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
Absolutely in the physical consciousness! Don't find any trace of the psychic anywhere, Sir! Are you handling the blessed subconscient physical or what?
I am handling the handle. Sticky! If you are absolutely in the physical consciousness, so much the better. It shows you are on the way. If you were in your uproarious mental or tragic vital, then there would be little chance for the psychic to emerge. But now that you are in the physical, there is some prospect of your finishing the circle M. V. Ph. Afterwards possibly there will be a chance for the line Ps. HC. S. Rejoice!
October 1, 1935
What are the abbreviations Ps. HC. S.?
Psychic—Higher Consciousness—Supramental.
You are trying to adopt shorthand now!
Of coursel what to do? Shorthand lessens the labour of the writer, even if it increases that of the reader. Besides the attempt to find out what the abbs mean should stimulate your intuition and sharpen your intelligence.
I told you I'm feeling lazy, have no aspiration, no inclination to write poetry... Is it the physical?
Yes, that's the joker—physical consciousness.
And this, you say, is the better condition?
No, where did I say that?
Why, this is almost next to inconscience.
Of course it is.
I don't know how the psychic is going to emerge from the physical consciousness.
Well, it's the bottom of the first curve, so logically the next thing is to make an upward tangent and get into the second curve.
Suppose one finishes the circle M.V.Ph., it can go round again before one is shifted to the starting of the other line.
That would be very clever, but it is not usually done, except by people with big egos. Yours is no doubt a well-developed chubby chap, but it is not a giant.
The oculist is leaving for Madras; so the charge falls on us. Here was an opportunity for me to do operations, but as I have never done any, it is not possible. Do you think the Yogic Force will enable a doctor, even if he is not trained, to do things like cutting off an appendix or a cataract?
Good Heavens, no! Spare the poor people's eyes. The Force has to prepare its instrument first—it is not a miracle-monger. The Force can develop in you intuition and skill if you are sufficiently open, even if you did not have it before—but not like that. That kind of thing happens once in a way, but it is not the fixed method of the Divine to act like that.
I believe on must know the technique, not by heart only, but by hands as well!
Yes.
Or, is it that in the yogic world operations will be tabooed since the Force alone will dissolve the cataract?
Whatever it does, it will do by a method, not in the void.
You never wrote what Y.F. (yogic force) will do, by citing examples, as you said you would.
Some day. I fixed no date.
October 2, 1935
Again, about the intuition! You speak of keeping oneself sufficiently open to get the intuition. If I keep myself open and intuition favours me, how shall I know that it is the true thing?
Practise and learn, learn and practise. When you have had a few thousand intuitions, you can get the knack—for there is a recognizable difference between the true ones and the imitations or half-ones.
In one or two cases my off-hand diagnosis was correct. But how far can I take it as an intuition?
It depends on how it came, what was the stuff of the perception and the light in it, and whether it bobbed up as one among potentials though dominant or seized you as an inevitable dead cert. Also whether it was a pure intuition or a mixed mental. Difficult, isn't it?
About how to develop it, I won't ask you—though it would enlighten us; but I suppose you will develop it some day, though a big condition of "sufficiently open" overhangs. Yes, everything one can have if one is "sufficiently open", but there's the rub, for one isn't and can't!
Well, instead of letting your Man of Sorrows sob and grumble all the lachrymose time, you should labour manfully to enlarge the opening.
P has made copies of your letters to me. Naturally, I suppose he will show them to his friends in Calcutta.
No. They must not be shown to people outside
And R has most pathetically requested me to forward him your letters written to me. Then life becomes cheerful by their splendour.
Have you told him they are not for exhibition? It is only on that condition he can have them.
October 3, 1935
Is there no truth behind animal sacrifices to Kali, or are they useless inhuman practices like vivisection in the name of Science (according to anti-vivisectionists)?
If animal sacrifices are to be made, they may just as well be made to Kali as to one's stomach,—the Europeans who object to it have no locus standi.
Buddhism says the killing of mosquitoes, bugs, snakes and scorpions may be done mercifully or mercilessly for self-protection.
Certainly. One might just as well object to the killing Of germs by fumigation or otherwise.
What about the sacrifice of harmless animals to Kali?
Useless and therefore inadvisable. External sacrifices of this kind have no longer any meaning—as so many saints have said, sacrifice ego, anger, lust etc. to Kali, not goats or cocks.
One can massacre men and nations for the Divine, but what about this then for the Divine's sake?
How does the Divine benefit by it? Very hungry, I suppose would like a nice goat-chop?
I wonder if you know that some Sharma has gone on hunger-strike to stop the sacrifices at Kalighat. Tagore supports him.
Of course, I know. But he objects to animal sacrifice; why does he make a goat-offering of himself to Kali? Is human sacrifice better than animal sacrifice?
The argument is: what does the loss of one life matter if by it other lives can be saved?
I know the South African saying 'How glorious if the whole world were to destroy itself to save the life of a single mosquito'. I used always to wonder what would become of the poor mosquito if the world were destroyed. It seems to my poor common sense that it would perish also in the glorious holocaust.
I suppose you are watching with great apprehension the war-clouds that are gathering?
No, I am not trembling, but I agree that it is a beastly affair.
I hope Mussolini got no indirect impetus from your Essays on the Gita.
He never read them, I suppose.
But however much one may deplore war, that seems to be the only opportunity for India's liberation.
? [Sri Aurobindo put a big question mark.]
October 4, 1935
By "India's opportunity" I meant that if England is involved, she will naturally fall on India for help with men and money and India would be in a good position to hold out the bait of freedom.
What India? The Legislative Assembly? You think it has force enough to exact freedom as a price of some military help? Must have changed much if they can do that.
England has to be trapped in her own den. We can't depend upon her generosity to give us freedom for the asking.
How you arrange things! If it were so easy as that!
I have become awfully irritated these last two days. Is it due to your exposition of the "chubby chap"?
Maybe. Ego irritated at its own chubbiness? Wants to be rough rude and bossy,—a true he-man?
D. Reddy is running a temperature. Etiology is obscure; I presume it may be yogic.
Rubbish! D.R. is not Yogic enough to have a Yogic fever.
October 5, 1935
D.R. is all right. No temperature. He wants to come to Pranam.
I suppose he can, Doctore volente (Doctor willing).
Please have a look at Calcutta Review for a criticism by Adhar Das. I don't know if you have seen it already.
Yes, I have read all these sweet things from the sweet adhar.124
I gather that he is favourably disposed to your philosophy so much so that he has written a book on it.
He was (favourable), without understanding much, before A.B. butted in and gored him into bitterness.
He doesn't seem to have grasped well the thing, has he?
"Methinks" he hasn't. Grasp of things is not his forte.
His remark about the divinisation of the individual and the emergence of the new race does not seem to be correct.
He seems to think that D.I. = E.N.R. or C.S.R.125 So if D.I. is possible,. C.S.R. is superfluous or out of the question. Why, I don't know, for it takes individuals to make a race and if a certain number of individuals are not divinised, I don't see how you are going to get a divinised race. As for it being out of the question, the great Panjandrum alone knows why if an individual is divinised—(one obviously is not enough), it should be out of the question to go on divinising others until you have a new race. But I suppose, unless you create unnecessary quibbles, there can be no "intellectual" philosophy.
He says, "Divinisation of the individual will be instrumental in the emergence of a new race." Is that what you mean by "Our Yoga is not for our sake but for the Divine"?
Not exactly.
I thought there was quite a difference between divinisation and supramentalisation, the one being a step to the other; so you won't stop at divinisation.
Yes, of course, but as I have never explained in these letters what I meant by supermind, these critics are necessarily all at sea. They think, pardonably enough, that anything above human mind must' be supramental.
I suppose it will be a presumption on my part to criticise a philosopher like him from whom, you wrote to T, you learnt your philosophy.
No, no! Not learnt,—say that I am slowly learning from him. For he is kindly teaching me what I meant.
People are longing to see the first batch of the supramental species from your great laboratory, Sir.
Go forward, go forward and show yourself.
Then the critic writes that you are making an extravagant claim in as much as it gives a lie to logic and also to the lives and experiences of past seers. Well, Sir?
Well, I don't suppose the new race can be created by or according to logic or that any race has been. But why should the idea of the creation of a new race be illogical? It is not only my ideas that baffle reason, but Adhar Das's also! he must really be a superman, self-made of course, outside the laboratory. As for the past seers, they don't trouble me. If going beyond the experiences of the past seers and sages is so shocking, each new seer or sage in turn has done that shocking thing—Buddha, Shankara, Chaitanya, etc. all did that wicked act. If not, what was the necessity of their starting new philosophies, religions, schools. of Yoga? If they were merely verifying and meekly repeating the lives and experiences of past seers and sages without bringing the world some new thing, why all that stir and pother? Of course, you may say they were simply explaining the old truth but in the right way but this would mean that nobody had explained or understood it rightly before—which is again "giving the lie etc." Or you may say that all the new sages (they were not among Adhar's cherished past ones in their day), e.g. Shankara, Ramanuja, Madhva were each merely repeating the same blessed thing as all the past seers and sages had repeated with an unwearied monotony before them. Well, well, but why repeat it in such a way that each "gives the lie" to the others? Truly, this shocked reverence for the past is a wonderful and fearful thing! After all, the Divine is infinite and the unrolling of the Truth may be an infinite process or at least, if not quite so much, yet with some room for new discovery and new statement, even perhaps new achievement, not a thing in a nutshell cracked and its contents exhausted once for all by the first seer or sage, while the others must religiously crack the same nutshell all over again, each tremblingly careful not to give the lie to the "past" seers and sages.
October 8, 1935
In our discussion of yesterday about Adhar Das, if "not exactly", what exactly then do you mean by "Our Yoga is not for our sake but for the Divine"?
Well, I once wrote in my callow days "Our Yoga is not for ourselves but humanity"—that was in the Bande Mataram times. To get out of the hole self-created I had to explain that it was no longer for humanity, but for the Divine. The "not for ourselves" remained intact.
Is it something like the Vaishnava idea of absolute surrender, without even desiring to see Him, have milan with Him; only give, give and give? A very sublime conception, but is it possible and practical?
Quite possible and practical and a very rapturous thing as anyone who has done it can tell you. It is also the easiest and most powerful way of "getting" the Divine. So it is the best policy also. The phrase, however, means that the object of the Yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the Divine's sake alone, to be turned in our nature into the nature of the Divine and in our will and works and life to be the instrument of the Divine. Its object is not to be a great Yogi or a superman (although that may come) or to grab at the Divine for the sake of the ego's power, pride or pleasure. It is not for salvation though liberation comes by it and all else may come; but these must not be our objects. The Divine alone is our object.
Why not write something about the Supermind, if only to give us an idea about it? Saying that its only a different consciousness, is hardly enough. Any realisation of the Divine would mean that, I suppose. Or have you said something about it somewhere?
What's the use? How much would anybody understand? Besides the present business is to bring down and establish the Supermind, not to explain it. If it establishes itself, it will explain itself—if it doesn't, there is no use in explaining it. I have said some things about it in past writings, but without success in enlightening anybody. So why repeat the endeavour?
Dr. B is going home tomorrow for a month. Please see that Messrs. H. F. [Hostile Forces] may not entangle me into trouble.
For one month you may make yourself like iron and look fierce.
A worker from Cycle House—Cassel (?) has conjunctivitis.
Author of the dictionary? I suppose you mean Keshavalu?
October 9, 1935
B.P.'s case is contagious. How can we keep him here in such a closed place?
These two people B.P. and R. K. seem rather hopeless physically, but we don't quite know how to deal with them. To send them off is harsh, to keep them is bothersome. So?
Do you advise that B.P. should not work in the D.A.?
Please cast a glance on the typed letters about A.D. I suppose you wouldn't mind a copy being sent to him? I won't send, but if others do?
No, it is not meant for him. It is only a bit of fun between ourselves. If there is any danger of anyone doing that, it is better to keep it to yourself.
October 10, 1935
I think it is advisable to remove B.P. from the Dining Room and give him a separate work.
I hear he has automatically stopped.
That will obviate the danger of contagion, but what about the other trouble, the sore on which you kept quiet? Am I to take it that by Yoga it may be cured? I remember Mother once saying that there is hardly a disease that can't be cured by Yoga. Can cancer, the deadly enemy of present civilisation, be cured?
Of course it can, but on condition of faith or openness or both. Even a mental suggestion can cure cancer—with luck, of course, as is shown by the case of the woman operated on unsuccessfully for cancer, but the doctors lied and told her it had succeeded. Result, cancer symptoms all ceased and she died many years afterwards of another illness altogether.
However, if you can cure B.P. that way, it would be very good. Only, I think it would require a great development of consciousness and an opening, which he hasn't yet got.
Quite so. No passage.
Tomorrow I'll take him to the hospital as he has developed some ear trouble. I'll get his blood also examined there.
Right you are.
October 11, 1935
My disgust is becoming more and more acute as regards poetry. I suppose the slightly lit-up channel has closed again. Things are pushing me towards medicine—an absolutely opposite pole! Where is your alchemist, Sir?
Has taken opium probably and is seeing visions somewhere. Perhaps they will come out some day from your suddenly galvanised pen.
October 12, 1935
In your letter to Somnath you said that what is most needed is an upward aspiration. But then what about the other two movements: rejection and surrender you mention in The Mother?
It was not necessary to mention all that. I was only answering a limited question, not giving a whole theory of Yoga to Somnath.
Don't you think that aspiration being equal, a rajasic man will meet with a greater resistance in rejecting his lower impulses than a sattwic man?
That is implied in what I said about the sattwic man having the advantage. Somnath's question seemed to be about the approach to spirituality, Yoga, not as to what would happen to the two kinds of people in the course of the sadhana. But obviously the rajasic movements are likely to create more trouble than the sattwic ones. The greatest difficulty of the sattwic man is the snare of virtue and self-righteousness, the ties of philanthropy, mental idealisms, family affections etc., but except the first, these are, though difficult, still not so difficult to overpass or else transform. Sometimes however these things are as sticky as the rajasic difficulties.
Since desires are strong in the rajasic man they will surely thwart the fire of aspiration rising upwards, won't they?
All that is logical, but it does not happen in every case. It may be true in your case, but what of St. Augustine, Jagai Madhai, Bilwamangal and the rest? St. Augustine had difficulties, but they do not seem to have been of a very violent character, the others are described as having made a total yoke face, I believe.
If I had been a predominantly sattwic man, you would have had much less trouble from me, wouldn't you?
No doubt. But you are not after all, a thief, debauchee, drunkard or gangster. You may say perhaps that if you had been, you could have been a great saint also, violently sinning, violently repenting, violently sanctifying yourself? Perhaps that was the secret of St. Augustine and the others
So you can see that aspiration per se, however strong and true, cannot achieve much.
Who says no?
Or do you mean that a strong aspiration will necessarily bring in rejection and surrender?
Of course.
Next, though sinners and robbers have been converted into saints, their number must be very small compared to the sattwic type.
It may be so, but that is not my experience. The highly sattwic are few; the abnormally rajasic are few; of the middle sort there are many. According to my observation, this is true not only of this Asram but of others.
If so, can one say that in the evolution of consciousness sattwic people are more evolved than the others? Narrow logic again?
Um! somewhat! There are all sorts among the more evolved, among the less evolved there are many sattwic people also, mere good people who don't amount to much. One pats them on the back and goes farther. But don't twist this into meaning that I prefer the nasty bad ones. I don't; they give too much trouble. Only life, evolution, human character and things generally in this perplexing world are disconcertingly complex and can't be dismissed with a few simpler affirmations.
M says that his head seems to be better but he doesn't know if eruptions will come out again, when the treatment is stopped. So he suggests you will be a better judge to say whether the disease is still inside or not.
How am I to know? The inside of his head is opaque, not transparent. So long as it doesn't come again from outside with a new sowing!
October 16, 1935
One or two points on your second letter to Somnath. First about sacrifice; you know plenty of young lads have sacrificed their lives for the country by going to jail, being interned, but also by terrorism. They believe in the sacredness of their cause and so have sacrificed themselves by adopting means which they think would best serve their cause. Would you call their sacrifice a "misguided" one and send them to perdition for it? I believe you wouldn't.
Self-sacrifice for the country's sake has certainly a moral value. The "terrorism" brings in another element and assimilates it to the act of a fighter, less sattwic and more rajasic in its nature. I am not sure that I would be willing to call that a sacrifice in the moral or sattwic sense. In Bhisluna's case the element of sacrifice came in not in fighting and killing for the sake of Dhritarashtra bul in his knowing that he must die and accepting it for his ideal of loyalty. Of course, you may say that every man who risks his life does an act of sacrifice, but then we come back to very primitive values. I took the word in Somnath's letter in a less outward sense; otherwise my answer might have been different.
You also know how an ignorant Muslim fanatic killed a Hindu whom he took to be irreverent to his Teacher. He was in turn killed by the Court. He made a sacrifice of his life for the noble cause of his Prophet!
It seems to me that he made the sacrifice of another's life and not his own. In that way a murderer can also be said to make a sacrifice of his life to his desires or his passions, for he risks the gallows. Note that the fanatic tried to escape the gallows. Even taking it that he gave his life, it was for a reward, Paradise. His act is therefore at best equivalent to that of a soldier killing and getting killed. It cannot be called sacrifice, except in the old sense of the word, when you killed a cow or a goat on an altar to get religious merit. For the essence of this kind of act of fanaticism is, admittedly, the killing of the unbeliever and not the giving of your own life. Would you call it self-sacrifice if you offered a goat at Kalighat? it would be for the goat if it assented to the affair, but for yourself? Of course there is the price of the goat—you might pride yourself on that sacrifice. There is nothing noble besides, in fanaticism—there is no nobility of motive, though there may be a fierce enthusiasm of motive. Religious fanaticism is something psychologically low-born and ignorant—and usually in its action fierce, cruel and base. Religious ardour like that of the martyr who sacrifices himself only is a different thing.
It seems difficult to understand when the Mother says that spiritual sacrifice is joyful.
She was speaking of the true spiritual sacrifice of self-giving, not the bringing of an unwilling heart to the altar.
But for those who have tasted the joys of life, plunged into its passions, desires, etc., the sacrifice can hardly be joyful to begin with. Pain, struggle, may not be the essential character of the sacrifice, but there is a lot of it in the offering—especially in this Kali Yuga, I should say.
It simply means that your sacrifice is still mental and has not yet become spiritual in its character. When your vital being consents to give up its desires and enjoyments, when it offers itself to the Divine, then the yajna will have begun. What I meant was that the European sense of the word is not the sense of the word "yajna" or the sense of "sacrifice" in such phrases as "the sacrifice of works". It does not mean that you give up all works for the sake of the Divine—for then there would be no sacrifice of works at all. Similarly the sacrifice of knowledge does not mean that you painfully and resolutely make yourself a fool for the sake of the Lord. Sacrifice means an inner offering to the Divine and the real spiritual sacrifice is a very joyful thing. Otherwise, one is only trying to make oneself fit and has not yet begun the real yajna. It is because your mind is struggling with your vital, the unwilling animal, and asking it to allow itself to be immolated that there is the pain and struggle. If the spiritual will (or psychic) were more in the front then you would not be lamenting over the loss of the ghee and butter and curds thrown into the Fire or trying to have a last lick at it before casting it. The only difficulty would be about bringing down the gods fully enough (a progressive labour), not about lamentations over the ghee. [By the way, do you think that the Mother or myself or others who have taken up the spiritual life had not enjoyed life and that it is therefore that the Mother was able to speak of a joyous sacrifice to the Divine as the true spirit of spiritual sacrifice? Or do you think we spent the preliminary stages in longings for the lost fleshpots of Egypt and that it was only later on we felt the joy of the spiritual sacrifice? Of course we did not; we and many others had no difficulty on the score of giving up anything we thought necessary to give up and no hankerings afterwards. Your rule is as usual a stiff rule that does not at all apply generally.]126
October 17, 1935
You always paralyse me by bringing in Mother and yourself in the argument. I can try to fight my cause against others who are human, or have been so at one time; but you are non-human.
All this about human and non-human is sheer rubbish, your usual red-herring across the path; you use it in order to argue that our knowledge and experience are of no practical value because they apply to us alone and cannot apply to or help human beings. As if no human beings ever had a clear mind and strong will able to make a resolution and carry it out without vital struggles and repinings. There are thousands who have done so. Even most ordinary men can do it when the passion for a cause seizes them. I have seen that in hundreds during the Swadeshi times. And do you think none who were human ever had conquered passion for the Divine?
Somnath suggests that I might try to write humorous stories, since he suspects that there is humour in me, however glum my outer appearance may be. He argues further that "since Sri Aurobindo is so humorous in your letters, you must surely have that element in you, which invites some response to it". Well, Sir?
There is a psychological truth involved in that reasoning. But it may be that it is an appreciation of humour rather than a power of humorous creation.
He asked how is it that sometimes secular literature moves one more, and gives a greater light and illumination than religious literature?
Religious literature inspires only the religious-minded,—and most religious literature, apart from the comparatively few great books, is poor stuff. Secular literature either appeals to the idealistic mind or to the emotions or to the aesthetic element in us, and all that has a much easier and more common appeal. As for spiritual light, it is another thing altogether. Spirituality is other than mental idealism and other than religion.
In literary expression, I think. it is the inner man that counts, But that would be tantamount to saying that an insincere man can't write things which will move the readers with a genuine and concrete something, or even if he does, not so much
Plenty of insincere men have written inspiring things. That is because something in them felt it, though they could not carry it out in life, and that something was used by a greater power behind. Very often in his art, in his writings, the higher part of a man comes out, while the lower dominates his life.
What shall we say then about Y? You seem to have said that his poems have helped many people, yet he was not quite sincere to his mood in his expression. Mother also spoke of his insincerity, it seems, and remarked that if he had been sincere his poems would have had a great force.
The Mother spoke of the poetry written in his bad after-days when he was merely repeating himself. It does not mean that nothing he wrote was sincere.
What about B.P.? His eyes seem cured—what about the rest of the business—sores? syphilis? blood test?
October 18, 1935
B.P. has trouble now affecting eyes, ears, throat and skin. Blood-test showed syphilis. He needs a very energetic treatment for about 6 months, though usual course is of 2 years, and isolation. A safe solution would be to ask him to go back home...
Can you speak to G, B's brother, and explain to him the situation from the medical and hygienic point of view—conditions, viz. necessity of isolation, 2 yrs course or minimum 6 months, danger to sadhaks of his coming to Pranam, so that he will have to stop the Pranam, etc., etc.? We shall have to decide after communicating with G, but I would prefer if all that can be told to him (with medical authority) rather than have to write at length.
About sacrifice and the rest, I keep silent tonight, since a cyclone is feared.
I am ready for it, but it has not arrived up till now—1 a.m
I am trying hard to understand your "Life Divine", like a dog at his bone. But at places I am at sea. Shall I take X's or Y's help? Who is better?
I know nothing of X's capacity for explaining philosophy—Y? well, he has translated it like everything else. Z would be the best man, but he is probably too busy and too lazy.
N.B. Very secret, these obiter dicta.
October 19, 1935
I explained to G the situation. But B.P. seems to be quite willing to face the quarantine for 1 or 2 years if necessary.
Can you draw up more precisely necessary rules for isolation? Also see the house where they are living (B, R.K. and R.B.) and what can be done so that there may be least chance of contamination. We might remove R.B., but she would be quite at sea among strangers.
No pranam of course; separate dishes; but the rest?
What's all this that J says, about his inner vital contact with A.B.?
J's inner imaginations, nothing more substantial than that
He says Mother has made this contact.
Rubbish! Mother never even dreamed of doing it.
He says further that he wants a direct contact with the Mother which A.B. doesn't allow, saying that he must do it through him.
Rubbish! A.B. would be the last person to prevent anyone from receiving the Mother's influence.
You have also conceded to this view. Very interesting, if true.
Rubbish! I never did.
They may be interesting, but they are not true
Are all these really true? And does he understand them?
Not at all. These are constructions and imaginations of a very active vital mind.
I wish I had known some of this business, but—
Alas, cult or occult Nothing do I know; Blindly, blindly like an ass Braying incessantly I go.
What a beautiful poem! You wrote it yourself? It is in Dara's most modernist style.
October 20, 1935
I saw Madanlal going about with bare clothing. Not good for asthma.
What the deuce is bare clothing? I have heard only of a bare body etc. Your Aeschylean expressions are sometimes very puzzling.
About "The Life Divine" class, I would have loved to read with Z, but his Purushalike bearing scares one. You know he refused even to take up and only by Mother's order he did it.
Take up what? You have already asked him for the L.D. and been sent banging? Or is it something else indicated by an Aeschylean ellipsis?
I asked also Rishabhchand but he has no time. Hence those two, thinking that they understand at least better than I.
Which two, Great Heavens, O Aeschylus? R & Z? or X and Y? I suppose the latter. And the elliptical "Hence those two" = Hence I asked about those two? I shall become quite a skilful Aeschylean scholar at this rate.
I shall have to fall back on myself for "The Life Divine".
You might try. Read an unintelligible para from the L.D., then sit in vacant meditation and see what comes from the intuitive gods. They will probably play jokes with you, but what does it matter? One learns by one's errors and marches to success through one's failures.
About that poem, it is all my writing, Sir, and all rights reserved. These are glimpses of something turning up some day, even though the sky is cloudy now. Micawberism, par excellence!
Nirod Micawber (Talukdar no more). That is a good idea.
October 21, 1935
S is suffering from neuralgia, no doubt but 2ry to the joint trouble.
[Underlining "2ry"]:
This is worse than Aeschylus. Is it an Egyptian hieroglyph? English? Bengali? Shorthand?
I intend to give him salicylate, iodine or arsenic one after the other.
It looks like throwing stones at a dog in the hope that one of them will hit him.
A screen examination is advisable. these things are intractable and there is a hereditary taint.
Well, you can do the screen exam, but if there is any scream on the screen, be discreet and let us know first before S is informed. After we know what's the matter, can fix medicine.
Do you mean that the method you advised for reading The Life Divine can really do something?
It was a joke. But all the same that is the way things are supposed to come. When the mind becomes decently quiet, an intuition perfect or imperfect is supposed to come hopping along and jump in and look round the place. Of course, it is not the only way.
I read somewhere of people suddenly merging into silence and emerging with a resplendent solution. I wonder how.
What does it matter how it happens, provided it does happen?
I understand that you wrote many things in that way, but people also say that Gods—no, Goddesses—used to come and tell you the meaning of the Vedas.
People talk a stupendous amount of rubbish. I wrote everything I have written since 1909 in that way, i.e. out of or rather through a silent mind and not only a silent mind but a silent consciousness. But Gods and Goddesses had nothing to do with the matter.
But no Goddesses for poor folks like us; they can only cut jokes, play pranks or tease our tails, that's all.
Well, if they tease your tail sufficiently, might not a poem be the result?
I had a dream last night that I found a hidden treasure consisting of silver coins, but at the bottom, bundles of incense sticks.
Silver = spirituality. Silver coins = spiritual wealth. Incense sticks = devotion, bhakti, worship of the Divine.
J says that the dream obviously means spiritual wealth.
Have I got it? When? Where?
It is an offer of these things to you, probably from some tail-teasing God or Goddess.
October 22, 1935
Anyhow, joke or no joke, I will try the method. But the trouble is that the mind finds it difficult to believe that a vacancy can be filled up all of a sudden without any kind of thinking. The Goddesses may tease you, but not sufficiently enough. Otherwise, why one, many poems would have been the result.
That is the silliness of the mind. Why should it be impossible to fill up a vacancy? It is easier for things to come into an empty space than into a full one. The error comes from thinking that your thoughts are your own and that you are their maker and if you do not create thoughts (i.e. think), there will be none. A little observation ought to show that you are not manufacturing your own thoughts, but rather thoughts occur in you. Thoughts are born, not made—like poets, according to the proverb. Of course, there is a sort of labour and effort when you try to produce or else to think on a certain subject, but that is a concentration for making thoughts come up, come in, come down, as the case may be; and fit themselves together. The idea that you are shaping the thoughts or fitting them together is an egoistic delusion. They are doing it themselves, or Nature is doing it for you, only under a certain compulsion; you have to beat her often in order to make her do it, and the beating is not always successful. But the mind or nature or mental energy—whatever you like to call it, does this in a certain way and carries on with a certain order of thoughts, haphazard intelligentialities (excuse the barbarism) or asininities, rigidly ordered or imperfectly ordered intellectualities, logical sequences and logical inconsequences etc., etc. How the devil is an intuition to get in in the midst of that waltzing and colliding crowd? It does sometimes,—in some minds often intuitions do come in, but immediately the ordinary thoughts surround it and eat it up alive, and then with some fragment of the murdered intuition shining through their non-intuitive stomachs they look up smiling at you and say "I am an intuition, sir". But they are only intellect, intelligence or ordinary thought with part of a dismembered and therefore misleading intuition inside them. Now in a vacant mind, vacant but not inert (that is important) intuitions have a chance of getting in alive and whole. But don't run away with the idea that all that comes into an empty mind, even a clear or luminous empty mind, will be intuitive. Anything, any blessed kind of idea, can come in. One has to be vigilant and examine the credentials of the visitor. In other words, the mental being must be there, silent but vigilant, impartial but discriminating. That is, however, when you are in search of truth. For poetry so much is not necessary. There it is only the poetic quality of the visitor that has to be scrutinised and that can be done after he has left his packet—by results.
You have seen, I think, Prithwisingh's poem. Its very first line was hovering over my mind—I let it go, not thinking much of it, but he has obviously caught it! Often similar instances have occurred. How is one to explain this?
There is no difficulty about explaining. You are as naive and ignorant as a new-born lamb. That is the way things come, only one does not notice. Thoughts, ideas, happy inventions etc., etc., are always wandering about (in thought-waves or otherwise) seeking a mind that may embody them. One mind takes, looks, rejects—another takes, looks, accepts. Two different minds catch the same thought-form or thought-wave, but the mental activities being different make different results out of them. Or it comes to one and he does nothing, then it walks off, crying "O this unready animal!" and goes to another who promptly annexes it and it settles into expression with a joyous bubble of inspiration, illumination or enthusiasm of original discovery or creation and the recipient cries proudly, "I, I have done this." Ego, sir! ego! You are the recipient, the conditioning medium, if you like—nothing more.
October 23, 1935
Your yesterday's long letter has delighted me much. The burden of it seems to be that for the present we have to take everything on trust since we lack the experience, and so long as the experiences don't come what can we do but go on teasing you with our questions? And you know.
We are not worshippers of you But your immortal letter! We do not worship the dumb blue But his resplendent star! Which shines and all the night shines In the dark caves of our mines.
[Underlining "letter" and "star":] Good Lord! I hope you don't imagine that is a rhyme?
But what about my table? Forgotten? Ellipsis? Out of the silence
What is the word that be About my cane-table, Sir? Shall I wait till Eternity? Yes or no, do tell me, Sir; Either can I take with surrender.
Forgot both the cane and the table. You can have if it is lying about. Good Lord! another! If you rhyme Sir and surrender you don't deserve a table but only a cane and plenty of it.
Rambhai complains of severe pain in the abdomen, due to constipation. Gave a dose of castor oil.
Rambhai is in Gujerat, if you please. If you are administering doses of castor oil to his abdomen direct from here, you must be a siddha Fascist Yogi. But perhaps you mean Ramkumar? Or whom do you mean? Is it—?
October 24, 1935
B.P. needs many injections out of which only 2 have been given.
By the way B.P. is said to be going to the reading room. Is that permissible? People may get nervous Wile does that.
By the way, what do you think of Prof. R and his immortal homeopathic treatment? I had some respect for the man without knowing much about him, but when I saw what you wrote to Sarat—that R doesn't believe in allopathy at all and considers it almost quackery, I said—a man apparently with sense, having such insensible notions!
But there are and have been plenty with sense who have held that view about allopathy (and homeopathy also and all medicine). What about Moliere? A man of sense, if ever there was one!
But our allopathic medicine is a science developed by painstaking labour—experiments researches, etc.
To a certain extent. The theory is imposing, but when it comes to application, there is too much fumbling and guesswork for it to rank as an exact science. There are many scientists (and others) who grunt when they hear medicine called a science. Anatomy and physiology, of course, are sciences.
I don't decry his homeopathy, and I dare say there are very potent drugs which we don't have...
There are plenty of allopathic doctors who consider homeopathy, Nature-cure, Ayurveda and everything else that is not orthodox "medical science" to be quackery. Why should not homeopaths etc. return the compliment?
Let me quote one or two glaring instances of his ignorance: 1) He said to X that the thyroid gland is at the back of the neck.
I think there are many homeopaths who don't know anatomy at all. I don't think there is any such thing as a homeopathic surgeon.
Poor X was thunderstruck. He almost came to believe it and consulted the Anatomy book!
It does not seem to have destroyed his faith in R. He has demanded "no rice" on full moon and new moon days, to Dyuman's and Mother's great perplexity. I had to tell the Mother, about the Indian "moon" superstition.
2) After trying this and that for X's hydrocele which isn't so by his diagnosis, he applied strong irritants causing inflammation and ulceration, and gave some internal medicines to stop these poisoning symptoms.
His theory is that homeopathy first brings out the disease, then kills it. Something like Yoga, what? i.e. you have to become conscious of things inside you and then remove them. I never heard such a theory before, though from any homeopath.
The latest development is retrenchment of bananas and no rice on new moon and full moon days! Science or witchery?
No. Not witchery nor science, but I suppose the common Indian idea. But don't doctors often make recommendations which are quite as absurd?
3) About A.B. I hear, R has stopped his sun-treatment which caused him headache. R traced the headache to his hot water bath and admonished him to use cold water... And fancy calling my science quackery! But who knows you are not enamoured of his—pathy! I wish I could transfer all my patients to him, and enjoy heavenly freedom, closing my branch.
I don't know anything about R's homeopathic knowledge or capacities. There is an enormous amount of self-assertion, bluff and fantasia in him. But sometimes he seems to be remarkably effective. It is perhaps however due to a great power of suggestion or, if you like to call it so, induced auto-suggestion. But many doctors say it is more the confidence in the doctor and the medicine that cures than either the doctor himself or the medicine. All this is meant not to support R, but to throw some cold water on the "my" in "my science". It sounds like Mussolini almost.
October 25, 1935
Yes, I was informed of B.P. using the reading room, and I had asked him to go when there were very few people.
His touching the newspapers is not dangerous?
A has been long complaining of ever increasing weakness—uncured by cod-liver oil, I suppose? Mother was suggesting to him to be examined at the hospital.
This silent mind you speak of in your case, [22.10.35] seems to be a result of Yoga.
Of course; the ordinary mind is never silent
Do thinkers and philosophers usually write from a silent mind, but unconsciously?
No, certainly not. It is the active mind they have; only of course they concentrate, so the common incoherent mentalising stops and the thoughts that rise or enter and shape themselves are coherently restricted to the subject or activity in hand. But that is quite a different matter from the whole mind falling silent.
If thoughts come like that [23.10.35], why is there a difference, sometimes a great difference, between the thought-substance of one person and that of another? Why don't thoughts, in some, shape themselves as profoundly, harmoniously and luminously as in others? Question of the opening into higher planes? And why is the beating not always successful?
Well done or badly done; also good condition or bad condition of the mental recipient.
First of all these thought-waves, thought-seeds or thought-forms or whatever they are, are of different values and come from different planes of consciousness. Even the same thought-substance can take higher or lower vibrations according to the plane of consciousness through which the thoughts come in (e.g. thinking mind, vital mind, physical mind, subconscient mind) or the power of consciousness which catches them and pushes them into one man or another. Moreover there is a stuff of mind in each man and the incoming thought uses that for shaping itself or translating itself (transcribing we usually call it), but the stuff is finer or coarser, stronger or weaker etc., etc., in one mind than in another. Also there is a mind-energy actual or potential in each which differs and this mind-energy in its recipience of the thought can be luminous or obscure, sattwic, rajasic or tamasic with consequences that vary in each case.
If I am not to "run away with the idea", you have to tell me definitely how to avoid being led into quagmires by any blessed idea. If the mental being is ignorant how will it discriminate or be impartial?
Experientia docet—experience is the doctor. Also the habit of intuitivising if it is honestly done develops a discrimination that begins to know how to sort the sheep from the goats or the demis and semis and semi-demis from the real thing. By honestly I mean without ego or parti pris.
As for the ego—can pride myself in being an instrument a medium, can't?
No, you can't—or if you do, you'll make an unblessed mess. Why should the chisel pride itself because the sculptor uses it? He could just as well have used another and it would have done as well. But anyhow the point is that ego brings a lack of poise and lack of receptive honesty and meddles with what is received.
You said on the 18th, "As for spiritual light, it is another thing altogether." What do you exactly mean by it? Do you mean that it can very well be had from anything—either high or low?
No. I did not mean that. I meant simply that an idealistic notion or a religious belief or emotion were something quite different from getting spiritual light. An idealistic notion might turn you towards getting spiritual light, but it is not the light itself.
We hear that one word, one sign, one line may put the spark to the powder and ignite the whole thing. But how? Because the psychic being was ready without one's knowing it?
It is true however that "the spirit bloweth where it listeth",and that one can get some emotional impulse or touch of mental realisation of spiritual things from almost any circumstance, as Bilwamangal got it from the words of his courtesan mistress. Obviously it happens, because something is ready somewhere,—if you like, the psychic being waiting for its chance and taking some opportunity in mind, vital or heart to knock open a window somewhere.
October 26, 1935
How does one get the "habit of intuitivising... honestly"? Is it by trying to have an inner silence and calm, and stopping all thoughts, as you point out in your letter?
That is the first condition, but not the whole process. I told you that one could not safely take whatever comes as the intuition and I gave you the reasons.
What I try to do now is to make my mind silent and pre scribe the drug that crops up...
Umph! But how are you sure that what sits127 up is not a mental suggestion?
And what has ego to do with all this? What one has to do is to remain just silent; I don't see how ego can come in the way unless you mean that the mind won't tolerate being made a passive Brahman, and will assert its right.
Ego interferes in a general way—not of course in choosing medicines—and many ways, e.g. inviting pseudo-intuitions which flatter the ego. Also it may interfere when a mistake has been made and prevent you acknowledging it or even call in more pseudo-intuitions to justify and back up the original error. Innumerable are the tricks of the ego. Also, if you feel yourself becoming intuitive, rightly or wrongly intuitive, (more so if it is wrongly), then a too strong ego may develop in you megalomania and then you are gone. So don't justify ego.
I understand that Intuition will be one of the outstanding features of your Supramental creation; we will only have to shut our eyes and come off with an illumined intuition! The result will be epoch-making discoveries, inventions, etc., etc. By Jove! What a grand period it will be!
Good Lord, no! At least not till you live in the gnostic Intuition as your ordinary consciousness. So long as you are only receiving all sorts of things from everywhere, you will have to be on the qui vive to see that you don't make a pseudo-intuitive fool of yourself.
Nirod [Underlined]
28-10-35
M still complains of having fever after his evening meal. We should like to know whether it is real fever or only some heat and uneasiness in the body. There is cough still, but it seems to be looser according to his last statement.
SRI AUROBIND October 28, 1935
You will agree that to develop literary style, two things are necessary: reading and writing...
Reading of various novels, stories, fictions is fruitful because their contribution is decidedly the richest. Now the trouble is that when I read these fictions, English or Bengali, though delighted by the style, I can't detach myself from the subject-matter. At times it may mean even the lowering of consciousness.
Why the devil can't you separate yourself from what you read—taking from it only what you need or what you choose?
For instance I read a book by Wodehouse. The fellow, as you know, has some charm of expression, and my vital takes part in the enjoyment.
I don't. I find him damn silly with a repetition always of the same trick humour. At any rate, I hope you don't call that style.
For literary creation and effective expression, who will deny that style has a great force?
Of course; without style there is no literature—except in fiction, where a man with bad style like Dickens or Balzac can make up by vigour and the power of his substance.
Aren't all your letters so refreshing, stimulating to us because of your superb style? And to manufacture your style, you will hardly deny that your enormous reading contributed to it.
Excuse me! I never manufactured my style; style with any life in it cannot be manufactured. It is born and grows like any other living thing. Of course it was fed on my reading which was not enormous—I have read comparatively little—(there are people in India who have read fifty times or a hundred times as much as I have) only I have made much out of that little. For the rest it is Yoga that has developed my style by the development of consciousness, fineness and accuracy of thought and vision, increasing inspiration and an increasing intuitive discrimination (self-critical) of right thought, word form, just image and figure.
October 29, 1935
I don't know what to do with R.K There is virtually no improvement in his trachoma. Today he says he has great pain in right pain and wants it to be reported.
You are certainly a born supramental. "To have great pain in right pain" is of a supramental depth.
Why can't I separate myself from what I read? Well, Sir, it is the devil that flares up and goes on lamenting over the loss of "ghee and butter" (by which, I suppose, you meant sex-enjoyment?) [17.10.35].
You mean then that you can't separate yourself when you are reading of sex? But surely even modern novels caret be nothing but sex enjoyment from start to finish? Why not separate the rest of the time, practise separation at least, even if you have to splash in when the sex comes rolling by?
I have seen your letter of today to Dilip. When I finished reading it, I let out a sigh and exclaimed—How cruel! after raising our hopes you mercilessly cut them of because the letter would be too long? Nothing is too long for us, especially such personal examples which are more valuable for the likes of us than any promises and possibilities...
Good Lord! I never said it was too long for you to read, I meant it was too long for me to write now. And I can't write such things by themselves as an autobiographical essay—it is only if they turn up in the course of something that I can do so. Last night I had no blessed time to illustrate. I thought of writing it because it seemed very appropriate, but when I couldn't, I just mentioned it in order to hint that what I had written was not mere theory, but provable by solid experience. No fell intention to tantalise.
October 30, 1935
But it is unthinkable and almost unbelievable to have any experience of Self, in the circumstances you have described! [In Dilip's letter.]
I can't help that. It happened. The mind's canons of the rational and the possible do not give spiritual life and experience.
But can you not tell us what the experience was like? Was it by any chance like the one you speak of in your Uttarpara Speech128—the Vasudeva experience?
Great Jumble-Mumble! What has Vasudeva to do with it? Vasudeva is a name of Krishna, and in the Uttarpara I was speaking of Krishna, if you please.
But didn't you begin Yoga later on in Gujerat?
Yes. But this began in London, sprouted the moment I set foot on Apollo Bunder, touching Indian soil, flowered one day in the first year of my stay in Baroda, at the moment when there threatened to be an accident to my carriage. Precise enough?
By the Self, I suppose, you mean the individual Self?
Good Lord, no. I mean the Self, sir, the Self, the Adwaita, Vedantic, Shankara Self. Atman, Atman! A thing I knew nothing about, never bargained for, didn't understand, either.
I had a dream of the Mother: we were all sitting in the pranam hall, when a very rich man came with his sick child. He said to Mother that if she accepted the child, he would give her lots of money. Mother thought awhile, drew out something like a horoscope which seemed somewhat like- the Taj Mahal. Through a tubelike instrument, she gazed at the design. She found that this child had a counterpart in Delhi whom if she secured, she'd cure this child. This man seemed to have some connection with the millionaire Hukumchand. What are these things now?
Dreams of the vital plane corresponding to some reality there, but not necessarily to any exact reality in the physical, though it does sometimes touch on physical realities. The connection with Hukumchand was either a touch of the vital mind or else only an indication of the class of men this belonged to, if it touches the physical.
October 31, 1935
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