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
Why can't you understand oceans and rocks aspiring to winged release? Haven't you read Tagore's "Balākā" where the earth, hills, rocks yearn to fly also, seeing the flight of a flock of cranes? Surely you have!
I am not an expert in Tagore. In English, rocks might just manage to aspire to be birds, but it would be regarded as fanciful—if oceans started that sort of thing, it would be regarded as beginning to be excessive.
June 1, 1938
In yesterday's poem, you seem to have put paeon in 3 or 4 places. Is that so?
Paeon? I don't think I did it consciously,—don't remember. In this metre I generally run to anapaestic-iambic, but I may occasionally plunk in a paeon or two in the exuberance of my soul.
R.B.'s pain is more marked just below the apex. I couldn't touch a single spot without her crying "Pain, pain." I can't make head or tail of the thing. It has been with her for 7 years, she says. I might consult André.
[Mother:] Yes, it is better.
June 2, 1938
B's piles still quite the same.
[Mother:] What "pommade" are you giving him? is it Anthémor He was complaining that the pommade was increasing his pain.
Should we stop giving K honey? He has taken it for quite a long time.
[Mother:] No harm, he can continue.
J has a small pimple in the left eye. I think saline eye bath and drops of argyrol will do. What does Mother say?
Yes, I suppose it is all right.
We have no kājal.
If kajal is wanted, why not have some prepared? People are asking, but Mother can't supply everybody.
I am sending you the power of attorney draft sent by Chand. It's in Bengali; you will see how difficult it is to translate the terms into English. What the hell am I to do?
I have not the hell of an idea!
Doraiswamy is coming this Sunday, I hear. Shall I ask him?
He may be coming, but as yet he has not announced it.
Or your I.C.S. knowledge would be help enough? I.C.S. people are supposed to be Gods, you know, knowing everything!
Good Lord, sir! I was a probationer only and had nothing to do with these elaborate idiocies. If I had been a practising civilian, I might have had to do it, but probably I wouldn't have done it and they would have chucked me out for insubordination and laziness.
With whom am I to go to the Consul? nothing to pay?
Purani will take you and find out everything and arrange everything.
June 3, 1938
Any influence of Wordsworth in my poem?
Good Lord, any? There are whole chunks of Wordsworth—esp. the childhood's days and growing years etc.
This poem has opened a new vista for me and gives me the hope that perhaps long poems and new things are not impossible, what?
If I can improve it further, give me the suggestions, and I shall do it.
It is a very uncertain mixture. Some lines and stanzas are so merely Wordsworth that they can't pass. The whole childhood and fading business is Wordsworth and everybody would ask, what's this old stuff copied here for? Much of the rest is Wordsworth romanticised. On the other hand there are blocks of mysticism. The poetry is good and there are very fine lines and stanzas, but as a whole it must be more inspired and Wordsworth chucked out and replaced by Nirod.
R.B. has very little pain [below the navel] even while walking. But no appetite at all.
[Mother:] I find her rather yellow in colour.
June 4, 1938
Yes, I also marked R.B.'s coloration. She was better in the morning, but her pain has increased. I can't find out at all what sort of trouble it is. It has been with her for the last 7 years!
[Mother:] Have you seen if it is not a moving kidney?
Guru, I have come to the end of my tether. Blessed Wordsworth took all the worth out of my words. So I have kicked out every blessed remnant and sentiment, lakes and rills and years, I hope. How do you find it208 now?
It is a true রূপান্তর,209 the Deformed Transformed—the whole poem is now exceedingly fine throughout. No need of lines; all would have to be double-lined.
June 6, 1938
Thank you, Sir, for yesterday's unexpected success. I was raging against you that you have left me alone! Even a dribbling Inspiration can be miraculous, what?
Often more miraculous than the flowing ones.
Did you receive the letter Dilipda mentions?
I had a letter from him some days ago.
June 7, 1938
"Slowly unfold before my vision World after world of light..."
These 2 lines seem to be a theft from your sonnet.
No. Anybody can see worlds unfolding before the vision. It is only if the language is reproduced that it can be called a theft.
I think it is better to open Bala's abscess. Shall we do it here or in the hospital?
[Mother:] It might be better to take him to the hospital.
P.S. Arjava told me to-day that he had gone to you, almost a week ago, for a tonic and that you had given one which did him a lot of good, and then you told him that there was no more of it in the dispensary and gave him something else which had not a good effect. Can you tell me what was this first tonic and if it is available here?
June 8, 1938
R.B. says she has no pain today even while walking. She can take more oranges.
[Mother:] I fear we cannot go on increasing oranges like that. They are not easily found in the market and they are costly.
We gave Arjava an Ayurvedic tonic called "Lohasava" containing iron. It is available in Madras.
[Mother:] It is better to order for some.
[Sri Aurobindo:] S has started taking douches daily—she writes that she is taking salt lotion (is it permanganate?) in the douche, and has taken from the dispensary but not in liquid form and has to melt in hot water "till she gets the right colour". Now in the old Doctor's time S once as an experiment took a tenfold dose of permanganate in her douche just to see whether it would not cure her at once in a trice! So Mother considers she cannot be trusted in these matters (she believes too much in her own cleverness) and she says the exact amount needed should be given her every day so that no "mistakes" may be possible.
X came.to me with the letter you have written to him. He said that he showed the letter to D but D had not done anything, not even spoken to Mother about it saying that he had to make some changes and arrangements. I was much surprised that D hadn't put it before the Mother. He should have at least done that.
But why on earth should things be done in a slap-dash hurry just to please X? Mother said nothing to D and did not ask him to make the new arrangement at once. There are many things beside the mere displacing of one sadhak by another that have to be considered and he was quite entitled to consider all that was involved before placing the matter definitely before the Mother for orders.
I thought that perhaps D did not want X in the kitchen, as he would not be able to do with him as he did with N and that your praise of X's cooking might not be palatable to him.
It would be quite natural if he felt like that. Since N and S are working, there has been a halcyon peace in the kitchen (in the D.R. also for different reasons) which are unprecedented in their annals. For years and years it has been a cockpit of shouts and quarrels and disagreements, all the "big" workers quarrelling with each other, each trying to enforce his own ideas and all (except Charu) trying to ignore and push aside D, all getting furious against the Mother because she did not "side" with them (X has also written that if Mother "sides" with D in a clash between them, he would not stand it), and the "little" workers quarrelling with each other or with some big worker. It was like the present state of Europe or worse. Things got so bad that Mother had to eliminate J, M and others and quiet down other would-be-bosses in order to still the uproar, for each time somebody who was till then less boisterous arose to take up the inheritance of quarrel and revolt. Finally we had arrived, as I say, at a halcyon peace—it might have been the tail of the supramental, it might have been only a lull; but anyhow it was precious. When we got X's letter showing by signs with which we were familiar that he was preparing to take up the inheritance, our immediate reaction was "No, thank you!"—hence my letter. We were determined to put our foot down at the first sign and not wait for farther developments.
X told me that he has definitely told D that he won't make any independent move whatever D gives, he will cook with that.
In his letter to us he wrote that he did that because he did not want to increase his own disquietude. He said that his idea was after a month or so to improve the cooking after his own ideas. He spoke of independence in the work and intimated that D's duty should be only to give whatever the রাঁধুনী210 asked for and not exercise any farther control as he was quite ignorant of these matters. His whole tone was that of one preparing for militant self-assertion. Now he seems to deny or forget all that and wonders why I wrote any letter to him at all.
X seems to be going off the trail altogether. His letters are full of the kind of stuff we used to get from B, Y at his worst, and many others. Abhiman, revolt, demands, challenges, ultimatums, commands "You will give me the D.R. upstairs room or I won't remain; you will answer without delay; you ought to have done this, you must do that," charges against the Mother of falsehood, bad treatment meted out to him alone and to no other, etc., etc., also the wickedness of other sadhaks against him (P.S., S etc.); announcement of his coming departure etc. Announcements also that he will stop eating. Also a vital mind taking up partial and misrepresented facts stated by others and without any knowledge of the real situation making false inferences (e.g. that the Mother had not spoken in truth) etc., etc. All that built up into a dark and dismal farrago of which we have had a hundred examples in the past. But it is now long since I have decided not to answer letters of that kind, leave the revolters to their own devices. They expect us to flatter them, soothe them, fall at their feet and beg them not to go, comply with their demands, inundate them with anxious love and affection of the vital kind and generally dandle and pet their vital ego. We have seen that to do anything of that kind is disastrous and makes things a thousandfold worse; the vital ego and its movements increase and reach an Asuric stature. So no more of that. I wanted to answer X and put the truth of his state plainly before him in the most quiet and temperate way because it was his first outbreak; I have already pointed out to him that there is one remedy and only one, for him to reject and fight out his vital mind and ego. But he listens only for a moment and the next day "cela continue". I have no time now to go on answering this kind of letter. If he wants to do what I say, there is a chance for him; but if he doesn't, we are not responsible for his failure.
Because I did not at once assure him of the increase of his work, he has now written announcing fasting and departure, refusal of the work—accompanied by some damn fool nonsense about Mother's frowning eyes, and serious face which is his own imagination. Et voilà.
June 9, 1938
Didn't you receive my private note-book yesterday? I positively sent it. It must be mysteriously lying somewhere there. I hope it hasn't gone to someone else!
I kept it because I thought of writing something about X and his antics but had no time.
R.L. wants half a cup of extra milk as she feels hungry in the morning... Can she have it?
[Mother:] Yes, for a time.
L has again a vomiting sensation and a headache. Last time we gave her Santonin twice with no apparent effect. Shall we repeat?
[Mother:] May not be advisable.
June 10, 1938
Guru, oh Lord! what a lot you have written! I feel called upon to respond to it a little. I had a talk with X and asked him all that he had written to you and Mother. First he said it wasn't anything much; then I told him about your letter to me and he said: "I wrote that I had a mind to try to improve the D.R. cooking gradually, but I realised it is impossible, so I have given up the idea..."
? I saw nothing in that letter about giving up the idea of improving the cooking.
"And that if D goes against Mother and Mother supports him against me, then it will be natural for me to have abhiman..."
Why should Mother support D against herself?
X came to me today with your letter which has pacified him.... I am almost sure if you hadn't replied, he would have gone away, and he did express such a desire, I hear211.
He says he went up to the station and came back.
He had decided already not to come back to Pondicherry after he went out—so it is not new. He came back because when at Cape Comorin he meditated on Shiva and Krishna, they none of them showed up and he could only see Mother and myself!
From what I learn from you and Kanai, I find that things have not been very well with X, from the beginning. His asking for a room in D.R. etc. was revealed to me only now. This incident only set the flame to his heaped-up grievances; otherwise I don't see how a man could write like that from a single instance of this sort...
He had any number of grievances
(1) not getting an easy chair,
(2) not getting an almirah,
(3) not getting the D.R. room on the terrace (reserved especially for visitors),
(4) my letter which was quite general about poetry, Yoga etc., he says I told him that his poetry was all humbug (ভন্ডামি) and that his sadhana was humbug and all our efforts on him were পন্ডশ্রম212—Needless to say I never wrote or suggested anything of the kind and in fact wrote nothing about his poetry or his past sadhana. There were other grievances, but I have forgotten them.
God allow that I may be left some common sense even in the vortex of my troubles. You surprise me by saying that Y also wrote such letters to you!
At least a dozen in which he was going to take the next train to commit suicide decently in some distant place. You don't know what a tug of war it was for some years together. Of course his letters were not so crude as X's but they were bad enough. All that was very confidential however. We both "kept up appearances" outwardly, and saved his face as much as possible.
I hope it is a lesson enough for X.
One can never be sure—when a thing like that has seized a fellow, it is apt to turn up again and again. But I hope for his sake it won't—for I have no longer my old unwearied patience which I showed to B, ft or Y and many others. Also I have no longer time for endless soothing letters. However his present attitude in his last letter is blameless—he seems to have understood.
Z has a slight temperature. Given her an Ayurvedic drug galoye. Should we give her soup?
[The Mother underlined "soup".]
Yes, it is better.
Our rose water is exhausted. Pavitra asked me to enquire if you have any.
[Mother:] I have some but it arrived from France in an iron drum. In spite of filtering there is still in it a slight tinct of rust. For any toilet preparation it is not harmful, but for eyes?—If you want I can send you a bottle—
June 11, 1938
T says the oranges are very sour.
[Mother:] No good oranges can be found and we are receiving no more from Bombay.
Please send us one bottle of rose water. We can try it.
[Mother:] I am sending one bottle.
June 12, 1938
Guru, I am not lucky enough to be able to follow your method [6.5.38]. This little piece has taken me about 2 hours and after an hour's slumbering concentration, mind you! After every line I had to stop for 10 or 15 minutes to concentrate for the next line—so it went on...
Let me remind you that Virgil would sit down and write nine lines, then spend the whole morning perfecting them. Now just compare yourself with Virgil; you have written 16 lines in 2 hours. That beats Virgil hollow.
June 13, 1938
You flatter me by comparing me with Virgil, Sir. But you forget that my 16, 20 lines are nowhere beside his 9 lines and that he didn't require Sri Aurobindo's corrections!
That is why he spent the greater part of the time, trying to correct them himself.
Today's poem has turned into "prosaic" philosophy. All philosophies are, I fear, prosaic. But in poetry it is inadmissible. What's to be done?
The only remedy is to extend the philosophy through the whole poem so as to cure the disparateness. Also it must be a figured philosophy. Philosophy can become poetry, if it ceases to be intellectual and abstract in statement and becomes figured and carries a stamp of poetic emotion and vision.
R.B. is much better today, but is taking very little food.
Shall we give her an extra cup of milk?
[Mother:] In that case you will have to stop the oranges because much milk with oranges can give pains again.
She wants to join work. We advised her to take rest a few days more.
June 14, 1938
I want to take up French again, especially conversation, as I find it will be very useful now. To begin with grammar and verbs will be rather dry, perhaps. Can you give me a few practical hints?
[Mother:] The best is to speak—courageously at every opportunity.
June 15, 1938
Dr. André has prescribed for Z the same medicine as for T, plus Arsenic. Do you sanction Arsenic?
[Mother:] It is to be seen if she can stand arsenic. Perhaps you might make a very careful trial.
As an alternative, he has suggested sodium cacodylate injections.
[Mother:] If the arsenic fails, this might be tried—
Her diet is very poor, she feels very weak. I don't know what to do. Can you suggest something?
[Mother:] But, evidently, the most important is the food—Unhappily these young ladies are very fanciful with their food; it is the palate and not the hunger that governs their eating.
Have you any honey in stock, or shall we buy some form the bazaar?
[Mother:] We have just received honey; you can ask from Datta.
[A separate note:]
Guru, please read T's medical report tonight. I am absolutely staggered at her sudden voracious appetite. Finished one cabbage in the evening! Have you pumped some Supra-mental Force into her stomach or what?
[Sri Aurobindo:] I have of course put pressure for no fever and a good appetite, but did not expect any supramental effects in the latter direction.
By the way, I find her quite sweet and simple...
[Sri Aurobindo:] You seem to be easily impressed by surfaces. You ought to know by this time that "girls" are almost always complex and often psychoanalytically so. Someone whom I know might tell you if he answered sincerely to the question that he had found her one damned incarnate complex. She is simple of course in the sense that she has not a sophisticated mind or intentions.
June 16, 1938
It would be advisable to give Z now and then some vegetables like karela, cucumbers, potatoes—which she can eat raw or boiled, at home; extra milk too.
[The Mother marked the whole question with a vertical line.]
You can propose to her any of these things. She may choose. If there is any objection to her eating spices, it is better not to let her cook because she likes food when it is terribly hot.
I think it would be better to screen-examine Bala's lungs.
[Mother:] Yes.
He is very nervous and his diet is very poor.
[Mother:] Yes, he needs badly a tonic—what about Cacodylate injections?
Guru, even after writing 200 poems, my poetic sense hasn't developed! On the contrary, barring those intuitive poems, these later poems aren't as good as the sonnets and lyrics of the first glorious days. Decadent genius?
No decadence, but the throes of an attempt at change of cadence.
June 17, 1938
This poem is either exceeding or damned—which?
Damned! that is to say, romantic.
Let me say again that in condemning things as romantic, it is because they are of the wilted echo kind. "Nectarous flow" "fountain music" "bright ethereal voices" "echoing notes" "far windblown lyre" "break upon my listening ear" etc. are perhaps new to you and full of colour, but to experienced readers of English poetry they sound as old as Johnny; one feels as if one had been reading hundreds of books of poetry with these phrases on each page and a hundred and first book seems a little superfluous. If they had not been written before, the poem might be pronounced very fine, but—I have tried my best with three of the stanzas to organise them, but except for stanza 2 out of which a very fine image can be made and the two lines marked, with no entire success. The third and fourth stanzas are hopeless. Where the deuce does your inspiration draw these things from? From remembered or unremembered reading? Or just anyhow? It looks as if some unknown nineteenth century poet from time to time got hold of you to unburden himself of all his unpublished poetry.
If you could spare, please send those cherries for T. I tasted one; they're very good.
[Mother:] Sending 2 boxes—
June 18, 1938
I was the 19th century poet myself perhaps, trying to take revenge!... The lines are coming just anyhow, even after a head-breaking concentration! To see things happen this way after so much labour is very disappointing and discouraging.
If it is a rebirth effect, it will obviously take time to get rid of it; no use grudging the labour.
I couldn't understand clearly whether Z could take the vegetables or milk or both.
[Mother:] Both can be given if she is ready to take.
S (a new-comer) complains of weakness, loss of appetite... He requires some "pick-me-up", I suppose. Shall we give him something?
June 19, 1938
R.B. has again a slight continuous pain... I wonder if it is a gynaecological case. But how to find it without examination? Will she agree to be examined in the hospital?
[Mother:] You can ask her.
June 20, 1938
Guru, nearly the whole of yesterday's poem came in the evening meditation—hence its intuitive character! Today's came through perspiring trance!
Not intuitive but a very well-inspired perspiration. You seem to have got back your swing.
The mangoes given to T are spoilt usually. Are they bought or sent by somebody?
[Mother:] Mangoes are not bought. They must be coming from one or another garden.
She proposes to take more rice and bread instead of fruits.
[Mother:] If she takes bread and butter it will help.
R.B. has no pain today. Can she begin work?
[Mother:] She may try.
Does Benjamin still require special cooking?
[Mother:] Ask André—
We have a meat extract lying here, bought for Raymond Shall we give it to Bala?
[Mother:] Yes, but it is better if he takes it in the dispensary itself as a medicine. Because if he takes it to his home, his mother may very well take it instead of he—
June 21, 1938
I fear it is a surrealistic business.213 I don't, understand anything of it!
As Baron says, "Why do you want to understand?" It is very fine poetry—according to Housman "pure poetry", for his view is that the more nonsense, the greater—or at least the purer—poetry. Of course it must be divine nonsense or let us say not "nonsense" but 'non-sense". So there you are. The last stanza is a masterpiece in that line—the clustered memories in the tree of night make also an exceedingly fine and quite original image. But the whole thing is perfect in its type. There is however nothing really unintelligible—only the transition (e.g. from day to the abyss and night and again to the heart and the caves) can be followed only on the lines of the logic of mystical experience—it is nonsense only to the intellect, to the inner feeling everything is quite clear. You have to look at it not from the brain but from the solar plexus! Anyhow the rise of light is a spiritual illumination to the silent day of the inner consciousness—the night and the abyss are the outer ignorance, its brief mortal existence, but even there it brings a momentary relief and an after-effect (trace on the clustered memories of the dark outer consciousness); within the heart there is the beginning of a trance, of change opening to the caves of the luminous deep of the psychic (hridaye guhâyâm)214 with its psychic fires. See? But that is only a clue for the mind to follow—this significance can rather be felt than understood.
R.B. has no pain, but no appetite at all! Shall I try small doses of arsenic? It may give good effects.
[Mother:] You can try—with prudence.
Dr. André says that cooking for Benjamin is no longer necessary. I shall inform him tomorrow.
[Mother:] But it must be ascertained that he eats the asram food. It is by not taking it (he does not like it) that he got so bad—
For my piles, local injection or operation is the only remedy!
[Mother:] Beware of operation: it does not cure—
Purani showed me your reply. Since we are giving Iron to R.B., there is no objection to Purani's preparation.
[Mother:] Then if she takes that preparation, it is better to postpone the arsenic—
June 22, 1938
Dr. André suggests that ওল কচু215 (what you call Indian potato) is very good for piles. Can it be given twice a week in the D.R.? It is not for myself only, but for many others who are also suffering from the same complaint.
[Mother:] You might ask Dyuman if they can be found in the market.
Bala is getting on very well, so I have postponed the screen exam. But if you think it's better to do it, I can take him for it.
[Mother:] No, it is better not to have it done as it might make him anxious for his health.
Benjamin says that he can't take Asram food at all. He has taken it before "with difficulty and against his heart"! I suppose, we have to continue?
June 23, 1938
Lalita came with your message to call Dr. André. Do you suspect something else than just boils?
[Mother:] No, but she is a bit nervous about it and is very anxious that all that should disappear quick. The last one in the armpit was very painful. Also she cannot stand medicine internally.
For Benoy's artificial eye, Nagaswami writes to Rajangam that it will be absolutely necessary for Benoy to go to Madras as each specimen varies from person to person, though we mentioned about sending our sample.
Our oculist says that the Madras firms are no good. We should send a sample to Bombay and ask from there. So it's better to enquire there, isn't it?
The same process [in writing poetry] gives wonderful results sometimes and foolish ones at others!
It depends on the consciousness-Source you strike; the same method will have different results according to the inspiration fount (or level) you get at.
June 25, 1938
I suppose Lalita has told you André's opinion and treatment regarding auto-vaccine. You have no objection, I hope.
[Mother:] No, it is all right.
D's bag and letter. I have to help you (helping Guru, I chuckle!) wherever you are likely to stumble in reading the letter.
In spite of your help I had a slow struggle with D's hieroglyphics—but half way through Intuition came to my rescue and I swam through the rest.
You will find from the letter that he is a little or much upset by P.S.'s remark...
It seems to be more much than little. I don't see why he should be upset by it at all.
I can't say if P.S. has said it, nor can I judge D's capacity to understand your Yoga.
The difficulty with D was that he had caught up ideas about Yoga from various quarters and stuck to his ideas like grim death, his mind refusing to understand my ideas and wilfully misunderstanding them. Thus he took supermind for the Vedantic Nirguna Brahman, something dry and high and cold, and the psychic for a pale udasin nirlipta216 business with no flame in it and persisted in such absurd ideas in spite of my denials. That obviously was not helpful.
I fear my capacity also is very poor in that direction. But is it necessary to "understand" your Yoga in order to practise it? As far as I understand, it is only your Supermind business that baffles us and some of us are sceptical about it...
Well, it may not be necessary to understand it, but it is advisable not to misunderstand it.
The scepticism is stupid, because how can one pronounce for or against about something one does not know or understand at all?
And some think it not worth while at present to bother about it.
Certainly it is better not to bother about it and to do what is immediately necessary. The attempt to understand has led many to take for the Supermind something that was not even spiritual and to suppose themselves supermen when all they were doing was to go headlong into the ultravital.
You have said that nobody knows or understands anything about it—but I think it is not even necessary, what?
Not at present.
If that is what was meant by P.S. I can see, but to say that D doesn't understand your Yoga is rather—!
I don't know what P.S. meant. I have explained in what sense 17 did not understand it. But how many do?
But—I ask you again—does one need to understand your Yoga in order to practise it? Or, how far should one understand, grasp and assimilate it?
If one has faith and openness that is enough. Besides there are two kinds of understanding—understanding by the intellect and understanding in the consciousness. It is good to have the former if it is accurate, but it is not indispensable. Understanding by the consciousness comes if there is faith and openness, though it may come only gradually and through steps of experience. But I have seen people without education or intellectuality understand in this way perfectly well the course of the Yoga in themselves, while intellectual men make big mistakes—e.g. take a neutral mental quietude for the spiritual peace and refuse to come out of it in order to go farther.
I admit that D, at times, was sceptical about some well accepted things of Yoga, e.g. Force curing diseases etc. But that was scepticism rather than lack of understanding.
Well, but his scepticism was founded on ignorance and non-understanding.
Could you give some light for him and for me?
This is for you, not for him.
N and others are interested to see your answers to D. Will it be advisable to show them?
They might talk and it would reach P.S. and make matters worse.
Anilbaran gave me his novel to criticise. He says it is very impressive and he has seen my criticism of J's poetry.
He says his own novel is very impressive? Or your criticism?
He says that I have a good critical faculty. So, Sir, that's something, what?
Sometimes.
June 26, 1938
"The sudden resurrection comes Within the slow Fire of unremembered history In its clustered snow."
Now, look here, look here! There is a limit—some coherence there must be! This means nothing either to the brain or the solar plexus.
"... That longs like a winged spirit to fly Beyond the pale Zone of terrestrial pathways Under a veil."
This flying under a veil is an acrobacy that ought not to be imposed on any bird or spirit. Besides the bird was on the moon—how did the terrestrial pathways come in then?
Guru, this is a direct effect of reading Amal's lyrics which you praised so much.
A terrible effect!
I am damned puzzled and baffled!
NO WONDER!!!
The first two and a half stanzas are very fine, but the rest!! Well, well, well, this is nonsense with a vengeance; but the poetry is too pure for any plexus to stand. Something might be done with the fourth stanza if the feathers disappear out of remembered history and the clustered snow goes the same way. But I fear the last 2 stanzas are hopeless. I tried but my inspiration remained weary and unstirred by any rhythmic wave.
"And melts the snow From its chilled spirit and reveals Before its gaze Columns of fire immensities..."
Why should the bird want to go into fire? Hot bath after cold one?
"... The awakened bird Now voyages with foam-white sails, That vision stirred!"
A bird with sails is unknown to zoology! Or do you mean that the bird hires a sailing vessel to go into the fires? Lazy beast! And what is it that is stirred by the vision, the bird or the sails? I don't think the last line can stand. You can say of the bird "Flies like a ship with foam-white sails," but then how to end?
If this poem doesn't stir your plexus, I am undone! The expressions may not be apt and felicitous but coherence there is, what?
Yes, except at the end where you make the bird a surrealistic animal with sails and stir the sails with a vision.
Guru, Chand has sent me the power of attorney. But out of laziness I didn't move. Is it necessary to show it to you or to Doraiswamy after typing it?
To me, no. You can show it to Duraiswami. Better get the thing done.
The oculist advised N to take cod-liver oil. N wants to have your opinion.
[Mother:] He can take it.
Whatever Z wants for her diet, e.g. vegetables, fruits, shall I ask Dyuman to get? He has agreed to buy them if you permit.
[Mother:] All right—
The honey we got from Datta is exhausted. I think K can discontinue it now.
[The Mother underlined "discontinue it new".]
Yes.
1) Arjava says that the Asram food is too rich and too spiced for him. Would it be possible to provide him with some boiled vegetables—beetroots, cabbage, potatoes, etc., once a day, at midday?
2) Madanlal since a very long time has a cold which is refusing to go—he is still coughing; it has become almost chronic, I fear. It would be better to interfere and get him rid of it.
I would like you to see to it, even if he says: it's nothing, etc.—
June 28, 1938
Dilipda has asked for a poem. I am sending the one enclosed, but how much of your remarks should pass?
If it is only for Dilip, it doesn't matter. But there's something wrong. What's "this brief mystical experience" coming in without any syntactical head or tail? Either I have dropped something or you have dropped or else misread. Please look again at my original hieroglyphs.
June 29, 1938
I am sending you "the original hieroglyphs". I think you have dropped one "of" before "this brief ... experience."
I haven't, but as I thought you have transmogrified what I wrote—It is not mystical but mortal and not experience but existence, "this brief mortal existence".
I am sure you have read the eulogies crowned upon Doraiswamy's head, on his retirement, and enjoyed them immensely at the same time feeling proud of him and saying, "Ha, ha, here is the fruit of my Force!" What? It is indeed a great pleasure to see the prestige of the Asram elevated by at least one man, though I suppose you care a damn for prestige.
Queer idea all you fellows seem to have of the "prestige" of the Asram. The prestige of an institution claiming to be a centre of spirituality lies in its spirituality, not in newspaper columns or famous people. Is it because of this mundane view of life and of the Asram held by the sadhaks that this Asram is not yet the centre of spirituality it set out to be?
I have been really struck by his many-sided qualities. Is that all achieved by your Force alone?
These qualities are all Duraiswami's own by nature. But all that has nothing to do with spiritual achievement which is the one thing needful here.
His legal genius, social charm, uprightness, noble character, etc., were all there or are they your Force's gifts? How far can one be changed by your or the spiritual Force?
Changed in what way? There are plenty of upright people (uprightness, straightforwardness, a certain nobility of character are D's inborn gifts) and plenty of able and successful people outside this Asram or any Asram and there is no need of my spiritual Force for that.
He told me that he began practice with only Rs. 15-30 a month. But that is no unusual.
Certainly not. It's done in America every day.
It was the same with C.R. Das. Apart from legal acumen, I want more to see how far Doraiswamy's character has been changed and moulded by the Force.
Lord, man, it's not for changing or moulding character that this Asram exists. It is for moulding spirituality and transforming the consciousness. You may say it doesn't seem to be successful enough on that line, but that is its object.
I suspect, however, that you are closing in your Supra mental net and bringing in all the outside fish!
Good Lord, no! I should be very much embarrassed Wall the outside fish insisted on coming inside. Besides D is not an outside fish.
But what about our X? When do you propose to catch him or a still longer rope required? I would call that your biggest success, Sir, and the enrichment of your Fishery.
I would not. You seem to have an exaggerated idea of X's bigness (an example of Einsteinian relativity, I suppose, or the result of his own big view of himself.) Whatever bigness he has is my creation, apart from the fact that he was a popular singer when he came. He would have been nothing else (even in music) if he had not come here. The only big thing he had by nature was a big and lusty vital.
We are all watching with interest and eagerness that big operation of yours. But I don't think you will succeed till your Supramental comes to the field in full-fledged colours, what?
What big operation? There is no operation; I am not trying to hale in X as a big fish. I am not trying to catch him or bring him in. If he comes into the true spiritual life it will be a big thing for him, no doubt, but to the work it means only a ripple more or less in the atmosphere. Kindly consider how many people big in their own eyes have come and gone (B, Q, H to speak of no others) and has the work stopped by their departure or the Asram ceased to grow? Do you really think that the success or failure of the work we have undertaken depends on the presence or absence of X? or on my hauling him in or letting him go? It is of importance only for the soul of X—nothing else.
Your image of the Fishery is quite out of place. I fish for no one; people are not hauled or called here, they come of themselves by the psychic instinct. Especially I do not fish for big and famous and successful men. Such fellows may be mentally or vitally big, but they are usually quite contented with that kind of bigness and do not want spiritual things, or, if they do, their bigness stands in their way rather than helps them. The fishing for them is X's idea—he wanted to catch hold of S.B., S.C., now L.D. etc., etc., but they would have been exceedingly troublesome sadhaks, if they ever really dreamed of anything of the kind. All these are ordinary ignorant ideas; the Spirit cares not a damn for fame, success or bigness in those who come to it. People have a strange idea that Mother and myself are eager to get people as disciples and if any one goes away, especially a "big" balloon with all its gas in it, it is a great blow,—a terrible defeat, a dreadful catastrophe and cataclysm for us. Many even think that their being here is a great favour done to us for which we are not sufficiently grateful. All that is rubbish.
I gather from NK that Nirmala doesn't take vegetable at all at noon. Only rice and curds, and that too not much. She is injuring her health!
[Mother:] You might, perhaps, explain that to her—
June 30, 1938
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