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
R asks me to send you these medical reports of G.
Reports no use unless the medical hieroglyphics are interpreted.
Today P came for her eyes. All on a sudden she burst into sobs—God knows why!
God doesn't.
P is a sort of weeping machine—touch a spring even uninten tionally and it starts off.
January 2, 1936
I am sending the 4 reports—3 on urine and I on blood. The first ones will give you an idea of the progress of the disease up to the present stage of cure. You will see that blood-urea has come down to normal. Albumin—an abnormal product in the urine—is present indicating heart-failure in the absence of any kidney lesion. The presence of blood in the urine is due to the same reason. I hope this set of "hieroglyphics" is now as clear as water.
I am afraid it is not so clear, though it is sufficiently watery. What I wanted to know was whether there had been such a miraculous change as Valle and the Pondicherry doctors seem to say and which were the medical facts on which they based their opinion—in other words whether the Force had really acted or not and, if so, to what extent—of course from the "pathological" point of view; for it is evident that the man is not dead and is in much better health than before. He had nephritis, blood-pressure, albumin and a number of other pleasant things whether as "symptoms" or as root-illnesses. I gather that these have gone practically. But I also gather or seem to from your remarks that G's appearance does not amount to much. But I am not clear about that. However, it is not of much importance.
This year is said to be your brightest year according to the horoscope, Sir.
Horoscope by whom? According to a famous Calcutta astrologer (I have forgotten his name) my biggest time comes much later, though the immediately ensuing period is also remarkable. Like doctors, astrologers differ.
But whatever miracle might happen, I don't see any chance for my caravan!
Too many dogs of depression bark?
What about B.P.'s work? Forgetfulness?
Not forgetfulness; but these things are not always easy to arrange.
January 3, 1936
A is suffering from chronic dysentery. Shall we give emetine injections?
Mother does not favour emetine, it is not without its disadvantages, at least from our point of view.
Please read C's letter regarding M.S.'s opinion on your philosophy. But I don't understand how a man who is supposed to be an authority on your Yogic philosophy can compare your Yoga with Ramakrishna's!
In a way he is, i.e. he is an authority on his own ideas about my Yogic philosophy. But from whom can you expect more than that?
Yes, but he is an authority on my philosophy, not on my Yoga. There is a difference.
Why, Sir, G's reports not so clear? Judging from the pathological reports alone [3.1.36] the change is nothing short of a miracle, leaving out the possibility of an inter-current affection which might take him away.
I am interested to see today that Valle pronounces "a perfect cure"—according to R, heart and pulse normal at 70-72, blood tension normal, oedema of feet, chill and headache gone, while kidney of interstitial nephritis of 8 years standing cured, urinary symptoms normal, enough vitality to walk on verandah and attend business freely, solid food from tomorrow. He has asked R to look in now and again—perhaps to be sure that solid food does not upset him. But all the same this is more than I expected as yet, though not more than I tried for—for one should always in these things have moderate expectations but a big endeavour. I don't overlook the possibility of a fall back or a sudden catastrophe by a reverse movement; but if he can stand normal diet and not go to excess again, he may live longer than was at all probable on any rational forecast before. Let us see.
But there is chronic heart-failure, and a chronic high pressure has altered the condition of the vessels so that a normal healthy life is impossible ...
That is not impossible to alter. It is doubtful because G is not a favourable subject and sheer matter (this is a very material degeneration) is not yet conquered. But all the same I have myself been surprised by the massive rapidity and scrupulous exactness (an unusual combination) of G's responses in this rather extravagant experiment. It is why I gave much of the credit to R's mediumship and the rapid action (that I find undeniable) of his drugs.
Too many dogs of depression, Sir, too many! And not only dogs, but cats and jackals and a host of other friends have made my life a misery!
Why are you so fond of this menagerie as to keep it with you? Turn them out into the street. Or, if that is not charitable to others, drown them in the sea. Don't shake your sorrowful head and say it is easier to say than to do. It is quite possible. It is only the Man of Sorrows that prevents it.
January 4, 1936
I had a look at J's rashes and eczema with your questinnaire on it. Since our treatment is only symptomatic I wonder if we can try R.
I am not very enthusiastic about this idea. R demands an implicit obedience from his patients which 3 would not give—and they would certainly clash very soon. There are other reasons also.
When a medicine is a specific, it is scientifically supposed to be active on one particular disease and therefore quite successful: for instance emetine in dysentery and quinine in malaria. But you don't give your approval even though these medicines are specifics in these particular diseases.
It is not enough for a medicine to be a specific. Certain drugs have other effects or possible effects which can be ignored by the physician who only wants to cure his case, but cannot be in a whole-view of the system and its reactions. The unfavourable reactions of quinine are admitted by medical opinion itself and doctors in Europe have been long searching for a substitute for quinine.
Z complains of vomiting, giddiness etc. I'm afraid these three Punjabi brothers and sister are rather—I mean physically.
Very bad health, all of them. The "stalwart Panjabi" is not much in evidence. One of the type who came could not progress. Another was tall but thin and ill. These—
I send a poem retouched by Nishikanta. Do put a few of your comments against the lines or expressions which are not quite right.
That is beyond me. I can only give my personal impression which amounts to "I like it exceeding well".
January 5, 1936
Henceforth I shall send you two note-books: one exclusively for medical reports and the other for personal matters.
Yes, this will be very good.
I hope this innovation won't be a burden to you—I won't report about small cuts and bruises, of course.
No burden at all.
Now, I would like to have your expert and thoroughly satisfying opinion on the following question:
There has often been a discussion and hence a difference of opinion on the relative greatness of different branches of Art. Some of us are disposed to think of music as the highest: poetry, painting, architecture, sculpture, embroidery following thus in order of merit. Though one may not agree to such a classification, still because of the universality and most direct appeal of music, cannot one give it preference? Poetry is rather limited in its scope and painting even more so. They have to be understood in order to be appreciated in their fullest measure whereas music, apart from the technical aspect which is not absolutely obligatory for an appeal, need not. You know of the stories of beasts and snakes being charmed, not to speak of the hard-hearted Yamaraja, by music! Take your "Love and Death" as an example of poetic excellence. I am afraid people would throng round a piece of music sung by one of the renowned singers, more than round the recital of your poem. Yes, you may have the satisfaction of having an audience of intellectuals and then it will prove my contention that poetry has a limited appeal. Now about painting. I hear quite a number of people have lost their heads over Mona Lisa, even over a copy of it, but I have come away quite sound and strong without even being touched in the heart and I am sure many others have done so. This substantiates again my theory that painting is restricted in its scope. But will you turn the tables by this very fact of the restricted scope and difficult technique of painting and poetry and frame the order: Painting, Poetry, Music and so on? Is there really a hierarchy of planes in the Occult?
I fear I must disappoint you. I am not going to pass the Gods through a competitive examination and assign a highest place to one and lower places to others. What an idea! Each has his or her own province on the summits and what is the necessity of putting them in rivalry with each other? It is a sort of Judgment of Paris you want to impose on me? Well, but what became of Paris and Troy? You want me to give the crown or the apple to Music and enrage the Goddesses of Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Embroidery, all the Nine Muses, so that they will kick at our publications and exhibitions and troop off to other places? We shall have to build in the future—what then shall we do if the Goddess of Architecture turns severely and says, "I am an inferior Power, am I? Go and ask your Nirod to build your house with his beloved music!"
Your test of precedence—universal appeal—is all wrong. I don't know that it is true, in the first place. Some kind of sound called music appeals to everybody, but has really good music a universal appeal? And, speaking of arts, more people go to the theatre or read fiction than go to the opera or a concert. What becomes then of the superior universality of music, even in the cheapest sense of universality? Rudyard Kipling's Barrack Room Ballads exercises a more universal appeal than was ever reached by Milton or Keats—we will say nothing of writers like Blake or Francis Thompson; a band on the pier at a seaside resort will please more people than a great piece of music with the orchestration conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham. In a world of gods it might be true that the highest makes the most universal appeal, but here in a world of beasts and men (you bring in the beasts—why not play to Bushy142 and try how she responds?) it is usually the inferior things that have the more general if not quite universal appeal. On the other hand the opposite system you suggest (the tables turned upside down the least universal and most difficult appeal makes the greatest art) would also have its dangers. At that rate we should have to concede that the cubist and abstract painters had reached the highest art possible, only rivalled by the up to date modernist poets of whom it has been said that their works are not at all either read or understood by the public, are read and understood only by the poet himself, and are read without being understood by his personal friends and admirers.
When you speak of direct appeal, you are perhaps touching something true. Technique does not come in—for although to have a complete and expert judgment or appreciation you must know the technique not only in music and painting where it is more difficult, but in poetry and architecture also, it is something else and not that kind of judgment of which you are speaking. It is perhaps true that music goes direct to the intuition and feeling with the least necessity for the use of the thinking mind with its strongly limiting conceptions as a self-imposed middleman, while painting and sculpture do need it and poetry still more. At that rate music would come first, architecture next, then sculpture and painting, poetry last. I am aware that Housman posits nonsense as the essence of pure poetry and considers its appeal to be quite direct—not to the soul but to somewhere about the stomach. But then there is hardly any pure poetry in this world and the little there is is still mélangé with at least a homeopathic dose of intellectual meaning. But again if I admit this thesis of excellence by directness, I shall be getting myself into dangerous waters. For modern painting has become either cubist or abstract and it claims to have got rid of mental representation and established in art the very method of music; it paints not the object, but the truth behind the object—by the use of pure line and colour and geometrical form which is the very basis of all forms or else by figures that are not representations but significances. For instance a modern painter wishing to make a portrait of you will now paint at the top a clock surrounded by three triangles, below them a chaos of rhomboids and at the bottom two table castors to represent your feet and he will put underneath this powerful design, "Portrait of Nirod". Perhaps your soul will leap up in answer to its direct appeal and recognise at once the truth behind the object, behind your vanished physical self,—you will greet your psychic being or your Atman or at least your inner physical or vital being. Perhaps also you won't. Poetry also seems to be striving towards the same end by the same means—the getting away from mind into the depths of life or, as the profane might put it, arriving at truth and beauty through ugliness and unintelligibility. From that you will perhaps deduce that the attempt of painting and poetry to do what music alone can do easily and directly without these acrobatics is futile because it is contrary to their nature—which proves your thesis that music is the highest art because most direct in its appeal to the soul and the feelings. Maybe—or maybe not; as the Jains put it, syâid vâ na syâd yâ.
I have written so much, you will see, in order to say nothing—or at least to avoid your attempt at putting me in an embarrassin, dilemma. Q.E.F.
SRI ADRORINDO
N.B. This is my answer, not the Mother's.
January 6, 1936
I don't understand at all, Sir, what to make of your reply or Art!
If you did know, it would mean I had committed myself, which was just what I did not want to do. Or shall we put it in this way "Each of the great arts has its own appeal and its own way of appeal and each in its own way is supreme above all others"? That ought to do.
[In the medical report I wrote Achanchar instead of Achanchal. Sri Aurobindo underlined "r".]
Is this r or l? If r, please transform into l.
January 7, 1936
I have no objection to N's eyes being treated by R.
It is not a question of his eyes. If R treats him, he will forbid all allopathic medicines for his other ailments. That is the point I put to N which he seems not to understand at all.
If it is I and not r why do they pronounce Achanchar? Is it like our saying আঁব143 (mango) instead of আম144? Oh, the very word আম takes you, Sir, to the land of—!
God knows! I have not heard their pronunciation. But it is l all right. R & l are however supposed to be phonetically interchangeable since the beginnings of human speech.
January 8, 1936
Is it true that poetry leads to the realisation faster than music, painting, etc.?
What the deuce is meant by leading to the realisation?
About poetry or any literary work, you have said that very often one's inner being comes to the front, and that is used by a higher Power. Is that the reason then why Poetry is such a quick process?
Don't recognise the quotation or recall the context. But the inner being can come to the front under any provocation, why of Poetry alone?
Venkataram says that he feels something when he takes up music—something different from what he feels in his other activities.
It all depends on what the something is.
Will you now say something about art, or do you think it risky?
Very.
Whatever little experience I have of sadhana through works, makes me incline to the view that work as sadhana is the most difficult thing.
Why argue from your personal experience great or little and turn it into a generalisation? A great many people (the majority perhaps) find it the easiest of all.
In poetry, though I may be unlucky as regards experiences, while I write, I try to think of you even if mentally. I can even say that it is only by thinking of you that I can compose poetry.
Many find it easy to think of the Mother when working; but when they read or write, their mind goes off to the thing read or written and they forget everything else. I think that is the case with most. Physical work on the other hand can be done with the most external part of the mind, leaving the rest free to remember or to experience.
In that case Music should have the greatest gift.
Why?
I won't dilate any more, but ask you to do it.
Why should I dilate either—at the risk of bursting? Besides tonight I have other dilatations (I can't call them delectations) occupying me.
January 10, 1936
Is there no real love in the human world?... Where is the crux of the trouble?
In the self-delusion of the vital. Human love is mainly vital, when it is not vital and physical together. It is also sometimes psychic + vital. But the Love with a dominant psychic element is rare.
I am in agony; a great upheaval is going on. Oh, how I wish for something real! real love! Can you not give me, make me feel, overwhelm me—even if for 10 minutes—with your love, and make life worth living?
What is real love? Get clear of all the sentimental sexual turmoil and go back to the soul,—then there is real love. It is then also you would be able to receive the overwhelming love without getting the lower being into an excitement which might be disastrous.
January 12, 1936
"Like a flame of flowers on yonder tree, Like the rippling waves of the sea,
Dance, dance, O my soul, thou playmate of Light, Winging the sapphire height.
Into the luminous calm of skies Uplift my leaden eyes And on a widening vision pour The sun-wine of thy soar."
A small poem. Trickle? Opinion, please. soul dancing too much? The first stanza came quite easily, but I got stuck after that. Then Amal hopped in and helped me with the second stanza.
I have no objection to the soul dancing, but to make it dance and wing a height at the same time is a little acrobatic. Also to pour wine (even of a soar, though what the wine of a soar may be I don't know) on the eyes would hardly be beneficial to the vision—in most cases. I admit however that these are perhaps rather too prosaic and Johnsonian objections to the sunwine of your or Amal's dancing soar.
Here are some new lines:
Trickle, trickle O mighty Force divine. Pour, pour thy white moon dreams Into my stomach, heart and intestine In little silver streams.
Two most damnable blunders, sir. "Intestine" is stressed on the second syllable and pronounced intestin, so how the blazes is it going to rhyme with divine? A doctor misstressing "intestine"—shame! How are you going to cure people if you put wrong stresses on their anatomical parts?
Second blunder—
Yogically, psycho-physically etc., etc. stomach, heart and intestine lodge the vital movements, not the physical consciousness—it is there that anger, fear, love, hate and all the other psychological privileges of the animal tumble about and upset the physical and moral digestion. The Muladhara is the seat of the physical consciousness proper. So you have to emend the third [Image 4] make it poetically beautiful and psycho-physically correct.
January 13, 1936
Nishikanta has written a poem from a vision. He says that he is going to paint his vision of the violet stream and the golden cup; so he would like you to illumine him regarding its significance.
"Violet" is the colour of benevolence or compassion, but also more vividly of the Divine Grace—represented in the vision as flowing from the heights of the spiritual consciousness down on this earth. The golden cup is I suppose the Truth consciousness.
Almost all whom I know have come here solely for the Divine, while I have just glided in. I don't know that I was actuated by the sole motive of drowning myself in the Divine...
The push to drown oneself in the Divine is very rare. It is usually a mental idea, a vital fumbling or some quite inadequate reason that starts the thing—or else no reason at all. The only reality is the occult psychic push behind of which the surface consciousness is not aware or else hardly aware.
I don't see any vestige of a yogi in me. It will be three years in February, since I have come here, and I haven't seen even three signs! It is your letters, Sir, that have bound me.
What the deuce is three years in Yoga? There are people who have to wait twice or three times or four times that time before they get the real sign. A child of nine might say Look here. I have been studying for 2 years and yet nobody has decided to propose me as the Vice Chancellor of the Calcutta University.
You have had signs that you can get Ananda, that a channel can be made through your physical brain (your poetry) for something that wasn't there before. That's sign enough.
I hear J jumped down from the train when it was leaving! He still seems uncertain. A problem indeed!
Everybody is a problem in his own way—the world itself is a problem and so are all the creatures in it.
January 14, 1936
I send you a letter of my friend J.B. He wants to know if he can write to you personally?
The difficulty would be about the answer—If I had to do it myself, he would get an answer every three years.
And can some general correspondence be sent to him?
It can be done sometimes.
What does he mean by "the overmental and supramental stages" which he doesn't want to leave?
I am puzzled by the sentence.
I suppose he takes anything beyond mind as Overmind and Supermind.
I suppose so, people always do at first. But even so, I don't understand why he writes of it as a stage he does not want to leave. What he has is not of course overmind or supermind, but some sense of the cosmic Force of the Mother behind the action of the personal being.
He feels some dynamic force working in him. He feels that he hasn't clung to the Divine, the Divine has clutched him.
That is very often felt.
People outside feel all these great experiences, while we feel a vacuum. Glory to God!
Lots of people feel that outside or similar things. Also they feel a bhakti and faith outside which is spoiled or gets rude shocks if they come and stay for some time in the Asram and converse with its enlightened sadhaks. But that I suppose is all in the game. At any rate it used to be like that. Nowadays I notice some improvement—let us hope that soon it will be an entire change.
Do you really think that I have done something in poetry? People say that one can't take your remarks on poetry, painting, etc. too literally, because you want to encourage us.
A very good beginning. Not yet Homer or Shakespeare, of course.
Mother is giving us doctors a very good compliment, I hear! that we confine people to bed till they are really confined!
Yes. Mother did pass on that epigram. Doctors were born to hear such remarks.
January 15, 1936
Why are you so afraid of P's screams? Surely yogis ought to be able to bear a little suffering and you ought to encourage or allow it, Sir!
She is not that kind of Yogi. She would only scream and get as wild as Durvasa145 and stop going to the dispensary—apart from copious weeping etc.
R.B. is all right. I thought she has been doing some work, but now I find she is taking a holiday.
True, she is very lazy. You can perhaps tell her that work now ought to do her good and recommend it as part of the treatment!
January 16, 1936
J is suffering from eczema. Don't know what to do except go on experimenting. Please ask Mother to guide me.
Mother can't say. Her experience is that strong medicines are not good for these skin things—toilet products are more effective; but this is only a general observation. I myself cured mine by spiritual force and stingingly hot water, but I don't know if it would work for others.
January 17, 1936
If you have cured yourself by spiritual force and hot water, why not apply the same here?
Can't say if it will succeed. Differs with people. Sahana cured hers once by icing it.
I am not giving anything except zinc oxide ointment which is very bland. Spiritual force, I have none; so can't give it!
Then?
January 18, 1936
I realise at every moment that I am neither made for the path of the Spirit, nor for any big endeavour in life. I know I shall be unhappy, but are all men born to be happy?
Man of sorrows man of sorrows!! Knock him of man, knock him off!
January 19, 1936
Man of Sorrows? Knock him off? Well, he is too cryptic or brief for me. I'm not much satisfied with the answer.
The most fundamental difficulty I find in me is that I can't believe that the Divine will do everything for me. My experience has shown me that—please don't say my experience is nothing. Take for instance this Poetry business. It has always been rare for me to write any poetry without a heavy dose of mental exercise—you know it very well. I have not, except once or twice, as I said, felt some force coming down and delivering a poem out of me, even a worthless one, in a second. If I don't write, I don't write, and even when I try to write, it takes me so many, so many days and so much labour. You will give the usual reply—What of that? That's all very well, but it means that I must labour—my own quota has to be enormous in-order to get any success. But I haven't got that leechlike tenacity. Since I haven't, I can't as well believe that someday the Divine Force will pour down, or gush out and do the miracle. You yourself had to concentrate for 4 or 5 hours a day for so many years, after which everything flowed in a river. But I am not Sri Aurobindo I I am not born with such a will and determination. Since I don't possess them, the most politic thing would be to rely on the Divine, but I can't believe in any such thing. You had to concentrate, Dilipda had to and so had everybody. Since I can't spend so much labour, I have to conclude that such big things are not for me. Even then I sit down for 2 or 3 hours, 3 or 4 or 5 days pass away and I am just where I was—result: depression. Where is the Force?
Now about Yoga: you know how much progress I have made. I don't blame you. I can't meditate, I can't pray, I can't aspire. Without them, I don't see how I am to get anything. Why not do them—you ask? If I could, would I have troubled you with all these wailings? Since I can't, I have no peace, no joy! You can't give them without any urge or aspiration for them, can you? I know, I understand, I gather how much one has to aspire for all these and even then the result is sometimes zero. Then if one can't aspire at all, where is his hope?...
Sometimes I think—don't bother your head. Eat, drink, be merry—with yogic reservations! no thought, no worry. I thought I would go on chatting, eating, reading novels, etc. But I can't. I don't get peace, though I find some are all right. Anilkumar, for instance (I don't mean any offence, though) reads novels the whole night practically. How can he? He must have got something. If I could do it, I would, but how would that bring me peace, progress in sadhana? As you have said, personal effort is absolutely imperative and a sustained effort too, until your Grace descends. God knows what will happen then! I don't see anywhere that effort nor the capacity nor even the will for it. So with what shall I hope, on what shall I rely? Neither can I try it myself nor can I believe that you will do everything for me. Hence all these precious agitations, disbelief ... I am not meant for any big endeavour.
Give an answer that will pierce the mind-soul. By an answer only. I don't expect more!
As there are several lamentations today besieging me, I have very little time to deal with each separate Jeremiad. Do I understand rightly that your contention is this, "I can't believe in the Divine doing everything for me because it is by my own mighty and often fruitless efforts that I write or do not write poetry and have made myself into a poet"? Well, that itself is épatant, magnificent, unheard of. It has always been supposed since the infancy of the human race that while a verse-maker can be made or self-made, a poet cannot. "Poeta nascitur non fit", a poet is born not made, is the dictum that has come down through the centuries and millenniums and was thundered into my ears by the first pages of my Latin Grammar. The facts of literary history seem to justify this stern saying. But here in Pondicherry we have tried, not to manufacture poets, but to give them birth, a spiritual, not a physical birth into the body. In a number of instances we are supposed to have succeeded—one of these is your noble self—or if I am to believe the man of sorrows in you, your abject, miserable, hopeless and ineffectual self. But how was it done? There are two theories, it seems—one that it was by the Force, the other that it was done by your own splashing, kicking, groaning Herculean efforts. Now, sir, if it is the latter, if you have done that unprecedented thing, made yourself by your own laborious strength into a poet (for your earlier efforts were only very decent literary exercises), then, sir, why the deuce are you so abject, self-depreciatory, miserable? Don't say that it is only a poet who can produce no more than a few poems in many months. Even to have done that, to have become a poet at all, a self-made poet is a miracle over which we can only say 'Sabash Sabash!'146 without ever stopping. If your effort could do that, what is there that it can't do? All miracles can be effected by it and a giant self-confident faith ought to be in you. On the other hand if, as I aver, it is the Force that has done it, what then can it not do? Here too faith, a giant faith is the only logical conclusion. So either way there is room only for Hallelujahs, none for Jeremiads. Q.E.D.
By the way what is this story about my four or five hours' concentration a day for several years before anything came down? Such a thing never happened, if by concentration you mean laborious meditation. What I did was four or five hours a day pranayam—which is quite another matter. And what flow do you speak of? The flow of poetry came down while I was doing Pranayam, not some years afterwards. If it is the flow of experiences, that did come after some years, but after I had stopped the Pranayam for a long time and was doing nothing and did not know what to do or where to turn once all my efforts had failed. And it came as a result not of years of Pranayam or concentration, but in a ridiculously easy way, by the grace either of a temporary guru (but it wasn't that, for he was himself bewildered by it) or by the grace of the eternal Brahman and afterwards by the the grace of Mahakali and Krishna. So don't try to turn me into an argument against the Divine; that attempt will be perfectly ineffective.
I am obliged to stop—if I go on, there will be no Pranam till 12 o'clock. So send your Jeremiad back tonight and I will see what else to write. Have written this in a headlong hurry—I hope it is not full of lapsus calami.
January 20, 1936
I send you the "Jeremiad", Sir. My observations are reserved. Anyway, you have succeeded in almost chasing away the clouds of depression.
To continue. The fact that you don't feel a force does not prove that it is not there. The steam-engine does not feel a force moving it, but the force is there. A man is not a steam-engine? He is very little better, for he is conscious only of some bubbling on the surface which he calls himself and is absolutely unconscious of all the subconscient, subliminal, superconscient forces moving him. (This is a fact which is being more and more established by modern psychology though it has got hold only of the lower forces and not the higher, so you need not turn up your rational nose at it.) He twitters intellectually (= foolishly,) about the surface results and attributes them all to his "noble self", ignoring the fact that his noble self is hidden far away from his own vision behind the veil of his dimly sparkling intellect and the reeking fog of his vital feelings, emotions, impulses, sensations and impressions. So your argument is utterly absurd and futile. Our aim is to bring the secret forces out and unwalled into the open so that instead of getting some shadows or lightnings of themselves out through the veil or being wholly obstructed, they may "pour down" and "flow in a river". But to expect that all at once is a presumptuous demand which shows an impatient ignorance and inexperience. If they begin to trickle at first, that is sufficient to justify the faith in a future downpour. You admit that you once or twice felt a "force coming down and delivering a poem out of me" (your opinion about its worth or worthlessness is not worth a cent, that is for others to pronounce). That is sufficient to blow the rest of your Jeremiad into smithereens; it proves that the force was and is there and at work and it is only your sweating Herculean labour that prevents you feeling it.
Also it is the trickle that gives assurance of the possibility of the downpour. One has only to go on and by one's patience deserve the downpour or else, without deserving, stick on till one gets it. In Yoga itself the experience that is a promise and foretaste but gets shut off till the nature is ready for the fulfilment is a phenomenon familiar to every Yogin when he looks back on his past experience. Such were the brief visitations of Ananda you had some time before. It does not matter if you have not a leechlike tenacity—leeches are not the only type of Yogins. If you can stick anyhow or get stuck that is sufficient. The fact that you are not Sri Aurobindo (who said you were?) is an inept irrelevance. One needs only to be oneself in a reasonable way and shake off the hump when it is there or allow it to be shaken off without clinging to it with a "leechlike tenacity" worthy of a better cause.
All the rest is dreary stuff of the tamasic ego. As there is a rajasic ego which shouts "What a magnificent powerful sublime divine individual I am, unique and peerless" (of course there are gradations in the pitch,) so there is a tamasic ego which squeaks "What an abject, hopeless, worthless, incapable, unluckily unendowed and uniquely impossible creature I am,—all, all are great, Aurobindos, Dilips, Anilkumars (great by an unequalled capacity of novel-reading and self-content, according to you), but I, oh I, oh I!" That's your style. It is this tamasic ego (of course it expresses itself in various ways at various times, I am only rendering your present pitch) which is responsible for the Man of Sorrows getting in. It's all bosh—stuff made up to excuse the luxury of laziness, melancholy and despair. You are in that bog just now because you have descended faithfully and completely into the inert stupidity and die-in-the-mudness of your physical consciousness which, I admit, is a specimen! But so after all is everybody's, only there are different kinds of specimens. What to do? Dig yourself out if you can; if you can't, call for ropes and wait till they come. If God knows what will happen when the Grace descends, that is enough, isn't it? That you don't know is a fact which may be baffling to your—well, your intelligence, but is not of great importance—any more than your supposed unfitness. Who ever was fit, for that matter—fitness and unfitness are only a way of speaking; man is unfit a misfit (so far as things spiritual are concerned)—in his outward nature. But within there is a soul and above there is Grace. "This is all you know or need to know" and, if you don't, well, even then you have at least somehow stumbled into the path and have got to remain there till you get haled along it far enough to wake up to the knowledge. Amen.
January 21, 1936
[Image 5]
Now then, what do you think of the vision poem by NK and its illustration by my "noble self', and its significance? Qu'en dites-vous?
Very remarkable—the poem, I mean. As for the vision I know it only through your work of art which leaves me stunned with astonishment if not admiration and therefore unable to articulate. Its greatest point is the bird which is a chef-d'oeuvre.
January 21, 1936147
Nishikanta sends another poem. He is determined to go at you with his literary volleys.
Kept them till tomorrow. Am racing with time to get work finished before 8 a.m. in the morning, so no time to receive today's volley.
J says she has been feeling terribly lonely for the last few days, had a terrible impulse to go away.
The usual terrible seems to have come simultaneously to you, D and her after leaving some others.
She says that if it happens off and on, it would be a hard job to stick.
Some people had it terribly once a week or even once a day for months together, yet they stuck or got stuck.
But what is this loneliness due to? Her isolation?
No way. It is the usual hubbub of the vital. D used to get this "loneliness" in the full swing of his tea parties, concerts and daily meetings. Nothing to do with isolation. Many isolated people don't feel lonely at all.
When a person with few or no friends, comes to see you, how to turn your face away? If any disturbance results from it I can bear if it is helpful, but when it becomes too frequent it'll be unbearable.
Let us hope it will not be too frequent. Don't want you to fall again either into the flummocks and the flumps or into the dumps. Don't look for these words, at least the first two in the dictionary, they aren't there—my own Joycean neologisms.
January 22, 1936
P was given pomegranate juice, she vomited it at once. It may be due to the reflex atony of the stomach.
That was the Mother's impression. Of course pomegranate juice may well have assisted (as she vomited after it), if it was the wrong (medicinal) kind of pomegranate and crushed out of the grains and seeds (becoming strong and bitter) instead of pressed out without crushing. Ordinary pomegranate juice many people take and there are no such results.
I myself was taking it daily at one time; I took it once or twice even prepared in the wrong way without any inconvenience. But if the bitter medicinal kind were given her in a weak condition of the stomach, it might well aggravate.
R showed me Gaudart's blood-urea report which was .025%. The lowest figure given was .02%. Dr. Valle has asked R to be on the look-out lest it fall lower.
Is he still treating Gaudart? He wrote that Valle had said he (V) would go no longer to G's and so R also had to leave G to himself. Valle has gone back then?
What did N.P. do after he stopped coming here? Left to the Force or to R?
Nothing to do with R. Says the Force is curing him.
I am surprised, Sir, that you are still complaining of time!
Are you? You wouldn't be if you were in my place.
No time, no time! it is going to be an eternal problem with you, it seems! After the reduction of correspondence—cutting off the evening mail—it leaves you absolutely free for other things. I suppose you are working at your "Savitri".
Where is the reduction of correspondence? I have to be occupied with correspondence from 8.0 to 12 p.m. (minus one hour), again after bath and meal from 2.30 to 7 a.m. All that apart from afternoon work. And still much is left undone—And you think I can write Savitri? You evidently believe in miracles t
What about the poem you promised, Sir?
I have no time even to think about it or about writing poems at all.
Muthu K. Swamy & Co., are starting a journal. I said I would give one of Nishikanta's English poems. May I?
I don't know whether it will be suitable to the kind of "Journal" they can produce.
January 23, 1936
But do you really mean that till 7 a.m. your pen goes on at an aeroplanic speed? Then it must be due more to outside correspondence. I don't see many books or envelopes now on the staircase. Is the supramental freedom from these not in view?
Your not seeing unfortunately does not dematerialise them. Books are mainly for the Mother and there is sometimes a mountain, but letters galore. On some days only there is a lull and then I can do something.
A most stimulating formula I find in your letter—"within there is a soul and above there is Grace"—about which you say "This is all you know or need to know." Is that all really?
For anyone who wants the spiritual life, yes, it is enough.
Can one arrive at what is called "a state of grace" simply by sticking or simply because there is a soul within?
Yes, one can, plenty of people have done it.
But then the soul is there in everybody and Grace is above everybody. How is it that people have turned their backs on the Divine?
Because of rajasic ego, ambition, vanity—because they believed in their own efforts and not in the Grace.
I have never heard that Grace did everything. And, where it seems to do so, how do we know that somebody has not done sadhana in his past life? You can't deny it, can you?
I could point you at many instances in spiritual history—beginning with the famous Jagai Madhai. But it is no use against a brain that does not want to admit that 2+2=4.
You can't affirm it, can you?
Simple sticking won't do. In that case our Asram cat Bushy would have a chance.
Of course she has—of rising to a new grade of birth with all in her favour in the next life.
Because we have to make a Herculean effort in sadhana I rather hesitate to believe much in Grace. Is not Grace something that comes down unconditionally?
It does not depend on conditions—which is rather a different thing from an unconditional surrender to any and every sadhak.
Even Ramakrishna's baby cat type of sadhak has to make a decisive movement of surrender and compel the rest of the being to obedience, which, let me tell you, Sir, is the most difficult thing on earth.
I never heard that the baby cat was like that—if it were it would not be a baby cat. (It is the baby monkey trying to become a baby cat who does that.) But you have evidently so great a knowledge of spiritual things (surpassing mine and Ramakrishna's) that I can only bow my head and pass humbly on to people with less knowledge.
If anybody can do the baby cat surrender at a stroke, it is not because his "unfinished curve" in the past life has finished it in this.
Hail, Rishi, all-knower! Tell us all about our past lives.
Now, if the soul instead of sleeping has to aspire etc. to call down its Lord the Grace, where do you see that aspiration in me? If you build my spiritual castle on those one or two minutes' brief visitations of Ananda, and that too once or twice only, excluding the moments of darshan of your great self, which also have been sometimes marred in these three years—and if you build my poetic mansion on little trickles, then I can only say—well, what shall I say?
Better say nothing. It will sound less foolish.
You have often inveighed against my asking you not to use yourself as an argument against the Divine. But what is the history of your sadhana in your own words—a Herculean practice of Pranayam, concentration and what not and then after years and years of waiting the Grace of Brahman. Still you are pañcamukha148 in praise of Grace!
What a wooden head! What is the use of saying things if you deliberately misinterpret what I write? I said clearly that the pranayam brought me nothing of any kind of spiritual realisation. I had stopped it long before. The Brahman experience came when I was groping for a way, doing no sadhana at all, making no effort because I didn't know what effort to make, all having failed. Then in three days I got an experience which most Yogis get only at the end of a long Yoga, got it without wanting or trying for it, got it to the surprise of Lele who was trying to get me something quite different. But I, don't suppose you are able to understand—so I say no more. I can only look mournfully at your ununderstanding pate.
Calling for ropes and waiting till they come is all right, but who knows what may happen meanwhile. Won't the expeditionist expire in the jungles, in trying to scale the Himalayas?
Who asks him to explore the jungles (of his own logic, I suppose) or climb the Himalayas? What has this to do with what I said? I did not tell you to make Herculean efforts.
I remember instances where people have failed in their sadhana and gone away. The Divine couldn't do much because he says he doesn't propose to do anything against the will of the individual, which means aspiration, rejection, surrender, before the Grace comes down.
It can mean also waiting on the Grace of the Divine! The will of the individual in this respect does not mean anything like that. If the will of the individual is towards perdition, if his ego becomes hostile to the Divine, then the Divine is not bound to show him a Grace he does not want at all and kicks at.
It seems to me that behind any difficult endeavour, there is the seeking for Ananda which acts as the motive-power, isn't it so?
Not that I know of!
Take the case of X. My God, to think that after all those Napoleonic efforts in poetry, and having succeeded, one is still driven to madness because, after all, one has obtained nothing spiritually in spite of aspiration, meditation, etc.—this is blood-curdling and at once smashes your theory of Karmayoga through poetry.
Napoleonic rubbish! He was the worst poet in the world before he came here and here immediately as soon as I put my force he began writing beautiful poems. Yet it was by his Napoleonic efforts that he did it? Imbecility, thy name is ego.
I was not putting any Karmayoga theory—I was simply mocking at your absurd idea that it was by your own mighty efforts that you had succeeded in writing poetry which any good judge (you are not one) would call genuine poetry.
I would not like to invite the same inevitable fate on my weak bony shoulders. So in every way is there room for Hallelujah or for Jeremiad.
All right, sir, Jeremy away.
To think that five or six years more of barren desert stretch between me and the Divine Grace, coagulates my blood!
Coagulate! coagulate! coagulate!
Please give an answer to these points—if no time tonight, tomorrow.
Non, monsieur,—j'ai d'autres chats a fouetter. I have other cats to whip—I can't go on whipping one cat all the time. A few lashes in the margin are all I can spare for you just now.
There are three main possibilities for the sadhak—
1) To wait on the Grace and rely on the Divine.
2) To do everything himself like the full Adwaitin and the Buddhist.
3) To take the middle path, go forward by aspiration and rejection etc. helped by the Force. The first, it appears, is too easy for you to do it, the second is too difficult for you to do, the third being easy in parts and difficult in parts is as impossible for you to do it. Right? Amen!!!
K's X-ray finding reveals that it is the right side that is affected—the lesion has just started...
[Sri Aurobindo underlined "right side".]
Right side where? lung? T.B.?
But why is she thrust on us again? She was evidently making good progress with R.
Because she insisted on being treated by Becharlal, not by R.
N is passing excessive phosphate. Shall we make a microscopic exam?
Do you want to microscope him out of existence? The loss of phosphates, I suppose, explains his weakness.
January 24, 1936
Very well, Sir, whip the cats and dogs, bulls and hogs, to your heart's content! Only the whipping has been rather severe in my case, but no help since I have surrendered my life and death at your feet. 0 cruel one, I shall accept all whipping as a gift of your compassion.
Righto.
I was grieved to see that after writing such a lot, you struck off all of it—it would have perhaps helped me. My difficulties run parallel to X's, I find; only there's a difference of degree.
Say rather that you have borrowed your difficulties from him or, say, run in his wake—a big steamer throwing a yacht into stormy waters.
But he has the great advantage of having a magnificent vital.
You have a sturdy but very sluggish one.
X has on the one hand your love, affection, letters, etc., on the other his sufferings, paroxysms of despair, depression, etc.
His paroxysms of despair were not caused originally by the Yoga but by disappointments of the vital,—this one's behaviour, that one's refusal to be under his influence, ingratitude etc. These things had nothing to do with Yoga. But the devil once admitted turned itself upon his sadhana also.
He has passed seven years here, Sir, and still he groans and groans...
And why please? Because he has never practised my Yoga, he has done his own. He has always put up some extremely traditional ideas about Yoga, jap, bhakti etc. etc. and challenged my own teachings with his reasoning mind which had no real conception of the things they meant. It is with great difficulty that I could sometimes get him to any direction by a secret pull and when I could do it he has always made some progress—which afterwards he refused to admit. And yet he made my incapacity as a Guru and the difficulty of my sadhana responsible for his failure—when he had never even given it a trial. That is a thing others beside him have done, also.
Don't tell me that because he takes butter and tea, enjoys good company that the Grace is afraid of coming down, for that would not solve the problem.
There is no problem at all. It is simply because he has been pulling his own way with a savage tenacity instead of allowing his Guru to Lead him. He now speaks of making his surrender. If he does it inwardly as well as outwardly, there may well be some considerable change.
Just one word about his poetry. I admit he had no vestige of poetry before he came here and that the Force has done it. But how shall I forget that he had to labour a lot at it?
It is ridiculous to talk of his labouring at it. He has an easy flow which ninety-one poets out of a hundred would envy him The only thing he laboured over was his prosody and metrical experiments, but prosody is not poetry. The rhythm, the capacity for chhanda came to him at once when he started writing here—although till then he had been absolutely and hopelessly inefficient in that respect.
I admit the Force, but you have to admit the big personal contribution, the collaboration. If you aver that the contribution also was done by the Force you will throw me into shallow or deep waters.
I don't admit it. It is a legend he has foisted on you. If you mean his writing for many hours a day that is no labour when one has the capacity. That is use of the power given, it is not effort and straining to get the power.
Anyway, I suppose I am again talking rot. These are funda mental wooden-headed difficulties.
Terrible rot.
Lastly, I have embraced your waiting on the Grace. I'll now dance and prance. A little khichuri, ālublājā,149 a little; harmless platonic love. Agreed?
I have no objection to alubhaja, but to the devil with your platonic love!
Last night I dreamt that you were most affectionately patting me for a long time; but before that, somebody asked me to promise that I would never indulge in any lower vital movements. And I promised. What's this?
Quite natural. If your vital makes that promise, the pat is normal.'
But why this promise at all when I had no intention of that sort of vital movement?
You may not have intended, but something in your vital may have had dark intentions of its own.
I send you a poem by Nishikanta. He says: "What is the use of writing if Sri Aurobindo doesn't read?"
I read and correct—so he has no cause for complaint. The Bengali ones—can't read them unless I have a clear time—even only quarter of an hour. I have not had it the last few nights.
What about N's complaints? Shall we then turn a deaf ear to them?
What complaints? Micturition and phosphates? Tell him to economise his phosphates instead of squandering them and he will become strong and healthy as a tiger.
I understand that Dr. Banerjee examined I.K. and told you of her case. Do you remember?
Good Lord, no. It is ancient history.
January 25, 1936
[Purani had reported to Sri Aurobindo Mulshankar's accident and subsequent admission to the Hospital.] There is no visible fracture of the skull, but there is bleeding from the left ear which is a sign of a fracture of the base of the skull. There are no signs of cerebral mischief as yet. Mulshankar invokes the Mother's presence and help. The ward in which he is, is rather noisy; he hadn't a wink of sleep.
He should be removed to one of the paid rooms as soon as the Surgeon finds it can be safely done. It would be well if we could get frequent reports of his condition three or four times a day.
January 27, 1936
Is it advisable for people, e.g. P, S, etc. to go and see Mulshankar now and then?
No. Mother had already written to P and B refusing.
Benjamin has phimosis.
What kind of medical animal is this?
January 28, 1936
You forgot to have a look at Nishikanta's poetry yesterday? It has come back just as I sent it—want of time and absence of mind—I mean overmind?
How is that? But it is not surprising if I overlook something, considering the crush through which I have to go at a gallop.
My nights are again becoming heavy and I don't know how to deal with them.
So are mine with a too damnably heavy burden of letters to write.
I come out of bed with the morose thought that another night has passed away and I have done nothing.
You mean the morbid thought!
Thoughts of past pleasures and enjoyments are hopping it and out!
Man alive, send them hopping off for good. What a masochism in all that!
January 30, 1936
You compare your nights with mine! God above! Yours, Sir, is a labour of love—
Love under protest then or at least labour under protest!
And mine—labour of Yoga?
A labour of Bhoga?150
Now apropos of Mulshankar's accident. He says that he fell half on the pavement and half on the road which seems to be right.
At 5 p.m., three men came to him and wrote down his version of the accident, below which he was asked to give his signature. He realised later that he had made a mistake and asked me to write to you. I don't know how these people dared to come and trouble him without the surgeon's permission. Moreover, he is not even in a position to give an exact account of the accident, at present.
But he can't remember how exactly he was knocked down... Bapu says Mulshankar fell in the middle of the road, got up and walked to the pavement, which Mulshankar denies—he didn't walk at all. But Bapu says again that when the car was on the point of knocking him down, Bapu closed his eyes from nervousness, and when he opened them, he found Mulshankar on the pavement. And I hear he is asked to be a witness which he refuses to be. Purani has taken down his version. There is going to be an incongruity between the two statements.
It turns out that it was the juge d'instruction who came to question Mulshankar, so there is nothing to say, though it is strange that they came in that way without informing or consulting the hospital authorities. It does not seem to me that Bapu's version of M's walking can stand. If his eyes were shut before the clash and he opened them only after Mulshankar had reached (in whatever way) the pavement, he cannot have seen Mulshankar walking, not at least with his physical eyes. Moreover it is most improbable. The car caught the cycle in the middle of the street, granted, but in such a way that the cycle went under the car and remained entangled there and Mulshankar must have been precipitated from the cycle, not merely tumbled from it. The car swerved in the collision in the direction of the same pavement and (according to Purani's sketch) was stopped farther on near this pavement, not in the middle of the road. The whole movement was therefore towards the pavement; Mulshankar must have been precipitated head foremost against it and so got his bad hurt on the head. If he had fallen down in the street where the collision took place, he would it seems to me have been run over or been otherwise hurt. In any case Purani should have pointed out to Bapu that his closed eyes and his seeing Mulshankar walk do not go together, he must have taken a mental impression for a fact, since Mulshankar denies the walking. It would be awkward, if the inquiries are pushed farther, that two different and incompatible statements about the incident should proceed from the Asram. If Bapu does not give evidence, it is another matter. Who has asked him to give it? The juge d' instruction or someone else?
January 31, 1936
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