Enlarged edition. Writings, letters of Sri Aurobindo & The Mother that were preserved by Champaklal. 'These writings to devotees are most valuable' - Champaklal
Sri Aurobindo : corresp.
THEME/S
It is a delight to present this revised and enlarged edition of Champaklal's Treasures, which contains new material recently found among Champaklal's papers. This book comprises writings and talks of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother that were collected and preserved by Champaklal. These letters notes, messages and conversations delve deep into the values of a life based on truth, light, love, beauty, harmony and the divine consciousness. They are full of insights into the problems of transforming one's nature and offer ways to overcome them.
Champaklal was interested in reading, writing, painting and music, but always his central aspiration was to serve the Divine. Sincere aspiration, even when not expressed in words, evokes a response from the Divine Grace. Champaklal's life is a standing example of this truth. His aspiration was fulfilled in a number of ways, often to his utter surprise. He once said, "I came here with the object of God-realisation. But here, I found the stress on transformation. Very soon, however, both receded and service took hold of my being entirely."
Service was Champaklal's mantra and he served Sri Aurobindo and the Mother with joy for over five decades. Neither sleep nor food had claim on his time. He was bright, smiling, sincere, firm, equal to all, transparent and humble. M. P. Pandit truly said, "He is the one man who can be an ātmaratih (one whose delight and contentment is in the self) of the Upanishad." It was a great privilege for Champaklal to live constantly under the direct influence of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Slowly he proved worthy of their faith. The Mother relied on him so much that once she exclaimed, "Champaklal is my memory!" He himself said, "Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are my all; they alone are my aradhyadeva,the form of the Divine that I worship. Whatever they have taught me, through words or gestures or writings, I follow to my utmost capacity."
Whenever Champaklal was free, he used to note down the events of his daily life, including his visions, experiences and problems. He wrote to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother regularly — short notes about work, long letters about his personal progress and sadhana — and received guidance from both of them. He also brought to them the letters of others. To help others was his very nature. He served them not only directly but by helping the disciples and devotees who came to their feet. About the notes, messages and letters collected in this book Champaklal once told me:
"These writings to devotees are most valuable. I have preserved them not only for myself but for others, so that they may receive what I have
received from them." These writings are truly Champaklal's treasures. Here is an example. Troubled by the "devil", the young sadhak Rene wanted to leave the Ashram. Sri Aurobindo wrote to him: "You are quite mistaken when you say that if you will go, there will be no Devil left in the Ashram. The Devil is not here because of you, he is here because he wants to give trouble to the Mother and spoil her work. And what he chiefly wants is to drive her children away from her and especially those who like you are nearest to her. If you go, he will remain; and not only he will remain, but he will feel that he has won a great victory and will set himself with a double vigour to attack her through others." Sri Aurobindo further explained, "You talk of not giving trouble to the Mother and to me, but do you not realise that nothing can be worse trouble to us than your going away?"
Part I, "Letters of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother", covers a wide variety of subjects. These letters offer solutions to many problems, emotional, psychological, social and spiritual. They deal both with the personal problems of spiritual life and with the larger problems concerning the nature of man, the world and the Divine. They throw light on Sri Aurobindo and the Mother's vision of life and their way of working with those who follow their path.
Part I
Letters of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother Aspire Sincerely
My dear Champaklalji,
Namaskar.
1) Kindly convey my humble salutation to the Mother and Sri Aurobindoji.
Done.
2) I have not received any letter from Pondi. I am anxious to know as to the progress made by various sadhaks. I do not know whether you can communicate with me on this matter. If necessary ask permission of the Mother.
Sadhaks are progressing all right. As you can see there is no obstacle to my communicating with you.
3) When are we to expect Sri Gurudev to appear in public.
On the 24th instant Sri Aurobindo will "appear in public" for a few hours.
4) Any service?
It is not easy to have the privilege of being of some service to Sri Aurobindo, but if you sincerely aspire for it, it may come.
5) Love to all.
Love from all.
9 November 1927
The Mother
Part II contains "Notes, Prayers and Reflections of the Mother". In "Myself and My Creed", the Mother's declaration of a true slave of God, reflects her total surrender to the Divine. In a note with twelve points, she summarises her ideas about what she wants to bring down into the material world. For the Mother, the important thing was Sri Aurobindo's work and her conscious support went out to all that helps that work.
Part II
Notes, Prayers and Reflections of the Mother
Personal Notes, Prayers and Reflections of the Mother
Part III, "Miscellany", tells us about the significance of blessings, blessings-packets, the Mother's signature and several symbols she designed. It also contains some Sanskrit names given by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother to disciples and devotees, with meanings such as Anurakta (lovingly devoted), Dyuman (the luminous one), Huta (the offered one), and Navajata (the new born). There is also some early regulations for the sadhaks of the Ashram.
Part III
Miscellany
The Mother's Blessings
My love and blessings are with you. Understand that blessings are for the best spiritual result, not necessarily according to human wishes.
My blessings are very dangerous. They cannot be for this one or for that one or against this person or against that thing. It is for, or well I will put it in a mystic way:
It is for the Will of the Lord to be done, with full force and power. So it is not necessary that there should always be a success. There might be a failure also, if such is the Will of the Lord. And the Will is for the progress, I mean the inner progress. So whatever will happen will be for the best.
21 January 1960
The Mother with Champaklal and Kamala
Part IV, "Correspondence with Early Disciples", contains letters by Sri Aurobindo written to Barindra Kumar Ghose and other early disciples. They give an intimate picture of the early days of the Ashram and provide details about Sri Aurobindo's sadhana between 1920 and 1924. These letters show that Sri Aurobindo took meticulous care of his disciples— those in the Ashram and outside it. His concern for their welfare and his all-pervading compassion are evident in these letters.
Sri Aurobindo first inculcated the revolutionary spirit into his younger brother when Barin visited him in Baroda. His guidance on sadhana, his insights into the work of hostile forces and his description of the vital worlds, "Rakshasi-maya", will be instructive to those who are doing yoga.
Sri Aurobindo's answers to the following questions are revealing: Why did I come to Pondicherry? What is the central clue of my yoga? Why have the people of India gone down to ruin? Why do I want a deva-sangha?What should one practise first before taking up this yoga? How does one transform the lower movements of the nature?
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother could surmise the nature of persons by seeing their photographs. They assessed their character through identity with them. Some examples of these character-readings are given here.
One interesting letter deals with the mission of India. Sri Aurobindo observed: "I believe also that it is the mission of India to make this great victory for the world. But what precisely was the nature of the dynamic power of this greater consciousness? What was the condition of its effective truth? How could it be brought down, mobilised, organised, turned upon life? How could our present instruments, intellect, mind, life, body be made true and perfect channels for this great transformation? This was the problem I have been trying to work out in my own experience and I have now a sure basis, a wide knowledge and some mastery of the secret."
Part IV
Correspondence with Early Disciples
Inmates of the Ashram 1923
Top: Rajangam, Timpati, Khitish, Nolinida, Satyen, Kanai, Bejoy, Purani and Nagaratnam (a local devotee) Centre: Punamchand, Champaben, Mrs. Kodandaraman, Mr. Kodandaraman Bottom: Champaklal, Moni, Amrita, Manmohan.
Part V, "Talks and Interviews with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother", contains advice to sadhaks on various subjects. How can one know when he meets his psychic mate? Did Buddha live in the Supermind? These and other interesting questions are discussed by Sri Aurobindo in this part.
A few sketches of sadhaks done by the Mother are given in this book. Due to her responsibilities for the Ashram, she had very little time to draw, but her portraits and sketches are true artistic treasures; they could reveal more than words. The Mother gave help and encouragement to a number of disciples who wished to draw and paint, both beginners and trained artists. For some of these aspiring artists, she made sketches and suggested compositions. During the early 1920s Sri Aurobindo's brother Barindra did some oil paintings under the Mother's guidance. His portrait of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother's feet is given here.
Apart from dedicated service to the Master and the Mother, painting seems to have been Champaklal's second love. Painting was an inborn capacity which grew in him and found scope for development in the Ashram. One can see some of his best works — from his early period to his last works in the marbling technique — in the book Champaklal as an Artist. One interesting work, Sri Ramakrishna with the image of Mother Kali in the background, is included here; this unfinished painting was made before Champaklal joined the Ashram. The Mother gave titles to many of his marbling paintings after looking into the movement of forces they suggested; these revelatory captions focus on the hidden meanings the paintings express. One such painting, entitled, "The light will come down and bring peace in the world", is included in this book.
Nirodbaran once wrote, "Champaklal was not a bhakta of traditional type, but one who has chosen service as the means of self-expression and fundamental realisation.... That is exactly the spirit he maintained unflinchingly throughout the long decade that we lived and worked together." Champaklal helped me personally to remould my life towards a Divine- oriented existence, a birth into a new consciousness. My heart overflows with gratitude as I remember the many sacred moments I have shared with him. Those were beautiful days when I worked under his presence and guidance.
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have given to the modern world the sublime vision of a divine life on earth. Our minds are uplifted by the light emanating from their vast and fathomless knowledge. To study their works is to enlarge the boundaries of our knowledge. The writings and talks collected here will surely inspire the reader to realise their ideal. I am happy that the words preserved by Champaklal during his lifetime will now be shared by a larger audience.
My sincere thanks to Bob of the Ashram Archives, who meticulously went through the manuscript and assisted me in preparing this book. My heartfelt thanks to Apurva, Ganapatibhai and Sunjoy for their help and goodwill, and to Achyutbhai for lending Barindra's paintings for reproduction here.
I am grateful to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, the Publication Department, SABDA and the Archives for their support. My special thanks goes to all those at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press who have collaborated with patience, persistence and goodwill in printing the book.
Sri Aurobindo Ashram,
Roshan
Pondicherry - 605 002
1929: The Mother setting out for an evening drive
Sri Ramakrishna with the image of Mother Kali Painting by Champaklal
Nirodbaran and Champaklal
Part V
Talks and Interviews with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother
During the 1920s Sri Aurobindo often gave interviews in the morning to disciples and others. In the evening he met regularly with a group of his disciples and had informal talks with them. A number of reports of those interviews and talks are included here.
The reader should bear in mind that these talks and interviews were not tape recorded, but were noted down from memory. Therefore they do not represent Sri Aurobindo's exact words, but an account of them reproduced as faithfully as possible.
At the end of this part, two oral comments by the Mother have been added.
1) The lower power of lust resists violently. How should I treat it?
It is not possible to get rid of it at this stage. Look at it calmly without getting troubled, dissociate yourself from it and do not indulge it. If you quietly persist, it is likely to lose gradually its force.
2) My wife seems to be an obstacle to me. She says that she will progress in yoga but she does nothing except occasional meditation. How should I treat her?
Leave her alone. It is not your business to force her into sadhana. Attend to your own sadhana.
3) In meditation I place myself under the feet of the Mother in the heart region with whatever little devotion I have got. But thoughts come and disturb. What change should I adopt in order to progress ?
Continue, but aspire or pray for peace, purity and true earnestness in the sadhana.
4) May I send my savings to Pondicherry or to my family? I get Rs. 50/- per month.
This is not for us to decide. What is your idea or feeling in wishing to send your money here? It depends on that.
27 November 1927
Sri Aurobindo
Motiben is quite happy here and she is progressing very well in her sadhana. If she goes away from here, the progress will be stopped and much of what she has gained may be lost. An intensive and concentrated sadhana once begun has to be persistently continued in the right atmosphere. If it is kept up only for a short time and then dropped for another kind of life in which the concentration is diffused and weakened, there is no likelihood of fruition. For this reason we would disapprove of her departure.
9 January 1928
To Dayaben,
The moment one enters the life of the Ashram and takes up the yoga, he ceases to belong to any creed or caste or race; he is one of Sri Aurobindo's disciples and nothing else. To cut jokes about what he was in the past is altogether incongruous and in bad taste, and only helps to keep up in both him and the speaker an old and wrong mental attitude.
January 1929
Diogenes was not the teacher of Alexander. They only met once. The teacher of Alexander was the philosopher Aristotle.
Mother never said that Kishensingh was Alexander. Kekoo [K.D.Sethna] must have made some confusion in his mind about this. There is no truth in this identification.
If this is his only illness, there is absolutely no reason why it should not be cured, if he keeps proper habits and diet and above all the right attitude. I expect that the reason why the illness has such a hold and strong effect on him is in the imagination and the nerves more than anything else. There is something there that expects the illness, accepts it when it comes and gives it free play. He must learn to keep calm and quiet in the mind and vital being, to refuse to regard the illness and the tendency to it in the body as something normal to it, regarding it rather as something imposed from outside, and he must believe firmly that it must and will go. If he can keep this attitude and open to the true force, the mind and the nervous being, once strengthened, the illness and weakness will disappear.
26 May 1929
(Basked me the names of the biscuits and chocolates which the Mother uses, as someone wanted to offer them. — Champaklal)
Chocolates are not necessary — as for the biscuits only: Reveillon (Pernot).
12 October 1929
It is not my intention to oblige you to wear mill cloth if you do not want to.
All I said was that I have only mill cloth to give.
When one becomes free in mind and heart, one's way of looking at all those things changes entirely. But until the freedom has come, there is no compulsion.
It is by allowing bad thoughts and doubts to approach you that you have come out of the protection.
Champaklal,
Tell D on behalf of myself and the Mother that she must not allow herself to be crushed by the burden of the past. All she has to do is to turn her back on this past and sexual weakness, for which she was not herself primarily responsible, — and to consecrate herself entirely to the divine. If she so consecrates herself, the past will be wiped out and a new life begin for her. This is the true atonement and the only one asked from her.
8 April 1930
Say to K that it appears from what has happened that he is unable to control himself and hardly even seems to will to do so; for otherwise he would not have indulged his sexual instincts in this way and by importunity force them on another. If that is so, he cannot lead a life of Yoga or sincerely follow the Ashram life; it would be mere hypocrisy to appear outwardly as a sadhak and secretly do what is inconsistent with this life and its discipline. It would be much better not to attempt what he cannot do; his proper course would be to go back and marry and live in the ordinary way. Without self-mastery and self-control there can be no Yoga.
The protection and help will be there as they were here. You have only to keep yourself open to them and live inwardly seeking to become more and more conscious so that you may feel the Divine Presence and Power.
As to the Bombay atmosphere, keep inwardly separate from it, even while mixing with others, see it as a thing outside and not belonging to the inner world in which you yourself live. If you can achieve this inward separateness, it will not be able to cloud you, whatever its daily pressure.
18 May 1930
During concentration I am unable to do anything except to offer pranams to the Mother. Am I proceeding correctly?
In spite of my efforts to reject the movements of lower nature there has been a lapse. I am ashamed and I beg for pardon.
Write to him that what he is doing is quite right. While making the Pranam he should aspire to be open to the Mother's influence and her workings in him and to become conscious of her workings. He need not be discouraged by what has happened. It is not to be expected that the old movements of the nature would change at once.
29 August 1930
How do you expect others to keep to an arrangement when you are not doing it yourself?
How do you hope to get out of your shallowness if you remain always one sided in your perception of things?
June 1931
You were having these bad suggestions (that I do not love you and that you want to go away), because you were disobeying me. But now that you have taken the resolution to act according to my will, the bad suggestions will disappear. '
Nobody has told anything against you to me.
24 December 1931
If you are quite sincere, you will agree with me that you are complaining of my being not too Divine but not Divine enough. For if, in my physical body I had assumed, for instance, the appearance cherished by the ancient Indian tradition, how convenient it would be! Imagine, if having several heads and a great number of arms, possessing the power of ubiquity, when S comes to manicure my hands and so unceremoniously knocks at the door to inform me that she is there, (I cannot tell her not to knock because she is very busy) if I could send her a pair of hands for her work and still be in my small room to answer to D who is sitting with me there, how nice it would be!...
So, you see, I fear I have accepted to become too human, too much bound by the human laws of time and space, and thus not capable of doing half a dozen things at the same time!
12 January 1932
We can't be as strict for visitors as for inmates of the Ashram.
To Sanjiban
The Mother has seen his pictures. If he wants to take up painting he must undergo a complete training under competent teachers. He must train his eyes to see things as they appear to artistic vision and his hand to execute that vision with perfect technique. In art a liking for it or even a faculty for it is not enough; what is required is a sound training.
1932
Sunderlal,
There are many kinds of truth and in the Shastra you will find all kinds, some seeming in conflict with others. Service to parents is part of family and social duty. It has nothing to do in itself with yoga. Yoga is truth not of family or society, but of spiritual life, and in spiritual life the seeking for the Divine takes precedence over everything.
If we ask you to remain still with your father and mother, it is not from the point of view of Truth, but of charity. Four of their children have already left them to come to the Ashram; it would be too hard a blow if you also left them now. As you have remained with them so long, you might remain a little longer. Even while in the family, you can prepare yourself for the spiritual life, by remembering the Divine in all you do and by doing it as a sacrifice for the sake of the Divine.
17 February 1932
The 6 couches: The seats, basis of the powers of creation (6). One still occupied by the titanic forces (the last, most material one).
The servant: Who showed us the way through the "labyrinth", gave us some food and even a smoky light (torch, very poor) to find our way in the dark, the lower nature, she asked to be paid for her services, saying that the "other gentleman" (titan) was always paying her.
The place: some vital layer in the physical consciousness.
20 February 1932 (2 a.m.)
What is liberty?
Liberty is to depend only on the Divine.
What is the Divine?
The Divine is what you adore in Sri Aurobindo.
28 March 1932
"Why be sorry and feel miserable when my playmates abuse me? If they are right in what they say, I have only to be glad for the lesson and correct myself; if they are wrong, why should I worry about it — it is for them to be sorry for their mistake. In both cases the best and the most dignified thing I can do is to remain strong, quiet and unmoved."
This lesson which I was giving to myself and trying to follow when I was eight years old, still holds good in all similar cases.
To my dear little child, with my best love.
1 May 1932
X might be told that apart from the superficiality and shallowness of his reasons for not coming for pranam, there are others, much more advanced in Sadhana than he is, who do come. What about these?
He is always trying to prove that he is far superior to all the other sadhaks. That is the root of his mistake.
May 1932
You should be very polite with those who depend upon you for their living. If you ill-treat them, they feel very much but cannot reply to you as man to man for fear of losing their job.
There may be some dignity in being rough with your superiors, but with those who depend on you, the true dignity is to be very courteous.
23 June 1932
She can try to do yoga, but her motive must be pure, for if she decides to do yoga in order to join you here, nothing good can come out of it.
Generally a snake symbolises a movement of falsehood. When something in the nature is in affinity with falsehood snakes are attracted. The nature of the falsehood is indicated by the nature of the snake and the plane where it appears.
30 August 1932
In the rooms I wear only a dhoti— so your vision was correct.
In the rooms I wear only a dhoti It is remarkably good.
23 September 1932
My four-years-old nephew cries and insists constantly to come to the Ashram. What should I do?
He is too young and undeveloped yet. It is only after a certain age that the being takes on a definite individuality except in rare cases. It is only after the age of ten that children can come here, as a rule.
S,
You cannot expect the whole world to be at your service and everything to happen as you fancy it to be more convenient for you.
You must stop quarrelling with everybody and about everything, otherwise how can you expect to make any progress in yoga?
I had just remarked to Sri Aurobindo (yesterday also): "I did not see D while I was walking on the terrace", and I was wondering why...
It must have been the darkness, I suppose, that prevented me from making you out in the shadows of the street.
After all I am glad to know that you did come, although I am sorry I missed the opportunity of giving you a sign of welcome.
23 October 1932
You say that it is through a newspaper that the news came of your nephew's death. So the child died a few days ago. Did S and P find any difference in their atmosphere, their feelings, their thoughts, their sensations, — a difference, an uneasiness, or a sense of loss, which would give a real ground for their sorrow? I am pretty sure that they did not. So their sorrow, if they have any, is not true but the result of conventional thoughts and feelings; it is all illusion coming from the family idea which is one of the most artificial and false of all conventions.
In truth the child was not in their atmosphere, otherwise they would have become aware of his death without needing to receive the news of it; he was no more in their atmosphere than any one of the 2 million human beings who die everyday — for the average death of human beings is 2 millions a day. Do they know that? Is not death the most common and everyday happening and can they reasonably expect that none of those they know will escape this general law?
24 December 1932
Do you want a new birth, a new start, a new opening of the consciousness? Then come tomorrow at 9.30, we shall sit to call it down.
It was an act of ignorance.
Received in the right spirit the curtains could have lasted 2 or 3 years more. Received wrongly they might have gone to pieces within a month.
Things also have a consciousness of their own.
I have gone through the papers you sent me.
The historic part of the papers seems to be true. The founder must surely have been acquainted with the Kabbalah and with some mystics of Asia Minor. The original appears to have been written in Latin with adjunctive of Hebrew words (probably taken from the Kabbalah). But the Osiris-Isis part looks to me like a more recent addition which came in something like 50 or 60 years ago.
The whole thing is from its origin a very well made, a very strong and elaborate mental formation, powerfully designed to catch hold of certain vital elements and forces (both outside and inside the individuals) to rule and use them and through the vital to exercise a partial power over the physical.
Formations of this kind are numerous; they translate upon earth into secret societies. (I have met many of the kind more or less ancient, more or less powerfully organized, but all of a similar type). They are not, in their natures, spiritual. If there is any spirituality in them it comes, not from the formation itself, but from the presence, in the society, of one or several personalities with a spiritual character and achievement.
I will speak of certain details in this connection, next time we meet. Until then I shall keep the papers with me. (Sri Aurobindo and myself alone will see them.)'
In the first dream we can take the theatre as the symbol of this world where all is a play — the appearance of something and not the thing itself. Here the kings and queens are not such because of an inner and divine right but as a result of the confusion of circumstances and birth.
I suppose the obstacles which were standing in the way of your joining me represent the difficulties (inner and outer) which are to be overcome in order to realise the union with the true consciousness.
The second dream seems to be an embodiment of old expressions left in the subconscient of social surroundings and your reactions to them.
In the third the train is, as always, an image of the way and the journey towards the goal. The sets of people are the various groups (secret societies etc.) that have been formed for this purpose. The one you were supposed to join was the society to which you became attached — composed of the boys who were with you at your first "school", the image is clear, but an association which you did not feel to be definitive.
Why didn't you come yourself? I would have seen you for a few minutes and told you something interesting and helpful as an answer to your letter of this morning.
For, in speaking it would have been better than anything I could write. At Pranam time I felt that you were still depressed. I thought that I would try to pour on you some of the Divine forces. I was looking at you for such a long time and it was Divine love that I was pouring on you with a strong will that you should become conscious of the Divine Presence in you and see all your sorrows turn into Ananda. I saw to my great joy that you were very receptive to all these Divine forces, and absorbing them without resistance as they were pouring down.
When I read your letter and saw that you thought you had received only some human kindness, it struck me that it was only a misunderstanding of the mind, almost a question of vocabulary that was standing in the way and if you could see this all or most of your doubts would disappear for ever, and with them your painful difficulties.
For what I was pouring in you was not merely human kindness —though surely it contained all that human kindness can be at its best — but Mahalakshmi's love, Mahasaraswathi's care, Maheshwari's embracing and enveloping light. Do not think of Divine Love as something cold or impersonal or distantly high; it is something as warm and close and tender as any feeling can possibly be. It does not abolish whatever is pure and sweet in human love, but intensifies and sublimates it to its highest. It is this love that the Divine has to give and that you must open yourself to receive. I think if you realise this, it will be easier for you to force through the mental veil and receive what you are longing to receive.
After all the affection and trust I had shown you yesterday morning after having taken you so much in my heart's intimacy, I never expected that you would go back to X in the old spirit in which you went and I have been truly grieved by it. Now I want you to promise that you will never do it's gain. I need this from you in order to wipe out a movement that ought not to have taken place, so that what was being established may not suffer. Will you give me this promise which you must faithfully keep?
To Kowsiki for her marriage —
To unite your physical existences and your material interests, to associate yourselves so as to face together the difficulties and successes, the defeats and victories of life—this is the very basis of marriage—but you know already that it does not suffice.
To be united in feelings, to have the same tastes and the same aesthetic pleasures, to vibrate together in a common response to the same things, one by the other and one for the other — it is good; it is necessary — but it is not enough.
To be one in profound sentiments, your affection, your feelings of tenderness for each other not varying in spite of all the shocks of existence; withstanding weariness, narrow limitations and disappointments, to find under all circumstances, one in the presence of the other, rest, peace and joy — it is good, it is very good, it is indispensable — but it is not enough.
To unite your mentalities, your thoughts harmonising and becoming complementary to each other, your preoccupations and intellectual discoveries shared between you; in a word, to realize your spheres of mental activity identical through broadening and an enrichment acquired by the two at the same time — it is good, it is absolutely necessary — but it is not enough.
Beyond it all, at the bottom, at the centre, at the summit of the being, there is a Supreme Truth of the being, an Eternal Light independent of all circumstances of birth, of country, of environment, of education; the origin, cause and master of our spiritual development — it is this that gives a definite orientation to our existence; it is this that decides our destiny; it is in the consciousness of this that you should unite. To be one in aspiration and ascension, to advance with the same step on the spiritual path — such is the secret of a durable union.
MARCH 1933
1) Is human love the combination of the mental, vital and physical loves or the predominance of one or another? And does it depend upon the largeness, purity and harmony of the nature that this love can take an unselfish, noble and pure form and expression? But after all, is it not a mixed affair of the human folly, ignorance, attachment, passion and desire? And although one should offer the best thing of it in one's aspiration and opening towards the Divine, is it not absolutely necessary in order to be free from all ties and bondage, not to allow this human love and relation to grow?
Human love is mostly vital and physical with a mental support. It can take an unselfish, noble and pure form and expression only if it is touched by the psychic. It is true, as you say, that it is more usually a mixture of ignorance, attachment, passion and desire. But whatever it may be, one who wishes to reach the Divine, must not burden himself with human loves and attachments, for they form so many fetters and hamper his steps — besides turning him away from the concentration of his emotions on the one supreme object of love.
2) Is there anything like psychic love?
There is such a thing as psychic love, pure, without demand, sincere in self-giving — but it is not usually left pure in the attraction of human beings .to one another. One must also be on one's guard against the profession of psychic love when one is doing sadhana, — for that is most often a cloak and justification for yielding to a vital attraction or attachment.
3) What is universal love? Is it based upon the sense of oneness in all?
Universal love is the spiritual, founded on the sense of the one and the Divine everywhere and the change of the personal into a wide universal consciousness, free from attachment and ignorance.
Divine love is of two kinds — the Divine love for the creation and the souls that are part of itself and the love of the seeker and love for the Divine Beloved; it has both a personal and impersonal element, but the personal is free here from all lower elements or bondage to the vital and physical instincts.
5) As a definition can it be said that the personal sense is that which affects the little human egocentric 'I' and all the consequence of its self-will, habits and notions and to efface it is to be released into the wideness of the true consciousness and in the full awareness of the true self?
There are two forms of personality in the being — the little ego personality which is what you describe and the true person which is a conscious portion of the Divine.
13 December 1934
I have already spoken about the bad conditions of the world; the usual idea of the occultists about it is that the worse they are the more probable is the coming of an intervention or a new revelation from above. The ordinary mind cannot know — it has either to believe or disbelieve or wait and see.
As to whether the Divine seriously means something to happen, I believe it is intended. I know with absolute certitude that the Supramental is a truth and its advent is in the very nature of things inevitable. The question is as to the when and the how. That also is decided and predestined from somewhere above; but it is here being fought out amid a rather grim clash of conflicting forces. For in the terrestrial world the predetermined result is hidden and what we see is a whirl of possibilities and forces attempting to achieve something with the density of it all concealed from human eyes. This is, however, certain that a number of souls have been sent to see that it shall be now. That is the situation. My faith and will are for the now. lam speaking of course on the level of the human intelligence — mystically — rationally, as one might put it. To say more would be going beyond that line. You don't want me to start prophesying, I suppose? As a rationalist,you can't.
28 December 1934
Why does the illusion of sex not disappear?
Too many roots in the human vital. Sex has a terrible tenacity. Besides, universal physical nature has such a need of it that even when man pushes it away, she throws it upon him as long as possible.
17 January 1935
You can be reassured, it is quite certain that Sri Aurobindo cannot make such a mistake!
As he says that you are sure to succeed, it means that you will succeed and become quite a good Yogi after all.
Don't let troubles and difficulties depress you, the greater the difficulties, the greater the victory hereafter.
I expect to see a cheerful D at this afternoon's distribution.
The whole thing is so powerfully symbolical and expresses so clearly how dangerous it is to be under the leading of an arrogant and ignorant human mind which relies on its own power alone and refuses the help of the Divine's Grace.
I do not need to enter into any detailed explanations; for with this clue you can easily understand the whole affair. Do you remember that I was asking you with some insistence who was driving the car and when you told me it was your driver, I felt relieved. But it was not your driver who held the steering wheel and the poor fellow suffered for the change.
What makes the whole thing much more striking is just the conversation I had with V. I asked him if he was interested in yoga. He said as a philosophical speculation it interested him but not as a thing to be lived. On my remark that it might come to him later on, he said, "Oh no! I am an atheist, you see, I do not believe in God." I asked smilingly, "Then how do you arrange your universe?" He felt the irony and replied: "I have taken a scientific attitude: I deny nothing but I believe in nothing." I felt the danger for X and said with some force: But, I suppose, you do not interfere with the beliefs of others and you will leave X free to think and feel as she likes. "Certainly", was his answer; but I did not believe him.
Tell X to keep her faith intact whatever pressure may be put upon her to change her mind and attitude. She may have to meet some difficulties, but she must never forget to call on the Divine's Grace with confidence and the protection and help will surely be with her.
As for yourself do not worry or apprehend dangers for X. Her difficulties, — and life is never without them, — are not likely to be of the more external kind, and the others she can meet and overcome by keeping her faith.
Beware of what pulls you downward. Do not yield to any lower instinct. Keep intact your aspiration for the Divine.
Is it not permissible for a sadhak to bluff under certain conditions? To be like that is always improper for a sadhak.
6 June 1935
Can't a sadhak speak a lie even when dealing with dishonest people ?
Because one is dealing with dishonest people, that does not justify one in going down to their own level.
If you think that the prices are too high or simply if you want them to be lower you can say so and ask for a reduction but it is not right to support your demand by a false statement.
No one is bound to speak the truth when it would be harmful or to speak whatever is in one's mind; it is always permissible to keep silence or evade a reply and not to say what one does not wish or think it right to tell. But to tell a lie is superfluous and not justifiable.
It is usually out of weakness (moral and mental) that people lie; those who are strong in nature do not need to lie.
A sadhak has to be strong and not weak. Straightforwardness does not mean of course that one has to babble out everything to everybody; to keep a thing to oneself, not to tell what should not be told is very necessary; but falsehood is not the right way. To conceal things that have not to be told, the right way is silence.
7 June 1935
What you write about the expression of beauty through painting and the limitations of the work as yet done here is quite accurate. The painters here have capacity and disposition, but as yet the work done ranks more as studies and sketches some well done, some less well than as great or finished art. What they need is not to be easily satisfied because they have done some good work, but always to see what has not been yet achieved and train vision and executive power till they have reached a truly high power of themselves. Nandalal's saying is true, but the three have to be combined and developed and harmonised in their combination to a sufficient degree before they bear the fruit of finished or great art.
10 January 1936
Nowadays I feel intensely like going to Gujarat. If you give me permission, I will go. But only if you will.
You can have permission to go. But one knows when one goes, one does not know whether or when one will come back. But if you really want to go, we cannot refuse permission.
26 March 1936
You can reply that Sri Aurobindo is seeing nobody and speaking with none. He only comes out to give Darshan to his disciples and some others on two or three fixed days in the year; but even then he does not speak with anyone.
Your mind is driven by passion and, to support the passion, it gives a twist which prevents you from seeing the truth of things. Guard against the twist, be conscious of the passion.
Action perverted by such a twist looks like insincerity. Be always on your guard against this persistent defect. This is my gift for the New Year.
These are mostly dreams made out of impressions recorded in the subconscient. They are not remembrances of actual events or circumstances, but are sensations and impressions left behind by circumstances of the same type or a somewhat similar nature. The unexpectedness and newness of the incidents occurring in the dreams are due to the fact that impressions not connected with each other are associated haphazard because the consciousness is not awake in its fullness. The dreams carefully scrutinized will disclose something of the condition of the subconscient and they can help to correct some movements of the waking state.
For instance, the first dream indicates a tendency to give when in action an undue importance to small superficial and artificial details at the cost of a larger and deeper view which would lead to a more true and successful action.
The second dream gives a similar indication to the one you already had about the lake, the path and the sea; it shows an unwillingness to take risks, an idea that one must not proceed till everything is safe.
The third dream must have been largely influenced by your preoccupation in the waking state, with the world situation linking itself to the memory of the past.
The fourth dream seems to be made up of old impressions mostly. The last dream indicates a tendency, in some part of the material being, towards material comfort and a pleasant indolence, which is suppressed in the waking state, but comes up in sleep from the subconscient. The two servants may be small vital entities who take pleasure in encouraging this tendency and conspiring how to do it.
But what seems to me of more importance is to try to explain how things are worked out here. Indeed very few are the people who understand it and still fewer those who realize it.
There has never been, at any time, a mental plan, a fixed programme or an organization decided beforehand. The whole thing has taken birth, grown and developed as a living being by a movement of consciousness (Chit-tapas) constantly maintained, increased and fortified. As the conscious force descends in matter and radiates, it seeks for fit instruments to express and manifest it. It goes without saying that the more the instrument is open, receptive and plastic, the better are the results. The two obstacles that stand in the way of smooth and harmonious working in and through the sadhaks are:
(1) The preconceived ideas and mental constructions which block the way to the influence and the working of the Conscious Force,
(2) The preference and impulse of the vital which distort and falsify the expression.
Both these things are the natural output of ego. Without the interference of these two elements my physical intervention would not be necessary.
You are quite right when you do not believe in "Mother likes", "Mother dislikes"; it is quite a childish interpretation.
There is a clear precise perception of the force and the consciousness at work, and whenever this force and the consciousness are obscured in their action, I have to interfere and rectify the movement. In most cases things are mixed up and there again I have to intervene to separate the distorted transcription from the pure.
Otherwise a great freedom of action is left to all, because the conscious force can express itself in innumerable ways and for the perfection and integrity of the manifestation no ways are to be a priori excluded; a trial is very often given before the selection is made.
Too strong a fire burns the food, spoils the vessel and wastes the fuel. A slow fire means a little longer time for the cooking but also a nicer result in cooking.
Hurried work is always bad work; time must be given if you want good results.
Mother, please tell me the significance of the flower 'Surrender of falsehood'.
My dear child,
I received your letter after 11.00 p.m. It was too late to read it, but I just glanced at the first sentences and saw that you had misunderstood my intention in giving you the flower of "Surrender of falsehood".
For me this flower has nothing to do with lies. The falsehood it * represents is all that in the mental, the vital and the physical and especially in the matter, the subconscient, and the inconscient is contrary to the Divine Truth that must descend upon the world. It is a flower I give very often because we must always be reminded that our exterior superficial being lives in falsehood and we must throw it off (surrender it) to emerge in the light of Truth. For instance, when somebody is ill I give it because all illnesses are falsehood in front of the Divine. You must not see any special intention in my giving you this flower and above all you must not worry about it.
I may add that I always considered you as a very truthful person and have no reason to think otherwise.
That is all I wished to say now.
This evening I shall read your letter and if any additional answer is needed I shall send it to you.
With my love and blessings.
7 September 1940
Anilbaran,
Mridu's letter is all right and I accept it as the apology I demanded from her. But things cannot be quite as before: she must make reparation for her fault not only in words but in her conduct; that must change and change altogether. That she can change it, if she chooses to do so, was shown when she began taking my darshan and her behaviour for some weeks was quite satisfactory. Afterwards she called back into her the bad forces which I had thrown out of her and the recent outbreak was the result. That must not happen once more. It is not possible any more that the Mother should show the same indulgence and leniency under great provocation as she did before or that I should remain silent and let such things pass. Our attitude towards her and treatment of her must depend on her attitude towards the Mother and her behaviour.
In the recent outbreak she practically took the position that she refused to change anything wrong in her nature — rather she regarded what is bad and wrong in her as something noble, great and admirable. If that remained her position, she cannot expect that we should accept it, nor would there be any reason for my giving her darshan. People are here to change what is wrong in their nature so that they may do an effective sadhana. If they refuse to do that or even to try, they are not real sadhaks or disciples and can expect nothing from myself or from the Mother.
What was worse, she seemed prepared to be the instrument of an alien force, acting against Mother, claiming victories against her, trying to lower her in the eyes of the sadhaks, asserting itself and its ways, traducing the Ashram and impairing the respect due to the Mother and spoiling my work as much as possible. It cannot really succeed in this, but it can give trouble, and I do not see why I should tolerate it. If she was not conscious of what she was doing or the evil Force that used her, the sooner she becomes conscious the better.
Arrogance, violence and self-assertion have always been the bane of Mridu's character. But in her relations with the Mother these things must go. She must learn not to force her will on the Mother but to accept the Mother's will in everything without opposition or murmur. That is the main point. If she does not take this resolve, she will always go on as she has done and relapse into revolts and that will bring no good to her. In short, however difficult it may be to her nature, she must learn self- surrender to the Divine. A "bhakti" which claims everything from the Divine and does not give itself is not real bhakti.
I point out some details. There should be no more clamouring and shouting and violent insistence when something happens which she does not like. There should be no disrespect, aggressiveness or constant contradiction when she speaks to the Mother. If she has anything to represent she can do it quietly and without violence. And she must accept the Mother's decision in all matters.
She should respect the Mother's time and the heavy work she has to do. She has been allowed to see the Mother very often in the day but she must not abuse the privilege by wasting unnecessarily the Mother's time. There is a heavy strain on the Mother allowing her :no time to rest and she must not increase the strain.
In her upstairs work she should try to be in harmony with others and not a cause of disturbance or inconvenience.
She should not push herself everywhere and take up a position not authorised by the Mother. I am referring especially to her interference above the stairs when the Mother is giving pranam to the sadhaks. To intervene, speak to people and give them instructions is not in her province and only disturbs the Mother's work.
In her talk with sadhaks and visitors, she should refrain from gossip of a bad kind or drawing a black picture of the Ashram which makes a bad impression on those who have joined recently and have had no personal experience of how things are, and on people from outside. There should be no attacks on the Mother or accusations against her. All that is harmful to my work and I want it to change.
That is enough for the present; but it is a wholesale change in her attitude and conduct that I demand of her. If she is prepared to make a firm resolution to get rid of these habits and keeps the resolution, all will be well. If she is not prepared, then why is she here and what is the meaning of her professed bhakti for myself or for the Mother?
23 May 1944
P.S. Explain all this carefully to Mridu.
It may be best to make a translation of this letter and give it to her to keep with her.
If you had understood and reacted in the right way, you would have passed the test and got rid not only of this special difficulty but probably of this hostile's influence altogether. But you failed and got possessed. And only one thing was left to me to do, it was to flood you with the pure light, the white flame of purification to chase from inside you the intruder. It is what you took probably for a cut in our relations, a wall of separation between us; there was nothing of the kind; I was inside you, penetrating you as usual but in the form of this supreme purity which is so foreign to all that is anti-divine or even to all ordinary human movement.
This adverse entity is not only vital, it is also mental and supports its desires by some apparently reasonable principles which become aggressively stupid by their rigidity. When this seizes you, you seem to lose all common sense and the most elementary understanding.
No wall at all — only the pure light, the white flame of purification penetrating right through, from outside inside, from inside outside.
Now I can tell you what has happened with a chance of being understood.
I shall be sorry to see you go and hoped it would not be necessary. But if you are feeling so miserable and so little sure of yourself, it might be better to go for a while and recover your poise. I will leave the door open for you and as soon as you become strong enough, you will come back. My blessings are and will always be with you.
And if next time you can come for the yoga and to lead the Divine life, then everything will become easy.
The western mind always finds it difficult to submit totally to a Guru and without total and unquestioning surrender to the Guru his help to you is paralysed. That is why generally I advise westerners to find the guidance and the Presence within themselves; it is true that this process is very often open to uncertainty and self-deception, mistaking some voice of the ego in disguise for the Divine's guidance.
In both cases, it is only an absolute sincerity and an unmixed humility that can be your safeguard.
With my blessings.
I was painfully shocked when I heard the translation of the leaflet you are distributing here in the Ashram. I never imagined you could have such a complete lack of understanding, respect and devotion for our Lord who has sacrificed himself totally for us. Sri Aurobindo was not crippled; a few hours before he left his body he rose from his bed and sat for a long time in his arm chair, speaking freely to all those around him. Sri Aurobindo was not compelled to leave his body, he chose to do so for reasons so sublime that they are beyond the reach of human mentality. And when one cannot understand, the only thing to do is to keep a respectful silence.
26 December 1950
This is a very good opportunity to test the value of the relation. You must absolutely stop all quarrels. They are harmful for the sadhana of both of you.
Try your level best, and if you cannot succeed, then you will have to give up the relation.
23 September 1951
Sri Aurobindo says that it is impossible for him to take up political action and enter the political field which would involve a sacrifice of his spiritual work.
His spiritual help is given to the country and individually to all those who aspire for it. He is ready to continue this help and even to increase it if it is necessary. But he is convinced that written messages alone are not sufficient to have permanent effect or even a sufficiently wide effect. Among the members of the Ashram he sees nobody whom he can send to represent him effectively.
I have already warned those who go on spreading rumours, more or less false, on what I am believed to have said or not said, that this is an act of treachery.
As this pernicious habit does not seem to stop I must add that those who persist in so doing will be treated occultly as traitors.
If I see X or anybody else twice then I must see Y too twice, and that is justice! And what about so many other people?
Will it be injustice if I don't see eighty people separately twice a day?...
Do you think sincerity and fearlessness mean to sincerely misbehave?
You must remove two falsehoods from your mind.
1) What you get from me has nothing at all to do with what the others have or have not. My relation with you depends on you alone; I give you according to your true need and capacity. Even here already you were alone with me; if there were no others you would receive nothing more.
2) It is a great mistake to think that physical nearness is the one thing indispensable for the progress. It will do nothing for you if you do not establish the inner contact, for without that you could remain from morning to night with me and yet you will never truly meet me. It is only by the inner opening and contact that you can realize my presence.
Say to your mother to go deep inside her heart and she will feel that the Divine Grace is with her. I am sending her a card with my blessings. You can translate for her what is written upon it. You can tell her also that the consciousness of your father had left his body at the time of the accident. That is why he did not move or speak, there is nothing astonishing in that and no reason to be especially sorry about it.
This is my answer —
It is because of all your quarrels, shouting, restlessness, nervousness, agitation, discords and disputes, that C is unwell. I told from the beginning that she needed rest and quietness. But especially it was indispensable and she has been surrounded by the opposite atmosphere — no wonder if she is ill. She weeps and trembles because her nerves are overtaxed and they are overtaxed because all of you have no mastery over yourselves and no control over your speech.
Cooking for her is quite nice, but it is not sufficient, you must let her have enough peace and quietness to be able to eat.
Do not grieve. Human love is fugitive. It is only the Divine's love that never fails.
With love and blessings.
continue
Reply to a letter from an objective point of view
If the supreme consciousness is incarnated and manifests itself in this body, all the negations in the world cannot prevent this from happening.
And, in any case, my physical existence can be interesting only for those who have faith and who, by virtue of this faith, can, through me, enter into contact with the supreme consciousness.
The question has no importance except for these, and others have no need at all to be concerned about it. For such a faith, in order to be sincere and effective, cannot be the object of any propaganda, either for or against it. Its birth must be free and spontaneous. It cannot be obtained through coercion nor destroyed by negation.
He who feels the need to fight violently against any kind of conviction or faith proves, by that very fact, that some part of his being however tiny, is touched by this conviction, whilst another part of himself, generally speaking more important and external, altogether refuses to accept a faith which seems to him the more dangerous the more sensitive he is to it, and his wanting to deny it forcefully comes from the necessity of convincing himself.
From the subjective point of view, I know what I am. But this living knowledge finds its worth only in my sincerity; and of this sincerity the Supreme alone can be the judge.
7 November 1951
It is a pity you have shown my answers to your questions. They were meant for you alone and nobody else. This has partly damaged the experience, as it was the vital and the mental wanting to take advantage of the situation to satisfy their own desires.
If you prefer the pleasures of the palate to the union with the Divine, it your own lookout and I have nothing to say, except that I do not approve, but each one must be free to choose whether he will rise above his lower nature or sink down in the material pit. My help is always for those who choose the higher path.
It seems to me, on the contrary, that the best way is to remain where you are and make effort to discover your own faults - you are bound to have some as everybody has - and try to correct them. To be conscious of one's own mistakes is the surest way to come out of a difficulty.
Both of these dreams (are they only dreams?) are of a quality far superior to the former ones.
The first seems to be one of those symbolic transcriptions of the inner condition and action which one so often gets in sleep. What appears to me most clear is how pointedly this dream shows the lack of any true ground for the apprehension you felt while swimming (the fear of not being able to reach the goal). For the protection showered from the shore to be reached brings you there even when in appearance conditions or circumstances seem to be driving you away from it.
To say exactly what the motor launches stand for is difficult in the absence of details.
The second is certainly not a dream but a reality, a very charming expression of the reality of the constant presence of Sri Aurobindo and of his help given through an intimate and true relation, even though veiled to the outer consciousness. This is a precious experience worth being kept in the most sacred corner of the remembrance.
When you feel unhappy like that it means that you have a progress to make. You can say that we always need to progress, it is true. But at times nature gives its consent to the needed change and then everything goes smoothly, even happily. On the contrary, sometimes the part that has to progress refuses to move and clings to its old habits through inertia, ignorance, attachment or desire. Then, under the pressure of the perfecting force, the struggle starts translating itself into unhappiness or revolt or both together.
The only remedy is to keep quiet, look within oneself honestly to find out what is wrong and set to work courageously to put it right.
The Divine Consciousness will always be there to help you if your endeavour is sincere; and the more sincere your endeavour the more the Divine Consciousness will help and assist you.1
19 May 1952
I intended to let you go for your studies to England without telling you anything about it, because each one must be free to follow the path he has chosen. But after what you have written I feel compelled to write to you.
No doubt from the exterior point of view, you will find in England all that you want for learning what human beings generally call knowledge, but from the point of view of Truth and Consciousness, you can find nowhere the atmosphere in which you are living here. Elsewhere you can meet with a religious or a philosophic spirit, but true spirituality, direct contact with the Divine, constant aspiration to realize Him in life, mind and action are in the world realised only by scattered individuals and no) as a living fact behind any university teaching however advanced it may be.
Practically, as far as you are concerned, there will be a great risk of drifting away from the experience you have realized and then you cannot know what will happen to you.
That is all I wanted to say — now it is left to you to choose and decide
With my blessings
22 October 1952
Your father died because it was his time to die. Circumstances can be an occasion but surely not a cause. The cause is in the Divine's will and nothing can alter it.
So, grieve not and surrender your sorrow at the feet of the Divine. He will give you peace and freedom.
It often occurs to me to beg Thee for a key word for japa.
OM.
A sannyasi who makes demands is not sincere. To be sincere a sannyasi must be perfectly satisfied with what is given to him and ask for nothing more. In all that happens to him, he must see the Divine's Grace and be at once happy and grateful for it.
Moreover he who wants to do "intensive sadhana" must be able to isolate himself from his surroundings and to sit if necessary in deep meditation even on a battlefield in the midst of the roaring guns.
Each one has the right to follow the path he has chosen, but it must be at the right place, and obviously this Ashram is not the place to follow the path you have chosen.
He is quite legitimate in thinking and feeling as he does, but he ought to understand that the others also are legitimate although their thinking and feeling differ from his and he ought not to despise them and call them by bad names.
If you have sympathy for them and true understanding of their difficulty you can always help them.
Wake up in yourself a will to conquer. Not a mere will in the mind but a will in the very cells of your body. Without that you can't do anything, e.g., you may take a hundred medicines but they won't cure you unless you have a will to overcome the physical illness.
I may destroy the adverse force that has possessed you. I may repeat the action a thousand times. But each time that a vacuum is created it will be filled up by one of the many forces that try to rush in. That is why I say wake up the will to conquer.
I do not deny that you have got a connection with something of Sri Aurobindo, the something that was interested in you and in what you are doing. This something might have remained with you to inspire and help you in your work in America and elsewhere. But it is only a part, a very, very small pan of the Sri Aurobindo whom I know and with whom I lived physically for thirty years, and who has not left me, not for a moment — for He is still with me, day and night, thinking through my brain, writing through my pen, speaking through my mouth and acting through my organising power.
5 May 1953
Bonne fete!
Let it be, for you, a new birth of your consciousness, the constant and conscious contact with your psychic being and for your co-workers a new start of unselfish and real collaboration in the work.
10 April 1954
It is important and urgent that the people of your Unity Party should rise to a higher level of consciousness and stop all attacks of a petty political character on persons. They must learn to fight for the Truth and the Divine Realisation and not against any political party. From the Divine's point of view there is truth behind all sincere convictions. It is in the mental and practical application to life and action that the falsehood appears and disfigures everything. The time has come when all those who are more or less connected with the Ashram and wish to base their action on Sri Aurobindo's or my teaching must abstain from all these low movements of political polemic and remain on the higher levels of the spirit.,
I expect that you will take at once the necessary steps.
31 January 1955
Her mental disease was congenital, that is to say, caused by her physical constitution, and it would have happened to her wherever she would have been and whatever life she would have lived. In fact, I made her last here one and half years more than she would have lasted elsewhere.
These congenital diseases can be cured only by an integral trans- formation of the body itself and we have not reached yet that period in the sadhana; otherwise it is only a so called "miraculous" cure that can take place and that kind of "miracle" can happen only as the result of an absolute sincerity in the consecration to the Divine and an unshakable faith in the Divine "Grace. This was not the case; she was full of fears, desires and demands and terribly concentrated on her exterior being and what she called its needs. This is just opposite of a sincere consecration.
25 March 1955
If these painters were sincere, if they truly painted what they feel and see, the picture would be the expression of a confused mind and an unruly vital. But, unhappily, the painters are not sincere and then these pictures are nothing else than the expression of a falsehood, an artificial imagination based only on the will to be strange and to bewilder the public in order to attract attention and that has indeed very little to do with beauty.
27 March 1955
If business cannot be done with the true attitude of consecration to the Divine, then business will be stopped and banned from the Ashram as politics are banned for the reason.
So unless the consciousness of the sadhaks recovers from this sad condition of confusion and pettiness, I shall find myself under the necessity of forbidding all commercial activities as it will be proved that they cannot be done in the. true spirit.
27 May 1955
You have asked to meet — but I do not see any use in this interview. What you could tell me you have already expressed abundantly in speech and numerous writings. As for me I have already conveyed to you several times in writing what I had to tell you. I can only add this:
Quite evidently you are not satisfied with what I am doing for you. But that is the maximum that I can do and the means at my disposal do not allow me to do more. You seem to believe, rightly or wrongly, that elsewhere you would receive a treatment more in conformity with your needs. I should not like to deprive you of the possibility of improving your condition, and if other institutions which — in opposition to the Ashram — are making a financial profit from your work, can and should make you profit in some way from their gains, I do not want to prevent you from sharing in this profit.
Here, altogether on the contrary, far from earning money with your work, we are at times obliged to invent some work to keep you occupied.
And this is why I took the decision which was communicated to you on the 7th March last. It is well understood that I am always ready to welcome those who are really satisfied and trust in the sincerity of my goodwill.
It must not be forgotten that the offering is made to the Divine's Work and not to any human enterprise. So the only thing that can be done is to express some appreciation in a few words.
I have read your letters and am well satisfied with the confidence you have in your capacity to do the work. It is true that you have the capacity, but you will agree that there is a difference between having the capacity and having the knowledge; and to have the knowledge of a work it must be learned.
So you must first learn from those who know and the best way of learning is to see them do. When you will know and have proved your thoroughness, steadiness and faithfulness in doing the work then I will entrust you with the full responsibility and give you the entire management of the work.
Your soul blossoms to the Light as a flower opens to the sun.
30 May 1956
How can we prepare ourselves to be your most faithful sadhaks during the possibly exciting events of this year?
Keep a cool head and strong and very quiet nerves and complete trust in the Divine Grace.
Why was not man created good from the beginning?
It is not God who made man wicked.
It is man who makes himself wicked by separating himself from God.
1 January 1957
A child's question: When the supreme Lord told you to make the world, how did you know what was to be done?
I had nothing to learn for that, because the supreme Lord contains everything in Himself: the whole world, the knowledge of the world and the power of making it. When He decided that there should be a world, first He put out the Knowledge of the world and the power of making it, and this is myself, and then He commanded me to make the world.
Why have you come just as we are? Why didn't you come as you really are?
Because if I had not come as you are I would never have been able to be near you and I would never have been able to tell you: "Become what I am."
25 September 1957
Why did I did not give meditation yesterday evening?
Because one does not enter the temple of the spirit with an unclean mind.
Simultaneously with the progress and intensification of the sadhana there is increasingly felt the imperative need that all hypocrisy and compromise should stop.
It is not in order to be happy that we are upon earth, for in the present conditions of terrestrial life happiness is an impossibility. We are upon earth to find and realise the Divine, for the Divine Consciousness alone can give true happiness.
Everyone has to follow his own path which, necessarily, is the best and the swiftest for reaching the goal.
As I happen to know the way, it is my duty to show it to them.
That one feels sad for one's own faults, — this may, if necessary, be useful to strengthen one's resolution to correct them.
But that one can be offended by another's bad conduct, this has truly nothing to do with the spiritual life and the service of the Divine.
About what you say on the last page of your letter. Things are not altogether what you think them to be. For some years already, I have had much to say on the subject. But what is the use...there are certain waters which are best left unstirred. In any case, I would like you never to forget this: What each one meets in life is always exactly in accordance with what he is. Not in the way ignorant human justice understands it, but according to a law that is much more subtle, more deep, more true. Let us never forget that the supreme Lord is behind everything and that it is He who is the master of our destinies.
You have answered the trustful welcome given to you by an arrogant and uncomprehending attitude, judging everything from the viewpoint of an ignorant and presumptuous morality which could only alienate from you the sympathy so spontaneously extended to you as to all those who come here in quest of the spiritual life. But in order to profit by one's stay here, a minimum of mental humility and generosity of soul is indispensable.
Have confidence, I am near thee.
With all my tender love
Let this day of your birth be for you an occasion to give yourself a little more, a little better to the Divine. Let your consecration be more total, your devotion more ardent, your aspiration more intense.
Open yourself to the New Light and walk with a joyful step on the path.
Resolve on this day that it may be thus and the day will not have passed in vain.
Now, what the intellect has understood let the whole being realise. Mental knowledge must be replaced by the flaming power of progress.
Have full faith in your experiences, they come from true spiritual source.
12 December 1957
Your ego, at the slightest thing that displeases it, is in the habit of opening the door of your being to an evil spirit of arrogant and impudent disbelief which passes its time in throwing mud and filth on all that is sacred and beautiful and especially on the aspiration of your soul and the help from the Divine's Grace.
If this is allowed to continue it will end in a sure catastrophe and ruin. Strong steps must be taken to put an end to this, and for that the collaboration of your soul is needed. It must wake up and join in the fight against the ego by resolutely closing the door to this evil spirit.
9 April 1958
You have allowed an evil spirit of arrogance and impudence to possess you. It is leading you to ruin and perdition. Allow your soul to wake up and save you from this catastrophe.
It is your attitude that must change — because nothing is personal, all belongs to the Divine and is meant for collective use if necessary. And as a concrete illustration of this, I must ask you to leave your present quarters and to go to a new house where you are given some lodging. I advise you to take this decision as a manifestation of the Grace.
16 April 1958
There is no question at all of "position" — nor of prestige. V has a lot of knowledge and experience of the stage that we do not have. She is willing to share it with us. So the only sensible thing for us to do is to learn as much as we can and to be grateful for it.
Moreover never forget that we are working here for the Divine and that no egoistic feeling can be allowed to intervene and spoil the work.
Always present with you.
5 November 1958
What has happened was more or less expected. Each one in life acts according to his own nature, and those who are not steady in their faith cannot be steady in their love either.
Surely I am not angry with you and my help is always there whenever you want it. As for doing anything wrong, all human beings do wrong things so long as they live in this world of ignorance, because even if they wish to do right, they do not know what is the right thing to do, until their consciousness is transformed, and for transformation the first thing needed is complete sincerity, not only to speak the truth, this goes without saying, it is an indispensable elementary condition, but to be always true to oneself and the Divine.
I know that to be with me is, for you, neither a need nor a joy but a duty, and that you are happier elsewhere, with some others. So I call you only when it is necessary — not when it pleases me, for it is long since I have put my pleasure in my pocket and left it there.
If there is somewhere in some part of your being, still the need for human affection and love, it is better to go through the experience of life, it is the best preparation for Yoga.
Whenever, in your life, you meet with a hardship, take it as a boon from the Divine's Grace and it will become so.
My advice is not to worry. More you think of it, more you concentrate upon it and, above all, more you fear, more you give a chance for the thing to grow.
If, on the contrary, you turn your attention and your interest elsewhere you increase the possibilities of cure.
You are making a big confusion between the maternal feeling which is the translation in the physical of the force of the universal Mother and the maternal act of procreation which is something altogether animalish, most often even bestial, and which is but a means Nature has found for perpetuating the different races.
You preferred human friendship to divine friendship but human friendship is unsteady, and now you feel cut off from both, not that the Divine has withdrawn His friendship from you, never does He withdraw it, but you have got into a state of vital incapacity for enjoying it.
At last ft has been possible to go through all your communications. I shall see what can be done.
Meanwhile here are two questions that do not call for a reply.
What have you done for the Divine to make so many demands?
What have you done to the Divine, to receive so many blows?
Certainly to do the right thing is not cruel or selfish. What is cruel and selfish is to follow blindly one's weakness and thus to drag another with oneself in a pit from which it is always difficult to come out and never without losing much of one's time and energy, if not much more and much worse. So do not worry; try now seriously to find out the meaning and the aim of your life and prepare yourself to carry it out thoroughly and sincerely.
My help, love and blessings are with you.
A friendship free from desire and attachment might be the ideal solution, but to be carried out it requires a perfect mastery over oneself and an unshakable discipline of the vital and the body. And as for the moment it is not yet the case, it is wiser not to tempt the devil and to cut all relations.
I am not eager to be the Guru of anyone. It is more spontaneously natural for me to be the universal Mother and to act in silence through love.
But as you put the question, I shall answer.
From the time you started using a mantra, I had put in it the power to make it effective. Now that you stated what is the word of this mantra, I am confirming the power into it.
It can be useful for a time to have certain inner experiences, but this attitude is not to be kept permanently as it is only a partial truth and far from the whole truth of the integral yoga.
I received your letter. My deepest sympathy is with you.
We must pray for the day when the light of the Truth will reappear in the consciousness. Meanwhile my love and blessings are always with you.
I have forwarded your prayer to the supreme.
But if you want to live in Ananda you must not try to impose your will on the Lord, but on the contrary to be ready to accept all that comes from Him, with an equal peace, because He knows better than us what is good for our progress.
I have sent for the "delinquent" to tell him that this kind of activity is out of place in the Ashram, though unfortunately it is only too often practised here; but I am sending you this letter before seeing him so that you may know that he has nothing to do with what I am writing to you.
But the second part of your letter made me see that, without justifying the aggression, for an aggression cannot be justified, at least your state of mind warrants it. I have rarely seen such a display of hatred and envy, bitter criticism and commonplace morality arising from unsatisfied and repressed desires.
All this is not very nice and immediately takes away the sympathy one could have felt because of the blows you received.
I thank you for reminding me that my position as... gives me duties and responsibilities, but it is better to call the Grace rather than justice, for if it were to come into action very few would be those who could stand before it.
What can be done will be done, but it is a matter of regret that you waited so long for the warning.
In any case, the only thing which is really effective is to will what the Divine wills, and to keep an unshakable confidence in the supreme compassion of the Divine Grace; for through that it is always the best that happens; not the best according to human ideas but the best according to the supreme Truth.
Be calm and full of a solid and pure faith.
My love and blessings are with you.
My love is always with you; if then you do not feel it, it is because you are not capable of receiving it. It is your receptivity that is lacking and should be increased; for this you must open yourself, and one opens oneself only if one gives oneself. Surely you are trying more or less consciously to draw the forces and the divine love towards you. The method is bad. Give yourself without calculating and without expecting anything in return, and then you will become capable of receiving.
Do not worry. It will pass.
It is the vital's amour-propre that has received a fine knock on the face, it is vexed and gone on strike. When it starts understanding that it is a foolishness and that this leads to nothing, it will become reasonable again and listen once again to the wise advice of the psychic which tells it to be quiet and do its work well, that nothing of true value is lost, that true love is always there, immutable, and that only those movements which were not in conformity with the Divine Work have been destroyed. For it is to the Divine Work that one must exclusively belong because it alone can, in our life, give us true happiness.
In order to be cured, my child, not only is it necessary to stop all these unseemly practices completely, but it is necessary to get rid of all these unhealthy desires from your thought and sensation, for it is desires that irritate the organs and make them ill. You must ruthlessly clean up everything and your will is not strong enough for that; invoke my will, call it sincerely and it will be there to help you. You are right when you say that with my help you will surely be able to conquer. That is true, but you must sincerely want this help and let it work within you and in all circumstances.
The initial error was to hope to recommence the same experience as the one you had in your youth.
In life experiences are not repeated identically, and if they are not better, that is, higher and more true, they become necessarily worse.
After a happy and favourable experience it is necessary to rise from the human to the divine, otherwise one risks falling into the infernal and diabolic.
Friend, sister of former days and always,
In your letter of the 9th June which has just arrived, you write that the Buddha is smiling with gentle irony", but the Buddha's smile can only be a smile of perfect understanding before a luminous accomplishment.
And in this state in which already the physical life has lost for you so much of its concrete reality, whether one is in the solitudes of the Himalayas or in the solitude of a house on the road to N., it should be equally easy to live in the deep peace of the immense Buddhist compassion.
The whole trouble comes from the fact that you cannot harmonize with someone unless he is in agreement with your own ideas and his opinion and way of doing things are in conformity with yours.
You must widen your consciousness and understand that everyone has his own law. It is necessary to find the ground of understanding and harmony in a happy combination of individual wills and not to try that all may be the same in an identical will and action.
I am writing to tell you that surely you should be able to feel my presence everyday. I am with you so concretely, I see you so clearly, we speak together, we contemplate the harmony of a beautiful park; I explain to you and show you how to keep within oneself always this great peace which makes you live in eternity’s beyond all human miseries, in the Presence (Truth) of the Lord.
Evidently, according to human laws I was wrong in telling you that I shall see you every month, since I was not sure of being able to do so, even whilst not forgetting what I had said.
In truth, I live from moment to moment, according to the supreme Guidance and, consequently, am incapable of making plans. I know that this is not comfortable for the human mentality which believes it can decide everything in advance. But from the spiritual point of view it is inevitable.
I am sorry, but for the moment we are not in a position to increase the number of inmates. It is already difficult to manage with those who are here — exception made of the very few cases of those who might come with a genuine call for sadhana.
1 August 1959
So my dear child,
Your letter of the 24th November has just come, bringing me your problem which, by the way, is the problem of the life of all human beings, specially when they have reached a certain degree of inner development but are not yet on the summit of spiritual freedom through the unification of their being around their conscious soul. For it is the lack of unification which is the cause of all problems. One part of the being pulls one way, another pulls the other way, sometimes one is stronger and gives a certain orientation of life, sometimes it is the other and then the orientation suddenly changes, and the result is an incoherence... And as it is the unsatisfied part which usually comes to the surface to express its want of satisfaction, so unless one is a sage, one is never satisfied with the life one leads and always misses the life one could have led — whether in one direction or the other.
In your case there is something more. As your soul remains very closely linked with my being, as the contact with the supramental consciousness grows more and more total and constant, it acts very strongly on your soul like an almost irresistible attraction. This is what happened in 58..
To conclude, "an easy and pleasant life" can only satisfy the outer being; but what answers in the physical being to the soul's influence need; for its flowering a life more in conformity with the soul's needs and "languishes" when it cannot find it.
3 December 1959
There was a time when you were very passionate and your affection! degenerated immediately into passions with all the disequilibrium that this entails.
But now you are more sober and undoubtedly you are more calm and quiet until the day there will be no attachments any longer but luminous and sweet sympathies without any demand or egoism.
It is clumsy and unbecoming enough to kiss a girl when she likes it; but kiss her when she does not want it is a coarse and imbecilic act.
You ask if you can retain the same relation with me if you stay away for some time more. Well, it will surely depend on the length of the time.
Because little by little you forget that you have (or had) a true beingand you will get so accustomed to be a "thoughtful", "tactful" am "reasonable" creature that you will no more dream of being otherwise.
In any case you have to take yourself the decision, neither your parent nor I can take the decision for you. They have no more than I have than right to interfere in your destiny. I can say only one thing, if ever and a soon as you feel disgusted of being a thoughtful, tactful and reasonable creature, run away from there, quick and without hesitation, and come back here. I shall give you back your true self.
You speak of absolute renunciation, but to give up the body is not the absolute renunciation. The true and total renunciation is to give up the ego which is a much more arduous endeavour. If you have not renounced your ego, to give up the body will not bring freedom to you.
As usual, it is only a misunderstanding, and also as usual, the ego of each one, by its reaction, magnifies the thing and aggravates it. But it is easy to arrange, and, with the goodwill of all, I am sure that all will be well.
I consider that we are at an excellent occasion for collective and individual sadhana and that is why I engage myself in it and take special interest in it.
We do not work for the success of X's play, or of Y's dance, or of Z's scenario. '
We want to render in physical terms, as perfectly as possible, the inspiration sent by the Lord for the accomplishment of His work upon earth.
And for that each individual soul is a helper and a collaborator, but each human ego is a limitation and an obstacle.
1960
I did not reply because her mind was in such a confusion as a result of her desires, that she would not have been able to understand what I would have written. Since then I have tried to work on her mental and vital being to make it a little more open and receptive, so that she may understand that love for children and the growing hope for future that they represent in the" creation, does not mean that each one and everybody must have children. To each one I disclose what is the best for him or her according to their nature and their spiritual need.
But surely it is not always in keeping with the desires.
October 1960
It is indeed indispensable that something should change radically in your nature before you are fit for staying here. You are far too ego-centric to lead a spiritual life; and it is also the cause of this catastrophe and of the suffering it has brought to you, which is the natural consequence of the whole affair. Indeed it is good if you go to face the ordinary life now and learn to live with the others and for the others instead of making of the Ashram life an excuse for living selfishly for yourself.
I shall see you and give you blessings in the afternoon just before your departure.
September 1961
Always remember that on the happiness you give will depend the happiness you get.
2 June 1963
The inner progress has been sufficiently rapid for the exterior being to find it difficult to follow. Now the body must learn to receive the Divine Force and to keep it.
The will not to cheat but also that of not being cheated.
With blessings.
It is not necessary to attach any importance to the opinions of people because they are the passing results of passing impressions; other times and new impressions easily change them.
My blessings are always with you, but never forget that, as much outside as in the Ashram, if you want to live a happy life, you must be the master of your lower nature and control your desires and vital impulses. Otherwise there is no end to the troubles and the miseries.
Dear friend,
Your letter came bringing me news I knew already, because often your thought comes bringing me your remembrance and keeps me in touch with your tribulations. Everyone, in truth, has his own and you know as well as I that is only in the inner attitude that peace is found.
So long as we are in a body, whatever its age and difficulties, it is certain that we have something to do or learn in it, and this conviction gives the necessary strength to face all vicissitudes.
I had hoped, in putting you into touch with the Tibetan refugees, that among them there would be one who would be happy to consecrate his or her life to have the opportunity to develop intellectually and learn all that you would be able to teach him or her in exchange for this service.
Would this not be possible?
For me the Grace is an active reality which guides our destiny through the ages.
One must not be in a hurry and hasten the departure, even if it is for the eternal repose or the beatitude of nothingness. As long as we are in a body, undoubtedly we have yet something to do or learn therein.
I have received your letters and answered inwardly, confident that you are capable of receiving these intimate communications.
But I feel something must be added to what I wrote to you already.
There is no question of going to people and collecting funds. The thing to be done is to find one man, or one financial group, or one foundation that is in a position to dispose of the total amount needed and is ready to go into this adventure and to run the risk for the sake of doing something new and worthwhile.
Such men or such people exist. There is only to make the two poles meet.
Could it be that you are a little impatient about what you consider as a slow advance?
Is it that you are restless and eager to taste soon the fruit of your efforts?
Moreover I cannot see how to be plunged again, even for a few weeks only, in the very atmosphere which is responsible for the thickness of the surface-crust through which your soul has to pierce to make itself felt exteriorly, can in the least help you to get rid of the "clinging impediments".
You are quite conscious of the aspiration and the aim of your soul; you are quite conscious of what your soul wants you and expects you to become. It is only some consequences of this present physical formation that stand in the way, and now, it is only a steady and patient working out of these impediments that can solve the difficulty.
So, from the yoga point of view, any "taking leave" would be a kind of "giving way" to the obstinacy of the resistance. This for me, is quite clear.
But are you quite sure that there is not the remembrance of an attachment lurking in some corner of the mind which makes you answer unknowingly to the insistence of a pressure coming from outside? In that case the problem would have to be considered from another angle.
This is a misunderstanding.
The sentence in French was clear enough. I meant that at these moments of depression or of revolt, no fresh decision must be taken under the impulse of the wrong movement, but practically one must go on with the usual routine quietly and undisturbed.
Do not forget that to succeed in our yoga one must have a body strong and in good health.
For that the body must do exercise, have an active and regular life, eat well, work physically and sleep well.
In good health lies the path towards perfection.
Blessings.
When you give yourself to the accomplishment of an unselfish aim, never expect the ordinary people to praise and support you. On the contrary they will always fight against you, hate and curse you. But the Divine will be with you.
(About the map of India at the Ashram playground)
The map was made after the Partition.
It is the map of the real India despite all fugitive appearances; and it will always remain the map of the true India, whatever men may think about it.
29 July 1964
Behind all destructions, whether the immense destructions of Nature, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, cyclones, floods, etc., or the violent human destructions, wars, revolutions, revolts, I find the power of Kali, who is working in the earth-atmosphere, to hasten the progress of transformation.
All that is not only divine in essence but also divine in realization is by its very nature above these destructions and cannot be touched by them. Thus the extent of the disaster gives the measure of the imperfection.
The true way of preventing the repetition of these destructions is to learn their lesson and make the necessary progress.
How can we know that we are receptive?
When we feel the urge to give and the joy of giving to the Divine's work, then we can be sure that we have become receptive.
12 July 1965
Always with you in a growing light and peace.
Forward, always forward in love and joy and a peace rising ever higher.
Do not give too much importance to the little incidents of life.
The importance of these incidents lies in the extent to which they have served you to make a progress.
And once the progress has been made, the consequences of past errors, if there are any, disappear through the intervention of the divine Grace.
It is obvious that your inner being is not very strong and does not have the power to counteract the pernicious influence of an environment full of sterile doubts, defeatist pessimism, egoism and unfaithfulness.
Our path is not easy, it demands great courage and untiring endurance. One must work hard and make a great effort with quiet stability to obtain results which at times are scarcely perceptible outwardly.
There are many human beings who need to roll in the mire in order to feel the necessity to cleanse themselves.
If the desire is too persistent for you to have the strength to overcome it, ask the people you know to find you a post (this is usually not too difficult for the young people going out from the Ashram) and go and face the ordinary life until you learn the true value of the life you would have left.
One must have heroism to be a precursor; for, generally, men have faith only in what is already accomplished, evident, visible and recognised even by the most sceptical.
All depends upon the kind of attraction.
If it is a physical attraction, the need, the instinct of the animal pushing it to reproduction, the best thing is that you leave the place and not see X again. For this would mean that this person's influence awakens and encourages the lower instincts.
If it is a vital attraction you can try to purify and control it, by avoiding a too close intimacy and cutting down your relation to what is indispensable when living in the same house.
If it is a sentimental and emotional attraction, it is easier to channelize and turn it to the Divine by confining your relations to a common seeking for the Divine and the spiritual life.
Then all will depend on your sincerity and reciprocal goodwill.
Truth does not depend on any external form and shall manifest in spite of all bad will or opposition.
12 February 1966
To forget the past and to lose habits of thinking is indeed a difficult thing and generally requires a strong "tapasya". But if you have faith in the Divine's Grace and you implore it full-heartedly, you will succeed more easily.
22 November 1968
It is a wrong use of a great quality — perseverance.
Make a good use of it and it will be all right.
Be obstinate in your efforts towards progress, and your obstinacy will become useful.
29 May 1971
If you have faith and confidence, it is not the human form of the Guru that you worship, but the Supreme Lord who manifests through him.
Be not troubled and give yourself unreservedly to the Supreme Lord through whatever channel helps you.
12 November 1971
In an ardent faith lies salvation.
In the final analysis, it is the Supreme Lord who does all.
We must be faithful instruments.
29 August 1972
To Indira,
Our best help is faith — the Divine is all merciful.
12 September 1972
Apart from the fact that the Ashram is not meant for those who seek the satisfaction of their vital or sentimental desires, but for those who aspire to perfect their consecration to the Divine, I have to warn you that here you must do only what can be done publicly because nothing can remain hidden.
I belong to no nation, no civilization, no society, no race but to the Divine.
I give obedience to no master, no ruler, no law, no social convention, but to the Divine.
To Him I have surrendered all, will, life and self; for Him I am ready to give all my blood, drop by drop, if such is His will, with complete joy; and nothing in His service can be sacrifice for all is perfect delight.
February 1920
"Ah! Since India is the cradle of religion, since all the Gods preside over her destiny, what is he who will accomplish the miracle of resuscitating this city...!"—A. Chaumel
Blinded by false appearances, deceived by calumnies, held back by fears and prejudices, he has passed without knowing it by the side of the god whose intervention he implores; he has come close to the forces which will accomplish the miracle he demands but without waiting to recognise them; and thus he has missed the most beautiful chance of his life — a unique chance — of entering into contact with the mysteries and marvels the existence of which his mind guesses and to which his heart dimly aspires...
In all ages, before receiving initiation the aspirant had to pass through many tests. In the ancient schools these tests were artificial and hence lost the greater part of their value. Now it is no longer the same; the tests are hidden behind the most ordinary daily circumstances and they have a little innocent look of coincidence or chance which makes them so much the more difficult and dangerous.
So it is that India does not reveal the mystery of its treasures except to those who can conquer within themselves the mental preferences and Prejudices of race and education. Others go away disappointed... not having found what they were in search of— because they looked wrongly r it, because they did not agree to pay the price of the Divine.
Pondicherry, 21 September 1928
Psychic beings
The quality is definite but the number is undetermined. 24 March 1932
It is always the same old story of "selling the birthright for a mess of pottage" (I understand the "birthright" as the possibility or capacity to be the first to reach the Divine Realisation).
4 May 1932
I feel inclined to reply:
I live so far from all these conventions that I had not even thought of that.
16 May 1932
Today at Pranam, for the first time I could enter D's heart and an emanation of mine settled there.
14 June 1932
We live only because Thou wiliest it.
We do not die unless Thou wiliest it.
2 March 1934
The anniversary of my return to Pondicherry which was the tangible sign of the sure Victory over the adverse forces.
24 April 1937
What I want to bring about in the material world, upon the earth.
1) Perfect Consciousness.
2) Integral Knowledge, omniscience.
3) Power Invincible, irresistible, ineluctable (Power), omnipotence.
4) Health, Perfect, constant, unshakable (Health), perpetually renewed energy.
5) Eternal Youth, constant growth, uninterrupted progress.
6) Perfect Beauty, complex and total harmony.
7) Inexhaustible unparalleled Riches, control over all the wealth of this world.
8) The Gift of healing and giving happiness.
9) Immunity from all accidents, invulnerability against all adverse attacks.
10) Perfect Power of expression in all fields and all activities.
11) The Gift of tongues, the power of making oneself understood perfectly by all.
12) And all else necessary for the accomplishment of Thy work.
23 October 1937
Silence all outside noise, aspire for the Divine's help; open integrally to it when it comes and surrender to its action, and it will effectively bring about your transformation.
D.'s belief:
The Divine (as manifested in me) is all irony and deceit. It thinks only of playing tricks. When it laughs it mocks; when it says to do something it makes this very thing impossible to do etc.
I was told that our boys (young or old) like to play with me (the exact words were "to give me a game") for some reason or another, but to play truly and to learn to play they must play among themselves.
You have this extraordinary opportunity of being able to play a game and to take exercise in an atmosphere filled with Divine Consciousness, Light and Power in such a way that each of your movements is so to say permeated by the consciousness and the light and the power which is in itself an intensive yoga; and your ignorant unconsciousness, your blindness and lack of sensitiveness is such that you believe you are giving a game or even helping to play a good old lady for whom you feel a little gratefulness and some kind of affection!
(In the night of the 4th to the 5th of June 1949)
French is indeed the most precise and clearest language. But from the spiritual point of view it is not true that French is the best language to use; for English has a suppleness, a fluidity which French does not have, and this suppleness is indispensable for not deforming what is vaster and more comprehensive in the experience than what mental expression can formulate.
January 1950
Au revoir, my child, I wish that life may prove happy for you, and that one day you may be born into the Light and Truth.
Au revoir, my child, never forget what your experience was, and do not let any external darkness penetrate and veil your consciousness.
I am with you.
To my child of today and always
in remembrance of our new meeting.
A prayer for August 15, 1950
Lord,
Give me the strength of a total and perfect sincerity that I may be worthy of Thy Realisation.
Lord, give us the strength to live integrally the ideal we proclaim.
The Lord has said: The hour is come and all the obstacles will be surmounted.
I am only realising what he has conceived. I am only the protagonist and the continuator of his work.
1951
Palmistry is a very interesting art but it depends for its exactitude and truthfulness almost entirely upon the real ability of the one who practises it. Moreover, it relates only to the material destiny and this destiny can be altered by the intervention of the higher forces.
3 January 1951
Do not take the sorrows of life for what they seem to be; they are in truth a way to greater achievements.
(Music of the 2nd December, '51)
"Who are you?" says the adverse force.
"I am the impartial and truthful Mirror in which everyone finds his own real image."
25 February 1952
It is a fact that the Godhead has always taken a physical body with the intention of transforming that body and making of it a fit instrument for His manifestation upon earth. But it is a fact also that, until now, He has failed to do so and for one reason or another. He had always to leave that physical body with the work of transformation unfinished.
In order that the Divine may keep till a total transformation takes place, the body through which He is manifesting upon earth, it is necessary that at least one individual, if not more, fulfilling the required conditions of harmony, strength, sincerity, endurance, unselfishness and poise in the physical, should consider the body in which the Divine incarnates, not only as the most important thing, but as the thing exclusively important, more important than the Divine's work itself, or rather that this body should become for him the symbol and the concretisation of the Divine's work upon earth.
3 October 1952
A vision repeated for the third time.
A small mountain train (funiculaire) open, without sides or roof, just seats in rows close to one another, arrives and stops at its terminus. There is only one passenger and no visible driver.
When the train stops, the passenger stands up and steps out of it, on the platform outside. Nothing can be seen of the landscape outside; yet there is a strong feeling that it is the top of a very high mountain covered with ice and snow; beyond it there is only a very clear pale blue sky.
When the passenger stands outside the train he becomes clearly visible. It is Sri Aurobindo, but clean-shaved, no hair, no moustache, no beard, his complexion is pale and ivory, almost translucid. He stands for a second on the platform, and then comes back, sits once more at the same place in the train and says quietly but very decidedly: "No, I will go further".
And the vision stops abruptly.
4 July 1953
... very few, in fact, specially in an age like ours in which success alone counts and the material satisfactions it brings. However, an ever-increasing number of dissatisfied people are seeking to know the reason of life. And, on the other hand, there are sages who know and strive to help suffering humanity and to spread the light of knowledge. When the two meet, he who knows and he who wants to know, there springs up a new hope in the world, and a little light penetrates the prevailing darkness.
I dream at times of this wonderful thing we could have done together ... but for that I ought to have been beautiful and you a sage!...
Today was truly a day of victory, victory over all that yet remained human in the physical consciousness.
O nature, I bring to thee force and light, truth and power; it is for thee to receive and utilise them. It is thou who wilt be receptive in the fruit of thy creation, man, and open the doors of his understanding; it is thou who wilt give him the energy of progress and the will of transformation; and, above all, it is thou who wilt make him accept the Presence and aspire for Realisation.
18 October 1953
This experience followed conclusively the one I had last night whilst seeing Pranab's film. I felt strongly that my children were emancipated and that they no longer need my physical intervention to do their work well. It is enough that my presence among them is an inspiration and guide for them to keep a clear vision of the goal and not to go astray on the way. This leads quite naturally to a physical withdrawal into oneself so as to concentrate materially upon the work of transformation of the body. I can now leave them externally to do things according to their own ideas of execution, reducing my presence to a more or less invisible role of creative inspiration and consciousness.
10 May 1954
Spirit of service has gone away from this place.
16 May 1954
When I say that I have initiated someone, I mean that I have revealed myself to this person, without words, and that he was capable of seeing, feeling and knowing what I am.
It is their mental and vital formation of me that they love, it is not myself. More and more am I faced with this fact. Everyone has made for himself an image of me in conformity with his needs and desires and it is with this image that he is in contact, it is through this that he receives what few universal forces and still less supramental forces succeed in filtering through all these formations. Unfortunately these people cling to my physical presence, otherwise I could withdraw into my inner solitude and, from there, do my work quietly and freely; but this physical presence is for them a symbol and that is why they cling to it, for, in fact, they have very little real contact with what my body truly is, and with the formidable accumulation of conscious energy it represents.
And now, O supreme Force, now that you descend into me and penetrate more and more totally all the atoms of my body, the distance between me and everything around me seems to increase more and more, and more and more do I feel as though I were floating in an atmosphere of radiant consciousness which completely escapes their understanding.
11 June 1954
The body repeats constantly and with a poignant sincerity: "What am I to demand anything whatsoever from anyone at all? Left to myself I am nothing, I know nothing, I can do nothing. Unless the truth penetrates into me and directs me, I am incapable of taking even the minutest decision and of knowing what is the best thing to do and to live even in the most insignificant circumstance. Shall I ever be' capable of being transformed to the point of becoming What I ought to be and of manifesting What wants to manifest upon earth?" But why does this answer always come from the depths, from You, Lord, with an indisputable certitude: "If you cannot do it, no other body upon earth can do it." There is but one conclusion: I shall persist in my effort, without giving in, I shall persist until death or until victory.
8 September 1954
Since I love only you, O Lord, it is You alone whom I love in all and in each one; and by dint of loving You in them, I shall end up by making them a little conscious of You.
For them, the real thing is to know how to let themselves be loved without any preference and obstruction. But, not only do they not want to be loved except in their own way, they do not want also to open themselves to love unless it comes to them through the intermediary of their choice... and what could be done in a few hours, a few months or a few years takes centuries to be accomplished.
When a child lives in normal conditions, it has a spontaneous confidence that all it needs will be given it.
This confidence should persist, unshaken, throughout life; but the limited idea, ignorant and superficial, of its needs which a child has must be replaced progressively by a wider, deeper and truer conception which culminates in the perfect conception of needs in accordance with the supreme wisdom, until we realise that the Divine alone knows what our true needs are and rely upon Him for everything.
19 November 1954
The supreme Divine manifested in an earthly form —generally a human form — for a definite purpose.
They have a disastrous atmosphere. They are pessimistic, dissatisfied, shrivelled up — out of tune with both sides at once, with the soul and with physical nature, which makes their life very miserable.
Am I truly
Yesterday morning I distributed petals of "Divine's Love". The previous night was, here, the darkest of the year and in India it is a great festival. Its true significance is that the Divine's Love is at the base and core of all manifestation even where it seems most completely inconscient.
There is here a Consciousness working. Each one when he goes against this divine Consciousness loses something of his consciousness every time he does so. He goes down each time he does something against it. Each one gains in his consciousness every time he acts according to this divine Consciousness.
The world goes on as it is. When there is nothing you or I can do to change it, we can only keep quiet, silent witness like Brahman. As in the world so here also. So many things go on: each one tries to prove his superiority; there is politics of all kinds, propaganda. I only witness like Brahman; I am neither for nor against, neither approve nor condemn.
26 April 1955
There we are. Lord, it is those very people to whom you have shown most love who make you responsible for their difficulties.
My Lord, Thou hast given me tonight this supreme knowledge:
We are living only because such is Thy will
We shall die only if it be Thy will.
Thou hadst decided to submit our faith to Thy test and pass our sincerity to Thy touch-stone. Grant that from this ordeal we come out greater and purer.
It is indispensable to observe the lower movements in one's being in a detached and scientific way, like a clear-sighted and perspicacious witness; but one should never allow these movements to express and assert them- selves as though they had the right to exist and govern the rest of the being. That is to say, one should never act under the impulsion of these movements, never translate physically their promptings into words or actions, never let their orders be expressed in inner or outer gestures.
19 September 1956
And yet there is an analogy. Just as for the piano you may read all the books possible on the art of playing it, if you do not play it yourself you will never be a pianist, so too you may read everything that has been written on occultism, if you do not practise it yourself, you will never be an occultist. November 1957
Last night I had the vision of what this supramental world could become if men were not sufficiently prepared. The confusion existing at present upon earth is nothing in comparison with what could take place. Imagine that very powerful will has the power to transform matter as it likes! If the sense of collective unity did not grow in proportion to the development of power, the resulting conflict would be yet more acute and chaotic than our material conflicts. ,
15 February 1958
Every outer change must be the spontaneous and inevitable expression of an inner transformation. Normally, every improvement of the condition of physical life must be the flowing out on the surface of a progress realised internally.
29 March 1958
Do not ask questions about the details of material existence of this body; they are in themselves of no interest and must not attract attention.
Throughout all this life, knowingly or unknowingly, I have been what the Supreme Lord wanted me to be, I have done what He wanted me to do. This is the only thing that counts.
22 June 1958
In the final analysis, seeing the world such as it is and seems meant to be irremediable, human intellect has decided that this universe must be an error of God and that the manifestation or creation is certainly the result of a desire, the desire to manifest, know oneself, enjoy oneself. only thing to do is to put an end to this error as soon as possible by refusing to cling to desire and its fatal consequences.
But the Supreme Lord answers that the comedy is not entirely out, and He adds: "Wait for the last act; undoubtedly you will change your mind."
23 July 1958
It is only by the growth and establishment of the consciousness of unity that a true and lasting peace can be realised upon earth. All are welcome although the exterior ones have a very limited effect. But the most important, urgent and indispensable of all is a transformation, human consciousness itself, an enlightenment and a conversion in its workings.
Meanwhile some exterior steps may be taken usefully and the acceptance of the principle of double nationality is one of them.
The main objection to it has always been the possibility of war awkward position in which those who have adopted a double nationality would be in case these two countries were at war. But all those who sincerely want peace must understand that the first indispensable towards it is not to foresee war; any action taking measures in prevision of a possible war is already a step taken towards its outbreak. contrary the larger the number of people who have a vital interest in the abolition of war the more effective the chances towards a stable peace until the advent of a new consciousness in man makes of war an impossibility.
(Sri Aurobindo's bust by E. Frankel.)
From the artistic point of view, it is certainly a masterpiece. It is also an inspired work, inspired by an inner contact with Sri Aurobindo with one of his aspects, with one side of his being, the intellect . that of knowledge, the seer.
1) Exhibited now in the Sri Aurobindo Library.
My Lord, what Thou hast wanted me to do I have done. The gates of the Supramental have been thrown open and the Supramental Consciousness, Light and Force are flooding the earth.
But as yet those who are around me are little aware of it — no radical change has taken place in their consciousness and it is only because they trust my word that they do not say that nothing has truly happened. In addition the exterior circumstances are still harder than they were and the difficulties seem to be cropping up more unsurmountable than ever.
Now that the supramental is there —for of that I am absolutely certaineven if I am the only one upon earth to be aware of it —is it that the mission of this form is ended and that another form is to take up the work in its place? I am putting the question to Thee and ask for an answer — a sign by which I shall know for certain that it is still my work and I must continue in spite of all the contradictions, of all the denials.
Whatever is in the sign, I do not care but it must be obvious.
There is nobody here, even among the best, who is ready to give up all his habits, conveniences and preferences to win the final victory, even if he is to break his neck on the way.
One loses most of the advantage of being here if one is not convinced that I can foresee better the consequences and the results of things and actions.
For those who are afraid of a word.
This is what we mean by "Divine": all the knowledge we have to acquire, all the power we have to obtain, all the love we have to become, all the perfection we have to achieve, all the harmonious and progressive poise we must make manifest in light and joy, all the unknown and new splendours that are to be realised.
This is destined for all those who are working for the organisation and immediate future of human life upon earth, and who see that the only solution of this problem is the concrete and effective realisation of Human Unity.
At the moment, in the physical consciousness, the heart is with X, the lover, and the spiritual confidence with Y, the Guru.
I do not see very well what I have to do in this tableau if it is not as a Will that puts spokes in the wheels of the cart ... of the truth of the Ego.
I prefer to withdraw and be the impartial and unseen witness.
I am always happy to receive and to help those who wish for harmony and conciliation, and are ready to correct their mistakes and to progress. But I can be of no help to those who throw all the blame on the others for they are inapt to see the truth and to act accordingly.
But it goes without saying that those who are here and are ready to face some difficulties in order to remain here, will always be welcome.
As usual my words have been completely changed and their meaning quite distorted.
I said that this coming year may prove quite-a difficult one.
On the road of the ascending evolution, every one is free to choose the direction he will take: the swift and steep climb towards the summits of Truth, to the supreme realisation or turning his back to the peaks the easy descent to the interminable meanders of endless incarnations.
Solution of the economic problem.
Arriving at the synthesis of two problems:
1) adjusting the production to the needs
2) adjusting the needs to the production
For me everything in human life is mixed, nothing is completely good, nothing completely bad. I cannot give my entire and exclusive support to this idea, to one cause or another. The only important thing for me, in action, is Sri Aurobindo's work, automatically my conscious support is with all that helps that work and in proportion of the help. And for the work to be carried on as it must be I need all collaborations and all helps,
I cannot accept only this one or that one and reject the others. I cannot belong to this party or that party. I belong to the Divine alone and my action upon earth is and will always be for the triumph of the Divine, irrespective of all sects and parties.
A short explanation will surely increase the interest of the picture shown to you tonight.
You will notice that it is in three sections, two black and one, the most extensive, in colour; the two black sections (first and last) show how things appear in the physical world, the coloured one expresses a similar sequence of events in the vital world, the world where one can go in deep sleep when one gets out of the body. So long as you have a body no true harm can happen to you in the vital world for the physical body acts like a protection and you can always return into it at will.
This is expressed in the picture in a classical way. You will see that the little girl wears on her feet some magic red slippers and that so long as she keeps the slippers on her feet, nothing wrong can truly happen to her. The ruby red slippers are the sign and the symbol of the connection with the physical body and so long as the slippers are on her feet she can at will return to her body and take shelter therein.
Two other details can be noted with interest. One is the snow shower that saves the party from the influence of the wicked witch who by her black magic has stopped their advance towards the blue castle of knowledge and intellectual power. In the vital, snow is the symbol of purity itself. It is the purity of their feelings and intentions that saves them from the great danger.
Note that to go to the castle of the good wizard they must follow the big path of golden bricks, the path of luminous confidence and joy.
The second is when Dorothy throws water on the straw man to save him from burning, some water falls on the face of the wicked witch who at once gets dissolved and dies. The water is the symbol of the power of purification and no hostile being or force can resist this power handled with good will and sincerity.
Finally when the good fairy teaches to the little girl, on knocking her two red slippers one against the other, how to go back home, by home she means the physical world which is the place of protection and realisation.
As you see the subject of this picture is interesting and not altogether deprived of knowledge; unhappily the whole set up is not as beautiful and harmonious as it could have been. There are some serious mistakes of taste and many regrettable vulgarities. There is only one thing of which I am absolutely sure, and that is who I am. Sri Aurobindo also knew it and declared it. Even the doubts of the whole of humanity would change nothing to this fact.
But another fact is not so certain — it is the usefulness of my being here in a body doing the work I am doing. It is not out of any personal urge that I am doing it. Sri Aurobindo told me to do it and that is why I do it as a sacred duty, in obedience to the dictates of the Supreme.
Time will reveal how far earth has benefited through it.
A self-willed man can not be grateful, because when he gets what he wants he gives all the credit for it to his own will, and when he gets what he does not want he resents it badly and throws all the blame on whomever he considers responsible, God, man or nature.
Compassion and gratitude are purely psychic virtues. They appear in the consciousness only with the participation of the psychic being in active life. The vital and physical feel them as weakness because they put a check upon the free expression of their impulsions based on the power of force.
As usual, the mind, when it is not sufficiently educated, is the accomplice of the vital being and the slave of the physical nature whose crushing laws it does not know well through their half-conscious mechanism. When the mind awakens to the consciousness of the first psychic movements, it deforms them in its ignorance and changes compassion into pity and gratitude in to the will to recompense which is transformed gradually into the capacity to recognise and admire. It is only when the psychic consciousness is all-powerful in the being that compassion for all that is below it on the evolutionary ladder and gratitude for all that is higher than it, in whatever form, manifest in their initial and luminous purity, not containing any vestige of the sense of condescension in the compassion or of inferiority in the gratitude.
In the Bible, God calls Cain and asks him:. 'What have you done with your brother?'
Today I call man and ask him: "What have you done with the earth?"
You have brought down upon earth Peace and Freedom.
Now Freedom and Wisdom must manifest in the heart of every man.
Have you never been mistaken in any of your decisions? Yes, you have been mistaken, haven't you? and many a time.
Then, by what right do you think that when my decision is not the same as yours, it is I who am mistaken?
... stand at street-corners, he held out for alms. Had we diplomatically sided with a religious or political body, we would be flourishing, but the divine white radiance must have no stain.
Selfless work, the self-giving to the realisation of an ideal is for ordinary men something so unthinkable that they hasten to sully it so as not to have to admire it.
...are at one in vilifying the Ashram and bespattering it with their mud. It is the old story that repeats itself.... The worst enemies come together when it is a question of stoning a prophet, crucifying God or condemning a sage to death.
To do good work one must have good taste.
Taste can be educated by study and the help of those who have good taste.
To learn, it is necessary to feel first that one does not know.
15 December 1965
Never I sit in meditation — there is no time and no necessity for it because it is not through meditation that one gives oneself to the Divine, it is through consecration and surrender and it is through all activities of life that consecration and surrender are to be made.
26 November 1967
Until now, my spontaneous attitude was that of the supreme Mother who carries the universe in her loving arms, and I was dealing with each one as with child from whom she tolerates everything equally; and all what the people here were doing to please me I was taking as a token of their love and I was very grateful for it. Today I have learnt that many, if not most, are looking at me as their Guru and that they are eager to please me because to please the Guru is the best way to acquire merit on the path. And then I have understood that the duty of the Guru is to encourage from each one only that which can lead him quickly to the Lord and serve His Divine Purpose, — and I am very grateful for the lesson.
In our way of working we must not be the slaves of Nature; all these habits of trying and changing', doing and undoing and redoing again and again, wasting energy, labour, material and money, are Nature's way of action, not the Divine's. The Divine Consciousness sees first the truth of a work, the best way of doing it according to given circumstances, and when she acts, it is final. She never comes back on what is done, She goes forward, using failure as well as success for a new progress, one more step towards the goal.
In order to progress. Nature destroys while the Divine Consciousness stimulates growth and finally transforms.
We have faith in Sri Aurobindo.
He represents for us something we formulate to ourselves with words which seems to us the most exact for expressing our experience. These words are evidently the best according to us for formulating our experience.
But if, in our enthusiasm, we were convinced that they are the only appropriate words to express correctly what Sri Aurobindo is and the experience he has given us, we would become dogmatic and be on the point of founding a religion.
He who has a spiritual experience and a faith formulates it in the most appropriate words for himself.
But if he is convinced that this expression is the only correct and true one for this experience and faith, he becomes dogmatic and tends to create a religion.
1) failing
Forward! towards a better future, the realisation of tomorrow.
To cure oneself of a critical judgment expressing itself through an incontinence of speech:
1) When one is in this state to refuse absolutely to speak — if need be to make it physically impossible for oneself to speak
2) To study oneself pitilessly and become aware that one carries in oneself precisely all the things one finds so ridiculous in others.
3) To discover in one's nature the state contrary to this (benevolence, humility, goodwill) and insist on developing it to the detriment of the opposite element.
In all religious and specially occult initiations, the ritual of the different ceremonies is prescribed in all detail; all the words pronounced, all the gestures made have their importance and the least infraction of the rule, the least fault committed can have fatal consequences.
It is the same in the material life and if one had the initiation into the true way of living, one could transform the physical existence.
This body has neither the uncontested authority of a god nor the imperturbable calm of the sage. It is yet only an apprentice in supermanhood.
On the choice of a motor-car:
Do you want to go from one place to another without getting tired and without spending much time on the way, or do you want to be smart and look like an important man?
And the body says to the Supreme Lord: "What you want me to be, I shall be, what You want me to do, I shall do."
And you want to make me speak and mentalise the experience until a new "system" is established and you can sit down comfortably in your new mental construction.
By definition the Ashramite has resolved to consecrate his life to the realisation and service of the Divine.
For this four virtues are indispensable, without which progress is uncertain and subject to interruptions and troublesome falls at the first opportunity:
Sincerity, faithfulness, modesty and gratitude.
... substitute the spirit of rivalry and competition by the goodwill of collaboration and mutual understanding.
liberty and order
fraternity and independence
equality and hierarchy
unity and diversity
abundance and scarcity
effort and repose
power and compassion
discernment and benevolence
generosity and economy
wastage and avarice
Obey your soul, it alone has the right to govern your life.
In their blindness men leave the Light and go to the darkness to obtain knowledge!
... so that his life may be governed by a true splendour of soul, so as to face his responsibilities with a noble and generous heart.
And the radiant bliss of this splendour was felt in a perfect peace
Transformation and intimacy
with my blessings full of love and energy.
21 June 1970
I am no more living an active life; if you are open, help is bound to come.
14 December 1972
Consciousness is a state and a power
Love is a force and an action
When Consciousness separated from its Origin and became inconscience the Origin emanated Love to re-awaken Consciousness from the depth of the inconscience and bright it back into touch with its Origin.
It may be said that at its origin love is the supreme power of attraction which awakens, in response, the irresistible need of an absolute self-giving, they are the two poles of the urge towards complete fusion.
No other movement could, better and more surely than this, throw a bridge across the abyss dug by the sense of separation that comes from the formation of the individual. It was necessary to bring back to itself what had been projected into space without destroying for this purpose the universe created thus.,
That is why love sprang up, the irresistible power of union.
This world is a chaos where darkness and light, falsehood and truth, life and death, hatred and love are so closely enlaced that it is almost impossible to distinguish them form one another and still more impossible to decide between them and undo a grip which has all the horror of a merciless struggle, so much the more intense the more veiled it is, above all in the consciousness of man where the conflict changes into the anguish of knowing, of ability, of conquering—a dark and dolorous battle, the more atrocious because it seems without any issue, but which can be resolved above all sensations and feelings and ideas, beyond the words of the mind ...in the Divine Consciousness.
The integral yoga is constituted of an uninterrupted series of examinations which one must pass without being warned about them beforehand
_ which puts you under the obligation of being always vigilant and attentive.
Three groups of examiners set these tests. Apparently they have nothing to do with one another and their procedures are so different, at times even they seem so contradictory that they do not appear to be able to move towards the same end, and yet they complete one another, they collaborate for the same purpose and are indispensable to the integrality of the result.
These three categories of examinations are those set by the forces of Nature, those set by the spiritual and divine forces, and those set by the hostile forces. These latter are the most deceptive in their appearance and in order not to be taken by surprise, unprepared, demands a constant state of vigilance, sincerity and humility.
The most banal circumstances, the events of everyday life, people, things, — apparently the most insignificant, all belong to one or other of these three categories of examiners. In this great and complex organisation of tests it is the events usually considered the most important in life which constitute the examinations easiest to pass for they find you on your guard and prepared. One stumbles more easily on the little pebbles on the road because they do not draw attention.
Endurance and plasticity, cheerfulness and intrepedity are the qualities more specially required for the examinations of physical Nature.
Aspiration, confidence, idealism, enthusiasm and generosity in self- giving for the spiritual examinations.
Vigilance, sincerity and humanity for the examinations set by the adverse forces.
And do not think that on one side there are those who pass exams and on the other those who set them. At the same time, according to the circumstances and moments, one is both examiner and examinee and it may even happen that one is simultaneously, all at once, examined and examiner. And the profit drawn from this depends upon the quality and degree of intensity in one's aspiration and the awakening of one's consciousness.
And, finally, a last recommendation, never pose as an examiner. For, whilst it is very well to remember constantly that one is perhaps fairly in the course of passing a very important exam, it is on the contrary extremely dangerous to think oneself appointed to set tests for others, for this is opening the door to the most ridiculous and disastrous vanities.
The overmind is the age of the gods and consequently of religions; the ideal of the unity of religions is one of the principal ideas of the age of the overmind.
In the supramental creation there will no longer be any religions, the whole of life will be the expression, the flowering into forms of the divine Unity manifesting in the world, and there will no longer be any gods. The great divine beings who will choose not to manifest physically will be friends and collaborators on a footing of equality.
When the physical substance is supramentalised, to be incarnated upon earth will not be a cause of inferiority; on the contrary, one will gain from it a plentitude which could not be had otherwise.
The whole of humanity should be organised upon these bases. But the organisation will not be true and viable unless at its centre and at its head there is the supramental Truth-Consciousness manifested in an individual or a small group of individuals who will be representatives of the new race, the incarnation of the supramental consciousness upon earth.
During the last lesson we learnt how to detach ourselves from our thoughts so as to be able to observe them like an attentive spectator.
Today we must learn how to watch these thoughts, look at them like an enlightened judge so as to discern between the good ones and the bad, between thoughts which are useful and those which are harmful, between constructive thoughts which lead to victory and defeatist thoughts which take us away from it. It is this power of discernment which we have to acquire now.
Second stage — discernment — discerning between good and bad thoughts, useful and harmful thoughts, thoughts which help progress and defeatist thoughts.
This is the counterpart of what we read last time. But note that here it is a question only of the thoughts which produce resentment. Its is because rancour as well as jealously are among the most widespread causes of human misery.
But how to get rid of rancour? A vast and generous heart is surely the best means, but it is not within everybody's reach. The control of one's thought may be more commonly used. Thought-control is the third stage of our mental discipline. After the enlightened judge of our conscious- ness has discerned between the useful thoughts and the harmful ones, there comes the inner policeman who will let only the accepted thoughts pass and refuse admission strictly to every undesirable element. With a magisterial gesture this policeman will close the entry to every bad thought and push it away as far as possible.
It is this movement of admission of refusal which we call the control of thought and this will be the object of our meditation this evening.
He pushed on the table before me a scrap of paper which seemed to have been torn form an exercise-book page, without any letter-head or anything official, on which he had written for me in a clumsy hand that I was promising to pay for the extra stamps if they were necessary.
I felt like a poor traveller accosted in the corner of a wood by a band of brigands, pistols in hand, asking you to empty your pockets before letting you pass. I hesitated for a moment, but I am a sport and I signed, thinking 'We shall see how far they dare to go...'
In this world one pays dearly for wanting to be unselfish!
In a severe tone:
"Madam, you are pledging your word."
Very quietly:
"I know it, sir, and when I make a promise, I keep it. But for me these things don't have much importance. I have no attachment for any religion, and when one has no attachment, one has no aversion either. For me religions are forms, much too human, of spiritual life. Each one expresses one aspect of the single and eternal Truth, but in expressing it exclusively of the other aspects it deforms and diminishes it. None has the right to call itself the only true one, any more than it has the right to deny the truth contained in the others. And all of them together would not suffice to express the Supreme Truth which is beyond all expression, even whilst being present in each one".
In a dry tone:
"I am sorry, madam, but in this field I cannot follow you".
Smiling and peaceful:
"I know that very well, sir, and I told you all this only to explain to you why I did not reply very seriously to the promise you were demanding from me".
It may be said that perfection is attained, through it remains progressive, when the receptivity from below is equal to the force from above which wants to manifest.
Collaboration and reciprocal good will are indispensable for good work.
11 August 1954
The closer you come to the Divine the more you live under a shower of overwhelming evidences of His immeasurable Grace.
15 August 1955
Before getting angry for the mistakes of others one should always remember one's own mistakes.
It is by combined and patient effort that all good work is done.
When you start a quarrel it is as if you were declaring war to the Divine's work.
For the work steadiness and regularity are as necessary as skill. Whatever you do, do it always carefully.
If mistakes were not to be effaced, then never the world could reach salvation.
There is no fire that can be compared with passion,
no misfortune equal to hatred.
no misery comparable with the agitation of the mind.
He who follows the steep path that climbs the heights can easily slip down into the abyss.
Divine solicitude is supporting you in the disinterested work through which you will attain transformation.
Open to the New Light that has dawned upon Earth and your path will be illumined.
To be always happy, with an unclouded, unfluctuating happiness of all things this is the most difficult to accomplish.
Our faith in the omnipotence of the Grace is never equal to what the Grace itself is. July 1956
There is nothing which, in the last analysis, is not an instrument leading to the integral Victory of the Divine.
July 1956
Be always ready to receive the Divine for He may come to you at any moment at all.
And because He has kept you waiting at the rendez-vous, that is not a reason for you to be late. September 1956
In order to be able to conquer death and win immortality, one must neither fear death nor desire it.
To seek for pleasure is to ask for pain, for they are the obverse and reverse of the same thing.
It is a mistake or a superstition to believe that a thing or an outer circumstance can be the cause of anything whatsoever. All things and all circumstance are the concomittant effects of a force which acts from behind the veil.
The Force acts and each one reacts according to his own nature.
Unless your goal is the Divine Realisation upon earth, at whatever cost, take good care, do not come too close to the divine messengers for their action is like a hurricane that sweeps away all established things.
7 May 1957
Every word spoken useless is a dangerous gossiping.
Every malicious word, every slander is a degradation of the consciousness.
And when this slander is a expressed in a vulgar language and gross terms, then that is equivalent to a suicide - the suicide of one's soul.
9 August 1957
My heart aspires to be vast enough for Thy Victory.
For those who use only their physical eyes, the victory cannot be apparent until it is total, that is to say, physical.
But this does not mean that it is not already won in principle.
2 October 1957
Widen yourself as far as the extreme bounds of the universe and beyond.
Take upon yourself always all the necessities of progress and dissolve them in the ecstasy of unity. Then you will be divine.
13 November 1957
(About the Gnostic supramental consciousness)
What gives the sense of a great simplicity; for it is always when one goes down that the complications begin.
One speaks a great deal about this teaching but one does not follow it.
Human beings for the most part have the inveterate habit of deceiving themselves. They deceive themselves in hundreds of different ways, each more slyly tricky and subtle than the other, and all this with at once a perfect can dour and a perfect insincerity.
Love alone can overcome hate and violence.
Let the Divine Compassion express itself through you always and in all circumstances.
The divine compassion reaches out not only to the one who is eaten
but also to the one who eats, not only to the one who is tortured but also
the one who tortures.
1957
To give oneself to the Divine, to receive and be the Divine, to transmit and spread forth the Divine: these are the three simultaneous movements which constitute our total relation with the Divine.
It is the supreme Wisdom that decides these things and not the ignorant human will.
And yet the Divine is everywhere in the ignorant man as well as in the sage.
S is always present in our thoughts and living in our hearts. For the thought the world is small, for the heart there is no distance.
Be faithful to your ideal and dedicate your work to the Divine.
The Lord will possess his universe perfectly only when the universe will have become the Lord.
Here is love and here the Presence, and indestructible Wealth.
Get rid of all violence and you will no longer have any fear.
For those whose destiny it is to scale the summits, the least false step risks being a mortal danger.
In the course of time and even in the course of your present life you can make your choice once and for all, irrevocably, and then you have only to confirm it with every new occasion; or else if you do not take a definite decision immediately', you will have to choose a new at each moment between the falsehood and the Truth.
One of the chief functions of the physical mind is to doubt. If you listen to it, it will always find a thousand reasons for doubting. But you must know that the physical mind is working in ignorance and full of falsehood.
The Divine Love is the essence of Truth and cannot be affected by the human confusions.
In the Ashram one must do only what one may do publicly, for nothing remains hidden. As for my protection it is equally over all and not over some as against others.
You cannot expect another to be perfect unless you are yourself perfect. Now to be perfect is to exactly what the supreme Lord wants you to be.
3 June 1958
Better not count upon man.
July 1959
1.)From the beginning
When one works for the Divine, it is much better to do perfectly what one does rather than to aim at a very big work.
13 May 1959
All having a common uplifting ideal, we shall unite; and in this union and by this union we will face and overcome the attacks of all opposing forces of darkness and devastation. In union is the strength, in union is the power, in union is the certitude of Victory.
31 October 1959
It is not a number that we want — it is a selection; it is not brilliant students that we want, it is living souls.
August 1960
The whole value of a medicine is in the Spirit it contains.
22 February 1961
To walk on the path one must bold, must never turn back on oneself with this mean, petty, weak, ugly movement that is fear. An indomitable courage, a perfect sincerity and a sincere self-giving to the extent that you do not calculate or bargain, you do not give with the idea of receiving, you do not give offer yourself with the idea that you will be protected, you do not have a faith that needs proofs — it is that which is indispensable for advancing on the way; this alone can shelter you against all danger.
29 March 1961
It is not in man's nature to be faithful.
A company that has no name, no business and no money, is nota company, it is a fraud.
The only salvation is in an absolute sincerity and truthfulness.
25 March 1963
A gift made through vanity is profitable neither to the giver nor to the receiver.
As long as there is within any being the possibility of an inner conflict, it means that he has still some insincerity in him.
It is better to state a truth than to disregard it; but it is much better still to live it than to state it.
There must be nobility in one's nature not to bear a grudge against someone who has done you good.
To realise the progressive truth, theories must be modelled on practice and not practice adapted to the theory.
Men tolerate the presence of the Divine upon earth only on condition that He suffers there.
All that is conducive to the keeping of one's consciousness in the most material planes of the being would be criminal.
There is no greater victory than that of controlling oneself.
One must not take consequences for causes.
Goodwill for all and goodwill from all, is the basis of peace and harmony.
Whatever is your personal value or even your individual realisation, the first quality required in yoga is humility.
Let India work for the future and take the lead. Thus she will recover her true place in the world.
since long it was the habit to govern through division and opposition. The time has come to govern through union, mutual understanding and collaboration.
To choose a collaborator, the value of the man is more important than the party to which the belongs.
The greatness of country does not depend on the victory of a party but on union of all the parties.
6 October 1969
Mother is which all those who are sincere in their aspiration towards a divine life.
26 March 1971
For each problem there is a solution that can give satisfaction to everybody, but for finding this ideal solution each one must want it instead of meeting the others with the will to enforce one's own preference.
Enlarge your consciousness and aspire for the satisfaction of all.
All quarrels in the place where food is prepared, makes food indigestible.
The cooking must be done in silence and harmony.
Insincerity leads on the path to ruin.
Even within the confusion, there is the seed of the Divine order.
It is good to read a Divine Teaching
It is better to learn it.
The best is to live it.
Indeed, the goodwill hidden in all things reveals itself everywhere to that one who carries goodwill in his consciousness.
This is a constructive way of feeling which leads straight to the Future.
Those who are ready for the transformation can do it anywhere and those who are not ready cannot do it wherever they are. 12 November 1971
Take the division out of the heart and then speak, of no division.
Whether I see you or not makes no difference to the help. It will always be there.
Let your consecration to Truth be complete and constant.
It is not in the outward circumstances that you must look for quietness, it is from inside yourself. Deep inside the being there is a peace that brings quietness in the whole being down to the body, if we allow it to do so. It is that peace you must seek and then you will get the quietness you wish for.
When we have to work collectively, it is always better to insist, in our thoughts, feelings and actions, on the points of agreement rather than on the points of divergence.
We must give importance to the things that unite and ignore, as much as possible, those that separate.
Even when physically the lines of work differ, the union can remain intact and constant if we keep always in mind the essential points and Principles which unite, and the Divine goal, the Realisation which must be the one unchanging object of our aspiration and works.
From step to sleep, from truth to truth, we shall climb ceaselessly until we reach the perfect realisation of tomorrow.
A broad mind,
a generous heart,
an unflinching will,
a quiet steady determination,
an inexhaustible energy
and a total trust in one's mission,
this makes a perfect Doctor.
Be sincere in the work you have undertaken and the Grace will always be there to help you.
Let the waves of the past flow far from you carrying away with them all attachments and all weaknesses.
The luminous joy of the divine consciousness is waiting ready to take their place.
Let each one do his very best and, peacefully,-leave to the Supreme the care of the result.
If each one took the resolution of mastering oneself and controlling one's impulses, the situation would become more clear.
When people allow their consciousness to remain in a turmoil, all their life becomes a turmoil.
Do not expect any satisfaction from physical life and you will no more be tied to it.
Let nothing short of Perfection be your ideal in work and you are sure to become a true instrument of the Divine.
It is better to use the energies received from the Divine for perfection rather than for aggrandisement.
An illness of the body is always the outer expression and translation of a disorder, a disharmony in the inner being. Unless this inner disorder is healed the outer cure cannot be total and permanent.
Disease is needlessly prolonged and ends in death oftener than is inevitable, because the mind of the patient supports and dwells upon the disease of the body.
From the standpoint of yoga it is not so much what you do but how you do it that matters most.
Which is the easiest way to forget oneself?
Always do the right thing, in the right way and at the right moment.
To be convincing when you speak think not in ideas but in experiences.
Be grateful for all ordeals, they are the shortest way to the Divine.
When difficulties besiege you know that the Divine grace is with you.
With confidence we shall advance;
With certitude we shall wait.
Never say, "I have nothing to give to the Divine." There is always something to give, for always you can give yourselves in a better and more complete way.
Nothing can be compared to the peace that comes from a total trust in the Grace.
Realisation
That is what we aspire for and for which we shall strive unceasingly' however long it may take.
Here the only power we can dispose of is the power of love.
In the depths of the Inconscient, there also shines the Divine Consciousness resplendent and eternal.
Death is not at all what you believe it to be. You expect from death the neutral quietness of an unconscious rest. But to obtain that rest you must prepare for it.
Amrita - sketch by the Mother
There are some petals, flower petals, inside, but they are charged with force, and if you keep them upon you, the contact with me is kept. So if you refer inside, you can establish the contact and have even an answer.
Let him keep this envelope in his pocket and look at the picture when he feels depressed.
The Mother used to write her full name only on documents:
M. Alfassa
Otherwise, she would normally sign notes, letters and messages:
Where only an initial was enough, she wrote :
A Prayer
Let this year that begins for me, be the beginning of a new life made of unshakable faith and trust in the Divine and of a constant aspiration.
February 1934
(Mantram for Pandit)
In the name of my Lord,
for the sake of my Lord,
with the will of my Lord,
by the power of my Lord,
stop immediately harassing us.
(Prayer for the children of Dortoir Boarding)
We all want to be the true children of our Divine Mother.
But for that, sweet Mother, give us patience and courage, obedience, good will, generosity and unselfishness, and all the necessary virtues.
This is our prayer and aspiration.
15 January 1947
(To Madanlal)
My Lord, make me entirely thine.
Grant me a quite trust, a peaceful strength, an ardent faith and devotion.
My Lord, my Mother,
You are always with me with your blessings and your grace-]
Your presence is the supreme protection.
"My Lord, grant me this quiet trust in Thee which overcomes all the difficulties."
A prayer for Gunvant, with love and blessings
Lord, give me this Grace to never forget you.
17 December 1958
Lord, give me perfect sincerity, that sincerity which will lead me straight to Thee.
August 1962
(The words of the music)
Lord, give me the real happiness, that which depends only upon Thee.
A grain of practice is worth a mountain of theories.
Lord, on this anniversary day of my birth, grant that the power to know changes in me into a power to transform myself integrally.
O my Lord
With your help and grace what is there to fear!
You are the supreme protection that defeats all the enemies.
O Lord
Let Thy will be done
Thou art the Supreme and perfect protection.
Lord, grant that my vision of things may be direct and objective and my acts be completely transformed by it.
Remember that the Mother is always with you. Address Her as follows and She will pull you out of all difficulties:
"O Mother, Thou art the light of my intelligence, the purity of my soul, the quiet strength of my vital, the endurance of my body. I rely on Thee alone and want to be entirely Thine. Make me surmount all obstacles on the way."
Lord, grant that a stupidity once committed and recognised may never be repeated.
(Dahyabhai)
Let this new house be filled with an ardent aspiration for the Divine Realisation and in answer to the call the Divine Presence will be there.
7 October 1951
When writing materials like fountain pens, ball-pens and pencils were offered to the Mother, she would often try them immediately. Here is what she wrote about five pencils tried out on a piece of paper:
the good pencil
a nice pencil
another nice pencil
a still better pencil
the perfect pencil
The central circle represents the Divine consciousness.
The four petals represent the four power of the mother.
The twelve petals represents the twelve power of the mother manifested for Her work.
Centre and 4 power white. The 12, all of different colours in three groups
(1) top group red passing through orange towards yellow, (2) next group yellow passing through green towards blue, (3) blue passing through violet towards red. If white is not convenient, the centre maybe gold (powder).
20 march 1934
The descending triangle represents Sat-Chit-Ananda.
The ascending triangle represents the answer from matter under the from of life, light and love.
The junction of both the central square - is the perfect manifestation having at its centre the Avatar of the Supreme - the lotus.
The water - inside the square - represents the multiplicity, the creation.
The effective manifestation of Ishwara and Ishwari in union.
The four S. that Subhadra must develop:
Sincerity
Simplicity
Silence
Steadiness
Satyen
The Four S -
I propose for your realisation:
Straightforwardness
Chinmayi's C:
Consciousness
Courage
Cheerfulness
Continuity
Pavitra'sP:
Peace
Purity
Patience
Perspicacity
''The following instructions were circulated in the Ashram during the first few years of its existence. The first short notice is by Sri Aurobindo, the last is by the Mother. The other two longer notices seem to have been formulated by Nolini Kanta Gupta, the Secretary of the Ashram, following the oral or written indications of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Some of he rules in them were written by Sri Aurobindo or else taken almost verbatim from his letters.)
After a careful study of the Ashram, nothing short of spiritual intensity is needed for the conquest over the greed for food. 27 November 1929
1) Always behave as if the Mother was looking at you; because she is indeed, always present.
2) All new-comers and persons connected with them are hereby informed that every new arrival to the Ashram is to be reported to Purani on the same day in order to furnish information for the Police.
3) There have been several instances recently in which members of the Ashram have been rude and over-bearing in their behaviour to the
French Police when they come to the Ashram in connection with the registration of new arrivals. There can be no possible excuse for this kind c conduct, especially as the police authorities have agreed to our own proposals in the matter and we have undertaken to help them with all necessary information's. Sri Aurobindo has already given a warning again; making trouble for the Ashram with the authorities; it ought not to h necessary to repeat it.
Especial care must be-taken during these days when many are arriving from outside. If the police come for information, they must not be sent rudely away; they should be asked to wait and information be given to Purani who will deal with the matter.
4) Food and other requirements are given in the Ashram to those who have made a complete surrender of their means to the Mother and receive only what she gives them. If anyone receives money from outside and keeps it, it will be understood that he wishes to live on his own independent means and does not need anything from the Ashram and arrangements will be made accordingly.
5) Furniture purchased by a temporary inmate for personal use remains a property of the Ashram when he leaves the place. He cannot take it with him nor claim it back when he comes again.
6) Nothing should be sent out for publication (contributions i newspapers and Magazines or books) without having been first submitted to Sri Aurobindo for approval.
7) Sri Aurobindo's work is purely spiritual. Anyone entering the Ashram as a member must abstain from political connections or activities
8) The moment one enters the life of the Ashram and takes up the Yoga he ceases to belong to any creed or caste or race; he is one of S Aurobindo's disciples and nothing else. Race prejudices, caste feeling pride of sect or contempt of other religions have no place here. Eve sadhak should remember this in his thought and speech and dealings with the others.
9) Visitors from outside should not be received in the Ashram by the sadhaks except under special circumstances and by permission Infringement of this rule may have very inconvenient consequences f the work.
10) Nothing should be spoken to outsiders as to what passes in the Ashram without special permission from the Mother.
11) Outsiders should not be allowed within the precincts of any of the houses of the Ashram. If anyone wishes to see the Ashram, it can be do only after special permission from the Mother.
12) Rule No. 4 applies only to permanent members of the Ashram. Those who stay only for a time must contribute to the expenses a monthly sum to be fixed by the Mother.
13) Permanent members of the Ashram are expected to undertake some part of the work necessary for its organisation and maintenance. The nature of the work to be given to them will be decided by the Mother. Those who reside temporarily may also assist while they are here.
14) This Ashram, maintaining almost a hundred people, has to be run at a heavy expense; it is therefore the understanding that while those who have nothing (the majority) are admitted free and nothing is asked from them, the few who have something are expected to give what they have. If they wish to have the charge of their whole spiritual and material future taken over by us, it is at least fair that they should make the offering of all their possessions.
Early 1930s
It has been found necessary to change some of the forms and methods hitherto used to help by external means, the individual and collective sadhana. This has to be done especially in regard to the consecration of food, the collective meditation and the individual contact of the sadhak with the Mother. The existing forms were originally arranged in order to make possible a spiritual and psychic communion on the most physical and external planes, by which there would be an interchange of forces, a continuous increase of the higher consciousness on the physical plane, a more and more rapid change of the external nature of the sadhaks and afterwards an increasing descent of the supramental light and power into Matter.
Meditation at 7 a.m. on all days of the week except Wednesday and Friday. Flower offering on Tuesday and Thursday, none on Saturday, Sunday and Monday.
All fixed or daily times for sadhaks seeing the Mother are cancelled.
Every day the Mother will call those whom she wants to see. Any others who need to see her, will inform Nolini early in the morning or the night before, and write the reason for their request which will be acceded to or otherwise dealt with, according to circumstances and possibilities.
The soup will be distributed in the evening in the downstairs verandah of Sri Aurobindo house. All who taste it must be present at 8.30 and remain seated in silence till the Mother comes. Before the distribution there will be few minutes' concentration all together.
The night meditations are cancelled for a time.
On the first of each month, the distribution from the stores will bi made in the store room, in the presence of the Mother, at 8 p.m.
The Ashram is meant for Yoga, not for musical entertainments, or other social activities.
Those that live in the Ashram are requested to live quietly an noiselessly, and if they are not capable themselves of meditation, the must at least leave the others to meditate.
Radhananda's original poem:
Why burnest thou, O fire, within my soul? Cheated by hope I sink beneath the strain Of thy divinity that has allured With its huge promise of unearthly goal This human, yea, too human self of mine! Too long have I thy scorching bliss endured, Too long the ecstasy of god struck pain! Madden not thus my failing flesh and mind - For mercy's sake, tell me what Might divine Has blown the blaze of thy effulgent wind Into my life? What immortality Beckons thee forward, guides thee from behind, O Shining Shadow of Dark Mystery?
Poem as corrected by Sri Aurobindo:
Why burnst thou thus, O fire, within my soul? Baulked of my hope I sink beneath the strain Of the divinity that has allured With the vast promise of its far off goal This human, O, too human self of mine! Thy scorching bliss I have too long endured, Too long this ecstasy of god struck pain! Madden not thus my failing flesh and mind — Have pity, let me feel the Might divine That blew thy blaze on some effulgent wind Into my life. What immortality Beckons thee on or guides thee from behind, O Shining Shadow of that Mystery?
Sri Aurobindo's comments on the poem. The numbers in the left column refers to the lines of the original poem.
1) Rhythm weak.
2) "Cheated" is too common and violent to be in tune with the style of the poem.
3) "The" gives a larger idea than "thy" and avoids a rather awkward construction of the syntax.
4) "Promise of unearthly goal" is not English. "An" or "its" is needed before the adjective — in the latter case the first "its" has to go. "Huge" gives a sense of uncouthness which it is not your intention to give.
5) Yea is archaic and rhetorical.
6) I alter the order both to get rid of an awkward inversion and to give a more natural turn to the repetition of "too long". To put the object between the subject and the verb should be avoided — it can only rarely be used and then only in order to get an unusual and powerful effect. On the other hand to put the object at the beginning for the sake of emphasis is permissible.
9) "For mercy's sake" is impossibly colloquial, — it cannot be used in poetry.
10) You cannot speak of "the blaze of a wind" — the phrase is too violent.
12) "Or" is indispensable here for smoothness in the sense.
13) "Dark" is out of place, it gives a sense of something sad and ad- verse. "That" referring back to "Might Divine" and indicating some supreme rahasyam would be much more poetic and profound.
[Punamchand had a small Ashram in Patan, Gujarat, where he and others practised Yoga under Sri Aurobindo 's guidance. Every year from 1919 onwards, he travelled to Pondicherry to visit Sri Aurobindo. In 1923, during his annual visit lie asked for permission to stay permanently in Pondicherry along with his wife Champaben. Sri Aurobindo agreed. When Punamchand went to Patan to bring back his wife, Sri Aurobindo asked about Champaklal and told him, "Bring him also when you come here. "
Punamchand, his wife Champaben, Kamala's brother Mahesh, and Champaklal arrived in Pondicherry on 12 June 1923 and lived there for four years.
One day he ingured his leg, which had to be operated upon in Madras. When the leg did not heal even after a year, his parents insisted that he should return to Patan for treatment. Responding to their wish, he left Pondicherry with his wife. Her letters from Patan show that Punamchand was not happy about this and cried for the Lord always.
While living in Gujarat, Punamchand was given the work of collecting the funds for building up the Ashram in Pondicherry. He approached many persons, particularly businessmen in Mumbai and Gujarat, for contributions.
In his reminiscences, Champaklal writes: "Punamchand was well known in our town. I met him in the Akhada (gymnasium), which was quite popular, where I went regularly. He was well built and not only looked after the boys' exercises but also followed the yoga of Sri Aurobindo. I was much influenced by him. The Mother told me how hard she had to work to remove his influence over me;
it remained with me till 1930."]
1) See Champaklal Speaks, 2002 ed., pp. 3-4, 38-39.
To Punamchand
I) Separation of Purusha and Prakriti to establish tranquillity of heart and mind.
(a) Separated Purusha, calm, observing Prakriti.
(b) Prakriti in the heart and mind attending calmness.
II) Offering of all the actions, all that is done in your life as a sacrifice to the Lord.
III) Realisation of the higher Divine Shakti doing all the works.
(a) Living with the constant idea that it is the Shakti which does the work.
(b) Feeling of the Divine Shakti descending from above the mind and moving the whole being.
1921
(Punamchand's letter to Sri Aurobindo)
My Lord,
After I left Pondicherry, November last, this is my first letter. Although I thought to write many a time, I write only this one.,
I thought it better to write you after I see some light or some experience, but up to now I have not seen anything substantial.
You said to me "it is not good to give shakti now when it is pushing forward for its own perfection; when it will be perfect, I will give it to you," I also know there are many who ask you for shakti and so I thought it better not to write you for that. But now I see no other way than this.
There are altogether nine souls in the Ashrama — I, my wife, Dixit and his wife and two children, a boy of six and a daughter of one year old, Kantilal, Champaklal and Natvarlal. All, we feel, have a spiritual tendency but externally very much undeveloped. The result is a very unpleasant discord. In the constructive work of the Ashrama, with regard to education and culture, I should say that we have been able to do very, very little. And with regard to economic life, we had no permanent resources, we financed ourselves with the help of friends. Very likely, in the present condition, we cannot henceforward receive financial help nor do we like to seek it. And so we have already started work of preparing leather sandals (which we do with our own hands) on a very small scale; that gives us food and cloth anyhow. Apart from giving us food and cloth, it also help us spiritually in removing our old samskaras of considering the work to be quite inferior and below our dignity and not befitting us! We have some other works in view, as for example, agriculture and silk weaving etc., but owing to want of capital we cannot begin at the present. Thus cultural and economic causes have produced great strain. Dixit is weakened physically and mentally owing to anxiety of finance, strain of internal discord, physical drain due to sexual excess etc. Dixit's wife with two children cannot undergo the hardships entailed by our present precarious economic position. And so Dixit has now accepted an employment as a teacher here in Patan, so as to enable to cover his expenses. (All about Dixit is in his own words). Kantilal will go to Bombay in a few days and stay and serve there for a few months, (until his elder brother who has recently passed his final examination in Civil Engineering, gets a good service) he is forced to do so owing to strong financial necessity of his house and family. He will return afterwards and stay and work with us. Now I will be in the Ashrama with my wife and two boys, Champaklal and Natvarlal. Now I have realised perfectly well, how difficult it is to establish a Deva Sangha or a spiritual unity even between a few souls. I fee] that it is most difficult or rather impossible to establish a Deva Sangha without the realization of the Spirit. I know it is very difficult to realize oneself but at least there must be some sound spiritual basis for the commune and the work.
I do not desire personal salvation or Bliss, but for our work this is the means and so as means for the work, I want it and not for anything else personal. In November last a fortnight after I saw you, I felt separation of Purusha and Prakriti once in the dream-state. Once I felt for nearly seven days that all my desires, as they were entering into me, were dissolving calmly as rivers in the ocean. Once I felt the world and all around me very terrible, kalasvarupa, and it continued for about a month and then stopped. Then once, after about two hours' concentration, I felt for an hour an ocean of shakti around me, and I was as if a leaf moved here and there. Sometimes I feel the centre of my being, above the top of my head, and at the time I feel that the substance of thought descends from that centre but the formations of thought take place in the mind. Nowadays I feel a pressure on my head, I feel as if some one thinks, sees, hears and does everything but through mind, eyes, ears, etc. I also feel the reflection and response of the state of the minds of the persons with whom I come into contact and according as the person is happy, gloomy or sick, the same feelings arise in me and cause a great physical and mental disturbance. Then I felt some invisible white light within my body for a very short time. And very recently on 24th last, at night, in meditation, I saw a golden light (it was like a circle of nearly two inches diameter). I am not confident at all, whether all my above experiences are mental imaginations or true and real experiences.
Now I feel that I must have, at any cost, some sound and solid basis in me for the work and so I wish to come over there for that purpose. If it is your will, I may come there; if not, I will surrender to your will. If I am to come, am I to come alone or with her?
Instead of an unwritten answer, I would indeed like most to receive an immediate written answer and so I humbly pray to you to accede to this my request. I am now anxiously awaiting it.
Eternally at your feet,
Patan
28 July 1922 Yours,
Punamchand Mohanlal Shah
(Sri Aurobindo's reply through his disciple, K. Amrita)
Dear Punamchand,
Your small note to me and the letter addressed to Sri Aurobindo Ghose are to hand. I gave your letter personally and "hand to hand" as directed by you to A.G.
A.G. says it is not possible to call and it would not be desirable for your sadhana at present. He is too much engrossed in his own sadhana and hardly gives us time except for meditation for which we all sit daily between 5 and 6 in the evening. It is the pressure of the yoga and the way in which it has taken him that makes it difficult for him to call you. It is the same reason Moti Babu of Chandernagore also is not called. Some, when allowed to remain here, found it rather difficult as the pressure of the yoga around A.G. is too intense and powerful and at last it was thought necessary that they should do yoga from a distance deriving inspiration from him. As a matter of fact I know one or two who are marvelously benefiting by the very fact of their being at a distance. I think this is why he has asked me to tell you that it will not be good for you to come here at present and do sadhana.
Secondly, he wanted me to tell you that this yoga cannot and must not be taken as a means for any work, even if the work is not personal. He learnt from your letter that you want to make work and activity the goal and to use this yoga as a means for that. The sadhana must be done in order to get to a Consciousness which is above this human and men The rest, whether to do a work (if any work, the nature of the work) or to do a particular work or to remain quiet will all be decided by that Supreme Consciousness which is above us. Then only we become real instrument of that Consciousness and also our surrender to God g a significance and value. Not only our work must not be personal but our work or no work must also be decided by God.
Thirdly, A.G. says your experiences are real and they are not mental imaginations as you seem to doubt them. As for example, the feeling the centre of our being above our head, or the vision of the white light above our head or the circular golden light on the top of the head - one and all of them are real and true - experiences. If you begin to disbelieve these experiences, then you will be creating an impediment strong enough to prevent the experiences from settling into permanent states consciousness. You must have faith in the power of the Supreme that giving you these glimpses, if you want the supreme help and guidance To get to the Divine Consciousness which will shape itself into a Div Life must be the central idea of this sadhana.
Please keep writing as often as you can, intimating your experience The rest he will do.
Kumud Bandhu Bagchi is in Nawadweep. He and some others doing sadhana there. Please acknowledge receipt of this letter.
Pondicherry
3 August 1922
Yours sincere
K. Amrita
The Bearer Punamchand Mohanlal Shah is my disciple and is now with me practising Yoga in Pondicherry. He is trustworthy and faithful in matters and enjoys my entire confidence.
Pondicherry 15
August 19
AUROBINDO GHOSE
Punamchand
As regards the amount of Rs. 500/- monthly from Vithaldas and your note in the account, I presume it is clearly understood that his sum has nothing to do with the account. It must be kept quite separate and remit here every month as soon as it is received; it must on no account and in circumstances be detained or used for any other purpose whatsoever.
As to the expenses shown in the account, you asked originally for Rs. 70/- a month in Bombay or Rs. 30/- in Patan; but the actual expenditure has been for months above Rs. 200/-. This is an enormous amount and, as I have already pointed out, it is swallowing up all you collect. I do not see how you expect to be able to maintain this rate of expenditure for an indefinite period or what purpose it serves.
The ornaments offered by Chandulal's mother.
Certainly, you can accept and send them. I do not know why you felt any scruple in this matter. Whatever is given with Bhakti can and ought to be received and not rejected whether it is money, things of value or useful things, there may be exceptions, as for instance where the gift is of a quite unsuitable or cumberous kind, but this is obviously not the case here.
(2) The talk with Haribhai.
Think no more about it except to retain the lesson. Your mistake was to interfere with your ignorant mind in a matter which had been decided by the Mother, as if it could know better than she did. As usually happens when the physical mind acts in this way, it made wrong reasoning and foolish blunder. It was as if you gave Haribhai a choice between giving money or giving the clothes and other articles. He was to give both and there was no question of a choice between them; nor could this kind of balancing and reduction on one side or the other be good for his spiritual progress. The fact that other clothes were coming from a Mill could make no difference; that was quite another list and did not meet the same needs. As for the other possibilities you speak of, they have nothing to do with previous arrangements and present requirements; they are only a possibility of the future. I write this much only to show you how mistaken these mental movements are: but you need not worry about it any longer.
(3) The 'Four Aspects' is half written and will be finished in a few days. It has been decided to publish these four writings with the February message in Calcutta. Motilal Mehta can use them instead of the August 15"' utterances.
3 October, 1927
To Punamchand M. Shah
I have received your letter and am sending this answer with Haribhai. I do not consider it necessary or advisable to make a public appeal for the sum of money I have asked you to raise for me in Gujarat. If a public appeal is to be made, it can only be when the time comes for my work to be laid on larger foundations and I can create the model form or outward material organization of the new life which will be multiplied throughout India and, with India as a spiritual nucleus and centre in other countries. Then larger sums of money will be indispensable and a public appeal may become advisable.
At present I am making a smaller preliminary foundation, a spiritual training ground and the first form of a community of spiritual workers. Here they will practise and grow in this Yoga and learn to act from the true consciousness and with the true knowledge and power. Here too some first work will be undertaken and institutions founded on a small scale which will prepare for the larger and more definite work of the future. I need money to buy land and houses, to get equipment for these first institutions and to accommodate and maintain an increasing number of sadhaks and workers. A public appeal is not necessary to raise the sums that are at present indispensable. I prefer to make it only when I have already created sufficient external form that all can see. It will be easy for you to raise privately the money I now want if you are inspired to get into touch with the right and chosen people.
As you can judge, even this preliminary work will be a matter not of one but several lakhs, but I have named one lakh as the minimum immediately needed in order that we may start solidly and go on without being hampered at each step for want of funds. If you can raise more than the initial minimum, so much the better. The work will proceed more easily and quickly and with a surer immediate prospect. Preserve the right consciousness and attitude, keep yourself open to the Divine Shakti and let her will be done through you.
1 January 1928
Punamchand,
I have not been "angry" with you, but have simply been observing your state of consciousness and your action with the necessary approval or disapproval. Therefore the excessive emotions of grief and dejection you describe in your letter are out of place. What you have to realize is that your success or failure depends, first and always, on your keeping in the right attitude and in the true psychic and spiritual atmosphere and allowing the Mother's force to act through you and move those whom you approach for this work. Or, if you cannot do that always, you must at least be able to put them into relation with her force and keep them in connection with it. They would then move in the right way without well knowing why or what moved them, but through an impulse and an interest or a psychic need created in them, and the work would be done. It is not "their movement" or your movement that matters most, but the movement of the Mother's force. If I can judge from your letters, you take its support too much for granted and lay the first stress on your own ideas and plans and words about the work; but these whether good or bad, right or mistaken, are bound to fail if they are not instruments of the true Force.
I do not wish, however, to waste time over the past and its mistakes and failures; it is the future that matters. The two men you speak of in your letter will be tried; the Mother will put her force behind your and their endeavour. The success will depend on whether you can make your self a transmitting instrument and whether they can be receptive. You must remember that we have no physical contact with the place or with these people: you are there as a support and a means of communication; you have to be always concentrated, always referring all difficulties for solution to the force that is being sent from here, always letting it act and not substituting your own mind and separate vital will or impulse.
I cannot approve of your idea about a society with a subscription for each member and with the kind of publicity of which you speak. These are methods quite inappropriate to a spiritual action. If applied to my work they would either miserably fail or else vulgarise and distort it. If you have sympathizers and want to keep them together and have their help, you must find other means.
Your other idea that it would be well if someone likely to be very useful in the work you are doing came here to receive the touch, is better inspired. It would obviously be the right thing provided the man in question had means and influence and was capable of a psychic or spiritual opening or some other kind of openness to the Power. If already touched from a distance, so much the better. It may be in this direction that there lies the best possibility for the future. Before sending anyone here, how- ever, you must take special permission after writing all that we should know about him.
Meanwhile proceed with your work, never forgetting the condition of success. Do not lose yourself in the work or in your ideas or plans or forget to keep yourself in constant touch with the true source. Do not allow anybody's mind or vital influence or the surrounding atmosphere or the ordinary human mentality to come between you and the power and presence of the Mother.
15 May 1928
I am surprised to see from your letter that you have received from Vithaldas an offer of Rs. 500 a month towards the expenses of the Ashram and that you have not immediately accepted it. In fact the language reported in your letter could mean that it was rejected almost with a polite disdain; but I suppose this would be a wrong impression. It is precisely help of this kind that we are feeling the most need of just now. For so long as this monthly deficit is not filled, we are obliged to spend on the monthly upkeep sums that ought to go for capital outlay and under such circumstances the very foundation of the Ashram from the pecuniary point of view remains insecure. If the monthly expenses are secured, the Ashram will be put on a safe foundation and the work for bringing the lakh and other large sums can go forward on a much sounder basis. Besides the forces will not be diverted from their proper work by the harassment of daily needs. Therefore, recently, it is just contributions of this kind that we have been pressing for as the first necessity. Vithaldas seems to have received an inspiration from this pressure and made a magnificent answer. And you do not immediately seize on this response. This is an example of what I meant when I warned you to keep yourself open to the Mother's force and not follow merely your own ideas and plans. Now the only thing to do is to speak to Vithaldas and see whether he keeps to his offer. If so you should accept at once. The sooner we get the money, the better. Our deficit is really more than Rs 800, for the number of disciples is increasing and the expenses also. If Vithaldas can be relied upon to give regularly Rs. 500 a month the gap will be almost filled and once that is done, the obstruction we have felt hitherto in the matter is likely to disappear and the rest to come in with greater ease. If you have not already accepted Vithaldas's offer and made arrangements for the regular transmission of the money, then realize its importance and act at once.
The Mother does not want to buy saris for herself with the money raised; in the present state of the finances the idea is altogether out of the question. The income and the expenses must be balanced; money must be found for the work of building up the Ashram. All the rest comes after.
2 June 1928
Write to Punamchand asking what are the 500/- that reached us today. Whenever he sends money, he should inform us at the same time what it is and who has given it.
Write to him also with regard to the letter he wrote about the detectiv's visit and his proposals. He has only to send regular accounts with details of sums, names etc. to me and he is on safe ground. He can simply answer that all monies given are accounted for and full details sent to me. If on the other hand he is loose in his accounts and dealings with money, he gives room for this kind of rumour and creates a wrong atmosphere. Nor in the absence of accounts can I myself have any ground to go upon if I am questioned whether I received or not the sums paid to him for me. In this connection note that he has not sent, as promised, the accounts for the last few months, since his arrival and return we have received nothing.
16 April 1929
He (Punamchand) can let Narayanji have Veda translations, but I do not want them widely circulated because they are a first draft, not final. Messages and letters he may have. But the evening talks must not get about. I have not seen these reports and therefore they are not authorized, and there must be any number of things in them which either ought not to be public or for which in the form they have there, I cannot accept responsibility.
September 1931
Re: Punamchand
(1) To give up his Bombay work and stay here.
(2) To return to Bombay, If so, for what work and on what conditions ?
For (l)—
I doubt whether he will be able, after the very different conditions to which he has been accustomed in Bombay, to settle down to the discipline of the Ashram which itself is very different from what it was when he was last here. And where to put them, if they stay?
For (2) —
On the other hand, if he goes back, how is he to live? It is out of the question for us to send him money and he must not even think of it. In future also we cannot make ourselves responsible for any loans he may contract; that too must be understood clearly.
If he collects money and spends all or most of what he gets on his own expenses, that is about the worst thing that can be done. It discredits him in people's eyes and discredits the collection and the Ashram. As soon as it is known people cease to give money. Moreover, what is the meaning of a collection in which all the money realized goes to collection expenses and nothing goes to the fund for which the collection is made.
There is therefore only one possible solution, for him to fix a maximum amount for his expenses and find someone (now that Vithaldas is no more) who will give him that sum monthly. All other amounts must be strictly sent here and on no account must his expenses exceed the sum fixed. This seems to me the only solution if he goes back to Bombay.
For the work —
It seems no longer possible for him to collect money in the way he and Dikshit first did — approaching anybody and everybody for contributions. The one thing he might possibly do, is what he has done with Narayanji and Ramanarayan — to make the acquaintance of people, get them interested in the Ashram and its work, and prepare them for coming here for us to see what can be done with them; if he can get them mean- while to contribute, so much the better. But they must be men who can give assistance either in a large sum or as a substantial assistance to the monthly expenses.
How can he expect me to protect him if constantly he is going out of my protection?
[Between 1923 and 1927, Champaben was engaged in personal service to the Mother. Thereafter she was obliged to return to Gujarat on account of some problems in the family. After the demise of Punamchand in 1950, she again came and stayed on in Pondicherry. Below are a few of her reminiscences.]
In August 1920 my husband and I and also Dikshitbahai came to Pondicherry. We stayed in a hotel named "Amanivasam" for about 15 days. Almost everyday we used to meet Sri Aurobindo. At that time I did not know even a bit of English. Sri Aurobindo was staying in the first floor of the "Guest House" (now part of the Playground). He would see us in the verandah adjoining his room. He looked thin and rather darkish. He would talk to my husband for quite long; but I could make nothing of what was being said. Having grown up in the old traditional atmosphere, I thought it would be improper on my part to ask my husband about the gist of his conversation with Sri Aurobindo. All the same, I liked the atmosphere and would feel a kind of inner happiness. At the end of the conversation, I and my husband would bow down to Sri Aurobindo and he would bless us.
1) Translated from Sanjeevan. a Marathi quarterly magazine, December 2004 - March 2005,pp. 18-19.
One day my husband said to Sri Aurobindo: "We wish to see your room." Thereupon, Sri Aurobindo, with great solicitude, took us from the verandah into his room. The floor of the room was kutcha, not properly finished, on account of which there was dust on it, some of which stuck to our feet. In the centre of the room, along its full length, Sri Aurobindo's foot-marks had made a kind of a depressed track in the floor. (In those days, Sri Aurobindo would walk the length of the room to and fro for hours together. That was the cause of the depressed track in the floor.) The room was quite simple — there were one chair and a table with a typewriter on it. There was also, I remember, a photo of Sri Ramakrishna in the room.
Four or five months earlier in the same year (1920), the Mother had come from Japan to stay here permanently. She was staying in a house close to the sea-beach. Daily, at about 4 or 4.30 in the afternoon, she would come to Sri Aurobindo carrying agarbattis, some fruits and a French type of bag. I naturally was unable to say anything to her. But she showered great love on me; my happiness knew no bounds.
One day we told Sri Aurobindo: "We very much wish to stay on here." He said: "For the present, go to Chandernagore and stay with Motilal Roy. Later, I shall call you here." Accordingly, we went to Chandernagore, but stayed there only for a month where after we returned to Patan. Finally, in 1923 we came over and settled down in the Ashram.
Respected Father and the Mother,
My Pranam at thy lotus feet.
I wanted to do the sadhana. Please show me the way how to open my psychic. I don't know, what to do, but sometimes I felt Peace and Ananda. Is it a true feeling?
If Peace and Ananda are felt, they cannot be false. Visions and suggestions and ideas may be true or untrue, but Peace and Ananda can always be accepted as fact.
Punamchand remembers Thee always and sometimes cries a lot. He concentrates on Thee and sees Thee in his visions. Please, guide him in his sadhana.
Bless us and shower thy grace always.
8 December 1935
Thy child,
Champa
A few days back I was meditating in the evening. Everything became calm. Something fell down on my head upto the neck. I was surprised;
what happened? Again I was meditating. I felt that from head to feet my body parted in two portions. On the right side I felt peace and heaviness. Why I felt two portions of my body? Please explain it.
The two sides of the body are supposed to represent two different sides of the being, the side of consciousness and knowledge and the side of force and action. The feeling you had at meditation may have been the sense of the removal of some veil of obscurity covering the mind — the head from the crown to the throat being the seat of the thinking mind.
Opening means only to be able to receive the Mother's force. Whether one is open or not is shown by two things. If one is conscious of the force working in one, then one is open. But even if one is not conscious, yet if results of the working happen, then that also means that in the inner being some opening has been made. Aspiration, sincerity and the quietude of the mind are the three best conditions for opening.
27 December 1935
At the Lotus feet of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother,
Is it possible to give me two books? One is "Conversations with the Mother" and the "Mother's Prayers in French". Please, write inside something if Thy will is there.
When I sit in the meditation, I feel sometimes that my whole body from inside became vacant and foggy. That time I don't feel the body consciousness except from neck to head I feel that. Explain it to me.
You are probably becoming aware of a suitable consciousness wider than the physical and when one is in this consciousness the body seems non- existent. The thought being still active, you are aware at that time of head only.
Whether I sit in meditation or not, I felt deep peace behind and around my head and I like to enter into it. How nice if it would descend into me! Is it imagination or truth?
You are probably feeling the peace of the higher consciousness with a tendency to enter into it. Afterwards this usually descends into the head and body, but as yet there is not this movement.
/ couldn 't stop my currents of useless thoughts, even in the sleep also.
I am tired of it. Why does it come? From where? Please, show me the
way to stop it.
I pray to give me faith, devotion, Peace and Ananda. Shower thy Grace on me and Punamchand. He sends his pranam at Thy lotus feet.
Pranam from Champaben
All thoughts really come from outside, but one is not conscious of their coming. You have become conscious of this movement. There are different ways of getting rid of them; One is to reject them one by one before they come in; another is to look at them with detachment till they fade away.
RENE
14 April 1930
With the love of Rene's Mummy who expects him to have a strong and unshakeable will from today.
A pencil-sketch of Rene's head drawn by the Mother. "One year old" means one year in the Ashram.
Do not worry about what has been done.
Let the past pass away.
From today you are reborn.
That is why you will be called: RENE (Reborn)
13 April 1929
From today
Rene will be perfectly
Strong, Sincere, Straightforward
21 April 1929
To Rene
I certainly cannot sanction your departure on so wrong and trivial a ground. You must be aware, as you admitted at first, that you are yourself to blame. When the Mother after a long and exhausting morning's work still gave you time, it was very wrong of you to reward her by speech of an insulting character. And it was wrong of you to resent her kind letter and her reference to the adverse force which you yourself have called the devil and from which you have insistently prayed to be delivered. I shall add that if you allow yourself to be ruled in this way by self-will and an abnormal sensitiveness, you will always create trouble for yourself, no matter where you go.
I could only sanction your departure if I came to the conclusion that you are still too young and raw and ill-balanced to bear the pressure for change which is inevitable in the atmosphere of the Ashram. But before this attack, you were progressing very well with a rapid growth in consciousness and character. It ought not to be difficult for you to get over this attack and settle down to a self-development of your undoubted possibilities on the right line. It would be a pity if you threw away the chance by obstinate persistence in the result of a moment's pique.
I prefer not to give any decision till after the 15th. You will do well to wait till and see if your present feelings do not change.
4 August 1929
1) Rene (Aga Syed Yacoob), born on 4 November 1908 at Hyderabad. He joined the Ashram on 13 April 1929.
Rene,
I did not agree to your going for the same reasons as the 1, First, there was no good reason why you should go; a fit of quite causeless jealousy and pique could not be considered a sufficient ground your wanting to leave us. You started your "revolt", as you ca cause the Mother took Duraiswami to a private sale to buy thing! you continued it because the next day (it being the first of the me the day after she was too busy with accounts and other affairs t( herself with you as you wanted. There could not be more absurd for wanting to go away.
What you seem to claim from the Mother is impossible. No one can be given the right to control or question her actions and decisions or to dictate whom she must or must not take with her or what time she s to one or another. The Mother can do her work only if she is free to do what she sees to be right and her decisions are accepted by all concerned. This is now generally understood in the Ashram and no 01 this kind of demand; it is not possible that you alone out of eight should have the right to do it. In fact, you have been given privileges of close daily persona with the Mother which very few in the Ashram have and which all would be only too glad to have. It is not because you have a greater claim than theirs. If it were a matter of ordinary claim, there are many wt precede you. Some have been here since the beginning; some advanced than most in the spiritual life; some occupy a responsible position in the work of the Ashram; yet many of them cannot come to the Mother separately every morning or meet her again in the afternoon as been allowed to do. This privilege was given you because she you had a special need of her care and of help and support from she does not act for her personal satisfaction or decide out of preference, but according to the necessities of the work and the of each one in the Ashram. And she gave you as much as s consistently with the call of her work and the time at her disposal instead of being satisfied and happy, you create in your mind grounds for "revolt" and "quarrel". You did this once and it was as a mistake which you recognized and would try not to repeat. discouraging to see you start the same folly, all over again as if you had understood and learned nothing.
You have not been asked to do any yoga; you were too young for that. You have therefore no reason to complain of be to do something beyond your power. But, without doing any yoga, it was quite possible for you, merely by your work and by daily contact with the Mother and her silent influence, to grow quietly and easily and happily in consciousness and character and capacity until you were ready. But if you refuse to learn self-control and discipline, (these are not matters of yoga, but what everyone has to learn unless he wants to waste his life and bring his capacities to nothing) and if you cannot be content and happy with the much that is given you, you yourself will make your own life here impossible.
My second reason for not agreeing to your departure was that I did not believe that you really wanted to go or that what spoke of going was the true.... But if your desire to go is serious and deliberate, if you cannot be happy here with us, then it would not be right for me to keep you against your will. That is a thing which I never do with any one.
My third reason was that I could only sanction your going if I saw that you were too young or otherwise unfit to bear the pressure of the Ashram atmosphere. I know that there is in you the capacity if you choose to exercise it. But a certain attitude towards this life and towards the Mother is needed which you seem unwilling to keep. If you cannot be satisfied, if you are constantly revolting and discontented and unhappy, if you again and again violently insist on going away, if you are constantly driven by something in you into these outbreaks which might have been excusable when you were a young child but are no longer proper to your age, it will be difficult for me to avoid coming to the conclusion that, as yet at least, you are not ready, not for the Yoga but even for living here.
One thing I wish to make clear. Neither myself nor the Mother wish you to leave us. I do not approve or sanction your going, still less do I decide that you must go. But if your desire to go is real, insistent and imperative, if you cannot be happy here and feel that you would be happier elsewhere, then I shall be obliged to withdraw my refusal.
This is the situation. Try to get back to your self, your real self, the real ... and see if he wants to go, if it is true that he cannot be satisfied by what the Mother gives him. It is upon that that the decision will rest.
3 September 1929
René
I shall answer your letter, but meanwhile do not allow these things to worry you. Don't allow them to run in your mind or to get on your nerves. And don't let unpleasant feelings last in you; throw them away. After all, these incidents are very small things in themselves, and it is only when one gives them too much importance that they can take hold of the mind and give trouble.
The important point is not who was in the right or in the wrong; when these things happen, there is always some mistake or a wrong feeling on both sides. The one important thing is your inner condition. You have the Mother's love and my help and spiritual support; why should anything said or done or not said or not done by others disturb you? I want you to be, whatever happens, calm and at peace within and happy. It is the only way to keep the devil at a respectful distance. 9 October 1929
In answer to your letter about your clash with Pavitra.
If anybody in the Ashram tries to establish a supremacy or dominating influence over others, he is in the wrong. For it is bound to be a wrong vital influence and come in the way of the Mother's work. If you feel anything of the kind in anybody, you are quite right to resist it and throw off the influence; to accept it would be bad both for him and you.
But there should be no quarrel or ill-feeling or keeping up of resentment or anger; for that too is not good for either. Certain things must be said in fairness to Pavitra. He can have had no conscious intention of injuring you with the Mother; for, if it were there the Mother would have seen it. And you may be sure that nothing of the kind could shake her confidence in you; she has seen your work, she knows your capacity, and she can judge it for herself without being swayed by the words of others.
He may not be very communicative about the contents of the "magic cupboard", but he did not intend to keep you in ignorance. Once he showed you in the Mother's presence the things that came from Europe and he must have thought that you knew already what was there.
He says that he never intended to order you about, and I am sure he I thinks what he says. If you felt something wrong of this kind in his manner, it is evidently something of which he was not himself conscious.
As to the work, part of what you ask is quite just and reasonable. You must be kept informed of what is there with Pavitra; otherwise you will be hampered in your work. You should also be consulted as to your requirements when an order is sent. As to the plans, the Mother, as you know, arranges them with you whenever any work has to be done. Put I suppose you are thinking of the plans for the new house of which Pavitra showed you a map. These are his suggestions and, as his rooms and offices and the electrical installation for his work with the motors will all be there, he has a voice in the matter. Nothing is definitely settled and nothing can be till the house is ready; then it will be the Mother who will decide everything and you will certainly be taken into confidence.
On the other hand, all orders must actually be drawn up and sent by Pavitra for it is part of the business with France and that is his department; none else can do it. Moreover, you are not right in asking that you alone should draw up plans, for that would be to prevent the Mother from taking advantage of Pavitra's scientific training and knowledge and his long experience.
You must remember that just as the Mother uses your capacities and gives them their field, she must be able to do the same with the capacities of others. If she gives charge of a department of work to one, that must not stand in the way of her consulting or using others. Thus Benjamin and Chandulal are in charge of the building work, but the Mother consults Pavitra too because of his scientific knowledge as an engineer and he has the right to make suggestions or criticisms or indicate any possible improvements, although he is not in charge. So too the Doctor is not in charge of the dispensary, but he is associated with the medical work and the Mother makes use of his expert knowledge and experience, when ever necessary or puts in his hands the treatment of a case of illness. It must be the same between you and Pavitra.
It will be best if you fix in your mind and keep to the true rules of the work; then you will have no difficulty or trouble.
All the work should be done under the Mother's sole authority. All must be arranged according to her free decision. She must be free to use the capacities of each separately or together according to what is best for the work and best for the worker.
None should regard or treat another member of the Ashram as his subordinate. If he is in charge, he should regard the others as his associates and helpers in the work, and he should not try to dominate or impose on them his own ideas and personal fancies, but only see to the execution of the will of the Mother. None should regard himself as a subordinate, even if he has to carry out instructions given through another or to execute under supervision the work he has to do.
All should try to work in harmony, thinking only of how best to make the work a success; personal feelings should not be allowed to interfere, for this is a most frequent cause of disturbance in the work, failure or disorder.
If you keep this truth of the work in mind and always abide by it, difficulties are likely disappear; for other will be influenced by the rightness of your attitude and work smoothly with you. Or, if through any weakness or perversity in them, they create difficulties, the effects will fall back on them and you will feel no disturbance or trouble.
About your zero.
When the bad will etc. is thrown away, first you begin to feel calm but empty, that is your Zero.
If you remain confident and go straight your peace will fill up with a silent strength and content which will turn the zero into a pluz +
In the end there will come in the 100 and the 1000.
Your cat and rat equation is, I suppose intended to describe the kind of reasoning by which the devil misleads the mind. At any rate, it is an apt description of the devil's logic and the devil's mathematics there are fantastic and false ideas with which it is dangerous even to play. You see how successful this kind of devil's reasoning has been with prashanta.
Prashanta presends to be pure and surrender to the will of God. How can he be pure when his whole trouble has come from the indulgence of impure desires? He pretends to act according to god's will, but his actions are moved by three things, desire, vanity and self-will. The devil makes suggestions supports by one or another of these three motives and persuades him that it is the will of God.
Ignorance is not a slate of innocence or purity; that is an old blunder. Only a consciousness full of light can be pure. For instance, when you are conscious, your mind is clear and you have the right ideas about things and people; your mind is pure of ignorance. but when the mind is clouded by some impurity, -say, anger, jealousy or pride or some unreasonsonable desire, you at once become ignorant and mistake and misunderstand everything.
Again, when your heart is turned to the Mother and satisfied with her love, when you are full of peace, contentment and happiness, then there is no room for wrong feelings and desires; your heart is pure.
That is what the Mother meant by purity; to be free from false ideas, wrong feelings, desires, demands etc. is to be pure.
27 October 1929
To René,
My dear boy,
I had a very interesting vision about you this early morning. I think it is better for you to come and hear it before you decide anything about going.
So I expect that you will come this morning.
13 December 1929
Your loving
MUMMY
René,
It is more than half an hour that I am waiting for you.
Please come at once.
Come quick, I have some nice proposal to make!
Your
for ever
Have you completely forgotten your Mummy's love? I have things to say and urgent work to give you — that is why I am asking you to come.
From his Mummy with her love
All this talk of leaving you is mere nonsense.
What you are or are not I know better than you do; and I know the treasures that are hidden behind what you call your lower vital.
The only thing true you say is that love is unselfish and unconditioned. Such is the love of Sri Aurobindo and myself for you
That is why we shall never listen to all your nonsense and will love you surely. ,
Come to me without fear. I will not scold and not look with "round eyes".
Your ever loving
MAMAN
My very dear boy,
I knew something of this although you had not spoken, and the or thing I regretted is that you did not love and trust your Mummy enough tell her frankly. How could you think that this could change my love for you?
Now nothing stands in the way between us, between Rene and Mummy, and if my love for you could be greater, it would be so now that you have shown full confidence to me.
/ expect you at pranam as usual. And what more I have to say I shall say when you come at one o'clock. You will be cured — this is sure Love from Saturday 5.45 a.m.
Your MUMMY
To René with blessings.
It is true that whatever you do I am always your Mother. But hence forth do not let the devil manifest through you.
Your loving Mother
Sincerity means to lift all the movements of the being to the level of the highest consciousness and realisation already attained.
Sincerity exacts the unification and harmonisation of the whole being in all its parts and movements around the central Divine Will.'
20 February 1930, 2.40 p.m
From now Rene is sincere and will be sincere like his Mummy.
1) Message cyclostyled and distributed in the Ashram
When these moods come upon you, why do you run away from the Mother and avoid her? Why do you not come to her, tell her frankly what you feel and what is in your mind and let her take the trouble from you?
The reasons you give for wishing to leave us are no good reasons at all. If you want to see the richness and greatness of God, you will, if you wait, see more of it with us than you ever can outside. And if you want to see the Himalayas, it will be much better for you to see them hereafter with your Mother beside you.
You are quite mistaken when you say that if you will go, there will be no Devil left in the Ashram. The Devil is not here because of you; he is here because he wants to give trouble to the Mother and spoil her work. And what he chiefly wants is to drive her children away from her, and especially those who like you are nearest to her. If you go, he will remain; and not only he will remain, but he will feel that he has won a great victory and will set himself with a double vigour to attack her through others.
You talk of not giving trouble to the Mother and to me; but do you not realize that nothing can be worse trouble to us than your going away? The moods of revolt that come upon you are clouds that pass; but to see you leave us in this way and feel our love rejected and your place near us empty would be indeed a real trouble to us and we would feel it more deeply than anything else you could do.
You know that it is not true that your sole desire is to go away. It is only so when you are in these moods. And you know that these are moods that pass, and if you allow the Mother to take them away, they go at once. The trouble is that when they come, you take them too much to heart and you begin to think that there is nothing else to do but go away. I assure you that that is no solution and that we would much rather have you with us even with these moods than be separated from you; compared with our love for you, the trouble they give us is mere dust in the balance.
Read this letter, talk with the Mother and act according to your true self; never mind the rest.
7 March 1930
When I spoke of being faithful to the Light of the soul and the Divine Call, I was not referring to anything in the past or to any lapse on your part. I was simply affirming the great need in all crises and attacks, —to refuse to listen to any suggestions, impulses, lures and to oppose to them all the call of the Truth, the imperative beckoning of the Light. In all doubt and depression, to say, "I belong to the Divine, I cannot fail", to all suggestions of impurity and unfitness, to reply, "I am a child of Immortality chosen by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother; I have but to be true to myself and to them - the victory is sure; even if I fell, I would rise again ; to all impulses to depart and serve some other ideal, to reply This is he greatest, this is the truth, this alone can satisfy the soul within me; I will endure through all tests and tribulations to the very end of the Divine Journey." -
This is what I mean by faithfulness to the Light and the Call.
31 March 1930
With the Love of Rene 's Mummy who expects him to have a strong and unshakable will from today.
Remember what Sri Aurobindo has written to you. When these moods come why do you run away from Mother? Come to her, on the contrary and she will cure you easily. This is the substance of what he has said
So, come without delay. I shall expect you after I come back from soup.
Love from your
Please come at once. It is already very late.
18 April 1930
I am giving you back your Mother. But you must undo your telegram to X; otherwise it may do harm - to him especially. Tomorrow morning we will send a telegram early, thus:
"Yesterday's telegram bad joke. Do not send money."
No. I did not agree.
My boy, I have been waiting for you at the bath room window from 10 to 6 up too 6.30: did you pass before?
Do not fail to come at 8 o'clock.
I hope your night has been good.
Something interesting happened between 4.30 and 5 - I shall tell you.
Love from MUMMY
Yielding to desires is not the way of getting rid of them. There is no end to desires; each one that is satisfied is at once replaced. by another one and they go on clamouring more and more.
It is only by conquering the desires that you can get rid of them, by coming out of this consciousness of the lower nature and rising to a higher consciousness.
29 April 1930
A desire which knows that it will never be satisfied at once vanishes.
Come quick. I have a letter for you.
Love from your Mummy with whom you have passed many hours of your night
Come quick. You have not seen me all afternoon and now I am waiting for you.
7 May 1930
How is it that you did not pass at 6 o'clock?
Rise at once and come.
I am waiting for you on the terrace.
27 May 1930
I did not call you this morning because I did not want you to believe that I was calling you to ask you to remain. We have been trying all the morning to set the Grand-Six in order so that you might take it to Madras, sell it and, after paying the expenses, keep the remaining money for your trip to the mountains, but we have not as yet succeeded in making it work; and as you refuse to remain even one day more, we shall give you the fare for Madras tonight. Duraiswami has written to his house to keep a room ready for you.
For further developments we must wait and see what happens to the Grand-Six.
7 June 1930
If you were seeking for a way of making it impossible for me to refuse you the money for going away, you have certainly found it this time. After the letter you have written and the accusations it contains, I am bound to give you the Rs. 50 you ask for X.
Your share in the family estate, which you demand from Dara, remains untouched; we have not taken it, Dara has not given it to us.
...Dara has given all he had, and he has given it freely, unasked and without claiming anything in return.
As to your other reproaches and accusations, I do not think it is necessary for me to reply. I send you the money you ask for and so fulfil the promise which you so imperatively demand that I should fulfil. I do not send you away or give my sanction for your going; it is for you to decide in all freedom whether you will go or stay. But if you stay, there must be no more reproaches of this kind, since you will be staying entirely by your own free will and under no pressure from us. Nor can I allow the claim you seem to have made that the Mother must do what you want and she must not say to you or do anything that does not please you. That is elation which is not allowed to others and it can not be allowed to you either. The Mother has shown you every possible favour and kindness; more she cannot do.
12 June 1930
Blessings from Sri Aurobindo and Mother.
I hope you have felt Mummy's presence and protection as I have been constantly with you — so much so that from time to time I was hearing Laki's voice and yours when you were speaking of me, as clearly as if we were in the same room.
I shall be glad to hear from you that your journey has been a good and happy one.
Say once more to Laki how much I have appreciated his visit and been pleased to see him. I am sure now that he will take great care of you and send you back "complete" before the end of the week, as he has promised'.
I feel confident that this little trip will do you much good and that you. will soon come back with a cheerful heart and peaceful mind. You will find your Mummy waiting for you and happy to see you in good health physically and morally.
Pavitra asks me to remind you of the motorcar accessories.
With Mummy's best love.
Pondicherry 12 July 1930
To René with blessings from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
Your letters dated 29th, 30th, 31st, have just reached and I have been very happy to receive detailed news from you and hear that your health is improving. But you must be patient and get it quite all right. The aching of the back must completely disappear and the sadness go to never come again. This is very important, for you know that if the possibility of the struggle remains as soon as you reach here it becomes worse. So you " must get completely cured and once for all be free from such possibility.
I do not know what Ali tells you about money, but I know that when money is concerned people have easily very dirty thoughts. Moreover I do not understand why you refuse to spend. The pension that will come to you is your own and you are free to spend. The same with Sudhira also. So both you and Sudhira will be able to buy, with the money you will receive, the things which you require.
But to make more sure that you will miss nothing, I shall send tomorrow to Ali the Rs. 200.
I hope you have received my last letter (no. 2) it was not registered. But seeing that so many letters are lost I shall register this one (no. 3) to be more sure.
I am very pleased to hear that Ali is treating you well; do not worry and think of "luxury", etc. Make yourself comfortable and do all what is necessary to be completely cured. The more you will be quiet and contented the quicker it will be done. Give my love to Sudhira and keep for you the best love of your Mummy for ever. Pondicherry, 3 August 1930
My dear little Rene,
Today I have sent the Rs. 200.
Expecting to receive soon good news from you.
With blessings from Sri Aurobindo and best love from your Mummy.
Pondicherry; 4 August 1930
To René with the blessings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
Two letters of yours, dated 9th and 20th of August, have reached about at the same time — one took 12 days to come, the other 3! The post seems to be full of fancies. The worst is that the correspondence becomes thus somewhat incoherent; to my letters I receive no answer and in yours you mention things of which I have never heard and of which you were probably speaking in previous letters which I never received.
In your last letter, dated 20th, you speak of another one you would have sent the same day; that one (and probably many others), never reached me. In that condition it is almost impossible to answer to what you write — it is too incomplete.
You speak if you can write to Pavitra; certainly you can and he will be very pleased to receive your letter.
He has cleaned your room and made it tidy; arranged your personal things, in boxes with naphthaline; like that nothing will be spoilt.
Pondicherry 28 August 1930
Chinmayi - sketch by the Mother
CHINMAYI
Chit, the pure spirit consciousness.
Chinmayi, one who is full or all made of the pure spirit consciousness.
Lion
To Chinmaya with love - sketch by the Mother
I always see you with pleasure.
Never believe that I do not want to see you. It is a suggestion from the hostile forces — a falsehood.
25 February 1930
Chinmayi,
The Mother has told me what you said to her. In other circumstances I would have asked you to stay on in the confidence that, however sharp the struggle might be, the inner being in you aided by the Divine Force would prevail over the other and foreign influence. But in the condition of mind described by you some relief and rest from the inner struggle seems to be necessary for you. An absence from Pondicherry and change of atmosphere may be the best way to give it.
I do not, however, care to take the responsibilities of sending you to Hyderabad, as that might turn out not at all the best, but the worst thing for you. Even if there were nothing else to do, it would not be possible to send you all that way alone; arrangements would have to be made. We would prefer instead to see whether another means cannot be arranged, such as staying in a quiet place in the hills where you could have a healthy change of air for a time and other surroundings and recover your vital strength and nervous balance. We are making enquiries and in a few days hope to be able to let you know what can be done.
I write this much today in answer to your request for an immediate decision; but I have something to say with regard to your spiritual life and its difficulties which I have not had time to finish. I will finish it tomorrow and send it to you.
3 June 1930
It will be perhaps better after all if you write a word to Jafar Hasan. You might tell him that you wrote your first letter under the impulse of a wish to go to Hyderabad for a time, but after posting it you felt that your real life was in the Ashram and you should not leave it, — and you are sending him this word so that he may not come to take you and go b disappointed, although you will always be glad to see him if at any time comes here.
1) Chinmayi (Mehdi Begum) was born on 4 October 1906 at Hyderabad. She arrived in the Ashram on 23 October 1927.
Do not despond or be discouraged; if you persevere, there can be doubt that the permanent change will come. But be more resolute hereafter not to listen to the suggestions of these forces whom you know to the enemies of your own soul and of your quiet and happiness, no 1 hostile to you than to us and our work; especially, do not shut yourself the Mother's help for any reason whatever, and never do what these for tell you to do; this shutting yourself up against help is the great mist you make when you are in this trouble. For some time you resisted their suggestions, and then we found it much easier to help you and to minimize or shorten their attacks. If you persevere in that uninterruptedly their power of attack will diminish, and then the time will come when can make it cease altogether.
Our force is always with you to aid you; it is for you to keep your open always to it and to us that it may conquer.
19 January 1931
I have a sweet little mother waiting at my door. Quick, quick, I must o¦ and let my sweet mother in.
26 March 1931
Chinmayi
It is very painful for us to see you in this condition and it makes very sad and anxious. Will you not make an effort to throw off the cloud that has fallen upon you? There is surely something you are not telling for nothing has happened to our knowledge that could make you go so as to refuse food and reject persistently the love and solicitude of Mother. Will you not tell us what is your reason and relieve your mind its burden?
You are our beloved child. Nothing should be able to throw a shad between you and our love. Throw off whatever shadow there is. I ask you to take your food as usual, speak to the Mother; turn to us once more; back the happiness and the sunshine.
The Mother is not yet all right. She sends you her love.
I want to give my whole being to Mother with all my love. But there is the whole nature that won't let me open myself. It lies like a weight on me and turns into ridicule all the efforts I make for getting out of it.
Not the whole nature — only a part of the vital nature. And even there it is not really your self, but something that has been imposed on the vital by the past and holds it still. That is why you feel it like a weight laid on you. It is bound to diminish and lose its present force, if you persistently refuse to accept it.
My dearest little child,
What a sad thing that my lovely is not well! I hope it is getting better now; but keep quiet and do not worry either for work or anything — you must not move until it is all gone... If you feel quite well this afternoon, come and I will be very happy.
With all my love and affection I am near you holding you in my arms and praying that you will be quite all right very, very soon.
Sunday morning 8.30
Herewith this morning's flower as pure and white as snow.
My dear little child,
I had no time to tell you that tomorrow morning there is no meditation but that I am expecting you at 7 o'clock as usual.
With my best love.
16 January 1932
This paper is made with true flower and leaf (the envelope too).
Once more this morning I have forgotten to inform you that tomorrow morning there is no meditation and that I am expecting you at 7 o'clock as usual.
I have kept you in my thoughts, in my heart, in my arms all day a feel sure that you, are quite all right now. With my best love,
3 February 1932
P.S.
Don't you find this picture very poetic?
Once more this morning I had no time to tell you that tomorrow the is no pranam and to remind you to come at seven o'clock for the work.
I hope you have well understood what I meant this morning. When the true and sacred love is there (love from the Divine and for the Divine whatever happens is always utilized as a means for increasing and perfecting the union. This leaves no place for worry, regret and depression but, on the contrary, fills the consciousness with the certitude of victor
With my best love,
Thursday
I will never be willing to send her away.
My sweet dearest little child,
I am so very happy to receive your loving letter.... Your affectionate thoughts had come in advance and had told me already of the vanishing of the clouds. I had felt your sweet love and cradled my dear little child my arms, filling her heart with the sunshine of confidence.
12 February 1932
Tomorrow no pranam, but you must come at 7 o'clock to do you work and receive your Mother's loving blessings.
3 March 1932
Mon petit enfant cheri, ma chupi...
I am obliged to go down. But my love remains with you with all its intensity. And in the intensity of this love, I have prayed and prayed to our Lord asking Him to pour His Grace upon you and to make you consciousness of the Divine Light and Soul in you, to give you the supreme realisation of His Presence.
With all my heart I kiss you, mon enfant cheri
No, no, you have not lost it! You have left it with me, safely in the box, saying that you would show me first, tomorrow, what you have done before fixing its place.
All is all right with our protection and love. Surely you know that.
13 March 1932 .
My sweet little child,
HOW is it that I have not seen you all the evening? Can it be that I had forgotten to tell you about the music? I would be so very sorry if I have.
But what about the stores and the soup? I missed you although my love was with you all the time.
I am sending you your flowers.
I am waiting for you, little child, come at once.
4 August 1932
Chinmayi had, last night, two beautiful dreams — in the first one she was facing an ocean, but all the front was hidden by shadows and black rocks. She was considering these shadows and rocks and reckoning them for what they were (difficulties etc.) when suddenly the sun rose marvellous and dazzling — The light was so intense that all shadows and rocks were swallowed up by it.
In the second I had given her a lot of dirty clothes to wash; they were so dirty that they seemed black. She washed them and they became so white that she says she never saw anything so white in her life.
27 September 1932
I want to see you and speak with you. Will you please come.
A great misunderstanding has taken place.
You seem to believe that I say one thing when I mean another. This is absurd.
When I speak, I speak plainly and always mean what I say.
When I say: the first condition for yoga is to keep quiet and calm mean it.
When I say that talk is useless and leads only to confusion, waste energy and loss of the little light one may have — I mean that and nothing else.
When I say that I have given nobody the right to speak in my name and to interpret my words according to his own fancy, I mean that and nothing else.
I hope that this is clear and decisive and this singular misunderstand will now come to an end.
There are two or three things that I think it necessary to say to you about your spiritual life and your difficulties.
First, I should like you to get rid of the idea that that which causes difficulties is so much a part of yourself that a true inner life is impossible to you. The inner life is always possible if there is present in the nature however much covered over by other things, a divine possibility through which the soul can manifest itself and build up its own true form in mind and life, — a portion of the Divine. In you this divine possibility exists in a marked and exceptional degree. There is in you an inner being of spontaneous light, intuitive vision, harmony and creative beauty which has shown itself unmistakably every time it has been able to throw off clouds that gather in your vital nature. It is this that the Mother has always tried to make grow in you and bring to the front. When one has that in
oneself, there is no ground for despair, no just reason for any talk of impossibility. If you could once firmly accept this as your true self, (as in- deed it is, for the inner being is your true self and the external, to which the cause of the difficulties belongs, is always something acquired and impermanent and can be changed,) and if you could make its development your settled and persistent aim in life, then the path would be clear and your spiritual future not only a strong possibility but a certitude.
It very often happens that when there is an exceptional power like this in the nature, there is found in the exterior being some contrary element which opens it to a quite opposite influence.
It is this that makes the endeavour after a spiritual life so often a difficult struggle: but the existence of this kind of contradiction even in an intense form does not make that life impossible. Doubt, struggle, efforts and failures, lapses, alternations of happy and unhappy or good and bad conditions, states of light and states of darkness are the common lot of human beings. They are not created by Yoga or by the effort after perfection; only in Yoga one becomes conscious of their movements and their causes instead of feeling them blindly, and in the end one makes one's way out of them into a clearer and happier consciousness. The ordinary life re- mains to the last a series of troubles and struggles, but the sadhak of the Yoga comes out of the trouble and struggle to a ground of fundamental serenity which superficial disturbances may still touch but cannot destroy, and finally, all disturbance ceases altogether.
Even the experience which so alarms you, of states of consciousness in which you say and do things contrary to your true will, is not a reason for despair. It is a common experience in one form or another of all who try to rise above their ordinary nature. Not only those who practise Yoga, but religious men and even those who seek only a moral control and self- improvement are confronted with this difficulty. And here again it is not the Yoga or the effort after perfection that creates this condition; there are contradictory elements in human nature and in every human being through which he is made to act in a way which his better mind disapproves. This happens to everybody, to the most ordinary men in the most ordinary life. It only becomes marked and obvious to our minds when we try to rise above our ordinary external selves, because then we can see that it is the lower elements which are being made to revolt consciously against the higher will. There then seems to be for a time a division in the nature, because the true being and all that supports it stand back and separate from these lower elements. At one time the true being occupies the field of the nature, at another the lower nature used by some contrary Force pushes it back and seizes the ground, — and this we now see, while formerly the thing happened but the nature of the happening was not clear us. If there is the firm will to progress, this division is over passed and, the unified nature, unified around that will, there may be other difficulties, but this kind of discord and struggle will disappear. I have written so much on this point because I think you have been given the wrong idea that it is the Yoga which creates this struggle and also that this contradiction or division in the nature is the sign of an unfitness or impossibility to go through to the end. Both ideas are quite incorrect and things will be easier if you cast them out of your consciousness altogether.
But it is true that in your case as in others this contradiction has been given a special and very discomforting kind of intensity by a hereditary weakness of the nervous parts which has always shown itself in you by fits of despondency, gloom, unrest and self tormenting darkness am spoiled for you the savour of life. Your mistake is to think that this i something to which you are bound and from which you cannot escape, fate which mistakes a spiritual change of your nature impossible. I have seen other families afflicted by this kind of hereditary nervous weakness accompanying very often exceptional gifts of intelligence or artistic capacity or spiritual possibilities. One or two may have succumbed to it like Prashanta but others, sometimes after a period of acute disturbance overcame the perturbations caused by this weakness; either it disappeared or it took some minor and innocuous form which did not interfere with the development of the life and its capacities. Why then despair of yourself or fix without any true cause the conviction that you cannot change and this thing will always be there? This despondency, this adverse conviction is the real danger for you; it prevents you from making a quiet and settled resolution and a permanent effective effort, because of it the return of this darker condition makes you quickly yield and allow the adverse external force which uses this defect to play and do its will with you. It is false idea that makes more than half the trouble.
There is no true reason why you should not overcome this defect of your external beings as many others have done. It is only a part of your vital nature that is affected, even though it often over clouds the rest the other parts of your being can be easily made the fit instruments of the divine possibility of which I have spoken. Especially, you have a clear and fine intelligence which, when rightly used, becomes a ready instrument of the light and can be of great use to you in overcoming its vital weakness. And this divine possibility, this truth of your inner being, if you accept it, can of itself make certain your liberation and the change of your external nature.
Accept this divine possibility in you; have faith in your inner being and its spiritual destiny. Make its development as a portion of the Divine your aim in life, for a great and serious aim in life is a most powerful help towards getting rid of this kind of disturbing or disabling nervous weak- ness; it gives firmness, balance, a strong support to the whole being and a powerful reason for the will to act. Accept too the help we can give you, not shutting yourself against it by disbelief, despair or unfounded revolt. At present you cannot prevail because you have not fixed in yourself a faith, an aim, a settled confidence; the black mood has been able to cloud your whole consciousness. But if you have fixed this faith in you and can cling to it, then the cloud will not be able to fix itself for any long period, the inner being will be able to remain on the surface, keep you open to the Light and maintain the inner ground for the soul even if the outer is partly clouded or troubled. When that happens, the victory will have been won and the entire elimination of the vital weakness will be only a matter of a little perseverance.
Sri Aurobindo Painting by Barindra Kumar Ghose
Barindra Kumar Ghose - sketch by the Mother
LIFE SKETCH
Barindra Kumar Ghose (1880-1959), head of the Maniktola secret society, was born in Croydon, England. He was eight years younger than his brother Sri Aurobindo. At the age of one his mother brought him to India where he was raised and educated in Deoghar, Bihar. He attend Patna College for about six months, but did not complete his studies Towards the end of 1902 Barin went to stay with Sri Aurobindo in Baroo during this visit his brother initiated him with the revolutionary oath. Early in 1903 he left for Calcutta to join Jatin Banerji, Sri Aurobindo's first emissary to Bengal, in revolutionary recruitment and organization, At this time he met Abinash Bhattacharya, who became his companion and assistant in the following years. The two spread their militant ideas especially among college students and the youth who belonged to the akharasor physical culture clubs in which wrestling, jiujitsu and lathi-fightin were taught.
In October 1904 Barin returned to Baroda for a year long stay with hi brother. During this period, probably inspired by Bankim Chandr Chatterjee's Ananda Math, he conceived the idea of an Ashram for the training of revolutionary Sannyasins, to be situated in some remote spot away from the cities. (An outline of this institution, written by Sri Aurobindo, was published in a pamphlet entitled "Bhawani Mandir" early in 1905.) Barin searched in the Vindhya mountains for a suitable place tc set up an Ashram, but could not find one. The scheme eventually took shape in a modified form in the centre at Maniktola.
Barin returned to Calcutta in the spring of 1906. Sri Aurobindo, having resigned his position in Baroda, also moved there at this time. The Partition of Bengal had awakened the people from their political slumber, and the two brothers realised that the moment had come for public work. Sri Aurobindo joined the staff of the Bande Mataram and put forth the call for national independence through self-help and passive resistance. Barin and his friends, with Sri Aurobindo's approval, started the vernacular daily, Yugantar, which openly urged the deliverance of the country through revolutionary means. Its leading writers were superb polemicists.
1) This life-sketch, and the reminiscences that follow it, are excerpted from Sri Aurobindo and the Freedom of India, compiled and edited by Chanda Poddar, Mona Sarkar and Bob Zwicker, 1995 ed., pp. 199-206.
The fiery newspaper soon became immensely popular, with a readership at times in the tens of thousands. Aware of its influence, the Government prosecuted Yugantar six times for sedition during its brief lifespan.
Eager to do more than just talk about revolution, Barin formed his own revolutionary group in mid 1907,establishing his headquarters and training centre at Maniktola. The property, owned by the Ghose brothers, was a secluded two-acre piece of land overgrown with vegetation. Here at "the Garden", as it was called, Barin began systematic instruction of the young men he had recruited; there were almost twenty of them, most in their late teens or early twenties. The Garden's curriculum included meditation twice a day, the study of the Gita and the Upanishads, classes in Indian history and the history of revolutionary movements in other countries, physical exercises such as wrestling, lathi-fighting and jiu-jitsu, and instruction in military strategy and the use of firearms. For a few there was also training in the manufacture and use of explosives. Barin was in overall charge of the Garden, its training programme and external work. The recruits carried out their activities according to his orders and were directly accountable to him. One of the chief instructors, he was also responsible for the raising of funds and the collection of arms, ammunition and material for making explosives.
By the end of 1907 the society's self-taught chemist, Ullaskar Dutt, was producing powerful bombs. Barin decided to use them for the assassination of certain unpopular Government officials. This, h£ thought, was the "voice of the People". Later when asked why he had turned to "political murder" Barin replied simply, "we believed the people wanted it." During the next six months, attempts were made upon the lives of three officials, but they were unsuccessful. The Maniktola society members and others were rounded up in May 1908 and charged with conspiracy. Soon after his arrest, Barin made a detailed confession, taking full responsibility for the secret society and its work; he did this in the hope of saving other revolutionaries, his brother Sri Aurobindo, and the innocent persons who had been arrested along with them.
For his role as leader, Barin was awarded the death penalty; the sentence was later commuted to transportation for life. In December 1909 he was shipped to the British penal colony on South Andaman Island. Physically weak and constitutionally slender, he endured ten years of drudgery, deprivation and suffering before his release. He returned to mainland India in January 1920, following the amnesty granted to political prisoners after the armistice of the First World War.
In 1920 Barin visited Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry and stayed for a brief time. He returned in 1923 and lived for six years in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. In 1929 Barin settled in Bengal, where he remained for thirty years of his life. He left several memories of his experience revolutionary and a prisoner. Extracts from these reminiscences are given below.
Since his arrival in India in 1893 Sri Aurobindo used to visit our maternal grandfather Rishi Rajnarain Bose's house at Deoghar. My first meeting with him took place there. My patriotic inspiration was largely derived from his deep and charming personality. We used to go out for long in the mornings and in the evenings. Sri Aurobindo would speak then in fervent language about the suffering of our Motherland, her degradation and the need to free her from her shackles.
Sri Aurobindo himself initiated me by placing an open sword and the Gita in my hand and reading out an oath written in Sanskrit on a piece of paper. The gist of the oath was this: "As long as there is life in my body as long as this country is not liberated from the fetters of subjection to a foreign power, I vow to carry on the mission of this revolution. If ever I give out any word or fact of this secret society or harm the interests ( organisation in any way, I shall forfeit my life at the hands of the assassin assigned by the society."
After being there [in Barodaj for a year I came back to Bengal with the idea of preaching the cause of independence as a Political Missionary. I moved about from District to District and started gymnasiums. There young men were brought together to learn physical exercises and study politics I went on preaching the cause of independence for nearly two years. By that time I had been through almost all the Districts of Bengal; I got tired of it and went back to Baroda and studied for one year. I then returned to Bengal convinced that a purely political propaganda would not do for the country and that people must be trained up spiritually to face dangers. I had an idea of starting a religious institution. By that time the Swaideshi and Boycott agitation had begun. I thought of taking men under my own instruction to teach them and so I began to collect this band which has been arrested.
[In Alipore Jail] I was in a state of sweet self-intoxication, almost beside myself in a sort of overwhelming beatitude, when I was counting my last days, with the halter round my neck and shut up in the 'condemned cell'. I was then face to face with Death, and alone and away from the world, I was playing with it most amorously and trying to snatch the veil of the beloved one. For pain, its messenger had already whispered into my ears, "Behind that dark veil there is the most radiant and soul-entrancing beauty."
[In the Andamans] our sorrows were many. The greatest of them was the want of company. The orders were strict that we should not talk to each other, even though we might be close together and in the same block. What a wail we smothered in our hearts when we walked together, ate together and worked together and yet could not open our mouths!
And yet our delight was not small even in the midst of such sorrows. For it is a thing that belongs to one's own self. One may gather it as much as one likes from the inexhaustible fund that is within and drink of it to one's heart's content. Not that, however, the lashes of sorrow were an illusion to us. Even the Maya of Vedanta did not always explain them away, so often had they a solemn ring of reality about them. But a tree requires for its growth not only the touch of the gentle spring, but the rude shock of storm and rain and the scalding of the summer heat. Man remains frail and weak and ill developed if he has an easy and even life. The hammer of God that builds up a soul in divine strength and might is one of the Supreme realities.
Disciple: How to conquer fear?
Sri Aurobindo: By mental strength, will and spiritual power. In my own case, whenever there was any fear I used to do the very things that I was afraid of even if it entailed a violent death. Barin also had much fear while he was in the terrorist activity. But he would compel himself to do those things. When death sentence was passed on him he took it very cheerfully.
1) Excerpts from Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo, recorded by A. B. Purani, 1982 ed., 'pp. 545-46.
Disciple: Is Barin still doing yoga?
Sri Aurobindo : I don't know, he used to do some sort of yoga even before I began. My yoga he took up only after coming to Pondicherry. In the Andamans also he was practising it. You know he was Lele's disciple. Once he took Lele to Calcutta among the young people of the secret society. Lele did not know that they were revolutionaries. One day Barin took him into a garden where they were practising shooting. As soon a Lele saw it he understood the nature of the movement and asked Barin to give it up. If Barin did not listen to him, Lele said, he would fall into aditch and he did fall.
Disciple: Barin, I heard, had a lot of experiences.
Sri Aurobindo: They were merely mental and he gathered some knowledge, much information or understanding out of them. I heard that when he had begun yoga he had an experience of Kamananda. Lele was surprised to hear about it. For he said that experience comes usually at the end. It is a descent like any other experience but unless one's sex centre is sufficiently controlled it may produce bad results such as emission and other disturbances.
Disciple: Yes. He had brilliance.
Sri Aurobindo: But he was narrow and limited. He would not widen himself (Sri Aurobindo showed it by the movement of hands above the head); that is why his thing won't last. For he was a brilliant writer and he also wrote devotional poetry. But nothing of that will last because of the limitation. He was an amazing amateur in many things, e.g. music revolutionary activity. He was also a painter; though it did not come to much in spite of his exhibitions. He did well in all these but nothing more.
Disciple: Barin in his paper "Dawn" began to write your biography.
Sri Aurobindo: I don't know that. Did he publish a paper? I would have been interested to see what he writes about me.
Disciple; It ceased after a short time.
I have received your three letters, but up to now I have not managed to write an answer. It is a miracle that even now I sat down to write, because letter writing for me takes place once in a blue moon —especially writing in Bengali which I have not done for five or six years. The miracle would be complete if I could finish this letter and put it in the post.
First about your Yoga. You wish to give me the charge of your Yoga and I am willing to take it, that is to say to give it to Him who is moving by his divine Shakthi both you and myself whether secretly or openly. But you must know the necessary result will be that you will have to follow that special way which He has given to me and which I call the integral Yoga.
What I began with, what was given to me by Lele, that was a seeking for the path, a wandering around in this and that direction touching this or that in all the old partial Yogas; lifting it up, taking it in the hands and scutinising it and, having had some kind of complete experience of one thing, running in pursuit of another.
Afterwards, when I came to Pondicherry, this unsteady condition ceased. The Guru of the world who is within us gave me the complete direction of my path, its full theory, the ten limbs of the body of the Yoga. These ten years He has been making me develop it in experience. But it is not yet finished. It may take another two years, and as long as it is not finished, I doubt if I shall be able to return to Bengal. Pondicherry is the appointed place for my Yoga siddhi, except one part of it — that is, the action. The first centre of my work is Bengal, although I hope that its circumference will be all India and the whole earth.
I shall write to you afterwards what is the way of Yoga, or if you come here I shall tell you about it. In this matter the spoken word is better than the written word. At present I can only say that its root principle is to make a harmony and unity of complete knowledge, complete work and complete bhakthi, to raise this above mind, and to give it its complete perfection on the level of gnosis above the mind. The fault of the old Yoga Was this, that it knew the mind and knew the Spirit and it was satisfied with getting the Spirit expressed in the mind. The mind can grasp only the division, it cannot completely grasp the infinite, the indivisible. In order to reach it, sannyāsa, moksa, nirvāna are the mind's means. One man or another can get this featureless Moksha, but what is the gain? The Brahman, the Self, God, are always there. What God wants in man is to embody Himself here in the individual and the community, to realize God in life. The old way of Yoga would not make the harmony or union of the Spirit and life. It dismissed the world as Maya or a transient Lila. The result has been the loss of the power of life and degeneration of India. It is said in the Gita "These people would perish if I did not do works" and in fact the people of India have truly gone down to ruin. What sort of spiritual perfection is this, that some Sanyasins and Vairagis should be saintly, perfect and liberated, some Bhaktas should dance in restless ecstasy or love and emotion and Ananda and a whole race should become lifeless, void of intelligence, sunk in deep Tamas; one must first get all the partial experiences on the mental level, flood them with the spiritual delight and illumine them with the light of the spirit and then rise above. If one cannot rise above, that is, to the Supermental level, it is hardly possible to know that last secret of the world. The problem of the world does not get solved. There, the ignorance of duality between spirit and matter, the spiritual truths and life, disappears. There one need no longer call the world Maya. The world is the eternal Lila of God, the eternal manifestation of the Self. There it becomes possible to fully know and fully possess God — as it is said in the Gita, "To know Me integrally".
The physical body, the life, the mind and understanding, the supermind and Ananda, these are the spirit's five levels. The higher we rise the nearer we get to the condition of the highest perfection of Man's spiritual evolution. By rising to the supermind it becomes easy to rise to the Ananda. There is a firm foundation in the condition of the indivisible and Infinite Ananda. Not only in the timeless Akshara Brahman, but in the body, in life, in the world. The full Being, the full Consciousness, the full Ananda, blossoms out and takes form in Life. This is the central clue of my Yoga, its fundamental word.
This is not easy to do. After these fifteen years I am only now rising into the lowest of the three levels of the Supermind and trying to draw up into it all the lower activities. But when this Siddhi is complete I am absolutely certain that God will through me give Siddhi of the Supermind to others with less difficulty. Then my real work will begin. I am not impatient for success in the work. What is to happen in God's appointed time, I am not disposed to run widely and leap into the field of work in the strength of my little ego. Even if I did not succeed in my work I would not be shaken. This work is not mine but God's. I will listen to no other's call. When God moves me then I will move.
I knew well that Bengal is not really ready. The spiritual flood which has come is for the most part a new form of the old. It is not real change. Still it was needed. Bengal has been awakening in itself the old Yogas and exhausting their sanskaras, extracting the essence and fertilizing the soil. At first it was the turn of Vedanta: the Advaita, Sannyasa, Shankara's Myasa etc. What is now taking place is the turn of the Vaishnava Dharma — the Lila, love, intoxication of the emotional delights. The merit of Vaishnava is that it keeps a connection between God and world and gives a meaning to life. The tendency to create sects which you have noticed was inevitable. It is the nature of the mind to take the part and call it the whole and to exclude all the other parts. The Siddha who brings the Bhava, although he leans on the partial Bhava, yet keeps some knowledge of the integral, even though he may not be able to give it form. The bundles will open of themselves. All these are the signs of the incompleteness and unripe condition. I am not disturbed by it. Let the spiritual power play in the country in whatever way and in as many sects as there may be. Afterwards we shall see. This is the infancy or embryonic condition. It is the previous hint, not even the beginning.
I do not want a society founded on division. I want a Sangha which is the image of spiritual unity and founded on spirit. You will say, what is the need of a Sangha I will be free and remain in every vessel. Let all become one without form, let whatever must be happen in the midst of the vast formlessness. That is true but only one side of the truth. Our business is not with the formless spirit. We have to keep life in motion. There is no effective motion of life without form. The taking of life by the formless, the assumption of name and form is not a caprice of Maya. It was needed. We do not want to leave anything of the world. Politics, industry, society, poetry, literature, art will all remain. But we shall have to give them a new soul and anew form.
Why have I left politics? Because the politics of the country is not a genuine thing belonging to India. It is an importation from Europe and an imitation. At one time there was a need of it. We also have done politics of the European kind. If we had not done it the country would not have risen from its sleep, and we too would not have had the gain and full development of experience. There is still some need of it, not so much in Bengal as in the other provinces of India. But the time has come to no longer extend the shadow but seize on the reality. We must get to the soul of India and make all its works in the image.
People now talk of spiritualising politics. Its result will be, if there be any permanent result, some kind of Indianised Bolshevism. To that kind of work also I have no objection. Let each man do according to his inspiration. But that is not the real thing. If one pours his spiritual power into all these impure forms — the water of the causal ocean into raw vessels — either that raw thing will break and the water be spilt and lost or the spiritual power will evaporate and only the impure form remain. In all fields it is the same. I can give the spiritual power but that power will be expended in making the image of an ape and setting it up in the temple of Shiva. If the ape is made powerful by the putting of life into it he may play the part of the devotee Hanuman and do much work for Rama, so long as that life and that power remains. But what we want in the temple of India is not Hanuman but the God, the Avatar Rama Himself.
I can mix with all, but in order to draw all into the true path keeping intact the spirit and form of our ideal. If we do not do that, we shall lose our direction and the real work will not be done. If were main individually everywhere; something will be done indeed, but if we remain everywhere, as parts of a Sangha, a hundred times more will be done. As yet that time has not come. If we try to give a form hastily, it may not be the exact thing we want. The Sanghs will be at first an unconcentrated form. Those who have the ideal will be united but work in different places, afterwards giving it some form like a spiritual commune and making a compact Sangha. They will give all their work a shape according to the growth and need of the age, not a bound and rigid form, not an acalāyatana but a free form which will spread out like the sea, take different wave-forms and surround this, over flood that and take all into itself. As we go on doing this there will be established a spiritual community. This is my present idea. As yet it has not been fully developed. All is in God's hands, whatever He makes us do that we shall do.
You write about the deva sangha: "I am not a God, I am only some much hammered and refined iron". No one is a God but in each man there is a God and to make Him manifest is the aim of divine life. That we can all do. I recognise that there are great and small Adharas (vessels). I do not accept as accurate your description of yourself. Still whatever the nature of a vessel be, once the touch of God is put upon it, once the spirit is awake, great and small, all that does not make much difference. There may be more difficulties, more time may be taken, there may be difference in the manifestation, but even about that there is no certainty. The God within keeps no account of all these hindrances and deficiencies. He breakes his way out. Not our strength but the Shakti of God is the Sddhakaof this Yoga.
Let me tell you in brief one or two things about what I have long seen. My idea is that the chief cause of the weakness of India is not subjection, nor poverty, nor the lack of spirituality, nor dharmabut the decline of thought-power, the growth of ignorance in the Motherland of knowledge.
Everywhere I see inability or unwillingness to think — thought incapacity or thought-phobia. Whatever may have been the middle ages this state of things is now the sign of terrible degeneration. The middle age was the night, the time of the victory of ignorance. In the modern world it is the age of the victory of knowledge. Whoever thinks most, seeks most, labours most can fathom and learn the truth of the world, gets so much more Shakti. If you look at Europe, you will see two things, a vast sea of thought and the play of a high and rapid and yet disciplined force. The whole Shakti of Europe is in that. And in the strength of that Shakti it has been swallowing up the world like the tapasvi of our ancient time, by whose power even the Gods of the world were terrified, held in doubt and subjection. People say Europe is running into the jaws of destruction. But these revolutions and upsettings are the preconditions of a new creation.
Then look at India. Except for some solitary saints, everywhere there is your "man on the street", that is, the average man who does not want to think and cannot think, who has not the least Shakti, only a temporary excitement. In India, you want the simple thought, the simple world. In Europe they want the deep thought, the deep word; an ordinary labourer or artisan thinks, wants to know, is not satisfied with surface things but wants to go behind. But still there is this difference, that there is a fatal limitation in the strength and thought of Europe. When it comes into the spiritual field its thought power no longer proceeds. There Europe sees everything as a riddle —nebulous, metaphysical, yogic hallucination. They rub their eyes as in smoke and can see nothing clear. Still in Europe now some effort is being made to surmount even this limitation. We have already the spiritual sense owing to the merit of our forefathers and however has that sense has near at hand such a knowledge and Shakti as with one breath might blow away all the huge power of Europe like a blade of grass. But to get this Shakti one must be a worshipper of Shakti. We are not worshippers of Shakti. We are the worshippers of the easy way. But Shakti is not obtained by the easy way. Our forefathers, swimming through a sea of vast thought, gained a vast knowledge and established a mighty civilization. As they went on their way, fatigue and weariness came upon them. The speed of thought diminished and with it the strong current of Shakti. Our civilization has become an acalāyatana, our religion a bigotry of externals, our spirituality a faint glimmer of light or a momentary wave of religious intoxication. And so long as this sort of thing continues any permanent resurgence of India is improbable.
In Bengal this weakness has gone to extreme. The Bengali has a quick intelligence, emotional capacity and intuition. He is first in India in all these qualities. If to these were added depth of thought, calm strength, heroic courage and a capacity for and pleasure in prolonged labour the Bengali might be a leader not only of India but of mankind. But he does not want that, he wants to get things done easily, to get knowledge without big thinking, the results without labour, Siddhi by an easy Sadhana. His task is the excitement of the emotional mind, but excess of emotion, empty of knowledge, is the very symptom of this malady, after it there comes fatigue and a tamasic condition. All the time the country has been gradually going down, the life power has diminished and finally what has the Bengali become in his own country? He cannot get enough to eat, or clothes to wear. There is lamentation on all sides. His wealth, his trade and commerce, his land, his very agriculture has begun to pass into the hands of others. We have abandoned the Sadhana of Shakti and Shakti has abandoned us. We do the Sadhana of love — but where knowledge and Shakti are not there, love does not remain. Narrowness and littleness come and in a little and narrow mind, heart and soul, there is no place for love. Where is love in Bengal? There is more quarreling, jealous, mutual dislike, misunderstanding and faction there, than anywhere else even in India so much afflicted by division. In the noble, heroic age of the Aryan people, there was not so much shouting and gesticulating but the endeavour they began, remained steadfast through many centuries. The Bengali endeavour lasts for a day or two in the system, and in all its movements. In the sea of Shakti the extension of the rays of the sun of knowledge and in that luminous extension the steady ecstasy of an infinite love, delight, and oneness. I do not want hundreds of thousands of disciples. It will be enough if I can get a hundred complete men, empty of petty egoism, who will be instruments of God. I have no faith in the customary trade of the Guru. I do not wish to be a Guru. That at my touch or at another's some wake and manifest from within their slumbering Godhead and get the divine life this is what I want. It is such men that will raise the country.
You must not think from all this lecture that I despair of the future of Bengal. You say that what is needed is the Bhava intoxication of feeling, to excite the country with the ideal. In the time of Swadeshi we did all that in the field of politics, but what we did is all now in the dust. Will there be a more favourable result in the spiritual field? I do not say that there has been no result. There has been. Where there is movement, there will come out some result, but it is for the most part of the nature of an increase or possibility and hardly to actualise it. There is not the right method. Therefore I wish no longer to make emotional excitement, Bhava, in any intoxication of the mind the base. I wish to make a large and strong equality the foundation of the Yogaand, established on that equality, a full firm and undisturbed Shakti.
What do they say? That this time a great light will manifest itself in Bengal? I too hope, still I have tried to show the other side of the shield. Where is the fault, the error, the deficiency. If these remain, the light will not be a great light and it will not be permanent.
The meaning of this extraordinarily long letter is that I too am tying my bundle, still I believe that this bundle is like the net of St. Peter, all the catch of the infinite is crowded into it. I am not going to open the bundle now. If I do that before the time the sikār might runaway. Neither am I going back to Bengal now. Not because Bengal is not ready but because I am not ready. If the unripe goes amidst the unripe what work can he do?
7 April 1920
(Translated from the original in Bengali)
Dear Barin,
I understand from your letter that you need a written authority from me for the work I have entrusted to you and a statement making your position clear to those whom you may have to approach in connection with it. You may show to anyone you wish this letter as your authority and I hope it will be sufficient to straighten things for you.
I have been till now and shall be for some time longer withdrawn in the practice of Yoga destined to be a basis not withdrawal from life, but for the transformation of human life. It is a "Yoga" in which large tracts of inner experience and new paths of Sadhana had to be opened up and which therefore needed retirement and long time for its completion. But the time is approaching though it has not yet come, when I shall have to take up a large external work proceeding from the spiritual basis of this Yoga.
It is therefore necessary to establish a number of centres small and few at first but enlarging and increasing in numbers as I goon, for training in this Sadhana, one under my direct supervision, others in immediate connection with me. Those trained there will be hereafter my assistants in the work I shall have to do, but for the present these centres will be not for external work but for spiritual training and Tapasya. The first, which will be transferred to British India when I go there, already exists at Pondicherry but I need friends both to maintain and to enlarge it. The second I am founding through you in Bengal. I hope to establish another one in Gujarat during the ensuing year.
Many more desire and are fit to undertake this Sadhana than I can at present admit and it is only by large means being placed at my disposal that I can carry on this. work which is necessary as a preparation for my own return to action.
I have empowered you to act for me in the collection of funds and other collateral matters. I have an entire confidence in you and I would request all who wish me well to put in you the same confidence.
I may add that this work of which I have spoken is both personally and in a wider sense my own and it is not being done and cannot be done by any other for me. It is separate and different from any other work that has been or is being carried on by others under my name or with my approval. It can only be done by myself aided closely by those like you who are being or will in future be trained directly under me in my spiritual discipline.
Arya Office, Pondicherry.
18th November 1922.
(Script Barindra Kumar Ghose.)
I waited for your letter in order to know precisely what portions Chitaranjan wanted to publish and why. It turns out to be as I said, but I wanted confirmation. I must now make clear the reasons why I hesitated to sanction the publication.
I should have had no objection to the publication of the portion about the spiritual basis of life or the last paragraph about Swaraj but that about non-cooperation as it stands without further explanation and amplification would lead, I think, to a complete misunderstanding of my real position. Some would take it to mean that I accept the Gandhi programme subject to modifications proposed by the committee. As you know, I do not believe that Mahatma's principle can be the true foundation or his programme the true means of bringing genuine freedom and greatness of India, her Swarajya and Samarajya. On the other hand others would think that I was sticking to the school of Tilakite Nationalism. That also is not the fact as I hold that school out of date. My own policy, if I were in the field, would be radically different in principle and programme from both, however it might coincide in certain points. But the country is not yet ready to understand its principles or to execute its programme.
Because I know this very well, I am content to work still on the spiritual and psychic plane, preparing there the ideas and forces which may afterwards at the right moment and under the right conditions precipitate themselves into the vital and material field, and I have been careful not to make any public pronouncement as that might prejudice my possibilities of future action. What that will be depend on developments. The present trend of politics may end in abortive unrest, but it may also stumble with the aid of external circumstances into some kind of simulacrum of self government. In either case the whole real work will remain to be done. I wish to keep myself free for it in either case.
My interest in Das's actions and utterances apart from all question from personal friendship, arises first from the fact that the push he is giving, although I do not think it likely to succeed at present, may yet help to break the narrow and rigid cadre of the "constructive" Bardoli programme which seems to me to construct nothing and the fetish worship of non-cooperation as an end in itself rather than a means and thereby to create conditions more favourable for the wide and complex action necessary to prepare the true Swarajya. Secondly, it arose from the rapidity with which he seems to be developing many of the ideas which I have long put down in my mind as essentials of the future. I have no objection to his making use privately of what I have written in the letter. But I hope he will understand why the publication of it does not recommend itself to me.
Pondicherry.
1st December 1922.
My dear Barin,
I have read carefully Jyotish Ghose's letter and I think the best thing is first to explain his present condition as he describes it. For he does not seem to me to understand the true causes and the meaning.
The present condition of passivity and indifference is a reaction from a former abnormal state to which he was brought by an internal effort not properly guided from without or from within. The effort brought about a certain breaking of the veils which divide the physical from the psychic and vital worlds. But his mind was unprepared and unable to understand his experiences and judged them by the light of fancy and imagination, and erroneous mental and vital suggestions. His vital being full of rajasic and egoistic energy rushed up violently to enjoy these new fields and use the force that was working for its own lower ends. This gave an opportunity for the hostile power from the vital world to break in and take partial possession and the result was disorganisation of the nerves and the physical system and some of the brain centres. The attack and possession seem to have passed out and left behind the present reaction of passivity with a strong hold of tamas and indifference. The tamasand indifference are not in themselves desirable things but they are temporarily useful as a rest from the past unnatural tension. The passivity is desirable and a good basis for a new and right working of the Shakti.
It is not a true interpretation of his condition that he is dead within and there is only an outside activity. What is true is that the centre of vital egoism that thinks itself the Actor has been crushed and he now feels all the thought and activity playing outside him. This is a state of knowledge, for the real truth is that all these thoughts and activities are Nature's and come, into us or pass through us as waves from the Universal Nature. It is our egoism and our limitation in the body and individual physical mind which prevent us from feeling and experiencing this truth. It is a great step to be able to see and feel the truths as he is now doing. This is of course the complete knowledge. As the knowledge becomes more complete and the psychic being opens upwards, one feels all the activities descending from above and can get at their true source and transform them.
The light playing in his head means that there has been an opening to the higher force and knowledge which is descending as light from above and working on the mind to illuminate it. The electrical current is the force descending in order to work in the lower centres and prepare them for the light. The right condition will come when instead of the vital forces trying to push upwards, the Prana becomes calm and surrendered and waiting with full assent for the light and when instead of the chasm in between there is a constant aspiration of the heart towards the truth above. The light must descend into these lower centres so as to transform the emotional and vital and physical being as well as the mental thought and will.
The utility of the psychic experiences and knowledge of the invisible worlds as of other Yogic experiences is not to be measured by our narrow human notions of what may be useful for the present physical life of man. In the first place, these things are necessary for the fullness of the consciousness and the completeness of the being. In the second place, these other worlds are actually working upon us and if you know and can enter into them instead of being the victims and puppets of these powers we can consciously deal with and control and use them. Thirdly, in my Yoga, the Yoga of the Supramental, the opening of the psychic consciousness to which these experiences belong are quite indispensable. For it is only through psychic opening that the supramental can fully descend and with a strong and concrete grasp transform the mental, vital and physical being.
This is the present condition and its value. For the future if he wishes to accept my Yoga, the conditions are steady resolve and aspiration towards the truth. I am bringing down a calm passivity and an opening upward towards the source from which the light is coming. The Shakti is already working in him and if he takes and keeps this attitude and has a complete confidence in me there is no reason why he should not advance safely in the Sadhana in spite of the physical and vital damage that has been done to his system. As for his coming here to see me I am not quite yet ready but we will speak about it after your return to Pondicherry.
9 December 1922
First about Krishnashashi. I do not think you are quite right about him at least in idea that he is responsible for the recent undesirable! manifestation at your place. He is evidently what is called psychic sensitive and one of a very high though not perhaps the first order. It is not his fault, I think, that things went wrong recently. These sensitives require a constant protection and guidance from some one, who has both power on the psychic and vital plane and knowledge of the science of these planes. There is none such among you. Especially when he is in certain psychic conditions such as these into which he has recently entered, he needs absolutely these protections. He cannot then possibly protect himself because the very nature of these conditions is an absolute passivity and openness of the psychic and psycho-vital influences. It is useless to ask him at that time to exercise his judgement or his power of rejection. For that would immediately make the condition itself impossible. If the psychic and psychic-vital influence are of the right kind, all is well and very remarkable results can be obtained. If they are bad the condition becomes dangerous. The only way to secure the exclusion of the bad influences is for someone else with psychic power to keep a wall of protection round him at the time. The sort of trance in which the breath diminishes, the tongue goes in, the body is one curved upwards and psycho-physical movements begin in the body is one which I know perfectly well and there is nothing essentially wrong about it. It may be brought about by a very high influence and equally by a bad one, or being brought about by the former, it can be misused or attacked by the latter. If there had been a protection about him exercised by one who had knowledge and confidence in his own psychic and vital force, the untoward influence evidenced by the cries, grimaces etc., would not have come in to spoil this stage. Let me add that these are not forces of our lower universal but an intervention from a foreign and hostile vital world.
In the present circumstances the proper line for Krishnashashi is to postpone this kind of psychic development, I mean the latter ones, especially those of a physical character. He must understand the character of his higher psychic experiences. These including the voice are not direct from the Supramental but psychic and intuitive on the whole mental plane from the higher mind downwards. There is no reason to belittle them. Only in the transcription in his mind there is a mixture of his own mental and other suggestions which is almost inevitable at the beginning. We should now without interrupting his higher psychic development give more attention to a self-controlled meditation and mental enlargement. In one letter he speaks of interrupting the reading of "Arya" from fear of growing too intellectual. This was an erroneous suggestion of his own mind. Let him by all means read and study these things. Of course in this kind of mental enlargement and self-controlled meditation there are dangers and likelihood of mistakes as in all the rest of yoga. But I think what he needs is at the present stage. The progress would be slow but it is likely to be more safe, and he can resume the full psychic development when the necessary conditions can be provided. He should also turn his will towards mental and vital purification. There is often much misunderstanding about passivity and self-surrender. It does not mean that there should not remain in the earlier stages any kind of choices, self-control or will towards certain things which are seen to be needed rather than others. Only they must be subject to a confidence and free openness to a higher guidance, which will respond to his choice and will in us if the choice and will are right and sincere.
Next with regard to the hostile manifestations which I observe to be of a very low vital and physico-vital character. I may observe that although there is a real force behind them many of them are not of a real character, that is to say, the faces seen and touches felt were not in all cases of real vital beings but only forms suggested and created out of of your own surrounding vital atmosphere and can easily be dismissed by refusing to accept their reality or to admit their formation. It may be that some particular person in your group opened the way for them but they need not necessarily have had such a personal cause. The real cause may have been the coming together in meditation of so many yet undeveloped people carrying with them a very mixed atmosphere. When that happens or even when there is general meditation, a chakra, hostile forces are attracted and try to break in. There ought to be some one in the group who during the meditation protects the circle. If the meditation is of a psychic character the protection must be psychic on the vital plane. Mirra's experience is that protection must take the form of a white light constantly kept round the circle. But even this is not enough as the forces will attack constantly and try to find a gap in the protection; there must therefore be round the white light a covering of dense purple light sufficiently opaque for these beings not to be able to see through it. It is not sufficient to have this in the mental or psychic levels. It must be brought down in the vital and fill it, because it is in the vital that there is attack. Further nobody must go out of his body during the meditation (I mean the vital being must not go out, the mental can always do it) or psychically out of the circle. But there is one thing that must be noticed. That if the manifestations occur in spite of all there must be no fear in the minds of those who become aware of them. It is by creating fear through terrible forms and menaces that the hostile beings prevent the Sadhaka from crossing over the threshold between the physical and vital world and it is also by creating fear and alarm that they are able to break in on the vital being of the body. Courage and unalterable confidence are the first necessity of the Sadhaks.
I observe that in your Calcutta Centre the Sadhana seems to have taken a different turn from that in the Krishnagore centre. It seems to be marked by an immediate opening and rapid development of the psychical consciousness and psychical phenomena. This turn has great possibilities but also by itself great danger. In the complete Sadhana there are two powers necessary, the masculine, Purusha or Ishwara power coming down in knowledge, light, calm, strength, wide consciousness from above, and the feminine, Nature or Ishwari power opening in receptivity, the responsiveness on all the planes of the being from below. The first by itself tends to be predominantly mental or mentalised intuitive and afterwards mentalised supramental. It is slow in action but sure and safe, only there is often a difficulty of opening up the separate psychic vital and physical being to the illumination and change. The second by itself is rapid, sensitive, full of extraordinary and striking experiences but apt in the absence of psychic or occult powers to be chaotic, uneven and open to many dangers. It is when both are present and act upon each other in the being that the Sadhana is likely to be perfect.
I think you should insist in your Calcutta centre on attention being given to what I call the Purusha side, that is to say a basis of deep calm, strength, equality, wide consciousness and purity in the mental being, and as the vital physical opens, also in the vital and physical being. If that is attended to and successfully developed the play of the psychic vital and physical experiences will be more steady, ordered and safe.
As to the three photographs you have sent I give you Mirra's comments in inverted commas with additions afterwards.
1) KANAI.
"An extremely interesting head, highly psychic personality but he must be careful about the physical as this type is likely to burn up the body in the intensity of its psychic developments."
The basis of calm, strength and purity brought down into the physical consciousness without any hasty trepidations unhealthy vibrations will secure the physical safety and is here very indispensable.
2) GIRIN.
"An intellectual and philosophic temperament but there is something heavy below."
I think that the heaviness is in the vital being and the physical mind and may cause considerable obstruction but if these two can be cleared and illuminated there may be behind a fund of conservative energy and steadiness which will be useful.
3) JAGATPRASANNA.
"Very dull. I do not know whether anything can be given to him." I seem to find behind the eyes a psychic capacity of a very low kind and in the vitality something impure which may be mediumistic element for the lower psycho-vital forces. If he sat in the circle or meditated in the house that might explain the interruption of the undesirable phenomena. This is my impression about the man. But I am not quite sure. If he is to do any Yoga it should be rather of the old kind and especially a discipline of self-purification. Passivity of any kind in his case would be dangerous..
One or two things I should add suggested by your remark on Krishnashashi. All should understand that the true direct supramental does not come at the beginning but much later on in the Sadhana. First, the opening up and illumination of the mental, vital and physical beings; secondly, the making intuitive of the mind, the right will etc. and the development of the hidden soul consciousness; thirdly, the supra-mentalising of the changed mental vital and physical beings and finally the descent of the true supramental and rising into the supramental plane.
This is the natural order of the Yoga. These stages may overlap and intermix, there may be many variations but the last two can only come in an advanced state of the progress. Of course, the supramental Divine, guides this Yoga throughout but it is first through many intermediate planes, and it cannot be easily said of anything that comes in the earlier periods that it is the direct or full supramental. To think so when it is not so, may well be a hindrance to progress.
As to what you say about an unhinged and unsound element in Krishnashashi, this is a probable explanation. The nature of this kind of psychic sensitiveness is complex and is full of many delicate springs easily touched from behind the veil; hence the sensitiveness but also easily twisted owing to their very delicacy. Something may have been thus twisted in his nature. In that case great care must be taken. It must be found out what it is and the thing be put right without any too rough handling.
I shall write to you separately about Arun's money and Sarojini.
Arya Office, Pondicherry
30 December, 1922.
It is unfortunate that Krishnashashi's Sadhana should have taken this turn. As things stand however a general mass in Calcutta is the worst possible place for him. If no other arrangement can be made it is better that he should go for the present to Chittagong, do his Sadhana there and write to me. It is not possible for me to have him here just now. If his Sadhana rights itself it may be possible hereafter.
As to the development of egoism in him that is the thing which often happens in the first rush of experience and with proper protection and influence may be got over. The serious features are only the psychic vital, the danger to the body and certain suggestions which are evidently meant to put him off the right way. I still find it difficult to believe that the menacing apparitions are primarily due to him, for there is nothing in the atmosphere of his letters that suggest a medium of this kind. If a photograph of him is available that you can send or ask him to send it to me.
I see that you say in your letters that all have been frightened by these apparitions. Insist on what I have said about the necessity of dismissing fear.
Some time or other everybody will have to face things of this kind and how can they do it if they fear? If they are afraid of these things, many of which are merely figures or nervous formations, how can they be spiritual warriors and conquerors, without which there can be no rising towards supermanhood. I presume they would be brave against physical dangers; why not then be brave against all dangers or menace.
If Krishnashashi needs the instructions I have sent in my former letter to you (They were made after consultation with Mirra) all may yet be well. If not, I shall have to try to send my mental protection and see what I can do. He is unfortunately too far away for me to put a psycho-vital protection about him. Let me know immediately what has been done and where he goes. I am sending you a letter for him enclosed to you.
As regards Arun's money, I understand that it is for the Calcutta centre and I do not understand why you want to send it here. If he can give the first monthly instalment at once that ought to lighten your difficulties there. I shall be able to arrange with Durga Dass' help and with the money coming from Madras and Gujarat for one year's expenses here, just sufficient for the two houses. What I want you to do, if you can, is to raise money from Bengal for the next year and for the maintenance of your Bengal centre also for two years, so that there may be no need of hunting for funds for some time to come.
At present the main difficulty in your attempts to raise money is that all remains as potentiality and promise and thins away before it can come to material realisation. It is possible that if you can materialize the small amounts this obstacle may break and remember that it is psychic difficulty, a state offerees, that is the thing to be changed, because that is the real obstacle. If another balance of forces can be begun in which there is the actual materialization even on a small scale that may well be an opening for better conditions.
January 1923
I have got a fuller idea from your letter about Krishnashashi's collapse. The main cause is what I saw, the vehement and unrestrained pressure and the vital uprush overstraining and upsetting the defective physical mind. There is no evil in the physical and mental or even the vital being proper. The seat of the harm is evidently in the physico-vital and the Physical being. The physico-vital dazzled by the experiences began to think itself a very interesting and important personage and to histrionise with the experiences and play for that purpose with the body. This is a frequent deviation of Yoga observable even in some who are considered great Sadhakas. It is a kind of charlatanism of the vital being but would not by itself amount to madness, though it may sometimes seem to go very near it. Ordinarily if the physical mind is strong it either rejects or else keeps these demonstrations within certain bounds. But in this case the physical mind also broke down. The coarse kind of violence exhibited is due to the rough and coarse character of the physical being. So much I see but am not yet able to determine whether the disorder is only psychic or, as was suggested in my last letter, there is some defect in the brain which has come to the surface. I am concentrating daily and those in Krishnagore have to help me by remaining calm and strong and surrounding him with an unagitated atmosphere also those, who can, have to keep a quiet concentration. He must be kept outwardly and inwardly under the control and check. If the disorder is only psychic the violence will pass away and the other signs abate and less frequently recur. But if there is some brain defect there as I said, it may be a difficult affair. I can give final instructions only after seeing how the malady goes.
As regards your own Sadhana and those of others in Bhawanipore I think it necessary to make two or three observations. First I have for some time the impression that there is a too constant activity and pressure for rapidity of progress and a multimedia of experiences. These things are all right in themselves but there must be certain safeguards. First there should be sufficient periods of rest and silence, even of relaxation in which there can be quiet assimilation. Assimilation is very important and periods necessary for it should not be regarded with impatience as stoppages of the Yoga. Care should betaken to make calm and quiet strength and inner silence, the basic condition for all activity. There should be no excessive strain, any fatigue, disturbances, or inordinate sensitiveness of the nervous and physical parts, of which you mention certain symptoms in your letters, should be quieted and removed, as they are often signs of overstrain or too great an activity as rapidity in the Yoga. It must also be remembered that experiences are only valuable as indications and openings and the main thing always is the steady harmonious and increasingly organised opening and change of the different parts of the consciousness and the being.
Among the experiences there is one paper headed" Surface Consciousness". What is described there is the nervous or physicovital envelope. This is the thing observed by the medium and it is by exteriorising it to a less or greater extent that they produce their phenomenons. How did Rati come to know of it? Was it by intuition, by vision or by personal experience?
If the latter, warn him not to exteriorise this vital envelope for to do so without adequate protection, which must be that of a person acquainted with these things and physically present at the time, may bring about serious physical dangers and also injuries to the nervous being and the body or even worse.
I got telegram about Krishnashashi this morning. Yesterday I received his photograph and today his last written experiences. I have been able to form from all these and from other indications as complete an idea about him as is possible at this distance. The photo shows a remarkable soul, an idealistic psychic intelligence and the presence of a high and beautiful being internal but the part of the face showing the emotional and vital being is too delicate to support adequately the upper part of the physical and the physicovital mould is of a poor and inferior character not easily lending itself to the higher movements or to the change demanded by the Yoga. This disparity in the being was the cause of his illness and is the cause also of his present disorder. The immediate cause, however, is his being hurried by circumstances and the eagerness of his own mind into a development too rapid for the physical consciousness which should have been subjected to a long and steady preparation.
I do not know whether Krishnashashi received your letter written to him at his other address. Raja Brojendra Narayan Roy's St., which he should have got on the 14th. In this letter I suggested that he should re- main in Chittagong or some other quiet place and do the Sadhana by himself turning to me for help and protection and I also insisted that the main object of his Sadhana should be the purification and calming of the mind, the vital being and the body. After returning to Bhawanipur I see that just the contrary has happened: a feverish psycho mental activity and a much too eager attempt at rapid progress. Instead of calmly receiving he has been seizing at everything that came and trying to translate it and throw it out into form. He has also been pulling at realisation and trying, as Murrach has put it, to swallow the world in a minute. The result is that there has been an uprush of some undesirable kind from the imperfect vital being and the physical mind unable to bear the strain has been thrown into disorder. It is evident also that the atmosphere of the Bhawanipur centre is not favourable to him. There is there an intense mental and psychic activity and a constant push towards rapid experience and progress which are just the things that are dangerous for him and there is not yet the assured basis of calm, peace, serenity and inner silence which he needs above all things.
I hope that it is only a crisis or a passing disorder. I am doing my best to mend the breakdown, but you must help me by keeping there a firm quietness and calm concentration. This was the object of my telegram. I am of the opinion that when he recovers his balance, my original instructions (into Manni's letter) should be adhered to, and he should go to some quiet place where there will not be any high pressure. He must be instructed to put away every other object except the quieting of his mind, vital being and body and the attainment of a poise of serene calm and peace. Also it is better for him not to pass the whole day in meditation and Sadhana but to take plenty of relaxation for the relief of the physical being and do some kind of physical work not exhausting which will keep it occupied and healthy. He must be assured that this thing does not mean at all a rejection but that it is necessary to secure the proper condition for his future Sadhana. He must of course keep himself in constant spiritual connection with me and write to me from time to time.
Please keep me constantly informed of his condition until he recovers. Since the above was written your second telegram came into my hands this morning. It is possible that Krishnagore may be a more suitable place for Krshnashashi than Calcutta. There is a more settled basis there. The place is more deliberate and the surroundings are likely to be quieter, a not unimportant consideration in his case. Besides he needs some-one who can impose upon him an atmosphere of calm and influence him directly from the psychic nature and not through the mentality, the latter being always of a doubtful affectivity in dealing with psychic people, and from what you have told me about Indu, it is possible that he may be able to help him in this way. In that case it would not be necessary for him to return to Chittagong or pursue his Sadhana in isolation. All this of course after he has recovered. His case is not that of insanity in the ordinary sense but, as in J.'s case and for rather similar reasons, a psychic disorder, I should of course be kept informed of his condition. I have many things to write but as this must go without delay I postpone them to another letter.
23 January 1923
I got your letter of the 26th and intended to wire but had not your Krishnagore address. This afternoon I have received your telegram and send a reply giving permission for Krishnashashi's removal. In case the telegram should not reach I have also wired to Kanai in Calcutta. Although to cure Krishnashashi by psychic means might not be possible, the prolonged resistance and the increasing violence make the present conditions impossible. The ordinary means of restraint and medical treatment will have to be used and therefore his removal as you suggest is the only thing left open to us.
It appears from your letters that there is a strong play around you of the hostile opposition from beings of the lowest physico-vital and physical ranges. These beings are small and without intelligence but full of power to do various kinds of harm and mischief. They are similar to those that did the stone-throwing in the other house. To produce brain incoherence, freaks, absurdities, sexual disorders, nervous agitations and disequilibrium, coarse violence of various kinds is their sphere in the physical domain and in the physical to bring about accidents, illness, injuries, physical impediments and on the smaller scale little mischiefs, inconveniences and hindrances of all kinds. It is these that have taken possession of Krishnashashi's brain and nervous centres and impel his speech and movements. It is these also that pursue with accidents those who are trying to collect money. I have for some time been aware of their activities and suggestions and they are almost the only positively hostile forces of which I am aware in the Yoga, the rest being merely obstructions of nature. In my own atmosphere I am able to make their suggestions abortive and minimise their play pending their elimination. But in your case they seem to be moved by some more powerful force which not being able to act on you directly is using them as agents. Probably you have in your Sadhana touched and awakened the plane on which they work, but are not yet able to conquer and protect as you can in the higher fields. Those entirely within your spiritual influences may resist or escape but others are exposed to their attack.
I think in these circumstances it is best to limit your creation of a centre there to those who have already begun and even with them, I mean the newcomers, you should be careful. Probably the best course is to keep the centre at Krishnagore as you suggest and have only a small establishment in Calcutta. The atmosphere of Calcutta cannot be a good environment for Sadhana centre. As to money affairs you must see whether the resistance can be overcome during February and in any case I hope you will not return empty-handed or with a nominal sum, for that would mea a victory for the hostile force which will make things more difficult in ih future. I understand from your last letter that Satkhari has already realised Rs. 500/-. If so get that sum and send it at once, also get in hand and send the Benares money. That will mean so much materialised and to that extent the opposing force defeated. Afterwards see whether the rest does not come in with less difficulty. If you can prevail, that means the way made clear for better success in the future. It is enough that these forces should have destroyed such fine psychic possibilities as of Krishnashashi. I do not like their being successful in other directions also.
As to Sarojini, it is out of the question that she should come here. Make it plain to her that the Yoga I am doing is now too much difficult for her. Her coming here would be waste of time and money. If she is in earnest about Sadhana she must begin with something much more easy. The first thing for her is to study these things, understand, get her mind prepared and begin with turning herself Godward, elimination of egoistic movements and perhaps doing works in the spirit of Karmayoga. A meditation active and not passive, with these things as the object is all she can safely try at the beginning. I have of course no objection to her turning to Theosophy if she is drawn that way. But for her to come into concentrated atmosphere here just now would not be good for her and it would be disturbing to us. Please stop her coming by whatever means you can.
I learn from your post card today that Kanai and the others are at Krishnagore. Please let me know your address there so that I may be sure whenever necessary of making a direct communication.
31 January 1923
AUROBINDO
First about the photographs. The mounted photograph man is fully unfit for the Yoga. The face is empty except for a great deal of pretension, not warranted by any substance behind. He had better be put off or left aside. It is no use just now bringing in people who have not a definite possibility and even among these who have the best only should be chosen.
As to the un mounted photograph, this is a much worse case. I cannot at all find what you say you see in his eyes. They seem tome rather the eyes of madness or at least monomania. The whole face is a nightmare. It seems to me a clear case either of possession or, even, of the incarnation of some vital being. Please do not meddle with him at all. It is only when have obtained mastery over the physico-vital and all the physical planes that it will be at all safe to deal with such cases and certainly even then it will not do to begin by taking them into the Yoga.
I note from this case and from what you say in connection with Rathin that you have just now what seems to me, a rather dangerous attraction (because likely to create hindrances or misdirect the energy) towards these vital cases. What you say about the different vital worlds is no doubt interesting and has a certain truth but you must remember that these worlds, which are different from the true or divine vital, are full of enchantments and illusions and they present appearances of beauty which allure only to mislead of destroy. They are worlds of "Rakshasimaya" and their heavens are more dangerous than their hells. They have to be known and their powers met when need be but not accepted; our business is with the supramental and with vital only when it is supramentalised and until then we have always to be on our guard against any lures from that other quarter.
I think the worlds of which you speak are those which have a special attraction and a special danger for poets, imaginative people and sane artists. There is, especially, a strain of aestheticised vital susceptibility or sentiment or even sentimentalism through which they affect the being and it is one of the things that has to be purified before one can rise to the highest poetry, art and imaginative creation. In the case of Krishnashashi some influences from these worlds certainly entered into the cause of his collapse. I shall write about Rathin directly to his father for I don't know how long you are staying in Gauhati. I shall only say just now that it will not be good for the boy if he merely changes the control of one kind of vital world for that of another. He must become healthy normal first and all else can only come afterwards.
As to money matters, I think you should go on trying for some time longer. I believed the obstacle is bound to break before long if we do not get tired out by the obstinacy of the resistance. I am just now very much concentrated in the effort to bring down the supramental into the physical plane which demands a very constant and sustained effort and it is for this reason that I have not been able to answer letters. I shall decide about Khitish when the time for your return draws near.
2 April 1923
Dictated letter about Barindra's inquiries:
We should not accept any man into the Yoga because he is rich, or at the same time we should not debar any man because he happens to be rich. But he must be made to understand the demands of the Yoga. There are three demands:
1st. The will (not mere inclination or desire) for a greater Truth.
2nd. Complete consecration to that Truth in doing all the works for that Life.
3rd. Transformation.
That means he must be able to remove to give up all motives other than that of the practice of Yoga even in the worldly pursuits.
The possession of wealth is a great obstacle and it is also a supreme opportunity. In our aim of Yoga we have to conquer the world for the Divine and if we can bring some force of wealth from the rule of vital worlds on our side, it is worthwhile. At present these forces are held by the vital world. We should win them for the Divine.
1923 14 April Evening
I answer first your letter of the 6th April. I have already let you know that I approve both the people whose photographs you have sent to me. As to Bibhuti Bhushan Datta you are right in thinking that he is a born yogin. His face shows the type of the Sufi or Arab mystic and he must certainly have been that in a former life and brought much of his then personality into the present existence. There are defects and limitations in his being. The narrowness of the physical mind of which you speak is indicated in the photograph, though it has not come out in the expression, and it might push him in the direction of a rather poverty-stricken asceticism instead of his expanding and opening himself richly to the opulences of the Divine. It might also lead him in other circumstances to some kind of fanaticism. But on the other hand if he gets the right direction and opens himself to the right powers these things may be turned into valuable elements, the ascetic capacity into a force useful against psycho-vital dangers and what might have been fanaticism into an intense devotion to the Truth revealed to him. There is also likely to be some trouble in the physico-vital being. But I cannot yet say of what nature. This is not a case of an entirely safe development, which can be assured only where there is a strong vital and physical basis and a certain natural balance in the different parts of the being. This balance has hereto be created and its creation is quite possible. Whatever risk there is must be taken for the nature here is born for the yoga and ought not be denied its opportunity. He must be made to understand fully the character and demands of the integral yoga.
Next for Kumar Krishna Mitter. He is no doubt what you say, a type of the rich and successful man, but the best kind of that type and cast on sound and general lines. There is besides indicated in his face and expression a refinement and capacity of idealism which are not too common. Certainly we are not to take people into the yoga for the sake of their riches, but on the other hand we must not have the disposition to reject any one on account of his riches. If the wealth is a great obstacle, it is also a great opportunity and part of the aim of our work is not to reject but to conquer for the Divine Self expression the vital and material powers including that wealth, which are now in the possession of other influences. If there is a man like this and is prepared with an earnest and real will to bring himself and his power over from the other camp to ours, there is no reason to refuse him. This of course is not the case of a man born to the yoga like Bibhuti Bhusan, but of one who has an opening in him to a spiritual awakening and I think of a nature which might possibly fail from certain negative deficiencies but not because of any adverse element in the being. The one necessity is that he should understand and accept what the yoga demands of him — first the seeking of a greater truth, secondly the consecration of himself and his powers and wealth to its service and finally the transformation of all his life into the terms of the truth and that he should have not merely the enthusiastic turning of his idealism but a firm and deliberate will towards it. It is especially necessary in the case of these rich men for them to realise that it is not enough in this yoga to have a spiritual endeavour on one safe side and on the other the rest of the energies given to the ordinary motives, but that the whole life being must be consecrated to the yoga. It is probably from this reason of a divided life these men like Ariensingh fail to progress in spite of a natural capacity. If this is understood and accepted the consecration of which he speaks is obviously in his circumstances the first step in the path. If he enters it will probably be advisable for him to come for a short time and see me in Pondicherry but this of course has to be decided afterwards.
I may say a word in passing about Nalineswar. I have read through his experiences and they confirm what I have said about the deficient capacity of his adhar. The mental, vital and physical being are full of weakness and Tamas and the debility and torpor which he constantly experiences are the result of this deficient adhar trying to bear the pressure of the Sadhana. At this time he has one thing which can carry them through if he keeps it steadily, the persistant faith and self-surrender. If the physical lightness, which he experienced for the last four or five days before he wrote can be made permanent then probably the worst part of the difficulty is over. In any case that permanence whenever it comes will be the sign of a certain fundamental safety and the other deficiencies can be gradually rectified by the coming in of the light and the power into the mind and the vital being.
As regards Jyotish Mukerjee, the most notable thing in his photograph is the strong symmetry between the two sides of his face centered in the dissimilarity of the two eyes. This always is a sign of two sides in the nature which have not been harmonised and unified, one side perhaps of faith and devotion and another of a critical and negative mind or one side drawn to higher things and the other held down by the earth nature. This is likely to create a great disadvantage and difficulties in the earlier part of the Sadhana, for it remains even though the disparity may be suppressed by the mental effort but once the balance or unification can be created there is a compensatory advantage by the combination of two strong elements both necessary to completeness. The Sadhana he has been doing seems to have been mainly that of a preliminary mental and vital (psychological) purification and preparation of a very sound character but what is still lacking is a positive spiritual side of the Sadhana. However, the clearing of the system seems to have gone far enough for him to have had at least glimpses of psycho-spiritual experiences and a promise even of the supramental awaiting its time for manifestation. I shall, if I make time, write separately my comments on his experiences and if he understands and follows he may proceed more rapidly in his Sadhana. What you say about your Sadhana is probably the right interpretation of your experiences. The two things of which you speak are really two sides of one movement. The opening and clearing of the lower strata can only be effectively done in proportion as this relative or mentalised supramental can lay hold on the consciousness and open to and bring down the higher or intermediate from above, and this in its turn can only settle it into the being in proportion as the psycho-vital and physical open, clear and change. The interaction must go on until a certain balance between the two movements is created which will enable the higher to hold the being without interruption, and open it more and more to the true supramental activities. The action into which you have been cast was probably necessary because it is the dynamic part of your being in which the defects of the lower nature have the greatest hold and are most prominent.
Pondicherry,
16 April 1923
After this letter was finished I got your last of the 12th. What you say about Kumar Krishna there is what I could already gather about him, only made precise. I do not think that these things very much matter. All strong natures have the rajasic active outgoing force in them and if that were sufficient to unfit for the yoga very few of us would have had a chance. As for the doubt of the physical mind as to whether the thing is impossible, who has not had it? In my own case it pursued years and years and it is only in last two years that the last shadow of doubt, not latterly of its theoretical feasibility, but of the practical certainty of its achievement in the present state of the world and of the human nature entirely left me. The same thing can be said of the egoistic poise, the almost all strong egoistic poise. But I do not think judging from the photograph but it is of the same half bull and half bulldog nature as in B.P.Mittra. These things can only go with spiritual development and experiences and then the strength behind them becomes asset. It is also evident from what you say about his past experience of the voice and the vesture that there is, as I thought a physical something in him Waiting for and on the verge of spiritual awakening. I understand that he is waiting for intellectual conviction and to bring it some kind of assurance from the inner experience. To that also there is nothing to say. But the question is, and it seems to me the one question in his case, whether he will be ready to bring to the yoga the firm entire and absolute will and consecration that will be needed to tide him through all the struggles and cries of Sadhana. The disparity between his mental poise and his action enough, precisely because it is a mental poise. It has to become a spiritual poise before the life and the ideal can become one. Have the spoiling by luxury of which you speak and the worldly life sapped in him the possibility of developing an entire God ward will? If not, then he may be given his chance. I cannot positively say that he is or will be the Adhikari. I can only say that there is the capacity in the best part of his nature. I cannot also say that he is among the "best". But he seems to me to have more original capacity than some at least who have been accepted. When I wrote about the "best" I did not mean as Adhar without defects and dangers, for I do not think such a one is to be found. My impression is of course, founded on a general favourable effect produced by the physiognomy and the appearance, on certain definite observations upon the same and on the psychic indications which were mixed but in the balance favourable. I have not seen the man as you have.
Your fuller account of your Sadhana shows that you are seeing in the nature and power of the supramental but you are seeing it probably through the revelatory light descending into the mind. It can only fulfil itself on the conditions I have named, first the opening to the actual descent of the supermind itself which you will find something still more concrete and full of the truth power and truth substance and its penetration of the physical consciousness in all its layers.
I have been obliged for some time, partly owing to the many sided storm of which you speak, to concentrate on other things and perhaps that is one reason why this stream of money collection has run dry. I shall see whether we can set it flowing again. I do not ask you come back as yet because it is much better if possible to get this thing finished in such a way that you may not have to go running back after a time to complete it. The arrangement I thought of with regard to the debts have not taken shape or rather have postponed themselves to an indefinite future. If I remember right what you have immediately to pay is some 251, more to Kamala Palit and 600 to Arun. Besides this and the other 2000 to Arun, which if necessary can wait, there are the sums due, 1500 altogether to the Kaviraj and Pulin Mitter. I believe there is nothing else. Can the last two wait and if so how long? What is still necessary is to raise 1500 more for next year's expenses here. Next, to pay off, the more pressing debts and if there is any large opening all the debts. I would have no objection to your applying the money you can raise from the Marwaries to the latter purpose. If Basantlal Murarka can readily raise 5000 from them, the problem will be solved. I shall then be able to keep Das' money separate and if he also keeps his promise that with some help from elsewhere will prevent all necessity of thinking of these things for another two years.
As regards Kanai, the experiences of which he is afraid do not seem to me dangerous in themselves. They are such as come to all people whose Yoga runs strongly on physic lines and those you mention and similar ones of still stronger character have been experienced by Mirra at least a thousand times during her Sadhana. The only danger, apart from any hostile interference, comes from the disturbance of the physical mind and the fear and apprehensions of the nervous and physical being, I have already written once before that the fearlessness is first necessary condition for going through this Yoga. These fears and apprehensions and the sense of weakness and insecurity come from the attachment of the physical and nervous being to its ordinary basis of consciousness and usual habits of living and its alarm at anything abnormal which forces it out of its own grooves. As for the need of immediate protection, that is only when the vital goes out of the body. The psychic being can go out without any danger if the physical consciousness does not disturb and itself create the danger. But unfortunately Kanai's physical and nervous being seems to be weak and not on a level with the powers of his mind and physical nature. It may be better for him to concentrate first on the preparation of his physical consciousness, I have already said that what he must do is to bring down the basis of calm light and strength into the physical mind, nerves and body. Once this is thoroughly done all attacks can be met. There will be no disturbing vibrations and all kinds of psychic and vital experiences such as those now pressing upon will be welcomed as an expansion and fulfillment of the integral nature and a cause not of apprehension but of knowledge and Ananda. As to his coming here, I was not calling him because just now I am still in the concentration on the complete mastery of the physical and that prevents me from putting myself out very much at present. I could not give him the constant attention which will be needed according to your suggestion and besides as his physical being is the weakest part of him, it might not be altogether advisable for him to be here until I have established a sufficient general security against any attack which might touch on that plane. Still I shall see whether I can call him after a little time.
I have no objection to Rajani's proposal of visit here in case of his confirmation. It might be helpful to him in the present stage of his Sadhana.
I had forgotten that Poury Mohan Das and Chittagong aspirant were one and the same person. You will have to take together what was said about each in Nalini's letter. The chaotic nature of his experiences about which I spoke are probably due to some kind of difficulty or exaggeration in his vital being. It is best for him to start with getting a sure foundation of calm and quiet opening upon all the planes of his consciousness, especially the emotional and vital, so that a sound and orderly development of the Yoga may be possible.
30 May 1923
If Kanai really gets anything of the nature of psychic trance the one thing he will have to be careful about is to meditate under such conditions that it will not be roughly broken from outside.
I have received the Benares money and am sending anacknowledgement with this letter, which you can transmit to Das. Rajani's fiftyhas not yet reached me.
I had already written to you about Akhil and on the 10th Manmohan telegraphed and wrote to Chittagong instructing him not to go to Bhawanipur but to collect the money and as soon as he had done this and sufficiently recovered from fever, to write and he would receive a call from here. It appears from your telegram today that he started before receiving Manmohan's telegram. I can give no other instructions than these I have already given, Akhil must collect the money sufficient for his journey here and back either to Krishnagore or Chittagong and he must not come without the sum in his hand. I have arranged things here so as to have just sufficient to meet one year's expenses under each head just that and no more. Until I am assured of the next year's expenses and more I cannot meet unexpected charges or enlarge my expenditure. Therefore it will not do for him to come and then have to wait here indefinitely for means of his return journey. An arrangement agreed upon ought to be observed otherwise there is unnecessary inconvenience and confusion.
I infer from your letter and telegram taken together that Mohini is starting for Krishnagore in order to take back Krishnashashi. Of course in that case there is no need to wait further as was suggested in Mohini's letter. I have received no news about Krishnashashi for the last three days. This kind of disregard of instructions is not at all right. It puts us in considerable difficulty in trying to help Krishnashashi. Please ask Mohini to. let me know often from Chittagong about Krishnashashi and his condition. Barada Babu's letter is very interesting but does not solve the difficulty I had, as it gives me no fresh information of any importance. It had already been seen that the immediate cause of the collapse was partly sexual; for that was included in what I meant by the uprush from the vital being. Nor does it make much difference that the physico-vital force possessing him took from the form or assumed the pranic body of some dead friend. The situation remains as before. If there is some brain defect that has come up, the issue is more doubtful. The suggestion about the medicine may possibly be useful hereafter. Mohini had better be informed about it.
As to Rajani's difficulties you might ask him to write to me himself stating them and the precise cause of his doubts. As far as I know about his Sadhana he was progressing in a steady and sound fashion, but for long I have no further news of it. There is no reason why he should not succeed in the Yoga if he keeps the right attitude and faith and perseverance. He will necessarily have difficulties with his vital nature and physical mind which have a strong earth element, but that is the case also with several others. His development, if he perseveres, is likely to be rather through knowledge and will than any great richness of psychic experience, but he must not take the absence or paucity of the latter for an inability to develop the Yoga.
The paragraph in one of your letters about the debts is very confused and I can make nothing precise out of it. What I want is to know first what were the heads and the exact sums actually met by the loan of two thousand. What for instance, is the amount still due to the Kavirajas and what the amount of the small loans. It is very necessary for me, whether in determining what to write to Amar with regard to money matters or in trying to help you, to have an exact and clear idea of the whole transaction. Where there is only a confused vague or general idea, the force I put out loses itself very largely in the void. Specially I shall have in the future to try and act more and more from the Supramental and less and less from the mind. Now the first condition of the Supramental is exactness, clearness and order both in the total and the details and their relations. Therefore it is a great advantage if there are these elements in the data upon which I have to work and great disadvantage if they are absent.
I shall await your report about Mohini. I gather from his letter that he wanted to remain sometime with me for Sadhana. My own idea is that as already written by Manmohan to Chittagong it is better for most to practise first in the elements at least the synthetic Yoga of Jnana, Bhakthi and Karma and establish peace and Samata before taking up the Yoga of complete and direct self-surrender. There will always be exceptions, but this is far most the safest course.
14 February 1924
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With regard to the attacks you get there A.G. says they are bound to come as long as your entire consciousness is not transformed. Even when the higher power works in you down to your physico-vital consciousness, the attacks will find a way through the physical consciousness. Even if the power is in full action down to the physical itself, the attacks you complain of in your letter, especially those that take the form of illness can get you through the medium of subconscious vibrations of the physical. You have to fight them out of you until your entire Adhara is completely transformed when no more attacks of any kind can trouble you. These things are always coming from the universal as you have had full experience; and now that you are no longer isolated they have the additional advantage of the people with who you mix, — for that is always full of the perturbed human currents.
Now to your question how you should mix people there. A.G. says you should retain and remain in your own Yoga consciousness separate from and above the consciousness of those who are around you. But you need not show them that you are in a different plane of being. It is enough to live in yourself in the true inner poise and keep the protection of your own atmosphere, without your outward manner of aloofness or of being other than they are.
You say that you have lost the Divine peace which had come to you on your way to Gujarat. A.G. says the Divine peace that you speak of — like other deepest states — comes and goes increasing gradually in the return until it can be fully established in the various planes of your being —they cannot be ready at once to keep it in its fullness. Lastly A.G. wants you to communicate to him constantly your experiences and the progress that you can make in your Sadhana in spite of any difficulty you may now and then feel in writing letters.
Dear Chitta,
It is a long time, almost two years I think, since I have written a letter to any one. I have been so much retired and absorbed in my Sadhana that contact with outside world has till lately been reduced to a minimum. Now that I am looking outward again, I find that circumstances lead me to write first to you. I say circumstances, because it is a need that makes me take up the pen after so long a disuse.
1: Letter of a disciple to A.B.Purani based on Sri Aurobindo's oral remarks.
The need is in connection with the first outward work that I am under- taking after this long inner retirement. Barin has gone to Bengal and will see you in connection with it, but a word from me is necessary perhaps and therefore I send you this letter through Barin. I am giving him also a letter of authority from which you will understand the immediate nature of the need for which I have sent him to raise funds. But I may add some-thing to make it more definite.
I think you know my present idea and the attitude towards life and work to which it has brought me. I have become confirmed in a perception which I had always, less clearly and dynamically then, but which has become more and more evident to me, that the true basis of life and work is the spiritual, that is to say, a new consciousness to be developed only by Yoga. I see more and more manifestly that man can never get out of the futile circle; the race is always treading until he has raised himself to the new foundation. I believe also that it is the mission of India to make this great victory for the world. But what precisely was the nature of the dynamic power of this greater consciousness? What was the condition of its effective truth? How could it be brought down, mobilised, organised, turned upon life? How could our present instruments, intellect, mind, life, body be made true and perfect channels for this great transformation? This was the problem I have been trying to work out in my own experience and I have now a sure basis, a wide knowledge and some mastery of the secret. Not yet its fullness and complete imperative presence — therefore I have still to remain in retirement. For I am determined not to work in the external field till I have the sure and complete possession of this new power of action — not to build except on a perfect foundation.
But still I have gone far enough to be able to undertake one work on a larger scale than before — the training of others to receive the Sadhana and prepare themselves as I have done, for without that my future work cannot even be begun. There are many who desire to come here and whom I can admit for the purpose, there are a greater number who can be trained at a distance; but I am unable to carry on unless I have sufficient funds to be able to maintain a centre here and one or two at least outside. I need therefore much larger resources than I at present command. I have thought that by your recommendation and influence you may help Barin to gather them for me. May I hope that you will do this for me?
One word to avoid a possible misunderstanding. Long ago I gave to Motilal Roy of Chandernagore the ideas and some principles and lines of a new social and economical organisation and education and this with my spiritual force behind him he has been trying to work out in his own way in his Sangha. This is quite a separate thing from what I am now writing about — my own work which I must do myself and no one can do for me.
I have been following with interest your political activities specially your present attempt to give a more flexible and practically effective turn to non-cooperation movement. I doubt whether you will succeed against such contrary forces, but I wish you success in your endeavour. I am most interested however in your indications about Swaraj for I have been developing my own ideas about the organisation of a true Indian Swaraj and I shall look forward to see how far yours will fall in with mine.
Yours...
18 November 1922
My dear Rajani,
I am writing today about your son Rathin and his illness if it can be called by that name. I shall state first in general terms the nature of the malady and its usual developments that is to say, the normal course it takes when no psychic or spiritual force is brought in to remove it. After-wards I shall indicate the two possible means of cure.
I think it best for me to state the case in its worst and not only in its best possible terms because it is necessary that you should know the full truth and have courage to face it. These cases are not those of a truly physical malady but of an attempt at possession from the vital world: and the fits and other physical symptoms are signs, not of the malady itself, but of the struggle of the natural being against the pressure of the hostile influences. Such a case in a child of this age indicates some kind of accumulation in the physical heredity creating an opportunity or a predisposition of which vital invasion takes advantage. It is especially the physical consciousness and physico-vital which contain the germs or materials of this predisposition. The physical being is always changing its constituents and in each period of seven years a complete change is effected. If the symptoms of this predisposition in the nature are detected and wise influence and training used by the parents to eradicate them and that is done so effectively that in the first seven years no seeds of the malady appear, then usually there is no further danger. If on the contrary they manifest by the seventh year, then the next period of seven years is the critical period and ordinarily the case would be decided one way or the other by or before the fourteenth year.
Romen Palit - sketch by the Mother
There are normally three possible eventualities. The difficulty in dealing with the case of so young a child is that the mind is not developed and can give no help towards the cure. But as the mind develops in the second seven years it will, if it is not abnormally weak which I think is not the case here, react more and more against the influences. Aided by a good control and influence it may very well succeed in casting out the hostile intrusion and its pressure altogether. In that case the fits and other signs of the physical struggle pass away, the strange moral and vital tendencies fade out of the habits and the child becomes mentally, morally and physically a healthy normal being.
The second possibility is that the struggle between the natural being and the intruding being may not be decisive in the Psychic sense, that is to say the intruder cannot take full possession but also he cannot be thrown out entirely. In that case anything may happen, a shattered mind and health, the death of the body or a disturbed, divided and permanently abnormal nature.
The third and worst possibility is that the intruding being may succeed and take entire possession. In that case the fits and other violent symptoms will disappear, the child may seem to be physically cured and healthy, but he will be an abnormal and most dangerous being incarnating an evil vital force with all its terrible propensities and gifted with abnormal powers to satisfy them.
In Rathin's case there is not as yet possession in the full sense of the word, but a strong pressure and influence indicated by the strange habits of which you have written. These are suggested and dictated by the intruding being and not proper to the boy himself. The fearlessness and security with which he does these things is inspired from the same source. But the fits prove that there is as yet no possession. There is struggle indicated by them and a temporary hold which passes out again. He is evidently in the earlier part of the critical period. I have indicated the course normally taken by the illness, but it is not necessary to pass through it and take its risks. There are other means which can come to his help and effect a complete cure.
The first and easiest is to give by hypnotic suggestion. This if properly applied is an absolutely sure remedy. But in the first place, it must be applied by some one who is not himself under the influence of evil powers, as some hypnotists are. For that obviously will make matters worse. Moreover, it must be done by someone, who has the proper training and knows thoroughly what he is about, for a mistake might be disastrous. The best conditions would be if someone like yourself who has a natural relation and already an influence over the child could do it with the necessary training and knowledge.
The other means of course is the use of spiritual power and influence. If certain psycho-spiritual means could be used, this would be as sure and effectual as the other. But this is not possible because there is no one there who has the right knowledge. The spiritual influence by itself can do it but the working is likely to be slow. It must ordinarily be conveyed through someone on the spot and you yourself are obviously the right instrument. What you have to do is to keep the idea that I am sending to you power for this subject, to make yourself receptive to it and at the same time make your own will and natural influence on the child a direct channel for it. The will must be a quiet will, calm and confident and intent on its object, but without attachment and unshaken by any amount of resistance and unalarmed and undiscouraged by the manifestations of the illness. Your attitude to the child must be that of a calm and firm protecting affection free from emotional weakness and disturbance. The first thing is to acquire such an influence as to be able to repel the attack when it comes and if it takes any hold to diminish steadily its force and the violence of its manifestation. I understand from your letter that you have already been able to establish the beginning of such an influence. But it must be able to work at a distance as well as in his presence. Further you must acquire the power of leaving a protection around him when you are absent. Secondly, you must be able to convey to him constant suggestion which will gradually inhibit the strange undesirable habits of which you speak in your letter. This, I may say cannot be effectively done by any kind of external coercion. For that is likely to make these impulses more violent. It must be a will and suggestion and silent influence. If you find the control increasing and these habits diminishing, you can understand, that the work cure has begun. Its completion may take sometime because these vital beings are very sticky and persistent and are always returning to the attack. The one thing which can make the cure rapid is if the boy himself develops a will in his mind to change for that will take away the ground of the hostile influence. It is because something in him is amused and takes pleasure in the force which comes with the influence that these things are able to recur and continue. This element in him calls the invading presence back even when it has been centrally rejected. I shall of course try to act directly on him as well as through you, but the instrumentality of one on the spot greatly enforces and is sometimes indispensable to the action.
A word about your Sadhana. It seems to me that the key of your future I development is contained in the experience which you say you often attained for a few days at Krishnagore (your letter of the 9th February) "A state which was full of knowledge, calm, serenity, strength and wide consciousness—all questions automatically solved—a continuous stream of power passed into body through the forehead centre — extremely powerful having undisturbed samata, calm, conviction, keen sight and knowledge". This was the consciousness of true Purusha in you aware of his own supramental being and it is this which must become your normal consciousness and the basis of the supramental development. In order that it may so become, the mind has to be made calm and strong, the emotional and vital being purified and the physical consciousness so opened that the body can hold and retain the consciousness and power. I notice that at the time you had it the body also expressed it. This is sign that the capacity is already there in your physical being. The calm and strength will descend from above, what you have to do is to open yourself and receive and at the same time, reject all the movements of the lower nature which prevent it from remaining and which are ruled by desires and habits inconsistent with the true being, the true power and the true knowledge, of course the superior power will itself reveal to you and remove all obstacles in your nature. But the condition is that not only your mental but your vital and physical being must open and surrender to it and refuse to surrender themselves to other powers and forces. As you yourself experienced at that time, this greater consciousness will of itself bring the development of the higher will and knowledge. Psychic experiences of a proper kind are of course a great help but in your case it may be that any rich development of the psychic will only come after or in proportion as this consciousness with its calm knowledge, will and Samata take possession of the different parts of the being.
Arya Office, pondicherry
6 April, 1923
I have read the record of Jyotish Mukherjee's experiences. It appears from it that he has made the right start to certain extent and has been able to establish the beginning of mental calm and some kind of psychic opening but neither of these has as yet been able to go very far. The reason probably is that he has done everything by a strong mental control and forcible stilling of the mind and emotional and vital movements, but he has not yet established the true spiritual calm which can only come by experience of or surrender to the higher being above the mind. It is this that he has to get in order to make a foundation for a more substantial progress.
(1) He is right in thinking that an inner calm and silence must be the foundation, not only of external work but of all inner and outer activities. But the quieting of the mind in a mental silence or inactivity although often useful as the first step, is not sufficient. The mental must be changed first into deeper spiritual peace Shanti, and then into the supramental calm and silence full of the higher light and strength and Ananda. Moreover, the quieting of the mind only is not enough. The vital and physical consciousness have to be opened up and the same foundation established there. Also the spirit of devotion of which he speaks must be not merely a mental feeling but an aspiration of the deeper heart and will to the truth above, that the being may rise up into it and that it may descend and govern all the activities.
(2) The void he feels in the mind is often a necessary condition for the clearing of it from its ordinary movements so that it may open to a higher consciousness and a new experience but in itself it is merely negative, a mental calm without anything positive in it and if one stops there, then dullness and the inertia of which he complains must come. What he needs is, in the void and silence of the mind, to open himself to, to wait or to call for the action of the higher power, light and peace from above the mind.
(3) The survival of evil habits in sleep is easily explained and is a thing of common experience. It is a known psychological law that whatever is suppressed in the conscious mind remains in the subconscient being and recurs either in the waking state when the control by itself cannot eradicate anything entirely out of the being. The subconscient in the ordinary man includes the larger part of the vital being and the physical mind and also the secret body-consciousness. In order to make a true and complete change, one has to make all these conscious, to see clearly what is still there and to reject them from one layer after another till they have been entirely thrown out from the personal experience. Even then they may remain and come back on the being from the surrounding universal forces and it is only when no part of the consciousness makes any response to those forces of the lower plane that the victory and transformation are absolutely complete.
(4) His experience that whenever he gains conquest in the mental plane the force of past Karma, that is to say, really of the old nature, comes back upon him with a double vigour is again a common experience. The psychological explanation is to be found in the preceding paragraph. All the attempt at transformation of the being is to fight with universal forces which have long been in possession and it is vain to expect that they will give up the struggle at the first defeat. As long as they can, they seek to retain possession and even when they are cast out they will, as long as there is any chance of response in the conscious or the sub-conscious being, try to recur and regain their hold. It is no use being discouraged by these attacks. What has to be done is to see that they are made more and more external, all assent refused until they weaken and fade away. Not only the Chitta and Buddhi must refuse consent but also the lower parts of the being, the vital and the physicovital, physical mind and the body consciousness.
(5) The defect of the receiving mind and the discriminating Buddhi spoken of are general defects of the intellect and cannot be entirely got rid of so long as the intellectual action is not replaced by a higher super intellectual action and finally by the harmonising light of the supramental knowledge.
Next as regards the psychic experiences. The region of glory felt in the crown of the head is simply the touch or reflection of the supramental sunlight on the higher part of the mind. The whole mind and being must open to this light and it must descend and fill the whole system. The lightning and the electric currents are the (vaidyuta) Agni force of the supramental sun touching and trying to pour into the body. The other signs are promises of the future psychic and other experiences. But none of these things can establish themselves until the opening to the higher force has been made. The mental Yoga can only be preparation for this truer starting-point.
What I have said is merely an explanation of these experiences but it seems to me that he has advanced far enough to make a foundation for the beginning of the higher Yoga. If he wishes to do that he must replace his mental control by a belief in and a surrender to the Supreme Presence and force above the mind, an aspiration in the heart and a will in the higher mind to the Supreme Truth and the transformation of the whole conscious being by its descent and power. He must, in his meditation open himself silently to it and call down first a deeper calm and silence, next the strength from the above working in the whole system and last the higher glory of which he had a glimpse pouring through his whole being and illumination with the Divine truth movement.
16 June, 1923
Dear Ramachandra,
I am answering your second letter which reached me today. And first I must say something about the very extraordinary line of conduct you propose to adopt in case of not hearing from me. I think it is because, as you say your mind is not yet in a completely right condition that you have proposed it. No one with any common-sense and certainly no one with a clear moral sense would support you in your intention. As to the law, it is not usual in France to take up things of this kind but only public offences against morals. The court would probably take no notice of your self-accusation and in any case it could not proceed in the absence of evidence from others which would here be lacking. But supposing it were otherwise, what would your action amount to? First, it would be putting an almost insuperable obstacle in the way of your own mental and moral recovery and of your leading a useful life in the future. Secondly, it would be bringing an unmerited disgrace upon your father and family. Thirdly, it would mean, if it took any form, the ruin of the life of someone else, for if I understand rightly what you say, some other or others would be involved, and your suggestion that you are entirely responsible would be absurd in law and could have no value, and all this havoc you propose to cause merely in order to satisfy, in fact if it could be a morbid moral egoism. It would be, seriously executed, a greater immorality than anything you have yet done. The true way to set yourself right for your act is not to do untold harm to others in the name of honesty or any other virtue, but to put yourself right inwardly and do otherwise in the future.
I shall answer briefly the questions you put in your second paragraph. (1) The way to set yourself right is, as I have said, to set your nature right and make yourself master of your vital being and its impulses. (2) Your position in human society is or can be that of many others who in their early life have committed excesses of various kinds and have afterwards achieved self-control and taken their due place in life, if you would know that your case is not exceptional but on the contrary very common, and that many have done these things and afterwards become useful citizens and even leading men in various departments of human activity. (3) It is quite possible for you to recompense your parents and fulfil the past expectations you spoke of, if you make that your object. Only you must first recover from your illness and achieve the proper balance of your mind and will. The object of your life depends upon your own choice and the way of attainment depends upon the nature of the objects. Also your position will be whatever you make it. What you have to do first is, to re-cover your health; then with a quiet mind to determine your aim in life according to your capacities and preference. It is not for me to make up your mind for you. I can only indicate to you what I myself think should be the proper aims and ideals.
Apart from external things there are two possible inner ideals which a man can follow. The first is the highest ideal of ordinary human life and the other the divine ideal of Yoga. I must say in view of something you seem to have said to your father that it is not the object of the one to be a great man or the object of the other to be a great Yogin. The ideal of human life is to establish over the whole being the control of a clear, strong and rational mind and a right and rational will to master the emotional, vital and physical being, create a harmony of the whole and develop the capacities whatever they are and fulfil them in life. In the terms of Hindu thought it is to enthrone the rule of the purified and sattvikbuddhi, follow the Dharma, fulfilling of one's own Swadharma and doing the work proper to one's capacities; and satisfy Kama and Artha under the control of the Buddhi and Dharma. The object of divine life, on the other hand, is to realise one's highest self or to realise God and to put the whole being into harmony with the truth of the highest self or the law of the divine nature, to find one's own divine capacities, great and small, and fulfil them in life as a sacrifice to the Highest or as a true instrument of the divine Shakti. About the latter ideal I may write at some later times. At present, I shall only say something about the difficulty you feel in fulfilling the ordinary ideal.
This ideal involves the building of mind and character and it is always a slow and difficult process demanding patient labour of years, some-times the better part of the lifetime. The chief difficulty in the way with almost everybody is the difficulty of controlling the desires and impulses of the vital being. In many cases as in yours, certain strong impulses run persistently counter to the ideal and demand of the reason and the will-The cause is almost always a weakness of the vital being itself, for, when there is this weakness it finds itself unable to obey the dictates of the higher mind and obliged to act instead under the waves of impulsion that comes from certain forces in nature. These forces are really external to the person but find in this part of him a sort of mechanical readiness to satisfy and obey them. The difficulty is aggravated if the seat of the weak- ness is in the nervous system. There is then what is called by European science a neurasthenic tendency and under certain circumstances it leads to nervous breakdowns and collapses. This happens when there is too great a strain on the nerves or when there is excessive indulgence of the sexual or other propensities and sometimes also when there is too acute and prolonged a struggle between the restraining mental will and these propensities. This is the illness from which you are suffering and if you consider these facts you will see the real reason why you broke down at Pondicherry. The nervous system in you was weak, it could not obey the will and resist the demand of the external vital forces, and in the struggle there came an overstrain of the mind and the nerves and a collapse taking the form of an acute attack of neurasthenia. These difficulties do not mean that you cannot prevail and bring about a control of your nervous and vital being and build up a harmony of mind and character. Only you must understand the thing rightly, not indulging false and morbid ideas about it and you must use the right means. What is needed is a quiet mind and a quiet will, patient, persistent, refusing to yield either to excitement or discouragement, but always insisting tranquilly on the change needed in the being. A quiet will of this kind cannot fail in the end. Its effects are inevitable. It must first reject in the waking state not only the acts habitual to the vital being, but the impulses behind them which it must understand to be external to the person even though manifested in him and also the suggestions which are behind the impulses. When thus rejected the once habitual thoughts and movements may still manifest in the dream-state, because it is a well-known psychological law that what is suppressed or rejected in the waking state may still recur in sleep and dream because they are still there in the subconscient being. But if the waking state is thoroughly cleaned, these dream movements must gradually disappear because they lose their food and impressions in the subconscient are gradually effaced. This is the cause of the dreams of which you are so much afraid. You should see that they are only subordinate symptoms which need not alarm you if you can once get control of your waking condition.
But you must get rid of the ideas which have stood in the way of effecting this self-conquest.
1) Realise that these things in you do not come from any true moral depravity, for that can exist only when the mind itself is corrupted and supports the perverse vital impulses. Where the mind and the will reject them, the moral being is sound and it is a case only of a weakness or malady in the vital parts or the nervous system.
2) Do not brood on the past but turn your face with a patient hope and confidence towards the future. To brood on past failure will prevent you from recovering your health and will weaken your mind and will be hampering them in the work of self-conquest and rebuilding of the character.
3) Do not yield to discouragement if success does not come at once, but continue patiently and steadfastly until the thing is done.
4) Do not torture your mind by always dwelling on your weakness. Do not imagine that they unfit you for life or for the fulfillment of the human ideal. Once having recognised that they are there, seek for your sources of strength and dwell rather on them and the certainty of conquest.
Your first business is to recover your health of mind and body and that needs quietness of mind and for some time a quiet way of living. Do not rack your mind with questions which it is not yet ready to solve. Do not brood always on the one thing. Occupy your mind as much as you can with healthy and normal occupations and give it as much rest as possible. Afterwards when you have your right mental condition and balance, then you can with a clear judgement decide how you will shape your life and what you have to do in the future.
I have given you the best advice. I have told you what seems to me the most important thing for you at present. As for your coming to Pondicherry, it is better not to do so just now. I could say to you nothing more than what 1 have written. It is best for you so long as you are ill not to leave your father's care, and, above all it is the safe rule in illness like yours not to return to the place and surroundings where you had the breakdown until you are perfectly recovered and the memories and associations connected with it have faded in their intensity, lost their hold on the mind and can no longer produce upon it a violent and disturbing impression.
1923
Hrishikesh,
It appears from your present letter and attitude that you propose to give God a seat on your right hand and R. another on the left and to sit in meditation between oscillating sweetly from one to the other. If this is what you want to do please do it in the Cherry Press and not in Pondicherry. If you want to come here, you must do it with a firm determination to get rid of this attachment and make a complete and unconditional consecration and self-surrender.
You seem not to have understood the principle of this Yoga. The old yoga demanded a complete renunciation extending to the giving up of the worldly life itself. This Yoga aims instead at a new and transformed life. But it insists inexorably on a complete throwing away of desire and attachment in the mind, life and body. Its aim is to refound life in the truth of the Spirit and for that purpose to transfer the roots of all we are and do from the mind, life and body to a greater consciousness above the mind. That means that in the new life all the connections must be founded on a spiritual intimacy and a truth quite other than any which supports our present connections. One must be prepared to renounce at the higher call what are called the natural affections. Even if they are kept at all, it can only be with a change which transformed them altogether. But whether they are to be renounced or kept and changed must be decided not by the personal desires but by the truth above. All must be given up to the Supreme Master of the Yoga.
If you cling to the desires of the mental, vital and physical beings, this transference and transformation cannot happen. Your attachment to your son is a thing of the vital parts in you, and if you are not prepared to give it up, it will inevitably clash with the demands of the Yoga and stop your progress.
When you came here, your physical being was opened up, and the mental, vital and physical obstacles sufficiently worked upon to admit of this opening. This came first, because that was the strongest part of you for the purposes of Yoga. Afterwards there was an attempt to open up the mind and the other parts. But owing to certain influences their resistancebecame strong enough to bring things to a standstill. Doubt and non-understanding in the mind and the vital attachments of which this one to your son is the strongest were the main instruments of this resistance. It is no use coming back with any of these things still cherished and supported by your mind and will. Either you will make no progress at all here or if the power works on you it will work to break the resistance. The nature of this struggle and the consequences may be of a serious and undesirable character. The power that works in this Yoga is of a thorough-going character and tolerates in the end nothing great or small that is an obstacle to the truth and the realisation. To come here will be to invite its working in its strongest and most insistent form.
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Chandrashekhar,
l) It is not easy to get into the Silence. That is only possible by throwing out the mental and vital activities. It is to let Silence into you i.e., to open yourself and let it descend. The way to do this and the way to call down the higher powers is the same. It is to remain quiet at the time of meditation, not fighting with the mind or making mental efforts to pull down the power of the Silence but keeping only a silent will and aspiration for them. If the mind is active one has to learn to look at it drawn back and not giving any sanction from within — until its habitual and mechanical activities begin to fall quiet for want of support from within. If it is persistent a steady rejection without strain or struggle is the one thing to be done.
2) The mental attitude you are taking with regard to Lord as the Yogeshwar can be made first step towards this quietude.
3) Silence does not mean absence of experiences. It is an inner silence and quietude in which all experiences happen without producing any disturbance. It would be a great mistake to interfere with the images rising in you. It does not matter whether they are mental or psychic. One must have experiences not only of the true psychic but of the inner mental, the inner vital and subtle physical worlds or planes of consciousness. The occurrence of images is a sign that these are opening and to inhibit them would mean to inhibit the expansion of consciousness and experience without which this Yoga cannot be done.
All this is an answer to the points raised in your letter. It is not meant that you should change suddenly what you are doing. It is better to proceed from what you have attained which seems to be solid though small and proceed quietly in the direction indicated.
23 August, 1924
Aurobindo Ghose
Seth Gangaram Bharatia,
A letter has been received from Purani by which Sri Aurobindo has been fully informed of the details of Natwarlal's case. He now knows clearly what is really the matter with him and he wishes me to draw your attention to the following points.
1) Natwarlal's case is not one of ordinary madness — that is, disturbance of the brain, but some hostile being or power has laid hold of his mind (as happened in the case of his sister, but in a different way and as yet less completely). It is preventing him from using his own intelligence. At the same time this power is continually giving bad suggestions to him — not to take food, suggestions of death, of throwing away his present body, of wrong motives in those who offer him food, of sin, of aparādha,etc.
2) To cure this illness of the mind will be difficult and is likely to take a long time, because these suggestions have become fixed ideas which he is unable to resist. Even if the being is driven away, something in Natwarlal's mind finds delight in the play or workings of the being and that is likely to bring it back again.
3) There is a supreme power that can cure him at once, because nothing can resist it. But that comes by the Grace of God, under conditions which cannot be commanded. Sri Aurobindo by his will cannot command it; he hopes to be able to call it down, but it is not certain. Meanwhile time is needed and the danger is that if he does not eat the body may collapse before anything effective can be done.
4) The hostile power is trying to destroy him by giving the suggestions not to eat, to throw away his body etc. The first thing necessary is that he should be made to resume eating and all of you should see that these suggestions are counteracted. He should be made to eat by any means, persuasion, pressure, compulsion or otherwise.
5) This can be done best if there is someone near him with a will stronger than his own, someone who will quietly and strongly insist, take no notice of and give no value to his objections and make him eat in spite of his own mind and its hallucinations.
6) If there is none, then if a powerful and genuine hypnotist is available, he can by right suggestions counteract the bad ones of the being, make Natwarlal have the will to eat and throw out the ideas of death, aparddha, etc., which are now perverting his intelligence.
7) Otherwise, the only possible method is to put him under the control of somebody accustomed to deal with these cases who will make him eat in spite of his objections.
8) Sri Aurobindo wishes to make it clear to you that he can absolutely have no cause for anger towards you or Natwarlal. On the contrary he has every cause to be pleased with him. He asks you to remove from your mind any idea of aparādha done towards him by yourself or Natwarlal as that will only hinder his helping effectively.
Sri Aurobindo says that he will try to free Natwarlal from hostile possession of his mind — the result is in God's hands. Only as time is necessary for a complete cure, Natwarlal must be made to take food so that he may not break down in the middle. That is the first and the one indispensable thing to be done.
Arya Office, Pondicherry Yours sincerely,
16 October, 1924 Punamchand M. Shah
In order to get to the higher consciousness the essential condition is quietude of the mind. The ordinary nature of the mind is either to be active or if denied activity to go to sleep. The method of counting 1,2,3 only stupefies the mind and though this method once accidentally got you into the higher consciousness, it is not the right way. The other way which you yourself got afterwards of "directing the aspiring Drishti of your entire Antahkaran towards its own heights and from there watching" is the right process; continue and make this progressively your normal condition.
As to Shakti Upasana, you need not trouble about it at present as your Sadhana is taking a different course, from that laid in the Yogic Sadhan. Shakti is of two kinds, the lower of the mind desires and the higher Divine Shakti. When the first has been quieted and the higher consciousness made normal in you, it is possible for the Divine Shakti to take up all your activities. This action of yielding and giving place to the higher Shakti is the aim of the Shakti Upasana. Let the quietude and the higher consciousness establish themselves. The rest will come later on. The replacing of the power of lower consciousness by that of the higher is the object of self-surrender — the surrender of your small narrow personal being and its activities to the higher and vaster Divine being and the Divine activities. By this surrender one will cease to act from one's personal motives, impulses, desires, etc. as one is at present doing. By the progressively increasing self-surrender the action of the higher consciousness will gradually begin to play in the place of the personal. That is how works in life and surrender are reconciled. The work in life will proceed as the result of surrender — from the higher consciousness instead of as now from the narrow personal. But this will come at a later stage: you need not mind about it now. But go on with the method indicated.
Only take care not to surrender to any suggestions or forces coming from the lower being as that is the chief danger of the Sadhana.
24 December 1924
About your difficulty in explaining to people what A.G. is doing — it will of course be useless to tell them in the true terms because they would not understand. But you can put it in this way which they will perhaps find intelligible.
A.G. is engaged in Pondicherry in Tapasya for Yoga Siddhi which is necessary before he takes up his future work. As Gandhi believes in soul force, that is to say in an inner moral force as the one thing necessary behind all true action, so A.G. believes in a higher spiritual force as the one thing necessary — the one thing that must be at the basis of India's freedom and greatness. It is this spiritual force which he is seeking to call down, embody and perfect in himself and others. This he has found can only be done by a long and patient Sadhana. It is when he feels it completed in himself and his whole mind, life and body capable of transmitting the spiritual knowledge and power into a perfectly effective action that he will come out from his Sadhana and begin his action. At the same time he is training a number of people to be effective instruments of the same power and centres and supports of his action. When he goes out into British India he intends to create a large centre for this spiritual training where his ideal will be embodied just as Mahatma Gandhi has done at Sabarmati for his own ideal, and with that as his basis undertake a work which will be for the world in general and specially for India. This work will embrace and will mean the spiritualising of all activities none being excluded. A.G. believes that a free India returned to her great spiritual ideal but on new and larger lines is destined to be the means of uplifting the world and initiating a new age of the general evolution and it is to- wards this ideal that all his work is to be directed.
1) Letter of a disciple to Motilal Mehta based on Sri Aurobindo's oral remarks.
Dear M,
I spoke of your visit to Sri Aurobindo and he asked me to write to you certain things which he thinks it better you should know. It is better you should not speak of this letter to Ramachandra, as in his present state of nervous weakness to know that his illness is being discussed might have an undesirable effect upon him. He is suffering from a strong attack of neurasthenia which developed suddenly during the three days before his departure. He was asked to go home because the conditions here are not suitable in his present state and also because in this case it is better to change the surroundings and associations under which the attack... along with the appearance of others that were not there before. The symptoms of the illness are, first weakness of some of the nervous brain centres resulting in occasional failure of memory and a mechanical repetition of thoughts and words in the brain; secondly an instability of the temperament in rapid alternations of modes and manifestations of exaggerated self- depreciation and its opposite and fits of violent melancholy and gloom. Finally a morbid sensitiveness and suspicion specially as to what others may be saying or thinking about him. When he spoke of his illness he showed that a part of his mind was perfectly self-contained and had a lucid and accurate observation of what was wrong with him. But the will centres are not sufficiently strong to combat and throw off the attack, specially he has certain vital habits, which in the long run impair the nervous system and against which he struggled very persistently. But his will was too often unable to resist the habitual instinct. What he needs is, first a perfect quiet and absence of anything that would cause excitement and disturbance, especially of anything that would excite or encourage the symptoms of which I have spoken. By quiet is not meant solitude; he should have society but as much as possible only of those he specially likes, and nothing should be thrust upon him. He should not be forced into any kind of occupation he does not want. But any occupation like easy reading which should distract his mind without straining it should be encouraged. Finally, he needs entire kindness and sympathy and the avoidance of anything that would wound or ruffle his feelings. If these conditions are satisfied it is possible that his nervous system will get soothed and quieted down and the illness pass away. Whatever help can be given from here will be constantly given.
Dear Chakravarty,
I have been obliged to answer in the negative to your request by wire for contributions to the "Bengali" on the occasion of your taking it over on behalf of the Nationalist Party. I have been for a long time under a self- denying ordinance which precludes me from making any public utterance on politics and I have had to refuse similar requests from the "Forward" and other papers. Even if it were not so, I confess that in the present confused state of politics I should be somewhat at a loss to make any useful pronouncement. No useful purpose could be served by any general statements on duties, in the present situation. Everybody seems to be agreed on the general object and issue, and the only question worth writing on is that of the best practical means for securing the agreed object and getting rid of the obstacles in the way. This is in any case a question for the practical leaders actually in the field and not for a retired spectator at a distance. It would be difficult for me even to pass an opinion on the rival policies in the field; for I have been unable to gather from what I have seen in the papers what is the practical turn they propose to give these policies or how they propose by them to secure Swaraj or bring it nearer.
Please therefore excuse my refusal.
Yours sincerely,
Pondicherry, 12 March 1926
I received this morning your letter about Tirupati. I shall try to explain to you Tirupati's condition, the reasons why I have been obliged to send him away from Pondicherry and the conditions which are necessary for his recovery from his present abnormal state of mind.
Sometime ago, Tirupati began to develop ideas and methods of Yoga Sadhana, which are quite inconsistent with the ideas and methods that underlie my system of Yoga. Especially he began practices that belong entirely to the most extreme form of Bhakti Sadhana, practices that are extremely dangerous because they lead to an excited, exalted abnormal condition, and violently call down forces which the body cannot bear. They may lead to a breakdown of the physical body, the mind and the nervous system. As soon as I became aware of this turn, I warned him of the danger and prohibited the continuance of the practices. At first he attempted to follow my instructions, but the attraction of his new experiences was so great that he resumed his practices in secret and in the end openly returned to them in defiance of my repeated prohibitions. The result was that he entered into and persisted in an abnormal condition of mind which still continues and at times rises to an alarming height dangerous to the sanity of his mind and the health of his body.
The following are the peculiar types of his condition.
(1) There is a state of mind in which he loses hold to a great extent of physical realities and lives in a world of imaginations which do not at all belong to terrestrial body and the physical life.
(2) He conceives a great distaste for eating and sleeping and believes that the power in him is so great that he can live without sleep and without food.
(3) He is listening all the time to things which he calls inspirations and intuitions, but which are simply the creations and delusions of his own excited and unduly exalted state of mind. This exalted state of mind gives him so much pleasure, so much a false sense of strength and Ananda and of being above the human condition that he is unwilling to give it up and feels unhappy and fallen when he is brought down to a more ordinary consciousness.
(4) In this condition he has no longer enough discrimination left or enough will power to carry out my instructions or even his own resolutions, but obeys blindly and like a machine these false inspirations and impulses. Every thing contrary to them he explains away or ignores that is the reason why he ignores my orders and puts no value on my telegrams or letters.
(5) Also he feels in this condition an abnormal shrinking (not any spiritual detachment) from physical life, from his family, from his friends — for some time he withdrew even from the society of his fellow Sadhakas — and considers anything that comes from them or turns him from his exalted condition as the prompting of evil forces.
Please understand that all these things are the delusions of his own abnormal and exalted state of mind and are not, as he falsely imagines and will try to persuade you, signs of a high spiritual progress. On the contrary, if he persists, in them he will lose altogether such spiritual progress as he had made and may even destroy by want of food and want of sleep his body.
To allow him to remain here would be quite disastrous for him. He would count it as a victory for his own aberrations and would persist in them without any further restraint with results that might be fatal to him. And the intensity of the spiritual atmosphere... Besides when in this condition he brings about here a state of confusion and perturbation, the one thing to be absolutely avoided in this way of Yoga, which if prolonged would make the Sadhana of my other disciples impossible and would spoil my own spiritual work altogether.
His one chance is if he can settle down in Vizianagram for a considerable time and in the surroundings of his old physical life returned to a normal condition. Please therefore do not send him back or give him money to return to Pondicherry. It will be of no use and may do him great and irreparable harm. He promised, when he went from here first, to eat well and sleep regularly, and he has now promised, on my refusing to see or receive him on account of his disobedience of my order, to remain quietly at Vizianagram, to cease listening to his false inspirations and intuition and to obey my written orders. I had already written to him to that effect and also to throw away his shrinking from life and from his conduct with others; but he came away without waiting for my letter. If this time he carries out my instructions, he may yet recover. He must eat well, he must sleep regularly, he must give up his wrong Sadhana and live for some time as normal human being, he must do some kind of physical action, he must resume normal contact with life and others. If he returns to his erratic movements, the remedy is not to let him leave Vizianagram, but to remind him of my instructions and his promises and insist on his carrying them out. Only you must do it in my name and remind him always that if he does not obey me, I have resolved not to see him again not to receive him. This is the only thing at present that can make him to do what is requisite. I consented to an arrangement by which he could live quietly by himself because that was what he asked for; but the best would have been that he should live either with his family in their house so that his needs could be looked after or with some one who would see to his needs, some one with a strong will who will quietly insist, always in my name, on his doing what he has promised. But I do not know if there is any one there who could do this for him or whom he would consent to have with him.
You should not understand by what I have written, that he should live as a householder, resume his relations with his wife etc., or that he should not be left mostly to quiet and solitude, if that is what he likes. What I mean is that he must come gradually, if not at first, to deal with those around him as a human being with human beings without his present nervous shrinkings and abnormal repulsions. The spiritual attitude I have told him to take is one of calm freedom from attachment (asakti) not of an excited shrinking. I may be that after a time will seem more possible to him than it does at present.
It will be best if you let me know fairly often what he is doing and whether he is carrying out my instructions, as it is likely that he will not write himself to me all the truth when he is in the wrong condition.
1926
You have to make some further progress before you can come here. What you are doing now is a mental effort. You imagine the Divine to be present before you and then you try to offer all your mentality to the Divine; all this is a mental effort. Peace which you feel after few days was the result of your surrender. And the pressure which you felt was a sign that some- thing in Nature resists the working of the Higher Power. When peace or any higher things begins to descend then you should stop your mental effort because it hinders the natural working of the Higher Shakti. Instead of making any mental effort at that time you should watch as Sakshi Purusha the working of the Higher Power. You write that you felt that the work of the sacrifice was carried on by somebody else and you were merely an onlooker, this is Sakshi Purusha, some part of you was watching and work of sacrifice was carried on by the Higher Shakti. You have to remain as Sakshi Purusha watching and consenting to the working of the Higher Power and rejecting the old lower movements of your nature. Rejection does not mean fight, it means that you have not to give your consent, anumati, to the things which come in the way of your surrender to the Divine. Let the peace and calmness settle down more and more in you.
2 June 1926
Your aspiration for the truth would be satisfied if you make yourself fit for the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo. In order to make yourself fit you should continue to read the Arya as you are at present doing and practise daily meditation.
1) Reply of Sri Aurobindo to Rambhai through Punamchand.
In meditation you should concentrate first in an inner aspiration that the central truths of which you read in the Arya should be made real to you in conscious experience; and at the same time you should aspire that your mind may open to the calm wideness, strength, peace, life and ananda of the spiritual consciousness.
1 December 1926
Chandulal,
The first conditions of this Yoga are:
(1) A complete sincerity and surrender in the being. The divine life and the transformation of the lower human into the higher divine nature must be made the sole aim of all the life. No attachments, desires or habits of the mind, heart, vital being or body should be clung to which come in the way of this aspiration and one object of the life.
One must be ready to renounce all these completely as soon as the demand comes from above and from the divine Shakti.
(2) A fundamental calm, peace and purity in the mind, vital being and all the nature.
The hours of meditation should be devoted to the formation of these two conditions in you, by aspiration and by self observation and rejection of all that disturbs the nature or keeps it troubled, confused and impure. Aspiration, if rightly done, quietly, earnestly and sincerely, brings the divine help from above to effect this object.
As to the hours devoted to work, needs, family etc., they can be made an aid only on the following conditions.
(1) To regard all these things as not belonging to yourself, your inner being, but as things external, work to be done so long as it remains on your shoulders to the best of your ability without desire or attachment of any kind.
(2) To do all work as a sacrifice without any egoistic motive.
(3) To establish and deepen the inner calm and quiet. If that is done, all these things will be felt more and more as external and the falling off of desire and attachment will become possible.
For getting rid of passion the same condition. If you separate yourself from these movements, and establish calm and peace inside, the passions may still rise on the surface, but they will be felt to be external movements and you can deal with them or call down the divine aid to get rid of them. So long as the mind does not fall quiet, it is not possible to deal finally with the vital being from which these forces rise.
20 May 1927
He can come, if he understands the conditions under which alone he can profit by staying here.
Henceforth a stay here can only be possible
1) for those who are ready for an intensive sadhana turning their back on all attachments belonging to the ordinary human life;
2) for those who though not ready yet recognise fully the aim and open themselves so as to prepare for it;
3) those who, even if not capable as yet of an inner intensive sadhana, can yet dedicate themselves entirely in the way of service.
July-August 1927
My mother is very much aggrieved over my intention of coming away to the Ashram. I am not touched by her grief. But I do not know if it is due to non-attachment or my hard-heartedness. What is the correct attitude?
As he has chosen the spiritual life and work for the Mother, he has only to remain firm and quiet and for the rest to leave it to the Divine power. His indifference is nothing but this quietness and firmness in the true way and he has not to weaken it by any emotional scruples.
26 December 1927
It is all nonsense about C's keeping up his power and position. It is the Mother who has put him there in control of the work (power) under her directions and gave him his position, and she would not be at all pleased if he did not keep up the position she has given him. As for egoism have you and others none? One ought to be free from egoism oneself before one can blame others for having it. What a sadhak should do is to be busy with getting rid of his own ego. To be busy with observing and resenting the ego of others can only raise and increase his own and prevent him from getting rid of it.
29 May 1928
It is quite impossible to turn the Ashram into a sanitorium. It is understood that apart from the use of medicines as an occasional and quite subordinate expedient, those who live here should be sufficiently open mentally, — psychically, and physically to the spiritual force to recover rapidly from attacks of illness and to keep a sufficient power of life and health in them not to need to be treated as chronic invalids. Any other rule would make the existence of the Ashram impossible.
Keep faith and confidence and remain cheerful.
2 September 1928
Divine Mother,
I wish to get light on the following points.
1) Have I the capacity and are there potentialities in me to lead this path?
This is not the question, the question is whether you have the necessary aspiration, determination and perseverance and whether you can by the intensity and persistence of your aspiration make all the parts of your being answer to the call and become one in the consecration.
2) How should I continue my practice (sadhana) after returning home ?Quiet yourself and in the quiet see and feel the Mother.
3) How can I meditate? What is meant by opening? Where should I open?
An inner purity and receptivity that freely lets in the Mother's influence Begin with the heart.
4) I aspire for higher life from above the head; but I always feel strained on the middle part of the forehead. What should I do?
Do not strain yourself.
5) How does the psychic being become open? How to understand the psychic and vital beings in the adhar?
By the force of aspiration and the grace of the Mother.
Psychic: your true being, the being that is in the heart and that is the spark of the Mother's own consciousness.
Vital: the part from which proceed desires and hunger and dynamic activities, having its physical basis round about the navel.
6) My family consists of myself, wife, two sons and one girl. I desire to come here and stay permanently, but my wife does not approve it. What should I do?
Detachment.
7) / want to come here again for a stay of at least three months. Kindly give me permission.«
Inform when you are ready to come. It is only then that the permission can be given.
8) In my daily life, I become dejected and fall prey in the hands of the lower forces (anger, lust etc.). I humbly request the Mother for help and protection.
9) My wife is devoted to Goddess Ambaji. Her heart opens to Her, but she cannot get rid of the worldly attachments. Please help her. May I send her photo?
If you like.
10) / request for permission to write letters to the Mother.
You can write.
11) What attitude should I keep while doing my works of daily routine ? How should I act with family-members, relatives and friends?
12) What should I read at present?Sri Aurobindo's books.
1) The Mother's replies to twelve questions of Muljibhai Talati.
November 1928
If this is his only illness there is absolutely no reason why it should not be cured, if he keeps proper habits and diet and above all the right attitude. I expect that the reason why the illness has such a hold and strong effect on him, is in the imagination and the nerves, more than anything else. There is something that expects the illness, accepts it when it comes and gives it free play. He must learn to keep quiet and calm in the mind and vital being, to refuse to regard the illness and the tendency to it the body as something normal to it, regard it rather as something imposed from outside and he must believe firmly that it must and will go. If he keeps this attitude and opens to the true force, the mind and the nerves being once strengthened, the illness and weakness will disappear.
June 1929
It is not possible to come here. Since he has married and taken service, he must go on with the ordinary life. He is still much too young and too unripe for any complete sadhana. At best he can do at present some kind of Karma yoga, trying to realise the one. Divine Force behind the action of the world and preparing himself so that one day he may feel a direct guidance.
1 October 1929
As I am in retirement and see nobody for the present, not even those who are here, what he requests is not possible.
Further no one is allowed to live in the Ashram except those who are here to practise yoga. There is no arrangement for visitors.
Vithaldas,
It is only by remaining perfectly peaceful and calm with an unshakable confidence and faith in the Divine Grace that you will allow circumstances to be as good as they can be. The very best happens always to those who have put their entire trust in the Divine and in the Divine alone.
Pondicherry, 9 February 1930
MIRA
(Telegram to Motilal Roy on the death of his wife)
Condolence. Only consolation for sincere sorrow — submission to divine will.
February 1930
The protection and help will be there as they were here. You have to keep yourself open to them and live inwardly seeking to become more and more conscious so that you may feel the Divine Presence and Power.
As to the Bombay atmosphere, keep inwardly separate from it even while mixing with others, see it as a thing outside and not belonging to the inner world in which you yourself live. If you can achieve this inward separateness, it will not be able to cloud you, whatever its daily-pressure.
It is certainly not very Yogic to be so much harassed by the importunity of the palate. I notice that these petty desires, which plenty of people who are yogis at all nor aspirant for yoga know how to put in their proper place, seem to take an inordinate importance in the consciousness of the sadhaks here — not all, certainly, but many. In this as in many other matters they do not seem to realise that, if you want to do yoga, you must take more and more in all matters, small or great, the yogic attitude. In our path that attitude is not one of forceful suppression, but of detachment and equality with regard to the objects of desire. Forceful suppression (fasting comes under the head; it is of no use for this purpose, abandon that idea altogether) stands on the same level as free indulgence, in both cases, the desire remains; in the one it is fed by indulgence, in the other it lies latent and exasperated by suppression. It is only when one stands back, separates oneself from the lower, refusing to regard its desires and clamours as one's own and cultivates an entire equality and equanimity in the consciousness with respect to them that the lower vital itself becomes gradually purified and itself also calm and equal. Each wave of desire as it comes must be observed, as quietly and with as much unmoved detachment as you would observe something going on outside you, and allowed to pass, rejected from the consciousness, and the true consciousness steadily put in its place.
But for that these things of eating and drinking must be put in their right place, which is a small one. You say that many have left the Ashram because they did not like the food. I do not know who are the many; certainly, those who came here for serious sadhana and left, went for much more grave reasons than that. But if any did go because of an offended palate, then certainly they were quite unfit for yoga and this was not the place for them. For it means that a mutton chop or a tasty plate of fish was more important for them than the seeking of the Divine. It is not possible to do Yoga if values are so topsyturvy in the consciousness. Apart from such extravagance, these things which ought to be only among the most minor values even in the human life, are promoted by many here to a rank they ought not to have.
At the same time it is better, if it is possible, to have well-cooked rather than badly-cooked food. The idea that the Mother wants tasteless food to be served because tasty food is bad for yoga, is one of the many absurdities that seem so profusely current among the sadhakas in this Ashram about her ways and motives. The Mother is obliged to arrange for neutral (plain and simple); not tasteless food for the reason that any other course has been proved to be impracticable. There are ninety people here, from different countries and provinces whose tastes are as the poles asunder. What is tasty food to the Gujarati is abomination to the Bengali and vice versa. The European cannot stand an avalanche of tamarind or chillies, the Andhra accustomed to a fiery diet would find French dishes tasteless. Experiments have been tried before you came, but they were disastrous in their results; a few enjoyed, the majority starved, and bad stomach began to be the rule. On the other hand, neutral food can be eaten by all and does not injure the health, — that at least is what we have found, — even if it does not give any ecstasy to the palate.
Only, the food, if neutral, should not be tasteless. A certain amount of fluctuation is inevitabale; no one can cook daily for 80 or 90 people and yet do always well. But if it is too much, a remedy is to be desired and the Mother is willing to consider any practicable and effective suggestion. If any practicable suggestion is made, it will be considered, — keeping al- ways in view the difficulty I have pointed out, of the ninety people and the three continents and half a dozen provinces that are represented here, apart from individual idiosyncracies and fancies, which of course, it is absolutely impossible even to try to satisfy unless we want to land ourselves in chaos.
What if people were to remember that they were here for yoga, make that the salt and savour of their existence and acquire samata of the palate. My experience is that if they did that, all the trouble would disappear and even the kitchen difficulties and the defects of the cooking would vanish.
23 August 1930
A deep -well was seen in meditation. Its walls were deep blue. The water inside it was also blue. Ripples were playing on the surface of the water. The sky and all around was blue. As I began to look towards the water it went deeper and deeper and all around became very deep blue. Very very small blue/lowers began to rain, with the flowers were white star-like things raining and falling into the well. As I went on looking towards the water it became deeper and deeper until it could not be seen. I want to know what it is. Sometimes flames of sacred fire are seen in front.
It is a symbol of the growth of the spiritual consciousness and its manifestations. The blue colour gives the indication. The flames are the flames of Agni, the inner aspiration towards the Divine.
20 November 1930
Yesterday morning I saw a number of green parrots in the beginning of my meditation. They had wings but could not fly and were coming crawling with great difficulty towards the centre. The colour of their beaks was light violet. They used to die as soon as they were reaching the centre. In this way innumerable parrots came and died. After this l had calmness and blue colour as usual.
What were these parrots and their death? Have all visions some real meaning? Should I care to see these things and write to you whatever I see?
The centre is the centre of the true being. Green and violet are colours of the vital plane and the parrots seem to indicate movements of the vital mind which try to become luminous and join the truth centre. The absence of the power of flight in the wings indicates a defect, probably that they are unable to transcend the vital plane (however brilliant in that plane itself) and therefore cannot live when brought into contact with the truth centre. Their death is no loss; it only leaves unstained the calm and intensity of the spiritual consciousness indicated by the blue colour.
All visions have a significance of one kind or another. This power of vision is very important for the Yoga and should not be neglected although it is not the most important thing — for the one most important thing is the change of the consciousness. All other powers like this of visions should be developed without attachment as parts and aims of the Yoga.
22 November 1930
About ten or eleven years before, I had seen a church in a city in my vision. I do not now remember the details of the city, but wizen I was coming from the station to the Ashram this time the church on the way resembled the church in my vision. Yesterday I went to see the church from inside and found it all resembling that. About six or seven years before continuously for many months I used to see in my vision beautiful rooms and furniture of different kinds and colours and sometimes a young European lady used to appear there. Generally I used to see such visions at eight in the morning or at noon after taking my food. I had asked my Hatha-yogic Guru if these things had any meaning and he told me not to care to see such things as they had only a purpose to please the fancy.
I want to know whether these visions had some meaning in my coming here.
From your account the church seems to have been a prevision of the church at Pondicherry. The second vision may have been also a prevision, but that is not so positive.
Visions of this kind are certainly not there only to please the fancy they have always a significance. But all are not visions of the physical earth; they may be scenes in other worlds. Also you may see a scene, a house, people etc., in vital counterpart and not in their exact physical circumstances, the arrangement of rooms, furniture, etc., may be different, the people may be acting, as people act on the vital plane and not as they do here etc.
You have evidently, had always a faculty of vision, but experience and the growth of an inner knowledge is necessary to understand and make use of the faculty.
21 December 1930
Kanti,
You are right in feeling that the protection and grace are always there and that all has been for the best. In your wife's condition, the best was that she should change her body and she has been able to do so in the state of mind which would give her the happiest conditions both after death and for a renewal hereafter of the spiritual development for which she had begun to aspire. It is good also that you have been able to keep your poise and the freedom of your spirit in this occurrence.
Again, you are entirely right in your resolution not to marry again to do so would be in any case to invite serious and probably insuperable difficulties in your following the path of yoga, and, as in this path of yoga it is necessary to put away sexual desire, marriage would be not only meaningless but an absolute contradiction of your spiritual life. You can expect full support and protection from us in your resolution and, if you keep a sincere will and resolution in this matter, you may be sure that the Divine Grace will not fail you.
6 October 1931
My Divine Father,
Please let me know how can a disciple make the best use of his Guru, the spiritual guide, for his spiritual advancement and the Divine Light or Knowledge.
I could not answer your letter of the 12th at once for want of time. Your question is put in a general form and I can only answer that there are three conditions for a disciple profiting fully from his relation to a spiritual guide.
1st. He must accept him entirely and him alone without submitting himself to any contrary or second influence.
2nd. He must accept the indications given by the Guru and follow them firmly and with full faith and perseverance to the best of his own spiritual capacity.
3rd. He must make himself open and receptive to the Guru, for even more than what the guru teaches to the mind of the disciple, it is what he spiritually is, the spiritual consciousness, the knowledge, the light, the power, the Divinity in him that helps the disciple to grow by his receiving that into himself and its being used within himself for the growth of his consciousness and nature into its own divine possibility.
I answer generally because of the general form of the question; if there is something more precise and particular you hold in mind, you can state it and I will see whether I can give you a more particular answer.
16 August 1932
All should understand that the true Supramental does not come in the beginning but much later in the Sadhana.
First:— The opening up and illumination of the mental, vital and the physical beings.
Secondly:— Making intuitive of the mind, thought, will etc., and development of the hidden consciousness progressively replacing the surface consciousness.
Thirdly:— The supramentalising of the changed mental, vital and the physical beings and finally the descent of the true Supramental and the rising into the Supramental plane.
This is the natural order of the Yoga. These stages may overlap and intermix, there may be many variations, but the last two can only come in the advanced state of the progress. Of course the Supramental Divine guides this Yoga throughout but it is first through many intermediary planes; and it cannot easily be said of something that comes in the earlier periods that it is the direct and full Supramental. To think so when it is not so may well be a hindrance to progress.
The Mother's feet, painting by Barindra Kumar Ghose
One cannot accept everything that comes to the mind as inspiration or intuition and act accordingly.
It is true that the emotional being contains a Truth behind it and that is that of Love. But one cannot and should not go on identifying himself with everybody. It is not a good thing for this Yoga at least. For other Yogas like Bhakti Yoga it is all right. In our Yoga the love must be universal but that only as a feeling and if the feeling is there, it is no harm. But that love must be absolutely calm and above all discrimination. It must know, otherwise one identifies himself with any being and if that is good, it is all right but if his being is not pure one gets all the difficulties of that being into himself. Such external aggression ought to be guarded at least while one is a Sadhak. I know of a Madrasi Sadhak who had an experience like that and then he identified himself with Barindra and some one else and then their influence predominated over him. If one remains open like that to external influences, it creates a lot of troubles in the Sadhak. Yes, the love is for him but we must carefully distinguish identification of other parts of being from that of the spirit.
14 April 1923
Strong rajasic nature has always an outgoing tendency. But that can hardly be said to be a drawback. If that could disqualify a man for Yoga, none of" us could have a chance of practising.
Firm entire absolute will for this is indispensable in this Yoga which he must bring to bear.
Strong intellectual doubt is certainly a great obstacle but who of us had not had! In my case it followed me for years together...
When all the elements are transformed, they become a great asset to the spiritual nature.
What is the way to eliminate this mechanical play of the mind? How to do away with it?
The physical mind must remain as the instrument to act here on the material plane, only its play, its movements will be transformed and its stuff too. Only withdrawal from the lower movements won't do. When you rise above the mind you can remain either quiescent or become dynamic.
How to transform its movements?
You will have not only to withdraw from its lower movements or play by rejecting it whenever that train of activity begins, but also seek its true movement above. In a thought, in an act, in speech, you have in everything to reject the lower form and seek its truer forms in the Supramental. If you seek and yet cannot always get, it shows that the lower being is not yet used to refer above and act in response to movement from there. It Cannot come all at once. Slowly and with great care it is to act always from an intense intuitive and psychic plane and cannot get beyond that. Of course I am not belittling the psychic, that is also a movement — a higher mental of the soul. But there is the still higher Supramental into which the roots of all you are and do must be refounded, everything changed in the stuff. Between the intuitive and the Supramental there is this difference, that the intuitive is somehow small, insufficient and not capable of transforming anything. The other is full of power and knowledge and complete in itself, it transforms everything.
22-December 1923
Regarding "The Supersensuous Life" by Whiner. Did you read that book? ,
Yes, not everything but some parts.
How do you find it?
Good book. But his idea about the relation of the higher to the lower Nature is not clear except that the higher only makes some impression on the lower; there is no idea of the transformation.
/ thought he has some knowledge through the psychic.
That also is superficial. I mean not that deep soul consciousness which is the basis of the true psychic knowledge. Besides, his intellect is not his strong point, for instance, he defines "Reason as light of nature" or something like that. It is not so. Besides he has not got complete grasp of human psychology.
14' February 1924
I am well impressed with Haribhai. There seems to be something large and warm about him. I do not know how far he would go in the Yoga but apart from it he has something large about him. If he takes to Sadhana more intensely, he would find many difficulties in the way, especially in the vital being. It is a help as well as an obstacle. But if he can bring the psychic being to the surface and develop it, then he can overcome these difficulties and if he can go through, the result would be richer and more ample in his case. He is not like Kashibhai straight and limited. There is a tendency to throw himself out in many activities.
18 February 1924
Sri Aurobindo said about Gandhi's appendicitis that those who (generally) take grapes and oranges get appendicitis. In France once there was an epidemic of it on account of people eating too much of it. Grapes are perfectly harmless otherwise. 21 February 1924
But do you want something immediate — some excitement for a time. What is the use of creating a row and ultimately finding that there are only ten people who stand to the last. Let the people's feeling be raised. Let all feel and then unite. If they all unite then it is easy. Let the country get slowly prepared....
That is the history of every religion, sect or religious institution. It begins with religion and ends in commerce, everywhere you will find the same thing.
28 February 1924
On my visit to Motibabu, Motibabu told me that according to Mr. C. R. Das Sri Aurobindo is lost to India.
Mr. Das had come to Pondicherry after seeing Motibabu and said, Motibabu's work in Chandernagore is not satisfactory. Mr. Das and Motibabu hold opposite views, several of Motibabu's close disciples have also left him. The number of his disciples given by him is unreliable.
The sadhak said to Motibabu that Sri Aurobindo Ghose appears to move very near to Shankaracharya. Sri Aurobindo Ghose told him when he (the sadhak) was at Pondicherry on 15th August 1923 that we should not accept ignorance of life and as ordinary life is full of ignorance, the only possible solution is to reject ordinary life and as this doctrine is preached by Shankaracharya, so Sri Aurobindo Ghose is near to Shankaracharya and therefore there is very little new to learn from him.
That is an entire misreading of my Yoga which aims not at rejection of life but fulfilment of life. Of course, — ordinary life is full of ignorance but it is not impossible to live without ignorance. In fact, life with full consciousness is the meaning of evolution. There is a nescience in matter and life which offers great obstacle when we progress towards conscious life and these obstacles have to be conquered by means of the Supermind. There are several curves and circles coming up and down. They have to be understood and used for transforming the ordinary life. Shankaracharya understood Vijnan as a superior mental consciousness and as this was still mental he rejected that Vijnan, Shankaracharya did not believe in manifestation which to him was Maya. Manifestation is truth of Divine power and has to be accepted. That power is working in us and it is possible for us to identify ourselves with that power and thus take part in the manifestation of the Divine on this earth. For some time I also could not understand Vijnan and mistook higher mental consciousness for Vijnan.
It is not sufficient to realise the higher consciousness in meditation. Its working presence should be felt even while doing the ordinary works of life. But Supermind proper is Divine Consciousness which arranges and guides the movements of the Universe. This Consciousness must be made to be our normal nature, and allowed to descend and transform our mind, life and body. Human effort is of no use. There should be complete surrender so that the higher power will come down and work. It is not difficult to realise Supramental Consciousness but it is very difficult to make it active. Therefore several great souls after realising this consciousness worked through mind and reduced it to mental terms. Therefore they could not experience the working of the Supramental Consciousness in its true nature. This new process has not yet been attempted by anyone up to now. I believe in this process and have accepted it and it is giving good results and unless I complete it, I cannot do any other work, i.e. I do not want to multiply disciples nor can I think of Mother India. When I will get it, it will act in such a way that other people will get it without much trouble. .Even at present I can give something worth giving to others but I do not wish to attempt this until the process is completed. Still I must have some men on whom I can make experiments and they will get according to their capacity. The Divine Life lives in unity but sees the difference also and the reasons of differences. There will be no action where there is knowledge of only unity. True action is possible by reading the truth of all activities by means of the higher consciousness. Human consciousness is limited and therefore called ignorance. The higher consciousness is bound to grow.
26 October 1924
In meditation, the light that I experienced here last year repeats itself. The only difference is that, while that light was white, the light that I now get is more like sunlight, and sometimes blue. Besides it is not steady except on rare occasions. There are also other experiences such as sweet smell, stoppage of breath, stability, vastness, timelessness etc., but these are occasional. The highest experience has been that of possession of self having some control over universal nature, but the ordinary mind takes hold of these experiences and reduces them to its own level.
Do the experiences touch the mind — Yes, except on some occasions " when they live in their own greatness.
Then the unstability of the light is due to vital consciousness and stability is due to physical consciousness. Difficulty is experienced by everyone in making the higher experiences normal as the lower being gets hold of them and reduces them to their own level. That is what has happened also in Motilal Roy's case. The remedy is to increase the stability and purify the being by removing all hostile forces. Calmness is the essential nature of the Purusha. It is Purusha. Every thought and action must be discriminated and hostile forces eliminated, so that the being may be purified. The process is necessary and is sometimes perilous. Even before the purification is done, the physical, vital and mental experiences and higher experiences are very much disturbed by similar experiences and moving forces outside oneself. Their relation must be understood and by discrimination, hostile forces coming from cosmic nature must be conquered. Then when purification is completed, there will be liberation of mental and vital being and mental and vital forces. This is ordinarily called Moksha but the real Moksha comes when there is perfection of the being and then enjoyment follows.
Is it possible to see the world by supramental sight as we see with our eyes and is there in man something like the third eye of Shiva?
Yes, but the supramental vision is not of the same kind as the mental or sensational vision. The being that stands back sees all the forces working in the world. This has been attempted by many in the past and has been acquired by some of them, but our own Yoga is not satisfied by mere vision. We must have power to control those forces. It is possible to know the physical nature of outside things by means of our physical nature, their vital nature by our vital nature, and their mental nature by our mental nature and their supramental nature by our supramental nature. It is possible also to know the inner nature of all things directly.
Is it possible to purify, liberate and perfect our nature i. e. to make an inner change without changing the outer life and whether this can be done as rapidly as changing the outer life?
Generally this is not possible. In my own case, I was very much engrossed with political work and could not make an inner change without changing the outer life. But it all depends on the nature of the individual. 5 or a certain time it is possible to make an inner change without changing the outer life. Afterwards the higher nature becomes very strong and many people are obliged to change the outer life. Our aim is not to get supramental experiences only in meditation but also in making them conscious in every act of ordinary life.
There is one Sutra in Brahmasutras viz., the upadesha of manifestation and non-manifestation in the Upanishads can be explained by the example of a serpent sitting in coiled form or otherwise.
From one standpoint, there is no manifestation as all exist in one; from another standpoint, we are one and yet different. The latter is superficial consciousness. It comes to play when there is projection of the Divine Power like a cinematograph. There are various aspects of the Divine and one example is not sufficient to explain all of them.
Champklal and Dilip Kumar Roy
It was stated by a sadhak to Shyam Sunder Chakravarty that Sri Aurobindo 's mind had become international and that he does not think about national matters.
I do not believe in present day internationalism which aims at creating unity by destroying nationality. Nationality also has value. Out of all nations, India is most fitted to begin a new race of supermen and it is for this purpose that the Indian nation must keep up its individuality and recover her soul. At the same time I do not want India to imitate Europe nor to remain in the present mud. Mahatma Gandhi has introduced Tolstoyan Christianity in India and has given a setback to Indian culture. I do not believe also that Councils will be very useful as the vision of the men there is limited. My work is meant for future India and will bring better results than what can be achieved through Councils, but that is silent work and does not require advertisement or speeches as made by leaders of men. India will be free. There is no doubt about it. Western individualism has failed. Russian communism is also not useful for India. India must find its elevation and it will come. If I find it necessary to come out for future work for India, I will do so, but I think inner change is necessary before outward action is accepted. Communism is useful for India but it should be based on spiritual lines.
(Dilip Kumar Roy wrote a letter to Sri Aurobindo asking certain questions regarding marriage. These are the answers of Sri Aurobindo conveyed by Moni.)
No cut and dry answer can be given to such questions as that will convey a wrong impression of this very complex and complicated subject. A solution is hardly possible in a few words. It depends, so Sri Aurobindo tells you something in a general way.
Bonds of union between man and woman are generally of three kinds. The first is the vital and the physical bond. This is very common and ninety nine out of every hundred marriages result in this type of union. This is the only possible bond among men and women of ordinary type and there is absolutely nothing wrong in it. In fact it is neither right nor wrong, but is rather necessary for them gaining experience in their progress of life. It is also there for fulfilling a great purpose of Nature, that is, reproduction or the continuity of the race. You ask why sexual impulse is so strong in man making him almost a helpless tool in its hand. Because, as Sri Aurobindo has said, it is there placed by Nature for fulfilling her most primary and primitive purpose, that of reproduction, and it is strong in order to compel man to do it in spite of himself. For ordinary men it is the only principle and in fact the sole impulse, however man may try to cover it with his emotional and aesthetic ideas and ideals.
The second type of union between man and woman is the psychic bond. Those who are extraordinary in type, of rare refinement and culture and have a call for a greater ideal in life than the average man and woman, as for instance, for art, music, poetry, patriotism, they should seek their life companion not from sexual desires but from a higher outlook so that their union may result in this type of pure and psychic bond. In such a case of an extraordinary man a psychic woman alone can be his real partner of life. She alone can help him to fulfil himself and add to his power and Ananda. A wrong choice for him spells a setback, and even ruin. A vital and physical union with a lower type of woman may blunt his aspirations and even wreck his life according as the woman is. This psychic union is very rare in the world and is so difficult to find — especially as your seeking for a partner is always coloured by your clamouring of desires and lower impulses. On the other hand, when found, your life is extremely happy and both of you grow in power and purity and may even, develop the highest type of bond — the spiritual out of this psychic one. Because psychic union is so rare and a real companion of life is so hard to find for a man of higher ideal, they generally remain single. Some of them find their mate late in life like Mustafa Kamal. Some are fortunate like Browning and are very happy all their life.
What about Napoleon and Josephine? Isn't that relation psychic?
Not entirely; it is half and half. Something in Josephine's luck helped Napoleon. Josephine had a better chance of being an Empress than Napoleon had of being an Emperor. It was by marrying her he made his chance secure.
The spiritual bond is the third and the highest and is for him who feels the true call for spiritual life and has to find his Shakti or complementary soul who will be at once his partner and guide in his sadhana. If you have spiritual life as an ideal in view, you must not seek either an ordinary Woman or a mere psychic one but a woman of that spiritual type who is also psychic and something more. This spiritual bond between man and woman is still more difficult to find and only one percent of the marriages in the world, if at all, result in such a union. When found, a spiritual companion doubles your life and power and increases your speed of progress tenfold. It is really the Purusha and Prakriti fulfilling themselves in their world and raising themselves to the Divine plane by their united power. A wrong choice in the type of one who seeks spiritual greatness is worse than in the psychic bond, the fall is swifter and the result may be fatal. Where there is spiritual union, the psychic is sure to be, but where there is psychic, the higher may not be; only in some cases the higher can be evolved out of it. But out of the lowest the highest cannot certainly .come and even the psychic is hardly possible.
What Ramakrishna had in his mind Sri Aurobindo cannot say, but he thinks Ramakrishna dreaded marriage from the point of view of the ascetic life. If one's ideal is to renounce the world, he has to avoid woman, she being like wealth and ambition, one of the great forces in Nature which drag down man's consciousness to the lower planes of vital and physical desires. Ramakrishna's insistence on renouncing woman was from a moral and ascetic standpoint. You can very well see that Sri Aurobindo does not tell you anything from this ascetic or moral point of view, but because of the above facts.
These are general truths relating to union of man and woman. In your own case everything depends on your ideal. If it is to be the ordinary life of vital and physical enjoyments you can choose your mate just wherever you like. If it is a nobler ideal of art or music or patriotism, the seeking for a companion of life must not primarily be from the sexual desire but from something higher and the woman must have something in her in tune with the psychic part of your being. If on the other hand, your ideal is spiritual life you must think fifty times before you marry: Sri Aurobindo has already told you how rare a fit mate is for such a spiritual union. You are here given the general principles only. From its complexity you can easily imagine how difficult it will be for Sri Aurobindo to give you any clear-cut answer. With these data before you you must decide for yourself.
25 November 1924
(A disciple later asked a further question about the subject discussed above.)
How can one know when he meets his psychic mate?
How do you know a spiritual experience? How do you know when you have the right leader? It is all a matter of feeling and inner perception. It is an art and not a science. When she walks into your life you will know her right enough. As I have told you again and again, no rigid and hard and fast rule is possible in things like this. Union with woman is right in one case and perhaps wrong in other 99 cases. In that one case again without his Shakti the man's progress will be very slow and he may even go wrong. In the other 99 cases contact with woman itself may prove an obstacle. There are so many hostile powers working against the right union of complementary souls that very often, you can seldom meet your right mate. Of course I am talking of the path and not of the goal. When you reach the highest you will have to see whether you can get your Shakti. Without a Shakti you can yourself be perfect, in the sense that you can attain full knowledge, power and Ananda and change your entire organised being into its divine nature, but when you want to throw your powers on the world for creation, it is different. Take my instance. It may so happen that I reach the highest all alone, my Shakti falling in the way. Then I cannot create without her. I can by my highest siddhi only prepare the way for others to follow and accomplish the rest in the future. It is not only the dark forces who obstruct and make it impossible for the twin souls to meet, but even when they actually meet their life may get wrecked owing to mental and vital impediments. It is only when the psychic or the spiritual part is predominant in both, the two can really fulfil one another and progress higher and higher. The hostile powers working against the siddhi of yogis are difficult to conquer. Ordinarily we are in complete darkness or ignorance with only flashes of knowledge now and then, even when the sadhaka has risen into a continual glow of knowledge and can discern the play of all the dark forces, he is not exempt from attack. Only when he reaches full illumination and is in serene and revealed knowledge he is beyond them and safe.
(The following seven reports of April 1925 are notes on Tirupati's interviews with Sri Aurobindo,)
When you bring down Power, you always bring down fighting power. The Divine power need not always be fighting power. When so power conies, a mere touch is enough to produce great effect. The Higher power knows the need of the system. In the physical, it is the calm, persistent power that works best, so you open with Sattvic ease, and the power can come down very easily, without your feeling strain. You need not bring down fighting power, unless you have to fight very great forces. In the vital, you could safely bring it down, for the vital is a fighting being.
7 April 1925
What I am now getting is the consciousness of unity with everything. The knowledge of difference, feeling etc. will come afterwards?
When you have got the unity, then you have got the right foundation for difference.
11 April 1925
1) Supermind is the Divine mind of knowledge and wisdom.
2) It shows the true relation of everything.
3) It shows everything.
4) Unity is the nature of the Infinite.
5) The idea of unity etc. is the creation of the mind.
6) You must pass beyond all these, to arrive at the true Supermind.
7) That which is coming is coming from above.
16 April 1925
1) What you are getting is what I call Vishaya Ananda; Ananda of the visayas.
2) Influence coming from these, have the nature of the true physical.
3) The Power is working in the material.
17 April 1925
1) Faith may be due to:
(a) The awakening of the psychic being.
(b) Fully developed emotional being turned upwards.
(c) Fully developed mind, which sees the thing as certain.
(d) Religious faith which is stupidity.
(e) Faith may be due to the absence of intellectual development; intellect which sees all possibilities gives prominence to each.
(f) Doubt may be due to the physical mind having positive side. We have to see, what is the source of faith. There is no absolute rule of law.
2) Spiritual being is Sachchidananda, which can be realised on the mental plane. One need not go to the Supermind at all.
3) First the whole physical being must be opened up; the Supermind must come and change the whole being from top to bottom; supramentalise it; then you get into the Supermind when you have the absolute truth.
4) Capacity of the physical being to extend depends upon our becoming conscious, and upon the plasticity of matter. Its capacity is the same as in the other parts, i.e., the plasticity and becoming conscious.
19 April 1925
There are very few people who have a trained mind. The education is such — getting mere ideas from books. They do not have that accuracy of the intelligence: intelligence which properly deals with the facts that are offered to it.
20 April 1925
I mean by trained intelligence the capacity to think rightly and see the truth, the truth of things in themselves and in right relation to each other. I mean the ideative mind. I do not mean to say that people have no ideas, but having ideas does not mean they think or look for the truth. Being* idealistic does not mean that they have trained intelligence. It is just the opposite of it. Idealists are mostly narrow. Opinions anybody can have. People may be optimistic, pessimistic, idealistic and it does not mean that they think.
My faith is from the psychic plane.
All power is one, but in manifestation it takes different forms and aspects.
These are different aspects and expressions of Ananda, delight of the perception of all things on all planes. In some there may be psychic or intuition, but that is a different matter. That is .very rare in humanity.
What do you mean by psycho-mental, psycho-vital, etc. ?
That is only a name. You can call it larger mental and larger vital.
What is pure psychic?
Pure psychic is Divine Principle.
Should we not be conscious of our strength ? You say, what is strong in me.
Yes, but you should be also conscious of your defects. You have a very strong vital being, and a good psychic being.
Is it more easy to act from the psychic ?
That you need not know now. The one advantage of having a good psychic is that there will be faith and certainty that the thing will come down. It is this that is necessary to fight the things on the physical plane. What they say Cue... it is faith. The nature of the Physical is to refuse power and light. But your faith brings down into the physical, the power and the light.
You ask me to be always conscious of the forces working and you make me so. But many people are not conscious yet; and yet they make progress. Why? How does the power work?
That is very common. It works behind the veil. Power is always working in the world. People are progressing, but few know how much they progress.
Becoming conscious is exceptional. It depends upon the aspiration of the being behind and upon the call from above. There is something in you which always, even in the darkest period, wants the higher thing. That is because of the force that has been gathered up in previous lives.
21 April 1925
An Avatār is not subject to the laws of Karma as ordinary men are. The mind, life and body of the ordinary man are formed as a result of his past Karma. The Avatar having no such past how are his mind, life and body formed?
The Avatar gets it as other men do. What has that to do with his being an Avatar? All that is only a certain movement in nature in his lower Prakriti.
If your idea is that Avatar is something miraculous and that he is not subject to the laws of Nature, then you have only the conventional notion about it. He is not miraculous in the methods he adopts. He also like others accepts the human limitations. If he did not then he ceases to have any meaning for man.
But how is his Ādhāra prepared?
It is a certain movement which takes place in his nature leaving his soul free, unaffected. If he were to use his freedom he would grow twenty arms and ten eyes. But he does not do so. Krishna says he has been taking birth always since the beginning. It is not that God is above somewhere else and has to come down. He is always here and everywhere. Only he has to manifest his Divinity.
Did Buddha live in the Supermind?
His aim was not to produce superman. His idea was to realise all this as the impermanent manifestation of the Permanent, to leave this and always remain in the permanent Nirvana State.
But his vital and physical parts did not live in Nirvana?
Evidently not.
Then were those parts subject to ignorance or were they free? If they were subject to ignorance then they could drag him down to birth again.
He could have abandoned those parts.
Then was he free?
What do you mean by freedom? Birth is a bondage so long as one is in the mental being. It only appears so. But if you look at the thing from above then there is no such thing, one is not affected by birth and death.
Then Buddha did not achieve perfection of his nature?
He may have entered the higher ignorance. You see there are infinite movements of the higher consciousness in Nature. Human mind can occupy itself with certain mental absolutes, not all. It can confine itself to the absolute of the silent Brahman or the absolute of the Infinite Power, Mahashakti, and exclude the rest of the Infinite. So many movements like this are possible. But I do not concern myself with them. Looking at the thing as a whole, we find that the aim has been to manifest more and more of the Divine.
In the Jaina philosophy there is an idea that in this age this body would not be capable of bearing the supermind.
We shall see.
They say that we have to prepare our body infield of consciousness first.
That may be the true body which is in the Supermind. We have to bring that body down into the physical. Besides Jaina philosophy is concerned with individual perfection. Our effort is quite different. We want to bring down the Supermind as a new faculty just as the mind is now a permanent state of consciousness in humanity which anybody can attain if he makes an effort. So we want to create a race in which the Supermind will be a permanent state of consciousness.
1925
(The following five reports of September 1925 are notes on evening talks of that month.)
If one has a natural conscious psychic capacity to open to God totally, unconditionally, sincerely, then there is no fall for him. Difficulties there may come, confusions there may occur, stumblings and covering up by forces of ignorance may happen, but he will go on without a fall.
He will come to know accurately what is to be taken up and what is to be thrown out — he will get the right knowledge and right guidance. Very few have got such utter sincerity and the natural psychic capacity to open themselves up to God.
One must be severe with oneself— must be able to reject at all times all kinds of lower movements wherever they are detected with a strong will — must not allow oneself to be lax and loose and enjoy oneself in these movements. All good, bad, indifferent, everything must be given up and surrendered to the Supreme. Unconditional surrender is required for the continued onward march and progress from light to light.
If one is simply blind to his aim, content with any kind of experience and taking delight and enjoyment in it, he easily opens himself very often into some part of the vital world. The vital world mostly (that is nine- tenth) is full of delusions and falsities and images. Anyone by his imagination may create anything for himself, bring about an image or experience of any kind. They have nothing to do with the higher Truth. There is some truth of course in the vital world which is behind all these. The forces in the vital world are only too ready to take their earliest chance and make use of the person at any time. The mental opening on the other hand is a better one than the vital. It is nearer the Truth — there are less delusions and falsities in it than in the vital. And when one has this opening there is a chance of his opening to the higher Truth. Psychic opening beyond and above the mental openings is the real opening — here there is no danger, one gets the proper knowledge and can go on with more spontaneity.
People who are not called to this Yoga, who have not taken the proper personal guidance from me and on whom Yoga is simply forced, in other words want to do some Yoga forcing it on themselves — very often and easily open themselves to these vital worlds. When a number of people sit together and meditate and earnestly want to get something, there will always be some opening. The worlds they open themselves to without being conscious to what they have opened themselves to is of no small importance to know.
One ought to know and become conscious to what he has opened himself to.
Also these people who have forced the Yoga on themselves and who easily get into some communication and opening into the vital world have no strong minds. The mind is not grown up or strong in them. Otherwise they could get beyond this vital opening and recognise and become conscious of their opening and the many delusions and falsities in it.
When one gets the real thing always he feels it, knows it and becomes conscious of it, and where he puts it or applies it, is always successful.
This natural psychic opening of the soul establishes something increasingly which always stands and is not broken by obstacles, confusions or covering.
11 September 1925
A quietude of the mind is necessary. This does not mean silence. It is necessary to have a quietude and calmness in the mind, a giving up of himself to the Supreme and a calm, quiet and peaceful watching of all the movements that take place. There should be a deep aspiration for the descent and establishing of calm and peace in the being. There should also be an aspiration for the entire purification and suddhi of the being. When the calmness is established then the light and knowledge will descend into the being.
12 September 1925
The motor-car is a devil incarnate; as long as there are motor-cars there will be accidents. There is something in the very speed of the car that invites all possible forces and movements and brings about all the accidents etc.
13 September 1925
Three-fourths of the actions of human beings are done from this physicovital world. In the vital world at least there is some power, some widening. In the physicovital it is petty narrow and small; some imps who when they get the chance of using some person as their medium begin to use them.
A movement from the physicovital, a fancy which the person is not conscious of and is unable to arrange or organise.
All the charlatanism, the humbugging hoaxes are from this world. Charlie Chaplin, the buffoons, clowns and newspaper-wits, all these are acted upon from this world.
There is very little difference between cats and human beings, it is a difference in detail.
14 September 1925
At the very first sight I could realise that he (Sri Aurobindo) had been seeking for the soul and had gained it, and through this long process of realisation had accumulated within him a silent power of inspiration. His face was radiant with an inner light and his serene presence made it evident to me that his soul was not crippled, and cramped to the measure of some tyrannical doctrine, which takes delight in inflicting wounds upon life. He, I am sure, never had his lessons from the Christian monks of ascetic Europe, revelling in the pride of that self-immolation which is a twin sister of self-aggrandisement joined back to back facing opposite directions.
I felt that the utterance of the ancient Hindu Rishi spoke from him of that equanimity which gives the human soul its freedom of entrance into the All. I said to him, "You have the word and we are waiting to accept it from you. India will speak through your voice to the world. Hearken to me"'...
Years ago I saw Aurobindo in the atmosphere of his earlier heroic youth and I sang to him,
"Aurobindo, accept the salutation from Rabindranath."
Today I saw him in a deeper atmosphere of a reticent richness of wisdom and again sang to him in silence,
"Aurobindo, accept the salutation from Rabindranath!"
RABINDRANATH TAGORE
Sri Aurobindo said: I have told him about his vital sensibility. Try to keep the vital quiet under any circumstances; whatever happens, not to get angry.
Regarding Kashibhai's dream in which he saw a brilliant, luminous round ball, Sri Aurobindo said: May be Sun.
Hamsa == soul
Cow= light and knowledge
Bullock = no meaning... may be working of Shakti
18-May 1930
When you take to yoga, the horoscope does not hold good, because another force enters into play. After that, the predictions are only true as far as you carry with you parts of your old life into the new one. This is a well-known fact.
At least to know what is going to happen may induce one to react and to stand against these limitations and break them. I would say in such cases, "This will not happen. Why should I submit to what is imposed by these vital forces? If the Divine is in me, I am the master of my destiny". Undated
The stars have no decisive influence. It is only if one does not believe in the Divine that one unnecessarily suffers by believing that they determine one's life.
I have known many astrologers both in Europe and India. So far, nobody has been able to read the future correctly. There are three reasons for the failure. First the astrologers do not know how to read the future properly. Secondly, the horoscope is always incorrectly made - unless a man is a mathematical genius. And even for such a person it is very difficult to make a correct horoscope. Thirdly, when people say that the stars in this or that house at the time of birth rule your life, they are quite wrong. The stars under which you are born are only "tape-recorders" of physical conditions. They do not rule the future of the soul. There is something beyond, which rules the stars themselves and everything else. The soul belongs to this Supreme Being. And if it is doing Yoga, then all the more it should never believe in the power of the stars or in any other power.
An astrologer who predicts a catastrophe for you is like a joker. Many jokers say things like "Today you will break your neck!" But in spite of the joke nothing happens.
Only a great Yogi can tell you your future correctly. But even then there is the Supreme Will which alone controls and decides everything.
8 September 1961
1) These two reports were seen and approved by The Mother.
X is a very refined girl, and she is extremely sensitive, easily hurt. Never scold her or speak harshly to her or force her to do anything. I find her very nice. But she looked so frightened — I don't know who could have told her about me that she should feel like that. Tell her that I found her very nice. She is very refined but somehow she has been living all tightened up. Let her feel quite free, don't try to put any ring around her. Let her feel completely relaxed and free here, and tell her that she should relax and just feel as if she were all the time in sunshine.
16 September 1968
"The Light will come down to bring peace in the world" Painting by Champaklal
25.12.71
The time has come for the rule of falsehood to end. In the Truth alone is salvation.
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