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
"Trust in God"? Personal or Impersonal? Tell me instead, "Trust in Me", that would be comforting, tangible and practical.
All right. It comes to the same thing in the upshot.
May 1, 1935
I took J to hospital for her ear, but the E.N.T. doctor found instead vasomotor rhinitis for which he prescribed parathyroid and calcium internally. But she is quite well at present.
If she is quite well, what is the use of parathyroiding and calciating her?
C complains of oppression of the chest, and sleeplessness begun 2 days after there was no more medicine. She wants to starve herself at night; it appears Becharlal told her to do so! I have asked her to go to you. Is the famine method really a remedy for asthma?
May 3, 1935
I have again become the victim of people's tongue. I came to know that someone was imputing most abject motives to some of my actions, without my giving any cause of offence. I am not even familiar with the person. The person is cultured and has been here for so many years. Above all, we find that you love the person, and the person also is so much attached to you. Still পরনিন্দা89 is so strong in the nature!
Do you think people need a "cause" for criticising others? It is done 'or the heavenly Ananda of the thing in itself. পরনিন্দা is to he human vital sweeter than all the fruits of Paradise.
If 6 or 7 years stay in the Asram, doing Yoga can't change these things in persons who are supposed to be good adharas, is there any chance for us?
"These things" are usually the last to change, not the first. Until the inner man is completely changed, the outer refuses to budge. Of course that is not a universal rule, but it seems to be the general rule—at least here. Theoretically it ought to be otherwise and with one or two perhaps it is, but—
I suppose you are curious to know what it is all about! Z said that because I have no chance of eating at D's place, I'm going here and there to get good food—and it is I who made S eat rasagolla and other things and made him ill. Can you explain why these poisonous shafts of criticism are thrown at me, without any reason at all?
Imagination + inference + joy of the perspicacious psychologist + joy of fault-finding + several other vital joys + joy of communicating to others, usually called gossip. Quite enough to explain. No other reason wanted.
I could give you the whole working of Z's mind and vital in every detail of this matter and support it by a thousand equally detailed instances, including criticisms of the Mother by "persons who are so attached to her" implying on her a far greater degradation and meanness, if true, than that imputed to you, (so take comfort by the Blessed Company you are in),—but it would fill 30 volumes and not be worthwhile.
May 4, 1935
(May I request you to use the pen henceforth, if not inconvenient?) I don't know if by "Blessed Company", you mean D also. I can never even dream of his having such pettiness!...
By the Blessed Company I meant the company of the Mother—very obviously, if you will read the sentence again. I meant that she has been criticised in the same way thousands of times and accused of still meaner motives than those imputed to you. So you ought not to mind, but rather enjoy being in the same boat with the Mother.
I am really amazed to hear that Mother told a child, E, I think, that only 5 or 6 here will realise the Divine. Then all the rest of us to be thrown into the dust-bin...?
"Blessed be they who believe all that they hear! for they have become like little children." (Pseudo-sayings of Christ).
What is this joke? You will tell me next that the Mother has confided to Dayakar90 that the supramental now reigns upon the earth or declared the secrets of the ineffable Brahman to K's baby. Are you by chance under the impression that E is 77 years old instead of her apparent age? Who has invented this supreme jest?
Tell us something—give us a word of hope or of despair, But only be fair!
There are already more than 5 or 6 in the Asram who have had some realisation at least of the Divine—so take comfort.
May 6, 1935
I hear there are some who proceed through the heart, and and some through the mind, in sadhana. Those who proceed through the mind—vertically, receive Light, Knowledge etc. I would like to know if a vertical opening can be there without the opening of the heart centre.
It can—but that usually leads to মোক্ষ or to জ্ঞান91 only, what Ramakrishna called শুষ্ক জ্ঞান92
I think that an intellectually developed man like N has an advantage over an emotional man like U; he will have a greater depth, wideness and vastness, and will most probably have also the experiences that U had, when his heart centre opened.
Leaving out individual comparisons, which are odorous,93—if the intellectual will always have a greater wideness and vastness, how can we be sure that he will have an equal fervour, depth and sweetness with the emotional men?
I don't see why U's mind-power will be ultimately less because, as you say, when the inner mind or the head centre opens, there is a downpour of Knowledge. Then if we can expect a mental type's heart opening up, we can also expect the psychic type's head and inner mind opening up and thus bringing in the downpour of Knowledge.
That is more logical—but the logical is not necessarily true. It may be that homo-intellectualis will remain wider and homo psychicus will remain deeper in heart.
I am still not sure. Can we say that Ramakrishna's mind or Christ's mind was as powerful as that of Buddha?
Buddha's mind as a mind was more powerful, but had he as much or as many-sided a spiritual knowledge as Ramakrishna?
I leave out Christ, because his spiritual knowledge was from the heart only and intense but limited.
Or can we ever imagine that a supramental X will have the same mental range and altitude as the supramental Sri Aurobindo? Absurd!
Mental and supramental are two different things. How does the supramental come in here?
You may say that it is after all the realisation that is important and all three had that; nevertheless, I think that a powerful mind is an extra asset. In this intellectual age the mind is going to play a big part. Hasn't your great dashing intellect charmed many intellectuals of the age?
Which intellectual age? The intellectual age is dead. Intellectuals are becoming less and less important.
There is nothing dashing in my intellect. And what effect for the spiritual purpose has the charming of these ineffective intellectuals?
So I would like to know how far your supramental Yoga can develop the mental faculty of U, S, etc. and also of people like my humble self: whether the full opening of these inner centres will make everybody's knowledge the same.
Please do not confuse the higher knowledge and mental knowledge. The intellectual man will be able to give a wider and more orderly expression to what higher knowledge he gets than the homo psychicus; but it does not follow he will have more of it. He will have that only if he rises to an equal width and plasticity and comprehensiveness of the higher knowledge planes. In that case he will replace his mental by his above-mental capacity. But for many intellectuals, so-called, their intellectuality may be a stumbling-block as they bind themselves with mental conceptions or stifle the psychic fire under the heavy weight of rational thought. On the other hand I have seen comparatively uneducated people expressing higher knowledge with an astonishing fullness and depth and accuracy which the stumbling movements of their brain could never have allowed one to suppose possible. Therefore why fix beforehand by the mind what will or will not be possible when the Above-mind reigns? what the mind conceives as "must be" need not be the measure of the "will be". Such and such a homo intellectualis may turn out to be a more fervent God-lover than the effervescent emotional man; such and such an emotionalist may receive and express a wider knowledge than his intellect or even the intellect of the intellectual man could have harboured or organised. Let us not bind the phenomena of the higher consciousness by the possibilities and probabilities of a lower plane.
Nirod,
9-5-35
What is the use and limitations of mercury powder? Is it not an unsafe thing which may do harm as well as good? In what illness can it be safely or effectively applied?
SRI AUROBINDO May 9, 1935
I have again the same chronic trouble. At Pranam I felt, Mother, that you were serious with me and the reason was, I thought, you did not like my comparing the sadhaks in the way I did yesterday. I have no intention of belittling anyone. It is a quite natural human curiosity to want to know what would be the intellectual manifestation of an uneducated sadhak after realisation ...
Rubbish! Mother did not think anything about it at all. Why the hell or heaven or why on earth or why the unearthly should she be displeased? You all seem to think of the Mother as living in a sort of daylong and nightlong simmering cauldron of displeasure about nothing and anything and everything under the sun. Lord! what a queer idea!
I had compared your behaviour, mentally, with others and said to myself: "If such and such a person goes on doing this and that almost all the time of the day (I had S particularly in mind), still Mother is Grace herself with her."
And the same persons make comparisons of Mother's behaviour with others and get into fits of revolt and abhiman, and what not! What a mad Asram!
I feel these formations are not true but I can't throw them away ...
Why not, I should like to know?
But this resistance must go.
I quite agree with you.
If I can't love.you, give myself to you, of what use is the sadhana? For mukti? I have no appetite for such mukti. Ramakrishna used to say "I have no objection to give liberation but I will not give willingly শুদ্ধা ভক্তি."94
Meaning? But what is শুদ্ধা ভক্তি, then?
But even if you are serious, I don't know why I can't take it calmly and in the right spirit.
Quite so!
You have no personal interest to be serious. It is for my good alone.
Not at all. It is simply the vital's imagination that the Mother is serious because of its tamas. There is not the least truth in it.
I understand all this but the emotion gets the upper hand. And you say I have a slow, deliberate mental strength!
The "emotion" is not the mind.
J says that in many cases where you were not in the least serious and smiled and smiled he had the after-feeling that you were serious with him.
That has happened at least a thousand times. Even, the Mother has seen somebody come with a gloomy face and she has poured out smiles in a river and blessed him in a most emphatic manner only to get a letter "You are displeased with me; you did not smile. You blessed me with only one finger: what wrong have I done? How can I live if you behave with me like this?" And perhaps an intimation that the outraged sadhak or sadhika is going away or will drop herself (this is generally a feminine menace) into the sea.
I am not exaggerating in the least—it is literally true.
And supposing the Mother happens to be serious in reality? What then? Are there not a thousand reasons in this world for being serious,—why must the cause be displeasure with the sadhika? After all Yoga itself, life itself is a rather serious affair.
But I don't really understand this, because how can One be so blind as not to see the smile on your face, or seeing it, mistake it for seriousness?
I don't know how, but "one" does it and not only one, but many. It is the minority who have not done it.
I want your sword, and not the pen only, to sever these impressions at their very root and let the inner being emerge with its flood of love and absolute surrender and make me your utter slave.
The sword is at your service, but for heaven's sake use it.
May 10, 1935
I thought that since homo-psychics proceed from the heart, their knowledge aspect will be limited.
But Ramakrishna was a homo-psychicus with no atom of intellectuality—yet he had plenty of knowledge.
Mother says in the "Prayers and Meditations" that there is a knowledge which surpasses all other knowledge which means knowledge of the Divine. In that case, psychics or otherwise who realise the Divine, will have the same width, vastness of knowledge.
Certainly, there is nothing to prevent it.
By the higher knowledge, I understand, you mean spiritual knowledge about Almon, Brahman, etc. But can one deal with the problems of ordinary life with mastery by this spiritual knowledge? For instance, if I am asked to criticise Shaw or other literary figures, how am I to do it with this knowledge alone?
One can. What has all that to do with spiritual knowledge? Criticism of Shaw is not a part of Brahmajnana. If one has to do it, one does it with the mind, so long as one does not get into the intuitive overwind or supermind—then one does it with those. This is quite another matter—it has nothing to do with the main question which is about the spiritual realisation—through love or through knowledge.
I have been concentrating on both the head and the heart centres. In meditation the being falls silent, but the head gets heavy and I feel some working going on there.
That is alI very good.
I hope I am not going to get knowledge only, because this is the centre for knowledge; I want bhakti and love too. Since I haven't felt them, I have been thinking that maybe the head centre is going to open and not the heart. Though I felt elated, I dreaded it also because I hear the head centre gives knowledge, no doubt, but no love, bhakti—so it is as dry as a nut ...
Yes, obviously that is what it is trying to do. When things come in this order the head opens up first and the heart afterwards—finally all the centres. So what is there to be worried about? If you are satisfied only with peace, knowledge and mukti, then perhaps the heart centre may open to that only. But if you want the love, then the descending Power and Light will work for that also. So cheer up and don't get into a state of pother with imaginary difficulties.
S was taking Lithinée according to your suggestion. For the last few days the pain which subsided by Lithinee has come back. Shall I try my mental knowledge or leave her to the spiritual?
At least use your mental K. to know what is the matter with her.
May 11, 1935
Till the other day patients with stomach ulcer were treated with soda bicarb, mag carb, calcium carb and Bismuth.
Very dangerous. S got his stomach curled up with these things—had to be operated.
I have found a patent drug Biomucine from Pavitra for ulcer to be followed with a strict regime.
What is inside the Bio or the mucine? With strict regime she would have to stop work, I suppose, at which she will kick.
A's right eye is almost cured, but the left one refuses and has become worse again.
The injection also was hopeless? Then it must be a purely local affair?
We are really getting tired and hopless.
[Sri Aurobindo drew a line to the word "hopless".] That is a good word. To be hopeless means to have no hop left in you.
May 13, 1935
I couldn't make out one word in your answer. Even Nolini failed. I thought you could fill up the gap from memory.
It might have been just possible for me after some concentration and appeal to the supramental.
It seems another victory has been won by you? Some people saw a red-crimson light around the Mother a few days back. What does it signify?
??? Great Heavens? which? who? But there is nothing new in that. It was coming down before Nov. 34, but afterwards all the damned mud arose and it stopped. But there are red crimson lights. One is supramental Divine Love. The other is the supramental physical Force.
I am reading your Intuitive Mind. Can you not release that manuscript in the meantime?
Which blessed manuscript? I have a hundred! I don't recall anything about Intuitive Mind.
May 14, 1935
I spoke of the manuscript (typed letter) on Avatar, on which you have written a lot, you said [6.3.35]. But if it is among hundreds of manuscripts, there is hardly any chance of rescuing it.
Good Lord, but the Avatar correspondence belongs to the distant past, what is the use of resuscitating it now?
The psychic fire you write about in the Synthesis of Yoga and the psychic being are identical?
The psychic fire is the fire of aspiration, purification and tapasya which comes from the psychic being. It is not the psychic being, but a power of the psychic being.
Allow me to congratulate you on the perfect poetry of your revised chapter VI of the Synthesis. It is a veritable "flowing river of gold". Is it supramental language or can it be still more heightened or perfected?
Supramental language it is not, because no such thing has manifested as yet. As I have no recollection of this chapter, I can't say what it is or whether it can be heightened or perfected.
May 15, 1935
Nirod
I can't find your microscopic note, so I write separately.
How do you hope to get a better being next time if you don't improve what you have in this life? How can you expect a better being to crop up all of itself without rhyme or reason? So buck up and do what is necessary now...
The Avatar letter was not finished I think, so I would have still to write something and it is far from my mind now. Perhaps one day.
17.5.35
SRI AUROBINDO May 17, 1935
What a hell of a time you left me in, Sir! The same emptiness, dryness and a negative pressure and one of the longest periods, too!
It is the confounded vital that does that when it is asked to change itself. The vital is a disciple of Gandhi as far as passive resistance goes—a master of non-cooperation.
It came after I took a strong resolution to do some serious sadhana. I wonder if the light of the sun is in view.
It is perhaps the strong resolution that brought up the resistance in a mass. That often happens. If you stick to it, then the light of the sun comes through.
May 18, 1935
It seems a great pressure is being brought down and many are disappearing, beginning with T and ending with K.
K has not disappeared. He has gone over there to enable D to come here during the vacation, for T would be otherwise alone there. He intends to come back—provided of course T does not capture him and put him in her pocket—if she has one.
May 21, 1935
For patient X shall we give Cascara or some salt for a few days? I hesitate to doctor on her without your approval.
Cascara you can try. Salt is not good as it may turn to colique hepatique.
May 22, 1935
I had a queer dream last night: I was bowing with love and devotion before a dark-complexioned gentleman, and he with equal affection raised me up and said, "You will require 18 years (Good Lord!!) to realise the Divine, out of which 12 years will pass away in just knocking about and playing.' Heart-rending prophecy! But who is this old gentleman, and what does his prophecy amount to—please?
The old dark-complexioned gentleman must be Old Nick, I suppose! and his prophecy amounts to Old Nickery.
May 23, 1935
So I bowed down to the devil, and devotionally too! But is it not possible to develop some kind of discrimination in these things? Usually it is only after the ceremony that I begin to doubt the credentials of the persons. I clearly saw that this devil did not resemble you, but still I bowed. But when we often see Mother in various forms, looking quite different, you say that it is the Mother; then?
Necessarily, Mother can manifest in many other forms besides her physical one, and though I am rather less multitudinous, I can also. But that does not mean that you can take any gentleman for me or any she for her. Your dream-self has to develop a certain discrimination. That discrimination cannot go by signs and forms, for the vital beggars can imitate almost anything, it must be intuitive.
My interest in poetry is growing again, but I could not complete a sonnet even after trying for three days. I don't mind the labour if only it is not spent in vain.
There have been instances where people have taken up music with your approval, and they have worked at it to find later on that it was not their line. What a waste of time for nothing! This is the thought that curbs my enthusiasm. Otherwise I quite understand that one has to suffer the "pangs of delivery". What do you say?
Approval or permission? People get it into their heads that they would like to do some music, because it is the fashion or because they like it so much and the Mother may tolerate it or say "All right, try". That does not mean they are predestined or doomed to be musicians—or poets—or painters according to the case. Perhaps one of those who try may bloom, others drop off. X starts painting and shows only a fanciful dash at first, after a time -he brings out work, remarkable work. Y does clever facile things; one day he begins to deepen and a possible painter in the making outlines. Others,—well, they don't. But they can try—they will learn something about painting at least.95
Labour at your sestets if the spirit pushes you. The Angel of Poetry may be delivered out of the labour, even if with a forceps.
Nishikanta has a furious boil on the nose; and as you know boils on the face are dangerous.
Why?
May 24, 193
Boils on the face are dangerous because its blood circulation has a direct connection with that of the brain, so that any suppurative process can go up and infect the brain.
[Sri Aurobindo put an exclamation mark.]
Again, I have read many times the "Intuitive Mind". Though the theoretical process is given very elaborately, it is not of much use for practical purposes. So will you answer how to get Intuition? If no time tonight, let the book wait till Monday.
I fear the book would have to wait much longer. I am just now in a strenuous time when I can't even think about these things, much less write about them. I can only keep your question in mind and wait for an opportunity to answer.
May 25, 1935
S has profuse "whites" ...
What on earth is this word? Winter? wintes? It may be profuse but it is not legible. For God's sake don't imitate me.
Shall try pill Aloes et Ferri for a few days?
You can try.
Today, I surprised myself by completing a poem of 18 lines in about 2 hours and 8 lines of another in 1 hour!
Glory to God!
We hear you are tremendously busy; hot speculations are in the air about near descents.
No, thank you, sir! I have had enough of them—the only result of the last descent was an upsurging of subconscient mud.
In the upshot many crashes and shipwrecks are apprehended.
What an appetite for crashes!
Please tell us something so that we may prepare ourselves in time to bear the pressure of the descent.
No pressure! I am simply busy trying to get out of the mud—in other words to see if the damned subconscient can be persuaded to subside into something less dangerous, less complexful and more manageable.
May 27, 1935
The word you stumbled against, is "whites". I thought Mother would understand. And it is our ideal to imitate you, or at least to try to imitate you in everything!
Great Lord! What an h! I could not do worse myself.
When you said yesterday, "I am simply busy trying to get out of the mind" etc., etc., I sighed, "What a happy ignorance! Will it be folly to get wise?"
Tot mind, sir. I have gone out of my mind long ago. I wrote "mud' mud, mud, mud of the subconscient.
Can you not tell us a few words on this subconscient? By the grace of Freud and other psychologists, we have come to look upon it as Dante's Inferno or Michael's Hell. Your description seems to come close to it, but you've said somewhere that in this subconscient, there is formed and stored the impression, besides that of previous lives, of everything seen, heard, etc., etc., and the waves surge up later on. If that be so, it can't be all bad! It seems to play a tremendous role in our lives. But is there also a universal subconscient by tackling which you can tackle the individual's subconscient? What will then be the meaning of these impressions in individual consciousness, a simple interchange between universal and individual?
So many questions come up!
Of course the subconscient is universal as well as individual like all the other main parts of the Nature. But there are different parts or planes of the subconscient. All upon earth is based on the Inconscient as it is called, though it is not really inconscient at all, but rather a complete subconscience in which there is everything but nothing formulated or expressed. The subconscient of which I speak lies in between the Inconscient and conscious mind, life and body. It contains all the reactions to life which struggle out as a slowly evolving and self-formulating consciousness, but it contains them not as ideas or perceptions or conscious reactions but as the blind substance of these things. Also all that is consciously experienced sinks down into the subconscient not as experience but as obscure but obstinate impressions of experience and can come up at any time as dreams, as mechanical repetitions of past thought, feeling, action etc., as "complexes" exploding into action and event etc., etc. The subconscient is the main cause why all things repeat themselves and nothing ever gets changed except in appearances. It is the cause why, people say, character cannot be changed, also of the constant return of things one hoped to have got rid of. All seeds are there and all the sanskaras of the mind and vital and body,—it is the main support of death and disease and the last fortress (seemingly impregnable) of the Ignorance. All that is suppressed without being wholly got rid of sinks down there and remains in seed ready to surge up or sprout up at any moment.
May 28, 1935
The oculist says that R's eye defect is slight and glasses may relieve the headache.
The objection to eye-glasses is that once you start the eyes get not better but worse and worse. So if it is only slight there is no use in spoiling the eye-sight in order to get rid of the headaches.
The oculist suggests Opo-calcium—a thyroid combination. I gave him thyroid pills, but the oculist says it should be continued longer...
It is a very good idea—but I believe it creates an irritation on the skin and R is likely to get wild and give it up.
S took one pill of Aloes et Ferri and from the next morning she had burning in her eyes. I washed her eyes and that gave an uneasiness in the head! Now I realise that I should have left her to you.
All that is of course S's imagination. She decides in herself that the medicine is the cause of the burning and the uneasiness. Perhaps she decides it beforehand—or rather something in her decides it. If her imagination were equally effective for cure it would be a great thing.
M complains of pain in the heels. There is no tenderness in the bone; some tenderness in the pad of fat. Internally salicylates can be tried, but there is no rheumatic history.
No salicylates. It will spoil her stomach without curing her heel.
It may be "policeman's disease" as the French call it, "maladie de sergent de vine"; I have forgotten the technical name for it, but it is supposed to come from too much standing. I had it myself for something like a year because of walking or standing all day—that was when I used to meditate while walking. The Fr. medical dictionary says there is no remedy but rest. I myself got rid of it by application of force without any rest or any other remedy. But M is not a policeman and she does not walk while she meditates—so how did she get it?
May 29, 1935
It is then quite possible for M to have got this disease, for she is almost always on her heels. Why not apply some Force and cure it?
She has got too much force herself, though the heel may be, as with Achilles, her vulnerable point. The Force may not be able to get into it.
May 30, 193
Here is a little Bengali love poem, Sir, after a long travail! Even then Nishikanta had to apply forceps at the end. I mark x against his lines.
The marks are to my eyes invisible.
I myself seem to like it.
This time you seem to have succeeded. That is poetry.
The process I follow in writing is like this: I go on chiselling and improving on what I have written and it takes a lot of time. Sometimes I write down, all the time trying to search for a better expression. It is said that both these processes are bad.
There can be no one rule for everybody. Many follow your process.
S's eye trouble is the same, there is a sign of strain in her eyes.
She writes to me that her eyes are a little better, but she is in dental anguish and as usual, all that is done by the doctor (dentist) makes her worse.
I hear from Rajangam that you are preparing to sacrifice someone, including ourselves, to the gallows of medical study, for a French diploma. Is it really necessary?
It is not for study, but that we may be safe against the French law which forbids anyone, except duly qualified medical practitioners (French-qualified, not foreign-qualified) to practise in French territory. What we are doing now is perfectly illegal, our only defence being that we take no money and do it only among ourselves—but whether that would be sufficient, is doubtful. Mother has often wished for someone who could stand as a shield, having the necessary qualifications, but Dayashankar who was to have done it is no longer available. We have no idea of forcing anyone to do it.
May 31, 1935
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