The letters reveal Nirod's unique relationship with his guru. The exchanges are suffused with a special humour.
Sri Aurobindo : corresp.
Nirodbaran's correspondence with Sri Aurobindo began in February 1933 and continued till November 1938, when Sri Aurobindo injured his leg and Nirod became one of his attendants. The entire correspondence, which was carried on in three separate notebooks according to topics - private, medical, and literary - is presented in chronological order, revealing the unique relationship Nirod enjoyed with his guru, replete with free and frank exchanges and liberal doses of humour. Covering a wide range of topics, both serious and light-hearted, these letters reveal the infinite care Sri Aurobindo devoted to the spiritual development of his disciple.
THEME/S
Please tell me if metre is, after all, not a question of the ear.
Mainly of the ear, but "number" also has something to do with it.
Wasn't the ear the first guide and then metre developed?
Yes, but in developing, metre modified the ear and created in it demands of a more complex kind.
What about Blake? Are his or other great poets' metres, absolutely orthodox?
English is different; it has a freer movement, I suppose, than Bengali. English metre is sometimes strict, sometimes breaks into irregularities.
J says she still feels that terrible pressure when she sits down to write. Is it due to resistance?
I suppose—if it is on the neck—that is the place of the expressing physical or externalising mind. As yet probably there is a strong resistance there—perhaps the result of something there that still expects or desires to write mentally, not mystically.
She was lying in bed trying to concentrate when she saw something like a thin wire coming towards her, with a rapid serpentine movement. The wire seemed to change into a snake. She had a joy out of it. She fears it may presage a bad event.
No need to fear. The wire implies a connection with some source—the snake the energy of that which was coming from the source. A snake is a bad symbol only when it comes from the vital or other lower plane.
D.L. complains of constant stinging pain in the abdomen. It is either ulcer or worms. I am thinking of treating her with a milk diet in alkalies. If ulcer, then it is bound to produce results. On Monday I shall take her for X-ray.
Is it not better to ascertain first by X-ray or otherwise before trying this treatment, as milk diet only may make her weak with a depressed resistance?
I asked S to take Asram food; he agreed but came back saying—"Let me go on one week more with the special diet." What's to be done?
Go on for a week more, since the fellow insists. He may think him self into pains again otherwise.
August 1, 1936
I send you this magnificent poem of Dilip's along with his after-corrections. My impression is that most of the changes have spoiled the beauty of the poem. Do you agree with me?
I have the same impression as you. It is always a little perilous to meddle afterwards with something that has come out in a full inspiration—"improvements" in such cases generally spoil the first spontaneous perfection.
I am again prosaic and gloomy. Everybody is changing here; no change for me.
Everybody is who? Give me the good news.
Must I go on crying and crying?
I hope not. Crying won't hasten the change.
Please put, at least, the shower of poetry on as you did a few days ago. Or is it gone?
It can always come back.
What about my other book lying with you? Can you release it now?
I don't know. Not immediately at least.
You said that if the wrong medicine is given, the Force has to counteract that also...
I only meant that it was so much obstacle to the Force which it has to overcome.
If the medical channel had opened in you like the painting vision, what a great help it would have been for you, and a boon for me!
My dear sir, in that case I should have to do all the doctoring. So I take care not to let the Medico open. Simple measure of prudence.
J says no trouble at all now... He is not willing to take any medicine. Cast him off?
Bile gone? If so can finish.
August 2, 1936
J had never any bile! He complained of pain and weakness.
Ah yes. I was under the impression it was S. I am always mixing them together.
You did not answer my question about the Force. What I asked you was that by the very fact of much obstacle, the Force or the giver of the Force knows that some mistake is being committed. Suppose you give a certain Force, but it fails to produce the desired result, then you say, "Oh that fellow has given wrong medicines—Swine!"
Not at all. The Force (I am out of the picture here) feels a greater obstacle, but need not know that it is due to a wrong medicine. Force and Knowledge are two different things and in the consciousness below supermind may go together or may not.
Swine is inappropriate—it should be some other animal.
August 4, 1936
X, in his latest poem, has used one of my expressions. Suppose his were to be published and then mine—I would be misjudged as borrowing from him. Now far is it justifiable for a poet to take the bhava and expression from others and use them?
Great poets have borrowed from small ones and small poets from great ones, and it is difficult to lay down any law in the matter. But to lift things bodily like that from unpublished poems shown in confidence, is not delicate—nor, I think permissible.
Shall we be petty and mean if we don't show our poems from such fear?
From the normal point of view it would be perfectly justified not to show your things—except of course for the fact that X and N have given you considerable help in forming yourselves as poets; but that is no reason why they should take things from your poems.
Please give the answer from the ordinary as well as the Yogic point of view.
From the Yogic point of view one ought to be indifferent and without sense of ownership or desire of fame or praise. But for that one must have arrived at the Yogic poise—such a detachment is not possible without it. I do not mind R's lifting whole sentences and paragraphs from my writings at the World Conference as his own and getting credit for a new and quite original point of view.
But if I were eager to figure before the world as a philosopher, I would resent it. But even if one does not mind, one can see the impropriety of the action or take measures against its repetition, if one thinks it worth while.
You will see that it is really a problem that concerns all writers, for I am also tempted to take and use others' expressions and bhava but I don't know if I should.
You should not—if for nothing else for the sake of the poetry and right development of your own inspiration.
A's umbilical pain is gone, slight liver pain... She says she wrote to Mother at 3.30 p.m. and since then her pain has stopped. She has these attacks, so I would like to know whether the medicine has done her any good or the Force alone.
I suppose the medicine has done its part.
A worker in the hot water dept. had dysentery 3 weeks ago and was treated at home. Suddenly day before yesterday he had copious vomiting of dark blood. Came to us with chest pain...
Dark blood can't be from the lungs? Not something wrong lower down?
August 5, 1936
What about my poem? I hope it is mentally quite clear!
Very fine indeed, very. You have suddenly reached a remarkable maturity of the poetic power. Which seems to suggest that the periods of sterility were not so sterile after all or were rather an incubation period, a work of opening going on in the inner being behind the veil before it manifested in the outer. Let us hope the same is going on in the direct sadhana.
Today at Pranam I felt a somewhat "blocky" feeling, if you know what I mean?
Yes, thought at first I was afraid you meant you felt blockheaded or felt foolish! but remembered in time the "block" of descent.
Is it the descent of Force?
Usually the feeling comes from a mass of the higher consciousness coming down either as peace or as force.
Dr. Becharlal and I are again strongly suspecting D.L. of a double infection: hookworm with Trichomonas... We'll make another stool examination...
By the way, I understand how hookworms get in, but how do these tropical Technomaniacs or whatever you call them, make their entry on the stage? Food? water? what?
S complains of hunger all the time. Five slices of bread are given in the morning, he wants one more! In spite of it, feels weak etc.
He must have bad assimilation due to liver, so always hungry and no profit from food.
August 7, 1936
If you have thought it is the apparent period of sterility etc. that has produced this "maturity", I am afraid it is not quite so.
I still think so and think that it is quite so.
For, this poem upon which you have based your opinion, was actually started, and one and a half stanzas were completed, on the 25th of July or so, i.e. before "the period of sterility". The rest only was done in these 2 or 3 days.
It is not confined to you or this case but a general psychological principle—the action behind the veil, even the psychologists who do not believe in Yoga have begun to recognise the large part this plays in Nature.
So I'm a little puzzled about the "going in".
I do not remember having said anything about "going in". I believe I spoke of something "going on" behind the veil during the time of apparent sterility in the outer being.
When you said "suddenly" did you mean that the maturity of power has come in fully in this poem?
When I said suddenly I meant as I said, that it appears in these two bigger poems and was not there before. A progress was there, but not this.
I thought that development in poetry has a connection with the development in Yoga as well. But you mention the two separately.
If poetic progress meant a progress in the whole range of Yoga, NK would be a great Yogi by this time. The opening in poetry or any other part helps to prepare the general opening when it is done under the pressure of Yoga, but it is at first something special, like the opening of the subtle vision or subtle senses. It is the opening of a special capacity in the inner being.
Though maturity has come in, the substance and depth are remarkably lacking—I think they've come in J's poems.
There is a much greater ripeness in the thought-substance as well as the rest.
What is more visible and very vivid, it seems to me, is the word-beauty of the poem. It doesn't make one think or stir deeply with the discovery of some hidden treasure.
I don't know exactly what you mean by that—in yourself or in the reader? You say you have not the enthusiasm of creation, so your own feeling in the matter is not conclusive.
All this maturity etc. is all right, only it doesn't thrill me or give me satisfaction... No interest in life or its creative activities, especially when I see that I am the same Man of Sorrows... Please don't taunt me saying that it is all D!
No. D this time is making a valiant attempt to suppress the Man of Sorrows in him and seems so far to have succeeded. I hope you too will soon screw up your energy to the pitch of throwing off this encumbrance.
... I'm now trying to keep myself as busy as possible; it won't allow the mind to feed on those poisons.
Well, that is right—at least it helps.
I don't know whether the Goddess of Poetry will withdraw her boon because I don't care much for it.
She doesn't seem to be doing so.
Anyway, do you understand my psychology and, if you do, will you give some answers, not mystic but mental?
It is quite easy to understand if one realises that the natural being is not of one piece, but made up of parts or quantums or whatever one likes to call it. One part of your mind and vital has the need though not yet the push for the Divine and that need is becoming very prominent—... Another doesn't believe in, or hope for anything. One part of the mind resorts to poetry but cannot wake the vital enthusiasm, because the vital is besieged by the Man of Sorrows. Then there is the man of sorrows himself mixing in everything. Different parts of the mind take different sides and suggest opposite things according as they are pushed by one force or another. As yet no resolution of the central being to put all that into harmony, expel what is to be expelled, change what is to change. I don't know whether you call that mystic or mental answers, but I can't give you any other that would be true.
... Today D.L.'s stools were examined, again there were swarms.
[Sri Aurobindo underlined the word "swarms".]
What's this word? It looks like "swarms"! Swarms of what?
August 8, 1936
I am satisfied with the answers exposing brilliantly the symptoms and providing the diagnosis. Now the prognosis and the treatment.
That is more difficult. Panacea there is, but only one, which you have indicated in your today's poem.27
How should I develop the push, the harmony and resolution of the central being, and how should I wake up the vital enthusiasm for poetry? If there is one workable formula that will be a panacea, so much the better.
For the rest there are several formulas which are not panaceas. The first is to get into touch with your central being and get it into action. That central may be the psychic, it may be the Self above with the mental Purusha as its delegate. Either of these once in action does the harmonising etc.
The second way is to act with your mental will on these things, not allowing yourself to drift and not getting upset by difficulties and checks, calling on the Mother's Force to assist and finally use your will. There are others, but I stop here.
I want urgently that part of the Divine which will help me keep my poise, calm, peace against any assault from the vital quarter...
It is what is trying to come down in the block condition.
D.L. has less pain. Starts normal meals. She asked if she could take oranges and grapes. I said—yes.
Grapes are safe? If she does not wash them in boiling water or a solution of permanganate?
By "swarms" I meant swarms of Trichomonas
The medicine had no effect? But if the Trichomonas are there in quantity, why is it necessary to search for Hookworms?
August 9, 1936
In your yesterday's answer you wrote that I have indicated the panacea in my poem. I thought I spoke of faith and surrender! Is that it?
You described very admirably the attitude of perfect nirbhar28 which is the great secret of the most perfect kind of sadhana.
You have not said how to get into touch with the central being, and get it into action.
There is no how. One decides to do it and one does it.
My mental will itself is weak.
It can be made strong.
I can try to call down the Mother's force, but faith and surrender would require a wonderful Yogic poise and power possible only in born Yogis, I think.
Not at all. A wonderful Yogic poise and power would usually bring self-reliance rather than faith and surrender. It is the simple people who do the latter most easily.
When you spoke of 'poetic power" in my poetry, what did you mean? I asked D. He says "poetic power" means a dynamism, a vigorous living force which we find in Madhusudan... But we find in Shakespeare both power and beauty, while Swinburne has hardly power predominant.
No power in Swinburne?
Did you mean by "poetic power" a power or capacity of expression?
Of course that was what I meant. The other kind of power would not be prefaced by the epithet poetic. One would simply say "there is great power in his style" etc.
August 10, 1936
Dr. Manila! examined D.L... She's extremely weak, he advises complete rest.
I suppose there is no call for her to work.
... Is it possible for R to take her up?
I am asking R. You will have to tell him all about the case.
August 11, 1936
Chand has sent money to buy garlands for you. You can bless him without garlands, can't you?
Yes, of course—quite able.
Jatin has brought me a pair of dhotis. I shall feel highly gratified if you will kindly use one.
I have two drawers packed with dhotis already! Why not use both—your supplies being undoubtedly less?
Do you know what all these people say? That they feel peace, peace everywhere, which one never finds at any other place!
Of course!
Jatin has been saying that Peace is coming as if in waves! Satuda the same, and Dr. Becharlal runs close, if not more! You must be very glad indeed to hear this news.
It is not news! Numbers of people have said the same thing—even carry it to Europe and keep it there in the midst of the crush and confusion.
I wish I could get a little of this long-cherished and much-coveted basis of your Yoga.
It is because you people here, having no infernal shindy outside themselves, create one inside it. The vital can't get on without a shindy—finds life dull otherwise.
August 13, 1936
NK sends you a poem on his Darshan impression.
Kept him.
August 16, 1936
J wants to know why or how the mind-fag has come in and by what attitude or process it can quickly pass off ...
There is nothing serious in it. Very often when the mind has been doing something for a long time (I mean of course the physical mind), something which demands intensity of work or action, not what can be done as a routine, it finds itself unable to do it well any longer. That means that it is strained, needs rest so that the force may gather again. Rest or a variation. A little rest given to it or a variation of work should set it right again.
I thought that one or two hours' work without undue effort might perhaps keep the channel open and at the same time produce no fatigue.
It is not a question of ordinary fatigue by overwork—but of a temporary inability to go on doing the same thing over and over any longer. That is what I mean by mind-fag. It is not the mere writing of poetry of any kind but the intensity necessary to bring down that kind of poetry that is in question. The channel in fact is not working because of the fag—it can work again only after rest. by not forcing oneself.
Dr. Manilal recommends arnica for Mulshankar's pain, and massage.
Massage best. No homeopathy without R's intervention is allowable.
S complains again of vague pains. Dr. Manila! says he must do only light work.
We gave him no work. It is his own spree.
A poem begun on the 6th and completed by Darshan... Well, any remark?
Sorry. Your poem got mixed up with Nolini's papers and I saw it only now. Glanced through but will have to study more carefully. Will return with N's.
Tomorrow, by the way, I am going to burst a little—Attention!
Eh what! Burst? Which way? If you explode, fizz only—don't blow up the Asram.
August 17, 1936
The Asram is quite safe! My explosion will burst me alone, but I will see if the Divine can as well be exploded. I expected very much that your touch would relieve my burden, a little even, or would do something somewhere by which something at least would be tangible outwardly. Well, illusion it has been all...
Man alive (or of Sorrows or whatever may be the fact), how is it you fell on such a fell day for your burst? There has been an explosion, as D merrily calls it, beginning on the 14th but reaching now its epistolary climax and I have been writing sober letters to excited people for the last few hours. Solicit therefore your indulgence for a guru besieged by other people's disturbances (and letters) until tonight. Send back the blessed burst and I will try to deal with it.
My problem is: I have been trying to call down Peace but none comes. I admit that at times a stabdhatā comes down in meditation, but afterwards no peace, not to speak of Ananda etc.
The stabdhata is still the condition which announces the attempt of peace to descend. It is a beginning.
This miserable condition is continuing so long! It drives me to make big efforts in concentration, to push and push, but it seems the vital refuses to cooperate in the sadhana and hence there is no joy.
It is of course that; the mind is pressing the vital by concentration and otherwise, but the vital is not yet prepared to accept peace or renounce agitation and desire.
Is it because the food has been taken away from the vital that it non-cooperates?
Partly that.
Or is it your Man of Sorrows who has besieged it?
The Man of Sorrows only takes advantage of the vital resistance and restlessness to bring in despondency etc. and make things worse.
Who is this Man of Sorrows, really? Is it a force or a being that has possessed me? I feel as if something is keeping me down forcibly.
Yes, it is so. But who it is, is a long story—He has not possessed, but is in control of part of your vital.
Whoever the devil he is, it seems to be impossible for me to dislodge him.
Difficult at present but not impossible.
If it is because of D's company, I'll cut it off from tomorrow.
No. D is less often upset and takes things in a more humorous way.
Or is it due to J's company? But that can't be cut off as the literary connection is there.
Well, I can't say that has nothing to do with it—but cutting off may not make things better.
... I can't even walk, where I want to run. Really I am losing all hope again...
That is the contribution of the Man of Sorrows.
You said "nirbhar is the great secret", [10.8.36] but when one is besieged by so many things: mind restless, vital dead, what shall I do?
"Nirbhar" means reliance on the Divine whatever the condition or the difficulties. "Nirbhar" when all is going well, does not mean much. It is a poise one has to take and you can grow into it as D is growing into it.
Lastly, please ask Mother if I've been doing any wrong movement these 2 or 3 days. I feel some indication of that sort at the Pranam.
Not to her knowledge.
Is the poem done?
Yes. Very good, especially first half. But this flower and bee image has been buzzing about since ages before Kalidas; needs a little more polish to look entirely new.
August 18, 1936
I'm again passing through a period of মন খারাপ29 due to the same old vital trouble.
Ah that মন খারাপ! If you could only get rid of it—face the thing calmly and steadily as something to be eliminated which necessarily takes time but must and will be done!
... Now tell me how I should keep this nirbhar when the vital rises. Rejection? Detachment?
D first—R with D.
How shall I detach myself when a subtle strain of dissatisfaction runs within?
Detach from the dissatisfaction.
Shall I cry out—"Damn it all; don't worry even if the lower vital bursts up. Everything will be all right"?
That is not nirbhar.
I fear all my answers30 are scrappy as well as illegible, but this has been also a fell day (one letter 36 pages vernacular, 2 others each 8 pages of foolscap, others less in size (4, 2, 1 etc.) but ample in number—and this is no-correspondence period!) I have had to race against the old man Time.
August 19, 1936
You simply say "the difficulty is there"! I wonder if anyone else here had to work under such a condition... To "detach"—isn't it something Herculean for me?
Well, but it is not individual to you. Everyone has to do that with his difficulties. Detach means that the Witness in oneself has to stand back and refuse to look on the movement as his own (the soul's own) and look on it as a habit of past nature or an invasion of general Nature. Then to deal with it as such. It may seem difficult, but it comes perfectly well by trying persistently.
If the mind goes on pressing and pressing, will the vital be prepared?
It does in the end.
Otherwise to take up the vital violently like D, doesn't seem possible.
Violently? I don't see how he did that.
To think that I will have to suffer like him for so many years before anything happens, freezes me!
That is not necessary.
If time permits, a comprehensive answer, please.
When time permits.
Mother would like you to go to the Hospital and ask the Doctor there what is really the matter with Swasti and how long they think he will have to stay there. Between doctor and doctor.
August 20, 1936
All your answers for the cure of my troubles have been too strong for me, for you have thrown everything on my great self: "If you could do this, if you could do that, etc!"
No, I have only made suggestions of what the great self could do to help the Force and make an orientation for the Force to work upon and carry out.
When I ask you how to do it, you reply—Oh one simply does it! If one could simply do it, why should I bother you?
One simply does it, means that one tries a certain psychological movement which is known by long experience to be effective and the Force enters into it and one day one finds it done.
Tell me, if I pray for Peace, Calm, Force, Strength, etc., will it be enough or not? After that, to be able to reject, detach, must be done by your Force. That's all I can do, please understand that.
At any rate there must be the acceptance of the rejection or detachment for the Force to use—a kind of will to it. If you simply pray and then say "All right, now, damn it, I have done all that is necessary; I can now lament or indulge"—that makes things a trifle difficult.
On the whole, I feel better today. I could recall after some concentration the nebulous outlines of your face. Something is going to happen?
Yes, of course.
Is it true that a greater and a vaster Force descended this Darshan?
It is not a question of descent. We are nurturing the Force and it grows necessarily stronger and has more effect.
What about Jatin and his wife?
Both of them very well and growing weller since they were here.
I want to ask you a host of questions on the psychology of the affair of D and Y...
By the way, as you got better, D flopped down. Lost his incipient nirbhar and wants to walk off again.
Any time to circulate some Force for poetry?
Yes.
N.B. I send you the lucubrations of the S fellow for your information. I absolutely object to his living in and on the Mother's force—he would be there like his own ball,31 neither melted, nor plastic nor disappeared. Any remarks? Please return the gem as I may have to answer it.
August 21, 1936
I have been longing to ask you the mystery behind J's poetic flowering; but of late you have become awfully cryptic.
That is perhaps because I am becoming more and more supra-mental.
You know her previous works were sporadic and simple with long gaps in between.
That was because she was trying to write literature. That is often the first stage.
When she was asked to compose songs the other day, we found a sudden transformation. Even the first few songs were not very striking, but they seemed to have opened a door and she has entered into your mystic kingdom...
Opened the lyrical gift in her probably—began knocking for the spontaneous song in place of the mind-made article.
What she is writing seems to me exceedingly striking. We don't meet any such original ideas and expressions in Bengali literature.
Of course not—she was not inspired this time by Bengali literature, but by the Faery International.
It is a great mystery to me. Comparing her original turn, expressions, speed, with her past work—what a miraculously rapid development!
But, my dear sir, it often happens like that. I believe you were not here when D's poetry blossomed; but it was quite as sudden. Remember Tagore's description of him as the cripple who suddenly threw away his crutches and began to run and his astonishment at the miracle. Nishikanta came out in much the same way, a sudden Brahmaputra of inspiration. The only peculiarity in J's case is the source she struck—the pure mystic source.
I refuse to believe that it is she who has done it.
Of course she didn't, nor D nor Nishikanta either. It is a way of speaking.
Has the inner mind opened up or what?
A passage opened through it.
Please shed some light on it. If you want it to be kept a secret, I shall keep it—but a few lines on it.
Well, if you think I knew how it's done! I hammer about till I hit the right spot. It hits quick sometimes, that's all.
Note however that there was always in J something that wanted or claimed to belong to another world. Perhaps by the pressure she got into contact with it.
How do you find the poem I am sending you? Does it deserve incineration?
Well, as poetry it is some good—but I can't say it is distinguished or beautiful like the poems you have written since.
You needn't incinerate, but bury it in a drawer somewhere for the moment. Read it again after ten years (Horace's advice).
What about the refrain?
Refrain? Man alive, if all were like the refrain, I should say "Bury, bury—burn, burn."
I have persistently forgotten to send you this letter. Can you give me any light on the subject? Do you know anything about these injections?
[Evening]
[Regarding the letter.] My knowledge of leprosy is practically nil, so I approached Dr. Manilal. He says that since the servant has come in close contact with the family, all the members must take the injections as proposed. Though the treatment is palliative it may produce a greater prophylactic effect, at least the psychological effect.
Good Lord—only that! Psychological effect needs injection?
Dr. Manilal says that servants working for 30 years in leper hospitals did not develop any leprosy. No intimacy in the contact?...
Perhaps unconcern also!
We have shed some light. Enough to illumine the supra mental table?
Umph!
August 23, 1936
Jatin's wife writes to her sister that she is extremely happy here... I can understand Jatin saying something like that, but she knowing nothing about spirituality likes the place so much—miraculous, what?
Why? Plenty of people have felt that. E.g. the Yuvarani comes here full of a secret sorrow for her lost son and goes back very happy.
Jatin had a dream of you as in the photograph, giving him instructions in his structural engineering work!!... It was Sri Aurobindo in his previous form, he says, why?
I suppose, the present Sri Aurobindo having left all engineering instructions to the Mother, the previous Sri Aurobindo had to come and do it in this case.
We see then that Sri Aurobindo has come out, the least hope of which we don't entertain. For another thing, he has come out as an Engineer! Any possibility of the fruition of the dream?
Anyhow what has it to do with coming out? Any number of people meet me in dreams and get instructions or intimations about this or that. It is an activity of the vital plane where I am not in strict retirement—it has nothing to do with any future physical happening.
What's this threat, Sir? You are cryptic because you are becoming more and more supramental! [21.8.36]. For the Supramental's sake, don't be that yet. I have many things to know...
Well, but haven't I told you that the supermental can't be under-stood by the intellect? So necessarily or at least logically, if I become supramental and speak supramentally, I must sound unintelligible to everybody. Q.E.D. It is not a threat, only the statement of a natural evolution.
A carpenter beaten by a rat...
Say, say! I never heard of a rat beating a man before! He ought to go to the criminal court instead of the hospital.
August 25, 1936
At last you have given me an occasion for a question; let it be an occasion for a big reply, what?
My dear sir, what is this extravagant ambition for bigness?
With fifty letters a day raining on me in a "non-correspondence" period, a supramental brevity is all of which I am capable.
You very often say "it is a meeting in the vital plane". Yesterday you said "an activity of the vital plane"—what does it mean? Are all happenings there as true as on the physical plane?
Yes, except that sometimes the record is imperfect—but the happening is true.
Are they intimations of what would happen on the physical plane?
No—the vital plane has an independent life of its own; the physical also.
My being meets you or the Mother in dreams, and receives your blessings. Has it any concrete value—as concrete as the Pranam touch?
What do you mean by concrete? It is concrete there just as the Abyssinian or Spanish wars are concrete here.
Do you mean to say that people getting instructions from you in dreams is as real, effective and correct as if you had written them on paper?
Yes, if the record is correct.
If that be so, does Jatin's meeting mean that his future work here will be engineering?
No, not necessarily.
Or does it mean that even there outside, he will be guided by the Mother?
He may be, if he develops the supraphysical contact.
I am apt to think somewhat slightingly of these vital plane meetings...
You are too physically matter of fact. Besides you are quite ignorant of occult things. The vital is part of what European psychologists sometimes call the subliminal, and the subliminal, as everybody ought to know, can do things the physical cannot do—e.g. solve a problem in a few minutes over which the physical has spent days in vain etc., etc.
When I dream that you are writing big answers or the Mother blessing me profusely, I see exactly the contrary in my book and at the Pranam. Any explanation?
What is the use of the same things happening on both planes? it would be superfluous and otiose. The vital plane is a field where things can be done which for some reason or other can't be done now on the physical.
Please don't write supramentally. If being supramental, you can't write intelligibly, is there any earthly use of that?
Certainly. Your inner self will understand and rejoice while the outer stares and wobbles.
N.B. There are of course hundreds of varieties of things in the vital as it is a much richer and more plastic field of consciousness than the physical, and all are not of equal validity and value—I was speaking above of the things that are valid. By the way, without this vital plane there would be no art, poetry or literature—these things come through the vital before they can manifest here.
August 26, 1936
I had asked R long ago to get "Sudarshan" specially for A. He didn't listen; at the last moment he said he would write to Madras, but wrote to Gujerat, hence the delay.
Very unbusinesslike and slipshod. Writing to Madras means that Mother will have to pay far inferior stuff while she can get free the best quality from Punamchand's father whose speciality it is.
X has inflammation inside the ear, I wanted to apply medicine, but he requires permission.
You can. It was Mother who sent him to you for treatment.
S still complains of slight pain and discomfort. Thinking of trying enema on alternate days.
Yes. Mother thinks it very necessary.
August 30, 1936
Yes, X told me that Mother had sent him, but when I went to apply medicine, he said—ask Mother!
Nonsense! It is implied. Mother doesn't send him to the Dispensary for a promenade or to dance.
It seems J's irregularity of periods has been caused by excessive mental and physical strain due to poetry.
Good Lord! If poetry is to be the parent of irregular menses!
August 31, 1936
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