Sri Aurobindo - The Smiling Master

Chapter 13

Sri Aurobindo's Humour-Miscellany

In the last chapter, we have given a number of examples of Sri Aurobindo's wit; the present chapter will be devoted to the exemplification of his sustained humour.

Wit, as we have already noted, is a form of intellectual quickness, raillery and repartee; it may often be the flash of an isolated sentence. For its production the writer or the speaker, as the case may be, often takes recourse to verbal jugglery.

Humour, on the contrary, - in its technical sense and not in its generic connotation - has to rise to a higher level and exploit for its production the artful manipulation of the ideas involved. At times there may not be even a single verbal device and yet the humour may be sustained over a long extended passage. Or, perhaps, simple innocuous twists given to the words here and there enliven the narration with a humorous glow.

Also, wit generally surprises our mind, but humour, appealing to our heart as well, becomes more delightful. And what is more, humour frequently exhibits generous and benevolent sentiments which, although expressed in an odd out-of-the-way manner, justly command our fondness and love. Humour may even be a translucent guise to hide our tender feelings. No irritation even in the face of undesirable situations, no ill-feelings even against those who wrongly oppose, no biting sarcasm nor even the slightest trace of any rancour, but the soft soothing glow of the rising sun in a winter morning - this is humour as the highest and richest form of the comic. And the examples that the following pages will show of Sri Aurobindo's humour will testify to these observations again and again. We shall have, so to say, a refreshing and edifying dip in the crystal-clear waters of the gurgling Ganges.

But before we come to Sri Aurobindo's own humour, let us introduce this chapter with three pieces of humour, both short and long, produced by the ingenuity of three artists of words.

Page 318

(1)Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911) was a play-writer, also a director of his own plays. When H.M.S. Pinafore was being rehearsed, Gilbert said to Mr. Rutland Barrington, the actor who was enacting the role of the hero, "Cross left on that speech, Barrington, and sit on the skylight over the saloon pensively." The actor did so, but the skylight collapsed completely, upon which Gilbert said: "That's expensively."¹

(2)John Laurence Toole, an inimitable comedian of the nineteenth century England, did not believe in what he called "the quackery" of memory-teaching lessons. In order to illustrate the "effect" of a course of mnemonics he often narrated the following story:

"You know there was a man who paid a couple of guineas for effective memory lessons. After the course was over, he went back home but soon after returned to the place where he had received the lessons; he rang the bell, and on being asked what he wanted, said, 'I have forgotten my umbrella.' "²

The readers must have noted that out of the two examples cited above the first one had a play on the words "pensively" and "expensively" whereas the second one does not depend on any verbal device to create the excellent humorous effect that it actually does. Here is our third example, a rather longish one, which spins out an elaborate bit of fooling at the cost of a judge called Lord Avonmore who was rather vain about his knowledge of classical tongues like Greek and Latin.

John Philpot Curran, born on 24th July, 1750, was in due course called to the Irish Bar. Barrister Curran was fond of a form of humorous mystification. One day he appeared before the said judge Avonmore and addressed himself to a jury constituted of some ordinary Dublin shopkeepers whose knowledge of English was poor, not to speak of their acquaintance with Greek and Latin!

This is how Barrister Curran began his address:

(3)"I remember, gentlemen, I remember the ridicule with

Page 319

which my learned friend has been pleased so unworthily to visit the poverty of my client; and remembering it, neither of us can forget the fine sentiment of a great Greek historian upon the subject, which I shall take the liberty of quoting in the original, as no doubt it must be most familiar to all of you."

And Curran was addressing himself to the Dublin shopkeepers!

He continued: "It is to be found in the celebrated work of Hesiod, called the 'Phantasmagoria'. After expatiating upon the sad effects of poverty, you may remember — don't you remember, gentlemen? - Hesiod pathetically remarks:

'Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se

Quam quod ridiculos homines facit.'"

On hearing this recitation by Curran Lord Avonmore bristled up at once. "Why, Mr. Curran, Hesiod was not an historian - he was a poet, and for my part I never heard before of any such poem by him as the 'Phantasmagoria'."

"Oh, my good lord, I assure you he wrote it."

"Well, well, it may be so - I'll not dispute it, as you seem to be so very serious about it, but at all events, the lines you quoted are Latin, not Greek — they are undoubtedly Juvenal's."

"Perhaps, my lord, he quotes them from the 'Phantasmagoria'."

"Tut, tut, man; I tell you they're Latin - they are just as familiar to me as my Blackstone."

"Indeed, my good lord, they're Greek."

"Why, Mr. Curran, do you want to persuade me out of my senses? - I tell you they're Latin - can it be possible that your memory so fails you?"

"Well, my lord," said Curran, "I see plainly enough we never can agree upon the subject - but I'll tell you how it can be easily determined. If it was a legal question, I should of course bow at once to the decision of your lordship, but it is not - it's a mere matter of fact, and there's only one way I know of

Page 320

deciding it. Send it up as a collateral issue to that jury, and I'll be bound they'll - find it Greekl"¹

Wonderful, Mr. Curran! the jury of shopkeepers will surely find the quotation Greek!

We now come to Sri Aurobindo's own humour touching topics as diverse as they possibly can be under the sun, and everywhere it is so sweet, so enlivening and at the same time so enlightening!

As elsewhere in the other chapters here too we have to enter the store-houses of the three privileged disciples Dilip Kumar, Nirodbaran and Amal Kiran, for it is they and they alone who happened to be the happy recipients of these humorous rejoinders from Sri Aurobindo.

I. From Dilip Kumar's treasury

(1) But what! But when! But which!

Bindu, a friend of Dilip's, once wrote to Sri Aurobindo a long letter besieging him with a number of world-shaking questions. Sri Aurobindo's reply was as follows:

"Bindu,

Good heavens! But what! But when! But which! You expect me to give you 'clear and concise' notes on all that, fixing the 'nature and salient features' of each blessed thing? It will take me several Sundays wholly devoted to grappling with this tremendous task! And how the deuce am I to tell you in a 'clear and concise way' what consciousness is or mind or life is? Do you think these confounded entities are themselves clear and concise or have any 'salient features'? They are 'salient' only in the Latin sense of jumping about all the time and becoming something different each moment. As for 'consciousness' you might as well ask me to define the world. Of course I could do it by replying - 'a damned mess', and that would be very satisfactory to me as well as 'clear and concise' but it would

Page 321

hardly serve the purpose."⁴

(2)Bindu's Prasad preparation:

In those days Sri Aurobindo or the Mother never allowed outsiders to cook for them. But Bindu's sheer importunate genius prevailed and he was allowed to cook what they in the Ashram called prasad. This he sent up duly to Sri Aurobindo who ate of it but not much, whereupon Bindu penned him a disconsolate letter:

"Gurudev, Nalina brought me back the dishes. I was stunned to find that you had hardly touched them. I am deeply pained, sorely disappointed, utterly dejected and mortally wounded, and cannot imagine why you are so unsympathetic to me."

Sri Aurobindo wrote back a sweet letter of solace:

"Bindu! Don't be absurd! Our sympathy towards you is profound and perfect, but it cannot be measured by our sympathy towards your eatables. We, usually, just taste the prasad people send to us; sometimes we take more but never when it is very sweet or very extraordinary. Of your vermicelli pudding we could well speak in the language of the passionate address of the lover to his beloved: 'O sweet! O too too sweet!' (which doesn't mean, though, that it was not well done). And the stew was extraordinary, albeit of another world — so much so that if I tasted the first forkful with anxiety, the second was with awe, after which I ventured no farther into these unknown countries...."⁵

(3)Three pieces of jolly news!

Dilip Kumar: O Guru, three solid pieces of jolly news: first, a Muslim writer named Abul Fazl comes to congratulate me because in my recent controversy with Tagore, he opines, the latter had very much the worst of it. Then comes a savant who praises my Bengali novel, Dola. Last, though not least, turns up a Zamindar who implores me to draft for him an address for a local doctor who has been honoured by a Rajah.

Now tell me, do you smile on it or frown?

Page 322

Sri Aurobindo: I sympathise. Three cheers for Abul Fazl and the savant. But I don't feel enthusiastic about the doctor even though honoured by a Rajah! What are things coming to! (Please don't tell this to Nirod [who happens to be a doctor.]) Perhaps, however, it may be on the principle: 'Honour the doctor that thy life may be long in the land!' But then to call in an eminent litterateur like you is after all appropriate. You can furnish them with a long address on the romance of medicine beginning with Dhanwantari, Charaka and Galen and ending with Nirod Talukdar or Dr. Ramchandra.⁶

(4)Sri Aurobindo's taste of Maharatta cookery:

On learning that the Maharaja of Dewas had invited DK to dinner Sri Aurobindo wrote to the latter:

"I hope your dinner did not turn out like my first taste of Maharatta cookery — when for some reason my dinner was non est and somebody went to my neighbour, a Maharatta Professor, for food. I took one mouthful and only one, O God! Sudden fire in the mouth could not have been more cataclysmic! Enough to bring down the whole of London in one agonised sweep of flame!"⁷

(Readers will please mark the note of exaggeration which, as we have seen before, may be, when judiciously used, one of the principal constitutive elements in the production of humour.)

(5)Special permission to correspond:

When Sri Aurobindo's correspondence to his disciples in the Ashram increased to unconscionable proportions and he had to deal with them all by himself night after night from 9 p.m. till 5 a.m. the next morning, Mother intervened and decided that henceforth only a few were to be allowed to write to him, by special permission. But as the number of the privileged ones mounted day by day, DK wrote to Sri Aurobindo:

"To how many have you given a special permission to write to you daily? Nirod confided to me - it's 121. Bindu says -impossible, it is only 97, out of the present total [of Ashramites] 150."

Page 323

Sri Aurobindo: The number openly accepted is - two by tacit understanding, two by express notice and two by self-given permission. If it had been 97 or 121, I would have translated myself to the Gobi desert or the Lake Manasa in the style of Sri Bijay Krishna Goswami.⁸

(6)Sri Aurobindo refusing Prof. Radhakrishnan's request!

Once when an offer came from Sir Sarvapalli Radhakrish-nan that he would introduce Sri Aurobindo to the West if he wrote a philosophical article for the Westerners, he declined and wrote to Dilip Kumar:

"Look here! Do these people expect me to turn myself again into a machine for producing articles? The times of the Bande Mataram and Arya are over, thank God!...

"But I don't know how to excuse myself to Radhakrishnan — for I can't say all that to him. Perhaps you can find a formula for me? Perhaps: 'so occupied, not a moment for any other work, can't undertake because he might not be able to carry out his promise.' What do you say?...

"I had some thought of writing to [Prof.] Adhar Das pointing out that he was mistaken in his criticism of my ideas about consciousness and intuition and developing briefly what were my real views about these things. But I have never been able to do it. I might as well think of putting the moon under my arm, Hanuman-like - although in his case it was the sun - and going for a walk. The moon is not available and the walk is not possible. It would be the same if I promised to Radhakrishnan -it would not be done and that would be much worse than a refusal...."⁹

(7)Karma-puzzle put by DK:

Sri Aurobindo's reply to DK: "... You again try to floor me with Ramakrishna. But something puzzles me, as Shankara's stupendous activity of karma puzzles me in the apostle of inaction! - you see you are not the only puzzled person in the world. Ramakrishna also gave the image of the jar which ceased

Page 324

gurgling when it was full. Well, but Ramakrishna spent the last few years of his life in talking about the Divine and receiving disciples - was that not action, not work? Did Ramakrishna become a half-full jar after being a full one or was he never full? Did he get far away from God and so begin work?...

"I do not know why you drag in humanitarianism, Subhas's activism, philanthropical services, etc.... I never thought that the Congress politics or feeding the poor or writing beautiful poems would lead straight to Vaikuntha or the Absolute. If it were so, Romesh Dutt on one side and Baudelaire on the other would be the first to attain the highest and welcome us there....

"My remarks about being puzzled were, by the way, mere Socratic irony. Of course I am not in the least puzzled by the case either of Shankara or of Ramakrishna...."¹⁰

(8)It happened once that one of Sri Aurobindo's disciples on whom he had lavished his love declined to change and deserted. A year later this man wrote to Dilip Kumar flaunting not only an ephemeral success of a trivial undertaking of his but rationalising it into a deep (?) philosophy. DK forwarded to Sri Aurobindo the gist of his friend's philosophy of life which was as follows:

"Life is a mirror, Dilip, and being a mirror, it must return smile for smile and frown for frown."

Sri Aurobindo commented: "As for his 'philosophy' it is phrases and nothing else: what he means is, I suppose, that when one is successful one can be jolly - which is not philosophy but commonplace, only he turns it upside down to make it look wise. Or perhaps he means that if you smile at Mussolini and Hitler they will spare you castor-oil or cudgel: but even that is not sure, for they may want to know what the smile means first - flattery or satire."¹¹

(9)DK's 6-point resolution and Sri Aurobindo's rejoinder:

Dilip Kumar: O Guru, so be it. Since I have been hanging too long in mid-air and must land somewhere somehow, anyhow - therefore I propose - subject to your approval - a

Page 325

drastic prescription for my long-suffering .unconvalescing self.

Number one. I will give up tea: I love it.

Number two. I will do without cheese: I like it.

Number three. I will bid adieu to tasty dishes and start periodic fasts.

Number four. Will forswear hair-oil and shave my head.

Number five. I will sleep on only one sole blanket, pillowless.

Number six. I will sleep without the mosquito-curtain which, I fear, will be the most difficult of all feats because I have never been able to hail the crooning of the mosquito as a lullaby.

Only believe me when I say that although I move this resolution in a language that may sound unparliamentary, my heart is really heavy and tearful, since I can see no shorter cut to salvation. So, in the circumstances, will you and the Mother ratify my resolution, or amend, please?

Sri Aurobindo: I stand aghast as I stare at the detailed proposals made by you! Fastings? I don't believe in them, though I have done them myself. You would really eat like an ogre afterwards.

Shaved head? Have you realised the consequences? I pass over the aesthetic shock to myself at Darshan on the 24th November from which I might never recover — but the row that would rise from the Cape Comorin to the Himalayas! You would be famous in a new way which would cast all your previous glories into the shade. And just when you are turning away from fame and all the things of the ego! NO: too dangerous by half.

Sleep without the mosquito-net? That would mean no sleep, which is as bad as no food. Not only your eyes would become weak, but yourself also - and, to boot, gloomy, grey and gruesome — more gruesome than the Supramental of your worst apprehensions! No and no again. As for the rest, I placed some of them before the Mother and she eyed them without favour....

I have noticed about ascetics by rule that when you remove the curb they become just like others — barring a few exceptions, of course - which proves that the transformation was not

Page 326

real. A more subtle method used by some is to give up for a time, then try the object of desire again and so go on till you have thoroughly tested yourself; e.g., you give up your potatoes and eat only the Ashram food for a time — if the call comes for the potatoes or from them, then you are not cured: if no call comes, still you cannot be sure till you have tried potatoes again, and seen whether the desire, attachment or sense of need revives. If it does not and the potatoes fall away from you of themselves, then there is some hope that the thing is done.

However, all this will make you think that I am hardly fit to be a Guru in the path of asceticism and you will probably be right. You see, I have a strong penchant for the inner working and am persuaded that if you give the psychic a chance it will rid you of the impediments you chafe at without all this sternness and trouble....

But how in the earthly did you get this strange idea that we were pressing asceticism on you? When? How? Where? I only admitted it as a possibility after repeated assertions from you that you wanted to do this formidable thing, and it was with great heart-searchings and terrible apprehensive visions of an ascetic Dilip with wild weird eyes and in loin-cloth, eating ground-nuts and nails and sleeping on iron-spikes in the presence of a dumbfounded Lord Shiva! I never prescribed the thing to you at all: it was you who were clamouring for it, so I gave in and tried to make the best of it, hoping that you would think better of it. As for the Mother, the first time she heard of it she knocked it off with the most emphatic 'Nonsense!' possible.

In fact what you proposed was even more formidable than my vision - a shaven-headed and mosquito-bitten Dilip in loincloth and the rest (not that you actually proposed the last but it is the logical outcome of the devastating shave!). Conquest of attachment is quite a different matter - one has to learn to take one's tea and potatoes without weeping for them or even missing them if they are not there....

So your subtle interpretation of our intentions or wishes was a bad misfit. However, all is well that ends well and... I will

Page 327

consider the danger over. Laus Deo!¹²

II. From Amal Kiran's treasury

(1)Amal Kiran : There is an idea that Harin is a reincarnation of Shelley. It is supposed to be based on your own intuition and the Mother's or least a practical certainty on your part as well as on here. The character of H's poetry seems to add colour to the idea. .

Sri Aurobindo: I have never had any practical certainty or any certainty that Harin was Shelley - what by the way is this practical certainty? The phrase would mean normally that I was not quite sure about it but rather felt as if it might be so. I asked Mother and she said that the question had frequently been raised and she spoke to me about it and I said it might be so. If that is what is meant by practical certainty, then of course! But how is that an intuition? The question was often raised, often by Harin himself because he was anxious to have it confirmed - I remember to have replied in the negative.

No doubt there was a strong Shelleyan vein in Harin's poetry, but if everybody who has that is to be accounted a reincarnation of Shelley, we get into chaotic waters. In that case, Tagore must be a reincarnation of Shelley, and Harin, logically, must be a reincarnation of Tagore - who couldn't wait till Tagore walked off to Paradise or Shelley must have divided himself between the couple. It may be that afterwards I leaned at a time towards a hesitating acceptance, but I am certain that I was never certain about it..."

(2)Amal Kiran : What happened to my request for a message to grace the special number of [the journal] mother India of August 15? I have heard nothing from you .

Sri Aurobindo: I have been trying to get you informed without success about the impossibility of your getting your expected Message from me for the 15th August. I had and have no intention of writing a Message for my birthday this year. It is psychologically impossible for me to manufacture one to command...

Page 328

If I started doing that kind of thing, my freedom would be gone; I would have to write at everybody's command, not only articles but blessings, replies on public questions and all the rest of that kind of conventional rubbish. I would be like any ordinary politician publishing my views on all and sundry matters, discoursing on all sorts of subjects, a public man at the disposal of the public. That would make myself, my blessings, my views and my Messages exceedingly cheap; in fact, I would no longer be Sri Aurobindo.

Already the Hindusthan Standard, the Madras Mail and I know not what other journals and societies are demanding at the pistol's point special messages for themselves and I am supposed to stand and deliver. I won't. I regret that I must disappoint you, but self-preservation is a first law of nature.¹⁴

III. From Nirodbaran's treasury

(1) What a "woman" expects of a "man";

NB: I had been to the pier with Y. We were quietly resting on a bench with our feet up, when a Tamilian came with a stick in hand and ordered us to put our feet down. I was rather bewildered and put my feet down; so did Y. I said, maybe he is the guard of the pier. Behind us Purani and others were sitting with their feet up, but he didn't tell them anything. This made Y very excited and she said that he had insulted us. He was only a drunkard or a rogue. Then she accused me of cowardice for my abject submission. The first thing a woman respects and admires in a man is courage! etc., etc.

Sri Aurobindo: Obviously what you ought to have done was to go baldheaded for the Tamilian, bang up his eyes, smash his nose, extract some of his teeth, break his jaw and fling him into the sea. Afterwards if the police came to arrest you, disable half the force and slaughter the Inspector. Then Y would have come to you in jail and wept admiringly over the mighty hero. That's what a "woman" expects of a "man" since the cave days. It is also what a she-cat expects of a tom-cat.¹⁵

Page 329

(2)On feminine women and masculine women;

NB: What is meant by feminine women or masculine women?

Sri Aurobindo: Feminine is not used in opposition to masculine here, but means only a wholly unrelievedly feminine woman — a capricious, fantastic, unreasonable, affectionate — vitalistic, incalculable, attractive - intolerable, never-knows-what-she-is or what-she-isn't and everything else kind of creature. It is not really feminine, but is the woman as man has made her. By the way, if you like to add some hundred other epithets and double epithets after searching the Oxford dictionary you can freely do so. They can all be fitted in somehow.¹⁶

(3)Sri Aurobindo becoming 'grave, rough, stiff and gruff ?

NB: One misgiving is pressing heavily on my soul. I sense and feel that the tone of your letters has suddenly become very grave, rough, stiff and gruff - the owl-like severity with which you had once threatened me. Have I done anything to deserve punishment? Or is it because you are getting supramentalised day by day that you are withdrawing yourself so? There must be a reason if my sense-feel is correct. Well, if you want to press me between two planks and pulverise me... Not that I want it, you know.

Sri Aurobindo: I think your sense-feel has been indulging in vain imaginations, perhaps with the idea of increasing your concrete imaginative faculty and fitting you for understanding the unintelligible. As you have now much to do with mystic poetry, it may be necessary. But why object to being pulverised? Once reduced to powder, think how useful you may be as a medicine, Pulv. Nirod. gr. II. Anyhow disburden your soul of the weight. I am not owled yet and my supramentalisation is going on too slowly to justify such apprehensions. Neither I am withdrawing, rather fitting myself for a new rush in the near or far future. So cheer up and send the Man of Sorrows with his 'planks' to the devil.¹⁷

Page 330

(4)Sri Aurobindo 'shouting' differently at different times!

NB: Sometimes I feel that if the Divine loves all equally, even then X and myself, for example, transgressing some vital rules of the Ashram, will not be equally treated. In my saner moments I have tried to look at it more rationally.

Sri Aurobindo: That does not stand. Sometimes you might get nothing except perhaps an invisible stare; sometimes I might say, "Now, look here, Nirod, don't make an immortal ass of yourself - that is not the transformation wanted." Still another time I might shout, "Now! now! What the hell! what the blazes!" So it would depend on the occasion, not only on the person.¹⁸

(5)"Requests, beseeches, entreats" all in vain!

NB: Another letter from my friend Jatin. He has asked for the reply to his previous letter. Please do write something tonight, Sir. I request you, I beseech you, I entreat you, I pray to you. Do find out the letter from your heap — I can see it from here - and just a few marks and remarks will do. That's like the Divine!

Sri Aurobindo: Sorry, but your luck is not brilliant. Had a whole night i.e. after 3 no work - was ready to write. Light went off, in my rooms only, mark - tried candle power, no go. The Age of Candles is evidently over. So "requests, beseeches, entreats" were all in vain. Not my fault. Blame Fate! However, I had a delightful time, 3 hours of undisturbed concentration on my real work, - a luxury denied to me for ages. Don't tear your hair. Will be done another day with luck.¹⁹

(6)On the genesis and growth of vital-physical attachment:

(i) NB: Am invited for tea to the oculist's place - there's some function. I suppose it'll be rude not to go. Again social consciousness? - you may say. But say it again then, Sir!

Sri Aurobindo: Of course, social consciousness - according to S.C., it is certainly rude not to go. What it may be from another S.C. (spiritual consciousness), is another matter.²⁰

Page 331

(ii)NB: If one has a double attachment, would it not be an insincerity?

Sri Aurobindo: It depends on the ideal. If it were a matter of the union of two lives, it would be an insincerity, a faithlessness. But for the vital? Its character is to change, sometimes to multiply, to run here and there. Unless of course it is caught, glued to a single attraction or passion for a long period or for a lifetime. But in such gluings it is generally one of the two that is entangled, the other skirmishes around dragging his living appendage or else leaving it half-glued, half-dropped.²¹

(iii)NB: X calls me now and then in the afternoon to taste something she has prepared. So I spend about 15-20 minutes on my way to hospital.

I like X's smile. It's innocent, childlike - nothing coquettish or sophisticated or trying to captivate.

Sri Aurobindo: Very dangerous! especially if you begin to luxuriate in the idea of her unsophisticated simplicity. Unsophisticated or not, if once the vital attachment is made, she will hold you as tightly as the other and with a greater violence of dabi [claim], abhiman [injured feelings] and the rest of it and, finally when the connection is cut, she will say and think that it was all your fault and that you are a very wicked person who took advantage of her foolishness and innocence. Well, well, you know about as much of women as a house-kitten knows about the jungle and its denizens and it is you who are in this field amazingly naive.

NB: If you think I had better stop this social relationship and check the unyogic enjoyment - I shall.

Sri Aurobindo: I certainly think that you should stop while there is yet time. It is no use getting out of one net to fall into another.

NB: Guru, you have castigated me for my inexperience, calling me sheep, lamb, house-kitten and what not. You will exhaust the whole zoology on me, methinks!

Sri Aurobindo: Why not? man has all the animals within him as he is an epitome of the universe.

Page 332

NB: I have resolved that next time X and Y call me, I shall go and "cleverly" tell them that it is the last time. Will it do, Sir? Sri Aurobindo

NB: I've given them mangoes and things before, as once you said regarding S's offer of curry, that it was quite trifling and absolutely harmless.

Sri Aurobindo: In S's case it was harmless, but similar things in another case might not be. All depends on the inflammability of the human materials in relation to each other. If they are mutually inflammable, a mango or a curry can be the match to light the flame.²²

(7) Fun with NB's boil!

NB: Again a boil on the left cheek. Good Heavens! No improvement.

Sri Aurobindo: As Rene's doctor says, "Tut tut tut tut tut tut."

NB: Punishment for too much talking or eating or subconscious welling out?

Sri Aurobindo: Probably.

NB: Boil a little ripe, but still -Hard and big as hazel-nut, In spite of your tut, tut, tut! Give one more dose at the least Or I howl on like a beast!

Sri Aurobindo: Tut nut tut, not nut tut tut!

Hope this will have the effect of a Tantric mantra which it resembles. So if you like OM ling bling hring kring! Just try repeating either of these 15,000 times concentrating on your boil {bling) at the time.

NB: Hard, throbbing painful boil. Slight fever, headache in the morning. Hot fomentation etc. Went to the 'miracle doctor', 4 powders! Added to these the Force! Does it budge? The game must be over by tomorrow, Sir. Otherwise I have to lie flat!

Sri Aurobindo: All this for a poor little boil? What would it be if you were put to roast?

NB: Did you really want me to chant that mantra? I took it

Page 333

as a big piece of joke.

Sri Aurobindo: You could not realise that Tut Tut Tut was a serious mantra with immense possibilities? Why, it is the modern form of [Upanishadic] tat and everybody knows that Om tat sat is a mantra of great power. Only you should as a penance for not having accepted at once, do it not 15,000 but 150,000 times a day - at a gallop, e.g. OM Tut a Tut, Tut a Tut, Tut a Tut and so on at an increasing pace and pitch till you reach either Berhampur* or Nirvana.

NB: Is it for nothing that I see the Red Light as the outcome of my misadventure?

Sri Aurobindo: Take courage. Say Tut tut tut to the misadventure and go ahead.

NB: Well, but what's the cure? That impossible mantra you gave me I am trying it though by fits and starts.

Sri Aurobindo: Good Lord! What mantra? OM Tut a tut to to tuwhit tuwhoo? Man! But it is to be recited only when you are taking tea in the company of four Brahmins pure of all sex ideas and 5 ft. 11 inches tall with a stomach in proportion. Otherwise it can't be effective.²³

IV. On sadhana, sadhaks and spiritual themes

(1) "Happy-go-lucky fancy-web-spinning" sadhaks!

NB: With your silence, consciousness, overmental, partly supramental, etc., etc., it should be possible to draw from the highest plane, at the slightest pull, and it should tumble down, Sir, but it doesn't. Why not? We wonder and wonder! Could you send Alice to Wonderland and ask her to discover and divulge the secret to us - not in hints, but at length?

Sri Aurobindo: The highest planes are not so accommodating as all that. If they were so, why should it be so difficult to bring down and organise the supermind in the physical consciousness? What happy-go-lucky fancy-web-spinning ignoramuses you all are. You speak of silence, consciousness, over-

* A place once famous for its mental hospital.

Page 334

mental, supramental, etc. as if they were so many electric buttons you have only to press and there you are. It may be one day but meanwhile I have to discover everything about the working of all possible modes of electricity, all the laws, possibilities, perils, etc., construct roads of connection and communication, make the whole far-wiring system, try to find out how it can be made foolproof and all that in the course of a single lifetime. And I have to do it while my blessed disciples are firing off their gay or gloomy a priori reasonings at me from a position of entire irresponsibility and expecting me to divulge everything to them not in hints but at length. Lord God in omnibus!²⁴

(2)Pulling down the Supermind by tail-twists!

NB: And what is this again? You say you are in contact with the supermind and then again that you are very near the tail of it! Sounds funny! Contact and no contact?

Sri Aurobindo: ... it was better to be in contact with it [the Supermind] until I had made the path clear between S [Supermind] and M [Matter]. As for the tail, can't you approach the tail of an animal without achieving the animal? I am in the physical, in matter - there is no doubt about it. If I throw a rope up from Matter, noose or lasso the Supermind and pull it down, the first part of Mr. S that will come near me is his tail dangling down as he descends, and that I can seize first and pull down the rest of him by tail-twists. As for being in contact with it, well, I can be in contact with you by correspondence without actually touching you or taking hold even of your tail, can't I? So there is nothing funny about it - perfectly rational, coherent and clear.²⁵

(3)"Brahman asking Brahmam what Brahman is!"

NB: Guru, what the deuce is "Brahman consciousness"? It is not spiritual realisation, I suppose, I mean realisation of Self? You see I am a nincompoop in this business. Please perorate a little.

Sri Aurobindo: Eternal Jehovah! You don't even know

Page 335

what Brahman is? You will next be asking me what Yoga is or what life is or what body is or what mind is or what sadhana is! No, sir, I am not proposing to teach an infant class the A

Brahman, sir, is the name given by Indian philosophy since the beginning of time to the one Reality, eternal and infinite which is the Self, the Divine, the All, the more than All, which would remain even if you and everybody and everything else in existence or imagining itself to be in existence vanished into blazes - even if this whole universe disappeared, Brahman would be safely there and nothing whatever lost. In fact, sir, you are Brahman and you are only pretending to be Nirod; when Nishikanta is translating Amal's poetry into Bengali, it is really Brahman translating Brahman's Brahman into Brahman. When Amal asks me what consciousness is, it is really Brahman asking Brahman what Brahman is! There, sir, I hope you are satisfied now.

To be less drastic and refrain from making your head reel till it goes off your shoulders, I may say that realisation of the Self is the beginning of Brahman realisation; - the Brahman consciousness - the Self in all and all in the Self, etc....²⁶

(4) Difference between intuition and thought:

NB: Guru, your Intuition says everything to you? Have you nothing to think whether right or wrong? Alas! how then can the shishya follow the Guru!

Sri Aurobindo: Good Heavens! After a life of sadhana you expect me still to "think" and what is worse think what is right or wrong. I don't think, even; I see or don't see. The difference between intuition and thought is very much like that between seeing a thing and badgering one's brains to find out what the thing can possibly be like. Intuition is truth-sight - The thing seen may not be the truth? Well, in that case it will at least be one of its hundred tails or at least a hair from one of its tails. The very first step in the supramental change is to transform all operations of consciousness from the ordinary mental to the

Page 336

intuitive, only then is there any hope of proceeding farther, not to, but towards the supramental. I must surely have done this long ago otherwise how could I be catching the tail of the supramental whale?²⁷

(5)God's body born!

NB: Guru, I am puzzled! Your additional stanza of yesterday's poem is magnificent. But how can a "body" be born, either God's or an animal's, even if we admit God has a body?

Sri Aurobindo: It is I who am awfully puzzled by your puzzlement. A body is not born? When the child comes out of the womb, it is not a body that comes out and the coming out is not birth? It has always been so called in English. You have never heard the expression "the birth and death of the body"? What is it then that dies after having been born? The soul doesn't die, nor is it the soul that comes out of the womb! You think God cannot have a body? Brahmo idea? Then what of the incarnation - is it impossible? And how does the Divine appear in vision to the bhakta except by putting on a form - a body?... All the same one can understand a metaphysical (not a poetic) objection to God having a body if one believes that the Infinite cannot manifest the finite, but that an animal's body is not born is new to me.²⁸

[The stanza in question was:

"From which the cosmic fire

Sprang rhythmic into Space

That God's body might be born

And the Formless wear a face."]

(6)On the squeaking tamasic ego:

NB: ... Now about Yoga: you know how much progress I have made. I don't blame you. I can't meditate, I can't pray, I can't aspire. Without them, I don't see how I am to get anything. Why not do them - you ask? If I could, would I have troubled you with all these wailings? Since I can't, I have no peace, no joy! You can't give them without any urge or

Page 337

aspiration for them, can you?... If one can't aspire at all, where is his hope?

Sri Aurobindo: ... All the rest is dreary stuff of the tamasic ego. As there is a rajasic ego which shouts "What a magnificent powerful sublime divine individual I am, unique and peerless" (of course there are gradations in the pitch), so there is a tamasic ego which squeaks "What an abject, hopeless, worthless, incapable, unluckily unendowed and uniquely impossible creature I am, - all, all are great, Aurobindos, Dilips, Anilkumars (great by an unequalled capacity of novel-reading and self-content, according to you), but I, oh I, oh l!" That's your style.... It's all bosh - stuff made up to excuse the luxury of laziness, melancholy and despair. You are in that bog just now because you have descended faithfully and completely into the inner stupidity and die-in-the-mudness of your physical consciousness which, I admit, is a specimen! But so after all is everybody's, only there are different kinds of specimens. What to do? Dig yourself out if you can; if you can't, call for ropes and wait till they come. If God knows what will happen when the Grace descends, that is enough, isn't it? That you don't know is a fact which may be baffling to your - well, your intelligence, but is not of great importance - any more than your supposed unfitness. Who ever was fit, for that matter - fitness and unfitness are only a way of speaking; man is unfit and a misfit (so far as things spiritual are concerned) - in his outward nature. But within there is a soul and above there is Grace. "This is all you know or need to know" and, if you don't, well, even then you have at least somehow stumbled into the path and have got to remain there till you get hailed along it far enough to wake up to the knowledge. Amen.²⁹

(7) Too easy, too difficult, easy in parts and difficult in parts!

NB: ... I would not like to invite the same inevitable fate on my weak bony shoulders.... To think that five or six years more of barren desert stretch between me and the Divine Grace, coagulates my blood!

Please give an answer to these points - if no time tonight, tomorrow.

Page 338

Sri Aurobindo: Non, monsieur, — j'ai d'autres chats a fouetter. I have other cats to whip - I can't go on whipping one cat all the time. A few lashes in the margin are all I can spare for you just now.

There are three main possibilities for the sadhak -

1.To wait on the Grace and rely on the Divine.

2.To do everything himself like the full Adwaitin and the Buddhist.

3.To take the middle path, go forward by aspiration and rejection etc. helped by the Force.

The first, it appears, is too easy for you to do it; the second is too difficult for you to do; the third being easy in parts and difficult in parts is as impossible for you to do it. Right? Amen!!!'⁰

(8) NB: You deal too much with paradoxes and contradictory statements, for my little brain to understand. Compare these two statements: "There is the soul within and the Grace above", and "If you want things to happen there is no reason why they should happen at all." Are these not contradictions?

Sri Aurobindo: I don't see how it is contrary. Naturally the soul and the Grace are the two ends, but that does not mean that there is to be nothing between. You seem to have interpreted the sentence, "There is a dawdling soul within and a sleeping Grace above. When the Grace awakes, the soul will no more dawdle, because it will be abducted." Of course, it can happen like that, but as I put it, there is no reason why it should. Generally the soul wakes up, rubs its eyes and says, "Hallo, where is that Grace?" and begins fumbling around for it and pulling at things in the hope that Grace is at the other end of the said things. Finally it pulls at something by accident and the Grace comes toppling down full tilt from God knows where. That's the usual style - but there are others."

(9) Three ways of bringing down the force:

NB: I am getting more and more disappointed, still more in Yoga since I hear that you are now trying more for the transformation of nature than for experience.

Page 339

Sri Aurobindo: Because without transformation of nature, the blessed experience is something like a gold crown on a pig's head - won't do. Picturesque perhaps, but -

NB: What to do? How to bring down the Force?

Sri Aurobindo: How? is there a how?

You call, you open, it comes (after a time).

Or, you don't call, you open, it comes.

Or, you call, don't open, it doesn't come.

Three possibilities. But how -? Well, God he knows or perhaps he doesn't!

NB: You call, you open, you don't call, you open, you call, you don't open - no profounder mystery can there be than these your phrases!

Sri Aurobindo: Not at all, plain as your nose. Excuses to the nose! I gave you three different cases, - don't mix them up together.

NB: I have called for poetry, I have actually sat up for 2 hours, has it come?

Sri Aurobindo: You called but did not open, so it did not come.

NB: I am praying for A

Both instances establish my case. Q.E.D.

NB: Really your Yoga is a puzzle and I haven't been able to catch the head or tail of it, shall never perhaps.

Sri Aurobindo: You need not catch either its head or its tail. It will be sufficient if you allow it to catch your head or your tail or both! Cheerio! Tails forward!

NB: You said - I called, I didn't open. Isn't it mysterious when I called and sat up with paper and pencil for two hours? Then all I can say is that opening is a mysterious business!

Sri Aurobindo: Who says it is not?³²

(10) Modern-minded disciples who know all about everything!

NB: Everything seems to be queer in this world, this yogic world included. When a fellow works hard at French, Medicine,

Page 340

trying to improve his department and himself, and thereby serve the Divine, it is bad. Too much concentration and meditation is worse. When one follows the rule "eat, drink and be merry" it is worst. I am coming to X's view that your Yoga will always be yours.

Sri Aurobindo: There is where you miss the truth and he missed it also - he did not try to "improve himself", at any rate in any yogic way - he might try to aggrandise himself, but that is another matter. Self-aggrandisement does not save from collapse.

Well, I never heard that 'to eat, drink and be merry' was one of the paths of Yoga - unless Charvak's way is one of Yoga.

It is not my Yoga that is difficult to get the head or tail of - it is your and X's and others' views about Yoga that are weird and wonderful. If a fellow is brilliant in French and Sanskrit, you think he is a wonderful Yogi, but then it is the people who are first in the Calcutta B.A. who must be the great Yogis. If one objects to spending all the energy in tea and talk, you say, "What queer Gurus these are and what queer ideas", as if sociability were the base of the Brahman, or on the contrary you think that everybody must shut himself up in a dark room, see nobody and go mad with want of food and sleep — and when we object to that, you say, "Who can understand this Yoga?" Have you never heard of Buddha's maxim "No excess in any direction" - or of Krishna's injunction "Don't eat too much or abstain from eating, don't drop sleep or sleep too much; don't torture the soul with violent tapasya - practise Yoga steadily without despondency. Don't abstain from work and be inactive, but don't think either that work will save you. Dedicate your work to the Divine, do it as a sacrifice, reach the point at which you feel that the works are not yours but done for you etc., etc. Through meditation, through dedicated works, through bhakti - all these together arrive at the divine consciousness and live in it"? Buddha and Krishna are not considered to be unintelligible big Absurdities, yet when we lay stress on the same thing, you all stare and say "What's this new unheard-of stuff?" It is the result, I suppose, of having modern-minded disciples who know all about everything and can judge better than any guru, but to

Page 341

whom the very claims of Yoga are something queer and cold and strange. Kismet!"

(11)Ego and the use of the pronoun 'You'!

NB: I certainly want to improve my poetry to its zenith, but it must not bring in the egoistic idea that I have done it by my own power, as your expressions "You have to do this", "You have to bring this" etc., etc. may very likely feed the egoism. That's all, Sir! Not clear?

Sri Aurobindo: Well, sir, if I can't say you, must I write "that body" or "the phenomenon of an apparent Doctor-poet"? Or there must be an impersonal commotion in the apparently personal part which might be pragmatically called "doing this" or "bringing this". That would discourage egoism; but it might discourage my writing also as well as stifle your poetic inspiration while you stare about the roundabouts.³⁴

(12)Advanced sadhaks? advanced indeed!

NB: I understand your protesting against "great" or "big" sadhaks, but why against "advanced" sadhaks? It is a fact that some are more advanced than others and so we mention X as an advanced sadhak, [we] don't mean anything else.

Sri Aurobindo: Advanced indeed! Pshaw! Because one is 3 inches ahead of another, you must make classes of advanced and non-advanced? Advanced has the same puffing egoistic resonance as "great" or "big". It leads to all sorts of stupidities, rajasic self-appreciating egoism in some, tamasic self-depreciating egoism in others, round-eyed wonderings why X an advanced sadhak, one 3 inches ahead of Y, should stumble, tumble or fumble while Y, 3 inches behind X, still plods heavily and steadily on, etc., etc. Why, sir, the very idea in X that he is an advanced sadhak (like the Pharisee "I thank thee, O Lord, that I am not as other unadvanced disciples",) would be enough to make him fumble, stumble and tumble. So no more of that, sir, no more of that.³⁵

Page 342

(13)O Nirod of little faith and less patience!

NB: What shall I hear from the mighty pen as a remedy for my chronic despair and impatience?

Sri Aurobindo: Now look here, as to the Yoga etc., if I can become patient with you and your despairs, why can't you be patient with the forces? Let me give you a "concrete" instance. X is a sadhak of whom it might be said that if anyone could be said to be incapable of any least progress in yoga, X was the very person, blockhead absolutely and unique in that respect. Mulish, revolted, abusive. No capacity of any kind, no experience, not a shadow, little or blessed pinpoint of it anyhow, anywhere or at any time for years and more years and still more years. Finally some while ago X begins to fancy or feel that X wants Mother and nothing and nobody else (that was the result of my ceaseless and futile hammering for years), X makes sanguinary row after row because X can't get Mother, not a trace, speck, hint anywhere of Mother. Threats of departure and suicide very frequent. I sit mercilessly and very severely upon X, not jocularly as I do on you. X still weeps copiously, because Mother does not love X. I sit on X still more furiously but go on pumping Force and things into X. X stops that but weeps copiously because X has no faith, does not love Mother (all this goes on for months and months). Finally one day after deciding to stop weeping for good and all X suddenly finds X was living in barriers, barriers broken down, vast oceanic wideness inside her, love, peace etc. rushing in or pressing to rush; can't understand what on earth all this is or what to do -writes for guidance.

Now, sir, if my yugalike persistence could work a miracle like that with such a one, why can't you expect an earlier result with you, O Nirod of little faith and less patience? Stand and answer.³⁶

(14)About the 'deportees' from the Ashram:

NB: Obviously, evidently, undoutedly, Sir, your Force is growing! By the number of departees, one can see that!

Sri Aurobindo: They are not departees yet. X gone on a

Page 343

spree - says he will one day come back. V sent as a missionary by the Mother - don't expect his mission will be very fruitful though. R went for her property - property and herself held up by her family, as we told her it would be etc. So no sufficient proof of force here! If they had all gone saying '

NB: What, Sir, S has gone to deliver a 'message'?

Sri Aurobindo: There is nothing about message. Marriage, marriage - Two marriages, in fact. Not that he is going to marry 2 wives, but he is going to see the misfortune of two others consummated and gloat over it.

NB: Y seems to have gone for health.

Sri Aurobindo: Y went, not only for health, but to see his dear Guru who is preparing to shuffle off the mortal coil and for other motives of that kind. Quite natural, isn't it?

As for X, he has been going some dozen and dozen and a half times, only pulled back with great difficulty. Wants immediate siddhi in perfect surrender, absolute faith, unshakable peace. If all that is going to take time, can't do the Yoga. Feels himself unfit. Not being allowed to reach the Paratpara Brahman at once, had better rush out into the world and dissipate himself into the Nihil. Besides got upset by every trifle and, as soon as upset, lost faith in the Mother - and without faith no Yoga possible. Reasoning, sir, reasoning - the mighty intellect in its full stupidity. Understand now?

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, not 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?³⁷

Page 344

(15) Enrichment of Sri Aurobindo's Fishery!

NB: Apart from legal acumen I want more to see how far Doraiswamy's character has been changed and moulded by the Force.

Sri Aurobindo: Lord, man, it's not for changing or moulding character that this Ashram exists. It is for moulding spirituality and transforming the consciousness. You may say it doesn't seem to be successful enough on that line, but that is its object.

NB: I suspect, however, that you are closing in your supramental net and bringing in all the outside fish!

Sri Aurobindo: Good Lord, no! I should be very much embarrassed if all the outside fish insisted on coming inside. Besides D is not an outside fish.

NB: But what about our X? When do you propose to catch him or a still longer rope required? I would call that your biggest success, Sir, and the enrichment of your Fishery.... We are all watching with interest and eagerness that big operation of yours. But I don't think you will succeed till your Supra-mental comes to the field in full-fledged colours, what?

Sri Aurobindo: What big operation? There is no operation; I am not trying to hale in X as a big fish. I am not trying to catch him or bring him in. If he comes into the true spiritual life, it will be a big thing for him, no doubt, but to the work it means only a ripple more or less in the atmosphere.

Kindly consider how many people big in their own eyes have come and gone (B, Q, H to speak of no others) and has the work stopped by their departure or the Ashram ceased to grow? Do you really think that the success or failure of the work we have undertaken depends on the presence or absence of X? or on my hauling him in or letting him go? It is of importance only for the soul of X - nothing else.

Your image of the Fishery is quite out of place. I fish for no one; people are not hauled or called here, they come of themselves by the psychic instinct. Especially I do not fish for big and famous and successful men. Such fellows may be mentally or vitally big, but they are usually quite contented with

Page 345

that kind of bigness and do not want spiritual things, or, if they do, their bigness stands in their way rather than helps them. The fishing for them is X's idea - he wanted to catch hold of S.B., S.C., now L.D. etc., etc., but they would have been exceedingly troublesome sadhaks, if they ever really dreamed of anything of the kind.

All these are ordinary ignorant ideas; the Spirit cares not a damn for fame, success or bigness in those who come to it. People have a strange idea that Mother and myself are eager to get people as disciples and if any one goes away, especially a "big" balloon with all its gas in it, it is a great blow, - a terrible defeat, a dreadful catastrophe and cataclysm for us. Many even think that their being here is a great favour done to us for which we are not sufficiently grateful. All that is rubbish.'⁸

(16) On bis own handwriting!

(i)NB: When you wrote yesterday, "I am simply busy trying to get out of the mind" etc., etc. I sighed, "What a happy ignorance! Will it be folly to get wise?"

Sri Aurobindo: Not mind, sir? I have gone out of my mind long ago. I wrote "mud", mud, mud, mud of the subconscient.³⁹

(ii)'[... In Sri Aurobindo's reply of the 18th there was a word NB had underlined in red, for Sri Aurobindo to decipher.]

Sri Aurobindo: Man, you can't expect me to read my own writing after so long a time! It looks like sideless, but can't be.⁴⁰

NB: Good God, I didn't ask you about that word again, for I read it the very next day. But that is no reason why you should not recognise your own writing, Sir!

Sri Aurobindo: A marker was on that page, so I thought you were returning my writing by imposing on me the impossible task of reading it after many days!⁴¹

(iii)NB: You have forgotten a word in yesterday's poem. A blank remains. Or you can't make out your own writing. That's fine, Sir!

Sri Aurobindo: The word looks like "fantasia" but I am not at all sure - it might be anything else. It is altogether irrational to expect me to read my own writing. I write for others to read,

Page 346

not for myself - it is their business to puzzle out the words, I try to read when I am asked, but I have to make a strong use of second sight with a melange of intuition, reasoned conjectural speculation and random guessings.'¹²

(iv) NB: Will you take the trouble, Sir, to mark the portions of your letters that I can show J?

Sri Aurobindo: Good Lord, sir, L can't do that. You forget that I will have to try to read my own hieroglyphs. I have no time for such an exercise - I leave it to others.⁴³

(17) Purushottam is going fut!!!

NB: By the way, what is happening, pray? Supramental descending? Purushottam is going fut. Some passing blood, some vomiting blood, another died devoid of blood!

Sri Aurobindo: It appears that P has recognised that his Purushottamhood was indeed all fut! He says he felt evil forces making him do and say these things, but he was so helpless that he was forced to obey them! That is a fall from Purushottama heights, but a return to sanity, if only temporary - (but let's hope it will increase). For that is evidently what happened.

NB: All thought that he was doing serious sadhana.

Sri Aurobindo: Serious? You mean not to sleep and all that sort of thing? Well, it is just that kind of seriousness which brings these attacks - Earnestness of this sort does call down that kind of Purushottama or rather call him in - for it is a horizontal [and] not a vertical descent.

NB: Purushottama descended in consequence of the earnest sadhana and hence he was calling Sri Aurobindo to come and bow to him! What next?

Sri Aurobindo: Next? Perhaps he will want you also to come and bow to him and pummel you if you don't.

NB: Makes me shake to the bones!

Sri Aurobindo: Only the bones?

NB: Already I am feeling awfully pulled down, on top of that M [a difficult medical case] sits; and the Purushottama crowns them all. I ask myself - whither, whither are you going, my friend, and what awaits you?

Page 347

Sri Aurobindo: Perhaps the Paratpara Purusha beyond even the Purushottama.

But why this pulled downness? You are not pulling down Purushottama or any other gentleman from the upper storey, are you? It is strain and want of rest, I suppose. Sleep, sleep! read Mark Twain or write humorous stories. Then you will be quite chirpy and even M won't feel heavy to you.⁴⁴

(18) Sadhaks not floating in the flood of the Supramental:

NB: Some time back you wrote to me: "Never has there been such an uprush of mud and brimstone as during the past few months. However the Caravan goes on and today there was some promise of better things." What about the uprush of mud? Has it settled down, and are people now floating in the flood of the Supramental?

Sri Aurobindo: It is still there, but personally I have become superior to it and am travelling forward like a flash of lightning, that is to say zigzag but fairly fast. Now I have got the hang of the whole hanged thing - like a very Einstein I have got the mathematical formula of the whole affair (unintelligible as in his case to anybody but myself) and am working it out figure by figure.

As for people, no! they are not floating in the supramental -some are floating in the higher mind, others rushing up into it and flopping down into the subconscient alternately, are swinging from heaven into hell and back into heaven, again back into hell ad infinitum, some are sticking fast contentedly or discontentedly in the mud, some are sitting in the mud and dreaming dreams and seeing visions, some have their legs in the mud and their head in the heavens etc., etc., an infinity of combinations, while many are simply nowhere. But console yourself - these things, it seems, are inevitable in the process of great transformations.⁴⁵

(19) NB: All this about man being imprisoned in Maya, and going on swinging in its whirl, seems to me due to the soul clinging to the Ignorance for the sake of experience, if what you

Page 348

say about the origin of creation is true.

Sri Aurobindo: What has the origin of creation to do with it? We are concerned with the growth of the soul out of the Ignorance, not its plunge into it. The lower nature is the nature of the Ignorance, what we seek is to grow into the nature of the Truth. How do you make out that when the soul has looked towards the Truth and is moving towards it, a pull-back by the vital and the ego towards the Ignorance is a glorious action of the soul and not a revolt of the lower nature?

I suppose you are floundering about in the confusion of the idea that "desire-soul" in the vital is the true psyche of man. If you like - but that is no part of my explanation of things; I make a clear distinction between the two, so I refuse to sanctify the revolt of the lower nature by calling it the sanction of the soul. If it is the soul that wants to fail, why is there any struggle or sorrow over the business? It would be a perfectly smooth affair. The soul would lift its hat to me and say "Hallo! you have taught me a lot, I'm quite pleased but now I want a little more fun in the mud. Good-bye," and I too would have to say, "O.K. I quite agree. I was glad to see you come, I am equally glad to see you go. All is Divine and A.I.* — all has the soul's sanction; so go and mud away to your soul's content."⁴⁶

NB: If failures are due to the revolt of the lower nature, why should that revolt occur in A's case and not in B's?

Sri Aurobindo: Because A is not B and B is not A. Why do you expect all to be alike and fare alike and run abreast all the way and all arrive together?

NB: Because the soul wants more 'fun' in the mud of Ignorance, people follow their "round of pleasure and pain", and their lack of faith etc. is due to their soul still wanting Ignorance.

Sri Aurobindo: ... The psychic has always been veiled, consenting to the play of mind, physical and vital, experiencing everything through them in the ignorant mental, vital and physical way. How then can it be that they are bound to change

* "Did Sri Aurobindo mean to write Al intending 'first-rate'?" - NB's note.

Page 349

at once when it just takes the trouble to whisper or say "Let there be Light"? They have tremendous go and can refuse and do refuse point-blank. The mind resists with an obstinate persistency in argument and a constant confusion of ideas, the vital with a fury of bad will aided by the mind's obliging reasonings on its side; the physical resists with an obstinate inertia and crass fidelity to old habit, and when they have done, the general Nature comes in and says, "What, you are going to get free from me so easily? Not if I know it," and it besieges and throws back the old nature on you again and again as long as it can. Yet you say that it is the soul that wants all this "fun" and goes off laughing and prancing to get some more. You are funny. If the poor soul heard you, I think it would say, "Sir, methinks you are a jester" and look about for a hammer and break your head with it.

NB: But if you ask me, as you do, "Why then is there so much struggle and sorrow?" well, I am floundered, unless one can say that though the soul has given the last kick, still a longing, lingering look is bound to be there.

Sri Aurobindo: You call that a mere look! I suppose if you saw an Irish row or a Nazi mob in action, you would say, "These people are making slight perceptible gestures and I think I hear faint sounds in the air."

My dear Sir, be less narrowly logical (with a very deficient logic even as logic) - take a wider sweep; swim out of your bathing pool into the open sea and waltz round the horizons! For anything that happens there are a hundred factors at work and not only the one just under your nose; but to perceive that you have to become cosmic and intuitive or overmental and what not. So, alas!⁴⁷

(20) The intuitive gods playing jokes:

NB: I shall have to fall back on myself for The Life Divine.

Sri Aurobindo: You might try. Read an unintelligible para from the L.D., then sit in vacant meditation and see what comes from the intuitive gods. They will probably play jokes with you, but what does it matter? One learns by one's errors and

Page 350

marches to success through one's failures.

NB: Do you mean that the method you advise for reading The Life Divine can really do something?

Sri Aurobindo: It was a joke. But all the same that is the way things are supposed to come. When the mind becomes decently quiet, an intuition perfect or imperfect is supposed to come hopping along and jump in and look round the place. Of course, it is not the only way.

NB: I understand that you wrote many things in that way, ... but no Goddesses for poor folks like us; they can only cut jokes, play pranks or tease our tails, that's all.

Sri Aurobindo: Well, if they tease your tail sufficiently, might not a poem be the result?

NB: Anyhow, joke or no joke, I will try the method. But the trouble is that the mind finds it difficult to believe that a vacancy can be filled up all of a sudden without any kind of thinking.

Sri Aurobindo: That is the silliness of the mind. Why should it be impossible to fill up a vacancy? ... The idea that you are shaping the thoughts or fitting them together is an egoistic delusion. They are doing it themselves, or Nature is doing it for you, only under a certain compulsion; you have to beat her often in order to make her do it, and the beating is not always successful. But the mind or nature or mental energy — whatever you like to call it, does this in a certain way and carries on with a certain order of thoughts, haphazard intelligentialities (excuse the barbarism) or asininities, rigidly ordered or imperfecdy ordered intellectualities, logical sequences and logical inconsequences etc., etc. How the devil is an intuition to get in in the midst of that waltzing and colliding crowd? It does sometimes, - in some minds often intuitions do come in, but immediately the ordinary thoughts surround it and eat it up alive. And then with some fragment of the murdered intuition shining through their non-intuitive stomachs they look up smiling at you and say "I am an intuition, sir". But they are only intellect, intelligence or ordinary thought with part of a dismembered and therefore misleading intuition inside them. Now in a vacant mind, vacant

Page 351

but not inert (that is important), intuitions have a chance of getting in alive and whole. But don't run away with the idea that all that comes into an empty mind, even a clear or luminous empty mind, will be intuitive. Anything, any blessed kind of idea, can come in. In other words, the mental being must be there, silent but vigilant, impartial but discriminating. That is, however, when you are in search of truth....⁴⁸

(21) Govinda Das, the Bangalore scientist:

NB: How did you find the Bangalore scientists? They seem to have been much moved, God knows by what!

Sri Aurobindo: The supramental, I suppose!

NB: One of them, the hardest nut and a "jewel" of the group, Govinda, was on the point of tears at the farewell! Just think!

Sri Aurobindo: Again the supramental! The supramental is beyond all thinking.

NB: Govinda, the Bangalore scientist, writes that he has written, but no reply! Asks me to enquire. What is the mystery, please? Usual timelessness or uselessness?

Sri Aurobindo: What mystery? Do you imagine I am conducting a voluminous correspondence with people outside? Put that pathetic mistake out of your head. It would have been a marvel and a mystery and a new history begun in the invisible (upstairs) spheres of the Infinite* if I had answered him! I don't even remember what he wrote.

NB: In the letter to me, he challenges God to give him peace, force and faith in this life. Only then will he admit its mulya [value, price], otherwise no good.

Sri Aurobindo: But what mulya is he prepared to pay for these fine things? Does he imagine that it is God's business to deliver these goods on order? Queer kind of business basis for the action of the Divine!

NB: He seems to think that we are striving for moksha

* Two lines of my poem that day were:

"Each moment new histories are begun

In the invisible spheres of the Infinite." - NB.

Page 352

[liberation] or some bliss in the next life! But he does not desire that.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "next life".]

Sri Aurobindo: Why don't you disabuse him of the idea and assure him that we don't care a damn for moksha and less than a damn for the next life?

NB: He wants peace, Force and nothing more; but in this life. Well, can the Divine give them?

Sri Aurobindo: Even if he can, why the deuce should he?

NB: That was precisely what I had thought of writing to Govinda Das. Now I can quote you, toning it down, of course.

Sri Aurobindo: No, sir, you mustn't make it a quotation from me, but you can unload it as your own original merchandise on your unwary customer.⁴⁹

(22) NB living like a cherub chubby:

NB: I couldn't quite catch the meaning of your phrase, "if you fellows give me a chance..." Nowadays we don't see many vital outbursts in the atmosphere.

Sri Aurobindo: O happy blindness!⁵⁰

NB: Now I hear that Y

Sri Aurobindo: You are astonished? Really, you seem to be living like a cherub chubby and innocent with his head in the clouds ignorant of the wickedness of men. I thought by this time the revolts of

NB: ...But the result of Darshan in some quarters leaves me staggered and staggered! I can't imagine such an incident taking place in the Ashram - I mean, of course, N's gripping M's throat. It makes me rather aghast. Coupled with that the incident of R rushing to shoe-beat P. Good Lord! but I suppose they are all in the game!

Sri Aurobindo: You seem to be the most candid and ignorant baby going. We shall have to publish an "Ashram News and Titbits" for your benefit. Have you never heard of N's going for K's head with a powerfully-brandished hammer? Or of his howling challenges to C to come out and face him, till

Page 353

Mother herself had to interfere and stop him? Or of his yelling and hammering in a rage at C's door till Dyuman came and dragged him away? These things happened within a short distance of your poetic ears and yet you know nothing??? N is subject to fits and has always been so. The Darshan is not responsible. And he is not the only howler. What about M herself? and half a dozen others? Hunger strikes? Threats of suicide? not to mention rushes to leave the Ashram etc., etc. All from the same source, sir, and apparently part of the game."

REFERENCES

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

.

Page 354