Sri Aurobindo's Humour

General Humour

1933

MYSELF: My birthday comes on the 17th of this month, shall I not come to you?

SRI AUROBINDO: Yes. I don't know how it failed to be put on the record.

MYSELF: I try to leave myself in your hands entirely. Am I wrong in my attitude or am I to cry constantly into your ears?

SRI AUROBINDO: Not constantly, but from time to time.

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1934

MYSELF: Can you spare me a canvas cot, if any? If you can, please sanction some mosquito frame arrangement too.

SRI AUROBINDO: Ask for the canvas cot and a mosquito frame to be used with. Impossible to hang a mosquito frame on the independent principle here.

MYSELF: Mother, from your look in the Pranam it seemed to me you didn't or don't like our taking food exclusive of Ashram food.

SRI AUROBINDO: How did you read food into the Mother's look? It was not there at all.
Why don't you go on what the Mother says instead of taking all this intuitive or inferential trouble?

MYSELF: Guru, so permission for Darshan given to S. Majumdar and staying with Dilipda too? I also know him, he is really a very fine man.
Dilipda promises me a kingdom for a wire. If I can get your answer today, well, the kingdom will be one day earlier, as the wire will go today.

SRI AUROBINDO: Can wire and become a king at once.

MYSELF: May I be permitted to see you on the l5th inst. the centenary of my arrival here?

(Sri Aurobindo underlined the word 'centenary', put an interrogation mark above it).

SRI AUROBINDO: I say, you have not been here 100 years, surely!

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1935

MYSELF: Everybody seems to be happy to find me shifted from the 'timber-throne' to the Dispensary, and says 'Now is the right man in the right place!'

SRI AUROBINDO: Men are rational idiots. The timber godown made you make a great progress and you made the timber godown make a great progress too. I only hope it will be maintained by your successor.

MYSELF: You refuse to be a Guru and decline to be a Father, though ladies specially think of you and call you by the latter. If they know this, I think I shall have to run from one lady to another with smelling salt!

SRI AUROBINDO: Father is too domestic and Semitic—Abba Father! I feel as if I had suddenly become a twin brother of the Lord Jehovah. Besides there are suggestions of a paternal smile and a hand uplifted to smite which do not suit me. Let the ladies "father" me if smelling salts are the only alternative, but let it not be generalised.

MYSELF: I have given you my time-table so that you may concentrate on me at the exact time. I hope the mathematical figures won't give you a shock!

SRI AUROBINDO: No fear! Mathematics are more likely to send me to sleep than give a shock.

MYSELF: My friend Jatin Bal whose photo I sent you the other day expresses a desire for Darshan. Is permission possible?

SRI AUROBINDO: No recollection of it at all! But the Mother remembers and she has given me a glimmering and

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gleaming reflection of a recollection. Yes, it was the photograph in which you qualified for Abyssinia. Right.
It is the only thing possible for a beginning.

MYSELF: As far as I can make out, 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 well 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.

SRI AUROBINDO: Good Lord! I hope you don't imagine that is a rhyme?

MYSELF: (I had told the Furniture Dept. that if a table was lying about I would like to have it. I had mentioned this in my note-book to Sri Aurobindo).
What about my table? Forgotten? ellipsis?

Out of the silence
What is the word that be
About my cane-table, Sir?
Either can I take with surrender.

SRI AUROBINDO: 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.

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MYSELF: I realise every moment that I am not made for the path of the Spirit neither for any big endeavour in life. I know I shall be unhappy. But are all men born to be happy?

SRI AUROBINDO: Man of sorrows! man of sorrows!! knock him off man, knock him off!

MYSELF: Something great, something big you have done, Sir. Will you kindly whisper what it is?

SRI AUROBINDO: I am always doing something big, but never big enough—as yet.

MYSELF: Really, Sir, do tell us, if no objection.

SRI AUROBINDO: Eh, what?

MYSELF: R and self are invited for tea to the occultist's place—there's some function. I suppose it'll be rude not to go. Again social consciousness?—you may say. But say it again then, Sir!

SRI AUROBINDO: Of course, social consciousness—according to S.C., it is certainly rude not to go. What it may be from another S.C. (spiritual consciousness), is another matter.

MYSELF: Can you stretch your hand, Sir and help me out of this mud of the subconscient, Inconscient, universal nature or God knows what?

SRI AUROBINDO: I am quite willing to stretch out any number of hands for the purpose. Hold on and you will get out.

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1936

MYSELF: My nights are again becoming heavy - I don't know how to deal with them.

SRI AUROBINDO: So are mine with a too damnably heavy burden of letters to write.

MYSELF: I come out of bed with the morose thought that another night has passed away and I have done nothing.

SRI AUROBINDO: You mean the morbid thought!

MYSELF: Thoughts of past pleasures and enjoyments are hopping in and out!

SRI AUROBINDO: Man alive, send them hopping off for good. What a masochism in all that!

MYSELF: You compare your nights with mine! God above! yours, Sir, is a labour of love.

SRI AUROBINDO: Love under protest then or at least labour under protest!

MYSELF: And mine—labour of yoga?

SRI AUROBINDO: A labour of Bhoga?

MYSELF: 'Exceptional circumstances'! whatever they might have been, have disappeared.

SRI AUROBINDO: Make them reappear.

MYSELF: Expected many things or at least something from Darshan but don't see anywhere any sign of it!

SRI AUROBINDO: Many Americans, at least, what was not expected. It is always the unexpected that happens, you see.

MYSELF: Arjuna was stupefied, horrified, flabbergasted by seeing the Vishwarup of Krishna whom he thought of as friend, guru, playmate. Could I for a moment play all these pranks on you if I saw your Vishwarup? No, Sir, I

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am satisfied with you as Sri Aurobindo pure and simple.

SRI AUROBINDO: But that was because the Vishwarup was enjoying a rather catastrophic dinner, with all the friends and relations of Arjuna stuck between his danstrāni karālāni. My Vishwarup has no tusks, sir, none at all. It is a pacifist Vishwarup.
No objection, I only suggested that I don't know who this Sri Aurobindo pure and simple is. If you do, I congratulate you.

MYSELF: The result of Darshan in some other quarter leaves me staggered and staggered! I can't imagine such an incident taking place in the Ashram—I mean, of course, N's gripping M's throat. It makes me rather aghast. Coupled with that incident of R's rushing to shoe-beat P. Good Lord! but I suppose they are all in the game!

SRI AUROBINDO: You seem to be the most candid and ignorant baby going. We shall have to publish an "Ashram News and Titbits" for your benefit. Have you never heard of N's going for K' s head with a powerfully-brandished hammer? Or of his howling challenges to C to come out and face him, till Mother herself had to interfere and stop him? Or of his yelling and hammering in a rage at C's door till D came and dragged him away? These things happened within a short distance of your poetic ears and yet you know nothing??? N is subject to these fits and has always been so. The Darshan is not responsible. And he is not the only howler. What about M herself? and half a dozen others? Hunger strikes? Threats of suicide?¹... to leave the Ashram etc., etc. All from the same source, sir, and apparently part of the game.

MYSELF: Whatever it may have been due to, the result of

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the Darshan has been very disturbing in some quarters. Difficulties of individual nature rushing up?

SRI AUROBINDO: Individual and general. The subconscient, sir, the subconscient. Brilliant irruptions of the subconscient Brahman into the dullness of ordinary life. (salutation to the subconscient Brahman)

MYSELF: As soon as I enter the Dispensary, it seems some black forces ride on my shoulders, I want to escape and spend a few afternoon hours away in the loneliness of Nature's company till this melancholia lasts. Can a cycle be had for the purpose?

SRI AUROBINDO: Again X! Can't supply a cycle for every melancholiac. Would have to buy 20 new ones immediately and then the whole Ashram would turn melancholiac in order to have cycles.

MYSELF: From the tone of my letter you may imagine that I am making you responsible for my pathological condition. Not at all; it is my blessed nature or Man of Sorrows as you title it, though I don't understand why you say that I have borrowed them from X. Diffidence, self-distrust has always been my element from the very start.

SRI AUROBINDO: Your "not at all" is a delusion. You doubt like him in the same terms, write like him with the same symptoms similarly expressed, want to cycle into Nature like him etc., etc.—and still you say, "No X!"

MYSELF: You call me lazy, but I am not lazy. When the inner condition is all right, I can work at a poem for hours.

SRI AUROBINDO: Then why the hell don't you keep it right?

MYSELF: I gather the painting here is only in its infancy,

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but this piece of poetry by A. K. is as mature a work as any great poet's.

SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, but all the same very remarkable at times, e.g. for a boy of Y's years with no systematic training some of the work he has done is quite unexpected. Only what has been done is not yet great and finished art. But if R is to be acclaimed as a mighty artist for his paintings, I don't see why our artists should be underrated any longer. Let us proclaim them also as epoch-making geniuses.

MYSELF: If Mother has no objection and Z is willing to look after the Dispensary, I would like to fly to the Lake or Villenur on cycle!

SRI AUROBINDO: Mother says if nothing is needed to be done and nothing happens while you are away and Z has only to sit and guard the Dispensary, then it is all right. On condition of course he doesn't kick down the Dispensary by an ill-considered movement of his legs in your absence! This last is my addition.

MYSELF: With all those 'buts' and 'its', I drew back today. So if Mother doesn't really approve I won't go. I didn't quite catch if Mother said that in the Pranam.

SRI AUROBINDO: Mother had forgotten all about Villenur and the Z-guarded Dispensary. So that had nothing to do with her look at Pranam.

MYSELF: It is really a pity that J is going away—with so many parts also!

SRI AUROBINDO: He is going with tears and full of blessings. Perhaps it is the "parts" you speak of that call him—his horoscope was found to be brilliant and almost Leninesque. Perhaps one day you will gaze at the figure of (mad Jaswant) (I think that is Mridu's description) presiding

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over the destinies of a Communist India!! why not? Hitler in his "handsome Adolf " days was not less (mad) or prettier, so there is a chance.

MYSELF: Really, how things happen here so suddenly! He had been laughing, joking and one day I find he has turned quite a different man—morose, muttering etc.

SRI AUROBINDO: That is because he is listening to "voices" and feeling "influences" A's and others, e.g. N's. Imagine N engaged in dark and sinister occult operations to take possession of somebody.

MYSELF: Herewith C's letter. He wants to change his residence. But if he goes to a Mohamedan mess, it would be from frying pan into the fire. However he wants your opinion. Have you any to offer?

SRI AUROBINDO: Have no opinion to offer. Don't very well understand the proposed culinary operation. He is going to earn Rs.10 and spend 14—and on the top of that bring his mother—to live with him in a Mohamedan mess? It sounds very modern—but too much of a mess. Irish stew—what!

MYSELF: What, Sir, "Expect" has become "except"? Supramental slip? Hurrah!

SRI AUROBINDO: Do you mean to say this is the first you have met? I used to make ten per page formerly in the haste of my writing. Evidently I am arriving towards a Supramental accuracy—spontaneous and careless in spite of the lightning speed of my epistolary movement.

MYSELF: So, J is going tonight. If any intelligent fellow with some interest in work can take his place or guard the Dispensary at least, please give us one.

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SRI AUROBINDO: Good Lord! What high expectations! Where are they, these intelligent interested fellows who are ready to stand guard over the Dispensary? Spot them, please.

MYSELF: Very strange, Sir, that you don't have a single intelligent chap in the species of your Supramental race to be! On what do you build your hopes, please?

SRI AUROBINDO: Excuse me, you said intelligent and interested.... You might find one of these separately, but how do you hope to get them combined together? Anyhow, we can't hunt for the kind of animal you want, you yourself should take up the chase.

MYSELF: My big photo requires Sanjiban's treatment. Granted permission?

SRI AUROBINDO: What? which? where? how? what disease? what medicine wanted?

MYSELF: I send you your big photo, it is your photo that would be drawn by Sanjiban.

SRI AUROBINDO: You are always plunging me into new mysteries. If it is a photo, how can it be drawn by anybody? And what is the tense, connotation and psychological and metaphysical annotation of "would be" here?

MYSELF: When a person with few or no friends comes to see you, how to turn your face away? If any disturbance results from seeing, I will bear if it's helpful. But if it becomes too frequent?

SRI AUROBINDO: Let us hope it will not be too frequent. Don't want you to fall again either into the flummocks and flumps or into the dumps. Don't look for these words, at least the first two in the dictionary, they are not there—my own Joycean neologisms.

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MYSELF: I'm obliged to sleep out for a few days because of repairs, the whole building is smelling of lime and lime and lime !

SRI AUROBINDO: If you want to be a real yogi go on sniffing and sniffing at the lime till the smell creates an ecstasy in the nose and you realise that all smells and stinks are sweet and beautiful in the sweetness and beauty of the Brahman.

MYSELF: Friend Chand again with his woeful tale!

SRI AUROBINDO: What a fellow! He blunders through life stumbling over every possible or impossible stone of offence with a conscientious thoroughness that is unimaginable and inimitable.

MYSELF: With a rupee sent by him,

What shall I buy
To suit the Divine taste?
But aren't all same to him - paste
Or pudding, butter, cheese or mutton-pie?

SRI AUROBINDO: Good Lord! Good Lord! I hope you are not plotting to send any such things here! Of butter and cheese I have more than I want an pudding and mutton-pie are banished from my menu.

MYSELF: By the way, I think fountain pen ink would be the thing for you, only nothing for Mother.

SRI AUROBINDO: No, Mother says we have f. p. ink in plenty—I won't say gallons and seas but still. Besides, the same ink is to be used always for the pen, otherwise it gets spoiled.

MYSELF: I send you a letter of our dear Chand. If you are still interested in the chap, you can take the trouble to decipher it.

SRI AUROBINDO: I have had several letters from him.

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MYSELF: He wants to know many things. Descent of Supra. M. Tail—on the slight happy news of which he will give a gorilla jump to Pondy to set right his nerves! Is the tail in view?

SRI AUROBINDO: Of course. Coming down as fast as you fellows will allow.

MYSELF: He wants your remarks on him which will prove 'precious'!

SRI AUROBINDO: Tell him I have grown chary of remarks. Remarks frighten the Sm. T.

MYSELF: Can any letters and poems be sent, though I know he will hardly read them?

SRI AUROBINDO: What letters? The poems are your own and co's, so you are the best judge of that.

MYSELF: Lastly will Mother give him a flower tomorrow through Nolini?

SRI AUROBINDO: You can make a petition to Nolini to get the flower.

MYSELF: The fellow is still dreaming of the Sup. M. Tail! He doesn't realise yet that many of us will see it after our souls have departed into the subtle planes and will have taken birth again in proper circumstances and conditions— one after the other dropping, dropping after many years of stay—viz. M-lal, next X-lal, Y-lal, then Nirodlal!

SRI AUROBINDO: Excuse me. M-lal and Company are not running away from the Sm. Tail—they are only running after the paternal tail—as soon as they have stroked it sufficiently, they will return. All the Lals have gone like Japhet in search of their fathers and will return in June, except M who comes back, I believe, after 15 days. Two others asked for filial leave—one is perhaps still thinking of running after P. T. But we are beginning to kick. One "leave" has been refused!

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MYSELF: Jaswant writes: Deepest love to Sri Aurobindo. Do convey it if Papa writes blessings, if Jaswant comes up in memory.

SRI AUROBINDO: Don't understand. What is to be conveyed? And how do the two 'ifs' relate together or with the 'convey'?

MYSELF: Tomorrow, by the way, I am going to burst a little. Attention!

SRI AUROBINDO: Eh, what! Burst? which way? If you explode, fizz only—don't blow up the Ashram.

MYSELF: Wretched, absolutely done for.

Feel like jumping into the sea,
Or hanging- myself from a tree!

SRI AUROBINDO: Why? Disburden yourself !

MYSELF: Disburden? You mean throw off the burden or place the burden at your door?

SRI AUROBINDO: Both!

MYSELF: Please give me some Force for writing. But I wonder if you have time for circulating it.

SRI AUROBINDO: Not as much as is necessary.

MYSELF: The atmosphere seems too thick with doubt etc. A lull over the Ashram. Storm brewing?

SRI AUROBINDO: Panic seems to be the order of the day as well as doubt. The storm seems to have brewed. I am fighting it at present, having been obliged to give up my Abyssinian campaign and stop the march to Adis Abbaba. However!

MYSELF: Had a dream of a death also...

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SRI AUROBINDO: Well, if you go on dreaming like that!

MYSELF: Please, Guru, try to percolate a little occultism through the thick sieve of your correspondence. I lost all hope, you know and was depressed, dejected and downcast. It is so very interesting—this occultism!

SRI AUROBINDO: All right. I can flood you when I have time and season.

MYSELF: I am preparing my confession! Perhaps tomorrow!

SRI AUROBINDO: Very good. Shall await the revelation.

MYSELF: Guru, this is the month when your thrice blessed disciple came into the physical world. But thinking again— what will the poor Guru do if the big disciple doesn't fulfil the conditions? Is that so?

SRI AUROBINDO: The one hope is then that he may last on to fulfil the conditions without his knowing that he is doing it! What do you think of that device?

MYSELF: Any impression of Mother's on my birthday? I am afraid I wasn't calm but the whole day I felt peaceful.

SRI AUROBINDO: Mother's verdict is "Not at all bad—I found him rather receptive". So, sir, cherish your receptivity and don't humbug about with doubt and despondency and then you will be peaceful for ever!

MYSELF: Chand has asked your advice and protection about going to Chittagong in January.

SRI AUROBINDO: Protection is possible, advice not.

MYSELF: Guru, I don't know why Mother looked at me like that during Pranam. Was I anywhere in the wrong?

SRI AUROBINDO: Mother knows nothing about it.

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MYSELF: I went over the whole incident and didn't find anywhere that I have misrepresented facts.

SRI AUROBINDO: No.

MYSELF: ...or was it because I was bothering myself and you over a trifle?

SRI AUROBINDO: No.

MYSELF: It was not an illusion. Some meaning was there.

SRI AUROBINDO: Yes? But then it must have been a meaning in your mind, not the Mother's. So only you, its mother, can find it out.

MYSELF: I have no peace now; the whole day passes in lamentation. No use dilating on it, as it has been before and will be after.

SRI AUROBINDO: We weep before and after,
Our sweetest hours are those we fill with saddest thought.

MYSELF : Now, will you send me some force to pull me out?

SRI AUROBINDO: All right, sir. If you feel ready for force, I will send you. As for the results, well, let us see.

MYSELF: Now absolute blank, a perpetual vegetative unrest, a Nirvana!

SRI AUROBINDO: Gracious heavens, you have reached Nirvana so easily? But how can unrest be Nirvana? Some misconception. Perhaps it is Prakriti laya you are aiming at! Perhaps you are moving towards a repetition of Jada Bharat and when you are sufficiently Jada and able to enjoy it, the Nirvana and all the knowledge will come to you.

MYSELF: You spoke of the supramental coming as fast as we will allow. If we fellows have to allow, you had better close down the shop and enjoy your supramental beatitude.

SRI AUROBINDO: You have mistaken the sense altogether. It simply means if with the bother of your revolts, depressions,

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illnesses, shouts and all the rest of it, I can get time to go on rapidly. Nothing more, sir.
I am quite ready. I propose that you call a meeting and put it to the vote "That hereby we resolve to release Sri Aurobindo into beatitude and all go off quietly to Abyssinia."

MYSELF: Why are we made of so many contradictory elements?

SRI AUROBINDO: It takes many ingredients to make a nice pudding.

MYSELF: Is it that the path to the Divine can't be made easy lest all leave the ordinary world?

SRI AUROBINDO: Perhaps it is to prevent the world from coming to a sudden end by a universal rush into beatitude.
Well, but haven't I told you that the Supramental can't be understood by the intellect? So necessarily or at least logically if I become Supramental and speak supramentally, I must be unintelligible to everybody. Q. E. D. It is not a threat, only, the statement of a natural evolution.

MYSELF: It is a pity that D went off-centre with so much brilliance!

SRI AUROBINDO: But look here, his brilliance came after his madness. Before that he was earnest, industrious, eager for knowledge, ambitious, but nothing more. I don't contend that his madness made him a genius, though it would agree with the immortal theory of Lombroso that genius is madness or at least always tied to abnormality and mental and physical unsoundness. It may have been the result of our constant pouring of Force into him to keep his mind bright and coherent and clear.

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MYSELF: It is said that Buddha died from eating pork.

SRI AUROBINDO: Modern scholars have cleared Buddha of that carnivorous calumny. They say it was a vegetable root called sūkarakhanda which ignorant commentators have mistranslated "piece of a pig".

MYSELF: What does your newspaper say about Abyssinia? Another "black country" swallowed by the "whites," "prayers to God of no avail!"

SRI AUROBINDO: Why all this sentimental fury? This and worse has been happening ever since mankind replaced and improved on the ape and tiger. So long as men are what they are these things will happen. What do you expect God to do about it? The Abyssinians have conquered others. Italy conquers the Abyssinians, other people have conquered the Italians and they will probably be sat upon again here- after. It is the Law, sir, and the Great Wheel and everything eke. Keep your head cool in the heat. If you want to change things, you have to change humanity first and I can assure you, you will find it a job—yes, even to change 150 people in an Ashram and get them to surmount their instincts.

MYSELF: You will perhaps say that justice, retribution will come in time.

SRI AUROBINDO: Good Lord, why should I say such things? Was I ever a moralist or a preacher? Justice was never the determining factor in a war.

MYSELF: Is it really an illusion that the force will one day galvanise the consciousness?

SRI AUROBINDO: Well, it is an exercise in faith! As for the results, some day, one day, many days, no day—why bother?

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MYSELF: No, I don't know anything about the roses being opened by the rhythm of Nature or the Bride. Hence the question to know what you know.

SRI AUROBINDO: What I know is ineffable.

MYSELF: But you seemed to have been in the worst of moods, due to heavy correspondence?

SRI AUROBINDO: No, the best.

MYSELF: And you gave me a good beating.

SRI AUROBINDO: It was all done for your good with the most philanthropical motive.

MYSELF: What is meant by feminine women or masculine women?

SRI AUROBINDO: Feminine is not used in opposition to masculine here, but means only a wholly unrelieved feminine woman—capricious, fantastic, unreasonable, affectionate— quarrelsome, sensual—emotional, idealistic—vitalistic, incalculable, attractive—intolerable, never-knows-what-she-is or what-she-isn't and everything else kind of creature. It is not really feminine, but as the woman as man has made her. By the way, if you like to add some hundred other epithets and double epithets after searching the Oxford dictionary you can freely do so. They can all be filled in somehow.

MYSELF: It looks C has disposed off his mother's ornaments trustingly deposited with him, to pull out a friend from difficulty. His mother has detected the 'robbery' by his own admission.

SRI AUROBINDO: Obviously it must. be that—unless he robbed her more than once which is always possible.

MYSELF: S, the head mason, has been having headache and vomiting for last 2 years, seems to be due to dietetic indiscretion, but queer that it persists so long.

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SRI AUROBINDO: Probably persistence due to want of dieting. Most impossible to diet a Tamilian—too many spices and things.
Sir, couldn't finish what I began with your other book, so kept it. Will see tonight if Time and the Gods are favourable. Pray to them meanwhile.

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1937

MYSELF: Jatin asks me to send you these questions. 'The answer is immanent but it wants clarification and 'there is Sri Aurobindo who will do it in a minute', he says. So will you do it. Guru, in a minute?

SRI AUROBINDO: No. You must not ask impossible miracles from me.

MYSELF: What does this telegram from C mean? All I know is that this loan company is a company at Chittagong where he has kept deposits. Is it the position of his complex self or the self of the company that is risky? Which?

SRI AUROBINDO: Both perhaps.

MYSELF: But one thing is clear that he requires your protection. Well?

SRI AUROBINDO: Difficult to protect such an erratic genius. However!

MYSELF: Have you read the letter and the poems of D? Anything to communicate regarding the letter?

SRI AUROBINDO: Nothing special.

MYSELF: Poems seem extremely fine, don't they?

SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, I said so.

MYSELF: You can't call them sentimental, Sir, this time, because they are addressed to the Divine!

SRI AUROBINDO: Well, one can be sentimental with the Divine, if one particularly wants to!

MYSELF: D is having plenty of garlands, meetings, feastings etc. Good enough for a change, what?

SRI AUROBINDO: Change, certainly.

MYSELF: Are you writing a Mahabharat in reply, I wonder!

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SRI AUROBINDO: I was.

MYSELF: Gum, I hope you won't 'ash'² me for spoiling your afternoon 'spree', by this letter, will you?

SRI AUROBINDO: Where is the spree in the afternoon? Neither afternoon, evening, night, nor morning. Spree indeed!

MYSELF: Laugh with the sonnets and cry with the letter, if you can. Very touching!

SRI AUROBINDO: You recommend me a fit of hysteria?

No, sir. The sonnets are as usual, quite admirable. By the way, his uncle has developed a carbuncle! And D expects me to cure it! A case for you, sir. After Parkhi.

MYSELF: What does he mean by 'manliness' here? i.e. his 'swadharma' is to cry like a woman, let him do it a bit—not for all, but for the One!

SRI AUROBINDO: Like what woman? That is the point. Tears, caprices, outcries, abhimān, hunger-strike? that is one kind of (nature of woman). (swadharma) you suggest,—no thanks. The One declines.

MYSELF: Guru, C wants to know what will be the true spirit of surrender for him and how he ought to receive Mother's flower 'surrender' which he has been getting often.

SRI AUROBINDO: Why for him? Surrender is the same for everybody.

MYSELF: Any illumination?

SRI AUROBINDO: None.

MYSELF: There is some law point here and reference to A. P. House also. God knows who is this Benoy Krishna who requires your permission to go into all this business. Well?

SRI AUROBINDO: Permission be hanged!

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MYSELF: I am sure next August will be a great victorious occasion with swarms of elites of Calcutta at your feet. Happy at the prospect?

SRI AUROBINDO: Horrifying idea! Lucidly the elites are not in the habit of swarming.

MYSELF: All these orations, successes etc. raise another question—whether the Divine also wanted that His name should he spread now.

SRI AUROBINDO: The Divine is quite indifferent about it. Or rather more privacy would be better for the work.

MYSELF: Anyway, please give him all the Force and protection possible and available so that the name of the Guru and disciple may resound from one end of India to another and all flock in crowds—trains, aeroplanes to the door of the Invisible Guru!

SRI AUROBINDO: Good God!

MYSELF: Alas, where shall we be then?

SRI AUROBINDO: And where shall we be?

MYSELF: Another letter from C—family matters and something about his Bank trouble! What a fine thing to be an Avatar, what?

SRI AUROBINDO: Why? You think an Avatar has to take in the Bank troubles of his C's? No fear!

MYSELF: Guru, there is a whole mass of letters from dear C.

SRI AUROBINDO: His Bengali handwriting is too much for me.

MYSELF: There is a tangled problem which is absolutely beyond me.

SRI AUROBINDO: I have read his letter, but can't make head or tail out of his problem. He will have to solve it himself.

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MYSELF: There is a clash between ethics and spirituality and worldliness; so he seeks your advice.

SRI AUROBINDO: Anyhow he seems to me to be the most loose and unpractical and disorderly fellow that ever was, leaving his papers and debts lightly fluttering about all over the world. It will be no wonder if he loses all he has.

MYSELF: Heard the great news? X singing in theatres'. Gracious, fancy that! In theatre and perhaps singing spiritual songs! Oh Lord!

SRI AUROBINDO: Bringing the highest to the lowest—quite spiritual!

MYSELF: Just now heard that he has made great friendship with Y.

SRI AUROBINDO: All are one, sir, one Brahman. Besides, the (Shreshtha), leading Man should get people to do all their work by himself doing all actions, sarva karmāni, the Gita says so.

MYSELF: I am pained when I hear people saying—after all Pondicherry has brought him to this.

SRI AUROBINDO: Why can't they say he has acquired a Godlike samatā ? Don't you remember the śloka—. A Brahmin, a cow, an elephant, a dog and an outcaste are all the same to the sage. So X can embrace even actors—hope, he will stop short of the actresses, though.

MYSELF: I don't understand in C's letter—psh. Is it Paresh? Got it at the last moment, by intuition, Sir.

SRI AUROBINDO: I see! It needed intuition to find that out!

MYSELF: I heard X was touchy regarding his wife. Is that it? and wife touchy about him! my God I where shall we go?
Grazes the skin almost, Sir!

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SRI AUROBINDO: Touchy means what? and how does touchiness graze the skin?

MYSELF: Very glad to hear, Sir, that you are too busy; only we have been hearing that so often and so long since, that by now the Supramental or any Light should have tumbled down!

SRI AUROBINDO: It isn't so easy to make it tumble.

MYSELF: But jokes apart, I hear from a reliable authority that the Descent—Supramental Descent is very near. Is it true, Sir?

SRI AUROBINDO: I am very glad to hear it on reliable authority. It is a great relief.

MYSELF: No luck about Intuition?

SRI AUROBINDO: None! Too thorny a subject to tackle without leisure and space.

MYSELF: Really, Sir, you have caught a magnificent fellow for Supramentalisation, what?

SRI AUROBINDO: Well, sir, in the Supramental world all kinds will be needed, I suppose. Then why not a supramental ass?

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1938

Chand sent a wire: Why silent? great struggle, protection.
MYSELF: Guru, I don't know why he says 'silent'. I have sent the darshan blessings on 23rd or 24th which he must have received.

SRI AUROBINDO: But you have not given him protection.

CHAND'S WIRE: Inspector's contact uncongenial trying avoid.

SRI AUROBINDO: What the hell! He seems to have plenty of money to waste on unnecessary telegrams! Why wire about the Inspector's contact?

CHAND'S WIRE: Progressing again, debt case tomorrow.

MYSELF: Voila, another, Sir! and not the last, if you please! I wrote to him once not to waste money unnecessarily on registered letters and telegrams but Chand is Chand!

SRI AUROBINDO: Well, well, let us accept the inevitable. —[Prakrtim yānti bhūtāni) which means all animals follow their nature.

CHAND'S WIRE: Great inertia again, letter follows.

MYSELF: Guru, another bombardment! What an impulsive fellow! almost unparalleled. I think he is another fellow who will find life extremely difficult here.

SRI AUROBINDO: Well, there's no inertia in his wrong activities at any rate. He is full of energy there.

MYSELF: Chand writes there is no letter from me. So, one word, Guru!

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SRI AUROBINDO: Well, well! (That's one word twice repeated).

MYSELF: Chand writes: "You have" said "Well, well!" The meaning is quite clear to me.

SRI AUROBINDO: Queer! He seems cleverer than myself.

MYSELF: Mother, in these two Pranams you seemed to have indicated to me that I have done something wrong somewhere.

SRI AUROBINDO: Nonsense!

MYSELF: Coming on just before Darshan it is rather hanging like a load. May I know what it is, if anything?

SRI AUROBINDO: Nothing at all—quite imaginary.

MYSELF: Guru, C writes to me to ask your opinion on the 'tampering with figures'. Can there be any opinion? Really, I don't know what to do with the fellow. But I suppose in worldly life such things are necessary?

SRI AUROBINDO: Not in the worldly life, but perhaps in the Corporation life. All this promises a bad look out when India gets Purna Swaraj. Mahatma Gandhi is having bad qualms about Congress corruption already. What will it be when Puma Satyagraha reigns all over India?

DILIP 'S TELEGRAM: Nirod Ashram, arriving tomorrow evening train. Heldil.

MYSELF: Guru, this is from Dilip—Heldil is not he, of course. But what is it then? Can your Supramental Intuition solve? But mine has: it is H of Hashi, e of Esha, l of Lila—Dil of course you know. What do you think, Sir, of my Intuition? He perhaps thought he'd beat us.

SRI AUROBINDO: I don't see how he could with the Dil there to illume the Hel.

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