Nirodbaran's Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo

February 1935

N asked me to tell you that he felt your Presence and Force in the evening very concretely. He does not want any medicine at all; he says that he used to have doubts before, but now they have disappeared.

It is queer. All the force I am putting into it or almost all turns into this subjective form—some objective result is there but still slight, uncertain and slow. Of course the cause is apparent—he has been accustomed to receive subjectively but not accustomed to receive physically. It is not however convenient for the present purpose—except as a preparation for the more objective receptivity.

We are not anxious to stuff him with too much medicine.

Perhaps it is better not to give medicines except Lithiné.

I still can't understand why you should bother to follow us doctors. The Divine can very easily act from the supramental consciousness directly; you don't really need a diagnosis given by ordinary men!

If things were like that, why the deuce should we have Doctors or a dispensary at all? And what would have been the use of your 20,000? We don't propose to do the whole business of the inside and outside off our own bat. You are as necessary for this as Chandulal for the building or others for their work.

Who told you we are acting from supramental consciousness? We aren't and can't until the confounded quarrel with Matter is settled.

If we doctors are important as mediums, you must tell me what our attitude should be in conducting a case.

Faith, openness, an alert and flexible intelligence. I mean by faith especially faith as a dynamic means of bringing about what has to be effected or realised.

February 1, 1935

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Can we help a patient by aspiring for him? Since the Divine Force is already acting on him, how can my aspiration help him further?

It can. Every little helps.

What is this "confounded quarrel with Matter" you mention? Does this refer to the lower vital and physical movements of the sadhaks?

I am not speaking of the sadhaks, but the resistance of the Earth nature itself in its material parts. But these are things you people cannot understand unless you have less childlike notions about things.

I am still wondering why there should be doctors and a dispensary at all! Isn't it a paradox—the Divine sending his disciples to the human physician?

Rubbish! This is a world of the play of forces, sir, and the Doctor is a force. So why should not the Divine use him? Have you realised that if the Divine did everything, there would be no world, only a show of marionnettes?

D also thinks the same as I do. Why is it not possible for the Force to cure the patients? Let the Dispensary go to the devils!

Thank you for your suggestions all the same—especially about the dispensary and the devils. D.S. almost sent it there, but it went to you instead.

Coming back to the cure you effected in D by your Force, X says that it might have been due to a combination of unseen factors—not due to your Force.

How does' he know? Why can't my poor force be there among the invisibles, since invisibles there are? If only visibles were admitted, then of course.

In that case all the trouble I took for D was sheer waste of energy, hallucination and chimera. Hallucination also the fact that D's improvement agreed exactly with the thought I put out in the force? Well, it may be so. Modern science says there is no such thing as cause and effect, only conditions and statistics. But what are these unseen factors? (The Doctor at any rate thought it miraculous. And what about the hundreds of cases of healing by suggestion or other mental forces everywhere?)

You say "natural and inevitable" things make my brain whirl [31.1.35]. But N has been here for so many years, no frivolous company, no lower trouble; on the contrary 7 or 8 hours meditation daily. Yet he was not able to cut his attachment for his dead mother. Then what kind of a sadhana has he done?

What kind of meditation? The only report he gave to me of it was devils. See note on next page.

I have always been at a loss to understand why mere length of meditation should be a title to greatness in Yoga.

Did he ever try? To my knowledge he did not. He was in constant correspondence with wife and son, always thinking about his family, demanding the advent of wife (+ son understood) here in spite of our constant refusals. As for his meditations, in them he was always going to his house, getting attacked there by devils and still returning. Yet you think his keeping attachment unnatural and evitable! Have some common sense.

As for G, I hear that he is preaching the Truth, saying, "Will you accept the Truth from Sri Aurobindo or from me?" What else is insanity!

But he has always been like that.

This fellow has been saying that you have told him that he has played great parts in the Divine Lila, in former births, had beautiful experiences!

Hallo!

How often have I intimated that G was no great clergy. As for experiences, anybody with an occult bent can have experiences. The thing is to know what to do with them.

Am I to say alas, human nature! Or alas, Divine Power!

Excuse me. It was not the Divine Power that told G to be a Teacher It was his ego.

Please don't mind our pungent remarks. We don't look upon you as a Bengali father but as an English one—who is a father and a friend.

That you is who? I decline the adhyaropa⁴² of an English or any father on me!

If you find my ravings too much to answer, let me hear something about the patient N.

What about the patient? It is for you to say, not me.

February 2, 1935

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N is very well today: fresh and cheerful. What about giving him some orange? Yesterday he enjoyed those few bits from D.R.

When Mother has she will give.

If he doesn't take pocket money, can I help him with a few annas?

Yes. But also if you think he needs, Mother can give the pocket money.

M's servant boy came today at 11 a.m, but R was not available. He was asked to come at 4 p.m, but he didn't turn up.

This won't do. He should be told to go to the Government hospital. We can't be responsible for a case like that.

So tomorrow we'll examine him.

If you want to examine, examine him at once, or else send him to the Hospital without farther ado.

February 3, 1935

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N has less sweating, and above all, his general appearance is so changed and he feels it.

We are inclined to agree with you.

He is weak, he says. I stopped soup. But should I increase soup because of flatulence?

Yes, if there is flatulence, soup is best.

Fruits may benefit him. If you think the same, he will require the pocket money for this month, to buy them.

Mother will tell C to send 2 oranges daily. Will that be enough? If more is needed, pocket money can be given.

I incised j's finger and he was quite bold. But funnily enough, while I was bandaging it, he said he was feeling giddy, and fell unconscious!

I think J himself is a little nervous by temperament.

It seems you were a little displeased about my "ado" about M's servant boy?

No, not at all.

Your mentioning "ulcer" made me think.

It was the story of blood-vomiting several times that made Mother suspect ulcer and insist on the hospital.

February 4, 1935

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N is keeping better. Temperature actually came down to 99.4˚, the first time in his illness. He is already aspiring to do his gate duty on Darshan day. What more evidence? Yesterday during meditation he felt a lot of Force on his chest, he said.

It is evidence of a subjective improvement which helps—but we must get the objective one also. If his lungs are improving and temperature [has a] downward tendency then it is all right.

I have a very wonderful colleague in Dr. B. He can't utter two words about you without shedding tears! Is it second childhood? In spite of all this devotion, domestic affairs bind him.

It is not second childhood—he has always been like that. Here or over there looking after his affairs, his bhakti is constant and genuine.

I am simply overjoyed to learn that one day your retirement can really come to an end. We had always a fear that you might never come out. Tagore expressed this sentiment saying that the world has lost you. How can the world be changed without the personal presence of the Incarnate Divine?

You mean to say I am not personally present—I have gone off to the x loka⁴³ already?

You refuse to be a Guru and decline to be a father, though ladies especially think of you as father and call you so. If they come to know of your refusal, I'll have to run with smelling salts from one lady to another!

Father is too domestic and Semitic—Abba⁴⁴ Father! I feel as if I had suddenly become a twin-brother of the Lord Jehovah. Besides, there are suggestions of a paternal smile and a hand uplifted to smite which do not suit me.

Let the ladies "father" me if smelling salts are the only alternative, but let it not be generalised.

But what is the relation you won't decline? Is it something besides the recognised ones in spiritual history?

I don't know. I always prefer something new to the old labels. I will see the Supramental and perhaps find something.

They are saying that a "sweet relation" has been established between you and me. I only hope and pray that it will be sweeter and sweetest.

The sweet relation is all right, but let it be nameless.

I have brought down a verse from heaven on the correspondence like Bahaullah⁴⁵—which proves that if I am not an Avatar, at least I am a prophet. It is I fear full of chhandapatan and bhashapatan,⁴⁶ but it expresses my feelings:

সাধক্গনের হৃদিতলে correspondence করব বলে
যদি জাগতনা পিপাসা,

থাকতাম আমি হাসিমুখে মগ্ন Supramental সুখে
হায়রে হায় কোথায় সে আশা ?⁴⁷

But for heaven's sake, don't show this undivine outbreak to anybody! They will think I am trying to rival Dara⁴⁸ in his lighter poetic moods.

February 5, 1935
[Morning]

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Your humorous verse on the burden of correspondence makes me feel a bit guilty.

I don't mind your correspondence. It is a relief. But when people write four letters a day in small hand closely running to some 10 pages without a gap anywhere and one gets 20 letters in the afternoon and forty at night (of course not all like that, but still!) it becomes a little too too.

Though I admit that you have reclaimed one non-believer by means of your correspondence, the thought of going away is becoming more and more remote. Perhaps this is no consolation to you, for what do you care after all? Men may come and men may go—

But letters go on forever!

February 5, 1935
[Evening]

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Correspondence suspended till after the 21st and resumable only on notice. But under cover of your medical cloak, you can carry on. Only mum about it! Otherwise people might get jealous and give you a headache.

Yesterday X and I had a discussion about the action of your Force. Try as I would, I could not convince him of its reality.

Let me put before you the discussion in dialogue form as it actually took place.

X: I just can't believe that D was cured by Sri Aurobindo's Force, unless I hear to this effect from Sri Aurobindo himself.

Myself: But the facts and figures are there: they show quite clearly that something utterly miraculous happened—an abdominal abscess being cured without any material intervention,—symptoms subsiding, the temperature coming down from 103 degrees to 102, and then dropping to 99. As a doctor, I think, I am in a position to judge these things.

X: Maybe all this happened, but how do you know it was Sri Aurobindo's Force that brought about this sudden change?

Myself: Everybody knows here that Sri Aurobindo's Force is constantly acting on us with a tremendous power. Almost all of us have experienced it one time or another. D was brought here under the Mother's instructions, even though his condition was precarious, so that Sri Aurobindo could act upon it with his Force. So it seems quite obvious that he had been cured by this Force just as others have been. What other blessed force could have acted upon him, and if some force did act, why not the Force under which we are living and which is all the time animating us?

X: If that is so, what about the instances where the Divine Force has failed, and why does it succeed in some cases and not in others?

The mistake is to think that it must be either a miraculous force or else none. There is no miraculous force and I do not deal in miracles. The word Divine here is out of place, if it is taken as an always omnipotently acting Power. Yogic Force is then better; it simply means a higher Consciousness using its power, a spiritual & supraphysical force acting on the physical world directly. One has to train the instrument to be a channel of this force; it works also according to a certain law and under certain conditions. The Divine does not work arbitrarily or as a thaumaturge; He acts upon the world along the lines that have been fixed by the nature and purpose of the world we live in—by an increasing action of the thing that has to manifest, not by a sudden change or disregard of all the conditions of the work to be done. If it were not so, there would be no need of Yoga or time or human action or instruments or of a Master and disciples or of a Descent or anything else. It could simply be a matter for the तथास्तु and nothing more. But that would be irrational if you like and worse than irrational—'childish'. This does not mean that interventions, things apparently miraculous, do not happen—they do. But all cannot be like that.

Myself: I don't see how you can deny the reality of this Force. Were you able to write with such vigour before you came here?

X: Yes, I could work a lot; so much so that people were astounded! Was that Sri Aurobindo's Force?

What is Sri Aurobindo's force? It is not a personal property of this body or mind. It is a higher Force used by me or acting through me.

And Tagore, Lenin, etc. who are giants—is your Divine Force working in them too?

Of course it is a Divine Force, for there is only one force acting in the world, but it acts according to the nature of the instrument. Yogic Force is different from others because it is a special power of the spiritual consciousness.

Myself: It may not be Sri Aurobindo's Force, but how can I exclude the possibility of Divine Force behind? Because one is an atheist, it doesn't mean the Divine is undivine against him!

There was an obvious intervention in the case he speaks of—but the agent or process could only be determined if one knew all the circumstances. Such interventions are frequent; e.g. My uncle's daughter was at her last gasp, the doctors had gone away telling him there was no more to be done. He simply sat down to pray—as soon as he had finished, the death symptoms were suspended, the girl recovered without farther treatment (it was a case of typhoid fever). Several cases of that kind have come within my personal observation.

X: Oh, if you say that everything is being done at the Divine impulsion, I have nothing to say. But you can't say for that matter that I am working because Sri Aurobindo is constantly at my back! (He had admitted this before, I don't know whether for the sake of argument, but he recedes now. What can I say against it?)

I am not very particular about that. It is a personal question and depends on X's feeling. I certainly put force on him for the development and success of his poetry—about the rest I don't want to say anything.

I have marginalised on the Force—to write more completely would need more time than I have tonight. Of course, if it depended on a few cases of illness, it would be a thing of no certitude or importance. If the "Force" were a mere freak or miracle, it would be equally trivial and unimportant, even if well-attested. It is only of importance if it is part of the consciousness and the life, used at all times, not only for illness but for whatever one has to do. It manifests in various ways—as a strength of the consciousness evenly supporting the life and action, as a power put forth for this or that object of the outward life, as a special Force from above drawn down to raise and increase the scope of the Consciousness and its height and transform it not by a miraculous, but by a serious. steady, organised action following certain definite lines. Its effectiveness as well as its action is determined first by its own height and intensity or that of the plane from which it conies (it may be from any plane ranging from the Higher Mind upward to the Overmind), partly by the condition of the objects or the field in which it acts, partly by the movement which it has to effect, general or particular. It is neither a magician's wand nor a child's bauble, but something one has to observe, understand, develop, master before one can use it aright or else—for few can use it except in a limited manner—be its instrument. This is only a Preface.

February 6, 1935

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[Image 2]

I am simply dying to show your divine verse to. D; "heaven's sake" I can't take seriously; you don't mean it either. Besides, I am no believer in heaven, so you will excuse me. No one in our group will think Dara's influence is acting on you!

Well, under careful limitations and in all confidentiality, you may risk the indiscretion.

Your yesterday's letter has given us quite a new and interesting point to think about. Our idea was that the Divine is always omnipotent, independent of all conditions and not limited by the particular plane from which he acts. But you give so many clauses under which the Force can operate successfully! K then seems to be right when he says that if one has not got a particular possibility in him the Divine cannot make him develop in that direction. Pushing this a little farther, I would say that one must have a talent or capacity as a nucleus in him for the spiritual development he is going to have later. One must have it, the Divine cannot make anything out of শূন্যম্⁴⁹

What is শূন্যম্? It is out of the Silence that all things originated All is contained in what you call Shunyam.

But I may be wrong. It again seems possible that the Divine can do these things—even change an atom into a mountain. If he does not, he has reasons of his own for not doing it. But then how is it that you spent so much Force on P but to no avail? Is it that you did not use the supramental Force, which alone can work irresistibly without the necessity of adapting itself to existing conditions?

Certainly, supramental Force was not the force used in that case, it was mental-spiritual. In such cases the object of the Force has always the right to say No. I put the force on him because he said he wanted to change, but his vital refused—as it had the right to do. If nothing in him had asked for the change, I would not have tried it, but simply put another force on him for another purpose.

There may be conditions and qualifications for the success of the Divine Force, but is it not also true that the Divine can rise above all conditions and act, and get a thing done

if he wants to? You make a distinction between the Yogic force and the Divine Force; but is not the former an outcome of the latter?

Of course, but all force is the Divine Force. It is only the egoism of the individual which takes it as his own. He uses it, but it is not his.

By the way, X did not question the reality of your Force for his poetry or other literary activities, but he said he could not admit that all his activities were through and through permeated by your Force, because he used to work with great vigour and energy even before he came here.

Of course not—all the activities cannot be that. It is only in the Yoga realisation that one feels all one's activities to be from the one source—something from above or the Yogashakti or the Guru Shakti or the Cosmic Force or whatever it may be (all names for the same thing in different formations) driving the whole consciousness and being.

Outside life is interdependent—on one's own energy and the environmental stimulus; fame, ambition, social stimulations, and one may thrive very well. But when these conditions are removed, one's whole energy may be paralysed, unless some higher Energy takes him up...

What is one's own energy after all? You mean Nature's energy in you? It may, in new conditions, remain extant in some things, develop in others, fail or change in others. One can't make a rule.

Looking at myself, I wonder how a vitalistic man can pass his days in cellular imprisonment without any suffocation!

That kind of change happens

One may say that a tamasic, indolent man can't be activised by the Divine to that extent.

Of course he can.

Am I really wrong?

No, but there are many sides or aspects to a question

After the 'preface", is any chapter likely to follow, or is it going to be like so many other prefaces—nothing coming after them?

Perhaps in some weeks or some months or some centuries the chapter may follow! But I used the word preface to characterise the nature of what I had written, not in a prophetic sense.

There are two things—Yoga-Force in its original totality, which is that of the Divine spiritual force, always potentially all-powerful, and Yoga force doing its work under the conditions of the evolutionary world here.

It is not a question of "can" or "cannot"⁵⁰ at all. All is possible, but all is not licit—except by a recognisable process; the Divine Power itself imposes on its action limits, processes, obstacles, vicissitudes. It is possible that an ass may be changed into an elephant, but it is not done,—at least physically, because of the lack of a process. Psychologically analogous changes do take place. I have myself in my time changed cowards into heroes and that can be done even without Yogashakti, merely by an inner force. How can you say what is latent in man or what is incurably absent? I have developed many things by Yoga, often even without any will or effort to do so, which were not in my original nature. I may even say that I have transformed my whole nature and it is in many respects the opposite of what I began with. There can be no question about the power to change, to develop, to awaken faculties that were not there before; this power exists already, but it can be raised to an acme by being lifted to the spiritual plane.

The force put on the gentleman you speak of at least made it necessary for him to change if he remained here. He had no will in the vital to change and so did not remain here but went to his fate.

The rest is for the indefinable future. One day I shall certainly try to explain methodically and by examples what the spiritual force is; how it has worked on the earth-plane, how it acts and under what conditions—conditions not rigidly fixed, but plastic and mutable.

February 7, 1935

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If you want seriously to write more on the subject as you hinted, may I point out to you that now is the golden opportunity? After the 21st, you will be again crushed and we shall have to rescue you with difficulty, from the heap of correspondence.

Yes, but I cannot spend these days in elaborate literary production—:I have taken this respite⁵¹ (though I find that letters still comet for more serious work that has been badly impeded since November. So it is only marginals and short comments that I can indulge in.

A.D.⁵² has questioned your placing of Intuition above Reason. My question is whether genuine yogic feelings are not some form of Intuition?

The heart has its intuitions as well as the mind and these are as true as any mental perceptions. But neither all feelings nor all mental perceptions nor all rational conclusions can be true.

Some would, like A.D., perhaps consider Reason to be the sole arbiter. But if the question be the quest of Truth, I should say that feeling or intuition should be more reliable than reason, especially where instances are not lacking that reason is not infallible and feelings have as much claim to certitude as reason...

How can Reason be the sole arbiter? Whose reason? The reason in different men comes to different, opposite or incompatible conclusions. We cannot say that Reason is infallible, any more than feeling is infallible or the senses are infallible.

If someone refuses to accept my feeling as a proof of something, since it is not based on reason, but when I get a confirmation from you in support of the truth of my feeling, then he accepts it, must I not say that his reason is a less sure guide than my feeling?

Your feeling is a guide for you until it leads you towards the Truth—but it is difficult for another-to accept your feeling as a guide—he must find out things for himself.

February 8, 1935

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We are a little puzzled when you give your own example to prove your arguments and defend your views, because that really proves nothing. I need not explain why: what Avatars can achieve is not possible for ordinary mortals like us to do. So when you say that you had a sudden "opening" in the appreciation and understanding of painting, or that you freed your mind from all thoughts in three days, or transformed your nature, it is very poor consolation for us. Then again, when you state that you developed something that was not originally there in your nature, can-it not be said that it was already there in your divya amsa?⁵³

I don't know what the devil you mean. My sadhana is not a freak or a monstrosity or a miracle done outside the laws of Nature and the conditions of life and consciousness on earth. If I could do these things or if they could happen in my Yoga, it means that they can be done and that therefore these developments and transformations are possible in the terrestrial consciousness.

There are many who admit that faculties which are latent can be developed, but they maintain that things which are not there in latency cannot be made manifest. My belief is that even that can be done. The Divine is everywhere, and wherever he is, there everything exists. Still, I don't think that I could be turned into, say, an artist or a musician!

How do you know that you can't

As for your statement, "All is possible, but all is not licit—except by a recognisable process... It is possible that an ass may be changed into an elephant, but it is not done, at least physically, because of the lack of a process", people say that there is no point In saying this, because it is no use knowing that a thing can be done when it is not licit, and is therefore not done.

[Sri Aurobinda made the following brief marginal comment on this remark but gave a longer answer to it at the end of the letter.] You had said it can't be done or somebody had said it.

About your changing "cowards into heroes", they put forward the same "latency theory". True, it is not possible to know what is latent or what is not, but that does not refute either theory.

How do they prove their theory—when they don't know what is or is not latent? In such conditions the theory can neither be proved nor refuted. To say "O, it was latent" when a thing apparently impossible is done, is a mere post factum explanation which amounts to an evasion of the difficulty.

They state very strongly that a servant of the Asram, like Muthu, for example, cannot be changed into a Ramakrishna, or a Yogi for that matter, even by the Divine.

If he were, they would say "O, it was latent in him".

Well, Ramakrishna himself was an ignorant, unlettered rustic according to the story.

Another point, one can't say categorically and absolutely that the Divine is omnipotent, because there are different planes from which he works. It is when he acts from the Supramental level that his Power is omnipotent.

If the Divine were not in essence omnipotent, he could not be omnipotent anywhere—whether in the supramental or anywhere else. Because he chooses to limit or determine his action by conditions, it does not make him less omnipotent. His self-limitation is itself an act of omnipotence.

The fact that P was not changed by the mental-spiritual force put on him proves that.

It does not prove it for a moment. It simply proves that the omnipotent unconditioned supramental force was not put out there any more than it was when Christ was put on the cross or when after healing thousands he failed to heal in a certain district (I forget the name) because people had no faith (faith being one of the conditions imposed for his working) or when Krishna after fighting eighteen battles with Jarasandha⁵⁴ failed to prevail against him and had to run away from Mathura.

Why the immortal Hell should the Divine be tied down to succeed in all his operations? What if failure suits him better and serves better the ultimate purpose? What if the gentleman in question had to be given his chance as Duryodhan was given his chance when Krishna went to him as ambassador in a last effort to avoid the massacre of Kurukshetra?⁵⁵ What rigid primitive notions are these about the Divine! And what about my explanation of how the Divine acts through the Avatar? It seems all to have gone into water.

By the way about the ass becoming an elephant—what I meant to say was that the only reason why it can't be done is because there is no recognizable process for it. But if a process can be discovered whether by a scientist (let us say transformation or redistribution of the said ass's atoms or molecules—or what not) or by an occultist or by a Yogi, then there is no reason why it should not be done. In other words certain conditions have been established for the game and so long as those conditions remain unchanged certain things are not done—so we say they are impossible, can't be done. If the conditions are changed, then the same things are done or at least become licit—allowable, legal, according to the so-called laws of Nature,—and then we say they can be done. The Divine also acts according to the conditions of the game. He may change them, but he has to change them first, not proceed, while maintaining the conditions, to act by a series of miracles.

February 9, 1935

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[Image 3]

Excuse my writing today, since all days are Sundays for you it is all right, I suppose.

The whole Asram seems to reason in the same way and to draw the farther consequence that the perpetual Sunday is the proper day for each writing his special letter to me! What a touching proof of unanimity and solidarity in the communal mind!

You say that since "these things"⁵⁶ have been possible in you, they are possible in the earth-consciousness. Quite true; but have they been done? Has any sweeper or street beggar been changed into a Buddha or a Chaitanya by the Divine? We see in the whole history of spirituality only one Christ, one Buddha, one Krishna, one Sri Aurobindo and one Mother. Has there been any breaking of this rule? Since it has not been done, it can't be done.

The question was not whether it had been done but whether it could be done. The street-beggar is a side-issue. The question was whether new faculties not at all manifested in the personality up to now in this life could appear, even suddenly appear, by force of Yoga. I say they can and I gave my own case as proof. I could have given others also. The question involved is also this—is a man bound to the character and qualities he has come with into this life—can he not become a new man by Yoga? That also I have proved in my sadhana, it can be done. When you say that I could do this only in my case because I am an Avatar (!) and it is impossible in any other case, you reduce my sadhana to an absurdity and Avatarhood also to an absurdity. For my Yoga is done not for myself who need nothing and do not need salvation or anything else, but precisely for the earth-consciousness, to open a way to the earth-consciousness to change. Has the Divine need to come down to prove that he can do this or that or has he any personal need of doing it? Your argument proves that I am not an Avatar but only a big human person. It may well be so as a matter of fact, but you start your argument from the other basis. Besides, even if I am only a big human person, what I achieve shows that that achievement is possible for humanity. Whether any street-beggar can do it or has done it is a side-issue. It is sufficient if others who have not the economic misfortune of being street-beggars can do it.

What a wonderful argument! Since it has not been done, it cannot be done! At that rate the whole history of the earth must have stopped long before the protoplasm. When it was a mass of gases, no life had been born, ergo, life could not be born—when only life was there, mind was not born, so mind could not be born. Since mind is there but nothing beyond, as there is no supermind manifested in anybody, so supermind can never be born. Sobhanallah!⁵⁷ Glory, glory, glory to the human reason!! Luckily the Divine or the Cosmic Spirit or Nature or whoever is there cares a damn for the human reason. He or she or it does what he or she or it has to do, whether it can or cannot be done.

Kindly excuse the impudence of the next question; it has been hovering at the back of my mind for some time. Can a Muthu or a sadhak be ever a Sri Aurobindo, even if he is supramentalised? I say that it is absolutely impossible, impossible, a thousand times so.

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

If anybody comes and says "Why not?" I would answer, "You had better rub some Madhyam Narayan oil⁵⁸ on your head."

I have no objection to that. Plenty of the middle Narayan is needed in this Asram. This part of your argument is perfectly correct—but it is also perfectly irrelevant.

And how can it be otherwise? You are looked upon by us here, and even by many outside, as a full Incarnation of the Divine. The sadhaks here at best are misty sparks of the Divine. I cannot by any empyrean flight of imagination conceive of this possibility even for a second.

The psychic being is more than a spark at this stage of its evolution. It is a flame. Even if the flame is covered by mist or smoke, the mist or smoke can be dissipated. To do that and to open to the higher consciousness is what is wanted, not to become a Sri Aurobindo or equal to the Mother. But if we are the Divine, what is the harm of evolving into a portion of the Divine, living in the divine Consciousness even if in a lesser degree? No middle Narayan will then be needed for anybody's head.

Once when Y had said she wanted to be like the Mother—you thundered saying, "How can it be? That is an ambition!" Do you say now it's possible?

Certainly not, it is not intended and I never said that [she] could as a practical matter.

All this is really too much for me. Please give a more direct answer—is it possible or not? Can a Muthu be changed into a being as great as an Avatar? If he can be, I have nothing further to say ; if not, there is a limit to the omnipotence of the Divine. It is for this reason that I said that your own example doesn't prove much.

Not at all. You are always making the same elementary baby stumble. It is not because the Divine cannot manifest his greatness anywhere, but because it is not in the conditions of the game, because he has chosen to manifest his centrality in a particular line that it is practically impossible.

Next point: it is hoped that the sadhaks will be supramentalised. Since it is a state surpassing the Overmind, am I to deduce that the sadhaks would be greater than Krishna, who was the Avatar of the Overmind level? Logically it follows, but looking at others and at myself, I wonder if such a theory will be practically realised. Past history does not seem to prove it. In Krishna's time, no disciple of his was a greater spiritual figure than the preceding Avatar Rama, even though Krishna was an Avatar of a higher plane.

What is all this obsession of greater or less? In our Yoga we do not strive after greatness. It is not a question of Sri Krishna's disciples, but of the earth-consciousness—Rama was a mental man, there is no touch of the overmind consciousness (direct) in anything he said or did, but what he did was done with the greatness of the Avatar. But there have since been men who did live in touch with the planes above mind—higher mind, illumined mind, Intuition. There is no question of asking whether they were "greater" than Rama ; they might have been less "great", but they were able to live from a new plane of consciousness. And Krishna's opening the overmind certainly made it possible for the attempt at bringing Supermind to the earth to be made.

I would not mind your fury in revenge if only you would crush me with a convincing assault. I hope to close the chapter on "Divine Omnipotence" with this last letter, but you keep me hoping with that promise of yours to write at length some day—

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

More seriously. I have not stated that any Muthu has equalled Ramakrishna and I quite admit that Muthu here in ipsa persona has no chance of performing that feat. I have not said that anyone here can be Sri Aurobindo or the Mother—I have pointed out what I meant when I objected to your explaining away my sadhana as a perfectly useless piece of Avatarian fireworks. So in my comment on the Muthu logic, I simply pointed out that it was bad logic—that someone quite ignorant and low in the social scale can manifest a great spirituality and even a great spiritual knowledge. I hope you are not bourgeois enough to deny that or to contend that the Divine or the spiritual can only manifest in somebody who has some money in his pockets or some University education in his pate? For the rest as I myself have been pointing out all the time there is a difference between essential truth and conditional truth, paramartha and vyavaharika, the latter being relative and conditional and mutable. In mathematics one works out problems in infinite and in unreal numbers which exist nowhere on earth and yet these are extremely important and can help scientific reasoning and scientific discovery and achievement. The question of a Muthu becoming a Ramakrishna, i.e. a great spiritual man may look to you like being an exercise in unreal numbers or magnitudes because it exceeds the actual observable facts in the case of this Muthu who very evidently is not going to be a great spiritual man—but we were arguing the matter of essential principle. I was pointing out that in the essentiality all things are possible—so you ought not to say the Divine cannot do this or that. But at the same time I was pointing out too that the Divine is not bound to show his omnipotence without rhyme or reason when he is working by his own will under conditions. For by arguing that the Divine cannot, that he is impotent, that he cannot do what has never yet been done etc., you deny the possibility of changing conditions, of evolution, of the realisation of the unrealised, of the action of Divine Power, of Divine Grace, and reduce all to a matter of rigid and unalterable status quo. Which is an insolent defiance to both fact and reason (!) and suprareason. See now?

About myself and the Mother,—there are people who say, "If the supramental is to come down, it can come down in everyone, why then in them first? Why should we not get it before they do? Why through them, not direct?" It sounds very rational, very logical, very arguable. The difficulty is that this reasoning ignores the conditions, foolishly assumes that one can get the supramental down into oneself without having the least knowledge of what the supramental is and so supposes an upside-down miracle—everybody who tries it is bound to land himself in a most horrible cropper as all have done hitherto who tried it. It is like thinking one need not follow the Guide, but can reach up to the top of the mountain from the narrow path one is following on the edge of a precipice by simply leaping into the air. The result is inevitable.

About greater and less, one point. Is Captain John Higgins of S.S. Mauretania a greater man than Christopher Columbus because he can reach America without trouble in a few days? Is a university graduate in philosophy greater than Plato because he can reason about problems and systems which had never even occurred to Plato? No, only humanity has acquired greater scientific power which any good navigator can use or a wider intellectual knowledge which anyone with a philosophic training can use. You will say greater scientific power and wider knowledge is not a change of consciousness. Very well, but there are Rama and Ramakrishna. Rama spoke always from the thinking intelligence, the common property of developed men; Ramakrishna spoke constantly from a swift and luminous spiritual intuition. Can you tell me which is the greater? the Avatar recognised by all India? or the saint and Yogi recognised as an Avatar only by his disciples and some others who follow them?

February 10, 1935

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

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

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

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

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

The cream = the persiflage—the rest is the solemn part of the argument.

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

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

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

" " 2) Because Sri Aurobindo is an Avatar, his sadhana can have no meaning for humanity.

3) What happens in Sri Aurobindo's sadhana cannot happen in anybody else's sadhana (i.e. neither descent, nor realisation, nor transformation, nor intuitions, nor budding of new powers or faculties)—because Sri Aurobindo is an Avatar and the sadhaks are not.

4) A street beggar cannot have any spirituality or at least not so much as, let us say, a University graduate because, well, one doesn't know why the hell not.

5) (and last because of want of space) Because I am a doctor, I can't see a joke when it is there.

N's temperature is varying from 98˚6-99˚2.

Why the deuce doesn't it become normal? What about his blessed lungs?

He wants to come to evening meditation, will he?

Depends on you. The nights are not yet quite warm and he would be there for a long time.

February 11, 1935

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But how terrifying is your "Look here"! What I have heard about your extreme seriousness in former days,⁵⁹ is quite enough not to invite it farther on my poor head!

Bad logic again! when I write "Look here!" it means I am not serious, however terrifying I may be.

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

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

G.L. came for glycerine. Rajangam asked me to see his throat, since he has been going on applying it mechanically. I thought it was not my business in absence of any complaint from him. There is chronic catarrh which subsides with present remedies, he says. Shall we use stronger throat-paints? R says that it is our duty to see how a man is getting on, even though he doesn't himself volunteer for examination or treatment.

R's theory is excessive. We are doubtful about the advisability of stronger paintings—it tends to dull down the natural resistance in the throat.

February 12, 1935

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Excuse me—I did not say that a street beggar or a proletarian can't manifest a great spirituality; I know that there have been cases where fishermen, barbers and robbers have been transformed into spiritual men by the touch of saints, prophets and Avatars. So I don't deny the action and the effectiveness of the Divine Power.

Then why bring in the poor street-beggar at all?

But others say—and it was the central question—that wherever the Divine Power has successfully acted upon and miraculously changed those who were in their external nature robbers and social pariahs, there was probably in them, interiorly, something latent. And they say—excuse my reiteration—that from those who have evidently no music or poetry latent in them the Divine cannot bring out these elements in spite of His omnipotence.

What is the use of this argument based on a "probably"? You say that in one in whom poetry and music are not evident, the omnipotent Divine is impotent to create poetry and music. Yet in one in whom virtue and sainthood is not evident at all, criminals, debauchees, etc., he can produce sainthood and virtue. When it appears, it is supposed to have been "probably" latent. But why can't poetry and music also be "probably" latent even when they are not evident? To say that only moral capacities are latent and mental capacities cannot be, is a sheer absurdity. There are plenty of examples of particular mental capacities manifesting in men who had them not before—A man makes one magnificent speech in his life, writes one or two splendid poems—all the rest is either silence or twaddle. The eye dull to beauty of painting becomes aware of line and colour; the man who was "no good" at logic or philosophy can develop into a logician or a philosopher. When he was "no good" these capacities were not "evident",—they become evident only when they appear.

Moreover, what is meant by latency—where do these things lie in their latency? If you say in the surface mind, then show me how their secret existence can be discovered while they are still latent. Otherwise how can we affirm an undiscoverable latency? If you say it is in the subliminal, I answer that the subliminal is the inner being which is open to the universal and plastic to it. All things exist in the universal, so it is impossible to say what will or will not manifest in the inner being, once the universal acts on it.

If the Divine is omnipotent, he can do it. If he can't do it, he is not omnipotent. What is this absurd self-contradiction of an Omnipotent who is impotent? If the Divine does not, it is because he does not choose to for one reason or another and I have tried to explain to you how the thing works—it is because he conditions his own working to suit his own self-made law and purpose.

When I argue with these people I say that maybe these things are latent, but even if they are not, the Divine can make them manifest if He chooses to. "Then you mean to say", they reply, "that a Muthu can be metamorphosed into a saint or an Avatar? A very big jump indeed!" I tell them, "Leave out the Avatars; they are perilous examples. But a Muthu can surely be turned into a great spiritual man by the omnipotent Divine; that is quite possible." Then these people answer, "Yes, maybe it is possible, but we are in no way wiser for it, because it is not done".

Now we don't know what is latent and what is not latent, but great Yogis and Avatars do; so we request you to tell us what is meant by mūkam karoti vācālam,⁶⁰ and whether the Divine can sow a seed in a barren, unproductive plot of land and reap the harvest of music, poetry and spirituality out of it, or whether He brings these things out from seeds which are already there in the soil—latent?

It means exactly what it says—that a man in whom there was no "evident" capacity, can suddenly or rapidly manifest that capacity by the Divine Grace. Indeed such things happen even without the direct intervention of the Divine Grace, so a fortiori the Grace can do it. He can make the barren unproductive land productive and fertile. Even a man can do that, say, Mussolini or the Japanese agriculturist. Seeds are thrown into the soil—they don't lie there for a thousand years and then sprout. But first make clear what is meant by the soil? The surface man? The subliminal man? In every human being there are these two, and if you can say something about the first, how much can you say about the other?

The examples of an unlettered Ramakrishna or a St. Peter and others do not prove much; one may say that big spiritual figures can and do take birth in humble social disguises. When all is said and done, the "latent" theory cannot be entirely waved aside. It seems that the Divine too usually follows the path of least resistance—I mean he brings out generally those tendencies and capacities that one is born with, that is, things that are latent.

It is a mere word—this "latent". It is like the materialist's "coincidence" and "hallucination" to explain away the appearance of the supernormal. At least it is so unless you define its action and modalities.

Certainly, it is the usual case. But the usual is not the limit of the possible.

Now, about your personal example. You speak of the evolution theory to prove that "it can be done", though the domain I touched upon was only the spiritual. If the scientists say that man has not been able to create living things up to now, and therefore he will not be able to do so in the future—that "it can't be done", what will be your answer? And if similarly, I say that a Tom, Dick or Harry cannot be a Rama, Krishna or Sri Aurobindo, what reply will you give?

I have brought in the evolution theory or rather fact of evolution, to disprove your argument that because a thing has not been done, it is thereby proved that it could not be done. I don't understand your argument. If a scientist says that, he is using bad logic. I have never said it can't be done. I dare say some day in the right conditions the creation of life will become possible.

They may not be Ram or Krishna or Sri Aurobindo, but they may become a spiritualised super-Tom, super-Dick or super-Harry. I have answered about the Avatar.

I have never said that you are only a big human person. On the contrary, you are not, and hence nobody can be like you. Nevertheless, I don't quite follow what you mean when you state that whatever you achieve is possible for humanity to achieve, your attainments opening the way for others to follow.

It is singular that you cannot understand such a simple thing. I had no urge towards spirituality in me, I developed spirituality. I was incapable of understanding metaphysics, I developed into a philosopher. I had no eye for painting—I developed it by Yoga. I transformed my nature from what it was to what it was not. I did it by a special manner, not by a miracle and I did it to show what could be done and how it could be done. I did not do it out of any personal necessity of my own or by a miracle without any process. I say that if it is not so, then my Yoga is useless and my life was a mistake—a mere absurd freak of Nature without meaning or consequence. You all seem to think it a great compliment to me to say that what I have done has no meaning for anybody except myself—it is the most damaging criticism on my work that could be made.

If a man has transformed his nature, he couldn't have done it all by himself, as you have done.

I also did not do it all by myself, if you mean by myself the Aurobindo that was. He did it with the help of Krishna and the Divine Shakti. I had help from embodied sources also.

I should say that Avatars are like well-fitted, well-equipped Rolls Royce machines.

All sufficient to themselves—perfect and complete from the beginning, hey? Just roll, royce and ripple!

They do have plenty of difficulties on their journey, but just because they are like Rolls Royce they can surmount them—whilst the rest of humanity is either like loose and disjointed machines or wagons to be dragged along by Avatars and great spiritual personages. Floating on the heights of the Overmind, you have overlooked what this earth-bound clod crawling over low plateaus has meant.

Great Scott! What a penal servitude for the great personages and the Avatars! And where are they leading them? All that rubbish into Paradise? How is that any more possible than creating a capacity where there was none? If the disjointed machines cannot be jointed, isn't it more economical to leave them where they are, in the lumber-shed?

I don't know about Avatars. Practically what I know is that I had not all the powers necessary when I started, I had to develop them by Yoga, at least many of them which were not in existence in me when I began, and those which were I had to train to a higher degree. My own idea of the matter is that the Avatar's life and actions are not miracles, and if they were, his existence would be perfectly useless, a mere superfluous freak of Nature. He accepts the terrestrial conditions, he uses means, he shows the way to humanity as well as helps it. Otherwise what is the use of him and why is he here?

I was not always in the overmind, if you please. I had to climb there from the mental and vital level.

Really, Sir, you have put into my mouth what I never mentioned or even intended to.

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

Let me remind you of what I wrote about the Avatar. There are two sides of the phenomenon of Avatarhood, the Divine Consciousness behind and the instrumental personality. The Divine Consciousness is omnipotent but it has put forward the instrumental personality in Nature, under the conditions of Nature, and it uses it according to the rules of the game—though also sometimes to change the rules of the game. If Avatarhood is only a flashing miracle, then I have no use for it. If it is a coherent part of the arrangement of the omnipresent Divine in Nature, then I can understand and accept it.

As for the Muthu affair, that was only a joke as ought to have been clear to you at once. Nobody has any intention of making Muthu a saint or an Avatar. But that is only because the Divine is not going to play the fool, not because he is impotent. Muthu's only business in life is to prepare himself for something better hereafter and exhaust some of his lower tendencies in the meantime. That is not the question—the question is whether as a general rule rigid and unalterable man is bound down to his outward nature as it appears to be built at the moment and even the Divine cannot or will not under any circumstances change it or develop something new in it, something not yet "evident", not yet manifested, or is there a chance for human beings becoming more like the Divine? sâdrishyamukti, sâdharmyam âgatâḥ.⁶¹ If not, there is no use in anybody doing this Yoga; let the Krishnas and Ramakrishnas rocket about gloriously and uselessly in the empty Inane and the rest wriggle about for ever in the clutch of the eternal Devil. For that is the logical conclusion of the whole matter.

February 13, 1935

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

Can you not understand that it was the natural logical. result of the statements made on either side about the unbridgeable distance between "Man Divine" and the human being moving in, the darkness towards the Divine? If you admit the utility of my sadhana, the controversy ceases. But so long as you declare that what I have done in my sadhana has no connection with what can be done, I shall go on beating you. (What the Avatar says in the "Essays", is only an explanation of the Gita; it is not the full statement of the issue.) But still if you read three or four chapters there; you will get some idea of the general principles. For the rest I propose that all discussion be postponed till after the 21st (not immediately after). This will give time for you to clear your ideas and for me to pursue my "Avataric" sadhana (not for myself, but for this confounded and too confounded earth race).

N was looking a little tired, Mother says. If it is necessary for hint to have S again, Mother can spare her.

February 13, 1935

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I accept your proposal of postponement and send this last letter, which incidentally brings to an end the topic of latency and omnipotence. We shall all be anxiously waiting to hear what you have gained in two weeks for founded earth race" which you always seem to have such great love. (please don't forget this confounded little earth creature.)

Now, I would like to mention one things more. Sometimes I think that the Avatar's work,—Buddha's sadhana, Christ's preaching about the Kingdom of Heaven, etc.—were not so unselfish. I don't mean that they did anything for personal gain; nevertheless, it was a kind of selfishness—let us say of the noblest kind.

No objection—if to do things for the Divine in the world rather than for individual gain is a high selfishness, that is all right. Only selfishness usually means doing something for one's own sole profit.

Considerably subdued after the beating I received, I am beginning to understand what you say about omnipotence, the conditions of the game that have to be observed, latency, etc. This letter is not to dispute any of the things you have stated, but just to express that I am boiling inside with impotent rage to see how you have "unfairly" cornered me with the very arguments I was maintaining all the while. Alas! my pen derives its power only from terrestrial planes!

You were the reporter of the discussion, so naturally you had to be the whipping boy for all sides. You can't complain of that. There must be somebody to tilt at—otherwise how the deuce is the argument to be done?

I have, however, jotted down a few points for you to see.

Point No 1. I never said that only moral capacities can be latent, and not mental.

No, but it was implied in the argument to which you gave voice. It may not have been your argument, but what does that matter?

Point No 2. I did not say that poetry or music, or any art not evident, cannot be manifested. I distinctly used the word latent, and not evident.

Evident is the opposite of latent; so "not evident" or "evidently not there" as you put it is equal to "latent"—my use of the word is therefore perfectly apposite.

Our point was that faculties not yet evident may be made evident because they may be unmanifest, latent, in some inner region of the being ; just as in Shunyam everything exists, so also in man—whatever comes out of him.

How can they be evident when they are latent? "Latent" means "hidden", therefore not evident. When you say that a capacity is evidently not there, you mean only that to all evidence it is not there = there is no evidence of its being there to the observer, ergo, the observer concludes that it is not there. All that you can really say is that it appears to be non-existent—you cannot say with certitude more than that.

The whole discussion collapses if we deny that the unevident can be made evident.

You said "people who have evidently no music in them"—that can only mean people in whom music is not evident—for none can say whether it is or is not there latent.

It does so also if you admit that the unevident can be made evident.

By latency we mean what is not evident, that is, not on the surface, but somewhere behind or below. If it is in the surface mind, it is no longer latent, because one can say with some certitude that such faculties exist, though not quite developed yet—that is, neither latent nor fully evident.

Evidently not there on the surface, but how can you say that it is evidently not there below?

You say, if I understand you right, that since the inner being is open to the universal, anything can manifest through it even if it is not there latent ; you further add that it is impossible to say what will or will not manifest once the universal acts upon it. But is this impossible for Yogis also? For example, can't you say whether a man has a capacity for Yoga or for something else? Do you simply gamble when you accept someone?

I have never said anything about how I choose people. I was answering the argument that what has not been or is not in manifestation, cannot be. That was very clearly the point in the discussion—that the Divine cannot manifest what is not yet there—even He is impotent to do that. He can only manifest what is either already manifest or else latent in the field (person) he is working in. I say no—he can bring in new things. He can bring it in from the universal or he can bring it down from the transcendent. For in the Divine cosmic and transcendent all things are. Whether He will do so or not in a particular case is quite another matter. My argument was directed towards dissipating this "can't, can't" with which people try to stop all possibility of progress.

You have raised another new point about the universal.

These are not new points, they are as old as the hills.

You can cut me, Sir, or beat me, but don't forsake me. In imitation of the librarian of my College who came out with a similar appeal when the professor of English caught him smoking one day.

Never! But beat—a lot.

I repeat—a little pathetically—that my brain is sclerotic and psychic smoky; no intellect and no Yogic capacity, as you yourself must have realised by making "word-punctures".

Well, to see that they are non-evident shows you at once that they are latent and will be evident and even if they are not latent they are waiting for you in the universal! So in every blessed way you are very quite all right. Be consoled therefore.

Rather a long letter, because a closing one. When will these two weeks be over! Give me a little extra force for doing something, just to keep me out of mischief—an idle brain is the devil's workshop. Who knows what I'll be up to!

Man, don't talk lightly like that of the devil. He is too active to be trifled with in that way. My devils? they are only expletive.

By the way, Mother, no chance for me to see you tomorrow—the anniversary of my arrival?

Mother has 2 birthdays (not her own, of course) and an interview tomorrow morning. I am afraid your train can pass only when the line is clear.

N is straining himself too much. It would be advisable to let S look after him, but as you see she is unwilling to give up work altogether.

The work can be so arranged that she will be there when he most needs her. They can arrange that between them.

February 15, 1935

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It is neither a discussion nor a medical report; but you may take it, if you like, as a medical report of my present mental-spiritual condition...

I am unhappy and I don't know why. To put it medically, there is some hidden focus of infection, disseminating slow and mild but constant toxins of unhappiness in the system.

Well, but hang it all If there is no "why", then "why" be "unhappy"?

Is it in "the system" or in the air? Endemic? epidemic? You seem to be only one of many cases.

I felt an immense joy at the Darshan [on February 21st], but it ebbed away as soon as I came down.

It sounds like facilis descensus Averno.⁶² But after all downstairs and Erebus are not the same thing.

There are some Yogis, I hear, who are in bliss during meditation, but when they come down they are swallowed up by the lower nature, and to escape from this they at once leap up to their static sublimity. Unfortunately I can't rush up again till August [15th—the next Darshan]. Will you kindly come down and help the poor amateur Yogi out of these inexplicable meshes?

Come down? into Erebus? No, thank you—I might become like the said Yogis.

But what is all this? We count minutes and hours for the Darshans and when they come and go, what kind of reaction do they leave in the being? and why?

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "why".] It must be like your unhappiness—no why to it.

At present I am only sleeping and sleeping, no aspiration, no will, nothing—shunyam, void! Have I set the devil on my track by my boasting?

Please save me from this Dilipian despair.⁶³

Which boasting?

But why hug despair without a cause—Dilipian or other? Come to your senses and develop a Nirodian jollity instead (not necessarily Mark Tapleyan,⁶⁴ though that is better than none). Laugh and be fat—then dance to keep the fat down—that is a sounder programme.

The Overmind seems so distant from us, and your Himalayan austerity and grandeur takes my breath away, making my heart palpitate!

O rubbish! I am austere and grand, grim and stern! every blasted thing that I never was! I groan in unAurobindian despair when I hear such things. What has happened to the common sense of all you people? In order to reach the Overmind it is not at all necessary to take leave of this simple but useful quality. Common sense by the way is not logic (which is the least commonsense-like thing in the world), it is simply looking at things as they are without inflation or deflation—not imagining wild imaginations—or for that matter despairing "I know not why" despairs.

February 23, 1935

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Your grandeur and austerity imposed themselves not on this commonsense-lacking poor man alone, but on others too. I will say then that common sense is highly uncommon like yogic faculties. However, I am waiting to write in detail as soon as the signal is down.

Common sense is exceedingly uncommon in this Asram. Sometimes I think the Mother and myself alone have our stock left unexhausted and all the rest have sent theirs flying sky high. However!

Our "poisoned" patient V has, to our surprise, recovered. Our medical authority Says that castor oil seeds are highly toxic and that 10 seeds are the extreme limit. This chap took more than three times 10! Is medical science mistaken or has your Force worked or is it the antidote of cow dung given by some villagers that did the miracle?

Perhaps it was Force + the cow dung that did it. You know the proverbial Cromwellism "Trust in God and keep your powder dry"—so "Open to the Force and keep your cow dung handy" would be the recipe for castor-oil-seed-eaters. By the way, we are told V advised D.R.R. to take the poison and he himself takes 5 grains at a time as a joy-dose. Is this fact or legend?

R has submitted the latest report, he says.

I have no report from R, but I gather from you that he has rallied and is at least on the way to cure. The books give 48 hours for the period of the poisoning, so I suppose if he is not only alive but kicking and lively at noon tomorrow, we may consider him safe.

February 25, 1935

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Do you mean seriously that you will "never" forsake this humble pie? [15.2.35]

Of course! [Underlined.]

Or has it any concealed meaning?

None; it is quite above-board. [Underlined.]

Will you have some spare moments to release a wave of inspiration for one or two good poems?

That I don't know—provided the poems are there "latent

V's story turns out to be a history. Last two months he has been taking the seeds starting with 5-7 seeds a day. The number rapidly rose to 26-30 divided among three meals. It is amazing he had no bad symptoms except a slight oily sensation in the throat at first. Immunity? Tolerance by the system? Or another Khagananda⁶⁵ in the Asram?

He must have immunised himself—a modem Mithridates! Of course, the Yogis do do this kind of thing and it is perfectly possible, but I did not realise that V was one of the great ones. He has however in these matters the faith (and audacity) that moves mountains. Also his intestines must be very leathery and tough.

Who is Khagananda? There was the public poison + nails + snake eater who died because once he forgot to do the antidotic Kriya after his poison-meal. But that was, I think, another Ananda.

It would be better if V stopped taking these seeds. Who knows if it may not produce cumulative poisoning later. I learn that he has already done some Hathayoga.

He must not stop suddenly, otherwise all the symptoms of poisoning are likely to come up. If he stops, it must be very gradually, decreasing little by little. Mother finds him very grey—perhaps he is mdermining his system. But one does not know what to do with hese fellows who start such things without reason or warning. You might discuss the matter with him and see what can be done.

The more we are seeing the more that pessimistic attitude comes over me and the likes of us you want to supramentalise! But the Book of Verses says, "The meaner the slave, the greater the Lord."

What is this more that you are seeing?

Jiban asked me about D.R.R.'s diet. Is he under my jurisdiction? He is all right, except for slight pain. Just now we have given him guimauve.

That is right—he should take until the pain goes. You had better keep an eye on him till he is all right. He can have milk, but you must ;peak to Dyuman about it. Mother has already informed him—in case it is wanted.

February 26, 1935

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I discussed the matter with V [the "poisoned" patient]. He agrees to give up taking the seeds—if you wish it. He says that the seeds have done him a lot of good—cured his obstinate constipation and resistant piles. Besides, he doesn't notice any bad effect. Well?

At any rate he had better diminish the quantity and not increase it—and not advise others to take. Of course, he must not stop it abruptly: As for the cure, it means that his bowels have become dependent on this artificial action—that is all.

We gave D.R.R. some Bismuth and Magnesium Carbonate for the pains in his bowels. It is indicated as treatment.

Bismuth constipates. Enema of guimauve and tisane (decoctions) of guimauve or linseed would be better.

Are you intrested in seeing our monthly work? We can send you the reports of the cases tomorrow.

Yes.

Khagananda is a Bengali Ananda who exhibits these yogic tricks, and is still on this earth. The other fellow you speak of was a Madrasi and is dead and gone—by Potas. Cyanide.

We are at a loss about Mithridates. The experts know only of one—a Persian king. Is he the one you allude to? But he had nothing to do with swallowing poisons.

The information of the experts is defective. Mithridates in order to guard himself against all possibility of poisoning immunised himself by training his system to take all poisons first by small then by increasing doses. He did it so well that when the Romans were after him in their genial manner and he had no choice but death at their hands or his own, he could not take recourse to poison and had to end himself by a vulgar perforation with steel—at least I think it was steel. He was not a Persian king, though he was of Indo-Persian extraction as his name shows. I believe he was king of Armenia or Bithynia or some such obsolete place in Asia Minor.

I proposed to R to get my bureau painted in my spacious bathroom, as he has no other place. He is willing if you will it.

Yes—but on condition he does not spoil the floor.

February 27, 1935

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Here are the medical reports—In.: inmates; w.: workers. You may be surprised at the small volume of papers, but the actual number of cases attended is more than reported. If you want all, I'll write down everything.

Don't. [Underlined.]

It is all right. But if you gave a resume (number sadhaks, number workmen, number cases cured, number pending) that would complete it.

By the way, people get poems, pictures in meditation and I seem to get only letters and points for letters! Since letters and discussions are interdicted I have been obliged to draw inspiration from sleep. And I find that sleeping has a decided advantage in this Yoga!

You get letters in meditation! that would be fine—it would save me the trouble of writing them, simply project into your meditation instead of sending through Nolini! No objection to sleep---the land of Nod has also its treasures.

February 28, 1935

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