Sri Aurobindo - The Smiling Master

Chapter 6

On Matters ''Logical''

Logic and logical reasoning provide us with a rich warehouse wherein to gather material for a sumptuous feast of humour. Most of the elements leading to the production of comical effect in this field have their fountain-head in what is called fallacious argument. Now, the dictionary meaning of the word 'fallacy' is 'a misleading argument'. Logicians use the term to designate an argument which, though basically incorrect, is psychologically persuasive to an unreflective mind. Upon examination, the unsoundness of the argument and hence the incorrectness of the conclusion drawn are easily detected.

There are two broad groups of fallacies: formal and informal. A 'formal fallacy' is one which bears a superficial resemblance to (but not an essential identity with) a certain pattern of valid inference. An 'informal fallacy' is, on the other hand, an error of thinking into which we may unwarily fall either because of carelessness and inattention to our subject matter or through being misled by some ambiguity in the language used to formulate our arguments. Depending on the situation we may meet what have been designated by the logicians as 'fallacies of relevance' and 'fallacies of equivocation and amphiboly'¹.

The humorous effect is produced when, because of some hidden and undetected fallacy in reasoning, we suddenly find ourselves face to face with a 'conclusion' which is most unexpected and patently absurd. This unexpectedness coupled with the sense of a pleasant shock is, as we have noted before, one of the most common elements in the production of humour. Let us consider a few examples, and we invite our readers to unravel in each case the fallacy that makes the conclusion look plausibly valid while in reality it is not so.

Ex. 1: Bats eat small insects.

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But bat is a short word.

Therefore, some short words eat small insects.²

Ex. 2: An elephant is an animal.

Therefore, a gray elephant is a gray animal.

Similarly,

an elephant is an animal.

Therefore, a small elephant is a small animal.³

Ex. 3: A youngman is trying to convince a young girl that she indeed loves him. His argument, in the words of J.G. Vivian, is as follows:

I love you; therefore I am a lover.

All the world loves a lover;

and you are all the world to me.

Consequently you love me."

It is so easy and natural for an uninstructed or inattentive layman to commit fallacies in his reasoning. The study of logic as a discipline helps us know the methods and principles we have to adopt in order to distinguish correct from incorrect reasoning.

Now, how do you draw a final conclusion in a chain of reasoning? Well, inference is a process in which one proposition is arrived at and affirmed on the basis of one or more other propositions which were accepted as the starting point of the process. The conclusion of an argument is that proposition which is arrived at and affirmed while the premisses are the other proposition or propositions whose truth-validity has supposedly led us to the inevitability of the conclusion.

When the conclusion is based on a single premiss, the reasoning involved is called "immediate inference", whereas a "mediate inference" is one wherein the truth of the conclusion is affirmed on the basis of the simultaneously affirmed truths of more than one premiss.

A syllogism is a form of deductive argument in which, granting the truth of two premisses, the truth of the third

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proposition (the conclusion) is claimed to follow necessarily.

Now, some arguments may appear to be perfectly sound and valid at the first glance, but on closer and careful examination they are found to be faulty and invalid. Apart from the case where right conclusions are validly drawn from a set of right premisses, there are three other situations, where fallacies may arise. These are: (i) wrong premisses leading to wrong conclusion; (ii) right premisses leasding to wrong conclusions; and (iii) wrong premisses supposedly leading to right conclusions. Now, these three latter situations may confront us with some strange absurdities which cannot but produce a humorous effect. As illustrations let us consider two inferences and try to examine if they are fallacious or not.

Ex. 1: All Parisians are Frenchmen. No Bostonians are Parisians. Therefore no Bostonians are Frenchmen.⁵

Ex. 2: All radicals are foreign-born. No patriotic citizen is a radical. Therefore no patriotic citizen is foreign-born.⁶

To the layman who does not reflect, these two arguments (of Exs. 1 and 2 above) seem to be absolutely sound and irrefutable but, in fact, they are not. Now how do we detect the fallacies and refute the 'validity' of the inferences? There are two possible methods; the first one is to take recourse to the formal theorems and the rigorous methods of the science of logic; the second one is the simpler method of constructing another argument having exactly the same form but with a different subject matter such that the so-called right conclusions appear in all their absurdity. Thus, "All triangles are plane figures; no squares are triangles; therefore no squares are plane figures" is an argument of the same type as the above two and yet the incorrectness of the conclusion will be patent to everyone.

Here is a third example of a fallacious argument of a different form:

All communists are proponents of socialized medicine.

Some members of the administration are proponents of

socialized medicine.

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Therefore some members of the administration are communists.⁷

The fallacy of this inference can be easily exposed by constructing the following syllogism conforming to the same pattern:

All rabbits are very fast runners.

Some horses are very fast runners.

Therefore some horses are rabbits.⁸

This is an excellent and efficacious method of arguing. The logical analogy is, as has been remarked by Prof. Irving M. Copi, one of the most powerful weapons that can be used in debate. In this connection we remember a witty remark once made by Dr. Johnson. The story is as follows.

"A slender butcher well known for his pretension to taste which he did not possess took up a volume of poems in a bookseller's shop and reading out the line 'Who rules o'er freemen should himself be free', turned to Dr. Johnson, who was standing by, and said, 'What think you of that, sir?' 'Rank nonsense!' bluntly replied Johnson; 'it is an assertion without a proof. You might as well say "Who drives fat oxen, should himself be fat." ' '"

Fallacies, both formal and informal, that men commit in their daily reasoning are of many different types; indeed their number is legion. As De Morgan so aptly said, "There is no such thing as a classification of the ways in which men may arrive at an error: it is much to be doubted whether there ever can be" Yet all textbooks of logic contain discussions of fallacies. Thus Copi's Introduction to Logic has elaborately considered eighteen informal fallacies alone. Some of the names are quite imposing and awe-inspiring; e.g., (i) Argumentum ad Baculum (appeal to force); (ii) Argumentum ad Hominem (abusive); (iii) Argumentum ad Hominem (circumstantial); (iv) Argumentum ad Ignorantiam (argument from ignorance); (v) Argumentum ad Misericordiam (appeal to pity); (vi) Argumentum ad Populum (to the gallery); (vii) Argumentum ad Vere-cundiam (appeal to authority); (viii) Accident; (ix) Converse

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accident (hasty generalization); (x) False Cause; (xi) Petitio Pricipii (begging the question); (xii) Complex Question; (xiii) Ignoratio Elenchi (irrelevant conclusion); etc.

We need not go into the detailed discussion of what these fallacies consist of. Indeed we beg to be excused by our readers for having dragged them through this long 'logical' digression but we felt it necessary to do so; for, in order to appreciate in full Sri Aurobindo's humour in matters 'logical', a prior acquaintance with the notions discussed above will be found very useful.

Before we pass on to the consideration of Sri Aurobindo's own humour touching logical themes, we take the liberty of appending below a number of inferences which, we hope, will tickle the logical imagination of our readers and add to their merriment. Please try to find out in each case wherein the fallacy lies, if there is any, and what leads to the comic effect produced. Of course, in logic fallacy is not the only factor leading to a humorous situation. At times we as onlookers become immensely amused when we see someone else being confounded by a maze of words and arguments signifying (i) something fallacious or (ii) perhaps nothing or (iii) something very very simple and so obvious as to release us into a peal of laughter. The examples given below belong to all these categories.

We have had enough of serious discussion; now, readers, we invite you to a 'logical' feast; relish the items presented below with your sharpened sense of humour.

(1) The story is told about Wendell Phillips, the abolitionist [of slavery in the United States], who one day found himself on the same train with a group of Southern clergymen on their way to a conference. When the Southerners learned of Phillips' presence, they decided to have some fun at his expense. One of them approached and said, "Are you Wendell Phillips?"

"Yes, sir," came the reply.

"Are you the great abolitionist?"

"I am not great, but I am an abolitionist."

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"Are you not the one who makes speeches in Boston and New York against slavery?"

"Yes, I am."

"Why don't you go to Kentucky and make speeches there?" Phillips looked at his questioner for a moment and then said, "Are you a clergyman?"

"Yes, I am," replied the other.

"Are you trying to save souls from hell?"

"Yes."

"Well - why don't you go there?"¹⁰

(2)"A servant who was roasting a stork for his master was prevailed by his sweetheart to cut off a leg for her to eat. When the roasted bird came upon the table, the master desired to know what had become of the other leg. The witty servant answered that storks had never more than one leg. The master, very angry, but determined to strike his servant dumb before he punished him, took him next day into the fields where they saw storks, standing each on one leg, as storks usually do. The servant turned triumphantly to his master, on which the latter shouted and the birds put down their other legs and flew away. It was now the turn of the master to feel triumphant. But the servant nonchalantly rejoined, "Ah, sir, you did not shout to the stork at dinner yesterday; if you had done so, he would have shown his other leg too."¹¹

(3)"When I was a boy I have seen plenty of people puzzled by the following: An elderly nun was often visited by a young gentleman, and the worthy superior thought it necessary to ask who he was. 'A near relation,' said the nun. 'But what relation,' said the superior. 'Oh, madam,' said the nun, 'very near, indeed; for his mother was my mother's only child.' The superior felt that this was perhaps very close, and did not trouble herself to disentangle it. And a good many people on whom it was proposed used to study and bother to find out what the name of the connexion was."¹²

Dear readers, what are your guesses on this point?

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(4)"Which is better, a clock that is right only once a year, or a clock that is right twice every day? "The latter,' you reply, 'unquestionably.' Very good, now attend. I have two clocks: one doesn't go at all, and the other loses a minute every day: which would you prefer? 'The losing one,' you answer, 'without a doubt.' Now observe: the one which loses a minute a day has to lose twelve hours or 720 minutes, before it is right, whereas the other is evidently right as often as the time it points to comes round, which happens twice a day.

So you've contradicted yourself once.

'Ah, but,' you say, 'what's the use of its being right twice a day, if I can't tell when the time comes?'

Why, suppose the clock points to 8 o'clock; don't you see that the clock is right at 8 o'clock? Consequently, when 8 o'clock comes round, your clock is right,

'Yes, I see that,' you reply.

Very good, then you've contradicted yourself twice. Now get out of the difficulty as best you can, and don't contradict yourself again if you can help it.

You might go on to ask, 'How am I to know when 8 o'clock does come? My clock will not tell.' Be patient. You know that when 8 o'clock comes, your clock is right; very good; then your rule is this: Keep your eye fixed on your clock, and the very moment it is right, it will be 8 o'clock. 'But -,' you say. There, that'll do; the more you argue, the farther you get from the point; so it will be as well to stop."¹³

Dear readers, are your heads reeling under this onslaught from Lewis Carroll's pen?

Now two other pieces - the humour here arising out of attempts at rigorous definitions:

(5)Let us say a barber is defined as one who shaves all those and only those who do not shave themselves. Does the barber shave himself?

Yes or no? Ponder over the two possible answers and be seized of the impasse. How do you propose to solve the riddle?

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(6) Plato's successors in the Academy at Athens spent much time and thought on the problem of defining "man". First they opted for the definition: "A man is a biped animal." But presently they came across a chicken. And they amended their definition to the new form: "A man is a feather less biped." But their problem did not end there. For Diogenes plucked off the feathers of a chicken and threw it over the wall into the Academy, shouting at the same time, "Here is a man according to your definition."

Of course, it was not a man. The definiens was too broad, for it denoted more than the definiendum. After much deliberation, the Academics added the phrase "with broad nails" to their definiens.¹⁴

Do you think the question was finally settled?

Humorous effect can be produced in another way, by mixing up the literal and the emotive meanings of one and the same word. An illustrative joke based upon this confusion was made by the philosopher Bertrand Russell, when he sought to "conjugate" the "irregular verb" 'to be' as:

I am firm; you are obstinate; he is pig-headed. This is a simple illustration of the point we have in view. The three words 'firm', 'obstinate' and 'pig-headed' all have the same factual dictionary meaning - that is, 'following one's own course of action and refusing to be influenced by other people's opinions.' They have, however, different emotional meanings; 'firm' has an emotional meaning of strong approval, 'obstinate' of mild disapproval, while 'pig-headed' of strong disapproval. In other words, the three conjugated forms really mean:

I am firm = I am not easily influenced and that is a good thing.

You are obstinate = You are not easily influenced and that is rather a bad thing.

He is pig-headed = He is not easily influenced and that is an awfully bad thing.

Thus, all the three forms have the same overt and public meanings and hence the people concerned cannot 'logically'

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take offence and protest; but the last two forms covertly signify something which is not at all palatable and as a result 'you' and 'he' cannot but smart and yet have to digest in silence their anger and irritation. And this blatant incongruity makes the onlookers laugh!

Here are three more examples of the same type"; readers may try their hand at constructing a few of their own.

1.I am righteously indignant. You are annoyed.

He is making a fuss about nothing.

2.I am fastidious. You are fussy.

He is an old woman.

3.I have reconsidered it.

You have changed your mind.

He has gone back on his word.

In Logic there is a particular type of fallacy which goes by the name of "Fallacy of Many Questions". This leads to a most embarrassing, and at the same time comic, situation for the interlocutor.

Suppose we ask you point-blank a question like "Have you given up your evil ways?" or "Have you stopped beating your wife?" and demand: "Answer quickly: Yes? or No?" Dear readers, ponder over what happens if you give the reply either affirmatively or negatively, and silently enjoy your discomfiture.

And now one last example to test your skill in argument. Examine carefully the sequence of reasoning as given below, which claims to lead you step by logical step to an impossible and absurd conclusion.

Logical (!) demonstration of the proposition "A white horse is not a horse.":

I say a white horse is not a horse. For, if you are seeking a horse, a yellow or a black one will do, but they will not answer if

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you want a white horse, O.K.?

Now, if it be assumed for a moment that a white horse is a horse, then what one is seeking is one thing, namely a white horse, which, as it is a horse by assumption, is not different from horse in general. Right? ... And by analogy, so is the case with a yellow or a black horse; that it to say, a yellow horse or a black horse is not different from horse in general. Agreed?

Yet although they are supposed, by our assumption, not to be different, a yellow or black horse will not fulfil your desire for a white horse. But why? The only answer is: Because our starting assumption was wrong and that has landed us into this absurd situation. (Readers, are you following us in our reasoning? We hope you have not lost the trail!)

So we have demonstrated by the 'method of absurd conclusion' that a white horse is not a horse. Q.E.D.¹⁶

Dear readers, are you convinced of the validity of this demonstration?

At long last we are in a position to enter into the pleasant realm of Sri Aurobindo's humour enlivening matters 'logical', but there is first of all a short introduction to it.

After the Sri Aurobindo Ashram was formally established in 1926, many young men and women started flocking to Pondi-cherry with the aspiration to lead a higher life and to do spiritual sadhana under the guidance of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Apart from using more potent inner spiritual means, the Mother and Sri Aurobindo used to guide their disciples through the medium of correspondence. This correspondence became a regular feature of the Ashram life for a period of eight years from 1930 to 1938. "Piles and piles of notebooks and letters used to be written, the Mother and Sri Aurobindo poring over them the whole night month after month, answering all sorts of questions, sublime and ridiculous, put by the sadhaks and sadhikas."¹⁷

Now it so happened that most of Sri Aurobindo's and Mother's now famous books had not yet seen the light of day during the period of time we are speaking of. So the sadhaks of

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that time had very confused ideas about many of the central aspects of Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy and Yoga. And as a result the notions they entertained or the questions they formulated were at times of a bizarre character. As NB, one of the principal correspondents of Sri Aurobindo, has remarked:

"Readers may sometimes find the questions rather silly; but in those days when the smaller books had not been published and we had only the [old issues of the monthly Review] Arya to fall back upon, we did not know much about this Yoga — for most of us the Arya was very difficult to understand. Secondly, the temptation to draw Sri Aurobindo out was so irresistible that we did not much weigh the wisdom of our queries."¹⁸

Sri Aurobindo, on his part, would not mind the obvious flaws of these queer queries and hare-brained assertions of his disciples. With great magnanimity he would repeatedly come down to their own mental level and patiently argue point by point, knowing fully well how shallow were their thoughts and ill-founded their reasonings. With infinite care he would expose all the fallacies implicit in their arguments and affirmations and then establish the truth for the edification of the persons concerned. To quote NB again:

"The lightning flash of humour, the brilliant passage at arms, the arguments exposing to ridicule the utter hollowness of my unripe reasoning were things beyond my usual mortal fare. With great joy, I used to run to Dilip Roy [another regular correspondent of Sri Aurobindo] to share the sumptuous feast. How we would roar with laughter and enjoy all the thrashings given me for my wooden-headed logic!¹⁹ [At times Sri Aurobindo would] invalidate my logic with the sweet comment, 'To be a logician, sir, is not easy.' "²⁰

As Prof. I.M. Copi has so aptly remarked, "Fallacies are pitfalls into which any of us may tumble in our reasoning. There is no 'royal road' for the avoidance of fallacies. To avoid the 'fallacies of relevance' requires constant vigilance and awareness of the many ways in which irrelevance can intrude. The 'fallacies of ambiguity' are subtle things. Words are slippery, and most of them have a variety of different senses or meanings. Where

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these different meanings are confused in the formulation of an argument, the reasoning is fallacious. One way of avoiding this sort of fallacy is to define the key terms that are used."²¹

In course of his long and sustained correspondence with his disciples, Sri Aurobindo used to pin-point all the fallacies committed by them, sometimes in a serious vein but at other times with a high dose of humour. Here are three examples belonging to the first category:

(1) Amal Kiran: "An additional nuance arose in my mind... - namely, that the joy and beauty found in 'mutable things' was due to the magnificent revealing flame of youth and desire. Without that flame, even earth's beauty and the beauty of the body would have proved dreary and comfortless. And it was because I had the same zest and emotive ardour when turning towards the Infinite as when turning towards things carnal that what I sought for could never be for me barren and cold... It is this idea in particular that seems to have suggested the title I proposed: The Sovereign Secret — the secret being that to find in spiritual life something more pleasurable than even in that of the senses, one must turn towards the Unknown with a heart of intense love [desire] and not with 'sage calm'."

Sri Aurobindo: "If I am to take some expressions in your letter at their face-value you seem to put forward... three notions about spiritual seeking which are somewhat extraordinary.

1.It is the same love which is addressed to a 'carnal prize' and towards the Divine. I should imagine that one who approached the Divine with a 'carnal' or untransformed vital love would embrace something of the vital world but certainly get nowhere near the Divine.

2.The Divine in itself is something cold and empty and dark — only human love gives it some warmth and attraction. I always thought the Divine was the supreme ineffable Ananda of which human love and delight is only a clouded and fallen ray -most often hardly even that — compared with the empyrean of ethereal fire. How can the luminous eternal Ananda be some-

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thing cold and dark, I should like to know.

3. Or perhaps you only mean that the Divine Infinite which the calm sages seek is by the very fact of their calm and wisdom something cold, dark, empty, gloomy. Has it not occurred to you that if they really sought for something cold, dark and gloomy as the supreme good, they would not be sages but asses? The sages sought after the Divine as the supreme Existence, Consciousness and Bliss, the Light beyond lights, by which all this shineth, the Joy beyond all other joys. Even the seekers of the Absolute Indefinable find in it the peace that passeth all understanding and that is nothing cold, dark or gloomy."²²

(2)Here is a second example of Sri Aurobindo's argumentation: this is taken from Dilip Kumar Roy's Sri Aurobindo Came to Me. Sri Aurobindo is writing to Dilip Kumar with 'stinging sarcasm':

"I would ask one simple question of those who would make the intellectual mind the standard and judge of spiritual experience.

"Is the Divine something less than Mind or He is something greater? Is mental consciousness with its groping enquiry, endless argument, unquenchable doubt, stiff and unplastic logic something superior or even equal to the Divine Consciousness or is it something inferior in its action and status?

"If it is greater, then there is no reason to seek after the Divine.

"If it is equal, then spiritual experience is quite superfluous.

"But if it is inferior, how can it challenge, judge, make the Divine stand as an accused or a witness before its tribunal, summon it to appear as a candidate for admission before a Board of Examiners or pin it down like an insect under its examining microscope?"²³

(3)The third example is a very interesting one. It concerns Bejoy Nag, the young man who accompanied Sri Aurobindo on his voyage to Pondicherry in April, 1910. Now, as ill luck would have it, in 1933 Bejoy rebelled and revolted against the Mother

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and Sri Aurobindo and decided to leave the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. He had a devoted friend in the Ashram, of the name of Sarat Guha. Before leaving, Bejoy assumed a very clever pose and sought to justify his rebellious departure as an act of high spiritual adventure. What was still worse, he tried to infect Sarat's mind with the diabolical idea of making a clear distinction between what he called the inner Mother and the outer Mother, between the inner Sri Aurobindo and the outer Sri Aurobindo, and then disregarding the instructions of the outer ones: he even persuaded Sarat to follow suit and leave the Ashram.

Sarat was confused. He was torn between two pulls: his natural emotional love for Bejoy and his deep devotion towards Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. In his desperation, he tried to hold a brief for Bejoy's perverse attitude and behaviour and prove to Sri Aurobindo that the rebellion of his apparently misguided friend was in fact an act of devotion to Sri Aurobindo and, what was more, was secretly supported and approved by the Mother and Sri Aurobindo themselves!

After having received Sarat's letter this is what Sri Aurobindo wrote to him in reply:

"As regards your defence of Bejoy, they sound like Bejoy's own ideas and very queer ideas they are. If they are right, we should have to come to the following conclusions:

1)Sattwa is not the best passage towards realisation, Rajas is the best way to become spiritual. It is the rajasic man with his fierce ego and violent passions who is the true sadhak of the Divine.

2)The Asura is the best bhakta. The Gita is quite wrong in holding up the Deva nature as the condition of realisation and the Asura nature as contrary to it. It is the other way round.

3)Ravana, Hiranyakashipu, Sishupala were the greatest devotees of the Divine because they were capable of hostility to the Divine and so were liberated in a few lives — compared with them the great Rishis and Bhaktas were very poor spiritual vessels. I am aware of the paradox about Ravana in the Purana,

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but let me point out that these Asuras and Rakshasas did not pretend to be disciples or worshippers of Rama and Krishna or Vishnu or use their position as disciples to get Moksha by revolt - they got it by being enemies and getting killed and absorbed into the Godhead.

4)Obedience to the Guru, worship of the Divine are all tommy rot and fit only for sheep, not men. To turn round furiously on the Guru or the Divine, abuse him, express contempt, challenge his sincerity, declare his actions to be wrong, foolish or a trick — to assert oneself as right at every point and his judgment as mistaken, prejudiced, absurd, false, a support of devils, etc., etc. is the best way of devotion and the true relation between Guru and Shishya. Disobedience is the highest respect to the Guru; anger and revolt are the noblest worship one can give to the Divine.

5)One who takes the blows of Mahakali with joy as a means of discovering his faults and increasing in light and strength and purity is a sheep and unworthy of disciplehood - one who responds to the quietest pressure to change by revolt and persisting in his errors is a great man and a mighty adhar and a noble disciple on the way to perfection.

I could go on multiplying the consequences, but I have no time. Do you really believe all these things? They are the natural consequences of Bejoy's theory or of this theory of revolt as the way to perfection. If you accept the premiss, you have to accept the logical consequences. That is what Bejoy did — only he called his errors Truth and the way prescribed by me as falsehood explicable only by the fact that I was a "Master who had forgotten his higher self. And the consequences worked to his departure, not willed by us, but by his own choice — and under such circumstances that he had made it a practical impossibility for me to let him come back unless he undergoes a change which the experience of the past does not warrant me in thinking possible."²⁴

The day following the receipt of Sri Aurobindo's analytical reply as given above, Sarat sent a second communication to his

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Guru, of which a part is as follows:

"In your communication to Mrityunjoy, Anil Kumar and myself you have narrated facts in relation to Bejoy's conduct which are staggering. If it had not been from you, I would have scarcely believed them as possible. ... You have rightly guessed that the ideas in my yesterday's letter were (generally speaking) Bejoy's own - arguments that he would usually put forward in support of his refractory conduct. They had appeared to me as plausible..."

In course of his long letter quoted above Sri Aurobindo reminded Sarat inter alia: "If you accept the premiss, you have to accept the logical consequences." This was a device Sri Aurobindo often adopted to expose ruthlessly the fallacious nature of his disciples' assumptions and confused thinking. If the persons concerned protested that they had not intended so, he would simply point out to them that non-intention cannot be an alibi for indulging in wrong reasoning. The following extracts will make this point explicit:

(1)NB: Only I find that you have beaten me right and left for what I did not even intend to say.

Sri Aurobindo: Of course! One is most responsible for what one does not intend. It is besides the nature of bad logic to imply what the logician did not mean or did not know that he meant. Ignorance is no defence in law and non-intention is no defence in logic. Such is the beauty of life!²⁵

(2)NB: Really, Sir, you have put into my mouth what I never mentioned or even intended to.

Sri Aurobindo: You may not have mentioned it but it was implied in your logic without your knowing that it was implied. Logic has its own consequences which are not apparent to the logiciser. It is like a move in chess by which you intend to overcome your opponent but it leads, logically, to consequences which you didn't intend and ends in your own checkmate. You can't invalidate the consequences by saying that you didn't intend them.²⁶

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(3) Sri Aurobindo: You make a flourish of reasonings and do not see the consequence of your reasonings. It is no use saying "I believe this or that" and then reasoning in a way which leads logically to the very negation of what you believe.²⁷

Sri Aurobindo v/as never tired of pointing out that one cannot possibly have a double promotion from the status of infrarationality to the suprarational one; one has to pass through the stage of rigorous rationality. When the intellect of man is not severely trained to a clear austerity, one is apt to fall a prey to all sorts of perilous distortions and misleading imaginations. What one will then achieve is, in the significant words of Sri Aurobindo, only "illuminating confusion rather than clarifying truth". "Especially is this mixed functioning dangerous when men with unchastened minds and unpurified sensibilities attempt to rise into the higher domains of spiritual experience. In what regions of unsubstantial cloud and semi-brilliant fog or a murk visited by flashes which blind more than they enlighten, do they not lose themselves by that rash and premature adventure!"²⁸

In a vein of humour Sri Aurobindo once remarked about his disciples: "Common sense is exceedingly uncommon in this Ashram. Sometimes I think the Mother and myself alone have our stock left unexhausted and all the rest have sent theirs flying sky-high. However!"²⁹

That is why Sri Aurobindo wanted to "logicise" his disciples before anything else. He expressed this task in a most jocular way in his exchange of letters with NB with whom he had a pleasant and totally uninhibited relationship. Here are two extracts which will tell their tale:

(1) NB: With that thrashing... if she (X) had stuck to you, I must say she is exceptionally enduring.

Sri Aurobindo: I suppose X was able to stick because X had no brains. It is the confounded reasoning brain that is the ruin of you. For instead of taking the lesson of things it begins reasoning about them in this futile - shall I say asinine - way.³⁰

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(2) NB: Please don't think what India is going to do with her independence. Give her that first, and then let her decide her fate for herself. Independence anyhow — your supermind will do the rest.

Sri Aurobindo: You are a most irrational creature. I have been trying to logicise and intellectualise you, but it seems in vain. Have I not told you that the independence is all arranged for and will evolve itself all right? Then what's the use of my bothering about that any longer? ... To drag in the Supermind by the tail here is perfectly irrelevant. We have been talking all the time on an altogether infra-supramental basis - down down low in the intellect with an occasional illumined intuitive or overmental flash here and there. Be faithful to the medium, if you please. If you do not become perfectly and luminously logical and rational, how can you hope to become a candidate for the next higher stage even? Be a little practical and sensible.³¹

But human reason has its serious limitations too. If it becomes rigid, non-plastic and obstinate in its claim of inviolability, it acts as an insuperable obstacle to the reception of higher Light and Truth. Sri Aurobindo has expressed this fact in a lighter vein as well as on a sublimer note. Let us enjoy the pieces:

(1) NB: You have admitted your failure in intellectualising me; now I am waiting to hear at any time the admission that all your attempts to make me a Yogi seem to be in vain!

Sri Aurobindo: Perhaps that is because for the sheer fun of it I tried the impossible, intending not to succeed — because if you had really become luminously intellectual and rational, why, you would have been so utterly surprised at yourself that you would have sat down open-mouthed on the way and never moved a step farther.³²

Indeed human reason, left to itself, can only move in circles and bigger circles, not being able to free itself from the

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fascination of the old accustomed "centre", or, perhaps, it adapts itself to any view or position depending on the interest and predilection of the moment. How can it then be an instrument for the discovery of true Truth?

Sri Aurobindo expresses this idea in the two following extracts through which flows an undercurrent of sublime humour:

(2) "... reason is in its nature an imperfect light with a large but still restricted mission and... once it applies itself to life and action it becomes subject to what it studies and the servant and counsellor of the forces in whose obscure and ill-understood struggle it intervenes. It can in its nature be used and has always been used to justify any idea, theory of life, system of society or government, ideal of individual or collective action to which the will of man attaches itself for the moment or through the centuries. In philosophy it gives equally good reasons for monism and pluralism or for any halting-place between them, for the belief in Being or the belief in Becoming, for optimism and pessimism, for activism and quietism. It can justify the most mystic religionism and the most positive atheism, get rid of God or see nothing else. In aesthetics it supplies the basis equally for classicism and romanticism, for an idealistic, religious and mystic theory of an or for the most earthy realism. It can with equal power base austerely a strict and narrow moralism or prove triumphantly the thesis of the antinomian. It has been the sufficient and convincing prophet of every kind of autocracy or oligarchy and of every species of democracy; it supplies excellent and satisfying reasons for competitive individualism and equally excellent and satisfying reasons for communism or against communism and for State socialism or for one variety of socialism against another. It can place itself with equal effec-tivity at the service of utilitarianism, economism, hedonism, aestheticism, sensualism, ethicism, idealism or any other essential need or activity of man and build around it a philosophy, a political and social system, a theory of conduct and life. Ask it not to lean to one idea alone, but to make an eclectic combination

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or a synthetic harmony and it will satisfy you; only, there being any number of possible combinations or harmonies, it will equally well justify the one or the other and set up or throw down any one of them according as the spirit in man is attracted to or withdraws from it. For it is really that which decides and the reason is only a brilliant servant and minister of this veiled and secret sovereign.""

(3) DKR: O Guru, how I wish Subhash would not attach much value to Reason's inordinate pretentions which often make people as blind to stark reality such as this! Qu'en dites-vous?

Sri Aurobindo: You are right, Dilip. Only you again seem to forget that human reason is a very convenient and accommodating instrument and works only in circles set for it by interest, partiality and prejudices. The politicians reason wrongly or insincerely and have power to enforce the results of their reasoning so as to make a mess of the world's affairs: the intellectuals reason and show what their minds show them, which is far from being always the truth, for it is generally decided by intellectual preferences and the mind's inborn or education-inculcated angle of vision, — but even if they see the Truth, they have no power to enforce it. So between blind power and seeing impotence the world moves, achieving destiny through mental muddle.³⁴

Leaving behind us these serious reflections on the office and limitations of the human reason, let us now have some close acquaintance with Sri Aurobindo's wit and humour concerning various matters 'logical'. As in the case of the previous chapter ("On Matters 'Medical' ") here, too, we have categorized the extracts under different headings.

I. To be cautious about the 'terms' one uses:

NB. But when did I tell you, Sir, that I expect to become supramental overnight? All I asked was whether this Mr. S [Supramental] is going to make us great sadhaks overnight? If

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so, how? By what supramental logic or intuition, do you heap this great ambition on my head, my human logic fails to comprehend.

Sri Aurobindo: You said "overnight", sir, "overnight". It was a logical inference from your desire to become a great sadhak overnight. In this remarkable correspondence I am not using the intuition — I am proceeding strictly by mental (not supramental) reason and logic. A "great sadhak" in the supramental Yoga means a supramental - or ought to according to all rules of logic.

NB: But, really, Sir, I never expected you to take my "overnight" as overnight.

Sri Aurobindo: Don't understand your deep expressions -you did not mean that it would happen rapidly and suddenly? "Overnight" in English means that, - but if you had some extraordinary supramental meaning (beyond the mental and out of the human time-sense) in your mind — it is a different matter, and then I express my awe-struck, heart-felt, flabbergasted regrets, pleading only as excuse my inability to grasp such a deep and novel use of the language. May I ask, very humbly, what you did mean, if not a sudden and rapid development into great sadhaks?"

II. Logical fallacies exposed:

(1) NB: ... If the Mother smiles at somebody we think him good; if she doesn't, well!

Sri Aurobindo: What a coupling of disparates! What a blunder! Don't you know that the Divine smiles equally on the wicked and the good together?⁵⁶

(2)NB: Very strange, Sir, that you don't have a single intelligent chap in the species of your Supramental race to be! On what do you build your hopes, please?

Sri Aurobindo: Excuse me, you said intelligence and interest. You might find one of these separately, but how do you hope to get them combined together? Anyhow, we can't hunt for the kind of animal you want, you yourself should take up the chase.⁵⁷

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(3)NB: When somebody leaves the Ashram, I feel a kick, a shock, a heartquake.

Sri Aurobindo: May I ask why? People have been leaving the Ashram since it began, net only now. Say 30 or 40 people have gone, 130 or 140 others have come. The big Maharathis, X, Y, Z departed from this too damnable Ashram where great men are not allowed to do as they like. The damnable Ashram survives and grows. A and B and C fail in their Yoga - but the Yoga proceeds on its way, advances, develops. Why then kick, shock and heartquake?

NB: I hold the view that the Supramental is descending concentratedly and that those who resist, who are between two fires, have either to quit or to submit.

Sri Aurobindo: Not so strongly or concentratedly as it ought, but better than before.

Even if it were so, that is their own business. The Divine is driving nobody out except in rare cases where their staying would be a calamity to the Ashram; if they cannot bear the pressure and rush away, listening to the "go away, go away" push and suggestions of the Hostile, can it be said then that it was the Divine who drove them away and the push and suggestion of the Hostile is that of the Divine? A singular logic! The "go, go" push and suggestion have been successfully there ever since the Ashram started and even before when there was no Ashram. How does that square with your theory that it is due to the concentrated descent of the Force?⁵⁸

(4)NB: If poets have powerfully active sex-glands, I suppose I can also be called a poet, at any rate an embryonic one! Q.E.D. Logic, Sir, n'est-ce-pas?

Sri Aurobindo: No, sir - ce n'est pas qa. You are illegitimately connecting two disconnected syllogisms.

1st syllogism - All poets are sex-gland-active, Nirod is a poet, therefore Nirod is sex-gland-active.

2nd syllogism - All sex-gland-actives are poets, Nirod is sex-gland-active, therefore Nirod is a poet.

The second proposition does not follow from the first as you seem illogically to think. All poets may be sex-gland-active, but

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it does not follow that all sex-gland-actives are poets. So don't start building an epic on your sex-glands, please.'⁹

III.Pushing an assertion to its extreme logical consequence and thus showing its absurdity:

NB: All these cases of failures prove what? I apprehend the same reasons may operate in me and I may behave exactly like an insane person.

Sri Aurobindo: What you say may apply to everybody because everybody has things in him which conflict with the Yoga. Logical conclusion - Nobody should try anything in which anybody has failed or in which there is a possibility of failure! I am afraid most human activities would stop on that principle except Ahara [food], Nidra [sleep], Maithuna [sex], and perhaps only the first two. But after all not even these - for people die in their sleep and others die of their food by poison, indigestion or otherwise.

So to be safe one must neither eat, sleep nor [do] anything else - much less do Yoga. Q.E.D.⁴⁰

IV.Debate on Divine Omnipotence:

NB: You say that since "these things" [such as, sudden opening in the understanding of painting, liberation of mind in three days, transformation of Nature] have been possible in you, they are possible in the earth-consciousness. Quite true: but have they been done? Has any sweeper or street beggar been changed into a Buddha or a Chaitanya by the Divine? We see in the whole history of spirituality only one Christ, one Buddha, one Krishna, one Sri Aurobindo, one Mother. Has there been any breaking of this rule? Conclusion: Since it has not been done, it can't be done.

Sri Aurobindo: The question was not whether it had been done but whether it could be done. The street-beggar is a side-issue. The question was whether new faculties not at all manifested in the personality up to now in this life could appear, even suddenly appear, by force of Yoga. I say they can and I gave my own case as proof.

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The question involved is also this - is a man bound to the character and qualities he has come with into this life — can he not become a new man by Yoga? That also I have proved in my sadhana, it can be done.

When you say that I could do this only in my case because I am an Avatar (!) and it is impossible in any other case, you reduce my sadhana to an absurdity and Avatarhood also to an absurdity.

For my Yoga is done not for myself who need nothing and do not need salvation or anything else, but precisely for the earth-consciousness, to open a way to the earth-consciousness to change. Has the Divine need to come down to prove that he can do this or that or has he any personal need of doing it?

Your argument proves that I am not an Avatar but only a big human person. It may well be so as a matter of fact, but you start your argument from the other basis. Besides, even if I am only a big human person, what I achieve shows that that achievement is possible for humanity....

What a wonderful argument! Since it has not been done, it cannot be done! At that rate the whole history of the earth must have stopped long before the protoplasm.

When it was a mass of gases, no life had been born, ergo, life could not be born!

When only life was there, mind was not born, so mind could not be born!

Since mind is there but nothing beyond, as there is no supermind manifested in anybody, so supermind can never be born! Sobhanallah Glory, glory, glory to the human reason!! Luckily the Divine or the Cosmic Spirit or Nature or whoever is there cares a damn for the human reason. He or she or it does what he or she or it has to do, whether it can or cannot be done.

NB: Can a Muthu** or a sadhak be ever a Sri Aurobindo, even if he is supramentalised? I say that it is absolutely impossible, impossible, a thousand times so.

* Urdu term meaning "Glory to God".

** An illiterate servant of the Ashram.

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Sri Aurobindo: What need has he to be a Sri Aurobindo? He can be a supramentalised Muthu!

NB: If anybody comes and says "Why not?" I would answer, "You had better rub some Madhyam Narayan oil* on your head."

Sri Aurobindo: I have no objection to that. Plenty of the Middle Narayan is needed in this Ashram. This part of youa argument is perfectly correct - but it is also perfectly irrelevant.

NB: Next point: It is hoped that the sadhaks [of Sri Aurobindo Ashram] will be supramentalised. Since it is a state surpassing the Overmind, am I to deduce that the sadhaks would be greater than Krishna, who was the Avatar of the Overmind level? Logically it follows, but looking at others and at myself, I wonder if such a theory will be practically realised.

Sri Aurobindo: What is all this obsession of greater or less? In our Yoga we do not strive after greatness. It is not a question of Sri Krishna's disciples, but of the earth-consciousness...

NB: I would not mind your fury in revenge if only you would crush me with a convincing assault.

Sri Aurobindo: "Peace, peace, O fiery and furious spirit! calm thyself and be at rest." Your fury or furiousness is wasted because your point is perfectly irrelevant to the central question on which all this breath (or rather ink) is being spent. Muthu and the sadhaks who want to equal or distance or replace the Mother and myself and so need very badly Middle Narayan oil -there have been several — have appeared only as meaningless foam and froth on the excited crest of the dispute. I fear you have not grasped the internalities and modalities and causalities of my high and subtle reasoning. It is not surprising as you are down down in the troughs of the rigidly logically illogical human reason while I am floating on the heights amid the infinite plasticities of the overmind and the lightninglike subtleties and swiftnesses of the intuition. There! What do you think of that? However!!

* An Ayurvedic oil used for insanity, composed of thirteen herbs and barks. Madhyam literally means "middle".

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More seriously. I have not stated that any Muthu has equalled Ramakrishna and I quite admit that Muthu here in ipsa persona has no chance of performing that feat. I have not said that anyone here can be Sri Aurobindo or the Mother - I have pointed out what I meant when I objected to your explaining away my sadhana as a perfectly useless piece of Avatarian fireworks. So on my comment on the Muthu logic, I simply pointed out that it was bad logic - that someone ignorant and quite low in the social scale can manifest a great spirituality and even a great spiritual knowledge. I hope you are not bourgeois enough to deny that or to contend that the Divine or the spiritual can only manifest in somebody who has some money in his pockets or some University education in his pate?

NB: I am a little taken aback to hear that a "certain note of persiflage" dilutes the grave discussion I am having with you?

Sri Aurobindo: Look here, don't tell me that because you are a doctor, therefore you can't understand a joke. It would have the effect of making me dreadfully serious.

NB: I am sorry I can't detect the adulteration of the Divine philosophy with persiflage. My medical appliance is hardly capable of doing it.

Sri Aurobindo: A sense of humour (not grim) ought to be a sufficient appliance.

NB: No doubt, I enjoy heartily the humour but I should like to be able to suck up the cream and give the rest its proper place.

Sri Aurobindo: The cream = the persiflage - the rest'is the solemn part of the argument.

NB: I would like to know something about my "bad logic" before I write anything further to you.

Sri Aurobindo: Helps to finding out your bad logic. I give instances expressed or implied in your reasonings.

Bad logic No. 1. Because things have not been, therefore they can never be.

" " No. 2. Because Sri Aurobindo is an Avatar, his

sadhana can have no meaning for humanity.

" " No. 3. What happens in Sri Aurobindo's sadhana

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cannot happen in anybody else's sadhana (i.e. neither descent, nor realisation, nor transformation, nor intuitions, nor budding of new powers or faculties) - because Sri Aurobindo is an Avatar and the sadhaks are not. No. 4. A street beggar cannot have any spirituality or at least not so much as , let us say, a University graduate - because, well, one doesn't know why the hell not. No. 5. (and last because of want of space) Because I am a doctor, I can't see a joke when it is there.

NB: But how terrifying is your "Look here"! What I have heard about your extreme seriousness in former days, is quite enough not to invite it farther on my poor head!

Sri Aurobindo: Bad logic again! When I write "Look here" it means I am not serious, however terrifying I may be!

NB: Others say - and it was the central question - that wherever the Divine Power has successfully acted upon and miraculously changed those who were in their external nature robbers and social pariahs, there was probably in them, interiorly, something latent.

And they say - excuse my reiteration - that from those who have evidently no music or poetry latent in them, the Divine cannot bring out these elements in spite of his omnipotence.

Sri Aurobindo: What is the use of an argument based on a "probably"? ... If the Divine is omnipotent, he can do it. If he can't do it, he is not omnipotent. What is this absurd self-contradiction of an Omnipotent who is impotent?...

As for the Muthu affair, that was only a joke as ought to have been clear to you at once. Nobody has any intention of making Muthu a saint or an Avatar... the question is whether there is a chance for human beings becoming more like the Divine? If not, there is no use in anybody doing this Yoga; let the Krishnas and Ramakrishnas rocket about gloriously and uselessly in the empty Inane and the rest wriggle about for ever in the clutch of the eternal Devil. For that is the logical conclusion of the whole matter!

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NB: It seems that before I could come out of the pit of "latency", the Avatar-pyramid has fallen on my head, sending me down to the bottom again! But I am afraid, you are making me admit something I never wrote, nor implied in what I wrote.

Sri Aurobindo: Can you not understand that it was the natural logical result of the statements made on either side about the unbridgeable distance between "Man Divine" and the human being moving in the darkness towards the Divine? If you admit the utility of my sadhana, the controversy ceases. But so long as you declare that what I have done in my sadhana has no connection with what can be done, I shall go on beating you....

For the rest I propose that all discussion be postponed till after the 21st ["Darshan Day"] (not immediately after). This will give time for you to clear your ideas and for me to pursue my "Avataric" sadhana (not for myself, but for this confounded and too confounded earth-race).⁴¹

So after an interval of six weeks the disciple was back on the scene, this time trying to cross swords with his Guru on the topic of Avatarhood. Let us enjoy the delightful fare that was the product of this controversy.

V. Debate on the phenomenon of Avatarhood:

NB: Enclosed is a long, perhaps too long controversy [i.e. a typed letter of 5 pages taking up the subject of Avatarhood]. But the subject demands it. You may read it at one, two or three stretches. Please write an exhaustive reply, but in ink.

Sri Aurobindo: On the back the rational and logical result of your arguments. I shall write some irrational answers on your MS. - in ink.

You have won all along the line. Who could resist such a lava-torrent of logic? slightly mixed but still! You have convinced me (1st) that there never was nor could be an Avatar, (2) that all the so-called Avatars were chimerical fools and failures, (3) that there is no Divinity or divine element in man, (4) that I have never had any true difficulties or struggles, and that if I

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had any, it was all my fun (as K.S. said of my new metres that they were only Mr. Ghose's fun); (5) that if ever there was or will be a real Avatar, I am not he - but that I knew before, (6) that all 1 have done or the Mother has done is a mere sham -sufferings, struggles, conquests, defeats, the Way found, the Way followed, the call to others to follow, everything - it was all make-believe since I was the Divine and nothing could touch me and none follow me. That is truly a discovery, a downright knock-out which leaves me convinced, convicted, amazed, gasping. I won't go on, there is no space; but there are a score of other luminous convictions that your logic has forced on me. But what to do next? You have put me in a terrible fix and I see no way out of it. For if the Way, the Yoga is merely sham, fun and chimera — then?

NB: I have read your Essays on the Gita, Synthesis of Yoga... and, though I am wiser, my original and fundamental difficulty remains as unsolved as ever. What is so simple to you, as everything is, appears mighty complex and abstruse to my dense intellect. So no alterative but to submit to a fresh beating.

What your view comes to, put in a syllogism, is this: Since I have done it and I am an Avatar, every other blessed creature can do it.

Sri Aurobindo: This is idiotic. I have said "Follow my path, the way I have discovered for you through my own efforts and example. Transform your nature from the animal to the spiritual, grow into a higher divine consciousness. All this you can do by your own aspiration aided by the force of the Divine Shakti." That, if you please, is not the utterance of a madman or an imbecile. I have said, "I have opened the Way; now you with the Divine help can follow it." I have not said, "Find the way for yourself as I did."

NB: In the Essays on the Gita you say, man "is ignorant because there is upon the eyes of his soul and all its organs the seal of... Nature, Prakriti, Maya... she has minted him like a coin out of the precious metal of the divine substance, but overlaid with a strong coating of the alloy of her phenomenal qualities, stamped with her own stamp and mark of animal humanity..."

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Sri Aurobindo: Does it follow that the coating cannot be dissolved nor the mark effaced? Then stamp the stamp of the chimera on all efforts at spirituality and catalogue as asses and fools all who have attempted to rise beyond the human animal...

NB: [In your Essays on the Gita] you say that the Avatar's descent is "precisely to show that... even human sorrow and physical suffering he must assume and use so as to show... how that suffering may be a means of redemption." Well, Sir, it will have no go with me, my heart won't leap up at such a divine possibility, such a dream of Paradise!

Sri Aurobindo: Your heart not leaping up does not make my statement a falsehood, a non-sequitur or a chimera.

NB: My fellow-brothers may venture to reach there through such a thin hanging bridge but if they do, I am afraid, it will be into a fool's Paradise.

Sri Aurobindo: The fool being myself, eh? For it is my Paradise and it is I who call them to it.

NB: The difficulties you face, the dangers you overcome, the struggles you embrace would seem to be mere shams. [Sri Aurobindo underlined "mere shams".]

Sri Aurobindo: Truly then what a humbug and charlatan I have been, making much of sham struggles and dangers - or, in the alternative, since I took them for realities, what a self-blinded imbecile!

NB: To his beloved children created in his own image the Divine says with gusto, "I send you through this hell of a cycle of rebirths. Don't lose heart, poor boys, if you groan under the weight of your sins and those of your ancestors to boot, I will come down and take hold of a pure heredity with no coating around me and say unto you — come and follow my example."

Sri Aurobindo: Who gave this message? It is your own invention. The Divine does not come down in that way. It is a silly imagination of yours that you are trying to foist on the truth of things.... Nobody ever said there was no coating - that is your invention.

NB: Not a very inspiring message, Sir!

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Sri Aurobindo: No, of course not - but it is yours, not any Avatar's.

NB: I prophesy that your message will reverberate in the rarefied atmosphere evoking a loud rebellious echo from human hearts.

Sri Aurobindo: I admit that you have successfully proved that I am an imbecile.

NB: We don't want to give you a compliment when we say these things.

Sri Aurobindo: Of course not. It is the reverse of complimentary, since you prove me to be an ignorant and mistaken fellow of an Avatar, who merrily wastes his time doing things which are of no earthly use to any human being...

NB: We say that the Sun is a thing apart, not to be measured by our human standards.

Sri Aurobindo: The Sun's rays are of use to somebody -you say all my acts and life and laborious opening of the way I thought I had made for spiritual realisation, are of no use to anybody - since nobody is strong enough to follow the path, only the Avatar can do it. Poor lonely ineffective fellow of an Avatar!

NB: We respect him, adore him, lay ourselves bare to his light, but we do not follow him.

Sri Aurobindo: Who is this we? Editorial "We"?... It has always been supposed by spiritual people that divine perfection, similitude to the Divine, sadrishya, sadharmya, is part of the Mukti.... All this is trash and humbug? Christ and Buddha were fools? Myself even a bigger fool? ... The whole spiritual past of man becomes a fantastic insanity, with the Avatars as the chief lunatics.... You cannot generalise in the way you try to do by an intellectual reasoning. The mystery of the Spirit is too great for such a puny endeavour.⁴²

VI. An exercise in syllogistic reasoning:

NB: From whatever you have said in joke or in earnest, it logically follows that you are immortal. Because if you say that Supramental can alone conquer death, one who has become

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that is evidently and consequently immortal.

Sri Aurobindo: Your syllogism is:

"One who has become supramental, can conquer death.

Sri Aurobindo has become supramental.

Sri Aurobindo has conquered death."

1st premiss right; second premiss premature; conclusion at least premature and in any case excessive, for "can conquer" is turned into "has conquered" = is immortal. It is not easy, my dear doctor, to be a logician; the human reasoning animal is always making slight inaccuracies like that in his syllogisms which vitiate the whole reasoning. This might be correct:

"One who becomes wholly supramental conquers death.

Sri Aurobindo is becoming supramental.

Sri Aurobindo is conquering death."

But between "is conquering" and "has conquered" is a big difference. It is all the difference between present and future, logical possibility and logical certitude.

NB: I hope I haven't made a rigid mental conclusion.

Sri Aurobindo: The premiss is false. I have never said that I am supramental - I have always said that I have achieved the overmind and am bringing down the supramental. That is a process and until the process is complete it cannot be said that "I am supramental".

NB: Though you say that death is possible because illness hasn't been conquered, I take it as a principle. Amal and myself firmly believe that those whom you have accepted, are absolutely immune to death.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined twice "accepted"]

Sri Aurobindo: Too comfortable a doctrine. It brings in a very tamasic syllogism. "I am accepted by Sri Aurobindo. I am sure of supramentality and immune from death. Therefore I need not do a damned thing. Supramentality will of itself grow in me and I am already immortal, so I have all time and eternity before me for it to happen - of itself." Like that, does it sound true?

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NB: My logic again, Sir: Sri Aurobindo is bound to become wholly supramental and is being supramentalised in parts. If that is true - and it is - well, he can't die till he is supramental -and once he is so, he is immortal.

Sri Aurobindo: It looks very much like a non-sequitur. The first pan and the last are all right - but the link is fragile. How do you know I won't take a fancy to die in between as a joke?⁴³

Let us end this chapter on "Matters Logical" on a note of pure fun. In the preceding chapter we have mentioned that Sri Aurobindo had a disciple who, though a medico by training, aspired to be a poet. He used to send his compositions to Sri Aurobindo in a regular way and ask for the latter's comments and appreciation. Depending on the quality of the composition sent, Sri Aurobindo used to favour his disciple with remarks like "good", "very good", "fine", "very fine" and occasionally "damn fine" which jocularly signified a poem of a "superlative" quality. Now there is a humorous dialogue between the Guru and the Shishya, centering round a particular poetical composition of the disciple NB.

VII. Logical demonstration (!) of the equality of NB to Shakespeare;

NB: This time, Sir, the poem looks to me damn fine. I know you will say, "Well, well!" - but we have very rarely agreed on any point! But does it really leave your plexus cold?

Sri Aurobindo: Very fine, yes, and perfect in expression; but I don't know about damn fine, for that is a tremendous superlative. Such a solemn phrase should only be used when you write something equalling Shakespeare at his best.

NB: Guru, "Shakespeare at his best"? The very name of Shakespeare makes my breath shake with fear! And to talk of equalling him at his best, oh, people will call me mad, Sir. If someone else had told me that, I would have called him mad! But I don't know what to say to you! You stagger me so much!

Sri Aurobindo: Well, but look at logic. G.B.S. [George Bernard Shaw, the great satirist] declares himself the equal, if

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not superior, of Shakespeare. Now, you write better poetry than Shaw ever did (which is easy because he never wrote any). So you are the equal (if not the superior) of Shakespeare!

NB: But, if I remember aright, some of my lines you have called 'damn fine'! So?

Sri Aurobindo: Did I indeed? Then, logically, it must have been equal to the best of Shakespeare, otherwise it couldn't have been so damned. This also is logic.

NB: By the way, I am surprised to see that in spite of three marginal lines over the whole poem, you call it only 'very fine'. Not a mysterious remark?

Sri Aurobindo: How is it mysterious? What do you expect three lines to come to then? Damn fine? That would be Shakespeare.

NB: Guru, I wrote this poem today. It gave me such a damn thrill that I thought I must share it with you tonight.

Sri Aurobindo: The thrill but not the damn.⁴⁴

REFERENCES

N.B. For what the abbreviations stand for please consult Bibliography on page 439.

1.Introduction to Logic by I.M. Copi.

2.Logic by J.G. Brennan, p. 8.

3.Copi, op. cit., p. 75.

4.Brennan, op. cit., p. 208.

5.Cohen & Nagel, Logic, p. 76.

6.Ibid.

7.Copi, op. cit., p. 173.

8.Ibid., p. 174.

9.FW, p. 74.

10.Copi, op. cit., p. 73.

11.De Morgan (as quoted in Logic by Cohen, pp. 456-57).

12.Ibid., p. 451.

13.Lewis Carroll (as quoted in Logic by Cohen, p. 431).

14.Adapted from Copi, op. cit., pp. 124-25.

15.Based on p. 10 of R.H. Thouless' Straight and Crooked Thinking and on p. 39 of Copi's Introduction to Logic.

16.Based on pp. 228-29 of Brennan's A Handbook of Logic.

17.Corr., First Series, p. 2.

18.Ibid., p. 4.

19.Ibid., p. 3.

Page 175

20.C-Compl., Vol. I, p. x.

21.Copi, Introduction to Logic, p. 84.

22.LLY, p. 160.

23.SAC, p. 174.

24.From the unpublished documents available with the author.

25.C-Compl., p. 145.

26.Ibid., p. 150.

27.p. 176.

28.LD, p. 11.

29.C-Compl., p. 157.

30..S/4H, pp. 92-93.

31.C-Compl., p. 325.

32.Ibid.

33.HC, pp. 111-12.

34.SAC, pp. 54-55.

35.C-Compl., pp. 326, 328.

36.SAH, p. 192.

37.Ibid., p. 176.

38.Ibid., pp. 318-19.

39.C-Compl., pp. 396-97.

40.IW., pp. 90-91.

41.Ibid., pp. 138, 139, 140, 141, 143, 144, 145, 146, 151.

42.Ibid., pp. 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 171, 172, 173, 174.

43.Ibid., pp. 193, 194, 195, 196.

44.SAH, pp. 420, 421, 422-23.

Page 176