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 am sending you a few snaps—some samples of your supramental yogis. Isn't Dilipda splendid in a standing posture?
Superb!
What about his deep intellectual look in the sitting one?
Admirable!
And my noble self seems to be coming out of the grave or going there probably?
Asking where will be the end of this প্রনান্ত লীলা ।32
My supramental forehead is merging with the Infinite, what?
Yes, dominating scornfully from there the pigmy universe.
Lastly, the Asram photos are very fine.
Very well done.
I give you a rare occasion for laughter. Please do laugh loud and share it with us!
No time to laugh! Can only smile.
As the cause of J's irregular menses it is not poetry I said, but the physical and mental strain. Coming here running with the poem, going back to meditation, then copying hurriedly the poem, then meal, etc. Going on thus day after day. Not enough to cause strain? No, not parent, it has become the issue!
You relieve me! I was thinking if poetry could be the parent of i.m., what it would do to you and Dilip and Nishikanta.
September 1, 1936
A is "slightly better". No fever, slight tenderness in the liver region.
Mother found him rather yellow at Pranam.? but if he has no fever, I suppose it is all right.
September 2, 1936
Again I have a blessed boil inside the left nostril—painful. I feel feverish. A dose of Force, please!
As the modernist poet says
O blessed blessed boil within the nostril, How with pure pleasure dost thou make thy boss thrill! He sings of thee with sobbing trill and cross trill, O blessed, blessed boil within the nostril.
I hope this stotra33 will propitiate the boil and make it disappear, satisfied.
Is that why you tend towards home-eating?
I asked R to return to us the duplicate key of the Dispensary. He has now practically no connection with the Dispensary. He has agreed, but puts a nonsensical suggestion that whenever I go out I should leave the key with the gatekeeper. He also says that if required, another key can be prepared by Manibhai!!
You ought to have shouted before. Now he has given order to Manibhai for another key.
September 5, 1936
G has signs of inflammation in the left lung. Better to take an X-ray tomorrow; sputum examination if necessary after that.
Better not X-ray etc. unless it is absolutely necessary. Feed him, tonic him, coddle with cod-liver oil and see how it works out before plunging into these soul-shaking measures.
Should be made a little civilised! He has hardly any bedding; no blanket, no mosquito net. He says there are not many mosquitoes.
A blanket, banyan, mattress have been given. Mother did not know about mosquito net—but if he is not accustomed to it, he may find it rather suffocating. But you can ask Amrita for one if you think it indispensable. Civilisation is good, but not at all points for everyone.
I can't decide if he should be given any work, but if he sits all the time at home, that may act adversely.
It will certainly act adversely.
At any rate, his wandering work has to be stopped.
On the contrary, to move in the open is surely one of the best things for him—provided it is not under the rain. He has most probably not been eating enough and ought to be fed. Also cod-liver oil and tonic may be good for him. He must have got cold and neglected it.
What a powerfully effective "stotra"! the boil couldn't but burst... I couldn't make out one word. Is it "make thy bows thrill"?
I thought you'd boggle over it. "Boss" man "boss" = yourself as owner, proprietor, patron, capitalist of the boil.
[Because of some inconvenience I wanted meals at home.] But if you want, the "home-eating" tendency can be stopped.
D.R. says more and more people demanding home consumption—carrying capacity exhausted. Will have to double Dayabhai's work if this goes on—he will spend the whole day tiffin-carrying—and finally what will be the damned use of the Dining Hall? Your name among the home-consumers—so gave you a jog. If we omit the visitors, 50 per cent of the Asram are taking home-meals and most of these all meals at home. All do not take by cart, but even so the cart has to carry more than its proper capacity.
September 6, 1936
G did not have good sleep at night...
Said bad sleep was due to the beastly blanket and mattress. Prefers a bedsheet to wrap himself according to former custom.
He has to be given a tonic injection "une toes les deux jours"—on alternate days?
Yes, if that is the direction.
His fever has to be brought down. Dr. Becharlal advises his native drug galoye...
If it does not clash with the injections.
We must also give cod-liver oil, but I fear to begin at once as he has fever and may not be able to digest. Still I will try from tomorrow one teaspoon a day.
You can wait till whenever it is suitable to give it. Perhaps the injections should be finished first.
"To move in the open" is surely the very thing, but don't you think with running fever of 101.4°, weakness, etc. it would be a little too much?
That of course—The objection is to making him a permanently sedentary invalid—that is what so many are becoming.
Till his fever comes down and weakness disappears, I think you will agree that his daily work has to be cut short.
Mother has stopped his work.
Why not take A out of the doctors' hands now by pumping a big dose?
Very refractory to big doses.
Dr. Becharlal prescribes butter for my amaigrissement and cod-liver oil by myself.
?? [Sri Aurobindo put 2 interrogation marks.]
September 7, 1936
If any oranges can be spared for G, don't you think it will do him good?
[Mother:] You can go to Champaklal, he will give two oranges daily.
Why two interrogations, Sir, against my using butter?
Butter and cod-liver oil—which is two.
Since the Force does not help, I have to seek fatness from butter and oil. Of course, Dr. Becharlal also added cheerfulness to the prescription.
Mother pours scorn on your idea that you are a jutting skeleton. She says that you are less shockingly plump than when you came, but that is all. But if you take butter and oil together, to say nothing of cheerfulness, what will you become? Remember Falstaff.34
We understand that Mother asked Shanta not to take cod-liver oil with milk or water as it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
Mother told her it might spoil her taste for milk—but did not forbid anything. Now Shanta says she can't take it even in milk, so renounces its use.
So we advised her to take it as it is though it is slightly bitter. But still she wants us to ask Mother how to take it!
So what? Any substitute which she will not object to? She says she has pain in eyes and temples. Replaced fever?
September 8, 1936
This trouble of S's has become really a nuissance! Nothing seems to hit him at the right place.
He has written me a furious letter denouncing you and all doctors and their wicked futile ways.
He is so much bent on having his diet increased in spite of our giving him quite a sufficient amount. His excessive hunger points towards some worm infection. Let us try Santonin, if you allow.
But how try without being sure? Liver also gives alternations of not-eating and bouts of excessive hunger.
About me, did you say "less shockingly plump"! Good gracious, was I ever plump? Mother has only to see my bare upper body and exclaim—Oh doctor like that!
It's your clothes that made you plump?
Please circulate Force from 2 or 2.30 p.m., will you?
Lord! my least forceful time or rather the fag-end of the same. Never mind.
September 9, 1936
What's the matter with my poetry? I tried yesterday's poem again for a long time, nothing doing! The channel has choked up or what?... Remedy—try and try? or rest and rest?
Both methods are possible and each has its advantages—or they might be combined "Rest and rest and try and try."
I have been unusually happy after months!... Man of Sorrows was non-existent—kicked out? But unfortunately he is trying to poke his face again!
Twist his nose.
We hear your Supermind is very near—not 50 years, I hope! Time to push us up a little, Sir, so that we may give you a proper reception, what?
That's what the Force seems to be trying to do.
Don't forget to make us, at least, feel the Descent. 30 years' sadhana, by Jove!...
30 years too little or too many? What would have satisfied your rational mind—3 years? 3 months? 3 weeks? Considering that by ordinary evolution it could not have been done even at Nature's express speed in less than 3000 years, and would ordinarily have taken anything from 30,000 to 300,000, the transit of 30 years is perhaps not too slow.
In trying to solve the riddle of the Sphinx, Paul Brunton in his book, "A Search in Secret Egypt", says, "That the Sphinx represents something divine or someone divine is suggested by the hieroglyph inscriptions on the walls of the Upper Egyptian temples, as at Edfu, where a god is pictured as changing himself into a lion with a human head in order to vanquish Set, the Egyptian Satan... If the force of a lion and the intelligence of man mingled their symbolisms in this crouching body, there was yet something neither bestial nor human in it, something beyond and above these, something divine!"35 He says there was some supernatural element in this stone being.
Did the Egyptians or Atlanteans have the same conception or believe in the same evolutionary Avatarhood and hence the statue?
Maybe. But the Sphinx is rather the symbol of the whole evolution from subconscient to the superconscient Light.
He further asks whether the Pyramids are "vast and vain monuments" or are they reared merely to hold one Pharaoh's mummified flesh?
It is usually supposed by occultists to be a symbolic-scientific monument in which were performed some secret Egyptian Mysteries.
Two doses of Santonin will have no harmful effect on S. But, I suppose, the necessity no longer exists as he is furious with us and may even quit us.
If he doesn't quit and submits to Santonin we have no objection.
September 10, 1936
A says he feels heavy and sleepy and not refreshed. Is it the Force that does it?
Good Lord, no! It is forcelessness that does it.
September 11, 1936
D's letter gives me an occasion to ask you about the suicide of X's wife. You said something about Fate which is always a mysterious word.
Well, the determination of human life and events is a mysterious thing. Can't help that, you know Fate is composed of many things—Cosmic Will + individual self-determination + play of forces + Karma + x + y + z + a + b + c ad infinitum.
Suicides and accidents are supposed to be due to hostile Forces.
Not Forces hostile to our work, but hostile to the suicide and to the accidented fellow.
She died because "she was hostile to the Divine". So it can't be the action of hostile Forces, for it would be in their interest to keep her alive, so that X may be hampered in his aspiration.
Was she hostile to the Divine? All I heard was that she was somewhat in the way of X's sadhana—but so many wives and husbands are like that and they don't get drowned.
And since X's turn to the Divine was much quicker than he thought, can one conclude from this accident that the Divine perhaps wanted to remove the obstacle? Of course it is a very drastic method.
All that is simplificative reasoning—the truth is much more complex than that.
I was tempted to conclude so, because I heard you had said that X being a rare sattwic type, you wanted him sooner, or something like it.
No. We were not particular about the time.
Some say the Divine's way would have been to try to turn the wife also this way or to help X to go through the ordeal—not this drastic step! A word or two please!
God only knows what God does and why he is doing it. And God is not in the habit of letting other people know—except when it suits him.
A has malaise; not refreshed after sleep...
I have been without light, so blank, blank, blank. Keeping everything in hope of better luck today. (This has nothing to do with A's malaise, by the way. Only take advantage of bottom of page.)
September 12, 1936
Shall we put A on Sudarshan powder?
All right.
Try some Force please, A is getting disgusted, it seems!
Only getting? He is chronically disgusted, to my experience.
The hostile forces have made my life unbearable, sucking away every drop of blood gained after much pain and expense. Can't sit outside, even for a minute, under the breezy, starry sky. Their breeding place is in the thick canna bushes Manubhai has planted. Can't you direct him to strike them off and save my precious life? What will happen if the Asram doctor is to die of malaria?
My dear sir, Manubhai will have a fit and you will have to treat him and probably he will kill you into the bargain. You prefer a violent death to malaria? While there is life, there is hope, even if there are also mosquitos. Why not negotiate with Manubhai himself? If you plead with him in a sweet low pathetic voice, he may have mercy.
By the way, Shanta has consented to take the cod-liver oil after all,—so I have agreed to ask you for a whole bottle for her personal absorption. So send her a bottle of this divine but fishy nectar.
September 13, 1936
G says he feels "tous les bien"!
Good Lord! what's that? French?
At times I think I am really useless as a doctor; I haven't the gift for it—wrong choice of profession altogether, like that of your Yoga, Sir! Both of them forced down my throat! I often feel like asking Mother to take off this responsibility from me and give it to some fitter person.
To whom?
Those 5 years in Edinburgh weren't just play. I have done some studies surely, which are not worth a candle, for people with much less knowledge, quacks even, seem to be more successful.
Book knowledge is necessary, but not much use by itself.
What are the elements then wanting in me? Lack of faith in the drugs given, lack of Faith in the Force?
Lack of experience, lack of decision, vacillating intuition, want of vision.
It is true that I haven't much faith in our drugs, but with these very drugs doctors are becoming enormously successful.
They go ahead, don't mind how many people they kill, but they go—human Motorcars.
It seems I don't know yet the right way to call down the Force, or is it because the "canalisation" hasn't been done yet?
Right—that's it.
I am getting more and more disappointed in my doctorship, as in Yoga, since I hear that you are now trying more for transformation of nature than for experience.
Because without transformation of nature, the blessed experience is something like a gold crown on a pig's head—won't do. Picturesque perhaps, but—
... Please give me precise practical suggestions on the art of healing.
My God, man! I am not a doctor.
What to do? How to bring down the Force?
How? is there a how? You call, you open, it comes (after a time). Or, You don't call, you open, it comes. Or, You call, you don't open, it doesn't come. Three possibilities. But how—? Well, God he knows, or perhaps he doesn't.
Seeing the miraculous effects of Homeopathy, Dr. Manila! asked me to study it with R. I don't know if it's any use—as study alone won't do. One must have the gift. Have I?
Can't say! Had you the poetic gift some years ago?
September 16, 1936
As I thought—no help but to wait for canalisation and in the meantime carry on. I suppose all "lacks" will be removed by the descent of Force?
Obviously, obviously!
You promised to write to me about Intuition, but like all your promises—!
I promised to do so in some future age when I had time. That promise stands—if a promise stands. What more can you ask of it?
God knows what you are busy with now, with the correspondence also reduced?
Who says it is reduced? For a few days, it was—now it has increased to half again its former size and every morning I have to race to get it done in time—and don't get it done in time. Thousand things are accumulating; inner work delayed.
I didn't mean by "practical suggestions", any medical ones, Sir! I meant about the Force. R, I saw once, put his hand on a patient's abdomen, and concentrated, God knows on what...
On the Mother and her Force for which he was calling.
I hear he actually feels the Force descending and the patients also get relief for the time being.
Yes, that has frequently happened.
Suppose I do the same, I know I won't feel any Force descending, but without feeling it, it may descend and act?
Doubtful.
Regarding A, you said he was refractory to big doses. In that case, how will my calling help the canalisation of the hard granite?
Even to small doses. Sometimes I get in a little surreptitiously and, as it were, against his will. He is much more granite than you.
You can be less mysterious in these explanations, si vous voulez.
Not mysterious at all. Succinct and epigrammatic.
September 17, 1936
"Obviously, obviously"! What obviously, Sir? When will the blessed Force descend?
That is irrelevant. The time of its descent has nothing to do with its obviousness.
Have been working these 2 or 3 days on this small poem, can't do it. Remarkable maturity of expression etc. etc. have all melted away!
Not at all. They are there, only feeling shy and sitting modestly behind the pardah.
A, though "much more granite" than I, seems to receive very well in poetry.
Ah, you think so! My dear sir, I have to do boring operations like digging an artesian well before I can get a few poems out of him—And afterwards it is one long wail "All gone! all gone! I am damned, doomed, dead, deteriorated, degenerated" for a whole day period. Sir, A is twice the Man of Sorrows you are.
If everything goes on so tremendously slow, isn't it enough to make one despair and sit and lament? Because one doesn't know how the devil one should proceed!
If you appeal to the devil, you can't proceed.
Well, after the failure in poetry, I am thinking now of reading and writing any blessed thing that comes. But there's no joy in it. Everything seems a waste of time. Meditation is hard, doesn't bring any result, poetry won't come—this is the state of affairs.
Present Discontents, what!
Fed up, fed up, damnably fed up! Work of the Spirit as complex as human nature!
Of course it must be, because it is in human nature that it works.
You call, you open, you don't call, you open, you call, you don't open—no profounder mystery can there be than these phrases of yours!
Not at all, plain as your nose. Excuses to the nose! I gave you three different cases,—do mix them up together.
I have called for poetry, I have actually sat up for 2 hours, has it come?
You called but did not open, so it did not come.
I am praying for A's cure, is there a response?
You called, but A did not open, so it did not cure.
Both instances establish my case. Q.E.D.
You said once that it is the spiritual consciousness that my being wants and that this need was becoming very prominent, but not the push yet. It seems now the need also has pushed back?
For the moment.
But if it is really the spiritual consciousness, how the dickens shall I get it by reading, say, Dickens, Lawrence or Nehru?
Probably not! Especially Dickens.
Is that why I think it a waste of time?
Possibly yes.
And yet I would like to read all the books. Have the attitude of nirbhar and do all these things?
Why not?
Really, really, your Yoga is a puzzle and I haven't been able to catch the head or tail of it, shall never perhaps!
You needn't catch either its head or its tail. It will be sufficient if you allow it to catch your head or your tail or both!
Cheerio! Tails forward!
G is now well. Shall we begin cod-liver oil now or after the last 2 injections? Ah, if all patients were like him!
Better finish injections first, then oil him.
September 18, 1936
Sri Aurobindo,
There you are, Sir, with your paradoxical, mysterious brevities! Dickens etc. won't give the spiritual consciousness and it is a waste of time; again, they can be done with nirbhar! Then why should I do anything wasteful with nirbhar?
If you want to understand my supramental brevities, you must read carefully. You have absolutely ignored my pregnant "Possibly". I never said that it must be a waste of time—but "possibly" yes or "possibly" not. Reading Dickens merely cannot give you the spiritual consciousness—that is obvious. It would be a miracle if it did. Reading the Oxford Dictionary might be more helpful in that direction. Unless of course a miracle took place; then even Dickens—But otherwise it may evidently be a waste of time. D got helped by Lawrence's letters—even J gave him dream-meetings with J and his daughter. But most people would get little that is either occult or spiritual from either. But things done with nirbhar can help—not because of themselves, but because of the nirbhar.
To try to be a literary man and yet not to know what big literary people have contributed would be inexcusable...
Why is it inexcusable? I don't know what the Japanese or the Soviet Russian writers have contributed, but I feel quite happy and moral in my ignorance. As for reading Dickens in order to be a literary man, that's a strange idea. He was the most unliterary bloke that ever succeeded in literature and his style is a howling desert.
One may become, after hard studies of authors, a literary man, but the supramental will keep its tail high up. What has been the result? This is one great disharmonious problem I haven't solved, neither have you helped me except by your supramentally brief jokes.
To be a literary man is not a spiritual aim; but to use literature as a means of spiritual expression is another matter. Even to make expression a vehicle of a superior power helps to open the consciousness. The harmonising rests on that principle.
Considering the capacity, worth and qualities I have been born with, my aspirations or ambitions are too great. In J's words—"So much to be seen, so much to be done, so many fresh avenues to explore," in spiritual as well as non-spiritual domains. I haven't got a clear vision of what to do, how to proceed, how to establish a harmony between the Spirit and the mundane and then to be fired with dynamism.
Ambitions of that kind are too vague to succeed. You have to limit your fields and concentrate in order to succeed in them. I don't make any attempt to be a scientist or painter or general. I have seen certain things to do and have done them, so long as the Divine wanted; others have opened in me from above or within by Yoga; I have done as much of them as the Divine wanted. D has had dynamisms and followed them so long as they were there or as often as they were there. You mentalise, mentalise, discuss, discuss, hesitate, hesitate.
If by any chance I could throw away all troubles about progress in Yoga and push on with literature, that would be some solution.
There is no incompatibility between spirituality and creative activity—they can be united.
... At moments I have aspirations for being many-sided, then comes a voice—"Leave all those things, seek for something more precious, happy." The eternal contradiction!
Fluctuating of course comes in the way of action and therefore of success. One can do one or other or one can do both, but not fluctuate eternally.
Can you now tell me something satisfactory, encouraging, hopeful, at the same time some practical suggestions—can't plead now that you aren't a doctor!
Give up the mentalising, hesitating, fluctuating habit. That is the one practical thing to do.
You say—I called, I didn't open. Isn't it mysterious when I called and sat up with paper and pencil for two hours and nothing came? Then all I can say is that opening is a mysterious business!
Who says it is not? Some people have the trick of always opening to a Force (e.g. Dilip, Nishikanta for creative literary activity), some have it sometimes, don't have it sometimes (you, Arjava, myself). Why make it a case of kicks and despair?
September 19, 1936
I had been to the pier with J. We were quietly resting on a bench with our feet up, when a Tamilian came with a stick in hand and ordered us to put our feet down. I was rather bewildered and put my feet down; so did J; but she asked "Why?" I said, maybe he is the guard of the pier, and it may be against rules... Behind us Purani and others were sitting with their feet up also, but he didn't tell them anything. This made J very excited and she said that he had insulted us. He was only a drunkard or a rogue. Then she accused me of cowardice for my abject submission; that it was not physical cowardice, but of the inner spirit. Because I didn't want to face him, I obeyed. The first thing a woman respects and admires in a man is courage! etc., etc...
Obviously what you ought to have done was to go baldheaded for the Tamilian, bang up his eyes, smash his nose, extract some of his teeth, break his jaw and fling him into the sea. Afterwards if the police came to arrest you, disable half the Force and slaughter the Inspector. Then J would have come to you in jail and wept admiringly over the mighty hero—That's what a "woman" expects of a "man" since the cave-days. It is also what a she-cat expects of a tomcat.
Kindly tell me frankly and openly what was my movement—was it cowardice? But this man was not at all strong, I could have fought him, besides Purani and they were there. Still why did I listen so meekly? Yet if he had come to attack J, I don't think I would have drawn back. One of the things I hate is cowardice.
In this particular case if you thought it was against rules and the man was a guard (as a matter of fact benches are usually supposed to be sat upon with the feet down), there was no cowardice in complying. Rules ought to be respected—the haughty self-assertive disregard of civic rules is worthy only of savages.
Apart from that there is a passive quiet courage which becomes aggressive only at need and is not partial to shindies, and there is the aggressive courage. To show the latter on every occasion is Irish, but not indispensable. Cowardice comes in only when you do or abstain from doing out of a sense of fear. Were you afraid? If not, it is not cowardice.
I have seen many people physically weak, yet brave like lions, while there are strong fellows who are cowards.
Yes, of course.
Is it something connected with the inner vital? Please explain the situation and give a satisfactory reply on courage vs. cowardice and the remedy.
Fear is of course a vital and physical thing. Many people who have shown great courage, were not physically or even vitally brave; yet by force of need they pushed themselves into all sorts of battle and danger. Henry IV of France, a great fighter and victor, was an example. Just because his body consciousness was in a panic, he forced it to go where the danger was thickest.
On Saturday I had a dream that my complexion had become absolutely golden. Y cried, "Oh, how beautiful you have become!" Is it some inner beauty reflecting itself on the outer being?
If Y and her compliment had not been in the dream, we might say so. But—If we give it a symbolic sense, (leaving Y out of account as a contribution from the vital) then it is a beautiful vision not of the body but of the future change of the being. For gold is the colour of the Divine Truth. People who come down from the highest planes (when not white or blue) are usually golden in dreams and visions. Take your choice of explanations.
G's temperature normal today. 6 injections finished. Start the oil? [18.9.36]
Yes.
Raghavan has eczema on right leg—not much benefit by mercury. Giving simple Zinc Oxide. Eczemas are beastly things. Wonder if we should give it up.
Give up having eczemas? Certainly. Boils too.
I have one more blessed boil! Dr. Becharlal says it is a good sign, for it means purification!! If so I shall bear thousands!!!
All that's a discovery. The boil is then truly a blessed one?
September 21, 1936
... If you approve of my all-round literary aim, then isn't it necessary that one should be acquainted with the best literatures of the world?
Not indispensable,—even by being steeped in one literature, one can arrive. But useful of course.
What do you say about my plans to read Meredith, Hardy, Shelley, Keats and the French and Russian writers?
Lord, Sir, I wish I had time to follow out a programme as massive as yours. I have none even to dilate upon yours.
You know I have hardly any experience of life and the world which helps in creation. That defect can, to a certain extent, be removed by the study of these works.
Is it so? There would be a danger of its being only derivative and bookish work. The great novelists like the great dramatists have been usually men who lived widely or intensely and brought a world out of the combination of their inner and their outer observation, vision, experience. Of course if you have a world in yourself, that is another matter.
... If I want to write poetry, I should read them side by side.
? [Sri Aurobindo underlined "them".]
Now I am in a mood to read prose.
No objection.
... I shall also read your books for 2 hours which will help my sadhana, opening of consciousness.
Good.
My sex-trouble is also much less at present—my most heartfelt gratitude to Mother.
Delighted to hear. Great pother and nuisance—the sex.
About that cowardice, I have thought and thought... Why should I have been afraid? I could have fought him any moment!
Don't suppose it was cowardice.
I don't understand the first part of the explanation of my vision. Why Y and her compliment stand in the way of taking it as an inner purity? Because I want to look beautiful in her eyes?
Yes—it creates a suspicion that it was golden vanity that created the golden vision—at least a desire to be gold in Y's eyes.
Rest of the explanation is also hazy but no matter.
Not hazy, only phosphorescent.
Who is this of France?
Henri Quatre, Henry IV of France—one of the most famous names in French history—what the deuce, Sir! never heard of him? Anyhow, he was a typical example of a great hero, victor in many battles who was yet physically a coward, but his mind and will prevailed over the fear in the body.
S has come back again! But I can't get the head or tail of his symptoms. Now he says one thing, now another.
Mother stopped his hot water and tiffin-carrier. He lamented about fever, liver pains and what not (that's his plea) for continuing them. I told him if he had such bad health, he must be under medical treatment, not rushing about everywhere and eating whatever he likes. He said doctor's treatment no good. But I suppose he has gone back either in the hope of your restoring his hot water and carrier or just to prove that cold water and Aroumé36 don't agree with him.
Tomorrow, I think, we shall start Santonin, and watch.
Mother says why give santonine to a healthy fellow and spoil his health? She has a strong suspicion that S's illness may now have become diplomatic ache and strategic fever.
September 22, 1936
I have started writing, Sir. Not exactly a story, for I have just let myself go... Should one have a rough outline of the plot or just begin somewhere and somehow?
It is done either way according to the author's prakriti.37
And about style—should one try to improve it consciously or let oneself flow on?
Same thing.
Good Lord, your writing is exceeding all limits, Sir!
Transformation of handwriting. The self exceeds all limits, the handwriting should do so also.
"Lord, Sir, ..."—I don't know what to make of it. [Letter of 22.9.36.]
You seem to have made it out all right.
By having a world in oneself you mean what the Yogis say, having brahmānḍa38 within by the power of Yoga?
Or by the power of Nature.
Had a vision of a small pretty steam launch sailing at moderate speed in the sea. Meaning? Slow spiritual progress?
About D's gramophone record affair, rumours were that you refused him permission, but D insisted and brought the gramophone company people by special request. Well, D told us that they have come of their own accord with your permission.
All that not true. They offered themselves to come and D took our permission. I have seen the correspondence. Who is spreading all these inventions?
S is running temperature 99°, morning and afternoon—"strategic"?
Perhaps it is the grief of his lost tiffin carrier that gives him that.
A says he can't work more than he would like to—i.e. till 12.
What's that? Why should he want to work more than he would like to? Do you mean "as much as" by any chance?
My boil has burst!!
Hurrah!
G's afternoon temperature 99°.
Tell him not to work too much. He is rushing about too much. For some months he must do it only in small quantities. If the temperature comes back, you will have to give the remaining four injections—to be bought in town.
Shivalingam—Pain, swelling [leg] much less. Slight pain while walking. Shall I try protein injections? In such cases it gives good results at times, but might give febrile reaction.
You can try. He is solid and stolid.
Or shall I let him go on with slight pain and swelling till the Supramental descends?
No sir. Supramental does not want to have to deal with swelled things, either heads, legs or stomachs.
September 23, 1936
A is better today. I suppose he got a dose of Force at night!
Well, Thursday is the day he comes to Mother.
S was given Sudarshan yesterday—hasn't turned up at all today. Bitter has produced bitterness?
By George! but that's a drastic remedy if he is malingering. He will say again "Trust not in doctors."
September 24, 1936
Nishikanta's leg is much better now.
What is actually the matter with N's leg? what's the cause of the thing? He proposes to give it rest for one year! So as to cure it entirely. But that seems to me the other extreme to straining it unnecessarily by overstrenuous walking. After the year of rest, it might want to rest all the life. What's your idea?
September 25, 1936
In my poem, Amal says "dim" and "dream" are too common. He can't get any alternative. I am sure you have one up your sleeve, what?
My sleeve is empty.
Please enjoy our poet H's sarcasm against "Aurobindo and his best disciples" in "Agragati" [a Bengali journal].
It is rather in H's silliest style.
And what about our Indian Hitler's [S.T.] great mission to save young brains of India by sending all Asrams to perdition?
If he would save his own young brain first from the evident disposition towards softening his ambition betrays, it would be more useful. It is S.T. himself or a fellow sheep of the modernist flock?
[A note from the Mother:]
Nirod,
Devraj will wait for you to-morrow at 9 A.M. at the Canal side entrance of the Hospital.
It would be good if you could obtain that some care should be given to the case—
September 26, 1936
Good Lord! R said Devraj has no organic trouble!! X-ray shows definite and progressive T.B.—worse in the left lung.
Tomorrow I shall see Valle or André (supposed to be a specialist in T.B.) But how R could have missed the diagnosis gets past me—with all his big cures!
I think he did not take much interest in Devraj's case and was inattentive. But he has been at far from his best recently. He used in outside cases to send me detailed reports of some examinations that were very helpful for action—but in D.L.'s case I knew nothing except that it was only her and it was critical until I got your letter.
"The sparkling surges of the sea Roar and break..."—was the first version.
Can't see how you got it in metrically. Besides the sea in poetry is always roaring and breaking. So why put it to that hard Sandow exercise once again?
[Image 1]
It is not flighty metre, but a flighty use of language.
"Green trees"—no special significance?
If they were yellow or red trees, then there would be a significance. "Green" is objectionable, because trees manage to be green always without any special significance.
Suppose it was "... like those green trees At evenfall"?
That would successfully get rid of any significance.
There you are or there am I... Please divinise the animal by your Supramental Inspiration.
Divinised! with quite fine results, though I say it.
Turns out to be a fine beast after all.
September 27, 1936
[The first two medical reports were written by Dr. Becharlal.]
Yesterday noon S got temperature—101.8°...
What is the nature or cause of this fever?
... She wants to take curd thrice a day. I have asked her to take milk as long as the fever lasts—she says she doesn't like milk and it gives a pain in the stomach. Hence without Mother's approval, curd is not desirable in her present state.
I believe milk does not agree with her, she finds it difficult to digest. What then is she to eat? You must settle this and give word to D.R.
... By the way, please make a rule henceforth not to accept sadhaks before they pass a medical exam. Don't you realise, Sir, what potential troubles are ahead with so many invalids?
You are quite right with a million times a million rightness.
No time for comments on rest. Too many urgent calls from R.
September 30, 1936
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