I want to include it in my forthcoming book (Tirthankar in English) to be published shortly by the Bombay publisher. I have been working hard at this and am now revising the last part. This will be included in the book if you approve: for Khitish Sen will not mind my corrections, I am sure (provided of course I improve his version).
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Khitish Sen’s style and yours are very different and they don’t always mix very well. His own is a good style direct and forceful and I think that should be kept as the basic tone. Yours tends towards a certain amount of diction and sometimes to the rich and ornate. I have not seen the Bengali song while deciding, so I have made only a few suggestions of my own.
I send you the two records just received: one on Mother, the other on yourself. They say my voice has come out very well but I am not satisfied with this rendering, because (and they also agree) the boys and girls have not sung as well as they might have. They got nervous. They have invited me to sing these in Madras which I will do (subject to your approval) next July with Manju,25 Sahana’s brother’s little daughter of seventeen. She has a very fine voice and I may train her up at Madras in a week as she is very anxious to learn. I miss Hashi – Manju cannot rival her of course but she may turn out very fine indeed (who knows?), if you approve of my project.
Yes, I suppose that is all right.
June 10, 1944
Mother, I want you to help me as I am somewhat weak in a certain social direction. Briefly, Hiren comes daily in the morning when I take tea with Nishikanto and AniT kumar, just for half-an-hour. I find his attitude one of simple gossip and I want now-a-days to avoid gossip.
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Both Nishikanto and Anilkumar take interest in things of Yoga about which I like to talk, if talk I have to, but Hiren comes and shouts about what is going on in the Ashram about his wanting to beat Prithwi Singh, etc. It is very disagreeable. Also he has a curious habit of reporting talks to others which creates unnecessary complications. In a word, I don’t want his presence at my tea-table and less his admiration of me which is certainly not good for my egoistic self. I really want to feel humble, believe me, as without humility your Grace cannot act on me properly. But though I resolved many times to request him not to come, I can’t succeed in asking him not to come. It so happens that he is free from 8 to 9 in the morning. Can you kindly give him some work for this hour as after nine I start to concentrate, etc. ? Mother, do be kind, you are kind to me always, but I want you to be kinder still, and think of some work for Hiren between 8 and 9, please! You see, I want to do the sadhana properly and Hiren (whom I did succeed in warding off) is such a hindrance. I am ashamed to tell you this, but I must tell you candidly all my weaknesses. I have found myself fairly strong in most matters of attitude and right action but this habit of politeness is still very strong in me so that I can’t forbid Hiren to come. He insists on coming and I don’t like his talk nor attitude. I am glad to tell you that Nishikanto and Anilkumar are both growing loyal to what I feel to be important, e.g. war, bhakti, aspiration for humility, etc. But Hiren does not listen. He is simply mad and his sympathies are still wrong, I have felt. Nirod agrees with me and wants me to tell him straight not to come but as I find it very difficult I make an appeal to you as a child should to his mother, confessing his weakness.
Mother will consult with Nolini and see if any work can be given to him at that time. But he was given work formerly and he did not do his work so it was taken from him. If he does that again, then the measure taken will not be effective. So?
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I was hesitating. But I have decided to write. For I think it is important. The other day Venkataram26 said Hitler had arranged that they would not be able to make any headway in Italy. Also that in Russia he has shortened his front so that Russians will not move any further.
Well, they seem to be making some headway in spite of Hitler’s arrangement. I seem to remember Hitler made arrangements for taking Stalingrad: the result was that he has been kicked out almost entirely from old Russia.
And in China, he said, Japan was going to crush China in three months, etc., etc.
It doesn’t look like it; but perhaps they have confidential information?
Of course I argued abortively and got annoyed in the end. I thought then that it was his views and analysis of the situation so I had to be tolerant. Then day before yesterday I heard about Narayan Reddi’s remark about the Allied para-troops having been wiped out. Venkataram categorically declared N. had said absolutely nothing. I wondered and asked and ascertained that he did say something. Did he? What? Can you tell me? (I am telling things briefly to save your time.)
People say that he did – on the authority of the men to whom he said it. Does N. R. deny his saying it?
/ told this to V. and said that why should N. have uttered what even the German Radio had not claimed? To that he sharply retorted that how was I sure about this? I had to admit defeat there, but incidentally I found to my deep chagrin how he still sympathised with the Axis.
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There is now strained feeling again between him and me as I know he lied again to shield N. and that was because he liked the remark about para-troops. It is very strange, but I cannot be possibly mistaken here. The reason why I tell you this is that I want to be more loyal to you than ever and this impels me to be cold to V. I find such contact harms me. I was tolerating his company in spite of everything because I was thinking all the time (mistakenly, I now realise) that Yogis should be tolerant and charitable. But I find it difficult now to tolerate such views in the Ashram under your aegis seeing that you are trying to make the Allies win. And then today a thought came to me which I feel to be right. It is that you and Mother want to deal blows even to ventilators of such views because such views may lead one easily to take side with the Asuras and as such, logically, against the Divine. Otherwise you would be more tolerant than all of us put together. Am I right or wrong here? You don’t reply now-a-days to my questions and I have succeeded in persuading myself that it is because you do not think it necessary. But as I have learned most of what has helped me yogically from your letters I have to encroach a little on your time specially when I am somewhat worried about it and the atmosphere here is becoming rather irksome, to say the least, because of the vicious views which V. refuses to discard. I feel it is an extremely obnoxious thing. I was perhaps wrong to have been friendly to him but I did hope he was changing slowly. This Reddi affair has been an eye-opener.
I write to you also to convey to you my unspoken prayer that I may be completely devoted to you and to all that you stand for. The rest I need not speak about my wanting to serve you with all I am and have and can earn. I am writing books which will, I am sure, increase my income which I will offer at your feet and Mother’s in due course. Please do not think I am lazy. On the contrary I have never worked harder in my life, for the first time doing music and literature simultaneously.
A propos music, I will offer Rs. 566 in a few days (keeping Rs. 200 for income tax) from the Gramophone. I wrote to you about going to Madras for a week or two at most in July to have a few new songs recorded. I want to take Anilkumar with me as he can play well on the drum-accompaniment: they will pay his fare
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I am glad to tell you that his attitude is becoming more and more correct. Both he and Nishikanto’s contact I find pleasant (unlike V.’s) and we take tea every morning now-a-days. This I will give up (taking tea together in the morning) as it is beginning to interfere with my morning concentration. But I tell you this to assure you that I am conscious I ought to get rid of this tea-ing together. But we talk of loyal things, if that is any compensation. But let me know whether I can take Anilkumar to Madras.
Yes, you can.
Also write to me if you can find a little time whether I am right in feeling that even speculating intellectually about the Allied reverses is not a right movement as it may easily lead us, unawares, into sympathy with the hostile hordes who are against your work.
All these things are silly utterances in which the wishes of the mind are presented as truth and fact. That is a common habit in this very imperfect humanity and ordinarily it would be of no importance, except that such inventions and falsehoods are most improper in the mouth of a sadhak and the habit must be a great obstacle to any progress. But here there is doubt behind, whether they are conscious of it or not, in that the Asura shall prevail against the Divine. That means a most dangerous giving of oneself to the Falsehood that is seeking to prolong its hold on the world and establish definitely the reign of Evil over the whole world. That is what the victory of Hitler would have meant – it would have meant also the destruction of my work. You are quite right therefore in resenting this kind of attitude (also there is the fact that it establishes a centre of support for the Falsehood and Evil in the Ashram). The propagation of this falsehood, false ideas, false feelings, false [notions] and persuading people that they are right is the chief instrument of the Asura and its prevalence and success a sign of the growth of darkness on the earth. Fortunately the intensity of the peril is over, however long the struggle may still last. Other perils and manoeuvres of the Asura may follow afterwards; so it is good to discourage firmly the tendency so that it may not do harm hereafter.
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June 19, 1944
(The question was why even so many fine, sincere people and estimable people were finding this sadhana growing more and more difficult and coming as a result to doubt the existence and reality of a “sunlitpath”. D.K.R.)
The sunlit path can only be followed if the psychic is constantly or usually in front or if one has a natural spirit of faith and surrender or a face turned habitually towards the sun or psychic predisposition (e.g. a faith in one’s spiritual destiny) or acquired the psychic turn. That does not mean that the sunlit man has no difficulties; he may have many, but he regards them cheerfully as “all in the day’s work “. If he gets a bad beating, he is capable of saying, “Well, that was a gueer go but the Divine is evidently in a queer mood and if that is his way of doing things, it must be the right one; I am surely a still queerer fellow myself and that, I suppose, was the only means of putting me right. “ But everybody can’t be of that turn, and surrender which would put everything right is, as you say, difficult to do completely. That is why we do not insist on total surrender at once, but are satisfied with a little to begin with, the rest to grow as it can.
I have explained to you why so many people (not by any means all) are in this gloomy condition, dull and despondent. It is the tamas, the inertia of the Inconscient, that has got hold of them. But also it is the small physical vital which takes only an interest in the small and trivial things of the ordinary daily and social life and nothing else. When formerly the sadhana was going on on the higher levels (mind, higher vital, etc.), there was plenty of vigour and verve and interest in the details of the Ashram work and life as well as in an inner life; this physical vital was carried in the stream. But for many this has dropped; they live in the unsatisfied vital physical and find everything desperately dull, gloomy and without interest or issue.
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In their inner life the tamas from the Inconscient has created a block or a bottle-neck and they do not find any way out. If one can keep the right condition and attitude, a strong interest in work or a strong interest in sadhana, then this becomes quiescent. That is the malady. Its remedy is to keep the right condition and to bring gradually or, if one can, swiftly, the light of the higher aspiration into this part of the being also, so that whatever the conditions of the environment, it may keep, it also, the right poise. Then the sunlit path would seem less impossible.
June 20, 1944
We have no objection to your doing this for a week, as you propose; I understand that it is not a retirement, but a cessation of social visits. My objection to retirement is that so many have “gone morbid “ by it or gone astray into zones of false vital experiences; secondly, that absolute retirement is not necessary for the spiritual life. It is different however for people like Radhananda who are to the manner born or at least perfectly trained. A “restriction of publicity “ is quite another matter. Also to be capable of solitude and to have the Ananda of solitude can always be helpful to sadhana, and a power of inner solitude is natural to the Yogi.
We will give our help and hope you will succeed – at least, you will have established a precedent for withdrawing whenever you want in the future.
August 30, 1944
We have heard the records. The duet was very good (shya-mala charana yugale namo) [We bow to the dark feet]. Mother still finds Manju’s voice a little undeveloped but the second song was a great improvement (biraher pate ankibo chhabi) [I shall paint the picture on the canvas of separation] on the first. In time she can develop into an excellent singer not perhaps as good as Hashi but even that may happen.
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September 10, 1944
Apart from the total rejection of sex-thoughts and imaginations and actions, which ends by acting in the subconscient also, I don’t know any remedy for sex-dreams except the putting of a force as concrete as possible on the sex-centre and organ prohibiting this urge and its result, put when about to sleep and renewed each time one wakes and goes to sleep again. But this everybody cannot manage to use, for they employ a mental will instead of a concrete force (the mental will can be effective, but is not always so). This method, besides, only acts for the time, it inhibits but does not permanently cure; it does not get rid of the kamajata [sex-impressions] in the subconscient, and of course it means thinking of the sex-affair though only negatively.
I have heard it said that even very advanced yogis get the dreams at least once in six months – I don’t know how far it is true or what the yogis themselves say about it. But the kamajata in the heart can be got rid of long before the end of life and even the seed state in the subconscient which comes up in dreams, though sticky enough, is not quite so irremovable as all that.
Anyway, the dream-kind is not so much to trouble about, unless it is frequent – it is the waking state that must be rigorously cleared out. Sometimes, if that is done, there is automatic extension of the habit of rejection to the subconscient, so that when the dream is coming there is an automatic prohibition that stops it. Under a regime like that I think the kamajata would become, if not non-existent, yet permanently quiescent in its seed state and so practically non est.
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September 16, 1944
As regards Krishna and devotion, I think I have already answered more than once. I have no objection at all to the worship of Krishna or the Vaishnava form of devotion, nor is there any incompatibility between Vaishnava bhakti and my supramental Yoga. There is in fact no special and exclusive form of supramental Yoga: all ways can lead to the Super-mind, just as all ways can lead to the Divine.
Certainly, I will help you and am helping and will always help you; the idea that I can stop doing it or will send you away has no sense in it. If you persevere, you cannot fail to get the permanent bhakti you want and the realisation you want, but you should learn to put an entire reliance on Krishna to give it when he finds all ready and the time come.
If he wants you to clear out imperfections and impurities first, that is, after all, understandable. I don’t see why you should not succeed in doing it, now that your attention is being so constantly turned on it. To see them clearly and acknowledge them is the first step, to have the firm will to reject them is the next, to separate yourself from them entirely so that if they enter at all it will be as foreign elements, no longer parts of your normal nature but suggestions from outside, brings their last state; even, once seen and rejected, they may automatically fall away and disappear; but for most the process takes time. These things are not peculiar to you; they are parts of universal human nature; but they can, do and will disappear.
About X’s music lessons, you can certainly stop them if you find that by doing so you can help your concentration or your inner purification. But you know my view about music itself, that it can help greatly in your sadhana and the development of bhakti; after all, your music, your song-writing and singing here helped you considerably and they may still have that use.
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September 17, 1944
I think you have done well in deciding not to take up X. again. The only thing of value in her is her musical possibility, but without seriousness, discipline or any depth of feeling this is not likely to develop; she has too much self-will, waywardness and flightiness which tends towards hysteria.
Certainly Krishna is credited with much caprice, difficult dealing and a playfulness (lila!) which the played-with do not always immediately appreciate. But there is a reasoning as well as a hidden method in his caprices, and when he does come out of it and takes a fancy to be nice to you, he has a supreme attractiveness, charm and allurement which compensates and more than compensates for all you have suffered.
Of course, your decision to continue the solitude has our full approval.
September 22, 1944
We cannot give you our approval for going away with this decision of not returning as we think it a wrong movement, vehement, hasty and unnecessary. We would not have refused permission to your going elsewhere for a time if you needed to do so for some good reason as has happened before. But we cannot accept this decision of yours as a final decision for the future.
It is nonsense talking about giving you another chance if you want to come back. There can be no question of another “chance “: if you go, you will always be welcome back as one coming home. That does not depend upon your success or failure in the sadhana. We know the difficulties of the sadhana and it is from the beginning a permanent chance that we have given you. Our relation is always there and our readiness to help is always there.
Whatever you decide, my love and blessings and the Mother’s will be always with you.
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September 26, 1944
I was very glad to read your letter. The clarification of the mind of which it is evidence is indeed welcome and likely to get rid of many persistent difficulties. What you express in the letter is the right way of thinking and seeing. The self-will of the mind wanting things in its own way and not in the Divine’s way was a great obstacle. With that gone, the way should become much less rough and hard to follow. I am very glad that you have got rid of the wrong ideas about the Mother in the pranam: for that was coming very much across any possibility of right reception.
I approve of the modifications you have made in your solitude programme, but I certainly would not like you to discontinue the solitude. It was becoming too absolute and certain features were coming in, like the shrinking from all contact with people, that were too exaggerated and might grow into something morbid. But the solitude itself I expected to be beneficial, and I was counting on it to prepare you for living within in the inner being more than in the outer consciousness. The outer can grow in faith, fidelity to the Divine, reverence, love, worship and adoration, great things in themselves – though in fact these things too come from within – but realisation can only take place when the inner being is awake with its vision and feeling of things unseen. Till then, one can feel the results of the divine help and, if one has faith, know that they are the work of the Divine; but it is only then that one can feel clearly the Force at work, the divine Presence, the direct communion.
October 2, 1944
What is there to comment on foolishness? It is a universal human failing. Your remark about Krishna was not so much foolish as desperately illogical. If Krishna was always and by nature cold and distant (Lord, what a discovery – Krishna of all people!), how could human devotion and aspiration come near him – and it would soon be like the North and South Pole, growing icier and icier, always facing each other but never seeing because of the earth’s bulge. Also, if Krishna did not want the human bhakta as well as the bhakta wanting him, who could get at him? He would be always sitting on the snows of the Himalayas like Shiva. History describes him otherwise and he is usually charged with being too warm and sportive.
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Nirod told the Mother about K. in my presence, but I did not catch everything. I understood that he wanted a one-storied house and would bring a doctor (or was that my subconscient’s imagination), etc. Mother was speaking of a house of the kind, but doubted whether it would not be more than Rs. 30 rent, the sum named by K. That is all I know about it. I suppose something will emerge. I will ask Mother about it tomorrow – if I remember.
P.S. It appears Amrita is to give information about the house.
December 10, 1944
(A disciple of Sri Aurobindo wrote to Dilipda that if he stuck to Krishna, the Supermind would not be included in his realisation, whereas if he stuck to Sri Aurobindo, Krishna would be included in his realisation. The disciple disapproved of Krishna as Krishna only brought down the Overmind and not the Supermind.)
I am puzzled and perplexed by this affair of Krishna and the Supermind. A.B.C.D.E.F. of Bombay, Nagpur and Delhi and P.Q.R. up to X.Y.Z. of Calcutta and Pondicherry will all be able to catch hold of the Supermind by the hair of the head or the end of the tail and “include “ it in themselves, only poor Krishna can’t do it! He can only be himself “included “ in it! Hard lines on Bhagavan Vasudev! What I said was that Krishna in his incarnation brought down the Overmind into human possibility, because that was his business at the time and all that could be then done; he did not bring down the Supermind, because that was not possible or at least not intended at that stage of the human evolution. I did not mean that he could not have brought down the Supermind if that had been willed at the time. You listen too easily to anybody, G.H. or Q. let us say, and treat their ingenious hair-splitting or unduly authoritative ideas as if they were gospel truths; that creates mental confusion. I believe Krishna’s intentions are to remain with us and he won’t run away when the Supermind comes down; so why should Mother send you away on his account? It would be a most illogical procedure. So that is that.
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December 1944?
I trust you did not take my yesterday’s letter amiss since it was prompted out of sincere reverence for you and not questioning. What I meant was perhaps not clear. So I enclose a letter of Krishnaprem I received two or three days ago. Read at least the red-lined sentence. It is this sort of recent views of his about everything-external-a-projection-of-the-internal and all-men-striving-so-none-is-to-blame sort of idea that repels me. I could never regard the world as so simple nor such a clear-cut precise view an all-round view – and so not essentially prompted by wisdom.
Is this view of things so simple and precise as that? It seems to me to involve a great complexity with no solution to it. But is it not the usual view from a phase of consciousness which goes beyond the ordinary human view and tries to see things from the impartial view-point of the equal Brahman, samam brahma and look with compassion and understanding on all beings struggling in the Ignorance to find their way in it or out of it. It is a phase through which one passes on the way to the highest Truth – I think most Yogis look at things or endeavour to look at them from this impartial consciousness. But for pragmatic world action it offers no solution except either to escape from the whole thing as Maya or doing one’s own work in one’s own circle of action and leaving the rest, Hitler included, to the mysterious unaccountable workings of the cosmic Ishwara.
And of this sum of all-round wisdom of which only dim rays are received by minds like ours I have had a glimpse only through contact with you and your writings. Why is it Krishnaprem is not influenced by such writings? Because, I feel, his guru teaches him such platitudes of all men being innocent and divine and everybody should be [?].
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I suppose because he has worked out his own view of things and finds it sufficiently profound and satisfactory. He seems to appreciate the thought of the Life Divine, but he has his own line of thinking and experience which he has followed pretty far going through one phase after another and he wants to follow it out to the end. I don’t think it can be said that he has a platitudinous mind – on the contrary if there is danger, it might be in the opposite side.
That is why Krishnaprem doesn’t condemn even the monster Hitler vehemently though he (for self preservation, I think) protests against Hitler’s campaign against all intellectuals whom H. regards as vermin. Krishnaprem is in a hopeless quandary now, I too noticed. So I thought that his guru was at least partly responsible as these are her views too – goody-goody platitudes that have little application to Life in its weird vast mysterious aspects. Life that cannot be tackled with such simple formulas but has to be approached with infinite pain and aspiration for Light to be even partially comprehended. I write in a hurry so may be I fail to convey my precise meaning but you will easily imagine what my drift is. I have seen Gopinath Kaviraj revelling in much greater absurdities. My mayavadi class friend who came here last year told me year before last G. was asserting before him that G/s guru (the humbug Vishuddhananda who made heaps of money because he could make sugar from sand) could create not only sugar but the brahmanda [universe] like Vishwamitra – because G.’s guru has always asserted this. I saw him once asserting like this and got disgusted at Puri in 1927.
This Visuddhananda affair does not seem to me clear on the facts presented to me. The facts might admit of being explained by jugglery or legerdemain, but the circumstances as stated to me make that a little difficult; they admit equally of being explained by the possession of certain occult powers, e.g. power to materialise subtle objects (sukshmagandha, rupa), power to communicate one’s own subtle sensings or [?] temporarily to others, occult power of transmutation (e.g. Ramakrishna’s turning of wine into D. Gupta’s fever mixture or Christ’s turning of water into wine) – but here a spiritual force was at work.
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I am told there is no record or evidence of V. having any spiritual realisation. If so his powers, if any, would be occult alone, probably on the vital plane. Such powers do not presuppose any spirituality, some who had them were very clearly unspiritual. Such men are often proud and egoistic and many boast extravagantly of their power and need not be averse to making money by them. Still if his powers were genuine, the Kabiraj’s faith in him becomes understandable, though his acceptation of “miracles “ alone as sufficient is not so intelligible. I am told that V. claimed to do his phenomena by the power of solar light and had established at great risk an institute for experiments with glass instruments in that direction, but died before the instruments came from Europe. That looks like a sort of straddling over the line between occult science and a hypothetical and experimental physical science. If genuine, such an experimentation would be sufficiently interesting, but these things have nothing to do with spiritual realisation. There is a spiritual occultism, but that is a different matter.
And this sort of thing is happening always – the mountebank Gurus hoodwinking credulous disciples who would believe anything of such gurus. That was why I had sworn never to accept a guru unless he was of the eminence of Sri Ramakrishna. That is why I came to you, only to learn however, from you and Mother that any guru will do if the disciple is sincere because through the guru the latter opened to the Divine. I was very sorry to hear this as you spoke from knowledge yet the “my guru “ did havoc in India in all conscience. K.’s recent deterioration I attribute to this my-guru-loyalty.
Not “any guru, “ surely but one’s own accepted guru. However, I will try to deal with that separately.
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I don’t know whether there has been any “deterioration “, I hear now that they have always been occultising over there; the Chakrabartis27 were theosophists. So their indulgence in occultist theories (a slippery ground where there is much room for intellectual ingenuity) may not be new. I have not read K.’s book, I only heard certain things from it from Purani which surprised me. I shall read the book when I have time. One can be intuitive in spiritual matters and yet not so sure of foot when one is occultising.
He says that with fanaticism. Only my guru – the rest matters not. That is why he tries his best to keep you at arm’s length because he does not want to be influenced by Truth for which you stand but for his guru. This attitude of his I deeply deplored but I stood routed at every turn when I wanted to hold to this deep conviction that it is dangerous for spiritual guidance to go to a guru who is not already a god-realised person. You may say how is K. to know whether his guru was god-realised. Well she doesn’t claim she is, she only claims she has bhakti. Why then K. thinks – he told me himself nearly eighteen years ago – that his guru was a “jibanmukta “? And I feel (may be here I am irrational) that his fall ...
? That is rather a big term. Fall from what?
... is due to his guru’s inability to guide him into the deepest truth.
But if a guru can’t do this how can he be a fit guru! I feel if Krishnaprem had you for his guru he would have got just this guidance to say nothing of the utterly deluded Gopinath. But both [?] I respect as admirable men. That is the tragedy and that [?] “my guru “ doctrine.
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