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
I was called by R to the dying case opposite our house. The case seems hopeless... It seems R is willing to take it up if he is guarded by André or Valle. I wonder if it would be wise, as the chances are next to nil...
R saw Mother and told her he thought the case hopeless. She told him to drop it. In fact she had not wanted him to take up the case, but it seems they impressed one "officier de santé" who came to fetch him.
(Since have heard the classic lamentations with a note from R of the departure of the patient to his destination).
Please have a look at the typescript on Thompson. It will be kept to a limited company. I am sure it will do a lot of good to many of us who think like Thompson as regards English poetry, of which I was one, as you know.
Can't sanction communication to others. First of all, I have slated Thompson in a way which cannot be made public—for he has done nothing to deserve a public castigation. I let myself go because I was writing for you alone. Moreover a comparative statement of Thompson's opinions and mine means, if published, a discussion between myself and him, which is not among the possibles. I have kept your typescript to see whether I can note down anything on the points raised which you can show to a few—but even then to a few only.
March 1, 1936
U has a painless swelling in the nape of the neck. It has increased in size, and will go on increasing... It is called a lipoma, i.e. fatty tumour; harmless and painless but ugly and "worthless".
He wants it to be cut off mercilessly: a very simple operation under local anasthesia; doesn't require lying in bed, except for one or two days.
For the one or two days he would have to remain at the hospital?
If you like I can show it to Philaire, or he can go to our Miracle doctor, and wait for a miracle...
I don't think it will be any use sending him to R—he does not succeed so well with the Asram people because they are too critical and have too much feeling against him. He works not by medicine alone, but by suggestion also with the Force behind him, and a spirit of critical antagonism and that working do not go well together. For the sadhaks better trust to medicine and the knife.
March 2, 1936
I think U can come away from the hospital. If you permit, I can take him to Philaire tomorrow.
Yes.
Please don't think that because I am silent on your "widening" theory, I have accepted it. All I may say is that you have been making a fool of me. I admit that I deserve no better, but still ... well, still! I am in a damn rotten state... As soon as I enter the Dispensary, it seems some black forces ride on my shoulders. I want to escape and spend a few afternoon hours away in the loneliness of Nature's company till this melancholia lasts. Can a cycle be had for the purpose?...
Again Dilip! Can't supply a cycle for every melancholiac. Would have to buy 20 new ones immediately and then the whole Asram would turn melancholiac in order to have cycles.
From the tone of my letter you may imagine that I am making you responsible for my pathological condition. Not at all; it is my blessed nature or Man of Sorrows as you title it, though I don't understand why you say that I have borrowed them from Dilipda.
Your "not at all" is a delusion. You doubt like him in the same terms, write like him with the same symptoms similarly expressed, want to cycle into Nature like him etc., etc.—and still you say "No, Dilipdar!"
Diffidence, self-distrust has always been my element from the very start...
Diffidence and self-distrust are quite another matter.
You call me lazy, but I am not lazy. When the inner condition is all right, I can work at a poem for hours...
Then why the hell don't you keep it right?
You say that Thompson doesn't deserve a public castigation. I wish he did, because he is again bombarding Dara, with his luminous theory on Indian English—apart from other things!
Not only so, but I refuse to figure as discussing with him on an equal platform. You will ask me next to enter into a debate with Chellu166 on Vedanta. There are limits.
A.K.'s poetry has caused a flutter. Another miracle, they say. How has this feat been possible? A fellow who has never written any bit of poetry produces, just after one or two pieces, a remarkable poem and a long one at that, which will have an abiding place in Bengali literature! How could he have produced it? It has really puzzled me a lot.
What a "hower" you are!
You are puzzled because you are always demanding a rational process familiar to the ordinary physical mind from a suprarational thing like Yoga. Yoga has its processes, but they can only be understood and detected by those who have Yogic experience. But you refuse to accept that experience as valid; you want everything to be explained according to your own field of reason which is that of the ignorant physical mind. If you persist in that you will remain puzzled to the end of the chapter.
Whereas I working for 3 years on Bengali poetry—what have I done? Nothing to speak of, compared with this piece.
That is because you are a "hower" and an "efforter"—So the Divine or the Oversell' or whatever people may like to call it has to pretend with you that it is done in you by your stupendous effort and the how has to be shown—the how being that you work 40 hours and produce 4 lines.
This piece of poetry is as mature a work as any great poet's. His success in painting is understandable, as he had to work and work a lot, before anything came out. Even then, I gather, painting here is only in its infancy.
Yes, but all the same very remarkable at times, e.g. for a boy of Romen's years with no systematic training some of the work he has done is quite unexpected. Only what has been done is not yet great and finished art. But if X is to be acclaimed as a mighty artist for his paintings ..., I don't see why our artists should be modest any longer. Let us proclaim them also as epoch-making geniuses!
March 3, 1936
You ask me why I don't keep my inner condition right. As If I knew how to do it! It keeps itself right or goes wrong without the least caring for my effort.
What about the wonderful efforts (unprecedented in human history) by which D and you have made yourselves poets? Why can't you put some of that superhuman effort into this? If you do and succeed, I will rigorously leave all the credit to you and not ask any for a superior Power.
If it is I—the I that I know—that brings in the right condition, I would surely try to keep it... You admitted when you said "... of course whether you widened yourself or it [Force] widened you and forced its way is another matter," that the Force has widened me and I quite believe it because I did nothing extraordinarily unusual to widen myself The Force had seized me then and has left me now that's all.
But what is this talk about force? Nothing is done in this world except by one's own effort. Ask your own reason and D.
You say that because I am an "efforter", I write 4 lines in 40 hours! Is that so? Then I have yet to know how without an effort things pour in at all times.
[Sri Aurobindo underlined "at all times".]
What things? Poetry flows into you at all times?
It may happen, I admit, in just a few cases, as it did in mine, but not always. And if one were to wait for the automatic opening of the flood-gates, I think my production would have been by now only 4 or 5 poems! You have yourself said that one has to beat and beat, and what is this beating, pray, if not an effort to bring down the reluctant Unseen into the,field of the seen?
I don't understand. You say it is only by effort that one can write poetry—that is, what is written is something constructed by mental effort. It follows that anybody who makes the necessary effort can become a great poet. Up till now it was thought that there was some mysterious thing called inspiration. There are plenty of people who have made Herculean and untiring efforts night and day but have not succeeded in writing anything that others would call poetry—they may have just produced good or bad verse. That however in the light of your luminous rationality is evidently an agelong error. As D might say "I labour and write poems day and night and people give the credit to some damned thing (not my own great self) they call Inspiration." Evidently. But what is this about a few cases? Are you going to tell me that Inspiration after all exists? Can't be.
From your answers it seems there is a very simple way of doing things and it is only our egoistic foolishness that refuses to take it and goes in for laborious effort. Knowing "how to bow" for some such thing I suppose! or is it some passivity?
Well, that is the idea in Yoga—that by a right passivity one opens oneself to something greater than one's limited self, and effort is only useful for getting that condition. There is also a notion that even in the ordinary life the individual is only an instrument in the hands of a Universal Energy though his ego takes the credit of all he does. But these are exploded ideas which you need not consider.
When did I refuse to accept experience as valid? I may want a rational explanation of a process, if any, but I don't disbelieve an experience.
[Sri Aurobindo underlined "if any".]
I said you did not believe in the knowledge given by those who have the experience—you want a how that agrees with your own lack of knowledge and lack of experience.
In my case I have found that mostly I have to make a great effort and then when the thing comes down, people call it the result of the Force; I am quite justified in refusing to allow the Force most credit.
Quite. It was your efforts that turned non-poets into poets! Hail, you wonder-workers!
If you say that the Force has different ways of working—at times making one sweat and struggle for the sake of fun and at other times coming and sweeping one like spring breeze—nothing to argue!
It is the experience of the Yogis—but that is of no value.
If you don't exclaim "Again Dilip!"
I do!
I shall write what he very aptly and eloquently expresses—"I did everything with my effort, and you say that the Force has made me do it! If it's the Force that's doing it then why alas, this bone-breaking labour!"
All I can say is that if it was D's Force (of effort) that turned in a moment a hobbling ass into a winged eagle, for that was what happened to his poetry, it has done something no one ever did before. Namo Namo Dilipaya.167 It is he who should go forth to change the world... But no doubt you are both of you right. I am rather coming to the conclusion that this world should be left to its own "efforts" to arrive where it can and the Mother and myself should take tickets for some other.
March 4, 1936
Yesterday I couldn't take U to the hospital because of my depression and today he couldn't come because of his depression due to his inability to pick up English! Like my poetry, what?
And all equally absurd
March 5, 1936
I have gulped down your satires quite smoothly. I am beaten if you put the same argument for Yoga too. Still it is difficult to see how without any effort, some time or other, one can do anything. As regards poetry, my point is that Force and inspiration are there, but effort also exists...
[Sri Aurobindo underlined "Force", "inspiration" and "effort also exists".
What then?
...and on many occasions I find that the effort predominates overmuch.
Much too much!
Inspiration leaves one sometimes and one goes on beating and beating, hammering and hammering, but it comes not! Inspiration failing to descend, perhaps.
[Sri Aurobindo drew an arrow indicating the last sentence.]
Exactly. When any real effect is produced, it is not because of the beating and the hammering, but because an inspiration slips down between the raising of the hammer and the falling and gets in under cover of the beastly noise. It is when there is no need of effort that the best comes. Effort is all right, but only as an excuse for inducing the Inspiration to come. If it wants to come, it comes—if it doesn't, it doesn't and one is obliged to give up after producing nothing or an inferior mind-made something. I have had that experience often enough myself. I have also seen Amal often producing something good but not perfect, beating the air and hammering it with proposed versions each as bad as the other; for it is only a new inspiration that can really improve a defect in the transcription of the first one. Still one makes efforts, but it is not the effort that produces the result, but the inspiration that comes in answer to it. You knock at the door to make the fellow inside answer. He may or he mayn't—if he lies mum, you have only to walk off swearing. That's effort and inspiration.
One has to work hours and hours on end. What do you call this labour?
Hammering, making a beastly noise so that Inspiration may get excited and exasperated and fling something through the window, muttering "I hope that will keep this insufferable tinsmith quiet."
By the way I discovered today from which corner the depression has come to me. It is our remarkable D again who got it immediately after Darshan. Then from him I got it! It is a pity though that one should get depressions after Darshan! It would suggest almost a post hoc theory. And he thinks it would be good to take a trip to Calcutta, or pass some time with X. Gracious, passing time with Mother and Sri Aurobindo doesn't help and X will?...
That is why I affiliate you to D. It is not the first time I have seen your depressions coincide with his. But as a matter of fact he got depressed before the Darshan and came ready to be dark and unresponsive. The cause as usual was piffling—because Sotuda and P.S. had bothered him about his houses! Formerly it was always because I didn't smile but remained grim, aloof and supra-mental. I secured one happy darshan by smiling at everybody with a Herculean labour of persistence. But that only set his outer mind seeking for some new excuse for being unhappy with the Darshan and he found it that way—and then the usual gloom and horror of darkness and frantic letters of departure—of course going back to the old grievance, no response from the Divine. Well, if anyone treated you as D does the Divine, would you be inclined to give a response? You would be more likely to be off to the Equator. And yet if he only did patiently what I have told him to do, he would get in time what he wants! Well, well!
S asks me to take him to the hospital for his eye-trouble. I asked him if R had given him permission—but R doesn't say anything. Also about the X-ray findings, when I asked R, he replied curtly as usual, "Oh I am not interested!"
R has given up S—only S goes on pushing reports saying "I am in perfect health except for a little cold" under R's door. It does not matter as S is going. He has written for his passage money.
S is in a danger-zone (suffering from chronic stomach ulcer). I don't understand why he stays here without a chance of coming to Pranam or meditation for months. I thought Mother's touch would do him good.
He is too insincere. Mother refuses to have him for Pranam or meditation. She says he is so full of falsehood that she can put no force on him except a Mahakali one and as he would resist that also, it would be more dangerous to him than helpful.
D was saying that his ailments don't ever improve after reporting to you. Please see that this report gives some response, otherwise another factor will be added to his depression!
The attitude of his physical mind prevents any result—fo it is so unwilling to recognize anything as the result of the Force that his subconscient works in the direction of preventing any result coming—and it is the subconscient that is most determinative in matters of illness.
If Mother has no objection and Rajangam is willing to look after the Dispensary, I would like to fly to the Lake or Villinur on a cycle.
Mother says if nothing is needed to be done and nothing happens while you are away and R has only to sit and guard the Dispensary, then it is all right. On condition of course he doesn't kick down the Dispensary by an ill-considered movement of his legs in your absence! This last is my addition.
March 6, 1936
With all these "buts" and "ifs", I drew back today. So if Mother doesn't really approve I won't go. I didn't quite catch if Mother said that in the Pranam.
Mother had forgotten all about Villenur and the Rajangam-guard Dispensary. So that had nothing to do with her look at Pranam
It is really a pity that J is going with so many parts, also!
He is going with tears and full of blessings. Perhaps it is the "parts" you speak of that call him—his horoscope was found to be brilliant and almost Leninesque. Perhaps one day you will gaze at the figure of পাগলা যশোবন্ত (I think that is Mridu's description) presiding over the destinies of a Communist India!! Why not? Hitler in his "handsome Adolf" days was not less পাগলা or prettier, so there is a chance.
Really, how things happen here so suddenly! He had been laughing, joking and one day I find he has turned quite a different man—morose, muttering, etc.
That is because he is listening to "voices" and feeling "influences", Anilbaran's and others', e.g. Nolini's. Imagine Nolini engaged in dark and sinister occult operations to take possession of somebody.
You said something about the intermediate zone. I thought it was sex-trouble.
Sex-trouble, ego-trouble, occult-power trouble.
I had an idea that the intermediate zone is something that one is likely to tumble into after making a great progress in sadhana... I find there is some similarity between him, N, etc.
Anybody passing the border of the ordinary consciousness can enter into this zone, if he doesn't take care to enter into the psychic. In itself there is no harm in passing through provided one does not stop there. But ego, sex, ambition etc., if they get exaggerated, can easily lead there to the fate of N and Co.
... He has very big ideas about himself e.g. he once said to me that he was trying to solve the sex-problem of the Asrarm!
So did N—he solved it finally by joining his wife.
(N.B. Sir, it is your pen that is making these blots.)
Really, I don't understand, how with so much love for you, such is the result.
Yes, but the vital got into the love and that always creates trouble unless the vital agrees to be under the control of the psychic.
It is as if the psychic is crying and crying but other parts are dragging him away.
Quite true. But the psychic is weak, the mind erratic, the vital rest less and over-eager. Hence these results.
Is this intermediate zone such a beastly thing that you can't draw anyone out of it in spite of his bearing so much love for you?
The diffculty is that if I draw him out, he runs back into it. These people feel a tremendous attraction to the wrong Influences and call them back. It is because in the absence of the occult experiences they feel ordinary and dull—and they are people who like to be-extraordinary. I did pull out G; but he became as flat as a pancake and would do nothing more in the sadhana, because naturally I refused to put any more power upon him as he might misuse it. Others also when I cured their extravagances, complained that they felt so "ordinary" and shouted for their "Extravagant Influences" back again. There are always plenty of forces ready to answer a call like that. How often did I cudgel B and bring him back to his senses and he became quite clairvoyant and lucid for a time. But always he went back to his central Extravagance—mistaking his Ego for the Divine.
By the way—
My boil has burst and as you see From the depression I am free. Thanks, Guru, thanks to Thee! Wilt Thou now pour some poetry?
Yes, I got irritated last night by your persistent boiling and put a gigantic Force which I am glad to see burst the little boil.
Thank God for that! Free from boil, At poems toil. Laugh and grow fat.
Dihp's temperature was 101.4˚ in the morning,., evening, 100.4˚. Had two half-boiled eggs in the morning as he was hungry because we starved him last night!
A robust patient
He says he has eaten two eggs out of greed, asks to be excused.
Quite safe!
U now vacillates or hesitates, thinking of pain and suffering, etc. and says, "After all how much can it grow in one or two years?" So I leave him with his tumour on the neck.
Mother was looking at his mango. It looked to her as if it was rather deep and would need more than a local anaesthetic. If he is afraid of the operation, no use operating.
I did not quite follow what you meant by "it does not matter" about S. He wants the glasses badly and says his eyes are burning.
Really now, what have I to do with his glasses? He is going—once out of the Asram, all these things will be his own business.
As he is going tonight, if any intelligent fellow with some interest in work can take his place or guard the Dispensary at least, please give us one.
Good Lord! what high expectations! Where are they, these intelligent interested fellows who are ready to stand guard over the Dispensary? Spot them, please.
March 7, 1936
How is it you remained unresponsive to my petty offers? (because they were petty?) I deferred the purchase of the pad, because if you have one, another would be of no use. I hope you haven't.
I am afraid I have.
But why should my depression coincide with D's? Too much association? Well, there are A, N, who mix with him more than I and yet they don't bring away the reward—and why do I?
Their separative individuality is more robustly precise. Besides they have not the Man of Sorrows temperament as part of their make-up.
You surely can't hold off Krishna, Shiva or Brahma because X treats the Divine like that. That would be acting not like a Friend, though maybe like the Divine!
What do you mean? I am not holding off Krishna. It is Krishna who is holding off himself, as he generally does, except when he finds a likely person who will tolerate his ways.
As to X's not doing what you ask him to, in a talk I raised the issue casually. He said: "What am I not doing? I tell Guru everything that I am doing." I replied, "But to my mind our failure to get anything in Yoga is due perhaps to our terrible egoistic demands—I have done so much, where's the result? This sort of thing prevents us from any success, as this is a Yoga of surrender and not of effort. Effort is necessary but without any demand..."
The real thing is that he had his own ideas of Yoga and never accepted mine. He raged against the supermind, sneered at the psychic, stared with blank unintelligence at the idea of love and self-giving without demand etc. So how the deuce could he do what I told him? Outwardly he tried in an imperfect way, but it is only recently that he has been doing it in earnest—but inwardly? and inwardly is the most important thing. What I have to do all the time is to try to force the growth of the psychic in him without his knowing it and it is an uphill and precarious business.
Is effort without demand of result possible unless the psychic fellow comes to the front?
Perfectly possible, if you can once distinguish between the will of the Purusha and the demand of the vital. Of course, it is easiest and indeed plain sailing if the psychic comes in front, but even before that it is possible.
X said that Mother asked him to try to be conscious at every step, but it is "a very tiresome business".
Exactly; there it is. He doesn't want to do what he is told because it is tiresome or not according to his ideas.
It seems he hasn't quite caught what you want him to do in spite of so many letters.
That's the difficulty.
Now I come to my state of affairs. I find now, except during depression, that I don't take the trouble of thinking of the Divine... Where is Yoga? Where is the aspiration, urge, etc.? An inner certitude that everything will be done by the Guru, what? Or a tamasic beatitude? I don't see really how the "blue moon" is going to rise.
You rely too much on your own seeing as the standard of all truth—again like D.
You actually propose "Laugh and grow fat" though laughing never makes fat!
You oppose one of the most ancient traditions of humanity by this severe statement. But your statement is mistaken even according to Science. We are now told that it is the activity of certain glands that makes you thin or fat. If glands, then why not gladness?
Really I am now wondering at my own revelry and hilarity. No particular concern about yoga, yet I am happy. What kind of psychic attitude is this, Sir?
It is not a psychic attitude, but it is better than depression
In what biological order will you put an egg—plant or animal?
European vegetarians regard it as a vegetable—others say that unimpregnated eggs can be eaten because there is no life in them—others say that as it is not destruction of conscious life it can be done.
I would like to have Mother's opinion on taking eggs so that I may not commit a sacrilege, if it is one.
Mother allows eggs as a special provision for health in cases like R. Otherwise she does not approve.
D was given Codein Phos syrup, and he says it instantaneously stopped the cough. Very surprising, almost miraculous, more effective and definite than Yoga-Force—his opinion.
The fellow! After my strong intervention, he now says it is not God's Force, but Codein Phos!
Very strange, Sir, that you don't have a single intelligent chap in the species of your Supramental race-to-be! On what do you build your hopes, please?
Excuse me, you said intelligence and interest. You might find one of these separately, but how do you hope to get them combined together? Anyhow we can't hunt for the kind of animal you want, you really should take up the chase.
March 9, 1936
[At the end of the day's medical report:]
About Mulshankar? How is he progrgsing? Have you asked him to take up some work? so we learn from B.S.168
March 10, 1936
Herewith Chand's letter. He wants to change his residence. But if he goes to a Mohamedan mess, it would be from the frying pan into the fire. However, he wants your opinion. Have you any to offer?
Have no opinion to offer. Don't very well understand the proposed culinary operation. He is going to earn Rs. 10 and spend 14—and on the top of that bring his mother—to live with him in a Mohamedan mess? It sounds very modern but too much of a mess. Irish stew—what!
He also writes that if M's wife gets angry with him and abuses him অনর্থক [for nothing], এটা-ওটা [this and that] might happen.
He means it will then not be নিরর্থক,169 but rather সার্থক170. Obviously If এটা-ওটা are going to happen, a shift might be preferable.
There is something enclosed in the bag. Good enough, Sir?
Very nice. But these things are generally somewhere else when one needs them.
What has happened to my typescript? Hibernating?
My dear sir, if you saw me nowadays with my nose to paper from afternoon to morning, deciphering, deciphering, writing, writing, writing, even the rocky heart of a disciple would be touched and you would not talk about typescripts and hibernation. I have given up (for the present at least) the attempt to minimise the cataract of correspondence; I accept my fate like Raman Maharshi with the plague of Prasads and admirers, but at least don't add anguish to annihilation by talking about typescripts.
March 11, 1936
I let go the typescript, but the poem? How can I allow you to break a promise, Sir?
Break a promise? Who's going to do that? No time was fixed—so the promise can be fulfilled, say in 1997. If you say you are not likely to be alive then, nor I either well, our heirs can complete the transaction.
What is the use of your complaining? You have committed the grave blunder of coming into this sorrowful world with a mighty magical pen. Sri Krishna, I conjecture, may have complained about his lungs because of his incessant blowing and fluting to melt our hard hearts.
It is an idea! Strange that none of the poets has mentioned it—a modernist poet would catch at it at once, "The Flute and the Lungs," or "Krishna's Bronchitis."
I am knocking about with Kanai and trying some joint meditation in the hope of getting something. Vain illusion?
Don't know—sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't.
D has presented me a copy of his novel দোলা171 and writes: সাদরে অদ্যাপি যে দরদী রইল বিষাদ সাথী172 Good Lord! can't afford to be his companion in melancholy any more. He has beaten me hollow, what?
Ten times hollow! What the hell has made him so abnormally sensitive? He attributes his last despair deep as black Erebus to a joke of mine which he took as a personal sarcasm against him, though it was only a joke pointing out the logical outcome of his idea that you can't love the Divine until you experience that highly elusive gentleman. I say, you are not going to be his সাথী173 in that kind of thing? If so, I shall stop joking betimes and write to you henceforth with the solemnity of an owl.
U's lipoma can be operated upon under a local anaesthetic. Now all this question of operation is useless, because he says he is afraid. After all he has no discomfort and neither is it very big, he says, so let it be. Only I am thinking that if it grows bigger, as undoubtedly it will, unless your Force prevents it, what will be done then?
No use doing it if he is afraid. Let us wait on the Gods and hope they won't increase the lipoma till it deserves a diploma for its size.
An American skyscraper on the neck would be obviously inconvenient.
About Mulshankar's massage—do you think a servant can be trusted to do it properly—or a sadhak, say Virabhadra, should be asked to do it. Mother wants your opinion.
You have read Nishikanta's poem রাজহংস.174 I would like to know how far the images he has put on the back of the swan, are permissible in poetry. It seems the imagination has run riot. D also voiced the same opinion. Here is a quotation: You have shown new paths to the horse known as Uchchhaishrava... By one single quiver your dance Urvasi was born.
Isn't it rather too much for a swan's miraculous activity?
If you except175 matter-of-fact verisimilitude from N or a scientific ornithologically accurate swan, you are knocking at the wrong door. But I don't see exactly the point of your objection. The lake is not a lake but a symbol—the swan is not a swan but a symbol. You can't expect the lake merely to ripple and do nothing else or the swan simply to swim and eat and do nothing else. It is as much a symbol as the Bird of Fire or the Bird of the Vedic poet who faced the guardians of the Soma and brought the Sonia to Indra (or was it to a Rishi, I have forgotten) perhaps carrying a pot or several pots in his claws and beak!! for I don't know how else he could have done it. How is he to use his symbol if you do not make allowances for a miraculous Swan? If the swan does nothing but what an ordinary swan does, it ceases to be a symbol and becomes only a metaphor. The animals of these symbols belong not to earth but to Wonderland.
March 13, 1936
What Sir, in your letter on "Swan and its symbol" expect has become except? Supramental slip!
Do you mean to say this is the first you have met? I used to make ten per page formerly in the haste of my writing. Evidently I am arriving towards a supramental accuracy—spontaneous and careless in spite of the lightning speed of my epistolary movement.
I admit that the swan is a symbol, but don't you think that behind the expressions there should be a meaning?
Yes, of course.
The Vedic bird can be imagined to be bringing pots of Soma, but what would you understand by:
তব নৃত্যের একটি শিহরে জন্ম লভিল উর্ব্বশী ?176 Take this line বাসনামত্ত মাতঙ্গে তুমি শান্ত করিলে177— one can find some meaning, but what about the line above?
As the মত্ত মাতঙ্গে178 is significant, so Urvasi is significant—so why should there be no meaning? Of course what you signify by Urvasi is another question. For me Urvasi is the divine beauty in the vital, with its intoxication and ecstasy. Why can't that come into being by a quiver, vibration, frisson of the dance of the Soul? Is it so meaningless? I confess that feeling it in that sense the line gave me a poetic thrill.
Isn't it true that you can't really love the Divine until you experience him in some way? Before that it won't be an intense or deep love.
Your supposition conflicts with the experience of many sadhaks. I think Ramkrishna indicated somewhere that the love and joy and ardour of seeking was much more intense than that of fulfilment. I don't agree, but that shows at least that intense love is possible before realisation.
For Mulshankar, I think the servant will do because only a slow up-and-down movement is needed. But when he is dispensed with, no longer needed, we can ask Virabhadra.
This servant is to be dismissed on the 19th, as he is found unsatisfactory in several respects. So perhaps you could press V into service as masseur.
March 14, 1936
Sahana came with a gritting sensation in the right eye. She rubbed and rubbed it since noon and it has become very red.
You didn't tell her that rubbing and restless touching is the worst thing one can do with the eye?
March 15, 1936
Yes, intense love is possible before realisation, but some sort of a decisive experience one must have, psychic, mental or vital. before the love can be profound, solid and intense.
What do you mean by experience? Love and Bhakti are themselves an experience.
First time I heard of any such rule.
One should be able to have the vision of the loving and intensely lovable Presence of Krishna or his blue radiance sending thrills of ecstasy.
Hundreds of Bhaktas had to wait for long and many years before anything of the kind came.
Five minutes or twenty-four hours of intense rapture by your touch will do something, but it would be a hardly sufficient solid basis. One may pull on with this petty capital of 5 minutes or more raptures till some decisive experience makes the capital absolutely beyond any chance of failure or insolvency. That's how I look at it.
That may be how you look at Love, but why should everybody else be obliged to do so?
You are again making a general sweeping rule out of your own standpoint.
Love and ardour of seeking with the same or increased intensity without any big experience may be possible in cases like Ramakrishna's who from boyhood used to fall into trance even at the sight of blue clouds, reminding him of Krishna. Even then isn't it said that many times he resolved to drown himself in the Ganges because the Mother wouldn't come?
What has that to do with it? It only shows that his yearning was excessive.
Was he shaken in his faith or love, or was it the impetuosity of love that wouldn't brook delay?
If his love was shaken, i.e. if he had ceased to want her, why the deuce should he care a damn whether she came or not? There is no question of faith, it is about love. Do you think at any time R ceased to believe in the Divine?
Don't you think your realisation of the Self helped you in your crucial moments of struggle, kept up your faith and love?
That has nothing to do with love. Realisation of Self and love of the personal Divine are two different movements.
My struggle has never been about the Self. All that is perfectly irrelevant to the question which concerns the Bhakta's love for the Divine.
But the sweet memory of that experience of the Self must have sustained you.
There was nothing sugary about it at all. And I had no need to have any memory of it, because it was with me for months and years and is there now though in fusion with other realisations.
We poor people in dark times which pay us frequent visits, fall back on our petty capital of Ananda, even on some of your jokes, to fortify ourselves. If such things can bring back a momentary wave of love and devotion, restored faith, how much would decisive experiences not do? ...
My point is that there have been hundreds of Bhaktas who have the love and seeking without any concrete experience, with only a mental conception or emotional belief in the Divine to support them. The whole point is that it is untrue to say that one must have a decisive or concrete experience before one can have love for the Divine. It is contrary to the facts and the quite ordinary facts of the spiritual experience.
It is only the lion-hearts that can go on without any experience.
The ordinary Bhakta is not a lion-heart. The lion-hearts get experiences comparatively soon, but the ordinary Bhakta has often to feed on his own love or yearning for years and years—and he does it.
March 17, 1936
J has been asked to use mustard oil, cocoanut oil or castor oil for her eczema. Which one should she use?
Pavitra must be asked what oil he is using and that can be used—for he has found it effective. Mother thought it might be cocoanut oil, but she is not sure.
March 18, 1936
Freed once more from the devil's claws! Just a few words about the process: I took up H's poem, felt like writing one after reading it, failed; then went to Pranam, there found Jatin's letter which I enclose, waiting, read it and as soon as I sat in the Hall, lo, everything fell off my shoulders or soul, as if by the breath of an invisible wave.
Yes, of course, it was the old man of the Sea, I mean of Sorrows, who dropped off because he can't stand anything cheerful and hopeful. The main credit goes to the letter, because it has a push in it of the psychic force which took your vital and the O.M. also by surprise and knocked him off and you up, before the said vital had time to turn round and cry, "Hélas! Hélas! Alas! হায় হায়179 Ototototoi!"
But I don't know what did the job. Poetry, letter or Mother? The letter itself gave me a sense of something pleasant.
All together—Poetry first attempt, letter brought a good atmosphere (that was the sense of something pleasant), and both were the effect of a long pressure from me which you had resisted sitting firm in a Gandhian passive resistance.
This shows, Sir, you make me suffer unnecessarily; you can, at any moment, draw me out if it pleases you.
Not at all, you can't be drawn out if something in you refuses and sticks like a badger in its hole. When that says "Oh damn it, after all let me get out and breathe some fresh air", then it can be done.
Please read his letter. I am sure your heart will leap at the response to your Force, by at least one soul, what?
Excuse me, he is not the only one.
J's is a most fascinating and convincing example. Alas, when will my hard crust be broken, and feel at least some fragments of what he feels!
The difference is that his mind is ready to accept and makes no resistance. If his vital is as willing,—the sex affair looks like it—then he can go very fast.
I don't understand what my friend means by the disturbance in connection with the affairs of the world.
That is clear enough. His new consciousness makes him feel more strongly the opposite forces that one contacts when one moves in the world and has to do affairs and meet with others and he is afraid of a response in his vital which will upset his sadhana or create difficulties.
Evidently he is a man who is psychically sensitive or has become so to that thing which you blindly refuse to recognize even when you are in the midst of it—the play of forces. You can feel your friend's atmosphere through the letter "so beautiful, so strengthening, so refreshing" and it has an immediate effect on you. But your mind stares like an owl and wonders "What the hell can this be?"—I suppose, because your medical books never told you about it and how can things be true which are not known either to the ordinary mind or science? It is by an incursion of an opposite kind of forces that you fall into the Old Man's clutches, but you can only groan and cry "What's this?" and when they are swept aside in a moment by other forces, blink and mutter "Well, that's funny!" Your friend can feel and know at once when he is being threatened by the opposite forces—and so he can be on his guard and resist Old Nick, because he can detect at once one of his principal means of attack.
Please reply to all the points raised.
Will see, so hold on to the letter.
I went over his letter again—it is so beautiful, so strengthening and refreshing. And how beautifully he writes about the snow-flakelike falling of delight.
That's his psychic atmosphere, sir. That is what the psychic feels like—to anyone who can contact it, "beautiful, strengthening and refreshing."
Give me a beautiful "beating", Sir, will you? Have not had it for a long time!
Have given you one or two smacks. No time to make it long.
March 19, 1936
Did you say "Old Man of the Sea"?
But why sea, Sir? Any allusion?
Well, traditionally, it is, I believe, old man of the mountains, but there were no mountains here, only a sea of sobs and sorrows—so I had to vary the phrase.
I find that you have forgotten to say anything about Jatin't permission for Darshan.
Well, the permission can be given,
And please don't forget the letter you are writing—you can write on a separate sheet as Jatin wants to see the original very much.
What letter? only remarks or lines, if they come. out.
March 20, 1936
"What letter" indeed! Very well, I won't call it a letter, call it remarks or lines, so long as it is not your marginal! Perhaps you are waiting for a Sunday?
I am waiting for a day when I won't have to race to finish everything before 7 a.m. in the morning.
"Over the lone heights in the still air roamed," but roamed what, Sir?
How the deuce am I to know? I wrote what came as a metrical example and the roamer didn't come in view.
Whatever you touch becomes so beautiful; Sir. The line is roaming and humming in my mind. Oh, if you could complete it! Don't say "some day", Sir, which is equivalent to "never"!
Well, if not some day, some night perhaps.
About B.P.—we can take him to Valle or André who, I presume, know more about his illness.
[Sri Aurobindo underlined "Valle or André".]
No. If all fails, we will hand him over to R. But B.P. has no reaction against his illness—that is the trouble.
Well, in my chase for a dispensary guard [7.3.36), I have found Mulshankar who is very willing to do it for an hour or two, though lame.
Yes. Mulshankar has written and we have answered that he can do this work.
For J's eczema, Pavitra put three essential factors:
1) Sunbath after oiling. 2) Cold bath immediately after sunbath.
[Sri Aurobindo underlined "oiling" and "immediately".]
Mother thought he did it after sunbath. But if it is the other way round his example must be followed—as it is his cure.
3) Cold bath should begin with the head to obviate any danger of catching cold by sudden exposure.
Yes—that is necessary.
March 21, 1936
About B.P., we can't get the required medicines from the local pharmacy.
You might speak to G and ask him whether it isn't possible for B.P. to be treated somewhere over there. Here his health continues to be bad and there is not the necessary skilled treatment.
March 22, 1936
René is sending me charts of the fever temperature of his cousin Badrunnissa (an Asram nomenclature) who has been suffering from typhoid enteric (so the Colonel Doctor of Hyderabad says) with affection of chest which was suspected to be pneumonia. Now in his first chart the figures were 104˚, 103˚, 102˚, 101˚ and an uninstructed layman could understand—but what are these damned medical hieroglyphs 30-112, 26-118 E 24-110, 24-110?
March 23, 1936
Here's about the "damned hieroglyphs" you don't understand, though I don't understand why you don't. If you only read Sherlock Holmes' science of deduction and analysis which I have done lately, you would have at once realised my remark.
Sherlock Holmes arranges his facts beforehand and then detects them unlike these doctors.
Well, keep the chart vertically then it should at once be clear to you that the red line is the normal temperature line: 98.6, and the fever would be about 101.8. Then the figures below, what could they be? Well, your long association with doctors should have taught you that in a fever chart pulse rate is recorded with the temperature.
Never gave me one, so far as I remember. I mean not of this problematical kind.
If that be so, between those pairs of damned figures, one must be of pulse and which is it? Surely not 30, 26, because with that rate no charts would have been sent to you!
Naturally, I knew it must be the pulse, but what were the unspeakable 30s and 24s attached to them? And I didn't want the pulse, I wanted the temperature. However your red line which I had not noticed sheds a red light on the matter, so that is clear now. I was holding it horizontal because of its inordinate length.
What are these 30, 26, 24 and 24 then? Just a little bit of cool thinking would again point out, Sir, that they are respiration rates—normal being 20, 22, or so. Now is it simple and easy or is it not?
No, Sir, it is not. What's the normal respiration rate anyhow? 32 below zero or 106˚ above? (N.B. zero not Fahrenheit but Breathen-height.)
Can you say the same thing about your yogic hieroglyphs? By Jove, no!
There are no hieroglyphs in Yoga except the dream and vision-symbols and nobody is expected to understand these things.
But what about E? Extravagant? Eccentric? Epatant?
Let the Sherlockian vein be pardoned. One independent criticism: I don't know how they suspect pneumonia with a respiration rate of only 30, 26. It should bound up to at least 40. Instead with a temperature of 102˚, it is only 24!
Well, both the doctors did that and one is a mighty man there, the Doctor of Doctors. But perhaps it's the fashion in Hyderabad to breathe like that when one has pneumonia. Anyhow pn. seems to have dropped out of the picture, and the D of Ds tells only of typhoid and a possible reactivity of inactive germs of tuberculosis.
I have at last written a poem, Sir. I have avoided anapaests as far as possible.
I have brought some in, but without any impure intention—they just came.
You will see that I have tried to immortalise depression, tried to bring in power, passion and spirit of the wilderness. with what success, you may judge. Amal says that it is very good—even "fine".
It is certainly good—in a way fine. The only defect is that it is somehow reminiscent of things that have been written before. It is difficult to be otherwise when one tries to immortalise depression—so many people have done it before you.
Today Mother said to me something during pranam—something more than "said". I searched in my mind, heart and body—what is it I have done!
She didn't she only looked at you a little longer than usual.
I can take any amount of thrashing with grace, even good grace, as you have had enough evidence by now, but to take it without knowing the why or how of it, goes a little too deep, Sir.
No thrashing at all—not even the natural yearning to thrash you.
For an earthly reason, I found that I have accepted an invitation for lunch. Is that then why Mother focussed her fury on my dread soul? Or is the reason unearthly?
Knew nothing about it.
Never dreamed even of the lunch—was thinking of B.P.—not of any delinquency of yours.
You can't say there was nothing...
I can and do.
I was positively conscious that there was something and I want to know it if only to rectify myself.
Only fancy, sir, dear delightless fancy. Nothing more deceiving than these pseudo-intuitions of Mother's displeasure and search for its non-existent reasons. Very often it comes from a guilty conscience or a feeling that one deserves a thrashing, so obviously a thrashing must be intended. Anything like that here?
The word locus" was unintelligible? But you understand all right. I adopt the device and "your attention" to save your time and mine as well as it is obvious.
Good God! Is this Hebrew or Aramaic or Swahili? I can't understand a word. Which device? which attention? Some reference to something I wrote? If so, it has clean gone out of my head. That by the way is a manner of speaking, for I have never anything in my head.
March 24, 1936
I am sorry for the last elision again—I wanted to write—I adopted the device and dropped your attention to save time—I find that I have dropped the word "dropped" altogether and so it became Hebrew, Aramaic or—?
Swahili. African language, sir, somewhere in West Africa
There you are then, Sir! You admit that Mother did look a little longer than usual—that's a point gained!
Just Jehovah, man! What of that? Can't Mother look longer without being furious?
But quarrel over over that...
[Sri Aurobindo underlined the phrase.]
Another ellipse? or a collapse? It sounds like a line of poetry.
Or is it about that girl I wrote to you of long ago and got a smack?
Consider yourself smacked this time also.
Nothing criminal or incriminating—still enough perhaps to make the heart throb. Even my fancy is only a fancy...
Fancy? fudge! It was only a movement of the hormones
A guilty conscience, a criminal conscience, well, that's about the size of it. Thrashing, fury I accept all if that was what it was for.
It was not. As there was no thrashing and no fury, it could not be for that.
I am obliged to sleep out for a few days because of repairs in our house. The whole building is smelling of lime, lime and lime.
If you want to be a real Yogi, go on sniffing and sniffing at the lime till the smell creates an ecstasy in the nose and you realise that all smells and stinks are sweet and beautiful with the sweetness and beauty of the Brahman.
I chuckled, Sir, to learn that you held the chart horizontally, because of its length! And E is none of those high sounding "extravagant" words. If you had just looked about you for a moment, lifting your eyes from the correspondence, you would have discovered that E stands for nothing but a simple evening. Clear?
No. What has evening to do with it? Evening star? "Twinkle, twinkle, evening star! How I wonder what your temperatures are?" But I suppose Sir James Jeans knows and doesn't wonder. But anyhow E for Evening sounds both irrelevant and poetic.
March 25, 1936
No, Sir, it is not at all irrelevant, though poetic. I swear it is evening. You know they take these pulse and respiration rates Morning and Evening of which M and E are short-hands, and one of which I suppose you will make mad and the other one of the three you have divined! But what is this "Jones—knows and doesn't wonder"?
Jeans, Jeans, Jeans—not Jones!
Sir James Jeans, sir, who knows all about the temperatures, weights and other family details of the stars, including E.
March 26, 1936
Friend C again, with his woeful tale!
What a fellow! He blunders through life stumbling over every possible or impossible stone of offence with a conscientious thoroughness that is unimaginable and inimitable.
He has sent a rupee to buy something for you. But your needs are so few and you are so strict about hygiene. At times I wonder why the Divine is so meticulously particular as regards contagion, infection. Is he vulnerable to the viruses, bacilli, microbes, etc.?
And why on earth should you expect the Divine to feed himself on germs and bacilli and poisons of all kinds? Singular theology yours!
So what shall I buy To suit the Divine taste? But aren't all same to him—paste Or pudding, butter, cheese or mutton-pie?
Good Lord! I hope you are not plotting to send any such things here! Of butter and cheese I have more than I want and pudding and mutton-pie are banished from my menu.
I hear from all quarters that you are buried in letters... I don't know how you are ever going to keep your head above the mud of the letters, for your bhaktas, admirers are increasing by leaps and bounds. In the near future they will be millions, and millions of letters heaped upon your supra-mental segregation, if you don't relinquish it and come out boldly!
Come out and have millions and millions of admirers heaped upon my promiscuity? Thank you for nothing! The letters can be thrown into the W.P.B.180 more easily than the admirers can be thrown out of the window.
March 27, 1936
By the way, I think fountain-pen ink would be the thing I can buy for you, with C's one rupee.
No. Mother says we have f.p. ink in plenty—I won't say gallons and seas, but still. Besides the same ink has to be used always for the pen, otherwise it gets spoiled.
March 28, 1936
Your letter to D has done us a lot of good, for you have cited the example of workers there. We people need such illustrations but not of your illustrious person or the Mother's.
You people are funny people!
I have resorted to prayer. Well, if a prayer means a call to the Above, why doesn't the Above have the kindness to respond?
But just answer! If it responded to everybody in all circumstances, there would by this time be 100 million poets writing away for all they were worth, let us say 1000 pages of poetry a day each and publishing them. Wouldn't it be a disaster? Wouldn't such kindness be a cruelty to all the rest of the creation?
Throughout the history of my writing, you know that the Above has been stingily charitable to me so that all my works—very few though—have been corroded with the marks of my labour and hence fallen short of poetic excellence...
Not correct—they look quite innocent as if you had written them off with ease.
My hard labour and effort deprive me of the joy of creation and discourage me with a dread of the work. You say this is because I am an "efforter" and a "bower". All very well, Sir, but have you shown me the Grand Trunk Road of non-effort—not to speak of leading the way?
There are two ways of arriving at the Grand Trunk Road. One is to climb and struggle and effortise, (like the pilgrim who traverses India prostrating and measuring the way with his body,—that's the way of effort). One day you suddenly find yourself on the G.T.R. when you least expect it. The other is to quiet the mind to such a point that a greater Mind of mind can speak through it. (I am not here talking of the supramental). You will do neither. Your mind refuses to be quiet—your vital kicks at the necessity of effort. One too active, the other too lazy. How can I show you the G.T.R. when you refuse either way of reaching it?
Or would you say that a beginner can't, at a leap, settle on the top?
Of course not
But even a beginner should be lured by more glimpses than has been done in my case.
System of lollipops? You won't travel to London unless you are given frequent glimpses of London before even you reach Bombay? Otherwise you will say Oh what a bother and give up?
Look at D—you yourself admitted that he had a very easy flow as soon as he started writing.
[Sri Aurobindo underlined 'You yourself admitted".]
Never in my life I admitted that.
Look at NK. Do you know he writes 200-300 lines a day!
Not at all if you refer to his poetry—As soon as he started writing here, yes. That is because he caught instanter the tail of the Horse—or the Force. You seem to read what I write in a queer way and put on it very strange [constructions].
I wonder if it is possible to make prodigious and unusual poets like NK.
Was NK a prodigious and unusual poet before he came here? You seem to be so obsessed by the present development that you assume it was always there and he did it all of himself from the beginning.
Lastly about your inspiration. Amal and I have been wondering why you should have to write and rewrite your poetry for instance, "Savitri" ten or twelve times. You will say the rewriting is also done by inspiration. True, but why rewrite at all?
That is very simple. I used Savitri as a means of ascension. I began with it on a certain mental level, each time I could reach a higher level I rewrote from that level. Moreover I was particular—if part seemed to me to come from any lower level, I was not satisfied to leave it because it was good poetry. All had to be as far as possible of the same mint. In fact, Savitri has not been regarded by me as a poem to be written and finished, but as a field of experimentation to see how far poetry could be written from one's own Yogic consciousness and how that could be made creative. I did not rewrite Rose of God or the sonnets except for two or three verbal alterations made at the moment.
If X could receive his inspiration without any necessity for rewriting, why not you?
So could I if I wrote every day and had nothing else to do and did not care what the level of inspiration was so long as I produced something exciting.
Fault in the instrument, obstruction between the instrument and the plane of inspiration...?
The only obstruction is that I have no time to put myself constantly into the poetic creative posture and if I write at all have to get out something in the intervals of quite another concentration.
With your silence, consciousness, overmental, partly supra-mental, etc., etc., it should be possible to draw from the highest plane, at the slightest pull, and it should tumble down, Sir, but it doesn't. Why not? We wonder and wonder! Could you send Alice to Wonderland and ask her to discover and divulge the secret to us—not in hints, but at length?
The highest planes are not so accommodating as all that. If they were so, why should it be so difficult to bring down and organise the supermind in the physical consciousness? What happy-go-lucky fancy-web-spinning ignoramuses you all are. You speak of silence, consciousness, overmental, supramental, etc. as if they were so many electric buttons you have only to press and there you are. It may be one day but meanwhile I have to discover everything about the working of all possible modes of electricity, all the laws, possibilities, perils, etc., construct roads of connection and communication, make the whole far-wiring system, try to find out how it can be made foolproof and all that in the course of a single lifetime. And I have to do it while my blessed disciples are firing of their gay or gloomy a priori reasonings at me from a position of entire irresponsibility and expecting me to divulge everything to them not in hints but at length. Lord God in omnibus!
March 29, 1936
I was not at all speaking of the whole world, neither am I concerned with it. I was asking why my prayers were not answered by the Above as in others' cases.
Good Lord! you are not part of the world? Then you must be a Jivanmukta and no need of prayer.
Specially when that Above lives opposite my house181 and encourages my writing.
The Above may encourage your writing, but it does not follow that he will deal with you in the same way as with D. যে যথা মাং প্রপদ্যন্তে182
I admit that my vital is lazy, because it is afraid of too much labouring, 4 lines in 40 hours!
Yes, but if the vital were not lazy you would not have to labour like that. It is lazy in labouring but it is also lazy in responding—it is a slow-mover.
Not only that, but also my mind does not know precisely how to silence itself. This second point applies to D too. How then does he manage to receive from Above?
The difference is that as his mind has opened to the Above, the Above can turn its activity into an activity of the Inspiration—its quickness, energy, activity enable it to transcribe quickly, actively, energetically what comes into it from the Above. Of course if one day it becomes silent also, it may probably become the channel of a still higher Inspiration.
Did D's vital become active and magnificent because somehow he could more easily draw in the Inspiration?
No—that is inborn in D. It was the first thing Mother said about D (long before he came here for Yoga) when she saw him through the blinds of the door "What a powerful vital!"
I can tell you that my own vital has done that feat when a flow was felt.
Yes, but D's vital strength is inborn, though it may not have at first been open to the poetic inspiration. When it did it could leap at once with full energy and gave itself entirely to the flow—It was not the flow that made it "magnificent".
I find that D didn't have to struggle as much as I—his magnificent vital magnificently and easily worked away as the Inspiration was not jerky and halting as in my case. My lazy vital is perforce lazy because the stream of Inspiration descends by drops. At the same time I confess that I am by nature rather indolent.
As usual, you are putting the thing upside down—Your last admission does away with the whole two pages of special pleading.
Is silencing the mind to be done only at the time of writing or at other times too, or one can't be done without the other?
Silencing the mind at the time of writing should be sufficient—even not silencing it, but its falling quiet to receive.
Suppose I find two lines:
Forgive me, Master, if I doubt thy Light Guiding my destiny, through a long trail, without any pre-formed idea of the poem, I think what can rhyme with light or trail—bright, height, sail, fail, etc., and try to fit in an idea with the rhymes...
Just the thing you should not do. Let the rhyme come, don't begin dragging all sorts of rhymes in to see if they fit.
Do you want to say that if I have discovered some lines I must not think of the next lines, but try instead to keep absolutely silent so that with a leap I find the greater Mind has simply dropped the necessary rhymed lines, like a good fellow, and I finish off excellently without a drop of black sweat on my wide forehead?
That is the ideal way; but usually there is always an activity of the mind jumping up and trying to catch the inspiration. Sometimes the inspiration, the right one, comes in the midst of this futile jumping, sometimes it sweeps it aside and brings in the right thing, sometimes it inserts itself between two blunders, sometimes it waits till the noise quiets down. But even this jumping need not be a mental effort—it is often only a series of suggestions, the mind of itself seizing on one or eliminating another, not by laborious thinking and choice, but by a quiet series of perceptions. This is method no. 2. No. 3 is your Herculean way, quite the slowest and worst.
From the very start NK has been a prodigious writer. He and Jasimuddin—now a renowned poet—used to sit together to write poetry. NK would finish 3 or 4 poems and go to bed, get up in the morning to find his friend still struggling with a few lines.
While one person breaks his head over a few lines, another composes three or four poems.
That is fluency, not necessarily inspiration. Southey used to write like that, I believe, but you don't call Southey an inspired poet, do you?
I cite all this to show that it is not primarily the silencing of the mind or the dynamic vital, but cases born with a wide opening somewhere...
The activity of the vital is there in N as well as in Dilip.
I don't see why you brought in "the organisation of the Supermind in the physical consciousness" into the talk about your poetic inspiration. The first is collective, the second individual.
Excuse me, it was you who brought in overmind etc. in connection with my poetry and asked why having these things I had to rewrite Savitri many times instead of pouring out 24,000 lines a day.
L wants her little growth in the cheek to be excised. She forgets to apply medicine, regularly. A simple operation is the only alternative.
Mother considers it better to go on with the medicine.
March 31, 1936
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